Tenebroum Ch. 209-210

Ch. 209 - Primeval (Part 2)

When the Titan emerged from the hole into the depths at the center of Tenebroum’s lair, it was just part of the flood. Shadowy monstrosities raged past it in all directions. In the past, the Lich would have gone to great lengths to avoid letting its enemies encroach on its domain, but sometimes, enemies were best fought at the very heart of one's power, despite the risks. After all, it had been necessary for Siddrim; who was to say it wasn’t necessary for this thing or whatever might flow out of the depths next. 

The giant spirit looked no differently here than it had in the icy caverns miles below where they now stood, and it immediately tried the same tactics. It once again attempted to distort reality here, as it had done below, shifting the space between spaces to make the already large cathedral practically boundless so that it could, in turn, make its already huge size even larger, but that was a trick that Tenebroum no longer allowed. 

Here, the Lich had absolute power, and nothing stirred even as the magic rippled outward through the stone and tunnels of its true body. It owned these stones by graven letter and magic links for half a mile in any direction, and the monstrosity would find not even the tiniest crack that it could leverage against it.  

“That will not work a second time,” the Lich intoned loudly through the steam pipes of its organ in a series of voices that were almost musical. “Nor will I allow you to escape.”

“Escape?” The Titan asked with two dozen heads in its alien language, leaving the rest of them to laugh at the idea that it clearly considered preposterous. “You are the one that has fled. Since you led me to somewhere so interesting, though, I will forgive you for wasting my time. I—”

The Lich did not wait for the monstrosity to finish speaking before it struck. Instead, it lashed out from every direction at once with a swarm of hundreds of inky black tentacles. Here, it had the strength to manifest as much power as it wanted, and right now, it was overflowing with darkness to fuel even its strongest attacks. 

It had dozens of appendages to fasten to each of the giant’s limbs. That was saying something considering that even without its strange distortions, it was nearly tall enough to reach the vaulted ceilings of the undertemple some forty feet above its head. 

It ripped and tore at Tenebroum’s tentacles as it tried to get free and mound some kind of counter-attack. There was nothing for it to fight back against, though. The Lich was everywhere and nowhere now.

Sometimes, it succeeded in dissipating them completely with its monstrous strength, but when they were destroyed, it was no great loss. They were ephemeral things that were less connected to it than the zombies it wielded. More often, though, the Titan merely severed them after the things had started burrowing into its very soul to sap its strength. This was a trick that Tenebroum had learned from the Queen of Thorns and the way she devoured other nature spirits, and it served it well here. 

That would not be enough, though, because the Titan continued to gain strength the same way that Tenebroum did: by devouring and absorbing the neverending herd of monstrosities that was still erupting from the depths. That was why the Lich had decided on this form of attack, though. It didn’t seek to murder its opponent; that would be counterproductive. It wanted to cocoon it away from the world so that it had nothing to feed on. In a way, it wasn’t so different from what the small god of Constantinal had done to it so long ago. The only difference was that Tenebroum would finish in hours what that godling had hoped to accomplish in decades. 

“You think you can tie me down with these parlor tricks?” the dark Titan’s foul voice yelled in defiance, but the Lich ignored it.

The thing might feign unconcern, but it had already had a dozen arms and legs ripped off by the force of the Lich’s infinite attack, and many of the others were at least partially bound. Tenebroum saw no way for the creature to resist. It tried using its strange magic again, singing a complex chorus of words in a way that was similar to how the Lich had learned to cast its strongest magics, but the Lich was ready for that.

It could not understand the language that was being used to cast the spell that the thing was conjuring, but it didn’t have to. It could feel the way that each word rippled in the ether as it tried to manifest some power that it thought would save it. The Lich could see those effects, and so it counteracted those efforts easily enough by creating a counterspell in real time and blasting it out of its eighty-eight mouths in scream after well-tuned scream. 

It was long past the time that Tenebroum would have to adapt and endure to its opponents. From now on, that would be a problem for its enemies. 

