Chapter 114: Wheat from the Chaff

Chapter 114: Wheat from the Chaff

It was Verdenin who thought of it. Tenebroum would have to credit the man with that much, at least. That was why he still had a pulse after all.

Because the priest loved power, and he had some wonderful ideas about how to get more, hed been allowed to stay alive. That, combined with the fact that he was as loyal as a turncoat could be, almost made it worth the trouble of keeping so many living on the second level in a part of its labyrinth once made to exclusively house the dead.

The priest had spent the whole winter exhorting those ideas to the other survivors of Blackwater and telling them all about the new world that was being born, as well as their place in it. The darkness is inevitable, he told them. Death chases every one of us our whole lives, but it will not take you. Not if you are useful to it! Let us serve the night in all the ways it requires, and we shall live forever, unchained by the conventions of morality and the rules of light!

The Lich still did not know how it felt about living followers, but it hurt nothing to give it a try. After all, all the other Gods and godlings it was aware of cultivated a flock of their own, so there must be a reason for it. Still, most of them had no other ready source of essence beyond their worshipers, where Tenebroum could always fall back on blood and suffering.

In fact, it doubted that an entire church could provide the same level of power as a single brutal night of fear and death, as one of its armies slaughtered a small town, but it had Kelvun make a note to conduct that experiment just as soon as the next phase of its war started. That was why it had constructed the dreamer. Both to delegate the task of surveilling their enemy and to increase their fear of what was going to happen next.

The Lich was proud of its many creations, and this latest one was no exception; even if it was more similar to the ones that had gone before than it was different, it was still something entirely new. More than anything, the dreamer was a shade, like the dark messenger that had served it so loyally for so long. In its case, though, the horse that it rode on was composed of pure shadow, just like the rest of its body.

So, it would need to find a grave or a pool of murky water to hide from the rising sun. If it did not, it would cease to exist as the rays of dawn reduced it to nothing but vapor and an unintelligible chorus of discordant screams as the many souls that made up its dreamer came apart at their very carefully sewn screams.

That and its inability to murder anything were its primary weaknesses. Its strengths were manifold, though, both literally and figuratively. It had the dark sense of human understanding of its puppeteer, it could spring apart into a hundred different copies like Krulm'venor, and it could speak in the sweet words of its herald so that no man could easily ignore it.

The Lich didnt care if the dreamer or the missionary, as his priest referred to it, caught a single new worshiper to join its growing flock. What it cared about were the things that the dreamer learned as it prowled the dreams of the unwary, night after night.

That, and the uncertainty that the shadow monster left in its wake made it a most worthwhile investment of time and resources. The Lich created it by stitching together the souls of fervent Templars and priests that it had harvested by the score. As it turned out, it was easy enough to lobotomize such a soul, keeping its devotion but vivisecting the cause that it was so fervent about. That is the way it created such a loyal servant by stitching the souls of a hundred lobotomized servants of Siddrim to a single true believer of the darkness.

With only one thing left for them to believe in, they all believed it eventually, after enough pain and confusion. Some resisted, but the more souls that fell, the quicker the rest of them gave in. Finally, after 66 days and 66 nights, it had a quivering ball of shadows that was practically begging to go out and proselytize to the masses. Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

She lured the man into her home to seduce him and then poisoned his beer. When her fellow villagers saw what she had done as she tried to bury the body, she defended her decision.

Dont you understand? she yelled as they readied the noose. I did this for you! For all of us! Its the only way to save us from whats coming!

Her friends and neighbors still hung her, but they did bury both her and her victim under the road as her dream prophecy suggested. There was such a wonderful thrill to all the layers of that betrayal that the Lich had its dreamer deliver that prophecy to every village it invaded by night.

In the south and the east, where the war was the fiercest, the dreams offered a promise of peace, but in the north, where the mountains protected them from violence, at least for the moment, they promised a good harvest instead.

The sun is weak, the dreams whispered. The growing season will be too short. By the time the snows come, all that will be left to harvest are stalks and rot unless you make a sacrifice to keep it at bay.

It was a terrible prophecy, but day by day, it spread across an already hungry land. It was enough to keep every farmer awake at night as he feared for his livelihood and the health of his children. You will die. Your animal and progeny will die. Everything will die.

That was true enough. Once Tenebroum figured out how to snuff to infernal lights a second time, it planned to starve everyone and build an army with their frozen corpses. All that would come later, though. For now, all it could do was watch and see what the good people of the realm would do.

Not every village fell, of course. In some regions, whole swaths of them resisted the urge to sacrifice one for the many. Perhaps twenty percent of them did, though, to its surprise, and the Lich was sure that many of the warriors that were the most likely candidates for such sacrifice in other towns and villages that had not yet given in lived in constant fear.

It turned out that most of the good men and women of the world found a way to justify a little blood on their hands in the same way that the Templars had when they set out to purge the temples to Oroza. It was an interesting lesson, and Tenebroum took it to heart.

Even as its armies began to march north through the vast tunnel that was finally quiet and finished, it was these choices that determined where and how it would strike. Over the winter, it had assembled thousands upon thousands of new monstrosities in every form. It had created its centipede calvary and living siege engines. It had repaired its shadow drake and Krulmvenor. More than anything, though, it had created a nearly unending supply of armored zombies and given them a general without equal.

Now, it was about to unleash them on a corner of the world that thought itself safe, but it would save those who were willing to bend the knee for last. After all, even with its vast and ever-expanding armies, it could not be everywhere at once. If they were willing to kill their own friends and family, then what else would it be able to get them to do before this war was done.

Tenebroum wasnt sure, but as people began to pray to the darkness to spare them, it found that it finally understood the appeal for why Gods worked so hard to attract their little chorus of worshipers.