Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 126-127 (Patreon)

Ch. 126 - Wall of Stone

Tenebroum’s armies had only just reached the twin fortresses of Banath and were pausing to gauge King Borum’s response to its generous terms when its carriage was detonated in front of the city gates of Rahkin without warning. One moment, The Voice of Reason had been riding sedately toward the open gate, and the guards seemed to have no interest in baring her way, and then next, fire arced out from a pair of mages on the castle wall, turning its beautiful carriage into an inferno.

The Lich was outraged by this turn of events but not so wroth that it turned away from whatever was going to happen next. The fire was destructive, but the tank of noxious gases that held its new plague in the bowls of that glossy vehicle was even more so. Though the flames likely destroyed all the infectious magic they possessed, it still took some joy in the fireball that expanded outward in a second, larger explosion that engulfed a dozen guards as the explosion became an eruption of liquid flame.

The fire melted away the flesh of the forms the horses and the carriage driver, crisping them in the preservative oils that had been used to keep them looking natural. So, the things that strode out of the fire looking for vengeance looked even more inhuman than they otherwise might have. Each of them strode out of the smoldering wreckage to make sure that those who had done this did not live to regret it.

First came the four horses, or the things that had been disguised as horses. Those skins had only hidden the predators that lay beneath, and now the long-legged dire wolves revealed themselves. Their legs stayed long, but tier spines lengthened, and their claws extended as they charged the main gate. The results were as bloody as they were terrifying.

The men that had been spared the fire were caught completely off guard by the slavering beasts of bone and steel as they darted forward and grabbed those closest to the violence in the giant mouths. They shook their prey like rag dolls, crushing bones, and snapping spines before releasing the corpse and moving on to the next target.

Amidst all the screams, no one noticed what happened to the other two occupants. The ripper delayed a moment in attacking as its extra arms finally unfolded, and it could, at last, do what it had been made to do. It ignored the guards and ran straight for the wall, where it started to climb like a giant, six-legged insect.

Its task was just as simple and straightforward as that of the wolves. It existed to kill, but its capabilities were greater, and its targets were of a higher priority. The mages didn’t even notice it until it was already halfway up the forty-foot walls. All the lightning and fire that they rained down on it in an effort to kill it did more damage to the stone than it did to the Lich’s revenge.

It would not be dissuaded in its task, and by the time it reached the first mage, it still had 3 arms and a heart full of rage as it ripped the young woman to pieces. Only the intervention of three guards with pikes delayed it long enough to allow the second mage, a graybeard, to flee down the rampart in panic. Those extra few minutes of life he might yet have cost everyone else their lives, though.

Pikes and spears were terrible weapons with which to face the undead. Without the cross guard of a partisan or coresque, there was nothing to stop it from searching up the shaft and ripping the head off the wielder. Even a boar-hunting spear would have been a better choice and told Tenebroum exactly how far those pitiful fools were from being ready. If they wanted a war, it would give them one, and instead of taking their dregs as payment, it would claim every last life in Rahkin.

As everyone else fought for their lives, The Voice of Reason finally made her way from the carriage and walked away from the city with all the dignity that her broken form could muster. She was missing her left arm at the elbow, and most of her hair of, spun gold, had melted together into a single lopsided lump that clung to her scalp.

Her entourage was so effective that no one watched her cracked, soot-covered form walk away from the city as fast as she was able. All she had to do was hide until nightfall, and someone would come for her. Until then, she was a broken toy that would have to think about how she might do better in the future. The Lich might allow her to try to mediate similar conflicts again in the future, but repeated failures would be rewarded only with being scrapped and turned into a drudge or worse.

. . .

Tenebroum turned its attention from its servant's failures and toward the battle that was already starting here. Behind it, to the west, lay a series of blood-soaked kingdoms they had already marched through. There, the only towns and villages that were left standing were those that it had chosen to spare. A number of ruined castles dotted its path, and though there were still a few holdouts in the kingdoms to the north, the forces of darkness had ripped through the whole area already like a scythe.

Now, there was only one pass separating it from the Kingdom of Hallen and the areas that had been denied it for so long by the intervention of the mages of Abended, the Siddrimites, and the Goddess Oroza. It had been forced to dig a tunnel all the way through a mountain range, war with the dwarves in the deeps, and fight through half a dozen smaller kingdoms barely worth the name to reach here, but it had done so. It was only perhaps a hundred miles north of Abenend now but on the wrong side of the Woden Spine.

