Tenebroum Ch. 211-212

Ch. 211 - A Taste of Light

They were married after the harvest, less than a year after his return. Everyone would have said that was long overdue, of course, but Leo hadn’t noticed. He’d been too busy spending time with Cynara while he worked through his complicated emotions and what he wanted versus what it was he thought he should be doing. Still, no matter what he thought the right thing to do was, his heart won out, and on a bright day, they stood before the entire village and said their vows. 

It was a simple ceremony, as all things were in Wayward, but the cake that was served was made from real wheat that had been ground from their own fields and real sugar that had been boiled from sugar beats they’d only recently harvested. It was the best, and perhaps last, good day of Leo’s young life. 

It had been so strange to see Cynara in a borrowed dress and blushing nervously, considering that he’d always looked up to her as a warrior first and foremost. Those days were long behind them now, though. He was taller than her now and had been for a long time, and even if she was four years older than him, he didn’t care. They were both in their twenties, and neither even remembered their parents, so it wasn’t like anyone could tell them what to do. 

At this point, all either of them wanted was to be together, which was easy enough. Reggie and Toman were already helping Leo to build a small house for the two of them. By the time the first snows of winter fell, they would be safe and warm together in a way that no one could interfere with. At least, that was the plan. They never made it that far. 

It was later evening, when the fires were lit and dancing was started that the thing struck. Leo had not noticed anything amiss in the woods while cutting down trees in the days leading up to his wedding, but then how could a man in love notice anything at all. The Lich might have hidden an army in the shadows of those groves, and he would have been too busy thinking about the way that Cynara’s hair smelled or the way her laugh sounded as he counted down the days to their blessed event. 

So when the beast howled and smashed down the beginnings of the palisade that they’d been building to flinders, it took everyone by surprise. No one was wearing armor, and only a few people had anything, even approaching a weapon nearby, and the first man that the giant wolf-thing picked up and bit in half didn’t even have time to scream. He was just gone, and only his boots and a bit of his legs remained. 

The next surprise, though, was when the thing spoke through its second head while it continued to devour with its first. “Yes! At last! We taste the light on this one. I have found it at last!”

At first glance, Leo had thought it was a wolf, albeit one that was larger than a horse. That was not the case. What stood before it was not a wolf but a chimera of some kind. Even as almost everyone else ran, either for safety or for weapons, he stood there, studying it. It had the head of a wolf, the head of a rat, and the mane of a lion, and it stood almost twice his height. It was a terrible monster, but it was far from the most terrible monster he’d fought so far, and he did not shrink from it. Instead, he took a step toward the thing. 

“Leo,” Cynara hissed, “You can’t. Not dressed like that.”

“I would protect you even if I was unarmed,” Leo answered before kissing her, “But I am never unarmed so long as I have the light.”

The monster tensed as if it was about to pounce toward Sam, and the dark eyed boy she’d been dancing with, but paused the moment Leo shouted out, “No! you will not have them!”

That gave the chimera a moment of pause, but even so, it might have continued to ignore Leo until it saw the silvered blade manifesting in his hand. Then, both its head and all of its aggression focused on Leo instead. 

When the Goddess had given him the weapon, it had glittered brightly even before he’d wielded it in anger for the first time, but now that he’d purged so much evil with it, the thing burned with inner light as much as a reflected light at this point, and it shimmered like a piece of the sun itself. That glare made the thing flinch ever so slightly when it saw it. 

“You think that you can defeat me? Even with that?” The wolf rumbled in a dark tone that promised violence. “I shall feast on your strength!”

That was the only warning that Leo received before the monster bounded forward. Cynara stayed by his side, but only for a moment before she decided that she should get her weapon or perhaps her armor. He didn’t care so long as she was out of danger. 

Leo, on the other hand, stood there perfectly still, waiting for the thing to reach him. He didn’t have to wait long. Despite the fact that it was almost a hundred feet away, it only took a few strides before it was on him like an avalanche. That was when Leo moved. 

The wolf's head struck at him first, with reactions almost too quick to follow, but he could tell the blow was meant to miss and drive him toward the second blow, which would come from the rat’s giant incisors. Leo sidestepped the first blow, and then, instead of parrying those awful yellowed teeth with the second as he’d intended, he cut right through them and deep into the lower jaw of the beast as it recoiled in pain. 

“I know not who you are or for what dark purpose the Lich created you, but you picked the wrong village,” Leo shouted as he pivoted back into a guard position to await the next surprise. 

