Tenebroum

Chapter 175: Prepared for Anything

Tenebroum spent more and more time in the well of darkness that had been Blackwater. Now that Abenend had fallen, there was little point in being anywhere else. At night, it would still leave briefly or take to the eyes of its watchers, which were nothing more than zombified owls that had been given extra eyes so they could see even more clearly in the darkness. This was so that it could gaze upon the moon and bask in the certainty that one day, the entirety of her fine white surface would grow dark.

What would happen after that? It wasn’t sure.

Would the thing vanish or die? Would it have to strangle whatever foul creature was born from her corpse in its crib lest it become a rival? The Lich could not say, but even if the method of assassination birthed new challenges, Tenebroum would still be happy to see her go.

The Moon Goddess was even more slippery and elusive than Oroza, and it had learned more about her from the souls of the mages it had devoured than everywhere else combined. A minority of those very souls seemed to think that magic might cease to exist when she did, but most of them thought that it would simply grow more dangerous for mortals to use without her purifying light.

The Lich was very skeptical that anything could snuff magic out in a single day. It was a natural force that permeated everything, but even so, it had begun to stock extra essence in its dread ring just in case things should go awry.

Still, these tiny excursions were no different than the way a farmer might sit on his porch and watch the sunset or a noble would stand at his window and watch his serfs toiling away. They were a reward for a hard day’s work, and the Lich was toiling now night and day.

Well, at least its servants were. The dead city of Constantinal, on the far side of the Wyrmspire mountains to the north, might be slaving away to build an endless tide of war zombies for all the battles to come. The desert kingdoms had fallen without much fighting, but initial reports suggested that would not be the case even further to the north.

All that had done, however, was free up the fleshcrafters and the forgeweights of Blackwater to do other things. Those other things, at least since the fall of Rahkin, had been to make sure that it never faced humiliation on the battlefield again.

The Lich loathed being forced to take the field at all. It was demeaning that it should ever have to do so, but the only way to prevent that in the future would be to make more powerful servants. As much as it loathed the idea of being forced to take weapons into its own hands and fight its enemies, it hated the idea of giving any of its minions enough power to rival a god even more, for obvious reasons.

So, day after day and week after week, its most clever creators hammered rare metals and stitched together alchemically treated leathers to create new forms that were optimized for all future scenarios that it could imagine. This was something it had worked on long before now, even before its first god-slayer form had been finalized. Still, most of these had not made the cut.

Even a few years ago, it had only a few different corpses it could wear on the field of battle should the need arise. In addition to its preferred form, there were a few larger versions of similar designs. One had been built like a six-legged centaur to favor speed as much as anything else; it had been given four arms so it could fire poison arrows from two different long bows simultaneously, but the Lich had never gotten used to the gait. There were a few flying forms, but all of them were too fragile for its liking, and it doubted it would ever find the need to wear them.

Of all its early forms, only the chorus had stood out as truly unique. It, too, was terribly fragile, but the ability to sing in the voices of a dozen dead casters wearing a body clothed in the faces of the dead was a terribly powerful thing. Sorcery, as the humans preferred to use it in the heat of battle, involved one man chanting ancient words, but the Lich found that too stifling.

It generally preferred to show up on the battlefield with every arcane contrivance it expected to need already enchanted into objects and weapons, ready to be used. Though this option was less flexible, the results were generally much more powerful. Indeed, these triumphs of darkness had become so commonplace now that frost blades were regularly handed out to its most powerful death knights to make them even more fearsome.

This did have the disadvantage of leaving it unprepared for certain situations, though. A chorus of bound mages could summon a twister or two or even rain fire or disease down on its enemies before their vocal cords frayed or their minds gave out.

That was why, thanks to Brother Verdenin’s inspiration, it was having a staff that functioned on the principles of a pipe organ crafted. The priest had commissioned a large version of that strange instrument to be built in the inner sanctum, and over the last year after much effort it had finally been constructed. It was even larger than the one that had existed and Siddrimar, though all of the notes were tuned two octaves lower, and most of the hymns were played in minor scales with flat keys instead of the sharper ones that the Lord of Light’s worshipers had preferred.

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It still wasn’t as beautiful as it should have been, but the sound of its terrible low notes could be heard and felt almost anywhere in the lair at this point, which the Lich found to be quite pleasing, especially when a choir filled with men and women who had each had their vocal cords surgically altered so that they could sing only a single note, sang in accompaniment to it.

