Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 105-106 (Patreon)

Ch. 105 - Unexpected Difficulties

Time took on a new meaning for Tenebroum in the wake of its Siddrim’s defeat, as its spirit continued to evolve. It became insufferably persistent and regular for the darkness for the first time in its long existence.

Before now, time might linger as it focused on its most important projects, such as when the Temple of Dawn neared completion or when its shadow dragon readied itself for another test flight that seemed like it would finally be successful. Now, though, time was its constant companion, and order had invaded its soul in a way it would not have been able to imagine previously.

Now it was aware of the ticking clock as it reminded it of every minute that passed in the same way it was aware of every drip of water leaking into a dank body storage room and every rat that was gnawing away at the raw materials of its future army. It tried to take this new information in stride, but more than anything, it was shocked at just how much waste it had allowed up till now and just how long it was forced to wait for some of its plans to come to fruition.

Every night its earth titan came to the surface and cleaved right through those damned bloody hills in the west in an effort to reach the sea, but even with its earth magic and the fact that it was largely obedient, the project to drown the river goddess was still months away, and it did not expect her to just wither up and die the moment it did so. That was a battle that would take years, but it would not let that stop it.

Its tunnel project alone might take over a year, too, but even if it lacked the infinite patience that ignorance had provided it up until now, it would not let that deter it. It would find ways to speed these things up. Already, the iron men that made up the legion of rust had journeyed north to the Woden Spine Mountains and begun to dig the passage that would become critical to its future attacks, but that was not the only thing it was up to.

Tenebroum’s base of operations was constantly expanding, and now that the surface was plunged into eternal night, some tasks could be accomplished faster and better simply by moving them to the surface where the cold could aid in those processes. Already, the most gifted healers of the crusader army had been merged and modified with each other to create a new batch of chirurgiens that were currently busy wailing and gnashing their teeth as they were forced to put their dead friends and brothers in arms back together again to replenish Tenebroum’s much-diminished supply of war zombies.

Such deficiencies needed to be addressed now that the world was well and truly aware of it for the first time in its long existence. This attack had failed, but there would be others, and it would be ready for them. Already, it was sending caravans with dark tarps and coffins to fetch the corpses that had been left to rot in the nearby villages to ensure that it would not run out of raw materials, and it had dispatched its army to Fallravea to purge it of all survivors since it was the last battlefield open to it.

There would be no heroics there. Not with a starving population lacking their holy defenders and a foundation that had long since been filled with tunnels to make any real defense impossible. It fell in a single night, completing its kingdom of the dead.

This, at least, was enough to pass the time as time crawled forward at the pace of one of its drudges. The Lich would not get to enjoy slaughter like this again until it finally made a new route to the soft cities and villages of the outside world. That meant it needed to savor every drop of orphan’s blood that dripped into the overflowing gutters and bask in the scream of every last widow before she, too, was silenced forever.

It made for a lovely two days of distraction, but after that, the bodies were cooling and slowly making their way back to its realm of eternal night one silent, cadaverous caravan at a time. After that, it was back to the monotony of assembling new minions and waiting for its long-term projects to come to fruition.

It was true that there were some bright spots. The dwarvish souls in its latest batch positively hated being fused with the bones and teeth of Kobolds so that they would make for even better miners, which was good because Krulm’venor barely reacted when it added the souls of unsullied dwarves in an attempt to rekindle the hound to be something more than the rabid attack dog it had become. This was a reasonable response to all the spirit had been through, but it was not an entertaining one.

Finally, after several weeks of monotony, when Tenebroum thought it could take no more of the monotony, its legion of rust finally got deep enough into the mountains to hold its interest. Until then, the endeavor had been nothing but logistical headaches. Now, though, it was paying off.

Not in the form of mineral veins, though their singularly straight tunnel had located both a tin vein and a silver vein that it would later exploit. No, in interesting biological specimens. Goblins would occasionally be drawn to the activity, though it was easy enough to slaughter them if they became too much of a nuisance. There was other, stranger life, too, though. There were giant albino centipedes that bored through the bedrock by spitting acid, and in one cavern, it located a whole ecology of spiders that preyed on other spiders with increasingly powerful poisons and stalking tactics.

