Tenebroum Ch. 219-220

Ch. 219 - Free For All

Even though Tenebroum’s mortal enemy was approaching from somewhere over the horizon hours earlier than he normally would, the spirit of darkness felt no fear. Why should it? In a single stroke, it had just shattered the sky, murdered the moon, and snuffed out nearly every star. A few remained as they stood alone against the dark, but they only emphasized the darkness now, with their pathetic light, and it felt no need to move against them right away. 

Instead, the God of Darkness focused on other threats. Dawn was not its only enemy in this moment. It could feel the world turning against it. Though it stood miles tall right now as a bridge between the twin abysses of the night sky and the bottomless depths, it could feel storm clouds gathering high above the earth. As high as they were, though, they only reached the middle of its towering, nightmarish form. 

Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled, but any wounds those electric arcs caused healed as soon as the darkness returned. Even someone as great as the Goddess of Sea and Storms could no longer hurt it, and the Goddess of Nature didn’t even attempt to come close. How could she? It had poisoned the land for dozens of miles in every direction now. There was nothing natural about Tenebroum anymore.

There are almost certainly dozens or even hundreds of middling and small gods that would love nothing more than to strike at me now, it thought, but how can they? They are anchored to their mountains, rivers, and cities. The only ones who had a chance at defeating me are already dead!  

The swirling maelstrom of darkness wasn’t surprised even a little by the febrile response. Dawn would be the decider. It had always known that and dawn was coming. 

That’s not the way it worked out, though. Instead, somewhere below the ineffectual storm that raged around what had once been blackwater, another figure approached. They were the only person on that desolate plain, but that wasn’t what caught Tenebroum’s attention. It was that the hooded figure moved an impossible distance with every stride, and with each step they got closer, they grew. 

Soon, she was bigger than Siddrim’s corpse had been before Tenebroum had taken it apart for essence and raw materials, but it had no clue who she might be. It wasn’t about to take any chances, though, and it blasted her to ruin with similar magics to what it had used on the moon. It had no need to moderate its power at this point. It would never run out of the dark energies that powered it now; the only possible danger was in overexerting its phylactery, which it was in no danger of doing just now. 

For a moment, the horizon was blotted out by the tangle of violent tentacles, but when they cleared, she had grown ever larger and showed no signs of distress. That’s when it finally saw the bones beneath her skin and understood. This was the Goddess of Death, and she had at last come for him.

How she had managed that trick, it had no idea. According to everything it had learned, the Lord of Light had either slain or imprisoned her. Tenebroum had longed assumed that to be the case, both because of what the Lord of Light had done to Malkezeen and because it had never run into her during all of its struggles and efforts. To see here now, though, on the eve of its success, was concerning. 

“You have no claim on me,” Tenebroum rumbled, so loud that its echoing voice blotted out even the storm that was raging below it for a moment. 

“All dead things are my domain,” she answered calmly, “and had Siddrim not killed me in his effort to make a more perfect world, then you would never have grown as strong as you are now, spirit.” 

“If you are dead, then how is it you are here?” it asked. Even as it spoke, the heads at the root of its tower had begun to sing a different song, and it was analyzing her with magic now, in all the ways it knew how, as it struggled to find the right way to strike at her. 

“I’ve enjoyed my time in the afterlife,” she smiled, the illusion of her dark skin getting thinner to reveal the bony form underneath. “But you have robbed this place of all life. It’s my home now more than it’s yours, and I think you’ve done quite enough damage to the natural order.”

“You think you can stop me?” Tenebroum asked in a voice filled with derision. That was when it felt its lands start to sink, for lack of a better word. Nothing moved, and its tower to the heavens did not sway, but still, something was shifting, and it could feel itself being drawn into the underworld, which, of course, it could not allow. 

“This is mine!” Tenebroum roared. “All of it. From the deepest pit to the tallest mountain! Mine!”

“Well, if that’s the case, and your dead heart belongs to me, then I suppose they all belong to me as well,” she answered with a shrug. “And frankly, I’m not interested in any more territory than I already have.” She wasn’t even fighting him. That was the worst part. She was just standing there, halfway to the sky, a pale phantom, and somehow, she was winning. 

