Tenebroum Ch. 215-216

Ch. 215 - Among the Ashes

Krulm’venor was only slightly harder to find than the Shadow Drake had been. This was because his partial goblin nature blended in so much better with the green skins that infested the area, and his flames were so low that they weren’t much stronger than the bonfires that dotted the region. 

Both of these factors were complicated by the fact that the godling was broken into five different versions of itself. None of these were particularly close to his former domain as the totem spirit of the burning skulls> that made sense since it had long since become a gold mine and a now abandoned human settlement. Instead, they were scattered widely through the foothills of the Wodenspine Mountains in the region that had once been the Stone Fist territory. Those thoughts brought back a whole host of Tenebroum's stray memories as it remembered how weak and wretched it had been during the goblin unification campaigns. It had barely been able to move openly over such distances, making it particularly difficult for Grod and his Gold Skulls to reach and conquer these places.

Pathetic, it thought, revulsing at that vision of who it had once been before shaking free of those thoughts and continuing its search. Tenebroum controlled everything for hundreds of miles in every direction. It had no need to dwell on the failures of the past.  

Once the darkness had found Krulm'venor's various doppelgangers, it only took a few moments for it to ascertain which one was the true seat of Krulm’venor’s soul. Then, it soared across the skies like an ill wind, reaching its destination with an entrance that sent the loose knots of goblins around the entrance to the cave scattering. The pathetic vermin had no idea what it was they were fleeing from, but they could feel the fear and the power radiating off of its dark, shapeless form, and they knew they stood no chance.

Tenebroum ignored them and continued inside, where it found its favorite toy completely broken. Though the God of Darkness knew that other full copies of the metal goblin skeleton existed and were wandering around out in the Red Hills doing only Gods knew what, what remained of the dwarf’s true body was only his skull-lantern, which sat there in the center of the filthy cavern on a crude altar like a sort of relic. 

When it materialized once more into a man of pure shadows, the godling did not react. Its worshipers did, though. The few remaining goblins that had clustered around it like a totem quickly escaped deeper into the cave, leaving the two of them alone. 

“How far you have fallen,” Tenebroum mused. “To think that after all the times you complained about this squalor, this is where you would return to.”

“At least here I harm no one who matters,” Krulm’venor shot back, obviously spoiling for a fight. Given his nature, Tenebroum realized that his servant had been waiting for the moment for quite a long time. “I can feast on these scraps forever if need be.”

“Can you?” Tenebroum growled. “Did you think I was dead? That I would not come for you?”

“I was never lucky enough for that to be true,” the skull chuckled darkly. It was a dry, metallic sound that was made more alien by the way it echoed off the foul walls of the goblin den. “When our connection died, I could hope, but hope isn’t good for much. It won’t even burn brightly enough to keep the fires lit.”

Tenebroum thought about asking the fire godling what had happened to bring it so low, but it had no need to do that. Instead, it decided to ascertain the facts by delving directly into the mind of its creation. Once, it might have needed to ask the question and force compliance with pain, but a god of its power no longer needed cooperation. 

Though Krulm’venor would never hear it, far away, in the God’s true body, a dozen of its mouths began to screech and chant the words for a spell at ear-splitting volumes powered by steam. As soon as the working was complete, Tenebroum seized the creature’s soul and began to examine it, studying each moment since it had held the leash in painful detail. It did not like what it had found. 

Tsson’vek had been disobedient for the sake of his tribe and preserved only a single valley. It was almost understandable, but Krulm’venor's disobedience had been far more obscene and constituted a complete betrayal. 

In the wake of the moment where Tenebroum sundered its phylactery, the dwarven spirit had not only stopped its attack on the few remaining survivors of the dwarven city it had been sent to destroy, it had actively tried to save the survivors. It had put the fires out and even helped to dig some dwarves out of the rubble.

No, it’s worse than that, the dark God realized. He did save some of them.

As it dug ever deeper into those memories and attempted to understand how exactly Krulm’venor was able to pull that off, its concern only deepened. The dwarf's bones had still heated when the godling disobeyed its last command, but free from Tenebroum’s influence, the dwarf had found a clever workaround. It had its other bodies yank its head off and destroy its body, breaking the chains that had held it for so long. 

