After the ambush in the woods, Tenebroum laid low. It was not out of fear of the moon, though, but caution. It had built a large bronze telescope with a fine lens that had been made from the clearest glass in the cities that it had sacked, but other than studying the pock-marked surface of Lunaris’s shield as she carried it through the sky every night or the heavily filtered wandering stars that the sun had become, it learned nothing new. So, it sought to steer well clear of her and her machinations.
Instead, it consulted its servants and studied the field, more aware than ever that it was a target. It had a world full of enemies now, and just because the sun had been shattered and the Lord of Light was no more did not mean that there weren’t other enemies that could slay it, nor that their mortal servants and avatars couldn't do terrible things.
Each target was scouted extensively in a variety of ways by different sorts of agents. Blackbirds looked for any signs of physical resistance from the populace, and at the same time, shades stalked the night, looking for more evidence of interference from the divine. It even listened to the pleading prayers of its growing flock for any clues about where resistance to its efforts might be starting to form.
Sometimes, these efforts located saboteurs or even mages that were eliminated before they could create too much mischief. Devouring their souls was enough to answer many of the questions about the traps they’d planned, but those who had given the order remained a step or two removed and remained inscrutable, much to its growing annoyance.
It was a simple thing to rip the souls from the still-warm bodies of rogues that were seeking to smash the keystone of a bridge, and it was nearly as easy to make a mage that had secreted themselves on the slopes of the Devlan Pass beg for death before forcing him to spill his guts about how he’d hoped to bury hundreds of zombies underneath a landslide, but that information did little good when they could provide no answers as to who gave the order or paid the bill.
Only once did the saboteurs manage to strike a serious blow against it, and that was when they made a brazen attack at noon and burned down the barns that it had been sheltering 800 soldiers in away from the harsh light of the sun. The loss was greater than any single battle it had faced, and before the coals of that victory had grown cool to the touch, Tenebroum responded by snuffing out every life within fifty miles to make sure that word of the tactic would not spread and undermine its disparate forces.
Even those subjects that had otherwise proven themselves loyal to the darkness over the last few months were slain. It simply wasn’t worth the risk that even one person might survive long enough to share such a dangerous idea. After that, though, it tried to limit its reliance on wooden buildings, and whenever possible, it stationed its troops in caverns, fortresses, and mines.
All these incidents combined to give Tenebroum pause, and after extensive reflection on the subject, it decided that it had become too predictable. For too long, it had operated with the advantage of surprise, but now even a blind man could see what it was up to. All of its movement had been in a single direction and all of its strongest forces were part of a single army, and whoever was watching it from a distance had noticed that, too.
Was that the influence of the light, it wondered? Was there too much order in its soul now? While the delegation to lesser servants for logistical and tactical purposes had been a great boon, Tenebroum was forced to concede that it was entirely possible that it had become too straightforward over the last year. So, it decided to muddy the waters. It dispatched lightning raids to the north and west and had Krulm’venor burn an entirely unrelated woods to the ground in case it was sending his fiery servant into a trap.
For the next month, the darkness upset all of its plans. Not because they weren’t correct, but because correct was predictable. That was the true lesson here. It had optimized its general to such an extent that a clever opponent could guess what it would do next. Excessive perfection was not a defect it had previously considered, and Tenebroum considered retiring its Paragon for a time until it could better understand the problem but decided against it.
It was too valuable a tool, and with so many warriors streaming under the mountain toward the front every day, the ability to delegate the fighting to someone else was vital to the Lich. Instead, it opted to do something that none of its enemies might expect: it sent envoys of peace to every kingdom that was still standing with the same message: swear fealty to the rising shadow, and you may yet live.
Sometimes, these messengers took the form of a living person and other times, the messenger was a construct custom-built for that purpose. Living messengers were usually either one of the fanatic priests who listened to Verdenin’s increasingly unhinged sermons throwing off the chains of the flesh in rapt joy or a person from one of the villages that its dead armies had spared within the same domain.
Stolen novel; please report.
While there was never a shortage of the latter, it sometimes amused the Lich to compel one of them to make the offer. It knew precisely what would happen to the trembling man or woman that dutifully went to their Lord’s court to make the terrible offer on its behalf, almost as much as it amused the darkness to burn their village down and leave them alive long enough to watch if they refused.
