Tenebroum

Chapter 184: Lost in Thought

Tenebroum lost itself for days this time rather than weeks, but the strange visions were much the same as they had been before. It swam through the swirling memories of the All-Father, exploring the junctures where they met and, indeed, often differed with individual dwarves. Still, big or small, they pounded against the Liches mind like the blows of a forge hammer.

In those swirling, rigid facts, there was enough information to make it feel some measure of shame for the way it built its lair. The core had been redone as a temple to accommodate its growing cult of followers, but the warrens of tunnels that had been built for defense and the storage of zombies, well, the influence of the All-Father made it clear that those would have to be redone, but only after it improved its forges.

Tenebroum had always thought that quality issues in its components were due to the unwilling nature of the forgewights, but now that the knowledge of the All-Father swirled through it, it could see dozens of problems in need of correction. Ventilation, contamination, temperature. None of those were quite where they should be, even for simple steel. It would take steps to improve all those things when it woke if it remembered.

For now, though, it remembered working with Lunaris to rebuild Siddrim’s chariot. It remembered chastising her in the All-Father’s gruff voice when it found out they had no one yet to recapture and harness the horses or even drive the thing.

“It’s a waste of my time if the thing won’t be put to use!” the dwarven God had roared.

Despite her assurance that it would be, the memory faded before the dwarf’s ire did, and instead, Tenebroum watched the All-Father force a sword made from silver dragon scales. This seemed important, but as soon as it saw that Oroza was with the All-Father and that it was her scale the divine smith was using, Its rage blotted out the whole memory.

She lives! Howled in outrage. The Lich had not seen his escaped handmaiden in so long that it had assumed its poisoning of her domain had been successful. To think that she was still out there and still working against its interests, even as rough as she looked, was more than irksome.

Eventually, even that drifted off, too. The Lich couldn’t hold on to anything for long, no matter how much it might care about it in the moment.

Remembering anything was hard. Sometimes, the intensity of the maelstrom at Tennebroum’s core reached such a fever pitch that it felt like it was either going to collapse or explode. It was especially intense when feeding on a god, though, and the dwarf was alien in so many ways. There was such attention to detail and uniformity, but beyond that, even, there was a certain alienness.

Above the world, past the stars and their strange constellations, there was nothing except the endless primordial darkness, but the same was true, according to the All-Father at the very center of the world, too. He kept the void from expanding the same way that the Moon Goddess and her glowing shield kept back the night.

Tenebroum had no idea if that was true, of course, or what would happen if those forge fires one day went out, but it was hard to focus on anything, let alone worry about it in the constantly drifting and morphing images. The forges of creation held back the nothing in the same way that the light kept the monsters at bay, and truly, the Lich wanted nothing more than to devour them all. It wanted to extinguish every light and life until there was nothing left but a cold, gilded monument ruling over a world of the dead.

Then, just as soon as it was focusing on those writhing shadows so far away and trying to figure out how it could devour them, it woke once more. What it had been waiting for had arrived.

That news was important enough that to finally get Tenebroum to stir from its slumber. Still, it lay there for the better part of a day while its drudges transported both the coffin and the hound that accompanied it to their proper place in the laboratory that it had built for this specific purpose.

As urgently it wanted to dive into those experiments, there were too many valuable insights left over from the churning remains of the All-Father, so instead of rushing anything, it spent time relaying as many of those memories as it could recall to the Skoeticnomikos. It was only then, after all of that tedium was done that it swirled out of the hopelessly damaged cathedral.

It wasn’t sure what precisely it would do with it now, but on a whim, it ordered its drudges to replace dull skulls with the few glowing ones that remained in the story room. Tenebroum wasn’t sure if there was more magic left to be done in that place, but even if there wasn’t, it would serve as a fitting tomb to the dwarven race. After all, that was where their God had died, and when it was done, the only dwarven souls that remained might be left in that room.

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Dwarves were no longer its concern, though. It was done with that enemy and moving on to the next one. Would that be the human kingdoms to the north? Somehow, the idea of hunting down mortal prey after devouring a god seemed less than enticing. Perhaps it would make its Queen of Thrones some allies to continue her hunt while it baited a trap capable of catching Niama, the nature goddess. Since it could not have the moon, then perhaps she would be its next meal.

