Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 208-209

Ch. 208 - Primeval

The shadows came roaring down the tunnel with every bit of the force that the water once had; Tenebroum gloried in them, at least at first. It let the tide of darkness wash across and rejuvenate its threadbare form. 

The leading edge of that tide were the shadow creatures that Krulm’venor had called the silent. They had been down in the dark so long they had forgotten what the last soul they’d even eaten was. So, instead of wearing the shapes of others, they were nothing but ragged and indistinct outlines. That didn’t save them from being devoured by Tenebroum’s hungry maw as it siphoned them up one after the other. 

They were nothing but fish, and they were devoured greedily by the Lich as they tried to swarm past him. The souls were thin. There was identity left to them and little in the way of essence, but little was more than zero, and each one added to its dwindling reserves. 

As the Lich grew in power, it absorbed more souls at a faster pace than before. It was a vicious cycle. Tenebroum got stronger, which in turn made it get stronger faster. It had experienced this before, at several points in its history. When it had devoured Siddrim and the All-Father were some of the highest points of its existence, but when it consumed Rahkin, and it had tasted thousands of lives within hours, as well as when it had devoured the silent shadows of Ghen’tal, it had experienced a similar rush. 

This was almost as much essence as those had been, and there was no sign of stopping. Instead, the shadows that were coming out of the bowls of the earth, where the All-Father had imprisoned them, were slowly getting larger and more well-defined. Most of them bore the faint shape of men, though without enough detail to say anything about the age they came from. 

There were other animals, too, including some like horses that could only be found on the surface, that hinted at some things that didn’t make sense. How would these shadows reach the surface as long as the sun, the moon, or the stars were always shining, it wondered. 

The Lich had no answers, though, and neither did the souls that it feasted on. In its new configuration, it felt like it could gorge forever on this flow, and so far, at least, it showed no signs of abating. It was possible it might peter out at any moment, but the Dwarves seemed to think it was a limitless reservoir of evil, and they recoiled at what it had done. They could not escape it, though; no one could. All it would take to stop this tide, theoretically, would be a single candle, but the Lich would never light one. Instead, it would feast. 

For the next few hours, the size of the creatures that emerged from the depths began to increase in size. Tenebroum found the dark tunnel to the absolute void that they were traveling from on the far side of the dwarven armory, past the fortifications and the locked doors that had been burst asunder by this endless tide. 

Now, there were orcs and ogres, as well as bulls and even larger creatures for which the Lich had no names. What had started as a school of flickering, formless fish had become an army stampeding toward its waiting maw. It was at this point that Tenebroum finally had the answer to one question that had been nagging at it as it bathed in the unrestrained flows of essence. 

Why haven’t they devoured each other? It had been asking itself for as long as it had been feasting, but it had to see a creature of significant enough size to answer that. 

It finally became clear when it saw the shade of a troll devour the shade of a man just before Tenebroum devoured them both. As it ate the man, it fissioned apart, releasing several smaller ghosts of the things it had devoured recently. These were, in turn, devoured by nearby orcs. It was a cannibalistic food chain that no one derived any sustenance from as they looked for scraps of life. 

Indeed, for anyone else, there would be no essence here at all. It was only because Tenebroum was so attuned to the darkness and had such a rigid form that it could devour and contain so many dead souls that would have simply leached the soul out of a living thing. 

Tenebroum wasn’t alive, though, not in any sense that mattered. It was a nexus of death and darkness. Its powers over disease and decay had atrophied with the loss of the Worm’s touch, but that was, for the moment, irrelevant. Right now, all it needed was its mastery of magic and darkness. 

At least, that’s all the Lich thought it needed. That was until the first truly mammoth creature found its way out of the labyrinth that had contained it for so long. At first, the Lich thought that it was the ghost of a whale swimming through the inky blackness. That wasn’t right, though. A whale didn't have a jaw that could unhinge or a hinged carapace. 

Whatever it was, it was the first creature that tried to devour Tenebroum rather than the other way around. It had no chance of succeeding, of course. It spread its toothy maw wide even as it approached the Lich’s event horizon and began to unravel. The most it could do was offer the very slightest resistance to what happened before Tenebroum turned it into raw essence, like everything that had come before it. 

It was the first large creature, but it wasn’t the last. Tenebroum knew nothing about the nature of animals and how they might be related to each other or what might exist on far-off continents, but as the parade of shadows continued into its waiting maw, they only grew larger and stranger. 

