Tenebroum - Chapter 105: Unexpected Difficulties

Time took on a new meaning for Tenebroum in the wake of its Siddrim’s defeat, as its spirit continued to evolve. It became insufferably persistent and regular for the darkness for the first time in its long existence.

Before now, time might linger as it focused on its most important projects, such as when the Temple of Dawn neared completion or when its shadow dragon readied itself for another test flight that seemed like it would finally be successful. Now, though, time was its constant companion, and order had invaded its soul in a way it would not have been able to imagine previously.

Now it was aware of the ticking clock as it reminded it of every minute that passed in the same way it was aware of every drip of water leaking into a dank body storage room and every rat that was gnawing away at the raw materials of its future army. It tried to take this new information in stride, but more than anything, it was shocked at just how much waste it had allowed up till now and just how long it was forced to wait for some of its plans to come to fruition.

Every night its earth titan came to the surface and cleaved right through those damned bloody hills in the west in an effort to reach the sea, but even with its earth magic and the fact that it was largely obedient, the project to drown the river goddess was still months away, and it did not expect her to just wither up and die the moment it did so. That was a battle that would take years, but it would not let that stop it.

Its tunnel project alone might take over a year, too, but even if it lacked the infinite patience that ignorance had provided it up until now, it would not let that deter it. It would find ways to speed these things up. Already, the iron men that made up the legion of rust had journeyed north to the Woden Spine Mountains and begun to dig the passage that would become critical to its future attacks, but that was not the only thing it was up to.

Tenebroum’s base of operations was constantly expanding, and now that the surface was plunged into eternal night, some tasks could be accomplished faster and better simply by moving them to the surface where the cold could aid in those processes. Already, the most gifted healers of the crusader army had been merged and modified with each other to create a new batch of chirurgiens that were currently busy wailing and gnashing their teeth as they were forced to put their dead friends and brothers in arms back together again to replenish Tenebroum’s much-diminished supply of war zombies.

Such deficiencies needed to be addressed now that the world was well and truly aware of it for the first time in its long existence. This attack had failed, but there would be others, and it would be ready for them. Already, it was sending caravans with dark tarps and coffins to fetch the corpses that had been left to rot in the nearby villages to ensure that it would not run out of raw materials, and it had dispatched its army to Fallravea to purge it of all survivors since it was the last battlefield open to it.

There would be no heroics there. Not with a starving population lacking their holy defenders and a foundation that had long since been filled with tunnels to make any real defense impossible. It fell in a single night, completing its kingdom of the dead.

This, at least, was enough to pass the time as time crawled forward at the pace of one of its drudges. The Lich would not get to enjoy slaughter like this again until it finally made a new route to the soft cities and villages of the outside world. That meant it needed to savor every drop of orphan’s blood that dripped into the overflowing gutters and bask in the scream of every last widow before she, too, was silenced forever.

It made for a lovely two days of distraction, but after that, the bodies were cooling and slowly making their way back to its realm of eternal night one silent, cadaverous caravan at a time. After that, it was back to the monotony of assembling new minions and waiting for its long-term projects to come to fruition.

It was true that there were some bright spots. The dwarvish souls in its latest batch positively hated being fused with the bones and teeth of Kobolds so that they would make for even better miners, which was good because Krulm’venor barely reacted when it added the souls of unsullied dwarves in an attempt to rekindle the hound to be something more than the rabid attack dog it had become. This was a reasonable response to all the spirit had been through, but it was not an entertaining one.

Finally, after several weeks of monotony, when Tenebroum thought it could take no more of the monotony, its legion of rust finally got deep enough into the mountains to hold its interest. Until then, the endeavor had been nothing but logistical headaches. Now, though, it was paying off.

Not in the form of mineral veins, though their singularly straight tunnel had located both a tin vein and a silver vein that it would later exploit. No, in interesting biological specimens. Goblins would occasionally be drawn to the activity, though it was easy enough to slaughter them if they became too much of a nuisance. There was other, stranger life, too, though. There were giant albino centipedes that bored through the bedrock by spitting acid, and in one cavern, it located a whole ecology of spiders that preyed on other spiders with increasingly powerful poisons and stalking tactics.

