Tenebroum

Chapter 132: Bread Crumbs

Ghroshian was not aware of the Templar when he first entered Rahkin, but when the Lich informed them the following night, they were not surprised. They had felt the menace from the moment the man had walked through the gate and scurried to find new, deeper hiding places for many of the rats that made up its greater whole.

It was an old scent. The scent of a predator. However, because everyone had said that Siddrim was dead and gone, it had been hard for them to reconcile that baleful aura with the Lord of Light.

It was him, though, and as soon as the Lich spoke those words, the rat god trembled. The fear only grew stronger when it was given the terrible order that they feared most in the moments after that.

“You are to follow him,” the darkness whispered to him from the mouth of its incapacitated reaver. “You are to watch all that the man with glowing eyes says and does as in this cursed city! We spent the winter denying them food and hope, and now, in a single day, the citizens are renewed. This is an outrage!”

They agreed, of course, but Ghrosian would have said anything to the Lich to avoid becoming the target of that rage. Its wraiths had already abducted more than a few rats that made up the pieces of their soul, and even without a physical manifestation here to enforce its will, the hungry God dared not oppose the thing that had become its master.

Of course, they dare not get too close to the specter of Siddrim’s light, either. They remembered too well how it burned, even around corners and through doors. Those terrifying memories were some of the oldest, most vivid parts of themself, and they had a feeling that they had not been quite so fearful in the days before that God taught them humility.

Still, the twin fears forced them to agree, at least to a very small degree, and that night, they sent dry, desiccated mice into the walls of the palace to observe what they could and report back. They would not get too close, but they would do enough so that they would not earn a punishment either. They had few enough bodies after the reaver had practically hunted them to extinction, and they would need time to grow from hundreds to tens of thousands all over again.

Getting into the palace was easy enough these days. Everywhere except the kitchens, of course. Thanks to all their hard work, the places in the city that might contain food were the most tightly guarded.

Everything else, though? The movement of dead armies beyond the walls attacked all the human attention, and since the reaver’s nightly attacks had been brought to an end weeks ago, the guards and the mages focused their attention on the darkness outside the walls.

The palace was an empty place these days, though, after the King and his sons had died. There were no longer banquets or parties, and even if there had been food to spare, it would have been unlikely to change things.

Why should it? According to every corpse they had feasted on, from the high-born to the gutter scum, the queen was in perpetual mourning after the death of nearly her whole family. The fact that they’d never really found out who did it and simply hung a few criminals as servants of the dark only twisted the knife.

Ghroshian didn’t mind, though. They enjoyed twisting the knife. Torment and grief were both fine spices for rotting meat, and any corpse that came from the palace these days had at least a hint of both.

So they would have enjoyed this little expedition as their mice fanned out through the grand hall and the private chambers of the royal family in search of their quarry and other tasty secrets, were it not for those terrible eyes.

When the mouse first saw them in the private dining room of the royal family, it retreated almost immediately, and it took all of the hungry God’s willpower to force that small tendril of itself to return to the tiny crack in the corner of the room where it could see the Templar talking with the queen and her generals about the cities defenses.

This was exactly the sort of conversation that Ghroshian should have been listening to, but it couldn’t. It couldn’t focus on anything but those twine golden eyes, which were brighter than any of the other lanterns in the room.

The man sat there with salt and paper stubble and slate gray hair. He even looked somewhat frail without his armor on, but all that they could see were those two terrible eyes sending out beams of light like twin lighthouses.

Once, when the man briefly turned in Ghroshian’s direction, the mouse that had been occupying simply died on the spot. The man hadn’t even been the one to do it. It simply cut off the limb rather than risk that the Templar’s gaze might fall on even the tiniest part of them.

Cursing itself for what the Lich would do to it if it found out, the rat God quickly rushed two more pieces of itself to the room, sending one to the same crack that already held one mouse corpse and sending the other to a cabinet on the far wall that it had long ago picked clean of anything edible.

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Once there, it forced itself to sit there with their eyes closed and listen to the words coming from the humans. Even with the vengeful glow so close that it might be able to be seen, it forced itself to listen and remember as they discussed the parts of the wall most likely to be attacked and how what they needed to do most was reinforce the harbor because the dead did not need to breathe.

It was only after the Templar asked to be allowed to visit the Grand Temple, which had since been sealed, and the queen opted to send her daughter to accompany the man, that the rat god allowed the fear to overflow it.