All it needed to do was cross this pass, and to do that, only two fortresses stood in its way. For better or worse, though, they were some of the toughest defensive structures on the whole continent. Its General, Paragon, had argued that they should simply be bypassed via increased tunnel digging and dealt with at a later date or simply starve out, but Tenebroum would not hear of it.

“It is not enough to win. We must crush the living, and they should know it,” it commanded. “There will be survivors. They will spread the truth: the darkness can breach even the highest, toughest walls. It cannot be beaten. That is the message that will spread from one man to the next until the whole world reeks of fear.”

“Did we not accomplish this by defeating the undefeated city?” the General asked.

The Lich was forced to concede that that was exactly what they’d done. But it wasn’t enough. “A city, no matter what its reputation, is nothing compared to a fortress. All of their strongholds must be turned into tombs, or they will think that resistance is possible.”

After that, the General did not argue. It merely planned and prepared to carry out the darkness’s will. In this case, the problem was that the two fortresses stood on either side of the pass. One could attack neither the western nor the eastern fortress without being in the line of fire of the other. They were built that way to prevent sieges, and their weapons were quite formidable. However, though catapults and ballistas could do almost as much damage as war mages, arrows did little to zombies and even less to skeletons.

So, as the fourth sunset, the bulk of its armies advanced on both structures without fear, and their dread footsteps echoed off the walls of the mountains as the war zombies marched in perfect lockstep. Even if they were capable of such a worthless emotion, they would have nothing to be afraid of. The humans had so little that could hurt it, whereas its General’s hardest problem was often deciding which weapon of the darkness should be brought to bear for which challenge.

In this case, given the simultaneous nature of the strike, it chose two: Its earth titan and shadow drake. Each of the imposing structures had been carved from the same granite stones as the rest of the mountain by means of magic; and their fifty-foot vertical walls were meant to hold out against an army. They were considered all but impregnable according to the souls it had interrogated.

Neither Tenebroum nor its general thought that either would be considered a problem, though. So, as its blocks of thousands of troops each reached the high, crenelation-topped walls of the imposing gray stone structures, the shadow drake swooped down from the night sky and released a gout of flame that caused the stone of the eastern fortress to burn just as readily as the stout oaken door which was immediately engulfed in the monster’s all consuming ebon flame.

At the same time, the Lich’s titan appeared out of the stony ground as if it were nothing but a swimming pool and strode toward the towering walls as it began to rip them apart piece by piece. Despite the thing’s compliance, the Lich still considered this toy its greatest failure. Even as it watched its lead gauntleted hands rip out a stone large enough to collapse a whole section, it became annoyed that it had learned so little about the thing.

Both fortresses were breached in the opening salvos of the encounter, and its dark elementals retreated immediately. Though there would be losses even after such a maneuver, victory was all but certain at that point. It was all over but the dying, so the Lich focused on other things, like its lackluster titan.

It obeyed, always, in all things, but its mind was so alien that Tenebroum still had very little idea of how to make it suffer. The Lich took some solace in the fact that it looked perpetually sad, but it was still far from unraveling the element of stone in the way it had water and fire, and it had been shocked to find out that the dwarves had learned scarcely more than it had already known as drained the priests of their knowledge.

Why didn’t the dwarves work together more with the humans, it reflected, as it stood there in a shell on a rocky outcrop next to its General.

There were definite synergies. Mentally, the darkness began to make notes for its fleshcrafters to try a few iterative combinations of humans and dwarf parts to determine an optimum mix for toughness and reach, but before it could completely document the new project, disaster erupted.

It had been a couple of hours since the first shots had been fired and twenty minutes since the walls had been breached. The killing was going steadily, and the Lich had no cause to be concerned, and then suddenly, just as its forces were largely engaged in the assault, both of the shield fortresses collapsed.

No, collapse wasn’t a strong enough word for what happened. They imploded, collapsing inward on themselves, and as they did so, the cliff faces that they were carved into gave way, collapsing together like a giant hammer and anvil and sealing the pass completely.

A path could be reopened, of course, but there would be no point. The point was that at a stroke, it had lost six or eight thousand soldiers, including all of its heavy infantry. It was a catastrophe that shocked both it and Paragon to their cores.

“What happened!” The Lich bellowed as rage overwhelmed it.