If that was all it had done, then the Dark God might have praised the prideful spirit before shredding its soul, but that was only what enabled Krlum’venor to do what it was going to do next. Once it was nothing more than a crippled shell and free from the agonies that its master had placed on it for so long with its cursed body, the thing used its other bodies to escort the few survivors who were still sane to distant locations where they could rebuild. 

“How dare you!” Tenebroum raged, almost snuffing out the candle of Krulm’venor’s soul with those simple words. 

“You were always going to do your worst to me,” the godling answered philosophically. “At least now I have done one small bit of good in the world that you cannot reverse.”

“Cannot?!” Tenebroum roared, making the stone shiver and killing several goblins that lingered at the edge of their conversation from pure terror. “There is nothing I cannot do! I will pry their locations free from your memory, and then I will build you a new body and force you to execute them yourself. I will—”

“But I don’t know their location,” the tarnished skull taunted. “I made sure of that, and the dwarves dashed their guides to pieces, so no one knows that now. No one in the entire world can help you find them. You—”

Krulm’venor choked on his words as his outraged master began to squeeze the tortured soul. It wanted to punish the defiant thing, of course, but even more than that, it wanted to find some terrible punishment, but it was having trouble resisting that violent urge. It would have ended him right there if the sun had not picked that minute to rise. That instantly got Tenebroum’s full attention.

One second, there was enough of a glow on the horizon that its giant soul retreated further into the depths of the cave, and the next, the entirely unexpected happened. The sun rose. This was not one of the pale blue or gray wandering stars that had plagued it for so long. This was a sun, a true sun, and as soon as it crested the horizon, the world was instantly flooded with light. 

Even there, thirty feet beneath the ground, Tenebroum could feel it, and that light pained it more than it ever had before. When the sun had last set, it had been death and decay as much as it had been darkness. Now, it was pure night, and it could feel the thing burning. 

The God of Shadows wanted nothing more at that moment than to return to its lair, but the way was cut off and would not be clear again until sunset. There, with the wellspring of shadows from the depths, it doubted that even direct sunlight could burn it away if it was willing to endure the agony, but here, in a goblin warren? It was intensely vulnerable. 

Tenebroum released Krulm’venor’s soul as it grappled with this new problem, unsure of what exactly to do or how exactly it had happened. Somehow, Siddrim had been reborn, or something had replaced him. It did not know which of those was worse. 

It took several hours of cautious observation to convince itself that it was not about to be attacked. 

I only have to endure this one day, it told itself, then I can return to my shell and be utterly beyond its reach. 

That wasn’t good enough, though. Tenebroum would never be satisfied until it devoured the entire world, and dealing with the rebirth of the sun only made everything that much worse. So, it brooded over what it could do and how it could do it. In the end, it decided that the sun couldn’t be its first target, no matter who it was. It was only when the moon and stars were dealt with that it would have the power to snuff out this new light. 

No, it decided after brooding on it for some time this changes little. Not even the sun itself will stop me now. 

That left Tenebroum the rest of the day to deal with the boredom of being trapped in a squalid cave with a traitor. So, instead of simply murdering the godling as it had originally planned, it examined the enchantments that yet remained attached to its soul via the lantern and, after a little investigation, decided on a better way to end the foul creature. 

It might have achieved some small victory in its absence, but that would not be enough to stop anything. In time, those dwarves would be found and murdered just as it had done with the rest of their people. 

When the first true sun that had been seen for a long time set that day, Tenebroum soared out of the cave, but only after it killed every goblin and every copy of Krulm’venor save for that pathetic skull. It wanted no more surprises and no way for it to escape before the dark rider it had just dispatched arrived to bring it home. 

There would be much to do before it sent the godling on one more mission. A new dark rider would have to be constructed, enchantments would have to be altered, and, of course, many new deaths heads would have to be constructed, but none of that would present any difficulty now. Soon, it would be ready to strike, and in the meantime, it could yet reclaim more of its minions and decide who would live and who would die.

Ch. 216 - Loose Ends

Tenebroum stayed in its lair for several days and nights before it journeyed north. This was both because it wanted to make the most important and painful changes to Krulm’venor and his self-replicating magics while it was still wroth with him and because it wanted to study the patterns of this next sun and determine if there was anything to be learned from it that might suggest an imminent attack.