Did it really have a dead heart at its core anymore, though? Tenebroum wondered. The souls of the humans that had nurtured it were such a small thing compared to what they’d once been. 

As it studied both its own soul and hers, it eventually decided that she had it exactly backward. While there was only a little death left in itself, there were oceans of darkness left in her. As it decided that and figured out exactly where she was pushing and where it could apply pressure in return, the slow sinking sensation slowly ground to a halt, and she looked at it in concern for the first time. 

“No,” Tenebroum said definitely. “Darkness can exist without death, but in death, there is only darkness. You confuse who is in charge of who at your own peril. Flee now and leave me to fight the sun while you still can.”

She didn’t move, though, and it didn’t really expect her to. Thanks to millennia of death, she had an ocean of power behind her that was nearly as large as the reservoirs Tenebroum commanded. 

Such things could not be settled with violence. This was instead becoming a battle of will between the two dark titans, and even though she was a power to be feared, Tenebroum did not fear her. Instead, it let her tear the last of its humanity free from it, unmooring it completely from the last shreds of mortality, losing her grip on it in the process. 

They were nothing now. A thief, a murderer, and a few traitors. They were the seed but not the mighty oak that it had become. It watched them go but fell no weaker for it. The greater parts of its soul had long since been made up of shadows and the spirits of dead gods. 

Next, she tried again, and it felt her tearing at its phylactery, trying to rip that free and unmoor it completely. Death was still there, of course. That was the last inextricable connection where death played a part in its existence because that was what connected it to this world.  

Were she to succeed, Tenebroum might end up as a rampaging behemoth with no more control or understanding than the terrible monstrosities from the outer darkness that it feasted on so regularly. It was unafraid, though. It had already guessed those would be her next targets. 

After all, where was death stronger, anywhere in the world,l than in the depths of its lair? There could be no graveyard or mausoleum that was closer to the underworld than that place, and even as she tried to claim it completely, it knew that she would not succeed. 

Tenebroum had taken no chances in the construction of its lair, and though it had done nothing to protect against this Goddess especially, there were lairs of glyphs and enchantments that bound each piece of itself to every other. It was a knot of impossible complexity, and she would never untangle it. While she did so, its tendrils began to worm its way into her soul, too. 

The plains around its ring were writhing with the hands and claws of a million dead reaching up out of their own graves to drag it into the underworld, but even so many limbs could not cross the boundary that it had set in stone so long ago.

The two gods probed each other, looking for weaknesses that they could exploit while the faraway sun began to rise. Tenebroum felt the burn, but it knew that death felt it too. Her movements were growing desperate and wreckless. The thing that Tenebroum had feared most, for the longest time, besides that little speck of hallowed ground at the heart of the swamp was the daylight. It might be able to inflict a mortal wound on death, but it knew that it could withstand what she could not. 

That was why it had wormed its tentacles deep inside her bottomless soul. It had not sought to claim her, and she was trying to do with him. It merely sought to tangle and hold the ancient skeleton so that she could not escape. She didn’t find that out, though, until the fires of the heavens became too great for her. They were both smoking by that point, but whereas Tenebroum remained a perfect pillar of obsidian night, her voluminous cloak was already burning away to reveal the ivory skeleton beneath. 

“I will leave our new Lord of Light to finish you,” she proclaimed, “But if you manage to best him, I will still return to claim you.”

“No one who has ever attempted to take something from me has survived the attempt,” Tenebroum gloated, “And you shall not be the first.”

She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again when she realized she was stuck fast. A forest of thorny briars had grown inside her and chained her fast to Tenebroum. There would be no escape for her. 

“What did you do!” she cried out. “The dead cannot claim death any more than shadow can endure the light.”

“And yet here I am,” Tenebroum answered as she started to burst into flame. “When the light kills you, I shall claim your kingdom too, and then your strength will become my strength.” Truthfully, even from this distance, the light of the sun was already hurting a great deal, but it would never show that. 

“Death cannot die!” she shouted. 

“It cannot endure the light of day, either,” Tenebroum said mockingly. 

