Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 97-98 (Patreon)

Ch. 97 - Between the Darkness and the Light

When Jordan first saw the lights on the horizon, he thought that they were torches, even if they were a bit too small and a little too bright. Morning was approaching, and though it was no longer bright enough to make the horizon glow with that long-lost blue line of hope or reveal the source of the lights, he still moved toward them. All he had now were the cold, distant stars and the approaching candles to ward off whatever evils skulked in the darkness.

When Jordan got close enough to them to discover what they were, he wished he hadn’t. They were… they were what exactly? Priests? Templars? He wasn’t sure, but there were thousands of them, and most of them marched with little flecks of sunlight radiating from their eyes. For a mage who had studied both of the burning times in detail, it was a terrifying sight, but even as he stood there and the ranks of marching men moved to meet him, swords stayed in their sheaths, which was as much as he could hope for.

On the front rank, one man stood out over all the rest, though. He was an older warrior who had burn scars on his hands and face, and his plate armor was a bit finer than most. All of those details paled in comparison to the most important one, though: he was glowing. Like everyone else, he had eyes of fire, but he was the only one with a flickering aura of the long-lost sunlight that the world missed terribly.

And he was looking right at Jordan. This was enough to make the mage swallow hard and step off the road he’d been following to allow them to pass, but as they closed the distance between them, the army stopped with a gesture from the glowing man, and he strode forward to meet Jordan. His large kite shield stayed on his back, but Jordan couldn’t help but notice that the man’s right hand stayed on his sword’s hilt the entire time.

“You are a sorcerer,” the man declared blandly, telling Jordan that whoever this was, he clearly had the sight and that it would be difficult to hide anything from him.

“An apprentice, my lord,” he said, bowing nervously. “I am Jordon Sedgim, son of—”

“I am Siddrim’s Paragon, and I care not who you are, only that you have no taint of true evil on your soul,” the Paragon interrupted, “I only wish to know what you are doing here.”

Jordan suppressed a gasp. “So this is a crusade?” he asked. “I’d thought that Sidrimar would send help!”

“Siddrimar is gone, lad,” the Templar lord said softly, “But my question still stands.”

“I… I got lost,” he confessed. “The Collegium at Abenend was under attack, and I was trapped in the city when the zombies tried to attack, but my spell went wild and… I ended up lost in the dark for days until I found that.”

As he spoke, Jordan pointed toward the southwest, to the giant pillar of night. It was just bright enough now that you could see the edges against a sky that was imperceptibly brighter.

“And what is that?” the Paragon asked.

“I-I don’t know,” Jordan confessed. They started walking after that, and Jordan told the Templar lord and his men all he could about his brief exploration of the empty spaces. “It encompasses at least part of the Oroza, the canal, and all of Blackwater, the mage said quietly, but beyond that, I know little. I never saw a single living thing, though, be it animal or man.”

They listened to his words and didn’t seem inclined to burn him at the stake or torment him with hot irons until he confessed his sins and repented of magic. So, he tried to do everything to make certain that continued.

By the time the first sun had risen fully and was moving across the sky, they were miles closer to the Templar’s goal, which made Jordan profoundly uncomfortable. Still, he could hardly refuse. They hadn’t said that he was their prisoner, of course, but the way he was flanked on all sides by armed men certainly seemed to imply that he was.

While they walked, the old warrior who led the assembled army told him that the fortress city had fallen along with their god and that the church was dead. It was a staggering admission. Despite the danger to himself, he’d hoped to rally the full might of the church to end whatever had done this. That was impossible now, though; this was it, and honestly, he wasn’t sure that it would be enough to face an evil that stretched to the sky.

By that evening, they’d almost reached the dark lands. It was like a black curtain drawn across the whole of the horizon to their west, and though the sun was setting somewhere behind it, the thin, reddish light didn’t reach the campsite they were building. The Templars had apparently made the decision for what was going to happen next a long time ago, but they were implementing it now.

In a few hours, most of the army would journey in the dark, leaving only the warriors without the gift of the light to defend the growing collection of camp followers. It was folly. Even Jordan thought so, but he was benefiting from it, so he said nothing. He’d be happy to stay behind and help defend the rump of the army. Even though he said nothing aloud, many other warriors did. The Paragon ignored all complaints.