The Shadowy God had an obsidian-lensed telescope that its spirit minions had used to study the paths of the wandering stars without learning much. They tried to use it on this new sun, too, but it burst into flames almost immediately after showing only a single glare-filled image of a man on a chariot that told it almost nothing. 

Fortunately, its work on Krulm’venor went much better. There, it dusted off the brazier it had used to make copies of the thing for further study so long ago and whiled away the nights dissecting the godling and listening to its screams as it studied just how much darkness it could add the sickly bluish flames of unfire before its efforts extinguished them completely.

In the end, when Tenebroum was done with its torments, Krulm’venor’s eyes no longer glowed cyan but a deep violet that bordered on black. That would be close enough, it decided, admiring its handiwork. Once that was done, all it needed to do was create hundreds of copies, but given the simplicity of the work and the lack of limbs and other moving parts, that would only take a few days. 

So, leaving things in the capable hands of its fleshcrafters, it soared north, leaving behind the familiar territory that was almost completely devoid of life as it drifted over the Wodenspine Mountains and the western kingdoms where it's few living followers yet remained. There, it restrained the urge to simply take their souls as it passed by. It did not need them, as it had gorged completely on the dark, misshapen things that continued to pour up from the depths, but it still wanted to taste them. 

Instead, it flew across the desert sands to Tanda in the search for its Voice of Reason, but it could not find her. Tenebroum swirled over the city like a monsoon, blocking out the stars, but still, it did not find her. She was here, but at the same time, she wasn’t, and it wasn’t sure what that meant. 

It thought about devouring the city anyway but decided that it could wait until its return trip after it had exerted it had dealt with its Dark Paragons. The Voices presence still bothered it, even as it glided further north. She had been the most obedient of all its creations, and it had thought that out of everyone, she at least would remain loyal. 

In the end, Tenebroum decided not to jump to conclusions. She may yet be a prisoner, or worse, it reminded itself. The Voice had written him on many occasions about the City Goddess Tanda Nihara and how she was the true power behind the throne in that place. So, if there was wrongdoing, it might not be the Voice of Reason who was to blame.  

As it flew north across the night sky, that view only deepened. At one point, Tenebroum had laid at least a small claim against all of the cities that it found; now, though, the darkness had been purged from the completely. Only the dungeons that the Pargaons used for logistics purposes and the ruins of fallen Abbas still bore its mark. 

The answer to all of that was obvious, of course. Without its strength to intimidate them, all those peaceful treaties and tributes that its agent had worked so hard to get signed had vanished like a desert mirage.

Well, so would everything else that was good in their lives. As the Lich glided above the third trading port that it had come across between Tanda and the Kingdom of Varenell, which was its destination on the far side of the desert, it noted that the wretched traitors had the gall to hold a celebration to rejoice the return of the sun. That was too much. 

It swirled down to the town, suffocating all of the lights in a single motion. One moment, everyone was wearing smiles and feasting on imported sweets and spiced meats as they celebrated how the end of the world had been averted, and the next, their souls were being torn from their bodies by ten thousand shadowy hands as Tenebroum glided through their streets. 

The dark, spiritual miasma of its body was like a black fog, and the God didn’t even slow down as it passed through the place. One second, there was light and life, and the next second, there was not. There was only a town full of cooling corpses, and not a single one of them bore a mark to indicate what it was that had killed them.  

The fruits of betrayal are never sweet, it whispered as it continued on. It would do the same to every other town along the eastern coast, in time, along with many of the small islands that were not so far offshore. Only the primitive tribes that The Voice of Reason had found on her return still bore the shadow of its touch. So only they would be spared for now. 

Tenebroum no longer needed armies now. It was an army of ghosts and shades onto itself. No, it was something larger than that. It was a behemoth of frost and shadows, and it wasn’t sure that there was anything left in the world that was still a match for it. 

Still, there was a time when it had needed armies and servants, and it still wondered what it was that had happened to them, so it continued on to Varenell. There, it found the wall that had been described so often in the reports. The Dark Pargons had been unable to say if it had been erected simply to keep out the undead army that marched north on them, but given how it lay in disrepair after all this time, that seemed unlikely. Even now, the wall lay breached in several places, allowing the dunes on the south side to slowly creep north. 