“You think that shade created me?” the thing laughed through its wolf mouth while its rat mouth slowly healed in a grisly, slow-motion sort of way. “It is but an echo… a memory… It has only lived for decades, but I have existed and have already devoured it.”

Leo had no idea if that was a bluff that was meant to intimidate it or not, but he didn’t have time to weigh the truth of the words because the thing attacked again and again. It snapped twice at him, predictably, and then it tried to rake him with its claws. Even rusty as he was, without armor, he was moving incredibly fast, though, and dodged each of these blows. It wasn’t until the thing’s mane attacked him that it finally struck a blow, though. 

What he’d thought was just some strange decorative element suddenly became a tide of tentacles, and even as he forced the wolf to pull back with a feint, a wave of them came after it, latching painfully to his flesh in a dozen places. Leo felt them start to pick him up, but with the backswing, he severed the connections, sending him tumbling instead as the stumps that had latched onto him slowly shriveled up and flaked off of him. 

The wolf growled at him and then prepared to pounce while he was on the ground. It would have, too, if an arrow hadn’t suddenly sprouted in its eye socket. He didn’t know who fired it, but as the beast howled in pain, he rose to his feet and saw his wife standing in a nearby doorway, holding her bow. 

“You think your friends can save you, whelp?” the rat roared. “I’ve devoured whole towns a hundred times larger than this one with no effort at all.”

The chimera lashed out at him again, but this time, Leo was ready for the third attack, and he sliced away the tentacles before they ever reached him. One of the Johansen boys wasn’t so lucky. There were other warriors joining the fight now, but the monster seemed to ignore them and their steel blades. Leo didn’t quite understand why until Kal got too close to the main while he was hacking away with his axe, and the slimy tendrils reached out to grab him. 

Leo shouted a warning, but it was too late. They didn’t yank the older boy off his feet as they’d done with Leo. Instead, they drank him dry in moments as his skin became wrinkled and sunken. One moment, he’d been a young man with his whole life in front of him, and the next, he was a desiccated corpse. 

“What out for the mane!” he yelled, though he wasn’t sure anyone heard him over the din of battle. 

Leo only had a few moments to wonder why he hadn’t met a similarly grisly fate, but the answer sprang to mind almost immediately: the light. It was only the blades that had been illuminated that the thing seemed particularly concerned about. None glowed half as brightly as his, of course, but even Reggie’s dully-lit blade made wounds that didn’t heal immediately, unlike the steel weapons that most people had. 

Unfortunately, every time it was sorely wounded, it just devoured another villager, and in seconds, it was as good as new. It still fought Leo, but now Leo understood. This wasn’t a single combat to the death against an unintelligent beast. This was a battle of attrition. The fight continued on, and he and other warriors both struck excellent blows that would have killed or maimed anything else, but it would simply devour another opponent and keep on fighting. 

That didn’t really hit home, though, until the thing sent Toman tumbling to the ground covered in blood. The older boy had fought fiercely, but he hadn’t noticed the subtle shift, and the beast had whirled around, raking him with one of its terrible claws. 

Leo wanted to rush to him and save him, but there was no time for that. He wouldn’t have been able to do that even if it was Cynara who lay dying at his feet, no matter how much he might want to. Instead, all he could spare was a quick glance at his dying friend and a silent prayer that he would manage to heal his own wounds and recover. 

“This ends here, beast!” Leo yelled. “I’m sending you back to the lowest pit where you belong!”

The beast turned and regarded him, and Leo thought he saw something like recognition flicker across its bestial features. “You are no Siddrim,” it growled, “You are no Eldrim or Tearin-Far or any of the other Sun Gods that came before him. You have no chance to defeat me!” 

Leo had no idea who most of those people were, but despite those bold words, the monster seemed more cautious than it had at the start. That made sense, though. It wasn’t just his eyes and his blade that were glowing with light now. It was his whole body. He was radiating enough light to turn night into day now, and that worried that thing. He could tell. 

Leo was tired, too, of course, but there was nothing for it. This was the reason he’d been gifted this blade. He could tell. He could feel it in the way it moved in his hand. The Goddess had told him that he would purge a great evil, and though he hadn’t been impressed by this at first sight, there was obviously more to this monster than he’d first expected.