It was the lord of this place. It was a god of darkness with a shadow that was cast halfway around the world. No one could do anything in its presence if it did not allow it, certainly not an aging relic without a spark of light to fight against a force of darkness.

There was a moment, toward the end of the fight when the thing tried to communicate with Tenebroum again. It roared incomprehensibly in its alien tongue before it was silenced forever. Whether that was to beg for mercy or offer some kind of deal, the Lich would never know. This wasn’t an equal; it was just a larger piece of prey than normal, and it was now fully tangled in Lich’s web. 

Slowly, the Titan’s bloodless blue limbs were wrapped one at a time by the Lich’s grasping appendages. Soon, the thing was drowning in inky blackness in a way that could no longer be properly expressed by darkness or shadow. It was no longer a part of the world in any real sense. It was already practically consumed and only a few more steps from being digested completely. 

In the depths, the two of them had fought for days to a standstill, but up here, Tenebroum had all but won within an hour. Even now, the monstrosity that had dared defy it was all but dead. It might still struggle, but that was all that it could do now, and resistance only made the process of rending it apart that much more satisfying. 

You weren’t as even as worthy a foe as the All-Father, Tenebroum thought bitterly, wishing that it had a real challenge. 

The real challenge on its mind would almost certainly come in the form of the moon and the stars. It would be soon, too. Even as it started to formulate a new plan and exactly how it would best use this much power, though, the memories of the Titan that it had finally devoured began to bubble to the surface, and the Lich turned away to focus on those. 

What it saw was confusing. There were no context clues to say where they were or even when they were. The mountains looked different, and the oceans had only the faintest waves. There did not seem to be much in the way of forests, either. Instead, it watched the Titan lord over a host of things that were barely men from the peak of a stone ziggurat. 

The whole scene struck Tenebroum as primitive, though it took it a while to say why. Swamps and poverty existed in every age, after all. It turned out that the missing detail was that the creatures had not even invented steel or iron yet. Most of the troglodytes wielded implements of bronze or stone, but before the Lich could study that, the scene was shifting. There were other titans, too, though none of them were the size of the thing it had just defeated. 

There were no remarkable insights here, the Lich decided, after watching the dizzying array of strange images flicker by it. It was ready to tune the entire affair out and refocus on the moon, and the situation outside that had passed by in its absence while it had been focused on the fires of creation.

It paused from doing that when it saw the sunrise, though. According to the memory, such a thing was unprecedented and threw everyone who saw it into panic. Before that moment, there had never been a sunrise before, apparently, which was an idea that the Lich found both odd and desirable. Instead, the world had been lit merely by wandering stars, and ugly, squat creatures had struggled with monsters amidst the foggy fern forests and the flat, swampy seas.

Such insights were inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory, but the idea that once there had been no sun, and then there was, fascinated the Lich. Moments ago, it was hopelessly bored with frog people or what it was they were doing, but now it was taking in every last detail as it struggled for insight on how to best fight the light. 

There was no fighting the light, though. Not then. It razed the entire civilization to ashes in a single day and sent even their gods deep into the earth looking for shelter. Tenebroum watched as the decades and centuries played out after that in the blink of an eye, but still, the pale things merely cowered and did nothing to strike at the gods above. They simply raided the surface for food and retreated before the end of the night, much like the goblins now might.  

That part of the things story might have gone on forever were it not for the dwarves. They had steel and slaughtered the primitive monsters, sending them ever deeper in their quest to get away. After that, the memories became indistinct. Tenebroum didn’t need to see more. All it needed to know was that these things had failed, and light had taken their world as a result. It would correct their mistake and would use their strength to do it.

Ch. 210 - A Brief History Lesson

From his view of the glowing orb high above the world, Jordan saw many things. He saw places he’d never dreamed of and faraway cultures he’d never even heard of before. There were too many to list, though the ones that worshiped the moon in some capacity were most apparent to him, and not all of them were in a pleasant way. 

