Tenebroum

Chapter 182: Main Course

When the city was burning, and chaos was at its peak, Tenebroum left the warehouse where skulls flickered and screamed and moved to a body that it had specifically built to fight the dwarven God. Then it walked to the cathedral, which would hopefully become their battleground, and began to summon the All-Father.

It enjoyed the pain and death that Krulm’venor was harvesting, of course, especially with the overtones of fear and madness that pervaded the normally muted dwarven psyche. For so long, the dwarves of Hammerheim had been entirely immune to the rise and fall of the world around them. Even the troubles of other cities barely reached their stout iron walls. The Lich could have basked in that shock and fear all day, but if it did, it would have missed this window of opportunity to strike at their God while he was weak enough to kill but strong enough to answer a challenge.

The body that Tenebroum had built for the occasion was a giant compared to the forms it normally wore and only barely fit down the hallway that led to the cathedral. The form that Lich had chosen was as close to the true form of the All-Father as it could find, based on the iconography of the dwarven religion. Unfortunately, this arrangement limited it to just four real limbs, but it would make due. It was worth it to mock the proud God with his own face.

The real only difference, beyond small spikes and other stylistic elements along with the layers of intensive enchantments, was the small third arm built into the chest that could move the outlandishly sized plate mail beard from side to side as a sort of auxiliary shield. If the Lich was going to waste so much Mithril and steel, having such an affectation constructed, it might as well put it to use.

Though it was constructed solely of materials that had been gathered from dwarven heroes, that would have been impossible for most to notice, as every piece had been melted down and recast into something new in case the All-Father had some unknown hold on the original. It would have been terribly ironic if Tenebroum lost this fight because of that kind of overconfidence, in the same way, that the All-Father’s avatar had lost their first fight because he thought to use the ghosts of the dead to face the Lich.

Tenebroum was not so foolish as to do that. Even so, despite using dwarven forgewights to do the work, it was somewhat inferior to the original. There was just something about dwarven craftsmanship that could not be replicated by the hands of the unwilling dead, but hopefully, Tenebroum could pry those secrets loose today.

Fortunately, the Lich had access to magic that the dwarves never would. They might have their runes, but that was only the smallest part of the greater magical whole, and when it came to this armored form, not a single inch was wasted on the inside or outside. Those protective spells, along with the liquid metal bubbling away in the center of this construct’s hollow core, would allow it to heal or at least cope with a significant amount of abuse.

When it reached the iron-floored cathedral, the drudges were just finishing setting up the embalmed dwarven heads that were going to sing this spell into existence and exiting in a silent single file line. Dwarves had no talent for magic and certainly did not enjoy it but could be convinced to coax a spell into existence when they were forced to by a monster like him. Sadly, it expected most of them to spontaneously combust within minutes as a result of the unnatural act, but the Lich didn’t care.

Either it would get the attention of the dying God and put him out of his misery, or the All-Father would resist Tenebroum’s call and bleed out in the dark. With the way the dwarves of capital were unraveling, it doubted very much that the deity had much longer to live in either case. Tenebroum could be sustained by devouring the souls of the dead, but none of its peers could say the same.

Strictly speaking, the Lich did not know if this would work. It didn’t have to work. The only hold that it had over the All-Father were the dead hostages. Still, Tenebroum thought that would be enough. On the broken anvil altar were arrayed an assortment of skulls from high priests that had been gathered and set aside for the purpose. It was powerful bait but not necessarily irresistible.

The God could simply ignore it and watch as Tenebroum devoured these hallowed souls one at a time. That was why it had made the entire performance as Blasphemous as possible.

Some of the corrupted skulls that looked down on the whole thing were already crying or babbling, but that only added to the atmosphere as eighty-eight deep base voices began to sing with notes so low that the iron floor beneath the Lich’s steel feet vibrated. The spell that it had written for the occasion was composed in dwarvish so that the All-Father might hear the litany of curses and insults in the summoning.

Dwarven honor and rage were a potent mixture, and the Lich was relying on the All-Father’s injured pride as much as his desire to save the souls of his priests as the Lich as much as it lifted the first crystalline skull from the altar and dropped it into the giant steel mouth of this body. In a single gesture, it crushed the thing to dust, feeling the spirit briefly effervesce from the jagged bits of crystal as the dark portal opened in its designated spot, beckoning for the All-Father to join it.

