Tenebroum

Chapter 190: Dark World

They’d expected another empty town. At worst, Leo and his friends had thought they might find a zombie or two. However, when the things boiled out of the nest that they’d turned one of the largest barns that were still standing into, they’d all reassessed that as they drew their blades and shouted plans to each other as they pulled out their weapons and spread out to take out the foes that looked to be the most vulnerable.

In a sane world, Leo would have noticed the barn a long way off based purely on the amount of evil it exuded. This wasn’t a sane world, though, not anymore. Everything was tainted. Only the wildest of places or the holiest of ruins weren’t covered by a thin film of evil.

Darkness hadn’t just broken the sun. It had covered the world like soot after a wildfire, and just walking through it was enough to make Leo feel tainted. Right now wasn’t the time to worry about that, though. Instead, he charged the center of the enemy line, seeking to bring down as many as possible, heedless of his own safety.

He had to. He was the one with the silverblade.

They’d finally found enough steel weapons for everyone else, but they were nothing special. Only he wielded a weapon that had been crafted by gods to strike at the very heart of evil, and it would have been a tragedy to waste that.

That was why he took the head off the first two zombies to get within range. He sliced right through their necks, leaving a trail of ashes and cinders as the holy magic in this blade annihilated the darkness.

The next opponent was wider than the last two put together and appeared to be a monster largely made of swine that had been stitched together. He took it apart in a single slash right down the middle.

That blow revealed some sort of alchemical contraption in its bloated belly. For a moment, he thought the thing might blow him up. Brother Faerbar had talked about such enemies long ago. Fortunately, either time or his holy blade disarmed the thing, and the worst it did was shower him with ichor as it fell into two.

Leo wiped the gore from his face as he took in the dwindling enemies left on the battlefield. A few of his friends seemed to be wounded, but none of them seemed to be in too much trouble. They’d all be in trouble if they didn’t keep moving, though. So, instead of worrying, he gripped his silverblade that much tighter and charged the biggest monster left on the battlefield.

This one was a sloppy monstrosity that was obviously made from leftover farm parts. That wasn’t an exaggeration, either. It was a sort of centaur made from the parts of two or three cows. Only the skull on top, and presumably the soul that powered the thing, was human. Even its arms were the wrong shape for a man, but two of them ended with huge rusted scythes that had once been used to harvest grain were now used to harvest flesh instead.

Leo rolled smoothly under the first one as he closed the distance and brought his sword up to parry the second. A rusted scythe had no chance against a divinely forged blade of light, though, and as the two weapons met, his slightly glowing blade cut right through the other, sending the tip tumbling into the scraggly grass on his left, even as the stump of the blade continued off to his right.

Once, he’d thought that he was weak compared to his friends, but with a growth spurt, he’d learned the truth: they’d all gotten strong; they’d just practiced together for so many years that they’d never noticed. They’d never had something weak to compare themselves to, and monsters like this, though brutal and horrific, were slower and clumsier than he’d been at the age of eight. Leo could dance rings around them, but in this case, he would settle for chopping them into pieces.

Both of the blows were powerful and might have cut an unarmored man in two as easily as they sliced through the air. However, now that they were past him, there was no way that the bony monstrosity would be able to reverse its blades and bring them to bear before he struck it down.

The only problem was that the beast was more than a little too tall for him. That, at least, was easily remedied. Leo cut off both of its forelegs at the mid-thigh, then ran past it before it could topple onto him. It was only when it was flailing on the ground in an attempt to right itself that Leo was finally able to split the skull in half, and the darkness that had filled it left its empty eye sockets in a whiff of black smoke.

“They’re really getting down to it,” Reggie joked as he walked over to Leo, now that everything was dead. “Sending farmers and farm animals after us.”

Leo thought about reminding his friend that all they’d really encountered were the dregs of some vast force. Somewhere, there were huge, dark armies marching across the landscape, but these weren’t it. They were the broken cast of bits of a much larger force. Even these didn’t leave them entirely unscathed, though.

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Today, it had been reanimated farmers. Two days ago, it had been soldiers missing limbs or otherwise mutilated. The dead were everywhere. Sometimes, it was just one zombie staggering in circles or trying to walk repeatedly through a solid object like a wall or trunk.

“I’m not sure anyone is sending these things,” Leo said with a shake of his head. “I think they’re just kind of everywhere these days.”