When Tenebroum reached the room set aside for studying the worm, the rat, and the wolf, it found his dark nature Goddess waiting. She’d grown stronger since it had last seen her, and it was obvious that her hunts were going well. She was not nearly as strong as the true Goddess, of course, but she was already the equal of Oroza; she might even be stronger. It was hard to say.

“Finally, a servant that does not disappoint me,” the Lich said, suffusing the room as a mist while it studied the stone sarcophagus that sat in the far binding ring. “Tell me everything about this discovery. Leave nothing out.”

Tenebroum listened to her as she relayed everything in a tone that was prideful enough that it would have sifted through her soul to search for treasonous thoughts if it was not already consumed by this new discovery. It would let her have her pride for now since she had done such good work.

She spent the next few minutes telling the Lich what it already knew, with only minor additions. It wasn’t until she talked about the strange behavior of the wolf that it stopped her and studied the beast.

“What do you suppose it wants in there?” Tenebroum asked her.

“I don’t know, my lord,” she answered, bowling her head. “I only know that it wants it badly.”

“What about you, Ghrosin?” the Lich stormed, making the cage full of rats that sat in the far circle scurry and swarm in fear and agitation.

“I-it wants the worm,” the chorus squeaked. “It needs it!”

“And what about you?” the Lich asked again. This set off a chorus of excited squeaks.

“Please,” they begged. “Please let us devour and knaw!”

The Lich had no intention of doing any such thing, of course, but it was all the confirmation that it needed that what it sought was here now. It had taken longer than it would have liked, but it had collected three dark gods that were, at the very least, centuries old. According to the All-Father, they might even be older than that.

“You may leave us,” it said finally to its dark forest Goddess. “Continue your hunt, and when this project is done, I will build you more suitable companions than this hound so you can take down larger prey.”

“Yes, my master,” she said with a sinuous curtsy that would have been impossible for anyone with a limited number of human joints. Then, she was gone, and Tenebroum was alone with its menagerie of monsters.

That solitude didn’t last long. Seconds later, a number of zombies entered the room to be the hands that the Lich no longer had to do the work that needed to be done. Three zombies came in with chisels, hammers, and prybars to begin opening the lead-sealed sarcophagus, and one more 7 eyed fleshcrafter came in for the darkness to coalesce inside to better study the problem.

Suffusing the room with itself had advantages, but with all the unknowns here, the Lich wanted a bit of distance. It wanted to be as separated from its subjects as they were from each other.

Breaking open the thing wasn’t hard. The thing was almost identical to the container in which the other two animals were found. This one wasn’t filled with the mangey, emaciated corpse of a wolf or hundreds of dead mice and rats. It was filled with grave earth. Though that was the end product of decay, of course, it still struck the Lich as odd.

Did the other two survive all these ages while this one did not? It wondered. It wasn’t sure why that would be the case or what that would mean, but it did strike the Lich as odd, and the unexpected always made it nervous.

Still, after only a moment's hesitation, it decided to continue the experiment and had large bowls of blood brought to it to feed the thing. That was how Tenebroum had woken up the wolf, and that was how it would wake up this monster, too, probably.

Blood feeds rage, though, Tenebroum deliberated as it watched its unthinking servant fill the thing with blood that was quickly absorbed by the desiccated soil. What might a worm require? If it's the incarnation of pestilence, then does it require flesh? A victim to infect?

The Lich was just trying to decide whether it should fetch an acolyte for this thing to consume when the grave earth began to stir, or rather, something stirred beneath it. It was barely noticeable, but it would have been difficult for anything to hide from a construct with so many eyes.

“Are you there, spirit?” The Lich asked in an ancient, cracked voice rather than speaking out into the ether.

Groshian could speak in their way through the rats, but the wolf had only ever managed to howl in pain as the Lich took it apart and then put it back together to better understand its undying nature. So, there was no way to know if the worm could speak. So it was with mild surprise it heard the words “Yesss… I have risssen… Onccce more…”