It was alone in the room now. Nothing had harmed it, and there was no reason to fear, but it could sense the danger, and it waited for a very long time before belatedly sending more of themself to the Grand Temple to await the Templar’s arrival.

That spot, at least, was safe enough. The light had long since left it, and it had since eaten the rugs, the books and scrolls, and every tapestry except those that were hung by chains too high up for it to reach.

The place had long since ceased to be holy, and that had been a great comfort to the rat god since its return to unlife. If Siddrim could be snuffed like an ordinary candle, then there was nothing that would stop it from feasting on the world until there was nothing left.

Well, nothing but the Lich, of course. It was not inclined to cross anyone that could defeat the Lord of Light, though, and even if there was something strangely familiar about the darkness, it—

Their thoughts stilled immediately as the guards forced open the door for the first time in months, and two people entered the darkened chapel. The glowing eyes of the man made their indities unmistakable, and all eight parts of themself froze in fear as the two humans made their way through the colonnade and toward the altar.

“And to think, even in this sorry state, it is still probably the grandest temple to Siddrim left in the whole kingdom,” the Templar said, gesturing widely at the splintered wood of broken stained glass in so many of the decorative elements.

Ghroshian had never once tried to evaluate this room as beautiful or not, but it could see how a human might. It was a wide open space, and the thick pillars held up the massive vaulted ceiling that made even this muted conversation easy to hear. In the light of day, it was probably quite bright, too, thanks to the multicolored windows that were plastered all along the southern walls.

It had no interest in such things, though, and didn’t let the stray thought distract it for even a moment as it focused on the people as well as the words they were speaking. They were talking about the nature of darkness, and the Princess seemed to have some terrible secret she wanted to confess, but they were more interested in how much its hunger had taken a toll on her previously lovely body.

She had been beautiful once, but between the lack of food and whatever it was she felt guilty about, she was little more than skin and bone. As sixteen sets of eyes observed her from different corners of the room, Ghroshian couldn’t help but wonder how soon it would be able to feast on the marrow of her bones.

“I… I had to, you understand. It was terrible, but he was going to—” the Princess said.

“Enough,” the Templar interrupted. “I am not your confessor; do you understand that? These terrible eyes allow me to see everything you have done, but I cannot punish you for it, do you understand? All of that will be between you and whatever God judges each of us in Siddrim’s absence when we pass over to the other side.”

“But—” she persisted.

“But nothing,” the Templar said, shaking his head. “Let me ask you this. Did you do the things that you did for your own benefit or for the light?”

“I had to fight the darkness,” she pleaded. “All who seek to ally with evil or placate them are evil themselves.”

“Correct,” he agreed. “Then you have nothing to fear.”

Ghroshian wasn’t quite sure what it was they were talking about, but they were intrigued. Nothing tasted better than a secret. At least nothing that wasn’t still warm and bleeding.

This had the taste of something older, and it desperately wanted to know more, but the holy man kept cutting her off. That was just as well, unfortunately, because their frustration was doing an excellent job of counteracting their collective fear as they watched the scene.

“That isn’t enough,” she whined. “I did something terrible. I demand to be punished for it, and you’re the only one left in the kingdom that can grant me that!”

The older man sighed. “Do you think I haven’t had to do terrible things? Sometimes, the light requires that and more. Do you think that these men haven’t also had to do terrible things to preserve the balance? Perhaps if we’d all done more, there would still be one sun in the sky instead of four.”

As he spoke and gestured at the men in the windows who were presumably saints or at least other holy men, a strange thing began to happen. They started to illuminate. One at a time, the panes began to glow. Worse than that, some small part of the consecration was returning to the ancient tile floor.

Ghroshian could feel their tiny feet beginning to burn at the unwelcome sensation, and most of their bodies fled. Even so, though, one remained to try to see how this would play out.

The Templar was merely lecturing her on the nature of morality and the terrible deeds that each of these men had done for the greater good. As he spoke, though, candleless candelabras were relighting, rays of a non-existent sun were streaming through windows that no longer seemed to be missing glass, and even the thick coat of dust that shrouded the entire room had disappeared.

“That’s nothing though,” she declared. “I did so much worse than that. I—”

Ghroshian strained to listen, but even as she moved to finally spill her secret, their final mouse body burst into holy white flames, and it was unable to make out whatever terrible burden it was that this woman was holding. It would tell all this to the Lich, of course. Hopefully, it would be able to make heads or tales of both the Princess's disposition and the way that the temple could return to life like that, even for a moment of grandeur.

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