In the faraway land of Rogan, the Ananani dwelt high in the mountains, and each month, they sacrificed living, breathing men and women to him every month to make sure that the new moon regrew and had the energy to become the full moon once more. On the plains of Morrin-kahm, the horse lords of Vargol held ecstatic rituals and dances on the night of each full moon. People didn’t die to these, at least, but they could be crippled or maimed just the same. 

Jordan would have rather spent his time watching over the children, but the Lich’s efforts had let a host of shadows sneak through the barrier in places where they were spread too thin. Now, it was up to him, as much anyone, to resolve that and expunge them one thin moonbeam at a time, wherever he found them. This, of course, required him to spend as much time turned away from the heavens as he ever had before, but he’d gotten so good at the constant game of chess in the sky that it was slowly but surely become an afterthought, letting him track down monsters made of darkness one at a time. 

Shades, silent, shadow behemoths, and the menagerie of evil that lurked out in the outer darkness of the night sky were fearsome opponents for the living, but they were nothing to him. All he needed to do was spot them, focus for a moment, and they would evaporate into nothingness. 

Sometimes, he found other opponents that could not be dealt with quite so easily. He noticed that Tanda seemed to be recovering from its brush with a fearsome monster, but there were no signs of undead about. Indeed, the strangest thing about the city was the shadows that it cast. Something wasn’t right about the place, but he could not exactly put his finger on what it was. 

Still, as his gaze drifted further north, he saw that the Lich’s armies had almost completely stopped their efforts to conquer. They no longer had the strength to take the field against an army of prepared men. Instead, they dwelled in caves and prowled in the shadows, looking for the unwary. Despite the fact that some of the monsters's more powerful servants still existed and several castles were still firmly under their sway, they were no longer a force to be feared. Instead, they were an endemic pest that would still kill hundreds or thousands more before they were rooted out. 

Even with all that searching, though, it took time before Jordan spotted the true threat once more. Unlike the servants of the Lich or the shadows, the beast that Lunaris’s prophecies spoke of moved fast and hid cleverly. It was only because Jordan traced the path of destruction down from Tanda that he found it at all. 

As soon as he found it, though, Jordan knew where it was going. Leo. Jordan did not know when or where the two of them would meet, but as long as Leo held the silvered blade, they would have to. That was the way that destiny was written, after all. As Jordan watched the giant chimera, it became apparent that it was searching for the light-eyed boy, too. 

As the monster moved south once more and prowled angrily through the ruins of Rahkin following the months-old scent of light, Jordan could not intercede directly, though. Theoretically, nothing stopped him, of course. His knowledge of things that should not be was the only thing that bound his hands; if he’d never seen that damned book, he would have done his best to kill or weaken the thing, but as it was, that was not his part to play. 

He could have, at any point, tried to strike Malzekeen down with pure moonlight, even though it wouldn’t have worked. He could have also warned the children directly that it was coming. 

Prophetic dreams were certainly in his purview as the God of the Moon and stars. However, except for the occasional dream to assure his children that Leo would one day return and that the boy was fine, Jordan resisted the urge. Were it not for what he’d read, both in the Book of Ways before he’d ascended and the other journals that he’d begun digging through now that the stars had returned to their proper places, he would have, but he knew two things with certainty now. 

The first was that this was hardly the first time such a scenario had played out. Jordan had reviewed hundreds of volumes of his library, often at random, and he had found nothing but the same miserable histories playing out over and over. For human nature, he expected that much, of course, but it seemed that in the same way night followed day, bad times followed good, and evil rose up again and again throughout history. 

Malzekeen wasn’t the only agent of this destruction, of course, but they were one of the most common and most powerful, thanks to the unholy combination of war, plague, and famine that had fused together. There had been others throughout the ages, though. The Weapers, Pardeshmerah, the Star Stealers, Kalagoth’s Horde, and even giant monsters from the deep had all risen up at some point to endanger the world, but each time they’d been beaten back. 

The Great Serpent of Gadorah had eaten the sun once, and now its bones merely made up an archipelago of some size far off the western coast. The Gods had apparently worried that it would arise once more, just as Malkazeen seemed to every few centuries, but so far, they had stayed quite quiescent, with only a single volcano that erupted boiling blood to indicate that any life remained in that old darkness. 

