Tenebroum

Chapter 117: Breach

When everything was in position, and the last red sun had set, Tenebroums forces began flooding out of its tunnel into the nearly undefended bottom lands. It was an idyllic landscape, complete with a perfect, picturesque sunset that quickly faded to darkness. It was that beauty and peace that made the Lich so sure that the whole of the region was completely unprepared for what was about to happen next. After all, here, the chill of its eternal dark had not reached these distant lands yet, so even its harvest was shaping up to be decent in a few weeks.

Pumpkins and melons were ripening, and grain stood heavy on the stalk despite the weak and intermittent light. Some of the villages had even started decorating for their harvest festivals already. It was almost a pity that by the time the night was over, there would be so few living souls left to harvest it.

Much of those crops were trampled under rotting feet anyway as its legions moved forward. Neither the Lich nor its paragon that had planned this assault and all the ones that followed expected any resistance tonight, and all of its most powerful constructs were kept in reserve in case of ambush while it flooded the field with its most disposable assets.

The plans made no effort to despoil as much of the land as possible. Instead, the paths and actions were a matter of pure efficiency and logistics. Cavalry was deployed to attack the widely scattered farmsteads that were far from the cities and villages it aimed to eradicate with its slower-moving legions. Everything moved with a purpose, and given how much ground there was to cover, little effort was made to increase the suffering of its victims as they cowered in fear or ran for their lives.

There were no surprises, save for perhaps the looks of horror of those that actually survived. Its general advised that it extinguish all life, and the Lich acknowledged that was the correct move, but something about allowing one house in ten or one village in twenty to survive because the inhabitants had bent the knee and done what it had taken to survive amused it to no end.

Tenebroum could hear their prayers now. The pathetic things blossomed every night when the sunset and the people who begged it for mercy grew afraid. They were always the same. They pleaded for the lives of their family and whimpered for the darkness to spare them. It found such things to be intoxicating.

In all of its existence, only the worship of the Lizardmen had come close, and it made Tenebroum Envy what the other gods must already have all the more. It did not know if it would found a church, no matter how much Verdenin begged it to as the man flogged himself and the other worshipers nightly in the under temple, but as far as it was concerned, such tainted souls should be savored, and it would feast on their blood only once theyd lost their fear, or perhaps their obedience.

Not all the villages fell without a fight, though. There were still heroes worthy of the name in the mortal world. In places, they had banded together, and sometimes they even had mages or ensorcelled weapons. Some of these warriors fought well enough for the Lich to let them face their end at the hands of its small number of death knights.

That was the only consideration the Lichs forces gave to these enemies was to try to keep their corpses as intact as possible for reanimation. Some of them would be joining those rarefied ranks soon enough. Not every corpse needed to become a drudge. That would be a waste of talent and resources.

Palisade walls fell to deathless strength, and no matter how many pikes and halberds a community might muster, they meant nothing to a tight formation of three hundred zombies that never tired or faltered.

The only problem with the night was that it didnt last long enough. Teneborum watched, and it fed the whole evening long, retreating only when the sun rose as the first wave of its troops settled into place. They used caves meant for aging cheese, root cellars that normally stored produce, and stone forts of the fallen.

The bodies would be harvested later and repurposed, but for now, the most valuable things that the humans could offer it were staging locations for other, larger assaults. The light of the fragile suns was its only real enemy until it reached the castles that served as the bulwark of humanitys defense, but they would not survive an assault.

As the Lich devoured the souls of the fallen, it learned more about the lay of the land and the history of the area. It learned about Black Gate and the feuding lands. It saw the twin fortresses of East and West Banath and the pass they defended. None of those were its next target, though. That would be Constantinal, The Undefeated City. It was still more than three nights of conquests from here, but the Lich felt drawn to the giant. Of all the cities in the region, it was the largest and the most well-defended.

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The spirits of the damned whispered that it had never fallen, but Tenebroum did not care about such things. It would be the first to claim it for its wealth in both blood and treasure. For generations, it had served as the gateway to the West, buying and selling grain and wine far and wide, but that rich history would end soon because it had something the Lich sorely craved: a web of catacombs and the gold and silver to make a second, larger laboratory for its northern campaign and there was no place better in the region.