Ch. 212 - A Flickering Candle

The battle was not a quick thing.l It was fought back and forth across the meager village they’d become so proud of until tonight, destroying it utterly, along with most of the residents. Eventually, most of those who weren’t trained warriors fled the battle with the beast. Leo didn’t think less of them for that. No matter what its origins were, it was a nightmare creation that average people could never be expected to fight. 

Once the farmers and the tradesmen who hadn’t spent half their lives sparring and practicing to fight the evils of the world left the battle to Leo and the men and women with light in their eyes, they should have been able to strike them down. Indeed, they outnumbered it a dozen to one; each of his brothers and sisters fought well, and most of their weapons bore at least some small trace of the light. 

It wasn’t enough, though. Because each time one of them managed to maim the creature, slicing off a limb or blinding an eye, some new piece of a monstrosity would grow to replace it. One by one, the men and women he’d fought beside for most of his life died. Rin was devoured when the wound she rent into its side suddenly sprouted teeth that bit down on her arm and refused to let go. Reggie was drained dry, not by the mane of worms and leeches, but by the few that stayed attached to him and refused to burn away. 

That left Sam grieving, and her light flared as brightly as he’d ever seen on someone other than Brother Faerbar or himself. However, even that terrible blast of holy flames was only enough to burn away the hair of its mangy coat, and every blister her fire raised hatched a dozen tiny rats that swarmed her and gnawed on her until there was nothing left but bones.

It was a horrible, brutal battle, and Leo tried his best to coordinate his attacks with those around him, but no matter what they did, they just weren’t fast enough or strong enough to slay this monstrosity. No one was, maybe not even him. 

One at a time, the lights went out throughout the village. Each one hurt him more than any of the other minor wounds that had been inflicted on him to date. He’d been bloodied more than once now, but each time, the light burned its way out of the rent in his flesh and healed it shut again. He’d experienced that before, on the battlefield, but never so powerfully as this moment, and he embraced the searing pain that accompanied the healing of each blow.  

Pain was better than death, especially if it was the death of someone else. The problem was that for all the effort and all the blows exchanged, they were doing nothing to it. The thing simply wouldn't die, and he lacked the strength to do more than wound it. No matter how strong wielding that a

At least Cynara is safe, he told himself. Since she didn’t have the time to don her chain mail, she wisely she stuck to her bow and used hit-and-run tactics to stay as far away from the battle as possible. Every new lance of light that skewered the monster was a reminder that she was safe. In that way, her blows handed no better than his. For all their light, this creature oozed power, and all they could do was burn it around the edges and then watch as it regrew again and again. 

It was no longer a wolf now and it was barely a rat. Instead, it was a mass of hideous tendrils dotted with mouths and teeth. Each wound became some new appendage or mass as it healed as scar tissue built upon scar tissue until there was nothing but a hideous cancerous mass of evil. It wasn’t working, but what else could Leo do? His only choices were to fight and to not fight; there was no third option. All he could do was hack and slash at the thing while the monster slowly changed into something more hideous. 

“When all the other lights are extinguished, will you still fight, or will you see that there is no defeating me?” half a dozen mouths warbled, taunting him for his inability to end him. 

For a moment, Leo doubted himself. He held in his hand a magic sword of legends that could slice effortlessly through zombies, but its wielder wasn’t strong enough to take down a single beast. For just a moment, his light dimmed, but as the creature suddenly flicked its gaze away toward the last pair of glowing eyes on a nearby rooftop, Leo suddenly understood the true meaning of its words. 

It's going after her next, he told himself, shocked by the realization. For the last few minutes, they’d been fighting around the well and the ruin of the building that they were trying to turn into the smithy, but now the thing was surging down the street on an uncertain number of limbs toward his wife. Leo wasn’t about to let that happen and charged alongside it, taking advantage of the moment to slice off half a dozen limbs on the nearside, sending it careening to the ground. 

“You cannot have her!” he roared, taking a blow from his blind side that sent him tumbling end over until he was stopped only by the timbers of a collapsed wall.

“I can have everything! The beast roared. “My hunger is infinite, and so long as there is no Lord of Light, then I will consume the entirety of the world!”

“As long as I have this light, you shall not have hers,” he grunted as he rose to his feet. 

That was enough to make the misshapen flesh beast turn to face him with two of its four twisted heads. 

“Did you not feel that way about the rest of your friends?” it chuckled darkly. “They were worth sacrificing, but she is not? It was all in vain. I have eaten the world, and I shall feast on it again.”