One had been large enough to try to devour its already dead dwarves, though without much success. Tenebroum did not slaughter them all immediately for their impudence, though. Instead, it was content to study the dumb, dangerous creatures. They were no real threat to it, and there was a great deal to be learned, it decided, both from how they moved and the toxins they generated.

It was strange, it reflected as it watched the days crawl by and measured the passage of that time in feet of progress made, timbers erected, and cartloads of debris carried slowly back to the surface by hundreds of drudges. A few years ago, its pet fire godling had made a very similar trip and seen very similar sights, but the darkness that held its leash had cared very little about such discoveries at the time.

It supposed that it was not strange to find itself so altered by its brush with the light. After all, it had taken decades to evolve from where it started as an angry swamp denizen to the master of necromancy that it had become and everything that it had been dwarfed by the essence that it feasted upon in Siddrim’s dying soul. It would have been far stranger for that situation not to change it at all.

So, while it waited for the next event or oddity worthy of its attention, it turned its eyes back to its own lair, adding hundreds of small tasks to the list that was its only thing longer than its ever-growing inventory of bodies. There were soul nets to mend, leaks to seal, bodies to pickle, and grisly mosaics to complete. Even with all the time in the world and more servants every day, it wasn’t enough to address the unaddressable.

It rejected the perfectionist streak that was slowly manifesting inside of it. Tenebroum resented it, but its need for orderliness and precision, especially in its larger plans, was becoming difficult to resist as time crept forward at a snail’s pace.

It had just finally gotten around to reviewing the limited data that its new astrolabe and the obsidian-lensed telescope that was paired with it when they encountered real-life, actual dwarves. The result was a bloodbath for both sides.

For weeks, Tenebroum’s legion of rust had been digging forward in a nearly straight line as it built the tunnel wide enough for three ranks to travel abreast. They’d been making great time at the rate of more than a dozen feet a day through the hard granite roots of the mountain, but when its tunnel impacted a more natural one, it found something completely unexpected: dozens, no - hundreds of dwarves encamped like they’d been waiting for it.

The clash was immediate but, to some extent, ineffective for both sides. Its iron men could not be slain, not truly, and the weapons they wielded were optimized for stone, not opponents, so the already impressive armor of the dwarves worked even better than it usually would. The result was a bloody, grinding stalemate as battleaxe and pickaxe traded blow after bone-jarring blow.

The Lich didn’t like to think that such a meeting could be a coincidence, but it didn’t like the alternative even more: they had known that it was coming, and this was an ambush. The fight that followed took almost a day, and for every dozen dwarves it slew, one of its iron men was reduced to scrap. Sadly, this math would not work out in its favor because the waves of dwarves seemed almost endless, and even the shades and shadows it unleashed on the miserable axe-wielding vermin were of limited effectiveness.

It had only kept a few hundred around for dealing with vermin like Kobolds and Goblin tribes that it did not yet control, but its enemy was prepared for that. They’d brought priests of the All-Father, and the holy magic they wielded was enough to erase the darkness long enough to banish its most creative servants. That left both sides to face the long grinding slaughter of steel against steel.

For hour after hour, screams and battle cries echoed for miles in all directions, sometimes even drowning out the metallic sounds of combat. Even those deaths weren’t enough to give the darkness any pleasure. No suffering or bloodshed could raise its spirits as it brooded on this development.

“I am the one who is supposed to move in secret, far from prying eyes, not the pitiful, plodding dwarves!” it raged in its throne room as it watched the fight from so far away.

The Lich knew that its forces had already lost within the first few hours and had already started to make a fallback plan. The drudges were hauling away the fresh corpses of its enemy so Tenebroum could devour them and interrogate them in detail to find out exactly how they had known the best spot to stymy it while its rear guard tried to kill as many as possible.

When the time finally came that it looked like the dwarves were on the verge of victory, its remaining iron men, who weren’t actively engaged in the fight, switched their targets to the support timbers instead. For mile after countless mile, these things had been laid to ensure the roof above their heads stayed where it belonged, but now they brought them down one after another with strikes from their pickaxes. Eventually, that was enough to bring the ceiling down for hundreds of yards in both directions as the immense weight of the mountains above bore down on them,

That was fine with the Lich. If it couldn’t have this tunnel, then no one could. It would expand its workshops, build a new force, and start again, and this time it would be ready for its new foe.

