Tenebroum Ch. 198-199

Ch. 198 - Another Problem

Despite the fact that the act of will had left Jordan completely drained, it had been worth it to beat the Lich back. He didn’t know what that monster was up to, but he knew that if it tried again in the next night or two, he would not be able to intervene again quite so soon. 

That thought filled him with even more dread than the hundreds of stars he’d lost that night. The Lich had slain less than a third of those, but suddenly shifting an entire hemisphere of the sky to beat it back had caused losses everywhere. A game as complex as the night sky was not meant to be shifted so suddenly, and he could have very easily drowned the world in shadows in his attempt to fight the Lich.

Even so, despite Jordan’s best efforts, a few of the smaller monsters had gotten through and would wreck no end of havoc if they found somewhere suitable to hide from the light of day. “You can’t win them all,” he sighed, laying on a couch in the rear of his small palace while he looked up at the sky. No matter how tired he was now, he dared not sleep. There was too much to do after all the snarls he’d created. It would be weeks before he put the whole weave back together again in something that resembled an orderly pattern, with all the constellations where they were supposed to be. 

“Master, I have come to inform you that the ladies Chamen Sea and two forest Goddesses that declined to give me their names have come to visit you,” one of Jordan’s servants said after appearing behind him and giving him a hell of a scare. 

“By the dark, I told you not to do that,” Jordan gasped, momentarily losing enough of his concentration that the endless battle faded from his mind for a moment, leaving the small cluster of stars he’d been helping to fend for themselves a moment. “You can tell them the same thing I’ve had you tell everyone else.”

Jordan felt rude addressing the ageless young man like that, but he’d given up trying to ask these people for their names. They didn’t have any, and they didn’t seem to appreciate it when he tried to give them one. They might look human and act human, but they were something else. 

If he had more time, he’d study them; they seemed to be an advanced sort of servitor that was tied to the house, but time was the one thing he did not have these days. Certainly, he didn't have the time to have an audience with every God and Goddess that seemed to want his attention the last few days. He hadn’t even had time to check on the children since all of this had happened, and he was certainly more concerned with their well-being than whatever else a god might tell him just now. 

Just that thought made him smile. Here he was, the black sheep and sole survivor of his family, and now suddenly, he was in the position to tell Gods to come back later. I didn’t even finish the Collegium, and here I am lording over…  as Jordan experienced the moment, he suddenly realized that his servant was continuing to stand there like he was waiting for more of that order. 

“Go on,” Jordan said. 

“Shall I tell them three weeks, like the others,” the servant asked. 

“Yes, please,” he sighed. “The night before the full moon, and not before.”

Jordan’s strange servant bowed and walked away, and as he did, Jordan called after him. “You can just tell everyone that. You don’t need to ask me every time!”

The man paused, turned, and bowed to acknowledge that order, but Jordan knew that he wouldn’t honor it. If someone showed up in an hour, then he, or someone like him, would show up to disturb Jordan’s concentration and tear him away from the cosmic battle that truly mattered. 

Jordan returned to the task at hand, frowning as he noted that in the time it took him to resolve that conversation, two of the stars on his side had been lost, and the situation had worsened slightly. This is why Gods never answer prayers, he thought to himself. They’re too busy dealing with everything else.

While true when he was aggravated, that statement became less true throughout that day and the days that followed as he slowly put the sky back where it was supposed to be. Lunaris had personally intervened in his own life twice, and it could be argued that Siddrim had as well, even if that was through Sir Farbaer. Jordan supposed that he could look through her journals and see if there was any mention as to why she saved him while she let Abenend burn to the ground, but that would have to be a project for some point in the distant future. He didn’t have any more time for himself than he did for others, as he focused entirely on keeping the world from falling into ruin.

In the days that followed, though, the second, third, and fifth attacks from the Lich that he’d feared never materialized, giving Jordan all the time he needed to fix the things that were broken. It was only once all of that was done that he finally took a look around the world again, and he liked what he saw. 

Not only was the bleed-through of the shadows less than he’d feared and almost completely dissipated by now, but there seemed to be less in the way of undead, too. Humanity was winning on several fronts, most notability in the northern and the desert kingdoms. 

