Tenebroum

Chapter 187: Hunted

Chapter 187: Hunted

Tenebroum was still hemorrhaging souls as it fled down the maze-like halls of its lair, and Malzekeen roared in pursuit. The monstrosity bowled over everything in its path like a force of nature. Even as the constructs wound down, some of them still fought, but against the reformed god from an age past, none of them stood a chance. Metal and bone were sundered by powerful claws and even more powerful teeth, and any flesh that touched it was left desiccated and decayed by the powers of hunger and rot.

The beast was the incarnation of destructiveness, and against that, in this vaporous form. Even its most powerful bodies might do little good against this monster, though. If Tenebroum had been itself, then it might have activated all of them at once and caused a true battle for the ages, but in the state, it was in now, it wasn’t sure that it could even possess a single construct and use it to its full potential.

The phylactery that it had allowed it to store immense amounts of power within itself. It had been the perfect union of the mind of a mage and the power of its hoard, and now its golden focus was gone. As a result, it could feel whole aspects of itself sloughing off like an eroding cliffside, falling into the hungry sea a bit at a time.

The darkness should have wondered about that gold, even before all of this. It should have been able to detect the touch of another hungry spirit, but it didn’t. Everything had happened so long ago when it had known. That was no excuse, though, and even as Tenebroum’s mind started to come unraveled, it found time to curse itself.

As the wounded spirit fled through the halls, it left a trail of smoke in its wake. It wasn’t smoke, though. It was streamers of dozens or even hundreds of spirits fissioning from it every second. No matter how fast it moved, they were left behind it in a trail that not only gave away its position as it sought to hide from the monster pursuing it. They also weakened it. Every soul that left its core made it a little weaker and a little slower. Tenebroum hated that reality bitterly, but there was nothing it could do to change that just now.

The darkness didn’t need to follow the corridors. It could charge right through walls like they weren’t even there. That didn’t help it escape its pursuer, though. The monstrous hound was gaining. Sometimes, it lost a few steps when it had to go around the walls and obstacles, but other times, it charged straight through, shattering the thin limestone walls.

It shouldn’t be that strong, Tenebroum realized. Nothing should, at least nothing that had just been resurrected. That strength was one more testament to just how much strength the creature had already siphoned from the darkness before Tenebroum shattered the connection.

“Tenebroum…” Malzekeen growled. Now that the slender connection that had tied it to the worm was gone, it could no longer whisper sibilantly into its mind. Instead, the beast had a voice that had taken on some of the characteristics of all three creatures. It was a low, violent thing with an undertone of whispers, and it repulsed the darkness. “I’m coming for you, Tenebroum… These scraps won’t be enough to sate my hunger…”

Tenebroum ignored it. Instead, it tried to fling constructs between it and the monstrous chimera, though that did little good. Many of them would not respond to its calls and instead continued to do whatever it was they’d last been assigned to do, while others simply dropped where they were, completely without power.

It had been the heart of everything. That wasn’t an accident. It had been the heart of it all. The phylactery was connected to the soul web, which wound through its gigantic underground lair like a network of arteries, and now that heart had been ripped out, and the body was dying.

That was something that Tenebroum was more than familiar with. It had killed more people and animals via its minions and its experiments than anyone else in the world. Perhaps even more than anyone else who’d ever existed, and now its mighty war machine was dying the same way. The darkness was unable to imagine a crueler irony.

It gave some thought as to how its armies and other, more complex servants would fair in this terrible, wrenching moment, but that ending the moment that Malzekeen bowled over an acolyte, practically ripping the young man in two as it charged after the dying spirit that had once been the Lich.

It was a desperate race, and even if Tenebroum won it, it was still likely to bleed to death at the finish line, but that was a problem to be worried about later. Once it reached the undertemple, the darkness finally remembered there were more directions than just forward and backward, and it surged up, looking for a place to hide and heal while Malzekeen’s slaughter of its flock was covered by the sound of a terrible dirge that was playing on the pipe organ.

“You think I will not follow?” the chimera bellowed. “I…” whatever threats it made after that were lost to the music. The Lich entered the widest of the organ's pipes and soared all the way to the surface, where night always reigned. Normally, it could look beyond the veil it had created easily enough and see if it were day or night for the rest of the world, but for some reason, right now, it couldn’t. It was blind to everything outside the boundaries circumscribed by its true name.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Tenebroum sought to reach out to his most powerful agents and avatars, to try to understand more about what was happening through their eyes, but it was unable to touch their minds. Even Krulm’venor, who was bound to it the most tightly of all, no longer seemed to exist. Either its connection to its constructs had been ended, or they'd died along with its phylactery. Regardless, there was no way to be sure, but it was angered just the same.