Brother Verdinan had vowed to rip out his eyes once the undertemple was complete, and the giant brass pipes were fully decorated and engraved with all the words of the scriptures of darkness, “because after that, he never needed to gaze on anything less perfect again.”

This pleased the Lich, too. It had already decided that when the man died, it would bind the high priest’s soul to the organ so that it could sing the Lich’s praises for the rest of time. That was the only fitting reward for a man who had spread his fervor to so many.

Even more important than the man’s devotion or the stream of missionaries he was sending north to preach the truth of the darkness to the benighted desert kingdoms and beyond, though, were the mechanics of how that musical instrument worked. It was one thing to have it playing soothing melodies at a volume that might deafen anyone who wandered too close to the main chapel on certain days, but it would be something else to use it as a weapon of war.

The end result was a sort of music box hidden inside the golden skulls that topped the staff. There were five of them, each from a dead woman or child. They had all been gilded and fixed in such a way so that when the elemental fire and water that were hidden in the staff itself were mixed, the ensuing steam would boil up and force one or more of them to screech the words of a spell at a volume sufficient for the mages that were bound in the little devices to unleash havoc on demand.

It still wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was a flexible one, and it doubted that any enemy could anticipate such an odd new weapon that might be wielded by any of its bodies. However, other than checking on the Lunaris’s failing health and making progress in the slow work of undermining the All-Father, all that Tenebroum did most days was swirl through the darkness of its own hive, inspecting the craftsmanship of the various vessels that were in production for imaginary fights, and nameless future enemies.

It would be ready, no matter what it faced. Tenebroum had promised itself that.

All of these abominations contained a golden core to hold as much of its grand, swirling soul as possible, but that was where the similarities ended. Past that, each one was unique. The most recent corpse to have been completed for it was built so that it could not be ambushed, and topping its seven-armed form of imperfect radial symmetry was a crown of eyes that looked in all directions at once.

It was nothing special, though. Not when compared to the spidery body that could launch alchemical webbing that was as sticky as it was poisonous, or the aquatic body that it some day hoped to hunt down Oroza with. It was the evidence that he had not forgotten about her and that when the time was right, it would devour her whole so she could never escape again. Truthfully, her disobedience deserved much greater punishment than that, but it would be self-indulgent to enslave her to some menial task in perpetuity, just to risk her escape a second time so that it might make her suffering worse.

All of these forms were just the tip of the iceberg, though. It had built a gilded skeleton that could be used just like Krulm’venor’s multiplying goblin form, though because it feared what a copy of itself might do if allowed to get free, it had never tested it before. Still, should the need arise, it could become a hundred-fold army all on its own, so it would never need to fear that another army might try to ambush it.

Most of its forms were more practical than that, though. One had been made to be entirely fireproof for obvious reasons, while several were built to withstand ever-increasing amounts of light, corrosion, or force. By contrast, some were built to radiate heat, cold, or even disease. More than one was only a container and an anchor for the army of shadows that it could unleash to devastating effect.

Each one was beautiful in its own terrible way. It even had some forms built solely for aesthetic reasons in case it ever wished to grace some mortal kingdom in person for diplomatic reasons. Those had been created long ago, though, and it thought that trying to cater to such lesser beings now would be embarrassing. Instead, it decided it might split the Voice of Reason’s soul the same way it had done with the Dark Paragon upon her return and turn those bodies of gold and ivory to other purposes.

That was why all but the largest bodies now decorated the undertemple and the area around it. In alcoves between mosaics and on plinths above, the parishioners below they stood there like humanity often did with saints. Each vessel was just another aspect of Tenebroum, though, which was entirely fitting given the character of the worship it demanded. It was a jealous god, and it would never accept another as ally or enemy.

Only the largest bodies were stored elsewhere. To date, the largest one was a draconic form made in homage to the swamp dragon that had served it so faithfully and for so long. Its blackbirds had found the partial skeleton of another long-dead drake, and its workers had labored tirelessly to create a body using those magnificent parts. It still didn’t fly, of course. Of all the magics out there, flight was the trickiest, and you had to give up so much to obtain it. Even so, each scale had been runed and warded, and in time, when it decided which terrible breath weapon to install, it would be a force to be reckoned with.

Taken as a whole, the Lich was content. If it was ever forced to fight again, it would certainly have the right weapon for the job.