Tenebroum

Chapter 148: The Dark Garden

Even as it planned the assault and set its forge ghasts and its hammer weights to crafting magic resistant weapons and armor from the bones and armor of long dead dwarves, it turned its mind back toward more important tasks. When night next fell, it soared halfway across its domain from Rahkin to the hub of activity that was Constantium.

The city was still devoid of life. Even the plants had withered and died because of the overwhelming amounts of unlife as well as the caustic embalming fluids and tanning liquids that spilled so frequently on the ground. Despite that, it was still a hub of activity.

During the day, those activities were limited to the growing catacombs that hummed beneath the place as well as the Grand Temple. However, by night, the streets would come alive in a parody of the life that would normally be present in such a large city.

There was no food, or merriment, though. There was no buying and selling, there were only drudges carrying bones from the beetle pits and fresh armor from the forges so that all the component parts could be assembled smoothly by the silent supervisor of its city factory.

Even that dread giant had grown in both size and complexity to account for new techniques and workflows, and each of the pillars that held up the giant dome were lined with appendages, handing off constructs in different stages of completion. Truly, it was a work of beauty well beyond the mortal mind. If anyone with a pulse had ever seen the thing in action, they might have died on the spot from the dread gaze of its 300 eyes that lined the dome and monitored all the work as it was being performed.

That was not why Tenebroum had returned here, though. There were no problems here, and if there were, they would not be the fault of its industrial strength fleshcrafters. They had no will. They existed only to bring to life the horrors of its mind, not to improvise or even object.

That was not why the Lich had returned to this place, though. With everything else going on, Tenebroum would have liked to delegate the tasks that would be necessary to experiment with its captured goddesses, in the end such important work ultimately could be done by it alone. They were simply too valuable as specimens. Even if it was unable to turn them into something grander, then it might yet learn a great deal simply by dissecting them.

Whatever it decided, though, it would need to be done soon. Cut off from light and life in its lead and stone dungeons, they were wilting a little more every day. Gods of nature were not meant for stygian captivity, and though it might have simply consumed their souls and gained more power. As a result, another servant with a new domain would be much more valuable to it.

Oroza had taught it a tough lesson, though, and it would not let them escape. The first in doing that, of course, was to learn their true names.

For some Gods and Goddesses that might have been impossible, Even the names that they were worshiped by sometimes had little in common with their true names. Siddrim had several secret names it had learned, but it wasn’t until Tenebroum had consumed the other god that it had learned there were several more names that it hadn’t known.

For nature goddesses, at least, though, that was easy enough. It simply spread its blackbirds far and wide and looked for forests and natural areas that seemed to be dying for no discernible reason. Once it had identified those three places, it was simply a matter of torturing the three bark-skinned women until it found out which name belonged to which forest goddess.

It was a straightforward process. Soon, Tenebroum figured out that the three small gods it had stolen were Tarieneian Vale, Verdant Glade, and Thornwood. Each of the women was slightly different, in both demeanor and appearance, in ways that suited the territories they called home.

Only one of them, Tarieneian Vale appeared almost human. She had skin of bark of course, but otherwise she looked very much like a woman. The other two, though, were much less so. Verdant glade was more like the outline of a person made from foliage, and rarely spoke. Thornwood was the most alien. She was constantly shifting set of brambles that appeared as an animal much more often than a person.

Unfortunately, its every attempt to chain any of the three, failed repeatedly. No matter how it attempted to chain them with manacles of servitude, they would grow in such a way that the bonds would slip free within only a few days. Only the wards of the cell itself held them reliably, which was far form ideal.

It was maddening. In the end, the Lich was force to improvise, and made the dark garden itself it’s means of control. This undertaking was grander, but less complicated. It simply chose an unused plaza in Constantinal and after the runes were carved by night in the stone of the place, its servants began to fill the whole thing with grave earth.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The hardest part of the project, as it turned out, was choosing which plaza would least impact everything else that was happening since Constantinal had become so busy. It knew that if it gave them a single opening, they would escape the way that Oroza did. So, even before it installed them in that lifeless courtyard, it installed leaden rings inscribed with each of their names to keep them from spreading their roots too widely.