Curse that filthy animal for this, Tenebroum’s soul cried out in pain. Curse it for finally allowing that pathetic flame to be snuffed out!

The darkness flew through the air above Blackwater as the music slowly became more erratic before finally dying in a single long, mournful note that lingered for minutes. While it did so, it studied the town that it had possessed for so long. The place had mutated in the time since the Lich had crafted its absolute barrier.

When the curtain of eternal night had closed over the backwater, it had been a small town that was halfway burned to the ground by Siddrim’s final bout of fury. Now, it was a ramshackle series of workshops and warehouses covered in patchy snow and a thin rhyme of frost. In the summer, that could melt away because of the warm winds, but right now, the roof edges were a forest of ice circles.

Up here, the chimneys of its smelters still exhaled smoke, but there was no work. There should have been regular hammer blows and the sound of dead feet crunching on rotten snow. Instead, it was so silent you could hear a pin drop. Not even a breeze rustled the dead place.

Despite the large cage of its own making, Tenebroum felt trapped, but there was nothing it could do about that. So, instead of rattling the bars of its cage, it perched there at the tallest tower in its factory of abominations and studied its own wounds.

Its soul was only half the size it had been before all of this. It might even be less. It had lost most of the cyclonic complexity it had possessed before and reverted to some earlier state. Tenebroum couldn’t remember what its soul had looked like before it had coalesced into its phylactery, but it was certain it was something like this. It was no longer a maelstrom. It was just a thunderhead, and as it dissipated, it realized it might become less than that, even. The land around it was its forever.

It couldn’t die, not truly, but it could easily fall until it was nothing but the thinnest shade of itself. It could become a dark version of Krulm’venor, living amongst the ruins of its greatness with no real understanding.

As it thought about that, another soul slipped free and started to drift away, but Tenebroum lashed out like a raptor, devouring it again. I can hold myself together, it seems, it thought to itself, but for how long.

Tenebroum’s fear drove it higher than it had in a long time. Perhaps ever. It had build this ring to bar the light from ever touching its domain again, but in all that time it had rarely used the full height of the tower that existed. Now it did. Part of it wanted to escape forever into the night sky.

That proved impossible, unfortunately. Eventually the darkness flew so high that it reached nearly to the stars itself. That was when it finally detected the warded connections that linked between the glowing dots, and it shied away from that ancient power. There’s something to be learned here, it thought as it slunk back from the shimmering net. But I’m in no fit place to learn it.

Still, as Tenebroum inevitably drifted back down, it considered what it had seen. It had long known that there were dark and terrible things in the spaces between the stars thanks to the blurred recollection of Siddrim’s overwhelming memories, but in the moment of weakness it sorely wished it could feast on them.

As the darkness studied this problem and tried to decide the best way to handle it, its world contracted down to a single point. At least, that was the case until it heard the sounds of a large beast padding around the tower three stories beneath it.

Tenebroum launched into the air again a moment before the thing launched its mane or worm and leach tentacles toward it. I for a moment, the dark sky between them was a forest of death, and each slimy limb sought to capture Tenebroum in its weakened state. It was able to avoid the monster, but only at the cost of shedding a dozen more minor souls and shrinking even further.

“Look how weak you already are,” the beast taunted. “I could keep hunting you, but what good would that do me? I already have much of your strength and find your pathetic toys to be a waste of energy.”

The darkness said nothing to give away its location. Instead, it swirled high above the dark god that had ruined so much and kept on its guard for the next attack from an unexpected quarter while the beast continued on.

“I could do that, but it would be a waste of my time, and the Lord of Light has already cost me centuries,” it growled. “So, I leave you to your fate. Let this place be your tomb while I go and devour the rest of the world.”

The darkness watched it from high above while it walked to the border and then outside of it. Tenebroum was tempted to watch it go from there, but something wouldn’t let it try to step across. So it didn’t. Instead, it slowly hemorrhaged souls as it waited.

What do I do now? It wondered as it reflected on the words of Malzekeen and slowly came apart. How do I survive this?

It was the only question that mattered, but in that moment, Tenebroum had no good answer. Too much of who it was had already started to drift away, and it wasn’t half the genius it had been even an hour ago.