Tenebroum

Chapter 197: Drinking the Ocean

Chapter 197: Drinking the Ocean

When all was in readiness, and Tenebroum had drunk its fill from every corner of its fading region, it waited for the first new moon to strike. It had long deliberated on this moment and decided to plan its attack when the heavens were weakest. Truthfully, I should have done this when Lunaris was dying; before she’d somehow managed to rejuvenate, the Lich berated itself before setting that blame aside.

That opportunity was lost to it now. It had been too focused on its plan, and as a result, it had not examined the playing field widely enough. That mistake would not happen again. It was impossible, now that it had almost two hundred pairs of eyes staring into the void now.

Its new form had thrown off the last vestiges of humanity that had bound it until now. For so long, it had drifted among the world as a fog or rested in its phylactery as something resembling a man. Its drudges and its armies had been thought of as arms and hands and fingers. All of those metaphors were gone now. Creating a phylactery that could be measured in miles had changed it.

Tenebroum no longer had hands. There weren’t enough hands in the world to do what needed to be done. It was a swarm, sunk seven lairs deep into the land that had once been a swamp, and now, when it reached for something, tentacles of darkness coiled around it, and dozens of drudges moved to carry out its will.

Tonight, though, its goal was entirely beyond the fearsome grip of the corpses that served it. Tonight, it was reaching for the sky, literally. In the days leading up to the new moon, it had planned carefully and sucked dry every reservoir in an effort to tap what it saw as a truly unlimited source of power: the endless night.

To that end, it had bled the goblin tribes, slaughtered any survivors it had found along the coast, and reduced the once mighty Oroza to a dead zone as it sucked the last dregs of life out of the Blackwater region. It martialed everything it had for this moment, and then, just after midnight, it struck.

There was no moon in the sky, and it would be hours yet before the first grayish light touched the horizon. Only the stars were out, and the Lich had no doubt that it could punch cleanly through the thin barrier of stars, which were all that was lying between it and the thing that it desired most when it launched its attack.

The tower of darkness that it created so long ago already soared thousands of feet into the air. It was taller than any man-made structure Tenebroum had ever seen. That was not enough, though. Not for what it had planned, and as the new glyphs and circuits activated, the whole thing became that much taller and thinner, soaring toward the sky.

No one could see the assault, of course. It was a dark sword soaring through the night sky, but the Lich didn’t care. The element of surprise was a valuable asset, and the Lich would take it. When it was surging with power from this newfound source, all would know of its triumph soon enough. Such a monumental event would be impossible to hide.

Higher and higher, the spire soared as it raced toward the thin lines of force that were the stars and the arcane patterns that were woven between them. From the ground, all that Tenebroum could see were the little pinpricks of light, but up here, he could see they were ten thousand thousand tiny warriors, all battling back against the darkness that writhed beyond them.

In that way, it was suddenly no different than the creatures that the tiny glowing warriors fought normally. The only difference was that its body was so far away that it was difficult to martial any real power from this distance and was reduced to shattering and skewering the defiant little bastards one at a time.

Still, even with that, Tenebroum might have been able to force its way through eventually. Gnats were fragile things, and the night still had many hours to go. There were only so many stars in this part of the sky that could be brought to bear, and the Lich would not be denied.

That was when the moon started to turn. One moment, it was nothing but a black orb, visible only in that it blotted out a small portion of stars. The next moment, it was a thin, glimmering line of light, like some giant god waking up from its sleep. Tenebroum had not planned for this.

The Lich’s schemes had called for a lightning assault that would allow it to tap the unlimited darkness above its head before anyone had noticed it was even there. It had done this on the darkest night of the month to ensure that the only person who might interfere would be unable to. Now that the first part of its plan had failed, it would seem the latter was as well.

Even as the moon’s crescent began to widen, Tenebroum retreated. It was out of time. It had felt the moon’s light before, but even when it had been pinned by those strange silvery arrows, it was not as vulnerable as it was in this moment. Right now, most of Tenebroum’s power was a mile’s long tower that stretched toward the sky, and as diffuse as that structure was, it might be obliterated in a single moment by the moon’s full power.

So, the two deities raced. Tenebroum sought to shrink and resolidify itself, and the moon slowly increased its brightness as more and more of its wide surface began to glow with light. It was a near thing, but by the time Lunaris had turned even three-quarters of her face to shine on the dark tower, it was gone.

That didn’t stop the moon from releasing the full might of its pale glow for several seconds. Instead of shining on a thin and vaporous tower that stretched to the heavens, though, the light found only an obsidian hard dome of pure darkness that was now only just large enough to cover Tenebroum’s domain. The thing wasn’t as impressive as before, but it was more defensive, and it used much less power.

It was the second part that concerned Tenebroum more than anything, though. Despite its taste of darkness, it had expended nearly half of its reserves in this monumental undertaking and had nothing to show for it. Oh, it had cost the sky a hundred stars, and in a few months, it could try again, but without a more significant advantage, it would take centuries to snuff out every star in the sky, assuming that the gods didn’t have some way of making more.

Tenebroum coiled back into its lair and seethed in frustration at this latest setback, and brooded about what to do next. It released its grip on the individual skulls that dotted its outer ring, letting the individual pieces of its soul argue about what to do next. There were many plans there. Some were quite insane, but others were less so. Gradually, though, a consensus began to watch over the collective heads.

A new plan had been decided on, and for it to work, the Lich would have to summon its fourth horsemen and dig deep into the earth.