He didn’t see things the same way. “Attacking at night has no meaning, since all is night past that line,” he declared, gesturing with his glowing sword, “and in the eternal night, there is no place for those without the light of Siddrim in their eyes!”

“If that is true, then why do you plan to take the mage inside with you?” one of his war council asked, annoyed that so many good men were being left out of what was to come in a few hours.

That was news to Jordan, and a shiver of fear went down his spine as he realized he might have to go back in there.

“He’s a mage,” the Paragon spat, “his soul is damned already, so there is no saving him. He might prove useful in understanding what is in that foul place.”

Jordan thought about asking if he had any say in any of this but decided that would not be a welcome interruption. That was fine. Once the fighting started, he could weave an illusion of invisibility and run or perhaps teleport back. He made a note to count his steps back to camp. Over level ground, that piece of information would drastically increase his options.

The warriors argued a while longer about his fate and the other details, but nothing changed, and a few hours later, they started marching. Intellectually, he knew they’d lost a third of their number, but from where Jordan stood, he couldn’t see it. He was still surrounded on three sides by armed men for further than he could see.

It was reassuring, on some level, to be surrounded by almost eight thousand of his worst enemies. A student of the Collegium knew better than almost anyone how brutal and powerful the Siddrim’s church could be. There were other gods that persecuted mages too, of course, but none did so with the same fervor as the sun god, and in their rage and grief, the children of the Lord of Light inspired a sort of awe. Jordan couldn’t imagine what it was that might be able to beat them, but as soon as he crossed the boundary, he found his answer.

The only match for the army of light at his back was the army of night that loomed out of the night toward him. Hundreds of zombies were only dozens of feet away, and as soon as they crossed the inky curtain, a hideous battle cry rippled along the ranks and surged forward.

Jordan did exactly what he expected he would in that situation: he froze. Before all this, he’d been hoping to land a position as an advisor or alchemist to a backwater Count or an Earl. He’d never dreamed of becoming a battle mage. So, even as the templars surged forward with a deafening battle cry, he stood there, forcing them to flow around him like a river of violence.

He needn’t have been worried, apparently. The line of zombies was only a few ranks thick, and it was crushed almost immediately by the wave of men in steel and their glowing swords.

The zombies had scarcely fallen into the collection of body parts that they were when something sinuous and shadowy soared over the assembled mass of milling warriors. Despite himself, Jordan ducked as one of the things soared too close to him. It was an unmanly reaction, but it saved his life when the man just to his right was snatched up instead and was carried screaming into the sky.

Jordan whispered a few arcane words and called the lightning, trying to strike at least one of the unseen creatures, but the result was stranger than than expected. The electrical force did nothing because there was nothing for it to hit. The light that the pulse radiated, though, was enough to make the nearest two creatures evaporate in a chorus of keening screams as they dropped their prey back to the earth.

Jordan did not get a good look at the things that had flown above them, but they looked vaguely aquatic. They were something like a skate or a ray made out of nothing but an oil sheen and shadows. It sent a wave of goosebumps across his flesh as he tried to imagine what horrors could fester and grow in a place that the sun never touched.

“Come now!” a voice taunted from the shadows not so far above them. “If you slay my little friends, you’ll ruin the show!”

The warriors looked around guardedly for what said that, but the sound was everywhere and nowhere, and Jordan could do nothing for the three remaining warriors who were much too far out of his reach. All anyone could do was watch as they were carried screaming into the dark sky, growing ever fainter.

“Show yourself spirit!” The Paragon roared as his sword flared to violent life, becoming a fountain of fire.

“You have no interest in me. What I have been ordered to show you though…” it quipped. “You will forgive the light I have borrowed when you see what it illuminates.”

While those words hung in the air, each of the templars that had been carried away in the night suddenly detonated like fireworks. Jordan recognized the traces of arcane magic in what had happened, but he wouldn’t have the time to study it. No matter how interesting it was that something had catalyzed a spell that released all the light and strength their souls possessed in a moment, it was what the sudden flash of light showed that stole his breath.

For a moment, the explosions of blood and light turned night into day. As bright as the explosions were, though, they only illuminated a hip, the lower sections of a rib cage, and the spine they were attached to. The bones themselves were unremarkable, save for the fact that they were the size of cathedrals or fortresses. The ribs themselves were longer than any bridge or taller than any tower Jordan had ever seen. Doing some quick math, he realized that the corpse had to be miles long, which left little doubt as to who it belonged to.

