Tenebroum-Chapter 216: Loose Ends

Tenebroum stayed in its lair for several days and nights before it journeyed north. This was both because it wanted to make the most important and painful changes to Krulm’venor and his self-replicating magics while it was still wroth with him and because it wanted to study the patterns of this next sun and determine if there was anything to be learned from it that might suggest an imminent attack.

The Shadowy God had an obsidian-lensed telescope that its spirit minions had used to study the paths of the wandering stars without learning much. They tried to use it on this new sun, too, but it burst into flames almost immediately after showing only a single glare-filled image of a man on a chariot that told it almost nothing.

Fortunately, its work on Krulm’venor went much better. There, it dusted off the brazier it had used to make copies of the thing for further study so long ago and whiled away the nights dissecting the godling and listening to its screams as it studied just how much darkness it could add the sickly bluish flames of unfire before its efforts extinguished them completely.

In the end, when Tenebroum was done with its torments, Krulm’venor’s eyes no longer glowed cyan but a deep violet that bordered on black. That would be close enough, it decided, admiring its handiwork. Once that was done, all it needed to do was create hundreds of copies, but given the simplicity of the work and the lack of limbs and other moving parts, that would only take a few days.

So, leaving things in the capable hands of its fleshcrafters, it soared north, leaving behind the familiar territory that was almost completely devoid of life as it drifted over the Wodenspine Mountains and the western kingdoms where it's few living followers yet remained. There, it restrained the urge to simply take their souls as it passed by. It did not need them, as it had gorged completely on the dark, misshapen things that continued to pour up from the depths, but it still wanted to taste them.

Instead, it flew across the desert sands to Tanda in the search for its Voice of Reason, but it could not find her. Tenebroum swirled over the city like a monsoon, blocking out the stars, but still, it did not find her. She was here, but at the same time, she wasn’t, and it wasn’t sure what that meant.

It thought about devouring the city anyway but decided that it could wait until its return trip after it had exerted it had dealt with its Dark Paragons. The Voices presence still bothered it, even as it glided further north. She had been the most obedient of all its creations, and it had thought that out of everyone, she at least would remain loyal.

In the end, Tenebroum decided not to jump to conclusions. She may yet be a prisoner, or worse, it reminded itself. The Voice had written him on many occasions about the City Goddess Tanda Nihara and how she was the true power behind the throne in that place. So, if there was wrongdoing, it might not be the Voice of Reason who was to blame.

As it flew north across the night sky, that view only deepened. At one point, Tenebroum had laid at least a small claim against all of the cities that it found; now, though, the darkness had been purged from the completely. Only the dungeons that the Pargaons used for logistics purposes and the ruins of fallen Abbas still bore its mark.

The answer to all of that was obvious, of course. Without its strength to intimidate them, all those peaceful treaties and tributes that its agent had worked so hard to get signed had vanished like a desert mirage.

Well, so would everything else that was good in their lives. As the Lich glided above the third trading port that it had come across between Tanda and the Kingdom of Varenell, which was its destination on the far side of the desert, it noted that the wretched traitors had the gall to hold a celebration to rejoice the return of the sun. That was too much.

It swirled down to the town, suffocating all of the lights in a single motion. One moment, everyone was wearing smiles and feasting on imported sweets and spiced meats as they celebrated how the end of the world had been averted, and the next, their souls were being torn from their bodies by ten thousand shadowy hands as Tenebroum glided through their streets.

The dark, spiritual miasma of its body was like a black fog, and the God didn’t even slow down as it passed through the place. One second, there was light and life, and the next second, there was not. There was only a town full of cooling corpses, and not a single one of them bore a mark to indicate what it was that had killed them.

The fruits of betrayal are never sweet, it whispered as it continued on. It would do the same to every other town along the eastern coast, in time, along with many of the small islands that were not so far offshore. Only the primitive tribes that The Voice of Reason had found on her return still bore the shadow of its touch. So only they would be spared for now.

Tenebroum no longer needed armies now. It was an army of ghosts and shades onto itself. No, it was something larger than that. It was a behemoth of frost and shadows, and it wasn’t sure that there was anything left in the world that was still a match for it.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Still, there was a time when it had needed armies and servants, and it still wondered what it was that had happened to them, so it continued on to Varenell. There, it found the wall that had been described so often in the reports. The Dark Pargons had been unable to say if it had been erected simply to keep out the undead army that marched north on them, but given how it lay in disrepair after all this time, that seemed unlikely. Even now, the wall lay breached in several places, allowing the dunes on the south side to slowly creep north.

