Tenebroum

Chapter 154: Unrecognizable

Niama. That was the only word that they clung to as they were trapped in the Lich’s dark garden. Niama will save us, each of them whispered to each other, like the frightened sisters they were.

No one was coming to save them, though. Only Lunaris tried to visit them the once in that desperate place, but before she could even whisper whatever message it was she’d dared come to deliver, a whirlwind of inky black barbwire sprung up out of the hateful thing that was the circle that bound them together, and she was forced to take flight lest she be caught alongside the rest of them.

It had been the only moment of hope that the three of them had experienced since they’d been stolen from the moon, and now it had turned only into a bitter stone in all their hearts.

After that, the only visits they ever received were from that terrible shade. Sometimes, it came in the body of one of its servants, but more often, it came as a dark thunderhead billowing with wicked powers.

Sometimes their captor tormented them words, but it always tormented them with pain as it cut away at who they were and pruned them into its desired shape. They had no idea of what that was, of course. All they could see were the bleak walls that surrounded the dead courtyard, and the leaden sky above them as the goddesses slowly forgot everything they’d ever known.

They had all had names once. Tarieneian Vale. Verdant Glade. Thornwood. Now they often had trouble remembering who was who, and when they spoke they were no longer sure if they were talking to themselves or each other.

It gained other things, though, while it lost so much. Sometimes, that would be a strange new power manifesting, but mostly it was hate. The monstrosity that had been three Goddesses slowly became consumed by hate more with every passing day as everything they’d loved about themselves faded away. It hated what the darkness had done to it, but it could not stop or protect itself. It could not even fight back.

One day one of her voices just stopped, and a few weeks later a second one followed. The corrupted nature spirit didn’t know if those two parts of itself had died or finally merged. Since it couldn’t remember which of the three it had been and which two were the ones that had vanished, it seemed to be the later. That realization wasn’t enough to keep it from feeling alone.

That was when the Lich finally branded them with their new identity. By the time that dread creature showed up that fateful night wielding a darkly glowing wand with a smoldering tip, they had long since forgotten who they were or even what they were. The monstrosity that had once been more was bound to its tree like an anchor, but that did not stop it from pacing around the ring that was the boundary of its existence as it slowly mutated from something more plant than animal to something more animal than plant in a desperate and almost unconscious attempt to be free.

“No?” she asked, lashing out at the monster that had taken so much from her even as she knew that the thorny vines could’t cross the boundary any more than the rest of her. “Then come in here with me and I will settle for revenge.”

As the natural monstrosity spoke, she grew terrible claws from her six arms, but the Lich showed no reaction. Instead, with a few muttered words, she felt something gripping her heart even as it tried to beat in her chest.

“The only revenge you shall ever have is mine,” it intoned as she fell to her knees. “You will tear apart the Gods and Goddesses you once called friends—”

“Never!” she spat, but the Lich ignored her.

“You shall be their undoing,” it continued. “And when their souls are mine, I shall give you a gift.”

“We… I want nothing from you!” the thing that had once been a woman, no, several women, spat.

“And yet you shall have it just the same,” the skeleton whispered. “I shall give you dominion over all of the natural world that you consume so that no one else can rise up to take the place of those you slay.”

That was when she finally understood that she was being offered the chance to serve this terrible thing. She laughed at that, disturbingly, in all three voices.

That laughter came to an abrupt halt as the fist in her chest squeezed tighter. She collapsed to the ground, and then, as she lay there, a dozen skeletal hands came up from the cursed earth and held her tight.

She reached for the tree to try to return to the safety of its wood, but it was inches too far away, so when the Lich began to carve terrible words into her very soul with its evil-looking wand, all she could do was scream.

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She had no idea how long the process took or even if it was finished, but by the time dawn began to color the edge of the sky, it was gone. She was alone again, with nothing but the pain of the darkness’s latest atrocity to keep her company. She could only lay there as the vines and branches that made up her body writhed in complaint.

When she finally made it back to the tree, she didn’t come out again, not for more than a season. There was no point. There was only pain out there, and though the Lich could still hurt her in here, it was slightly more protected.

That torpor might have gone on forever, except for one spring day, she realized that her strength was returning. For many months, she’d confused the weakness that winter imposed on all their kind with the weakness caused by all of these surgeries and experiments.