The bones seemed to phosphoresce, briefly absorbing the light. They continued to glow softly for the next several minutes, serving as a macabre backdrop for the assembled forces.

“It is my honor to inform you that your deity is grateful that you have decided to die on the same ground that he did,” the voice taunted. “So, we welcome you to the realm of darkness and promise you that none of you will leave here alive.”

Ch. 98 - Godfall

Initially, Brother Faerbar had been planning to march straight for the Temple of Dawn and the festering well of evil that lay beneath it. It had been his mission from the very start, but all that changed with the sight of his own God’s remains, though. That was a sight that the Templar had never expected to see. It was one thing to know that Siddrim was dead because the God’s own memories of that moment that burned inside of him said so. However, it was quite another to see his larger-than-life remains fall to the earth, and his eyes stayed fixed on that point even as the giant bones disappeared once more into darkness.

Tears unexpectedly came to his eyes after that, and his sword dimmed a bit as dark emotions rushed through him, but the taunts he expected from the mystery voice never came. It vanished along with everything else, and the army of light was left alone to deal with the aftermath of the things they’d seen. Even though the Paragon knew that the effect was still impossible to avoid, he knelt there on the icy road. Then he began to pray, even though he knew there was no god to hear him. Over the course of the next several minutes, the whole army knelt with him to pay their respects. It was all they could do.

After that, there was no way they could continue on their crusade without going north, paying their respects, and learning what they could about what happened. After an hour of marching, though, all they learned was that physically, there was nothing there to enshrine or bury. Most of Borther Faerbar’s men couldn’t see anything except the crater that Siddrim had made when he’d fallen, but with his sight, he could see the cathedralesque remains towering above him into the darkness.

They hung there like an aura without an owner, and even though he questioned the mage harshly, the young man had nothing to add to the situation. “So Siddrim’s spirit is just stuck here forever?” He demanded of Jordan.

“I mean - I would th-think his spirit was in the small suns that reappeared—” Jordan stammered.

“Those are not the remains of our god!” Brother Faerbar roared. “Those are his horses, running free of his chariot with no one to guide them. I fear that without his steady hand, they might eventually tire and flee to a different pasture or stop and graze one mid-day and burn part of the world while the rest freezes!”

“His horses?” Jordan asked, a look of obvious confusion on his face. “I’d always thought that was a metaphor…”

“And what would it be a metaphor exactly?” the Paragon demanded. “What would light and heat the world if not his four flaming stallions?”

The mage had no answers for that, which was fine, Brother Faerbar supposed. He had never read the scriptures, so teaching him would be nigh impossible anyway. Handling the disposition of Siddrim’s corpse and his steeds only had one thing in common: they were problems that would never be in his power to solve.

Brother Faerbar had always been a simple man, and part of him resented having to be the one to make these decisions. Even as he debated what they should do next with his lieutenants and if this development actually changed anything, he reflected on that.

He did not seek this power or this army, but now that he had it, there was only one use for it. He needed to rip out the black heart of the evil that had inflicted this scar on the world and slain his God by treachery under a shroud of darkness. Which meant fighting. No amount of delays or strategizing would change that.

The longer everyone talked, the harder it became to hear them, though. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart as it beat with rage at the very idea that there might be an alternative to what was coming next. So, Brother Faerbar gave the order, and they began to march once more. This time, though, it was for Blackwater itself - the very heart of darkness.

He could see the fear and indecision beginning to grow in even the hearts of veterans. The mage looked like he was about to piss himself or run in fear at any moment. Brother Faerbar could understand those emotions, but they no longer reached him. There was no fear in a soul already suffused with a need for vengeance.

On the long slog back to the river through frozen fields and small snow drifts, they found a few more smaller groups of zombies, but they tore apart like tissue paper. To this point, the weather and the darkness had proved to be a bigger obstacle than the forces arrayed against them, and that worried the Paragon. How could an enemy be strong enough to defeat a god but weak enough to fall before them like wheat?

It wasn’t until they reached the edge of Blackwater that they met any real resistance, and for Brother Faerbar, that only deepened the mystery. The zombies before them were obviously different from the ones they’d faced until now. They wore crude armor and wielded weapons that were lashed to their hands. More than anything, they bore a resemblance to the warriors that he’d faced years before in Oroza’s under temple, but they proved only to be a distraction.

