Some distant part of Tenebroum’s mind recalled what it was the infernal rats had told it when they had whispered about this encounter. Crystallized dragon fire, they had called it. The breath of a wyrm frozen in time. The mages claimed that they lacked the power to release it with their weakened numbers and that only the Templar’s light might succeed where they had failed.
The Rat’s smelled subterfuge in that statement. They’d even thought to mention that to the Lich, but at no time had they mentioned that the Templar might have had the scent of deceit about his as well. That no longer mattered, though.
Now, everything was burning. The fire had shattered its prison, and launched toward it like a Tsunami with ferocity that might have melted even Krulm’venor’s specialized form. The wall of fire burned in yellow and white, blasting back the rubble that was the remains of the gatehouse from the force of the shockwave, and bathing the world in incandescent flames for twenty yards on either side of the breach in the walls, and extending backward a hundred yards behind Tenebroum.
There was nowhere for it to run now, not even if it wanted to. All it could do was trust in the skill of its unwilling dwarven artificers as it moved one step at a time toward the man that was holding the torrent of fire in his bare hands. The Lich was a creature that was made up of pure will, but that didn’t make enduring what it was experiencing any less agonizing.
The shadows on its blades had winked out immediately, but it only dropped their rusted cores as the phalanges of its hands began to reduce to slag and ash. In those first few terrible seconds it lost two hands and an arm. Finally, the head of this construct itself was blasted to ash in the high-pressure torrent of inhuman flame.
Tenebroum had not designed this body to endure fire like this. Nothing was. Its mind raced as it tried to imagine what it would need to do that, but even if it could craft the brittle ceramic bones, the dragon scales were something it simply didn't have.
This form had been created to fight the light, which wasn’t quite the same as what it was facing now. Light it could have handled for hours. Wearing this form, the Lich could have walked for several minutes under the noon day suns if it had been required. But against the heat of a dragon’s breath? The gilded coating of the Lich’s bones very nearly evaporated under that terrible assault.
Bronze and brass didn’t last much longer, and after a few seconds, even the Lich’s steel bones began to redden and soften. In the end, it was only its mithril armor that saved it.
As its arms fell and its legs gave way only a few steps away from its goal, the darkness was forced to hide in an ever smaller portion of its carefully crafted vessel. Even among the grave goods the Lich had looted, mithril was a rare substance, and this was the only construct it had built with half so much of the stuff. Fire, as it turned out, could not penetrate the silvery metal, and even as the flames began to subside and it was forced to cower there like some sort of metallic beached tortoise, it endured.
Less than half a minute after the torrent of fire started, it was over. The nearby stone walls had been melted by the flames, and anything not made of stone or metal had been erased from existence.
For a moment, the Lich stood ready to flee and lick its wounds, but then it saw the mangled corpse of its opponent and changed its mind. The front of the Templar had been burned away down to the bones. Even as it watched, it could see the man trying to heal himself from the impossible damage, but the Lich didn’t see how that would be possible. It could see the man’s tortured lungs rising and falling in his charred rib cage, and though he still had his arms and hands, they were practically skeletonized from the elbow down.
The Lich rose up from its own charred corpse as a vaporous mist and moved with haste to the closest war zombie it could find. It felt terribly vulnerable in this form but not so vulnerable that it would not see this man dead. Just because it should have been impossible to recover from such a grievous injury did not mean it would not happen.
So, with the uneven gait that came from no longer being used to walking with only two legs, the Lich trudged back over to the man, raised the rusting great sword clutched in its skeletal hands, and then brought the weapon down hard, shoving a foot and a half of steel through his heart and into the scorched earth beyond. Pinning the Templar to the ground and finally forcing his cursed heart to stop its endless beating.
The light left his body then and drifted toward the night sky. The Lich wanted to stop it. It had meant to capture and study it, but all the devices and spirits that it thought might have accomplished that had been annihilated. Instead, it let the thing go. It was too depleted to do more than that.
It could still claim the second most important soul present on the battlefield, though. The darkness poured out of the construct. It was animating like smoke and traveled down the blade into the still-warm body of its foe.