These were animals that had little in common with anything that it had ever seen. The only real parallel was the behemoths it had glimpsed beyond the stars. Eventually, after barge-sized slugs with razor spines and hydra worms with a thousand mouths, that became Tenebroum’s only real conclusion. These things must have been down there for so long that they predated the sun and the stars themselves. 

It wasn’t sure what to make of that. It had never given thought to the idea that permanent darkness might have existed before it had brought it to the world for a brief time. 

Soon enough, the parade of monstrosities was beginning to provide a real challenge to the Lich. It was stronger than it had ever been. It was radiating so much cold from the consumption of so many shadows that the once boiling water was now freezing into place. 

Neither ice nor anything else could stop the tide of darkness, though. All Tenebroum could do was consume, less it spill over. It was only after days, or perhaps weeks of feasting that it finally found what it was that this herd of grotesques was stampeding away from. Until that moment, Tenebroum had thought that they were simply seeking to escape from their prison, but when the first giant crawled forth from a shattered gateway that was much too small for it to ever fit through. Still, the thing fit through all the same. 

In fact, once it was in the cavern, the Lich’s soul had grown to almost entirely occupied, the whole thing warped, becoming larger than it ever should have been as the fifty-limbed and hundred-headed monstrosity rose and stretched, reveling in its full height after what must have been a very long imprisonment. 

Tenebroum was again surprised when the thing started to speak. It spoke no language that the Lich or any of its souls understood, and yet, somehow, the meaning came through. “You have quenched the fires of creation,” it said in dozens of voices. “I thank you, paltry shade, but the only reward I can offer you is a quick death.” 

The Lich had no fear of the threat, and the battle was soon joined as the giant fought against the maelstrom of frozen souls with no clear advantage to either party. Is this some dark god from an age past? It wondered as it thrashed and gnawed. Will it have some terrible trick to play on me like the worm?

Tenebroum banished that doubt as soon as it appeared. Just because it had been bested in a single fight did not mean all dark gods it encountered might have some secret advantage over it. The Lich had slain more than one god already; this was just an opportunity to add another one to its list. 

Surely this soul will be valuable too, it decided. It will have answers to questions I have not yet thought of. 

Tenebroum fought back with all its strength. A week ago, or perhaps even a day ago, it might not have been revitalized enough to face this impossible monster, but if it could attack with fifty arms and legs, then Tenebroum could attack with 100. It needed to, too. 

Soon, the problem wasn’t the creature it was facing but the avalanche of other monstrosities that traveled in its wake. Every minute spent wrestling with an ageless titan was another where it was being gnawed on by a thousand varieties of unnamed beasts. 

That was when Tenebroum withdrew. Not because it was afraid or even because it was losing. What it was engaged in at this moment was very clearly a stalemate that it would eventually win. However, time was not on its side. Just because this thing was the largest creature to come from the bowels of the earth didn’t mean that it was the largest thing that would come from them. It would be in real trouble if two of these nightmare giants appeared. 

So Tenebroum disengaged and moved swiftly back up its borehole to its lair, which was its true place of power; it left only ice and enemies in its wake as the tide of monstrosities gave chase. All of these monstrosities were as incorporeal as it was, so neither the blockages nor the ice troubled them at all. Instead, it became a mad rush to the surface, though that took several minutes. While the Lich returned, it made a series of urgent orders to its minions, who extinguished all the fires and other lights in the main chambers but lit them anywhere that the Lich didn’t want these creatures to wander off to. 

They would be entering its sanctum. That much had to happen, but it would not allow them to go anywhere that would represent a real inconvenience or danger. That would be unacceptable. 

By the time Tenebroum returned to the undertemple, the stage was set, and the lair was thrumming with power. It was here that it showed off all of the efforts that had gone into rebuilding and restructuring the edifice in the wake of its near death. 

Miles away from its ring, it had only a fraction of the power that it had here and now at its heart. The outer ring that contained the eighty-eight golden skulls that were its new phylactery throbbed with so much power that black lightning arced between the nodes, relaying its thoughts instantaneously. 

The Lich had more essence than it had ever thought possible now. It spun like a whirlpool, creating a singularity of power where it now stood, ready for anything. As the dark titan crawled out of the hole that led into the depths, Tenebroum was ready for it. Before, the two of them had been a near match, but now the Lich would rip it to blood shreds after it finished yanking off its prehensile limbs one at a time.

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.