By the time the Paragon had slain his third zombie, a shape larger than five men together lurched out of the night. For a moment, he thought it was a troll. That was the only thing he’d ever faced that was this size, but this was even bigger. In the end, as it charged him, all he could do was charge it in return before he crushed the men around him into paste.

The thing was more than twice his height, but he was infused with the strength of a god and jumped as they met, slamming his shield into the chest of the thing, staggering it. Even glowing with Siddrim’s light, though, it wasn’t enough to kill the thing, and as he swung his sword hard at the neck, looking for a quick kill, it deflected off the crude iron collar that had been put there. Someone had done their homework, he realized bitterly as he pressed his legs against the thing’s chest and lept away before the thing could grab him and crush him to death in its giant three-foot wide hands.

“Is that the best you can do?” the Paragon roared as he was knocked off his feet by a backhand and sent flying back toward his own lines.

Up until now, he’d succeeded at weaving just at the edge of its range and striking at each blow directed his way with his flaming sword in a bid to sever a finger or a tendon, but it had done very little good, and on his last strike he’d gotten a little too close, and he’d been knocked off his feet for his troubles.

He could feel the pain spreading throughout his body. A broken hip, a twisted knee, and a fractured leg. Each of these wounds healed before he even had the chance to rise, though.

His words were almost as effective as his sword, though. The glowing blades made quick enough work of the lesser zombies, but so far, every slash and trust he’d attempted to land on this monster had done nothing but gouge the metal beneath its skin. Something had taken the time to skin this giant, install bizarre bronze scale armor, and then sew the skin back on as if that made any sense.

It baffled the Templar, but then he supposed the motives of evil wouldn’t always make sense. This also held true for the words the mage began to chant somewhere behind him. For a moment, Brother Faerbar thought that he was about to be betrayed, but even as he braced for impact from whatever foul sorcery the mage behind him was casting, a lance of fire arced up over his head and splashed across the face of the behemoth, making it roar in anger.

Brother Faerbar doubted that was enough to kill it or even blind it permanently. The dead didn’t need their eyes to see. Not truly. Still, as long as it was on fire and distracted, he could afford to try something more complicated. Circling around behind the flailing giant with all the speed he could muster, The Paragon struck hard at the base of the thing’s spine, but the bone there had been replaced with steel as well.

He took a two-handed grip on his blade and struck the same spot twice more to no effect, and even as the monstrosity began to clear the fire to circle around and grab him once more, he switched to a softer target: the inside of the left knee. Because of its need to flex and move in a way that was at least somewhat natural, Brother Faerbar’s blade cut deep there for the first time, releasing foul black ichor even as the thing’s leg went out from underneath it, and it fell on its side roaring in outrage.

It lashed out again and again from its prone position. Sometimes, it succeeded in grabbing a warrior and crushing them so hard that blood poured out of the twisted plate mail before it lobbed them back into the army. It never succeeded in grabbing the Paragon, though, and with each attempt, it only exposed another vital piece of its underbelly to him, now that he knew what he was looking for. The warrior struck at every joint it could with his blade, and with every ligament he severed, the thing grew slower and clumsier until it was nothing but a turtle lying there harmlessly on its back.

A ragged cheer went up from the nearby men who had been doing what they could as Brother Faerbar climbed on top of the monster’s head. Then, without flourish or fanfare, he plunged his fiery blade into the thing’s eye socket to finally destroy the brain, and it exploded, launching the Templar a dozen feet back toward Blackwater.

He had briefly expected that the thing might spring to life once more or that a second wave of zombies would arrive to save it. What he never imagined was that the creature’s death would trigger some alchemical blast deep in that thing’s body.

Suddenly, that bizarre armor made sense, Brother Faerbar realized just before he hit the ground hard. When defending against blows, every hit had been absorbed by the scale mail, but when this thing detonated, most of those same scales went flying, and all of those sharp pieces of shrapnel hit with the force of a thousand arrows as it flew in all directions, shredding those closest to the blast.

Brother Faerbar’s plate mail spared him the worst of it, but he felt the pain race through him from half a dozen punctures and knew that he wouldn’t be able to begin to heal until the cursed metal was removed from his body.

He rose shakily to his feet and began to pull out the pieces. Then he surveyed the damage and the dead, wondering what other terrible surprises awaited him between here and the Temple of the Dawn.