Chapter 134: Violation

Chapter 134: Violation

As Tenebroum watched the latest skirmish preparing to unfold outside the walls of the capital, it had trouble focusing on the details. It wasn’t because it was upset that the Templar, with the light in his eyes, had made it unharmed into the city or even that they had as of yet been unable to find where the man had sheltered for so long. Even the growing light behind Rahkin’s walls wasn’t enough to make the Lich too angry.

That the man had failed to fall into the trap that the Lich had prepared for him so long ago was disappointing but not unexpected. He did not seem to be half so weak as his squire had been. Still, even this latest twist was unlikely to deny it the city. The man had not been able to rally his thousands-strong Templar army against it at its nadir, and it was much stronger now than it had been before.

It was just how well the events had played out on the moon the other day. That was enough to make all of this seem trivial.

The gods themselves are afraid of me, it pondered to itself in equal parts contentment and gloating.

After that, as delicious as the feasts of the battlefield were, any victory tonight simply wouldn’t compare. After all, last night, it had dined on the flesh of the divine for the first time in a long time. Nothing compared to that.

Not even victory, it had struck by sending real fear into the hearts of the gods that were arrayed against it. The Lich had spent months growing that corrupted dryad in Constantinal, and for most of that time, she was a scrawny, withered thing that hung on the edge of life and death. It was only shortly before the nature Goddess had called her to the conclave that the dryad looked like she might survive, and the Lich had seized on the opportunity and stitched a truly nasty surprise inside of her.

It had intended to leave the relic it had embedded inside of its wooden servant as a measure of last resort when some God or another detected its presence. Only none of them had. His construct had simply been pitied by Niama for the terrible fate that Krulm’venor had inflicted on her, and she had been escorted to a seat so that she could speak her words of warning toward the end of their little meeting.

Sitting behind her eyes, the Lich had soaked up all it could from that meeting. After all, while killing or even kidnapping a god would be an incredible victory, spying on the whole affair and leaving while its enemies were none the wiser would have been even better. At least, that’s what it had thought until it saw her there.

It knew that Oroza yet lived, and though even the sight of her was enough to make its anger boil over, it resisted the urge immediately. The Lich was content to note her weakness and gloat over her eventual demise. When she revealed secret after secret that belonged to it, though, that was when it grew truly enraged and changed its mind.

The Lich could not yet tell if its efforts to poison the All-Father’s soul were bearing fruit or that God was naturally a curmudgeonly sort; with a dwarf, it could well be either. Either way, it approved of the stone man’s need for secrecy, as well as the way it hamstrung all the other gods as they tried desperately to get help for their own concerns while desperately trying to frame it as working together.

Part of the Lich wished it had tried to capture Lunaris itself with such a trap, but it knew that the odds of this working on a Goddess with real power, let alone powers over light and magic, were slim to none.

Capturing half a dozen different minor deities for later vivisection could not be called a failure by any stretch of the imagination, though, and watching all those around its dark beachhead struggle with the monsters that poured out of that well of darkness was more than satisfying as well. Tenebroum’s one regret when the whole thing was done was that it had not been able to pull Oroza over the threshold.

That would have made the whole thing perfect, it decided fondly, as the Lich looked out the eyes of a swarm of ravens at the Walls of Rahkin while it viewed the skirmishes that its dark Paragon was engaged in on a nearly nightly basis. They were an ongoing process that typically consisted of one or two fronts of low-quality drudges and worn-down war zombies to attract the defender’s attention while some new abomination or another damaged a wall or wreaked havoc from an unexpected quarter. Today, it was a frontal assault to test out the limits of their mage’s range while specters assaulted the smallest gate on the northern side of the city.

If that went well, they would let in a unit of death knights who would do real damage as they fought their way toward the city’s largest granary, but Tenebroum was not confident it would be successful. The only way it was likely to take this city was in a large-scale battle where it committed everything in the area to overwhelm the defenders, and it was unwilling to do that as long as it and its general suspected they still had trucks up their sleeve.

So instead, they opted to inflict a death by a thousand cuts until the defenders’ edge were suitably dulled. Often, very little was accomplished, but sometimes, it found a vulnerability and wreaked true havoc. That had been the case last week when it had sent a brigade of zombies across the ocean floor and into the city’s harbor at night.

Its Paragon had given it a two-thirds chance of losing the whole expedition to an ocean god or another spirit like Oroza, but no one had noticed, and instead, the sodden zombies had come ashore without issue. That, in turn, led to the damage and destruction of dozens of vessels and hundreds of deaths before the city watch had finally vanquished the last of them.

Repeat performances hadn’t worked any better than this frontal assault was working now. Even as it watched through the eyes of its flock, it could see that the dregs that were assaulting the gate tonight were already being mowed down with a mixture of arcane magic and holy might.

Every attack was a small victory, though. Tonight, it would allow the Lich and its minions to better understand the range and capabilities of the dwindling defenders, and in the case of its recent battle for the harbor, it had forced the humans to station guards all around the harbor, now only further stretched their already dwindling defenses.

As it watched a watchman with light in his eyes hold back the specters long enough for reinforcements to arrive, denying the death knights entry and forcing them to retreat, the Lich sighed. In time, the city would break, and the Lich was confident of that. No matter what magic Brother Faerbar brought to wield against it, it would not be enough to stop what was coming