Ch. 106 - Last Minute Harvest

Jordan had been prepared for all sorts of eventualities when he finally saw the tiny village of Tolems Ferry. He’d expected his family to be happy to see him or even angry that he’d come, depending on who it was that held the reins of power. After all, the world had all but ended, and there was no telling how much worse things might have gotten during that time. His father might be dead. It was possible that one or both brothers might be too.

The last thing he’d expected was to find the place basically abandoned, though. There was no one but a couple of fishermen who were able to offer up explanations for everything that had transpired. “The rest of your family has run off, my lord,” Rufus told them. “As soon as the sun rose again, they took their things and their retainers and took off toward the capital. They said it was to petition the king for men to fight the goblins, but… well, you know…”

Jordan nodded sadly. He did know. They’d decided to save themselves. That wasn’t surprising. He’d decided to save himself in the end, too, once upon a time, and the only reason he hadn’t been because he’d flubbed the spell.

The village itself wasn’t more than 60 buildings, built at a location where the currents were weak, and a safe crossing was all but assured. A little fishing was done here, and a little farming in the bottom lands prone to flooding along the river’s path where rice and potatoes were planted most years. Some wheat was grown higher up on the slopes, but those areas were mostly reserved for grazing sheep.

This village should have been home to a couple hundred people, but the brief conversation revealed that there were only a dozen left. Half had run off, and the other half had moved into the manor, slowly turning it into something resembling an armed camp under the orders of the headman Olmers.

“That might complicate things,” Jordan nodded, but regardless, he vowed to set things right and thanked the fisherman for the heads-up. He was a Sedgim, after all, and he couldn’t shirk the plight of his people. His family had already done enough of that for all of them.

He conferred briefly with his companions and then decided that it would be for the best if they all went together. After all, he didn’t think the chances of violence were high, but the presence of almost two dozen children would certainly reduce them.

At least, he thought so. He was wrong about that, too.

Jordan could feel the paranoia and the fear radiating off the men he glimpsed from behind makeshift barricades and through the slats of boarded-up windows. Sedgim Manor had been a keep once before it had been made into a manor house after generations of peace, but other than the giant picture windows that had been installed, the home and the giant U-shaped courtyard were still very defensible.

Paradoxically, when he announced himself, that seemed to put people even more on edge. “You’d bar the door against me?” Jordan asked, feigning a bit more arrogance than usual as he raised his voice. “I grew up in these halls!”

“I’ve sent someone to fetch the headman,” the guard said as he nervously fidgeted with his spear. “Olmers said no one allowed in without his say-so, but he didn’t make no exceptions for you.”

Jordan considered arguing the point but decided that he didn’t want to escalate things with so many children about on both sides of the makeshift barricade. Instead, he stood there peevishly while he waited to be let into his own home. Mel was a good guy, and he felt sure the old man would see reason.

When the headman finally appeared, the first thing he said was, “You can’t be Jordan. I heard he died.”

“Very nearly, more than once,” Jordan quipped, but he was unable to keep the warm tone with the drunk he was talking to.

He’d supposed that the man he was waiting on was the town cooper, Mel Olmers, senior. That man had been a rock of the community; he’d been everything his son wasn’t. Ned, on the other hand, was a half-remembered bully who seemed destined to grow up to be a swine herd. From the looks of it, things had changed much in the years you’ve been gone.

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Ned sneered. “I might be able to see fir to letting you in, and maybe the ladies with you, but the children… I’m afraid we simply don’t have the room for them.”

“You’d turn away children at the end of the day, Ned?” Jordan mocked him, losing his patience. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.”

Ned’s brow furrowed for a moment as he tried to figure out if he’d been insulted. When he decided that he had, he drew his sword and pointed it at Jordan. “Open the gate so I can teach this lout some manners. We’ve saved plenty of kids, and I won’t let any of you be spoken down to by our betters.”

“Why don’t you put the sword away, man,” Jordan said through clenched teeth. That was one of his father’s swords, and the last place it belonged was in the hands of horse apple like Ned.

“Why don’t you make me,” Ned shot back as he strode through the door.