Those proud walls would fall, but that was still days away. For now, it did not tip its hand. Night by night, its legions of the dead, which now numbered in the tens of thousands, spread in all directions, murdering indiscriminately and leaving only the most craven and fearful survivors behind to thank it for its mercy. The simple farmers had started calling it the reaper, and the Lich thought that was an apt enough name for what it was doing. It was, after all, conducting the largest, bloodiest harvest of souls that the world had ever witnessed.

Only one of its expanding fronts contained the many works of art that its minions had spent years crafting, and they advanced north toward its primary target. After four nights of blood and fire, there could be no true surprise attack on the waiting city.

Even as its legions massed just at the edge of arrow range and the Lichs General surveyed the field, it saw no issues. The thirty-foot-high stone walls stood opposite the natural moat formed by the forking river, and the defenses were crowded with soldiers. Even catapults and ballistas had been installed and manned, but even though they started to fire as its forces marched forward, they would do precious little good.

The beat of its soldier's feet matching in perfect lockstep shook the earth as they approached, though the inhuman rhythm damaged nothing but the defenders morale. It was obvious to anyone that they all desperately hoped their walls would hold, but the Lich knew that the mighty defenses would only matter a few minutes more. Anything beyond that would take more magic than these pitiful creatures possessed.

Its constructs didnt stop at the waters edge, either, though the Lich might have summoned its Titan to build them a bridge. This far from Orozas water, it did not expect that it would need to, though. Instead, they just marched right over the bottom toward the walls. The ladders they would use to climb them didnt move forward yet. Not until the Lichs shadow dragon soared down from the night sky and made the foot-thick oaked gates evaporate with a single gout of ebon flame.

The dragon quickly fled after that. One of the primary lessons of Siddrimar had been just how fragile that creature was, so it needed to be used sparingly. After all, even if the light was no longer an enemy that it needed to fear, it could still feel a Gods work somewhere in this battle, and if rivers could have their own deities, then it would not be surprised to find out that cities could have them as well.

The God of Constantinal did not reveal himself until Tenebroums skeletal centipede Calvary crawled up the outermost wall of the city, and the zombies began to pour over top of them. Then, he appeared in a flash of mana directly over the damaged gatehouse.

The Lich gave the signal, and a number of ravens filled with alchemical concoctions took to the sky in an attempt to murder or weaken the divine opponent. The shadow dragon even wheeled around to take another pass, but before any of its dark servants could reach their target, the divine spirit vanished again. In its place, all the heroes that had been carved into the stony rampart sprang to life.

The Lich had learned of this myth in passing from those it had slaughtered, but it had found such an outcome unlikely. The Heroes of old springing to life was a tale that was almost as old as the city itself, but it hadnt happened in living memory.

Even though Tenebroum had not given the myth credence, its general had prepared for it just in case, and members of the Legion of Rust had been dispersed throughout the ranks. While not as brutally effective against flesh as the war zombies, they still bore tools meant for taking stone apart, and that was what they did tonight.

While the rest of its forces focused on the living defenders and moved past them into the city proper, its broken metallic dwarves made short work of the stony defenders with their kobold teeth-tipped picks. In the stories, those heroes could hold the largest of armies at bay until the end of days, before they needed neither food nor rest. Against the Lich, they barely lasted an hour. After that, the back of the mortal defenders was broken.

There were still pockets of defense here and there, but the Lich was content to let them hold out a while as its death knights advanced on the city's temples and the palace of the local Duke while the gutters of the city ran red with blood. It would need living sacrifices for the days that lay ahead, and that meant that it could hunt down the remaining forces at its leisure. After all, the people that had cowered behind their thick walls had been too thick to kneel to the darkness. So, here, at least, every life was fair game.

It looked around the battlefield with a feeling of only faint triumph. Taking the unconquered city had been less difficult than it had thought it would be, and the only thing that would cheer it up after such a let-down was finding the small god of the city and devouring him whole.