With the air full of dust and debris, no one could say obviously, but the General proceeded to lay out several theories about the nature of the rock and how the attacks of the titan and the shadow drake had weakened the superstructure, but given the symmetrical nature of the collapse, this seemed unlikely.

Someone had done this to it intentionally, and though it didn’t know if it was due to dwarves or magic, it would find out and make sure that whoever was responsible for it died screaming.

Ch. 127 - Starve Them Out

By day, the reaver hid away in the attacks or the basements it could find that were furthest from the scenes of its bloody slaughters. It had killed over a hundred souls in the first week of its endless mission of suffering, and even though it was now down to only two arms and one eye, it hoped to murder at least that many again before it finally ceased to function.

The most interesting thing it found was not the blood of its victims or a weakness in the walls, though. It still had not found a way to creep into the castle and slaughter the royal family who had spat in its master’s face. What it had found, though, was a rat.

Not just any rat. The thing that it currently pinned to the ground with a claw and studied with fascination was a rat that was already long dead, and still, it moved. That had been enough to get its attention, and because the reaver’s initial assessment was that this had been some sort of proxy for the still-living mages it had not yet managed to hunt down, its first instinct had been to dash it to pieces.

Instead, it decided that this was something alien and unique enough to await the judgment of its master. So, instead of going out that night to prowl the shadows and slaughter more families, it lingered there in that disused ossuary and prayed to the Darkness for guidance for hours until it finally manifested itself.

Finally, its focus was rewarded, and the deathless Lich slipped smoothly inside its cracked skull as it began to examine all the specifics of the situation. A city in flames, a panicking populace, and a tiny zombie rat were the things it looked at the most, and the reaver could feel that its master was pleased with it.

“Who do you belong to?” the Lich growled through the reaver’s mangled voice box.

The rat gave no reply to the question, and so the Lich crushed it. However, as it did so, it wove a dark enchantment, using that rat as both focus and sacrifice, and the tiny, still corpse began to glow with a dim yellow haze.

“Know this,” the Lich continued. “You can answer me now, when I have killed a single one of your tiny servants, or when my reaver has killed a thousand more, but I will have the truth. I will find the source of this magic!”

By the time the reaver was done crushing the half-mummified rodent, it was nothing but powder, and as that glowing dust drifted on the foul air currents of the sepulcher it was hiding in, it began to illuminate all sorts of things. Suddenly, there were tiny little tracks crisscrossing the tunnels between various crevices and corpses.

Even as the Lich’s spirit left its deathless servant behind, it left a new order in its place: “hunt the rodents until you find their source. Slaughter all you find until they are amenable to conversation and use their remains to extend the spell.”

While the new command lacked the blood and suffering that the vengeful reaver enjoyed most in life, it could hardly resist. Instead, it pursued its new task with even greater gusto than before, for it was no longer limited to the dark hours of the day. It could masquerade through the black warren of tunnels beneath the capital almost constantly, and everywhere it went, it found more of this strange infestation.

Mice, rats, and even hound-sized constructs woven of dozens of dead rats filled the place, but none of them stood a chance against the reaver’s fists or its blades. Their only chance was to find somewhere narrow enough that it could not reach them, but often enough, it found a way to extract the dully glowing rodent from their hole by ripping out part of a wall.

It gave each construct it located a moment to speak as the Lich desired before it reduced it to nothing but dust and bone fragments, and with each death, the web of yellow and brown lines that connected these creatures thickened and multiplied. Who was it that was responsible for animating so many tiny creatures? What was their purpose? It didn’t know. Most of the time, it barely cared about the answers to those questions.

It had been built to hunt in the same way that the Lich had been built to think, and so that’s what it did. It hunted through mile after mile, moving from bone-filled catacombs to sewage-filled sewers and back again. In all that time, its only complaint was that the humans were often so close that it could almost reach out and drag them screaming into the depths, but sadly it was not allowed to. So they stood in the safety of their ignorance, just out of reach.

After weeks of hunting rodents, all it wanted to do was creep to the surface and bathe in the blood of the innocent. After so long without killings, they would think that the coast was clear and that everything would be safe. They were wrong, though. As soon as it fulfilled the Lich’s command and found the source of this strange infestation, it would be allowed to return to its killing spree.

The simple predator clung to that hope long after its joy in stalking and murdering such unsatisfying prey faded. In the end, it took almost a month and hundreds of murders to find the tomb. Though it practically glowed with a sickly yellow aura, the master of the rats had obviously gone to great lengths to hide it. Only a single strand of faint footprints finally led it here, but even it could see that this was the beating heart of its enemy.

