Tenebroum

Chapter 19: Dying Embers

Krulm’venor was disgusted by its circumstances, but that was nothing new. That was the first emotion it felt each evening, as it flared to life when the Burning Skulls added fuel to their cookfires and lit the bonfires at their shrines. During the day, when it was slowly reduced to embers, it lacked the awareness to contemplate such things. Each evening it was born again, though, which meant that it had to remember how far it had fallen all over again.

Krulm’venor, once the scourge of the under realm. Stone burner. Sacker of Ghen’tal and Mournden. Once, dozens were fed to the fire each day, so it could feast on their flesh and mana, but now it lorded over a handful of goblins. That there were less than two hundred of the buggers only added salt to the wound.

How a dwarven demigod had fallen so far that instead of inhabiting the forge fires of a dozen cities, it dwelled only in the campfires of a single tribe of greenskins, it couldn’t quite recall. The further back that the flickering fire spirit tried to think, the hazier things got until there was nothing but dark smoke and bitter disappointment.

The goblins wouldn’t have been enough to support it now if they weren’t so bloodthirsty and didn’t dwell in the shadow of a dead volcano. Krulm’venor seemed to recall that it had been forced to flee something in the dark when its last fortress monastery had fallen and that it had chosen the volcano as a place to be reborn, like a phoenix from the ashes it had planned to detonate it and use the eruption to ignite the nearby forest on fire in a conflagration that was truly worthy of its majesty. It had lacked the strength, though. Over time, it had withered away until its pride had atrophied so much that the idea of being a war god to a vicious army of goblins hadn’t seemed like a terrible idea.

It surveyed its shrinking kingdom and knew it had erred mightily, though. Perhaps it might have been different if it had been an orc warband full of rage or even hobgoblins with their crude sense of discipline. Goblins simply weren’t cut out for greater things. As it was, recently, the Burning Skulls had stopped expanding. No matter how much power he poured into their shamans, they could barely hold back the resurgent Black Teeth. All of a sudden, its tribe suddenly seemed to lack the strength to match such an insignificant tribe like that to the West. Yet, it was still nowhere near strong enough to brave the plains to the east and the humans they would almost certainly find there.

It was maddening.

The spirit would have withdrawn its power from the incompetent bastards entirely if that wouldn’t have spelled its inevitable doom. Without blood and fire, it was doomed to fade into the background until even it forgot it had ever existed. Even if it was a fruitless struggle, the fallen god would cling to life in the same tenacious way that the goblins did when they ripped each other to pieces for scraps of territory.

It tore its gaze away from the goblins' filthy warren and took to the sky to survey its kingdom. Today, not even the beauty of its gold could mollify it. Once, that had been its focus: to conquer enough land to bring slaves back to mine it, but it had never materialized. Now it served as an unwelcome reminder of better days.

The nighttime hillside wasn’t much better, though. Only a year or two ago, it had two dozen fires burning for it. Now the spirit had to settle for less than half a dozen cookfires and a few torches. It was pathetic. How could the shamans that claimed to worship it even expect to have enough mana to sling their bolts and blasts around if they would not pay homage to the fearsome Krulm’venor and his terrible hunger.

When they went to bed at dawn, but before the fires had guttered entirely, it would chastise them in their dreams and make its displeasure known. The spirit trembled with desire at the prospect. Its prophetic dreams hadn’t seemed to be having much of an effect on its worshipers lately. Still, it enjoyed tormenting them just the same. Besides the taste of meat, it was the one joy left in its life.

Had its territory always been so cramped, it wondered as it floated from hill to hill, surveying its tiny kingdom. It used to be that its world stretched far enough that it reached most of the way to the horizon. Now it seemed like almost half of that was in a shadow that its flame wouldn’t penetrate. Instead of the ash-covered skulls of its enemies dotting totems along the old boundary, there were only the new yellow skulls to replace them. It didn’t even understand why either tribe would use a yellow skull. What was that supposed to signify. Were they meant to mock it?

Krulm’venor should have been marshaling patrols to go and strike down the strange totems, but it couldn’t be bothered. Not unless it concerned a fight or trips to one of the stands of trees still standing in its territory to gather firewood. Nothing else mattered.

Eventually, that’s what the spirit decided it needed, and it stoked the emotions in the warband leaders. Tonight it wanted a fight. It wanted blood and flesh, and after a bit of coaxing, they did too. They seemed strangely reluctant to deal with the Black Teeth to the east, and the broken remnants of the Stone Fists were too far north to deal with without more planning. Vanishing into smoke each morning after the fires died made it somewhat difficult for the spirit to plan anything anymore.

