Tenebroum-Chapter 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.

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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.

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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.