As it advanced, a tremulous cry finally rose up from a chorus of rats. It was a discordant thing, but the words were understandable enough. “Cease your hunt!” they cried! “We surrender!”

It stood there in the doorway, baring their escape, and this time, when the Lich came, it was much faster than before. It took minutes instead of hours for it to reach out and make the connection.

“I accept your surrender,” it said at once. “Tell me, who do you serve?”

“No one!” came the chorus of denunciations. “We are our own master. We feast where we like on what we can!”

“You did once,” the Lich agreed, but you will serve a new master now.

“Yes!” the tiny voices screeched in unison. “Be merciful! Let us serve you!”

The vermin crumpled immediately, as expected. It was their nature. Better to eat the crumbs from the high table than be exterminated by your betters.

The light the Lich invoked as it willed a complex binding spell into existence made the floor throb with violet lines of power, and even the dead, cracked limbs of the reaver began to tingle as a massive amount of necromantic energy flowed through it, and a ghostly version of the Lich’s Scoeticnomikos appeared in one hand.

“No one, not even a single copy of you, leaves this room,” the Lich promised. “Not until I understand everything about you.”

The hundreds of rats lined up there on the niches, and the shattered sarcophagus resembled a small sea of candles in the way they glowed faintly yellow, but each time the Lich reached out to dig deeper into their collective soul with its dark powers, they flickered in they flickered dangerously like they were moments from being extinguished.

The reaver understood that much, though. The Darkness that flowed through it right now was so powerful that it could have very easily been extinguished by its master. It wouldn’t even have to do it on purpose. A mere accident would be enough to steal the spark that animated it and send it tumbling back into the maelstrom of souls that made up the Lich’s true self.

It did not fear such a fate, but only because it was made with hunger instead of fear. It had that in common with the rats, too. It, no, they were all named Ghroshian, and they were pure hunger. It seemed to the Lich, or at least it seemed to the reaver as it watched the Lich study the fragile souls of the creatures, that they had been part of something larger and stronger. Neither of the thing that studied nor the thing that was being studied knew exactly what that was, though.

This terrible conversation had started off with words and questions, but as the two things melded together in a whirling maelstrom of magic that communication became nonverbal, and eventually, it contained very few words at all. It had been imprisoned for so long that whole parts of its soul had shriveled to dust and were poorly understood. Some words like Malzekeen flickered by between the images, but it was unsure if that was a place or a person.

It was a cacophony of thoughts and images, and the revenant could only stand in mute awe as much of the details passed right through it. These rats were part of a hive mind, and they were old and already buried long before the Darkness had been born. It had been beaten by Siddrim and the other gods, as it had fought beside the worm and the wolf centuries earlier, but it had lost those names to the searing light they’d tried to purge the rodents with, and the Darkness their remains were imprisoned in afterward.

“Why couldn’t they slay you?” the Lich asked through its mouth when words finally returned to the conversation.

“Can hunger ever truly be extinguished?” the rats asked in a ragged chorus. “Can war and conflict ever reduce hunger with their presence? Famines can be eliminated, and pestilences can be defeated, but some child, somewhere, will always go to bed somewhere, and we will be reborn there and start the cycle anew. The Lord of Light thought better of it. He trapped us so that we would always exist, and a new hunger could not be reborn without us.”

The answer made no sense to the reaver, but its master seemed satisfied with it.

The meager swarm swore their allegiance to the Lich there beneath Rahkin without an ounce of deception in their heart. Only then did the yellow magic of seeking and the purple wards of binding begin to fade to black, leaving the reaver standing there in a new darkness that was lit only by hundreds of tiny red eyes and no specific orders about what it was supposed to do next.

Unfortunately, when all was said and done, it was not given back its previous mission of mindless slaughter. Instead, it was forced to assist these rats in their new order: starvation. Though it would get to do some killing yet, that would be incidental to the larger goal.

The fall harvest was coming in now, and thanks to magic, it was better than it had any right to be. The humans were experiencing hope for the first time in a year because of that, and it would have to be not just stopped but reversed for the siege that lay ahead.

“Make them rue the day that they dared refuse my generous offer,” the Lich declared to both of them. “Make them weep and gnash their teeth until they have nothing left to eat but dust as the corpses of the fallen!”