So they set out. A warband of thirty would be more than a match for any scouting or scavenging party they found. Krulm’venor let the group drift further away from the main strongholds of the Black Teeth and hunt for one or two that it could get alone near the watering hole just outside its domain. There amongst the reeds and the weeds, it was easy enough to pick off a straggler and take it back to the caves to feed.

It had been a favorite strategy of the Burning Skulls for a long time and had worked to excellent effect lately. It had, first against the Dog Eaters and later against the Black Teeth after they’d usurped that boundary. Once, the spirit had tried to instill some dwarvish martial discipline into its ragged tribe of greenskins, but it had never taken. Now it settled for some hit-and-run sneak attacks and the sheer ferocity that goblins naturally excelled at.

Further thoughts about tactics and planning drifted away like smoke as the ragged cry went up. Someone from another tribe had been spotted. Instantly, the vast majority of the Warband surged forward. They’d been goaded into such a frenzy that each one of them wanted to be the one to rip out the throat of the enemy. Only the two shamans and their flunkies stayed behind at the edge of the tall grass. They weren’t wary, exactly. They just saw no reason to get involved in chasing down a single warrior. The only fire needed for such a small meal was already burning back in the lowest level of their warren.

Outside its territory, it could only see through the eyes of its goblins, but that was enough to enjoy the spectacle. Through half a dozen pairs of eyes, it saw flashes of a single goblin fleeing for its life as it ran at the water’s edge. Its lead was shrinking, though. Ten feet… Five feet… Any minute now, the Burning Skulls warrior would catch it and disembowel it.

Except that’s not what happened at all.

Suddenly, a wall of Black Teeth stood in front of the fleeing goblin, and he seamlessly slipped through a hole in the lines before it closed behind them. There were at least two dozen of them. The worst part wasn’t even that they seemed to have appeared from nowhere; it was that the ones at the center of the ambush were the bigger, crazed-looking goblins that had been responsible for their recent gains. It had to have been some side effect from the poison toads that the tribe ate in tough times because the berserkers that charged heedlessly into battle had dark veins throbbing underneath their skin, crisscrossed with dark black scars.

In a battle of savages, they were monsters. The Burning Skulls tried to fight at first, but what was supposed to have been a simple ambush had reversed now. Instead of being a quick bit of sport followed by a snack, it was a bloodbath that was quickly becoming a rout.

The claustrophobic battlefield dominated by shadows and dense foliage that was much too wet to burn played to all the Black Teeth’s strengths and all the Burning Skulls’ weaknesses. It was almost like they’d planned it that way.

That was impossible, of course. None of the other goblin tribes in the area had a patron spirit, or magic for that matter, which only made the moment that much more humiliating for Krulm’venor. Its strongest Warband was getting their faces bashed in, and it was all due to dumb luck.

The Burning Skulls broke before the fourth body fell, bleeding into the muck. Even though they outnumbered their enemy, they could feel the danger radiating off the warband leader and the core of his warriors. The only thing they had which could stand up to that sort of violence was the fire. So, they broke and ran back towards their shamans. It was a desperate flight, both because of the fear of the enemy they ran from, as well as the fact that some of the Burning Skulls closest to them would inevitably be burned alive in the crossfire.

That was fine with Krulm’venor. Either way, it tasted flesh and the screams of agony it craved. It was practically drooling for the climactic conclusion when those black-toothed bastards burst out of the tall grass only to face a wall of fire. They might have bloodied its nose, but they would pay a heavy price for the privilege.

At least that’s what it thought, but when the first Burning Skulls burst out of the wall of cattails and could finally see their shamans again, that view changed everything. Krulm’venor warned the shamans quickly enough for them to turn and see what was bearing down on them, but by then, it was too late to summon fire or to run in fear. No matter how fast they ran, they would never outrun the dog riders bearing down on them.

Dog Eater cavalry and Black Teeth berserkers working together? It didn’t make any sense to the spirit, but that’s precisely what was happening. The fire spirit had fought enough real wars with soldiers wearing fire-forged armor and wielding its steel and its flames to know this was an ambush. It was a classic pincer move, and it was almost as ashamed that it had been caught unawares as it was angry that it was losing so many of its warriors.

This was a trap that had already been sprung, and it could see that there would be no survivors. Krulm’venor accepted that. What it could not accept was being outwitted by a goblin chieftain or the idea that two different tribes had suddenly started working together. This had something to do with those strange yellow skulls.

It was sure of that much.