Those words hit Leo like a punch to the gut. If he couldn’t bring this monstrosity when all of them had fought together, united, then how could he hope to do it on his own?

“You have been defeated before, too,” Leo stood, unwilling to admit defeat. He had no idea how he would win; he only knew that he had to, and with each step forward, that certainty deepened. The only way it was getting to Cynara was over his mangled corpse. “Every name you’ve listed is a name that has destroyed you utterly. You will add my name to that list.”

The creature hissed. “I don’t even know your name! You are not worth remembering!”

“I’m not,” Leo agreed. “But once upon a time, I was worth saving, and so was every person you slew tonight.”

He started hacking at the thing again, but this time it was different. Even now, the fireflies were stirring around him. That’s when he knew he wasn’t alone. 

In the light of his sword, the souls of the dead flickered and stirred around him, slowly coming to life. The details were vague, but one at a time, he recognized them as his slain brothers and sisters, not that he’d ever had any doubt.

For a few seconds, they joined him on the battlefield as a storm of swirling swords along with disembodied arms and legs. Then, one at a time, they began to merge with him. 

With each absorption, there was a flash of recognition at whom the spirit had been in life before their power flowed into him, making his light burn that much more brightly. Sam. Rin. Jamin. Tara. One by one, the ghosts of everyone he’d ever fought beside merged with him, lending him their last bit of strength. His sword was barely recognizable now. Indeed, it wasn’t even visible. It was a pillar of holy fire, and it charred the flesh of the beast that it was facing. 

“No!” it bellowed out of a dozen mouths. “I was supposed to smother you in the cradle before you gained your strength!”

Leo ignored those words and continued to hack away. He’d never been the tallest of his siblings, but right now, he felt like a giant. He was overflowing with a lifetime of other people’s souls, and for the first time in the entire fight, he felt stronger than the thing he was facing. 

Unfortunately, he had no idea how long this would last, so he pressed the attack as hard as he could. There was no subtlety now nor any attempt to dodge or parry blows. He trusted the blazing aura around him to handle most of the defense and for the light to heal the wounds of any attacks that made it through that incandescent storm before they could slay him. 

Now, he threw every last ounce of his strength into defeating this beast once and for all. He attacked; it was a berserk fury that was as much fire as it was force. Well, light, at least. The holy light that surged around him did nothing to harm the ruined buildings or even Cynara, who glowed very lightly in her own right as she looked on in awe. It even made the flowers blossom, and the weeds grow. To the screaming monstrosity of flesh that he faced, though, he might as well have been a bonfire. Its questing tentacles turned to ash before they ever got close to him, as he hacked it apart a piece at a time, and the thing was constantly fissioning now into rats, worms, and other stranger animals in an attempt to escape him. 

Some of them did. He had no doubt that was the case. He had no way to stop them. All he could do was keep fighting the ruin that was the main body and hope that would be enough. 

It was disgusting work, but as he reached the core of it, he found the things black heart pounding away. “Noooo!” the creature screamed through its remaining mouths. 

Leo didn’t even hesitate. He just thrust his sword deep into the thing, annihilating both of them in a burst of terrible energy. One moment, the silvered sword was a blazing pillar of light in his hands, and the next, it was annihilated as it canceled out against the terrible well of darkness that it had found in the center of that monstrosity. 

Leo was tossed backward like a rag doll by the force of the explosion, and debris went spraying in all directions, but none of it belonged to his opponent. Instead, where that terrible blast wave struck it, it simply ceased to exist. One moment, it was a pile of postulate body parts, and the next, it had simply vanished as if it had never existed.

Leo rose to his feet once more quickly, only to find that he had nothing to fight. He’d won. That took a moment to sink in. However, as soon as it did, he looked to Cynara to make sure that she was okay. Once he saw that she was, he finally released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and looked at his hands. 

Leo was still glowing so violently that his flesh was almost invisible compared to the storm that his aura had become. While he did that, Cynara finally rose and ran toward him but stopped partway, shielding her eyes. “Leo?! Are you in there, Leo? What happened to you?”

Leo wasn’t sure. He didn’t know either, to be perfectly honest, but he hoped like hell that it would stop sooner rather than later.

Author's Note: As of today, Tenebroum Plus patrons have received the final chapters of the story. So, no pressure, but for anyone that wants the ending now instead of next month, that is officially an option. You are welcome to read or wait, but I would steer clear of the discord Tenebroum channel for the next few days in case people feel the need to discuss it, to avoid spoilers.