Jordan had feared that the surprise attack from the Lich had indicated that its evil was resurgent, but if anything, it seemed to have been a last gasp from that evil creature. Not that he was willing to count the thing out, of course. As long as shadows clung to Blackwater, and even after, that thing would be a menace, but if it had finally burned itself out, then the world would recover, and after a new Lord of Light was put into place and the sun rose once more…

Jordan sighed at that thought. He knew that’s what the Gods and goddesses would demand of him in a few days. He even knew who the candidate was, but even if Jordan thought that little Leo was ready for such a burden, it would violate the prophecy that he’d spent so much time studying in the Book of Ways. No, for now, his hands were tied, and he would do only his job. Everything else would come in the fullness of time. 

When the conclave of deities finally arrived a week later, he was only half-right. The gods of cities and rivers he’d never heard of crowded the amphitheater that he hadn’t set foot in since Lunaris’s death. To him, it was hollowed ground, but to everyone else, he was just a pretender to the throne. The All-Father did not join them. No one could say why, though the Goddesses of Nature and the Sea and Storms stood by his side in the center of that vast place. 

Jordan noticed that no one sat very close to anyone else. It was not a protocol he understood, but he didn’t ask, either. Instead of focusing on the Lord of Light and who it should be, though, the conversation mostly revolved around a new threat: Malkezeen. 

“It has returned,” Niama told everyone. “I have seen it with my own eyes. Malkezeen walks among us once more.”

Jordan did not reveal his ignorance by asking who that was. Even though his strange but dutiful servants had done their part to make sure he looked a bit more like a god than he ever had before, he still knew precious little. Instead, he listened and learned as everyone else shared what they knew. 

Apparently, this was the entity that they all truly feared. That was one of the reasons they’d done so little about the Lich. It was likely only a harbinger of the true evil that waited to devour the world with war and famine. Apparently, several small gods had already been devoured by it, and servants of the Lich might have been murdered as well, but that was harder to say. 

“Perhaps it has eaten the All-Father,” the lesser God of a faraway city to the north asked. “It’s not like him not to be here.” 

“It’s not,” Istiniss agreed. “But the All-Father would never leave the depths for such a brawl, and Malkazeen is too hungry to search the deeps for him. There is a reason why the Lord of Dwarves has survived endless cycles of light and dark, and that is by not getting involved.”

There was a mixed reaction to those words, and Jordan could see there was not a lot of love lost there. At one point, the goddess of the great Bahlmatta Mountain range asked him if he’d turned the moon's gaze so recently to fight the chimeric wolf-rat. That was apparently why they were all here. They thought that he was seeking to lead the charge against the most terrible evil any of them were likely to ever know. 

“I didn’t,” Jordan admitted, provoking audible sighs. He explained how he’d fought against the Lich when it had attacked the sky, but no one seemed to care about that. The Lich had done its damage, and even now, as its armies were winnowed and routed, the Gods were turning their attention to other matters. That annoyed him more than he could say. 

If the thing is weak, then now is the time to strike and finish it. He thought. We can’t let it fester and grow once more. 

Everyone else’s concerns lay elsewhere, though. He was standing on the moon with a hundred divinities, many of whom were from so far away that he’d never even heard of them, and they were acting like a flock of frightened children. No, they were worse than that; Jordan had seen the way that Cynara, Leo, and all the other were reacting to the hardships they found in the wider world, and none of them were freaking out like this. 

“The child has been found, the sword has been forged, and the evil will be struck down,” Istiniss answered finally as if that meant anything. 

Jordan said nothing about that either, but mostly because it seemed to calm everyone. Fate was a slippery thing, though, and he’d dealt with it just enough to be uncomfortable around it. It had warned him of what Tazuranth was going to do but had told him nothing of this rat-wolf spirit nor about the Lich’s attack against the stars. Hells, it hadn’t even told Jordan that he was going to become the God of the Moon. That was a hell of a thing to leave out. 

So, even if there was a prophecy that was playing out around them, there was no telling what terrible consequences it might cause, even if it was literally true. Jordan explained some of those fears to Istiniss alone after the meeting had broken up and people started to leave. She just smiled and said, “The tide will come in and out twice a day. That’s the only prophecy I truly need to know. Everything else will be as it wills.”

