Chapter 129: Seeds of Darkness
The siege around Rahkin started well before the first snows, though it would be weeks before the humans understood that. Despite the fact that they were offering to pay well over the market price to fill their diminished granaries and had frequent patrols wandering the countryside to keep the roads safe. The roads were not safe, though, not at night, and a few mercenaries weren’t enough to keep its ghostly riders and centipedal cavalry at bay. So, the only supplies that arrived eventually came from the north, and most of those were forced to travel by sea.
Thanks to Oroza’s betrayal, Tenebroum had no hold on those routes. Despite its best efforts, it had yet to find a replacement that was even a hundredth her strength. It would in time, though. Even though Tagel-by-the-sea was abandoned, a fishing fleet still sailed out into those waters some nights. The boats that were caulked in pitch had been infused with cholorium, though. This was enough to keep Oroza and her ilk at bay, even if it poisoned the whole harbor and made the nearby beaches a graveyard for rotting fish.
It might not be able to catch a river dragon, but with tainted harpoons, it could drag the bloated carcasses of sea monsters back to port. There, they would be stuffed with a thousand tiny elemental spirits if that’s what it took to animate them after they’d been dissected and alchemically preserved. Though the lives of both animals and men were rare in the South now, and even finding goblins in the Red Hills could be a challenge, the seas and the mountains still had many raw materials just waiting to be plundered.
For now, at least, the creation of interesting new servants was not the Lich’s focus, though. At the moment, it was focused on territory and on strangling commerce. To the South of the capital, this was easily accomplished with night riders and fire. There were no longer any major cities in that direction to offer resistance, and the roads were already nearly abandoned, so it was easy to burn the harvest to ashes while hungry men tried to harvest it.
The north and the west were more complicated, though. There, defenses still stood, and large divisions of men still patrolled. This was where Tenebroum would enact its invisible siege. If it wanted to hoard thousands of troops overnight to prepare for the inevitable assault as it grew closer and closer to the capital. However, it had learned its lessons with buildings of timber and would not repeat that mistake. They could be burned to the ground. So, from now on, it required that its minions build dozens of dungeons across the disputed region to house both its undead and its goblinoid minions.
As much as it would have liked to simply build a tunnel across the continent, such large-scale earthworks were infeasible, even with the Devourer. It had taken over a year to dig its tunnel through the Wodenspine Mountains, and that had only been thirty miles. Even at that blistering pace, it would take over a decade to build tunnels all the way to its current target, and that was completely untenable.
Between that construct and its sad, silent titan, though, making a number of smaller fortifications was easy enough, and several new lairs for it to hoard its troops during daylight hours sprang up each week. Most of these were simple affairs to start. They were little more than large rooms connected to winding stairs that were dug into the earth in out-of-the-way places.
It was only when some of them were discovered, and the humans began to attack them that they became more interesting than that. Tenebroum knew in some sense that humans were drawn to such things. It had seen that behavior before, in its earliest days, but it was still a surprise when it happened once more.
The first group to stumble onto one of its scattered lairs was a group of boys armed only with their father’s weapons. Most of those who were foolish enough to descend into the darkness died very quickly, but because it had been unprepared for such an activity, a few of them were allowed to escape and spread the word. This caused a larger force to appear on the following night to take their revenge. This time, all of them perished, and their village did not last much longer than that.
The Lich immediately ordered traps be installed to force those that had stumbled inside to stand and fight, even after they found out what a terrible idea that was. The deathless voices of its advisors contributed other ideas to that, though.
“Let the dreamer tell them,” the library whispered. “Let them believe they have found a way to defeat you and that the tool to your undoing is hidden in that darkness.”
“If you are going to bait such a fine trap, you might well spread the word as well,” the Ghost of Solovino suggested. “Let them whisper of your bane, let them pray for your downfall, quest for it, and then die screaming.”