The second thing that he knew, thanks to the things he’d read in the Book of Ways, was that any intercessions he could make were likely to make things worse. At least, that had been the way of things when he was a mortal, and it didn’t seem likely to have changed now that he’d become a God, especially since he no longer had the book. 

Well, since the book no longer works, he thought in frustration as he looked at where it had sat on the shelf. He’d let it sit in the field for months before finally risking a trip to the world below to retrieve it, but it was nothing but a book full of empty pages now. It was inert.

Still, as it had slowly taken his sight, he’d learned many things that all amounted to the same thing. To see the future was to see the path laid out before you, and the temptation to leave it and try to find some shortcut would only amount to folly. He’d seen a hundred ways to kill Taz, but all of them had ended with some or all of their deaths. 

It was ironic, but the right answer had been to simply sit on his hands and read while his eyesight faded. It was the opposite of heroic, and he expected that Sister Annise had suffered much the same fate. After all, she’d come to warn them of danger, only to lead directly to her own death. 

Why have a book that told the future if he didn't dare to do anything to change it? He couldn’t say. 

The tome was a tool of prophecy, but that was hardly unprecedented throughout history, and he was slowly discovering that. Prophecies seemed to be almost as regular in their rhythms as the cycles of the moon. There were prophecies for when this sun would die and when that evil would rise, and right now, the prophecy that seemed to matter most was when the new dawn would come and chase away the shadows that had haunted the world. 

He could only find parts of that one in Lunaris’s journals. She had not thought to leave him a complete version of the thing for easy reference, but then maybe that’s because he wasn’t meant to know it. It was clear enough to him at this point, though. A boy born of darkness would wield a sword of light and cause the sun to rise once more. It wasn’t especially clear if Leo would be that sun or he would die in the fight, but there was little Jordan could do about that just now.

Despite scouring her books, that was all the information he could find. Well, that and all the information that Siddrim had taken to prevent it. For a new sun to rise, the old one would have to set, and apparently, the Lord of Light had done his level best for centuries to avoid that fate. He’d devoured many a would-be hero’s light just to make sure that they would never rise to eclipse him. 

Lunaris didn’t think much of this practice, but it wasn’t her place to stop him. Still, she dropped lines here and there about this prophecy as if she’d heard it from someone,  even if she’d never said who. 

Jordan had asked Niama about that, but the Goddess had merely shrugged. She’d told him there was no God of Fate, at least not currently.  “They’ve existed before and will exist again, but destiny is not as enduring a force as nature or the stone beneath the feet of the mortal world, so sometimes it just… fades away.”

“So you’ve always been the Goddess of nature, and you’ve known more than one God of Fate?” Jordan had asked, trying to nail down the details. 

“Always is a long time,” she’d laughed. “Nothing is always. Nothing except the dance between light and dark and life and death. I concern myself with living, though, so like the All-Father, I’ve been around longer than most. I’d tell you to try it, but Gods of Light… they don’t last quite so long as other forces.”

Jordan had thought about those words long after she’d left. It reinforced just how little he knew about what was going on. He didn’t even know where the All-Father was, though no one seemed particularly concerned about that. “He’s the oldest of us and rarely gets involved in these things beyond making something from time to time,” the Storm Goddess had said at their last meeting. “Now that he’s made the blade, he might retreat from the realm of mortals for a decade or more. It’s his way.”

Jordan was unconvinced, but who was he to gainsay another Goddess when he’d barely gotten his feet wet. He was fast becoming an expert at stars, but that was it. What he wanted, even more than to stop fighting that endless battle, though, was to find someone to talk to about all this strange destiny magic. 

If you can simply hand out prophecies to end evil, then why not do so for all evils of the world and be done with it? He often wondered. That would have been too easy, of course. There had to be some reason for it, even if he didn’t know what it might be. Still, as Jordan watched Malzekeen’s progress back toward the children’s tiny village, he desperately hoped that this time the prophecy would not fail.

One way or another, it would all be over soon, and at this point, all he could do was watch.