Once that was done, it salted the earth in the rest of the place so that not even a blade of grass would grow. It was only then, when all was in readiness that it replanted them and observed what came next.

To start with, all of the women became trees that grew quite quickly at first. They’d thought that with enough strength, they might pierce the stone beneath them or bridge some kind of connection to the rest of the vegetation outside the city and vanish, but that was not possible. All they had done in the process was take in a tremendous amount of taint from the grave earth instead.

Tenebroum let them acclimatize to this, and grow new leaves and buds before it started to add Cholorium to their water, feeding the three slender trees a steady diet of poison and unquiet dreams.

After that, its drudges began to carven profane symbols into the bark of all of them on a regular basis. The former was to continue to increase its grip on their foreign element of wood, while the later was merely to provoke a response from those that might be watching.

Those markings would vanish in a few days, and the spirits within the wood barely even cried out in pain, but then, they weren’t the intended audience. Now that the Lich had shown its hand, it knew that somewhere out there, the Moon and the rest of her friends were watching and waiting for their chance to rescue.

Tenebroum had prepared for that, too, and had several creative countermeasures prepared for just such an eventuality. There were watchers and guardians every night. During the day, the whole operation was far more vulnerable, but its artisans were working on the completion of a mechanical trap that would slide a rusted awning across the whole area and lock anyone foolish enough to attempt to free its prisoners inside with them.

There were a few false alarms, but the conflict it had hoped to bait never happened. So, when it became apparent that its enemies would be patient, it decided to test that patience with a bit of brutal theater.

First, its drudges installed a second, larger binding ring to accommodate all three of them, and then, seeds from each were planted and allowed to grow before the three trees were chopped down and burned to ash.

It was done on the night of a full moon to ensure that the show reached its intended audience. Despite how terrible of a scene it was, Lunaris never attempted to intervene, though. Instead, Tenebroum feasted on the agony of its prisoners alone and then proceeded to twine the trunks of the new bodies together while they were still flexible saplings.

The trees resisted this, and it was forced to use steel chains that had been profaned with terrible engravings to force them into an unnatural shape long enough that it started to become permanent. It was only when their forms began to blend that it started to work on their spirits.

Tenebroum was a cruel God, but in many ways, this was the cruelest thing it had done since it had given Kelvun his richly deserved reward. It had to be, though, both because of the assumed audience of this project, and because of the level of brutality that would be needed two destroy three individual spirits, and turn them into one new monstrosity.

At first, they endured this monstrosity silently. Even when its servants began to feed its prisoners more poison and prune their branches to force terribly unnatural symmetries on it, they did nothing. It was only when it began to prune their very souls that they began to beg once more.

The Lich hoped that their silent screams would carry for many miles for those with the ears to hear them. It was only when those wounds were fresh that it began to stitch them together that it could see a glimmer of what they would become when all this was done.

The Lich was very familiar with the idea of sharing its soul with others. It had done so since almost its earliest days. Initially, the shade and the murderer had warred and feuded in its heart, but by the time the mage and pieces of its first dozen victims swirled there, too, it had become normal.

It would never be normal for these three godlings, though, and with a midnight thread spun from pieces of its own tattered soul, it began to turn three women into one. For now, it started with minor enough operations. After all, they hardly needed three heads and thirty fingers between them. These rounds of psychic surgery were incredibly taxing for them, of course. They had to be. All of his subjects wanted to die.

So, Tenebroum would have to give them frequent breaks and occasionally stop poisoning them for weeks at a time. Despite that, progress was made. Slowly, wounds healed closed, thoughts began to mix, and day by day, what had been three fae and beautiful women became a terrible chimera.

Even tied together so tightly they would never escape, they still weren’t one by any stretch of the imagination, of course. They warred within their strange braided tree as they fought to preserve themselves at the expense of the other two Goddesses that now shared their soul.

It was a losing battle, though, and in the end whatever this produced was unlikely to look like any of them.