In the end, it did not have to kill death. It would let her allies do that. Even as whatever blurry shape it was that had replaced Siddrim drew his bow and fired the first volley of heavenly light at it, it used her as a human shield, letting the dead god absorb as much of the punishment as she could before fading away to nothing. 

None of that mattered, though. All that mattered, in the end, was whether light was stronger than dark. For Tenebroum’s entire existence, the opposite had been true, but it had already upended the rest of the natural order, so this was its final task.

Ch. 220 - The Last Day

Leo charged across the sky as soon as he received Jordan’s whispered warning, but he was too late. From where the solar palace sat on the far side of the world, he hadn’t even noticed anything amiss, and by the time he was whipping his team of horses to make them go even faster, the moon was already breaking up on the distant night sky. 

That horrified him, but not as much as the strange pillar of night that he saw next. Leo had only taken his place as the sun for a short time, but he’d already grown used to the edge of night retreating in front of him even as it advanced behind him. It was a normal behavior. The idea that any darkness would stand in defiance of him, though, was more than odd; it was impossible. 

Everything was impossible, though. Leo never had a very good view of the stars. Besides Cynara, it was one of the things he missed most. Usually, he could still see them distantly, at least, before they faded away completely. On this ride, though, they were almost all gone before he even got close, and those few that remained were falling. 

It was a nightmare, and more than anything, he wanted to ask someone what he should do about it. There was no one to ask, though, not with Jordan gone. Leo took heart when he got closer and saw the skeleton, though. He had no idea what he was supposed to do about a tornado of darkness, but he knew exactly what to do with undead abominations. It was the only thing he was any good at. 

Of course, I’m better with a sword, he thought as he tied his reigns around the rail and reached down to string his bow. 

Anything to do with a bow made him think of Cynara. No, that was a lie, he realized. Everything made him think of his wife. It was just that some things did more than others. 

He didn’t let that distract him, though. Whatever this thing was, she was hundreds of miles from it, and he was sure that she would be okay. He would make sure she was okay. He had to. That was the only thing that kept him going. Jordan had promised him that when she died one day, her soul would be heroic enough to join his and that instead of becoming a star in the sky, she could join him and make him burn all the brighter, or she could become a handmaid in his palace. Either was better than the occasional glimpse he got of her some days as he rode across the sky. 

That was what he thought about when he unleashed that first volley. Though he only nocked and released a single arrow, that arrow divided again and again until a hundred lances of light stormed across the sky. Even before they reached his target, he was already drawing back on another shaft of light to do it again. 

By the time he was close enough to put away his bow and draw his sword, the giant, mountain sized skeleton was already crumbling into dust, which gave Leo hope, yet somehow, the pillar remained in defiance of it, and it was much larger than even the strange black spire he’d seen rising up from distant Blackwater. That thing had been an oddity when it had existed, but this was a menace. 

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it, but he’d already decided that he was going to have to make another pass. That was something that he wasn’t supposed to do, of course, because heating the world unevenly could cause all manner of problems, but those problems could wait. No problem he could create by accident would be worse than not ending whatever this was. 

“Is it some kind of monster from out there?” he wondered as he drew his heavenly blade and looked to the night sky. 

Jordan had told him that there were giant monsters in the dark that were bigger than any whale. That was his job, apparently. To protect the world from such monsters. 

Leo supposed that was possible, but Jordan had described the creatures as being monstrous, with bulging eyes, dozens of mouths, and hundreds of tentacles, while the thing he rode toward, was a sleek, black pillar of darkness, that seemed to do nothing besides smoke faintly at his approach. 

If it had been anywhere else, even the missing city that had so startled Jordan, Leo might have believed that. This darkness connected to the world below in a singular terrible place that made him kick himself for having underestimated it. It was the place where Brother Faerbar’s crusade had ended and the place where the dead that had devoured civilization had originally erupted. That could only mean that the lich that had started this had concocted some new and terrible spell and that—

Leo jerked the reins hard, altering his flight path. He’d been rising closer and closer so he could hack away at the pillar. He hadn’t planned to ride directly to it. That was far too reckless. Instead, he was just going to make an exploratory attack and see how sturdy this thing really was when suddenly, the side facing him exploded into dozens of tentacles that raced toward him. 

