Tenebroum

Chapter 151: Pieces of the Puzzle

Tenebroum regarded the golden cage full of squirming rats impatiently as it scryed into their flimsy souls. It did not find deceit there, nor even signs that it would normally think of as intelligence. It never did. Instead, it found only fear and hunger-fighting their eternal war against one another.

“Tell me about Malzekeen,” it commanded again. “In detail this time. Everything that comes to mind.”

“W-we don’t recall details; it’s been much too long for them. They have tried up and blown away.” the rats cried out as one in a keening, squirming chorus. None of them could make whole words, but each of them could make parts of words in a way that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “All we remember are the wrath and ruin… That endless terrible light… Then all of it, everything, and everyone was gone.”

The Lich was uncertain if they were referring to the fate that had befallen the city, or if they were instead referring to the wolf and the worm that it sometimes spoke about instead. The two concepts were almost as entwined in the rat’s mind as it was in various texts that the Lich’s servants had pored through.

“Nothing?” the Lich grumbled in annoyance. “Remind me, which one is wrath and which is ruin?”

“Wrath has the sharpest teeth,” the rats called out, “Ruin’s bite is much slower but even deeper.”

The Lich sighed mentally. I hated dealing with this broken thing.

It had already found some answers in the mind of its library and more in ancient books in places like Sidddrimar, Constantinal, and Rahkin. It had specialty constructs in those and other places that did nothing but read and remember. Those undead were uncharacteristically thoughtful, and so it had made them uncharacteristically weak to prevent any problems as they sifted through centuries of knowledge, looking for an uncertain number of needles in a variety of different haystacks.

Its readers were little more than drudges, save that they’d been given the minds of learned men, and their skulls had been sliced open cleanly and hinged on top. This was so that when those minds were full, they could be replaced, and fresh minds could be installed so they might continue their research.

It had found a number of surprising details so far, but many of them were contradictory. Malzekeen seemed to be both a place and a group of dread gods that may or may not have been from that place. The details were unclear.

All that everyone agreed on, was that the place was either lost in the northern deserts which were apparently created when Siddrim smote them for their foul ways, or it was off the east coast of the continent, sunk beneath the waves because the Lord of Light had decided that it was so foul to his sight and so irredeemable that it had moved the very world from its place in the heavens to drown them.

Though the Lich thought that either story was possible, and its presence in both locations was unlikely, it had dispatched servants throughout the area to search for the ancient ruins. Despite those efforts, and the fact that it apparently had one of the survivors in its hands, it still could not find any clues to narrow the search area down further.

As a last resort, the Lich had brought a caged sample of the larger swarm back to its lair so that it could investigate them more thoroughly in its soul forge, but even that had limited utility. Individually, the rats were simply too insubstantial.

They required some critical mass to take on the spark of true intelligence. While that was an interesting detail, it was happy to study, no matter how many of the rat souls it had to shred for answers, it did not help Tenebroum find the answer that it was looking for.

“What of the wolf and the worm then?” the Lich asked again, with growing impatience.

“What of them?” the rats answered. “They are our brothers, lost to us for all this time.”

“Do you think they yet live?” the Lich asked.

“Always dying, but never dead,” the rats agreed. “Unless new deities of wrath and ruin have risen to take their place.”

The Lich paused to consider whether or not it qualified as wrath or ruin, but decided again it. It wasn’t sure if it know of course, but it liked to think it would. If things were so broad as that, then surely its eternal avariceness and greed would have long ago stolen Groshin’s power too, wouldn’t it?

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If it had to characterize itself, it would give itself the labels of darkness and death more than anything symbolic. Is wrath the same as death in the end, though? It wondered.

It couldn’t say. Instead, it passed along the philosophical question to its library and returned to the topic at hand. “Were you always separate creatures, or were you more than that?”

“My brothers were never far from us,” the rats squeaked. “Not until the Lord of Light burned us to ash and dust.”