Everyone had moved back now except for the guard that had opened the door and, of course, the Templar. That man wouldn’t move out of the way of the devil himself.

Brother Faerbar didn’t even need to unsheathe his sword, though. As soon as Jordan said, “Are you sure we can’t talk this out,” the oaf sneered, “The time for your fancy words is past, pal. There’s no daddy that. Can save you now—”

He’d never finish his sentence. Jordan unleashed a bolt from the blue and struck his opponent dead without much effort.

“I trust that will be the end of that little mutiny then?” Jordan said, walking over to the body and retrieving his father’s sword from the steaming corpse that had just tried and failed to order Jordan’s death. It wasn’t an enchanted blade, but it was a finely worked piece of steel, and he had no doubt they’d need all the blades they could muster in the dark days to come.

No one said anything after that, which made him smile. It was one thing to be told that the youngest brother had gone off to learn magic, but it was quite another to see him use it when he returned, and none doubted him now.

Unfortunately, the more he toured the compound, the more clear it was that all of them would soon be in dire straights. The men had decided that the world was over, or it might as well be, and they’d dinned on the stores in the cellar like locusts. What hadn’t been taken by his family had been devoured by the people they’d left behind to defend it. The granary was halfway empty, the wine cellar was down to two dozen bottles, the beer and ale were all but gone, and even the cheese that should have been aging in the cave before it was brought to market in the spring had vanished.

Jordan didn’t even want to think about the conditions of the herds. Between the talk of increased goblin activity and the things these men had done to their emergency supplies, they were all about to be in fairly dire straights. The only bright side to all this was that by the time he returned to the house to lay down judgment, most of the worst offenders and all of Olmers’s inner circle had decided to get while the getting was good. The rest of the world might be a bleak, dangerous place, but it was far less dangerous than a man who could wield lightning and fire.

The place was in an uproar, and those that remained seemed pretty convinced that Jordan had tipped the scales to their annihilation, but that was only true until he showed them that they’d only been weeks away from running out of food as it was. After that, their fear turned to the anger it should have been the whole time.

. . .

Once the chaos died down, and it was made very clear to everyone that they could demand neither a more legitimate ruler nor a stronger protector than him and his very quiet holy warrior companion, things got back to normal fairly quickly, but only because they had to. No one doubted that the weather would turn earlier than ever this year. So, giving it their all became a literal life-or-death matter.

Brother Faerbar wanted to cut the hands of a few people who remained who were obviously guilty of looting and otherwise feathering their own nests to his sight, but Jordan forbade it this time. Instead, he promised the Templar that he could have a free hand to punish the wicked after they’d all been warned, and then he offered everyone the same admonition: “Work hard until the first snow, or none of us will live to see spring.”

They were in dire straights. It would be a minor miracle if they made it to spring without having to devour their seed or slaughter every last ewe, but they had no choice. He very much doubted things would be better in the capital, and it was too late in the season to flee north to where climes might be better.

Everyone worked after that. Even the children. What grains had ripened were cut, and the fields were gleaned of every last kernel to save them from the birds. Rice was harvested, potatoes were stacked even though they were small and gnarled, and the lambs were slaughtered.

For the next month, they did all the work that had been neglected for the last two and more, and slowly, the mood of his subjects improved. When he’d arrived, they were desperate men sure there wouldn’t be enough food to go around, but comradery and teamwork, mostly facilitated and aided by all of the “mouths to feed,” had turned the tide.

Even that wouldn’t have been enough were it not for the generosity of the river. They all agreed to blame Markez for the stunning amount of fish they started to catch on a daily basis in the days leading up to the river freezing over. In a week, they caught more than the dozen fishermen that made the town home usually caught in a season. There were so many that they were going to have trouble smoking and preserving all of them.

Jordan knew the truth, though, and he suspected that others did, too. This was just one more favor from Oroza to them, and he vowed to repay it by rebuilding a shrine to the river goddess, though that could wait until the snows had set in, and the ground had frozen. For now, he could only offer her his silent prayers.

They had long, hungry months ahead of them, just like the rest of the world, and even as he pulled his robe around him to fight the rising chill, Jordan walked outside to find an axe. Now that they’d done everything they could for food, they needed to bulk up their stocks of firewood while there was still time.