The ones that got closest to his horses burst into flames before they ever got close. The rest of the forest of tendrils largely missed, though a few grabbed hold of the left railing and wheel. Leo leaned over and cut away at the writhing mass before they could do much more than slow him down. 

After that, he galloped in an ever tighter path around the thing, making his light burn that much brighter. He was scorching the mountaintops of the Wodenspine Mountains and melting glaciers, but he couldn’t worry about that now. Forests would burn, and if anyone lived them, they would die, but as long as this thing continued to do whatever it was doing, they would all die anyway. 

Leo wasn’t great at driving his chariot yet, but the horses were far older than him and did much of the work themselves. He steered around only the largest tendrils and chose to smash right through the curtains of smaller waving fronds. Those were hectic moments as he struggled to navigate the three-dimensional maze, where the things got ever closer to blocking him on all sides. 

By the third loop around the giant column, he was only just barely able to cut away at the thing with his sword, and even then, he was only able to do so by blazing it so brightly that it flared to maximum length. The result was instantaneous. The wall of blackness shattered at even the lightest touch of his celestial fire, and though the thing immediately tried to regrow, it was a slow enough process that Leo could see it was struggling. 

All of this happened in only a moment, though. After that, he was forced to pull away and give wide birth to the thing as he evaded giant serpents of shadow that were chasing him from behind. 

He and his team raced through the growing thicket of darkness that sought to trap him, but in the end, they finally broke free. It was only from that distance that it was able to see that the pillar of darkness had begun to resemble something more like a tree than a gleaming celestial pillar, as it had done previously. 

Did that have significance? Leo wondered. He wasn’t sure.

The thing had no leaves, but the way entire forests of tentacles were waving in the unseen breeze in a bid to grab him made the comparison unavoidable. More disconcerting was the fact that he couldn’t even see any evidence of all the damage he’d done from this distance. He was going to have to hit it harder. 

As he wheeled around to come in for another pass, he wracked his brain for the right answer. “You deal with a tree with an axe, but I don't think my…” his words trailed off as he looked from his sword to his team of horses and back again. He did have one thing that might work like an axe against a mile’s tall tree, he realized, but it was a really dumb idea. 

Leo shrugged and said, “It’s what Brother Faerber would do,” before he turned his chariot and started straight toward the base of the towering structure, picking up speed the whole way. 

I cut right through it before, like morning fog, he tried to reassure himself as he steadily lost altitude. He knew he shouldn’t do something so reckless, but he was out of options now. 

So, instead of doing the smart thing, he roared down from the heavens like a comment, blowing away the storm clouds between him and the earth below like they were nothing more than a curtain. “I can do this, he reassured himself. Just one good hit, and this whole thing will fall apart, just like the tentacles and the…”

As the wall of shadows got closer and closer, it took up nearly his entire view. The horses grew nervous, but they didn’t disobey. Instead, they charged ever faster, right up until the last moment. When he reached the wall of shadows, it disappeared before him like it had never existed at all for the first several seconds. Leo thought sure that he’d made the right decision. He could practically see the giant tower leaning, and he was prepared for it to fall to the ground with a terrible sound.

Then, with no warning at all, he hit a wall. One moment, the darkness was retreating at the same pace he was moving forward, and then it solidified like a wall of dark iron, and it dashed him and his chariot to ruin. The chaos and the carnage was almost too much to take in, especially over the shock and the disbelief. 

The wind was knocked out of him by the blow as the chariot came apart around him, but Leo was too stunned to even feel the pain as he realized that somehow he’d been outsmarted by whatever this was. He wasn’t able to see if the horses had been dashed to pieces as much as everything else, as the wall of darkness grabbed for him, but that was something he could worry about later. 

The glowing wings that sprouted out of his back at that moment came as a complete surprise to him, but as he circled clumsily, trying to steer away from the wall of solidified darkness that had nearly cost him his life, he saw a large hole at the center of the ruined town that had once been Blackwater. He didn’t know what was down there exactly, but he knew that this awful tree had sprouted from it, and before it could resolidify, he was going to go down there and purge it with fire.