Jordan thought that was the least satisfying non-answer he’d ever heard, but he thanked her for it just the same. Then, when she had departed along with everyone else, he went to his library. It was time to get some answers. Even if he didn’t have the time, he would make it. There was too much he was missing, and he would have to fix that if he wanted to be ready for whatever was about to happen next.

Ch. 199 - Wayward

One rescue at a time, the small community that Leo and the others nourished grew. That didn’t make things easier, though. That only made them harder. Even though they found more survivors on their far-flung journeys throughout the area, food remained as elusive as ever. In fact, if not for the obviously divine intervention that made nuts and berries spring into existence nearly every day, even in the winter, he was quite certain that most of these people would have starved to death. 

Leo had learned Brother Farbaer’s trick to make loves of bread spring from nowhere, but it was harder than healing magic, and he couldn’t do it all the time. Instead, he mostly stuck to fighting. He and his friends had broken up into two groups now. Now, half of them struck out every week to search for survivors, threats, and anything else that might be useful. As they did that, the other half of the group stayed here to defend the little town of Wayward, which had stuck, despite Cynara insisting the whole thing was a joke. 

“I just meant that the wayward people could stay here until we found somewhere better!” she said half the time someone brought up the name around her, but that just made people want to use it more. For better or worse, it was going to be Wayward until they found somewhere to take all of these people to, and so far, the options were looking grim.  

Unlike everyone else, Leo never stayed with the group that defended Wayward. Some always stayed in the little seaside community to defend the nearly hundred souls they’d gathered into one spot, and some came with him on some of his expeditions. However, he was only ever in Wayward for a few days at a time before he was back out again. At this point, there wasn’t much out there, he reflected as he watched a few of the women making a meager stew with more water than roots in a large cauldron they’d found on a recent trip. 

It was a good find. It was going to be a long time before anything new was made of cast iron in the area. Even basic blacksmithing was currently beyond them. That wasn’t a problem now, but it would be when they ran out of weapons and armor to scavenge. 

“You look worried,” Toman said, sneaking up on Leo as he sat there on his stump. “You guys find something out there?”

Leo just shook his head and answered, “Nothing to find.”

That wasn’t quite true, of course. There was Rahkin. He’d seen it on the horizon on more than one trip now, along with its plume of evil that hung over it like the thick smoke over a forest fire. He’d wanted to go and explore it, but each time he’d told his friends, he’d been outvoted. It wasn’t that they feared the dark exactly. It was that they thought he was foolish.

And he was foolish; he didn’t say that, though, not to Toman or anyone else. Instead, he just said, “It’s slim picking out there. If we want to find anything worth finding, we’re going to have to go farther. Maybe when it warms, we can take everyone to the northwest and see if any of the Eastern Kingdoms still stand.”

“If Rhakin fell, then why would anyone else be left standing?” Toman asked. 

It was a fair question, but Leo didn’t answer it. He didn’t know. He just knew that he couldn’t just stay here. He’d wanted to save these people more than anyone, but now, the longer he stayed, the more he felt like a hound pacing nervously in his kennel. He needed more than this. There were horrors and nightmares out there that only he could slay, and his enchanted blade was meant for more than this. 

After Leo’s sullen silence could be borne no more, Toman finally volunteered, “I do think you’re right, you know. When the weather warms, we should move on and try to find something worth finding because this… Well, I don’t want to stay here two winters in a row.”

That was true enough, and Leo smiled as he remembered how miserable the winter had been to most of these people without proper houses. The light warmed him, though, so he barely felt the touch of the cold. He’d spent half the winter in a tent out in the world, looking for things to fight, but not everyone was so lucky. 

Leo was about to comment on that, but when Sam and Rin came over to join them, Leo decided not to. Moving on was an unpopular opinion, and he didn’t want to upset anyone. Increasingly, he was of the opinion that he was probably going to need to go out on his own and find someplace he could lead everyone else to, but he knew that would not go over well. 

Leo spent the rest of the evening pretending to care about the conversations that happened around him, and he managed to make a couple loaves of bread to share with the young and infirm, but none of those moments quieted his mind or made him change his mind. That night, when he watched Lunaris slowly cross the sky and lost himself in the twinkling of the constellations, he made up his mind. He was going to go north. First to Rahkin and then to all the places that lay beyond it. 