“You worry too much,” Jenna said, coming up behind him and ruffling his hair. She was bleeding, but if she wasn’t worrying about it, then he wasn’t either. Almost all of them could heal minor wounds. He didn’t have to risk being called a show-off by insisting he be the one to take care of it. “Me, I think the war’s over, and this is all that’s left. We clear these things out, and we’ll all be heroes. They’ll tell stories about us.”

“They will,”Leo agreed, adding mentally If there’s anyone left besides us to tell them.

They’d found plenty of broken-down monsters and empty villages. They’d found forests too afraid for birdsong and fields that had been abandoned for years. The one thing they hadn’t found though, was any survivors.

Some of the children had initially argued they should go back to Jordan’s home, Sedgim Manor. Others had argued that made no sense and that the reason they’d left that place was because Jordan knew that something bad was going to happen to them if they stayed.

They’d looked to Leo for answers, but the Goddess hadn’t given him answers. She’d only given him a sword. So, he’d argued they should return to Siddrimar. A holy city like that might have survivors.

Everyone had agreed with that, but the ruins had been just as empty as all the towns they’d passed through before and after that destination. All that Siddrim’s most favored city had were weapons of steel that were untainted by darkness. They’d even found some armor, though it didn’t fit anyone very well. They’d have to make do.

“It’s going to be okay,” Cynara agreed as she walked up to join the rest of them. “Surely the capital still stands, even if the rest of the world has fallen, and if it hasn’t? Well, then other survivors are likely heading there, too.”

“Screw other survivors,” Reggie laughed, “I want some real food!”

There were a few laughs or muttered agreements at that. They hunted enough that none of them starved, but there were few fruits this time of year, and though they occasionally found grain tucked away in village granaries, it was inevitably moldy or otherwise ruined. Sometimes, they found a few random crops in the field, but it wasn’t enough to feed them. It was just enough to make all of them hunger for more.

“Food, people, it’s all going to be in the same place, I expect,” Leo said with a shrug. “Where this darkness ends, life begins. We just need to find the edge.”

Leo was heading toward Rahkin just as much as he was heading away from the darkness to the south. He knew that with his blade, he should probably be heading straight toward it, but he wasn’t strong enough yet, even with this sword.

He knew that one day, he’d have to go south and fight whatever it was that was lurking there in the darkness that Jordan had described to all of them. Part of him felt badly that he wasn’t just going straight away, but then, he had everyone else to think of. If anyone should die, even Toman, then he—

“There’s another one,” Cynara said, pointing at a nearby tree and completely interrupting his train of thought.

Leo looked up and noticed that there was a bird sitting on one of the branches of a tree at the edge of the field. It wasn’t a bird, though, not a natural one, anyway. It was one of the spies that the Lich had scattered across the world.

Honestly, he was surprised he hadn’t seen it before now. The bloom of evil on the thing was enough to taint the tree that it stood upon, and it took flight almost as soon as he looked at it with his glowing eyes.

Leo focused hard, shutting his eyes tight as he held his empty hand up and gestured vaguely at the blackbird. It wasn’t the first red-eyed monstrosity he’d brought down, but it was always a challenge. Sometimes, they got away. It was those nights that where feared they’d wake up to some terrible ambush. So far, that hadn’t happened, but that didn’t mean he wanted to tempt fate.

Leo pulled at the light inside him just like he might have if he was trying to heal an especially grievous wound, and then, with a silent prayer to a dead god, he released it and opened his eyes. The result was nothing impressive. He didn’t smite it with his gaze or shoot a beam of fire like Jordan might have. Instead, the clouds that covered the overcast sky cleared ever so briefly, and a single sunbeam from the bluish wandering star that was out just now struck the thing.

The abomination that had once been a crow, or perhaps a raven, burst into flames mid-flight and fell from the sky, leaving a trail of greasy black smoke behind it.

“Come on,” Leo said. “We should keep moving. Rahkin is still a long way away.”

Everyone fell into line with him after they’d retrieved their packs where they’d dropped them before the fight, and the group started moving north again. It used to be that no one listened to him, but even if Leo knew it was mostly because of the glowing sword and the story about the Goddess that had given it to him, he still enjoyed the fact that people were finally taking him seriously, and he smiled as began to cross the fallow, weed-strewn field.

They still had hours before dark, and he wanted to find something a little more defendable than this. It wasn’t a matter of if the next monstrosities found them. It was a matter of when.