That gave Tenebroum hope that its forces would have conquered large stretches of this new country. It was disappointed. Though towns and villages near the wall and the arterial trade road had been flattened by war, neither humans nor undead remained to control those areas. Instead, after going further to the northwest, it found the remains of its once grand army in two large castles where the remaining forces seemed to be warring with each other rather than an external enemy.

Th𝓮 most uptodate nov𝑒ls are publish𝒆d on ƒreewebηoveℓ.com.

That confounded the darkness as it stared in confusion at the battlefield where the dead fought against the dead, and the human army stayed far on the sidelines to watch. Teneborum wasn’t sure what to do until it felt the prickle of magic that indicated that at least one of the sorcerers in that army had noticed the missing stars and sought to understand why.

That turned out to be a tragic mistake. A God of Shadows could not allow that, and while it continued to study the array of forces on the field, it swooped down and ended the humans with little more than a thought. Only a few of the souls that it consumed even understood that they were in danger, and only that first sorcerer managed to cast a single spell before they were reduced to meat.

Mortal forces meant nothing to it anymore. To think I labored so long and fought so hard against insignificant worms like this, it thought scornfully, before it called out “Enough!” and halted all motion on the battlefield before it.

To call these armies would have done a disservice to the word. Once, this grand army had more than thirty thousand war zombies, backed with thousands of calvary, hundreds of siege giants, and an untold number of specialized abominations. Now, only the dregs remained.

Tenebroum could have forgiven that much. In its absence, deprived of resources and essence it could see its armies grinding down to nothing. Fighting each other, though, this was utterly unacceptable. It called to the generals on both sides and met them on the field of battle. This time, it did not attempt to don a human shape. It was too angry for that. Instead, it was a cyclone of anger at the center of two deadlocked forces frozen in place until it decided what would happen next.

The dark God did not wait for either entity to explain themselves. It simply ransacked their minds as it had done with Krulm’venor. Unlike the godling, though, they did not even attempt to resist, which made the whole thing even more confusing.

After so many betrayals in its absence, Tenebroum was expecting to find one more. And execute both of them on the spot. Instead, it found a terrible miscommunication that had led to months of completely unnecessary and avoidable warfare, and it sighed in disgust.

The way that the triumvirate of Dark Paragons had been created, each of them acted on their own initiative while they worked together with the other two. However, in cases where the three of them disagreed, they voted on the correct course of action. That had worked fine as long as there were three of them.

There weren’t three of them anymore, though. A holy warrior of some renown had managed to kill one of its Dark Paragons at the cost of his own life. Normally, such a paltry sacrifice would have been nothing, but in this case, once he had done so, the other two could no longer agree.

After that, rather than fighting the enemy, they fought about how to fight the enemy. “What a terrible waste this was,” he growled as he studied both creatures while they stood rigidly at attention in their plate mail.

Tenebroum wasn’t sure if it would simply replace them both or make more of them so this wouldn’t happen again. For now, it simply created a hierarchy, designating one of them as primary and the other as secondary. It was a simple enough change, and instantly, it fixed the problem, at least for now.

“Clean up your dead and retrieve the corpses of your freshly slain enemies on that hill,” Tenebroum commanded. “After that, put this force back into some kind of shape and do show the mortals why they should fear us once more.”

“Yes, my lord,” they both answered, bringing gauntlets to their chest in unison.

Tenebroum didn’t stick around for questions or conversations, though. The Dark Paragons were geniuses only in a single aspect of life. Their thoughts in any other sphere were practically nonexistent. A conversation with them would be as interesting as watching a fleshcrafter stitch the skin back onto a war zombie.

Besides, the night was only so long, and given how far it was from its lair right now, Tenebroum needed to head south once more. Even if it didn’t, it already knew everything there was to know here. This Kingdom had been shaping up to be a tough nut to crack, but its sudden absence had made it impossible, and even before its generals had short-circuited, their progress had stalled.

None of that mattered now, of course. It would handle things itself from this point.

Still, when it went back south, it planned to look for his Voice of Reason, but this time, it wasn’t simply the little porcelain doll that Tenebroum couldn’t find. It was the city of Tanda; the whole thing was just gone. It wasn’t that it was empty or that the desert had taken it either. The city had vanished, and along with it, the broad delta and the harbor that had made it so wealthy.

The God of Darkness looked on this development in annoyance, but it could not linger. Sunrise was coming soon, and it wanted to be deep in its lair before false dawn colored the sky. It would be back one day soon to study this mystery, though. There was something here that it did not yet see.