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Tenebroum was not a fan of giving its enemies hope, but a poisoned hope sounded very interesting indeed. It could imagine such a thing. It had long spread songs to make the world believe what it wanted them to believe. This would be no different, save that the only light waiting for the heroes at the end of this tunnel would be the forge fires that would turn their bodies into something more interesting.
Slowly, day by day, the dungeons nearest to the large towns and close to the most well-traveled roads began to grow and change. They were no longer places where a few hundred war zombies sheltered until dusk.
They became testing grounds, and not just for traps, either. The Lich filled these places with escalating terrors designed to draw in the opposition and make them feel like they had a chance right up until the moment they watched their friends die.
For the price of a few broken-down drudges holding rusted weapons, it could lull warriors with spirit and prowess who were fierce enough to pose it actual problems into a complacency from which they would never escape. A warrior might be able to strike down a worn-out skeleton that had spent the last decade digging holes, but against a handful of war zombies, or worse, he would quickly be reduced to a quivering blob of flesh begging for mercy with his dying breath.
The Lich was also able to use some of its more creative monsters in these pits as well. With the distinct lack of mages anywhere in the world outside of Abendend or the other major cities they sheltered in to hide from its wrath, there were few that could protect the fools from turning on one another when they faced the floating brain that was one of its neuroids. Some might have swords with a touch of magic, but most couldn’t even strike a single blow against a shadow hydra before they were bitten in half, even if they had a silvered blade.
Occasionally, these pits lured other interesting specimens like a priestess of Lunaris or a druid that worshiped Niama, and it learned a great deal about those Goddesses and even some of the other gods in their cursed pantheon by saving those heads to be mounted into its ever-growing library.
It was unlikely that such diversions would pay for themselves in terms of mana or effort. However, as the snows began to fall, one thing was certain: it amused Tenebroum. Watching fools blunder to their deaths as they searched for a supposed sacred sword or forgotten scroll that would finally reveal the true name of the evil that was sweeping the land wasn’t quite as enjoyable as basking in the prayers of the tens of thousands of scared villagers it had left in its shadow in the march east, it was still exquisite.
Increasingly, the Lich found that it treasured more than gold and rubies. Those things were still shipped to one of its main lairs, of course, along with the intact heads of anyone worth studying on a deep level. It was becoming accustomed to becoming a god.
The original dungeon beneath Blackwater had become quite beautiful despite its humble beginnings. Its library was in the process of becoming the poison tree that it had seen in its vision, and its bras limbs and gold foliage blended right in twitch the rest of the arcane infrastructure that was its ever-growing core.
Most of the rooms near the core were a gilded hive as soul webbing stretched across every ceiling in a way that mimicked the ornamentation that humans used in their most important buildings, and in many places, mosaics increasingly dominated the floors and the walls as well. Each of them showed a different victory in a timeless fashion via the clever arrangement of precious and semi-precious stones.
Almost no one would ever see these, though. Even the devoted worshipers who created them by the light of dim oil lamps never really saw the whole work when it was completed. They could only ever enjoy the tiny contribution they were making. This was fitting, as far as Tenebroum was concerned.
Though High Priest Verdenin and his growing cult were the ones that created these works to glorify the dark, the dark spirit they served, it was the only one that would ever really appreciate their undertaking. As in all things, only Tenebroum could see how all of its plans and all of the moving parts involved in them fit together, even though it was increasingly delegating minor roles within those grand schemes to other, lesser spirits.
As it gazed upon the world now, it saw it in many ways as a mosaic where it had once seen only a map or a chessboard. It was still a game to be played, but now there were thousands of spaces and tens of thousands of moves, and as it moved outward, conquering more and more territory.
The main difference between the version of the game that it was playing and the one that the nobles it battled against played in their homes while the snow thickened outside was that the Lich played for keeps. Each time it took a piece from an opponent, it became another pawn on its side, and each time it took a square, that became one more piece of the glittering mosaic that was the monument to its glory.
Someday, every piece would belong to it. It would not have to pace the under temple or haunt the halls of its lair to view them; it would be able to hold the world in its hand instead and admire every glittering facet itself.
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