There might not even be anything there left to fight, he told himself. We’ve searched a few of the dungeons left behind by the dead, and nothing was moving in any of them. 

Was he telling himself that because he hoped there was no great evil left to face or because he was trying to let himself down easily before he went there and found nothing worth fighting? He wasn’t sure, but he knew that going there was the right thing to do. He could feel it in his heart and, more importantly, in his sword. He was certain that this is what Brother Faerbar would have wanted him to do, though he couldn’t quite say why. 

Even though Leo’s mind was made up, he didn’t leave that day or the day after. Instead, he tried to work up the nerve to tell his friends or at least make peace with the fact that leaving them was a betrayal. 

What if marauding zombies or worse attack while you’re gone, and people die? He asked himself. Can you live with that? Could you live without yourself if Cynara or anyone else was dead because you weren’t here to save them? 

He couldn’t. He knew that he couldn’t, but that didn’t change anything. Neither did the fact that Cynara still sometimes beat him with wooden swords. Without the silvered blade, he was only one of the best warriors among them, but with it… well, he didn’t believe anything could stop him. 

Humans hadn’t managed to survive in this place by chance. The forest was protecting and nurturing them. Nature deities might rank pretty far below the Lord of Light to him, but they were still a damn sight higher in his books than the evil that wandered the land. 

He struggled with the whole thing until one morning when he just didn’t anymore. After that, he didn’t tell any of his friends about his change of heart; he just wrote a small note and put it somewhere where they were sure to find it before he left. He didn’t try to explain himself because he couldn’t, and he was done tying himself up in knots about it. 

He just wrote, ‘I’m going where the Gods take me. When I find out where we are meant to be, I will return, and we can take the survivors there instead. Leo.’ 

Then, just like that, he was gone, going north fast enough that no one would be able to catch him easily. Leo walked through the first night and most of the second one before exhaustion finally caught him, and he slept in an abandoned farmhouse. They’d look for him, but with a day’s head start, they would not catch him, and eventually, they would realize the error of their ways and turn around; at least, that’s what he told himself. 

In the days that followed, Leo took the long way, exploring every village and crypt that had been considered too polluted by his companions to explore on previous trips. It was in those places he finally found things worth fighting. 

Most of the dead he and his friends had encountered these days just lay there or moved weakly. It was only those who clung to the foulest patches of land, with air that polluted the lungs of anyone who breathed it, that were truly dangerous anymore. Leo couldn’t see the spirits of the damned, but the old blood splatter told the story as often as not; these were places of slaughter and death. 

Sometimes, he found a mob of shuffling zombies in an old temple. Those were easy enough to dispatch. Other times, though, he encountered something larger and meaner. Those were the fights that Leo looked forward to. Fourteen-legged calvary. Siege ladders made out of a mob of people. Giant zombies with armor under their skin. Each of them was a challenge in their own way, and he learned something from ending each of them. 

It was only when the flesh giant dug itself free from the graveyard, where it had lain dormant for who knew how long, that Leo could finally admit to himself that this was the reason he’d struck out on his own. 

As he dodged limbs thicker than his entire body and wove between blows that would have struck him dead, he felt truly free for the first time since they had all left Sanctuary's gilded cage. This is what I’m for, he thought as he sliced through the rotting Achilles tendon on the thing’s left leg before he scampered away from where the thing was about to crash to earth. This, right here, without having to worry about anyone else getting hurt. It’s just me, the sword, and whatever it is that needs to die a second time. 

It was a thrill, both because this thing might strike him dead at any moment and because this was the first creature he’d faced that had been a challenge in such a long time. Challenge or not, once the thing could no longer stand, it was a sitting duck, literally and figuratively, and Leo soon chopped it to ribbons. It was a slow death, but not because he was trying to make it suffer if the abomination was even capable of such a thing. 

First, he crippled its legs and then its arms, and it was only then that he took out its spine in enough places that he could climb the shifting pile of rotting flesh and sever the giant head with blows that were more like a woodsman with an axe than a warrior with a sword. It was just too big to slay with any finesse. 

Still, when his lungs were heaving, and he stood there splattered in ichor, he watched the miasma that clung to the place start to dissipate, and he smiled. “Well, at least that confirms it,” he told himself. “There’s definitely something in Rhakin that’s still worth killing.”