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The first dead dwarf, Thuall’kenden, died at the ripe old age of 341. He played the harp and was survived by seven sons. He only had a chance to experience a few flickering moments from his deadly dull life before The Lich devoured his soul and stripped a lifetime of centuries down to a bit of essence. Jarden-bar didn’t fair much better. He lived for 332 years and died the last member of his clan before he was laid to rest; his soul vanished into the ether in an instant as well.

Several heads in its choir had already burned into cinders, and the wailing of the crystal skulls in the background had increased markedly because of all the light and activity, but still, the portal from the depths of the world to this cursed place stood unused. The Lich was just picking up a third skull to repeat the process, and the throbbing song was just reaching a crescendo when the All-Father finally stepped through the dark portal which was nothing less than an intentional rent in the inviolability of the area contained by the vast circle that surrounded blackwater, and showed himself.

“You called, and so I have come to end you,” the All-Father growled. “Your insults and your depravity will not be allowed to stand!”

As he spoke, a hammer with a red-hot head appeared in his hand, somewhere between a forgehammer and a warhammer. Tenebroum had expected that sort of weapon and was not surprised. What it was surprised by was that the All-Father was shorter than it expected. It had built this body to be the exact same height, based on religious texts, but instead of being a nine-foot-tall dwarf, he was closer to seven and a half. This unintentionally made the irony sweeter to the Lich, though, and it said nothing about it.

Instead, the Lich said, “Stand? You’ve spent this whole time hiding on your knees, little God. Perhaps if you’d joined the fight earlier on, the realms of men might have yet stood a chance.”

Even if the God was shorter than the Lich had expected, he was still imposing. He glowed with a soft orange light and, worse, perfectly crafted armor. He might be as tall as a man, but he was as wide as any three of them and could easily have wrestled the Lich’s juggernaut into submission.

“The realms of men can rise and fall without me and mine,” the dwarf grumbled as it regarded the Lich with burning eyes. “They have fallen to dark before, and they will again. It is you who are transitory in all this, not I. Earth and steel will endure even your deprivations. Tradition is forever.”

The Lich drew the battleaxe it had created for this occasion as it considered the God’s words. “When all is darkness, nothing will be allowed to rise again,” he said finally, annoyed that despite everything, the dwarf was still maintaining a solid sense of who he was. He flickered some moments, indicating there was some strain, but that was the only sign of problems. Given that the Lich had destroyed his entire world, he expected to see more damage, mentally and physically.

“You think you’re the first one that ever tried that?” the All-Father laughed. “You think you’re the first villain to shatter some arrogant light god’s chariot? I’ve already fixed that and made the damn sword. My part in all this is done, or it would be if you would learn to leave well enough alone.”

Chariot? Sword? The Lich’s mind wondered about both of these things, but before it could consider that, or the implication that this had all happened before, the All-Father charged the Lich with all the force of an avalanche.

The Cathedral of Skulls was built to be bait and insult, but it was also built to be an arena. That was the reason so much stone had been carved away and witchfire braziers burned in the background. It was also the reason why the floor had been plated in iron; because the blows that these two heavyweights could inflict on each other would shatter stone.

There was no art to this combat. There was no dance of blades with elaborate dodges and parrying like it had once done with Siddrim and later with that cursed Templar. This was more brutal than that. This was a force of nature. It was an earthquake, given human form, and the Lich worried a little at the damage these terrible blows might do to the rest of its lair.

That didn’t stop him from taking the full force of the hammer on his left shoulder even as it brought its dark axe down on the dwarf god’s head. The force of the axe was only enough to dent the helmet, but the shadowy edge that manifested along the edge of the blade a moment before impact was enough to split it, too, sending the piece of armor tumbling away, even though the head beneath it healed almost instantly. At the same time as it struck, though, Tenebroum's body was thrown entirely off balance by the hammer blow, and despite the reinforced skeleton that had been created to hold the weight of this giant suit of armor, the clavicle still fractured. The Lich staggered back from the blow as the liquid metal flowed like mercury to repair the damage.

What distracted Tenebroum wasn’t the force or the pain, though; it was the strange magical interactions that had occurred at the moment of impact. Its construct had tried to harvest the heat of the hammer to power a few of its spells, but the hammer had likewise tried to do something with the metal, and as the traitorous substance responded to the call of the deity, several lines of inscriptions that powered those spells were erased, resulting in a spray of sparks rather than the magical aura of protection that should have been created.

So even after all this time, he has some surprises too, the Lich mused. This was about to get very interesting.