Tenebroum

Chapter 186: Shattered - End Book 4

Chapter 186: Shattered - End Book 4

Worms were crawling all the way up to the edge of the boundary circle now. They were pouring out of the sarcophagus like there was some sort of portal in there. They were flooding the place, but except for the few that had sprung from the corpse that Tenebroum had been wearing only a moment ago, there was none outside the binding rings.

That was good, but there should have been none at all outside the binding rings. The spirits were separated from the rest of the world; at least, they should have been.

The Lich woke up every head in its library at once to demand answers but knew that such answers would take time, even if they came at all. While it did so, it was torn between fleeing the room and sealing the stone door and between watching what might happen next. If it stayed, then whatever foul magic it was that connected it to the Worm might get stronger, but if it fled, then it wouldn’t be able to see or stop what happened next.

The very idea of fleeing in its own place of power was preposterous, but that’s exactly what was about to happen. It would have, too, if it had not seen the worms from its corpse inching their way across the floor toward the cage of rats.

Tenebroum silently ordered the closest drudge to walk over and stomp every last worm until there was nothing left. It might not be able to do anything about the overflowing sarcophagus yet, but fire-wielding forgewights were on their way. They didn’t have a tenth of the strength of Krulm’venor, but they were more than enough to sterilize this room.

As the zombie crushed all the worms until they were nothing but goo with thick booted feet, the Worm cried out. “You don’t need to do thisss... you can join usss...”

“I do not have partners or allies, and I do not join pantheons,” the Lich barked. “And I only use servants that—”

“Not a pantheon...” the worms whispered. “No... A creature like you... we desire your power...”

The Lich should have roared in outrage. It wanted to, but instead, it could only stare in mute horror as the drudge that had crushed the worms began to bulge and bloat. Tennebroum ordered it to move back to the far end of the room, but it didn’t reach it before it exploded in a shower of flat and roundworms of all shapes and colors.

The door to the room slid shut behind its ephemeral form with the loud sound of stone grating against stone. Such a burial wouldn’t stop the Lich from doing as it wanted, but it would keep whatever was happening here from spreading.

Realistically, it should draw the life force out of these cursed things and devour their spirits whole. It had considered that with Groshin many times, but now it was glad that it had not. There was no telling what terrible effect that might have had.

The worms were everywhere now. They were in all three circles and on several of the drudges. They were on the walls and the ceilings. Tennebroum was more than a little disturbed. Fortunately, that’s when the forgewights arrived.

The dwarven ghosts were usually used to hammer armor into shape and make metal skeletons for one of a hundred different projects. For that, they wore iron gauntlets bound to their souls so they could use tools and interact with objects. Today, they had a different task: extermination.

“You want my power?” Tennebroum asked. “Then burn with it.”

As the Lich finished speaking, fire flooded the room. In fact, the light of it was uncomfortably bright enough that it moved to hide in the shadow of the sarcophagus lid that had been propped against the near wall. It didn’t need to see everything to know what was happening, though. It could hear it. It could hear the shrieks of the rats and the howl of the wolf as much as it could hear the crisping of the worms as the world filled with fire.

According to the legends, that was how Siddrim purged them, wasn’t it? Tenebroum thought to himself.

The fire went on for almost a minute before the oxygen was completely depleted, and the forgewights fled as slender blue flames before they were extinguished completely. This let the Lich spread out completely in the darkness to see what it had wrought.

Suddenly, it looked down at that slender thread that seemed to unravel off of it and back toward that monster. It was reading its mind through this cursed link.

“I am,” it purred. “That and so much more. You are but a paltry ghost, but you’ve been up to so much. And you have such strength, too. We cannot wait to devour it.”

Tenebroum paused, almost to its throne room, and assessed itself. It did not feel weak, but not that it was focusing on it; it could detect a notable drain.

In the distance, something boomed. The beast was trying to get free.

With all the souls like this, it had gathered, it could probably endure this a long time, but that wasn’t good enough. It needed to sever this strange connection once and for all. There was only one way to do that, though, and the thought was terrifying.

The connection to the Lich was through the gold in its phylactry. What it didn’t know. What it could never have known was that that gold had already touched something else. That was what those adventurers found, and that was what Cutter and Riley had stolen from them. That was the core of everything.

Suddenly, certain questions that Tenebroum had never asked before were answered. Why did it have powers over disease in those early days? Why did it slip so easily into the swamp and its many predators? More than anything, why did it all feel so right?

The Lich was horrified by those realizations and more as it sped to its throneroom. There was a terrible bang again. This time, it was accompanied by the sound of cracking stone. Even eight inches of limestone wasn’t enough to keep that thing at bay.

“Nothing can stop me,” Malzekeen whispered in his mind. “I’m coming for you, Tenebroum, and there’s nothing you can do about it...”

It briefly tried to reverse the link and pry into the mind of this foreign entity, but it was a terrible idea, and it only sped up the power that was being sapped from it. The Lich stopped and ignored it. It had already made up its mind.

It issued a command that it never thought it would have to make, and suddenly, its lizardman honor guard that had stood still for so long sprang to life. They hesitated only briefly as Malzekeen tried to stop it, but whatever hold it had over Tennebroum was tenuous, and it only barely extended to the Lich’s minions.

“You think this will stop me?” Malzekeen roared in Tenebroum’s mind like the beast he was. “I am primeval. I am unstoppable. You cannot hope to defeat me!”

As the beast blustered and shattered the stone doorway that held it back, the Lich’s eight lizardman warriors brought their halberds down hard on the phylactery, hopelessly mangling it. Albrect had stood there silently for such a long time, and now, with no warning at all, he was being destroyed. The warriors delivered blow after terrible blow until the golden shell was in pieces, and dust was leaking from the mummified corpse.

And just like that, the ghostly link vanished, along with a good chunk of what made the Lich who it was. For a long time, it had been a maelstrom. It had been lightning in a bottle, but now there was no bottle, and it began to unravel immediately. Now, its soul spun out of control, hemorrhaging spirits large and small. With each one, a bit of expertise or knowledge vanished, and Tenebroum slowly but surely unraveled into nothing.

It was coming undone. It was no longer a Lich. It was merely one specter among many, desperately flying through the dark as its world ended. It wasn’t alone; there were tens of thousands of spirits flying to pieces in all directions, and it had no idea what would be left when every last spark and shard that made it who it was was gone. The last thing that Tenebroum saw before it flew off to hide in the darkest corner of its lair was that awful chimera tearing its way through the guards it faced.

It had become exactly like the texts had said it would. It was a deranged two-headed predator, as large as a man, with the head of a wolf and a rat, ringed all around in a terrible mane of worms, and any minute now, that thing would be hunting it.