Tenebroum

Chapter 207: Quenching the Forge

When all was in readiness, Tenebroum opened the floodgates and sent dozens of cubic yards a second cascading into the darkness below. In time, the river might run dry, but if that happened, thanks to its efforts to salt the river and weaken her further, the canal would not run dry until the oceans did.

None of the spirits that swirled within the Lich had any idea how much water it would take to quench the fires of creation or what the consequences might be. The mages didn’t know, and neither did the dwarves. Even the All-Father didn’t know. The spirits of the dwarven dead all seemed to believe that the fires would eventually go out on their own if the forge went unused for too long, but no one had any idea if that would be years or decades, and the Lich was unwilling to wait one day longer than it had to.

So, instead, it emptied the river and sent the flood flowing into the depths. Even falling as fast as it was, it still took several minutes for the first drops to reach the fiery depths. These evaporated before they even made contact, but the same could not be said for the wall of water that followed.

The eruption of steam that followed was enormous, obscuring the whole cavern in a blanket of scalding fog. Tenebroum knew nothing about volcanos or engineering, but some of the dwarven spirits did, and as the lava met with the torrents of water, they whispered what was happening. They explained how the pressure was building in an attempt to erupt but was unable to because of the sheer weight of the water.

Instead, the steam rippled out through the surrounding passages and caverns, doing untold damage and making the stone itself shake so violently that it could be felt all the way on the surface. After verifying that the tremors caused no real damage, Tenebroum ignored them. Instead, it focused on the elemental battle occurring miles below.

There, fire and water in their purest forms were battling out, releasing torrents of air and slabs of earth. It was, in its way, a perfect elemental laboratory, and just watching the way that the four elements interacted gave the Lich new ideas and theories it could try with its elements. It had used them separately, but it had never mixed them together in an attempt to cause such a powerful reaction. Such a thing could be a potent weapon.

Still, it set that idea aside for now, and instead, it focused on the pure fury it had unleashed. No matter how much it drowned them, the fires of creation refused to extinguish. Instead, each time the magma cooled enough to become the base stone it should have been, those boulders would sink beneath the fiery surface, and the process would repeat all over again. Sometimes, eruptions would occur between these small, shifting plates, causing fresh new eruptions to occur repeatedly.

It was a scene of primordial chaos that seemed like it would last forever, but no matter how long it took, the Lich could not turn away. The cavern was a vast place with the All-Father’s anvil in the center, but all of that was hidden by the storm of swirling steam. All that Tenebroum could see was where its poisoned waterfall came down like a pillar of water and vanished before it could become the lake that it should have become.

Slowly, that changed, though. Day after day, the water came down, and eventually, the magma that it struck first turned to hard stone. Slowly, almost too slowly to notice on any given day, that area of fully solidified stone began to spread, and just as slowly, the endless fog began to dim.

That was when the steam rocketed to the surface. The Lich fumed, worried it had finally run the river dry, but that turned out not to be the case. Instead, one of the stone walls its minions had built almost a quarter mile above this hellish place had ruptured, and the water that should be quenching the forge was now filling some nameless cavern and flooding the depths instead.

If it had been drowning a dwarven city or something similar, Tenebroum might have accepted such a miserable delay, but the race was all but extinct at this point. There might not be a single dwarf left at this point, which made this a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, there was little it could do about it. As the steam rocketed hire, it detonated that section of the tunnel, causing fractures and cave-ins that stopped the flow entirely.

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Tenebroum growled in frustration as it considered its options. Why must it always be something, it thought to itself. First the stars, and now the steam. The darkness is only ever just out of reach!

It could send the Devourer back down to bore a new hole. This would take time, but it wouldn’t be impacted by the water. It almost did just that until a few swirling voices in its soul pointed out that as soon as the blockage was cleared, the thing would be swept down and dashed upon the rocks far below.

Though the Lich was perfectly willing to sacrifice such a pawn, it had no idea whether or not it would need the complex machine again. Instead, it set it aside and opted to use its Dark Titan instead.

“Circumvent the blockage and craft a new channel through the bedrock,” the Lich commanded. @@novelbin@@

The elemental creature didn’t acknowledge the command or make any reply. It never did. It was always silent as it got to work.

The creature of stone and lead would not be nearly as fast as the Devourer. Rather than ripping and breaking apart the stone with teeth and claws tailor-made for the task, it manipulated stone similarly to the way that dwarves did, but making it malleable and molding it like a piece of clay. This would create a stronger path for the terrible pressures involved at those depths, making it an acceptable compromise.

While the Devourer could move feet of stone every day, the elemental could move only inches, so the workaround was even slower than Tenebroum had feared. Still, the thing worked tirelessly, and after a few weeks of endless waiting, the path was once again open.

This time, much of the steam and, indeed, much of the heat had dissipated. Whether it had known it or not at the time, the Lich had been on the verge of success.

So, while the cavern began to fill with water, the darkness that was the Lich’s soul followed it in, and began to search for anything of value that it might add to its resources. The anvil was the largest thing. It was impossible to miss and also seemed to be made out of pure Adamantite or perhaps even something stronger. Such a thing represented an impossible trove of riches. The only problem was that Tenebroum had no idea how it would break the thing apart and reforge it into something useful.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case with everything else. The hammer that went to the forge was missing, but the Lich knew exactly where that was. It was still resting at the bottom of the dead cathedral that had witnessed their dual not so long ago. Fortunately, there were any number of small implements made of mithril and other rarer things that would tide the Lich over until it made plans for the anvil.

Around the main anvil were smaller ones that were presumably used by the forge master’s servants. Any number of smaller projects lay around in states of partial completion, and then beyond those, in a dark room that seemed to go on forever, it found the mother lode.

Amongst the weapon and armor racks were nearly endless sets of weapons and armor that had been made and set aside. The dwarven spirits it had absorbed whispered that these were always being constructed so that the stone men could fight the world’s end when the day of judgment arrived.

Well, that didn’t work out for you, did it? The Lich mused as it prowled the rows, looking through the endless axes and horned helmets that sat there oiled and ready for use. It could outfit an infinite number of zombies now, which was Ironic, considering it had so few at the moment. Unfortunately, it had no idea how it could get all of these to the surface. Even with a mithril chain, a crane of such length seemed out of the question.

Before it could give that problem much thought, though, it noticed something. It was almost fully dark now. Only a few flickering flames guttered in the highest ground, and even now, that water was climbing higher and higher to reach it. One by one, Tenebroum watched those go out as the room got darker and darker, quietly celebrating its victory. It had very nearly extinguished the forge fires of creation. It had done the impossible.

Then, suddenly, the darkness was complete; nothing could stop it from going even deeper and finding out what exactly this beacon had been holding back for so long. The Lich rejoiced in that, but before it could explore deeper or reactivate its Devourer to continue on its journey, it felt another tremor. Another quake, it wondered. But the steam has stopped.

It took the Lich a moment to realize that this wasn’t the stone making further complaints.

It was a different sound that was heard as much as felt. Something was coming.