That gave Tenebroum hope that its forces would have conquered large stretches of this new country. It was disappointed. Though towns and villages near the wall and the arterial trade road had been flattened by war, neither humans nor undead remained to control those areas. Instead, after going further to the northwest, it found the remains of its once grand army in two large castles where the remaining forces seemed to be warring with each other rather than an external enemy. 

That confounded the darkness as it stared in confusion at the battlefield where the dead fought against the dead, and the human army stayed far on the sidelines to watch. Teneborum wasn’t sure what to do until it felt the prickle of magic that indicated that at least one of the sorcerers in that army had noticed the missing stars and sought to understand why.

That turned out to be a tragic mistake. A God of Shadows could not allow that, and while it continued to study the array of forces on the field, it swooped down and ended the humans with little more than a thought. Only a few of the souls that it consumed even understood that they were in danger, and only that first sorcerer managed to cast a single spell before they were reduced to meat. 

Mortal forces meant nothing to it anymore. To think I labored so long and fought so hard against insignificant worms like this, it thought scornfully, before it called out “Enough!” and halted all motion on the battlefield before it. 

To call these armies would have done a disservice to the word. Once, this grand army had more than thirty thousand war zombies, backed with thousands of calvary, hundreds of siege giants, and an untold number of specialized abominations. Now, only the dregs remained. 

Tenebroum could have forgiven that much. In its absence, deprived of resources and essence it could see its armies grinding down to nothing. Fighting each other, though, this was utterly unacceptable. It called to the generals on both sides and met them on the field of battle. This time, it did not attempt to don a human shape. It was too angry for that. Instead, it was a cyclone of anger at the center of two deadlocked forces frozen in place until it decided what would happen next. 

The dark God did not wait for either entity to explain themselves. It simply ransacked their minds as it had done with Krulm’venor. Unlike the godling, though, they did not even attempt to resist, which made the whole thing even more confusing. 

After so many betrayals in its absence, Tenebroum was expecting to find one more. And execute both of them on the spot. Instead, it found a terrible miscommunication that had led to months of completely unnecessary and avoidable warfare, and it sighed in disgust. 

The way that the triumvirate of Dark Paragons had been created, each of them acted on their own initiative while they worked together with the other two. However, in cases where the three of them disagreed, they voted on the correct course of action. That had worked fine as long as there were three of them.

There weren’t three of them anymore, though. A holy warrior of some renown had managed to kill one of its Dark Paragons at the cost of his own life. Normally, such a paltry sacrifice would have been nothing, but in this case, once he had done so, the other two could no longer agree. 

After that, rather than fighting the enemy, they fought about how to fight the enemy. “What a terrible waste this was,” he growled as he studied both creatures while they stood rigidly at attention in their plate mail. 

Tenebroum wasn’t sure if it would simply replace them both or make more of them so this wouldn’t happen again. For now, it simply created a hierarchy, designating one of them as primary and the other as secondary. It was a simple enough change, and instantly, it fixed the problem, at least for now. 

“Clean up your dead and retrieve the corpses of your freshly slain enemies on that hill,” Tenebroum commanded. “After that, put this force back into some kind of shape and do show the mortals why they should fear us once more.”

“Yes, my lord,” they both answered, bringing gauntlets to their chest in unison. 

Tenebroum didn’t stick around for questions or conversations, though. The Dark Paragons were geniuses only in a single aspect of life. Their thoughts in any other sphere were practically nonexistent. A conversation with them would be as interesting as watching a fleshcrafter stitch the skin back onto a war zombie.

Besides, the night was only so long, and given how far it was from its lair right now, Tenebroum needed to head south once more. Even if it didn’t, it already knew everything there was to know here. This Kingdom had been shaping up to be a tough nut to crack, but its sudden absence had made it impossible, and even before its generals had short-circuited, their progress had stalled. 

None of that mattered now, of course. It would handle things itself from this point. 

Still, when it went back south, it planned to look for his Voice of Reason, but this time, it wasn’t simply the little porcelain doll that Tenebroum couldn’t find. It was the city of Tanda; the whole thing was just gone. It wasn’t that it was empty or that the desert had taken it either. The city had vanished, and along with it, the broad delta and the harbor that had made it so wealthy. 

The God of Darkness looked on this development in annoyance, but it could not linger. Sunrise was coming soon, and it wanted to be deep in its lair before false dawn colored the sky. It would be back one day soon to study this mystery, though. There was something here that it did not yet see.