Chapter 34: Regaining Control

Chapter 34: Regaining Control

The swamp was dying.

It was a slow process that would be measured in years, but the darkness could feel it just the same. Day by day, the waters receded from the shallowest edges of its domain, and what had once been shallow lagoons or deep pits of mud slowly solidified into soil. The grasses came after that, binding all that sand and silt to the ground like a thousand, thousand little ropes that sought to restrain the darkness and separate it from the world above. No matter how slow it was, it was a process that was impossible to hide.

It wasn’t a secret, even though his figurehead Kelvun thought it was. The reason was clear. A great gouge had been cut through the whole area, and every day a little more of its dark water left to poison the Oroza. Five years ago that might have been enough to slay the darkness, or at least cripple it. Back then it had been the murky waters as much as it had been an unquiet spirit.

Now it was merely a nuisance.

The falling waters affected the flora and fauna of the region even more than the cholerium affected the animals that dwelled in the river as whole ecosystems were overrun, but none of that affected the darkness that had been incubated in its heart for so long. The boy had tried to slay the monster that had haunted his dreams, but he had succeeded only in striking at the sloughed off skin of a snake that had long since molted and metamorphized into something all the more terrible.

In time the Lich would repay the insult with interest, but for now it merely bided its time. For so long it had been a region or a place more than a person, but its lengthy duel with the river dragon had forced it to narrow its worldview to a single point for so long that it had started to identify with a body again. That statue-still body was nothing more than a gold-clad corpse, though. It was one more thing that would have to be fixed. It had labored at length to build ingenious creations like the swamp dragon, the dark messenger, and its new ferryman, but in all this time it had not improved the only corpse that really mattered in the whole dungeon: its own.

Everything that its foolish Count had done was to the good anyway, whether the lordling knew it or not. The swamp needed blood and souls more than it needed privacy or seclusion now, and as the waters receded, they were replaced with rich black earth that the farmers were flocking to. In time those farmers would have families and build villages. Those populations would grow even larger until towns erupted, each with hundreds of souls waiting to be devoured. In that sense, the darkness was sowing seeds of its own, even if it would be years or decades before its bloody harvest arrived.

The Count had apparently put out a call for all the poor and landless to move to the region, and in exchange for the hard work of taming the land they would be given tenancy for free. The darkness had neither known nor cared about the foolish and short-sighted offer until it found the offer in the dreams of hundreds, but it was interesting nonetheless. All these souls had left their homeland for a better life, and they had come like sheep to the slaughter. They brought their own gods and faiths with them, but none of them found much purchase in ground that was already owned by the darkness.

In the swamps the lizard men were the top of the food chain, but in those treacherous mountains they would be somewhat closer to the bottom. It was no matter. The swamp would gift them the same deathless strength that it had previously lent to The Black Teeth. They were being relocated for one purpose: to bring the Lich the corpses of true monsters that it could use as the raw material for even greater horrors. Their formidable strength alone wouldn’t be enough to bring down a manticore or a griffon, but the darkness would make sure that they survived the attempt to try again. Their tireless devotion to it through the years had earned the tribes that much. This time, their totem poles would rise in their new home and reflect all the strange creatures that they killed in its name.

There were only so many ways you could manipulate the bones and spirits of men and common beasts before they were warped beyond recognition after all, and it would need more than the zombie legions it had and the goblin tribes that were slowly being reformed under the leadership of the Dark Eye tribe for the wars that were to come. The goblins might be useful against their southern neighbor at least, though it would be a long time until the fingers of the tribes once more curled into a fist worth using against any opponent, and unless it tamed Krulm’venor once more, that fist would lack any real force.

It could feel Lindvell stirring to the west, even as Dutton eyed its neighbor enviously from across the river to the east. The enmity between Greshen and the county of Lindvell which hugged the coast were well known and long-standing, but the discovery of the region’s new gold mine in the red hills had added their other neighbor, the county of Dutton to the list. For a long time they had been the richer of the two river dominated regions. They had better soil and consequently, more people than Greshen. The poisoning of the river was affecting the other kingdom more though, if only because of the direction that the Lich drew the mana. The loss of poor share croppers to better lands merely added insult to injury.

The fool Kelvun was more obsessed with treachery in his inner circle than he was with the enemies that were beginning to gather in all directions. Ostensibly they were all stewards of the king’s lands, and wars between those lands were supposed to be rare, but if the King felt threatened by the glorious ascent of Kelvun “Goblins Bane” Garvin, then he might allow such a thing. And if a war came to pace, the Lich had no doubt that both of Greshen’s neighbors would strike at once.

Necessarily, such a war would have to be one fought between mortal powers, the Lich thought with frustration. It would be easy enough for it to field an army of the dead and crush either region, but that would draw in the church, and upset all the Lich’s plans. No, since its pet lordling was busy chasing the skirts of barmaids in Blackwater Landing, it would fall to the darkness to stop the war before it could get started.

Normally it would be all in favor of a little war. Some infighting that left thousands dead while nothing else really changed was exactly what the Lich had just done to the county with its goblin army. A new army would remove his pawn though, and with it the gold that had been promised to it, and for the darkness, that was intolerable. Something had to be done, and for better or worse, the only tool it had that could work such a miracle was a plague.

It had been cooking up several, using the gray shivers as a basis, but until recently it had been focusing on creating diseases that maximized suffering rather than contagion. That had changed. Now it wanted something that didn’t just make the afflicted pray for death, it wanted something that made sure that where one victim fell with a fever ten more would soon follow.

This would take time, so for every minute the Lich wasted on building the perfect disease that would kill off enough men to ensure another war free year or two, it increased the boy’s paranoia just a bit more in his sleep. If the Lich wasn’t going to be able to focus on what was truly important, then neither would its servant.