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One had been large enough to try to devour its already dead dwarves, though without much success. Tenebroum did not slaughter them all immediately for their impudence, though. Instead, it was content to study the dumb, dangerous creatures. They were no real threat to it, and there was a great deal to be learned, it decided, both from how they moved and the toxins they generated.

It was strange, it reflected as it watched the days crawl by and measured the passage of that time in feet of progress made, timbers erected, and cartloads of debris carried slowly back to the surface by hundreds of drudges. A few years ago, its pet fire godling had made a very similar trip and seen very similar sights, but the darkness that held its leash had cared very little about such discoveries at the time.

It supposed that it was not strange to find itself so altered by its brush with the light. After all, it had taken decades to evolve from where it started as an angry swamp denizen to the master of necromancy that it had become and everything that it had been dwarfed by the essence that it feasted upon in Siddrim’s dying soul. It would have been far stranger for that situation not to change it at all.

So, while it waited for the next event or oddity worthy of its attention, it turned its eyes back to its own lair, adding hundreds of small tasks to the list that was its only thing longer than its ever-growing inventory of bodies. There were soul nets to mend, leaks to seal, bodies to pickle, and grisly mosaics to complete. Even with all the time in the world and more servants every day, it wasn’t enough to address the unaddressable.

It rejected the perfectionist streak that was slowly manifesting inside of it. Tenebroum resented it, but its need for orderliness and precision, especially in its larger plans, was becoming difficult to resist as time crept forward at a snail’s pace.

It had just finally gotten around to reviewing the limited data that its new astrolabe and the obsidian-lensed telescope that was paired with it when they encountered living dwarves deep beneath the mountain it was tunneling through. The result was a bloodbath for both sides.

For weeks, Tenebroum’s legion of rust had been digging forward in a nearly straight line as it built the tunnel wide enough for three ranks to travel abreast. They’d been making great time at the rate of more than a dozen feet a day through the hard granite roots of the mountain, but when its tunnel impacted a more natural one, it found something completely unexpected: dozens, no – hundreds of dwarves encamped like they’d been waiting for it.

The clash was immediate but, to some extent, ineffective for both sides. Its iron men could not be slain, not truly, and the weapons they wielded were optimized for stone, not opponents, so the already impressive armor of the dwarves worked even better than it usually would. The result was a bloody, grinding stalemate as battleaxe and pickaxe traded blow after bone-jarring blow.

The Lich didn’t like to think that such a meeting could be a coincidence, but it didn’t like the alternative even more: they had known that it was coming, and this was an ambush. The fight that followed took almost a day, and for every dozen dwarves it slew, one of its iron men was reduced to scrap. Sadly, this math would not work out in its favor because the waves of dwarves seemed almost endless, and even the shades and shadows it unleashed on the miserable axe-wielding vermin were of limited effectiveness.

It had only kept a few hundred around for dealing with vermin like Kobolds and Goblin tribes that it did not yet control, but its enemy was prepared for that. They’d brought priests of the All-Father, and the holy magic they wielded was enough to erase the darkness long enough to banish its most creative servants. That left both sides to face the long grinding slaughter of steel against steel.

For hour after hour, screams and battle cries echoed for miles in all directions, sometimes even drowning out the metallic sounds of combat. Even those deaths weren’t enough to give the darkness any pleasure. No suffering or bloodshed could raise its spirits as it brooded on this development.

“I am the one who is supposed to move in secret, far from prying eyes, not the pitiful, plodding dwarves!” it raged in its throne room as it watched the fight from so far away.

The Lich knew that its forces had already lost within the first few hours and had already started to make a fallback plan. The drudges were hauling away the fresh corpses of its enemy so Tenebroum could devour them and interrogate them in detail to find out exactly how they had known the best spot to stymy it while its rear guard tried to kill as many as possible.

When the time finally came that it looked like the dwarves were on the verge of victory, its remaining iron men, who weren’t actively engaged in the fight, switched their targets to the support timbers instead. For mile after countless mile, these things had been laid to ensure the roof above their heads stayed where it belonged, but now they brought them down one after another with strikes from their pickaxes. Eventually, that was enough to bring the ceiling down for hundreds of yards in both directions as the immense weight of the mountains above bore down on them,

That was fine with the Lich. If it couldn’t have this tunnel, then no one could. It would expand its workshops, build a new force, and start again, and this time it would be ready for its new foe.