“Yes, but as a single entity, or a pantheon, or something else?” The Lich demanded. It was trying to stay calm. When its power raged too out of control, the rat swarm was disrupted and lost almost all ability to speak for a time. It was annoying but only slightly more frustrating than the current quality of answers.

“We have never been a single entity…” the rats answer with hesitation. “Hunger never applies to only one.”

Somehow it knew that was the wrong answer, but still they said it anyway. That was enough to make Tenebroum worry that the things were trying to be deceitful toward it, but thy seemed to lack the intelligence for such complex lies, especially in small numbers.

It had figured out one thing though. It was fairly sure that Siddrim had intentionally not destroyed them completely in order to try to imprison those natural evils. This fact tended to argue against Malzekeen being a drowned island somewhere. After all, if the island sank how would they find all the little rat corpses and seal them away in a sarcophagus.

No, whoever had done this had made sure to have pieces of the dark gods left to imprison so something new wouldn’t rise in their place. That much it could determine without having to ask anyone at all. Tenebroum wished it could get more answers from Sidrrim’s soul on all these things, but it was so long ago that the only answers it had were a smug satisfaction that it had triumphed, which was less than useless.

It left them there and had a drudge seal the room as it soared off into the night sky beyond its absolute barrier so that it could look at the stars and consider what it already knew.

It knew that the Malzekeen probably came from the city of Malzekeen, or at least they met their end there at the hands of an angry sun god. Where that was exactly didn’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things.

What mattered was which of the many versions of history were right. To date, the most interesting books it had found were actually in the black libraries buried beneath Siddrimar. Those hidden histories contrasted more than a little with the public ones that its heads had read elsewhere, but because it had eaten their God, Tenebroum knew better than anyone how corrupt and untrustworthy Siddrim’s church had become in the last century.

There had been several attempts to fix that and at least two reformations, but as the Lord of Light took less and less interest in the world he ruled over, corruption set in. Still, broadly speaking, Sdirrim’s adherents seemed to believe in a cyclical view of history. There were ages of light and ages of dark, and the world kept spinning.

Different saints throughout the church's history took that to be literal, while others thought that it was a metaphor for corruption and vigilance. It was impossible to say which was true with any certainty.

Given how much damage Tenebroum’s forces had done to the world so quickly, it understood how fragile that balance was, too. But it saw no way that light could win now that darkness was all but paramount. It was only the thought that the light had once believed the very same thing only a few years ago that gave it pause.

I will take nothing for granted, Tenebroum told itself as it gazed across the night sky and glared at the waxing crescent moon with suspicion. I will find every advantage, take every precaution, and kill or corrupt every enemy until the whole world belongs to me and me alone!

This was practically its mantra, and it had only strengthened as it learned how big the world was. For a short period of time it had assumed that it had already conquered almost all their was to see, but as it consulted maps and learned from the souls of merchants and mariners, it began to understood just how many other lands there were to be conquered.

Though the darkness doubted they would stand any more of a chance against it than these pathetic kingdoms had, it would not grow overconfident. It promised itself that. Especially not as long as the moon still hung in the sky. That woman was not to be trusted, and even now, it was certain that she was marshaling her forces for some new trick.

It had tricks of its own. It already possessed spirits of almost every element, and its work on its new nature goddess was going well. She still thought that she was free, but in time, his six-armed Queen of Thorns would do terrible things to the guerilla forces that had beset it on more than one occasion. The Lich had spent months carving those three spirits into one, and it wouldn’t be long before they had its brand on their soul, and it could finally be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

She was just the first of its new weapons, too. Once it struck down Abendend who knew what strange magics it would be able to unlock, and if the wolf was still buried beneath that ancient place as Groshin had promised it, well, Tenebroum was sure that soon it would be the one trapping the moon, not the other way around. It had already dragged the sun from the sky, so why not Lunaris as well?

Tenebroum watched her as she traced her slow track across the sky, just as she did every night as he considered all these complex ideas. Now, it just had to find the worm, and the table would be set.

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