These poor souls were almost universally executed on the spot for consorting with evil, proving that the dead were a better option. At first, Tenebroum sent ghosts like his favorite bard with these glad tidings, but they were, unfortunately, able to extract very little in the way of retribution because of their nonphysical nature.
Eventually, Tenebroum started sending skulls to every town and keep days or weeks ahead of its armies. They were simple, custom constructs with a single purpose: they delivered the Lich’s terms, and if those terms were rejected, then they would shriek in outrage, burst into flames, and explode with enough violence that everyone in the room would be shredded by bone shrapnel before they could escape.
The Lich enjoyed that part so much that it ordered siege engines built just for firing the things at fortified structures. There were many ways to scare mortals half to death and make their essence more palatable for its consumption, but few of them were quite so enjoyable as flaming skulls soaring through the air moments before their death.
Eventually, the Counts and Barons in the path of its armies came to fear those death's heads. They dreaded them almost as much as the armies themselves because once they were delivered, the fate of the recipient was sealed.
In the past, one might be able to refuse it and live for a week or two while its soldiers moved into position. An enterprising Lord might even flee east and try to stay ahead of the armies of death. Now, though, refusing the Lich’s terms came with a very personal cost.
Not that they were particularly onerous. All that it demanded was 10% of the living, the Lord’s weight in gold and silver, and an oath of eternal allegiance to reject the gods of light and serve the dark. Surprisingly, few were willing to make that deal, though. Even the slenderest of lords seemed willing to risk everyone's lives for the sake of a few coins.
It didn’t matter to the Lich that its entreaties were rejected. All that mattered was the division and fear it sowed. How could someone hope to second guess where it was or what it would do next to lay another trap when it seemed that its forces might make peace or strike out in fresh conflict in any direction at once.
Besides, Tenebroum didn’t want the fealty of anyone who didn’t have those dark, murderous impulses. Disloyal servants would make for better zombies or drudges than they would living, breathing humans that could cause mischief.
This game occupied it for a time, and as victory after victory stacked up, a few noblemen like Count Wardrick and Duke Elbin sued for peace. The darkness only accepted their offers because it knew just how many skeletons were already in their closets, of course, but it was sufficiently shocking news to echo across the continent and put its opponents on their back foot.
When the Lich’s forces entirely skipped their kingdoms though and followed through on its pledge of peace, the floodgates opened. Suddenly, every Lord wanted to swear their allegiance to the dark. Tenebroum saw through this too, or at least its puppeteer did. It understood human nature better than any true human, and it could see which groups were playing for time and which sought to position their armies for a stronger counterattack in the rear of the undead army.
They were foolish thoughts since armies of the dead lacked supply lines in the traditional sense, but even at the end of the world, the powers that be still sought the comfort of the familiar rules of war, and they died to a man. Not a single one of those vipers was allowed to know peace or even given an audience. In fact, the deathheads disappeared altogether after that. Now that its opponents expected it to seek peace, it sought only war once more.
Why shouldn’t it? Peace had been an interesting diversion, but while the darkness had tens of thousands of subjects in its lands now, corpses outnumbered the living at least five to one, and that ratio only grew by the day.
It was an interesting calculus. Dead could not betray it, but they were fueled by essence. Every day, it burned whole lakes of the stuff and replenished them through cruelty and murder. Living subjects, on the other hand, provided essence, but at the cost that they were not direct pawns for the Lich to control. There was an argument to be made that it should leave as many alive as it could and make peace with anyone who earnestly wanted it, but that seemed unwise.
“No,” the darkness whispered to its far-flung council. “We have only one offer of peace left, and we must save that for the King after all hope was lost.”
That wouldn’t be too much longer, of course. There were still a few large armies, and the mages seemed to be up to something from their growing fortress on the banks of the Oroza, but in terms of defenses, there was simply nothing to stand in its way for hundreds of miles.
So, while its general and its copies played at war, growing ever more skilled at striking hard targets with small groups of death knights and maneuvering the larger blocks of troops in the field to optimal positions for the battles that would follow, the Lich began work on yet another new project. This time, it would make a messenger worthy of a King and see what sort of reception it received at court.
Tenebroum had made many things as deadly as possible, and it had made even more creatures that were optimized for efficiency. It had never attempted to make a construct that was as beautiful as possible, and that, it decided, would be a more interesting project than whatever outcome came of its newest toy.