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This was one soul it would treasure. Tenebroum wasn’t yet sure what it would do with it, but these bones would be taken back to it lair for something truly diabolical. It found the soul just where it expected, and swarmed it, encompassing it completely, so escape would be impossible.
To its surprise, the man didn’t even struggle when it forced its way inside every last pore, seeking to suffuse him completely. He just said, “So you survived that, did you monster? The mages told me there was no way anything could stand up to the dragon’s fury. Not even me. I suppose they were right about the last part at least.”
“Silence!” Tenebroum countered. “You will have all the time in the world to apologize to me and beg forgiveness, but now—”
“Apologize?” the Templar laughed. “I’m just sorry that I didn’t eradicate you with the same weapon that killed me. I knew I couldn’t trust those damn mages. Jordan was an okay sort, but the rest of them? Liars and thieves, the lot of them.”
Tenebroum was so apoplectic as it tried to understand what was going on that it merely floated there as a slowly solidifying haze while the annoying warrior spoke. Even now, without the light, he still had a small aura about him. The darkness reached forward to try to grip him and force him to comply, but its dark tendrils slid right off the ghost.
“All of this, and you still think you have a hold over me?” the Templar asked, looking at him in amusement.
“I control the forces of death itself! All spirits are within my power!” Tenebroum roared, but that only made the frustrating warrior’s smile broader.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he asked with a shake of his head,
You only snared Siddrim with Todd’s stained soul, you—”
“Of course I know that!” Tenebroum hissed, swirling around the man like a storm as he looked for an opening.
It couldn’t find one, though, and more frustratingly, even as it watched, the spirit was already fading away. That was intolerable. There should be nowhere for it to flee to, and yet it was happening!
“Then you already know that you have no hold on a soul without any darkness in it,” The Templar said with a shrug. “You cannot stop me from going to the Elysian Fields that were promised to me and my brothers and sisters.” He looked like he was going to sleep now.
“No soul is clean!” Tenebroum raged. “No life is without taint!”
“True, mostly,” the Templar agreed. “There was a little darkness in even my soul once upon a time. I used to hate myself for all the mistakes I’d made, but a few years with the light burning away inside you is enough to bleach even those transgressions to nothing. I die with only a single regret, but will accept that I maimed you at the very least…”
Tenebroum’s scream of incoherent rage as the mans spirit slowly faded from view and crumbled to nothingness was enough to stop its constructs in mid stride for a hundred yards in any direction. A dozen of its blackbirds fell from the sky.
It had experienced anger and frustration before, but it had never felt volcanic rage like this, and for a while, its ghostly form flickered and jittered like an agitated swarm of wasps. It had achieved its goal, and yet somehow it had gotten nothing it wanted from the event.
It had faced down terrible magics, beaten what might have been its only real adversary left on the continent besides the mages and the gods themselves, and somehow it had walked away with nothing. Not the divine spark, nor even the soul of its enemy to torture for the rest of eternity.
Despite that, much of its power had been bled away in the assault. I maimed you, at the very least. Those words echoed in its mind even as it took in its ragged form that was closer to a shredded burial shroud than a cloak of pure midnight.
The fool did nothing that cannot be repaired with a day or two of rest! Tenebroum griped, but the words were cold comfort.
Finally, when it was so angry that it would have gnashed its teeth with rage if it still had a body, the Lich retreated, floating above and away from the burning city. The defenses were failing on several fronts now, and it no longer saw mages casting their bolts from the walls.
“Crush the defenders and sink the ships, but leave the rest to cower in their homes,” Tenebroum commanded as it drifted higher and further to take in all the violence.
It was wounded, frustrated, and in absolutely no mood to enjoy the mindless slaughter that would unfold next. So, that would wait for tomorrow. There was no hurry any longer. The shepherd was dead, and the sheep would mill around, panicky and bleating, until they were ready for the slaughter.
The Lich was determined to enjoy that moment, and if it could not do so tonight, then they would just be allowed to keep breathing for another day or two until it had collected itself.
Yes, it thought as it drifted up into the night to look for the nearest dungeon that would be dark enough to allow it to rest. Rahkin’s defenders are no more. The table is set now, and the feast can begin at my leisure.
There were still thousands of living souls in those broken city walls, and soon, every last one of them would die screaming for its pleasure.