As the sap began to flow, though, and she felt herself grow revitalized, she realized that she might be able to finally dig through the stone far beneath her. It was a slow, methodical plan, but day after day and week after week, she made progress. Once she finally felt the stone that had barred her way for so long crack, and she penetrated to the deep earth and pure water beyond it, she tried to drink deep of it but was almost immediately sickened.

Too much of a good thing after starving for so long can be almost as bad as the starvation itself, she reminded herself as she began to tunnel blindly toward the edge of the city.

It took weeks more to find some hearty climbing vines to link to, and once that was done, things moved quite quickly. So far, no one had discovered that she’d slipped from her cage, and despite how deep her roots had dug, she was determined not to give that away. If she could just reach the foliage beyond the city walls, she could flee to the nearest forest, and Niama would take her into her loving arms and fix her.

She was sure of it. There was nothing the goddess of nature could not do.

Two days later, while the red and the white suns were high in the sky and the Lich’s forces were all hiding from their gaze, she finally made contact with the weedy, overgrown irrigation ditches nearest the walls, and fled. In her ethereal form she raced along from one set of roots to the next. The fields had long since gone fallow and were being reclaimed by nature. That only helped her move faster.

Less than an hour after she escaped the city, she made it to the nearby woods only a dozen miles away. She would move farther tomorrow, and in time, she would reach even Niama’s court itself, but for now, she desperately needed to rest.

She tried to feast on nature's bounty here, but found the essence almost tainted. Could the darkness’s reach really extend so far? She wondered as she began to search for allies so she could explain what happened.

Shortly after noon she looked into a pond at her reflection and she immediately regretted it. What she saw was a horror. The left and right side of her face clearly belonged to two different people, and even if she had recognized whose body it had been originally, the fact that she had six arms made her look anything but natural. She was a monster, a nameless monster.

She concentrated, and after a few seconds she was able to become something close to what she thought that she might have one looked like. Even the indistinct features and curled vines that were only vaguely man shaped were better than the alternative, though.

It was almost twilight when she found a small encampment of the children of the forest. She concentrated, and with some effort, she forced her strange, new body to return to a form that they might find more pleasing.

“Greetings wanders, I come in—” As she spoke, the elves drew their weapons, obviously sensing something was wrong about her.

“Who are you?” one of the ageless young men demanded in the musical language of his race, pointing his black glass dagger at her. “You stink of evil. How did you find your war through our glamours.”

She wanted to tell him that the glamours, and the way they glowed in the deeping gloom were the reason she’d found them at all in the first place, but even as she opened her mouth to explain how she’d been captured and tortured by the evil gripping the land she felt the Lich smoothly slide into her mind.

“Such a good huntress,” it whispered in mock praise. “You’ve only just been released into the wild, and already you’ve found some of my most elusive quarry. Make sure not to let them get away.”

“I would never!” she hissed, trying to resist the command, but even as she did so, she felt her disguise coming undone and her other arms slipping free as their claws extended.

“By the goddess,” the closest forest child whispered, backing away as the ones farther from her started to scatter and run for their lives.

“You cannot escape me,” the Lich continued, ignoring the growing chaos. “Even if you could, you would soon starve to death because the light is forever lost to you. So, my Queen of Thorns, it is time to claim your destiny. Feast on the flesh of your allies by the time the sun rises, or I shall call you a failed experiment and feast on your soul instead.”

After that, the Lich was gone, but it didn’t matter. As he said that terrible name, Queen of Thorns, the profane symbols he’d carved into her very soul sprang to life and began to burn inside her like a forest fire. She now knew who she was again, for the first time in months, but she did not like it.

It became harder to think after that, and as her body began to shift with every move, and the bloody thorns erupted through her bark colored skin, she didn’t even try. She felt the hunger now, and she scented her prey, and that was enough.

A few minutes ago, she’d been a mutilated goddess looking for allies to save her, and now she was a thorned, eight-legged hunting cat bounding down the fading trail to rip those same allies to pieces. Part of her screamed in horror at this turn of events. She never even suspected that the Lich would let her escape, but now it was too late. She was gaining on her quarry rapidly, and any second, she’d be able to rip out his ageless little throat and drink the sweet taste of elder blood before she started looking for another corpse.

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