Tenebroum

Chapter 212: A Flickering Candle

The battle was not a quick thing. It was fought back and forth across the meager village they’d become so proud of until tonight, destroying it utterly, along with most of the residents. Eventually, most of those who weren’t trained warriors fled the battle with the beast. Leo didn’t think less of them for that. No matter what its origins were, it was a nightmare creation that average people could never be expected to fight.

Once the farmers and the tradesmen who hadn’t spent half their lives sparring and practicing to fight the evils of the world left the battle to Leo and the men and women with light in their eyes, they should have been able to strike them down. Indeed, they outnumbered it a dozen to one; each of his brothers and sisters fought well, and most of their weapons bore at least some small trace of the light.

It wasn’t enough, though. Because each time one of them managed to maim the creature, slicing off a limb or blinding an eye, some new piece of a monstrosity would grow to replace it. One by one, the men and women he’d fought beside for most of his life died. Rin was devoured when the wound she rent into its side suddenly sprouted teeth that bit down on her arm and refused to let go. Reggie was drained dry, not by the mane of worms and leeches, but by the few that stayed attached to him and refused to burn away.

That left Sam grieving, and her light flared as brightly as he’d ever seen on someone other than Brother Faerbar or himself. However, even that terrible blast of holy flames was only enough to burn away the hair of its mangy coat, and every blister her fire raised hatched a dozen tiny rats that swarmed her and gnawed on her until there was nothing left but bones.

It was a horrible, brutal battle, and Leo tried his best to coordinate his attacks with those around him, but no matter what they did, they just weren’t fast enough or strong enough to slay this monstrosity. No one was, maybe not even him.

One at a time, the lights went out throughout the village. Each one hurt him more than any of the other minor wounds that had been inflicted on him to date. He’d been bloodied more than once now, but each time, the light burned its way out of the rent in his flesh and healed it shut again. He’d experienced that before, on the battlefield, but never so powerfully as this moment, and he embraced the searing pain that accompanied the healing of each blow.

Pain was better than death, especially if it was the death of someone else. The problem was that for all the effort and all the blows exchanged, they were doing nothing to it. The thing simply wouldn't die, and he lacked the strength to do more than wound it. No matter how strong wielding that a

At least Cynara is safe, he told himself. Since she didn’t have the time to don her chain mail, she wisely she stuck to her bow and used hit-and-run tactics to stay as far away from the battle as possible. Every new lance of light that skewered the monster was a reminder that she was safe. In that way, her blows handed no better than his. For all their light, this creature oozed power, and all they could do was burn it around the edges and then watch as it regrew again and again.

It was no longer a wolf now and it was barely a rat. Instead, it was a mass of hideous tendrils dotted with mouths and teeth. Each wound became some new appendage or mass as it healed as scar tissue built upon scar tissue until there was nothing but a hideous cancerous mass of evil. It wasn’t working, but what else could Leo do? His only choices were to fight and to not fight; there was no third option. All he could do was hack and slash at the thing while the monster slowly changed into something more hideous.

For a moment, Leo doubted himself. He held in his hand a magic sword of legends that could slice effortlessly through zombies, but its wielder wasn’t strong enough to take down a single beast. For just a moment, his light dimmed, but as the creature suddenly flicked its gaze away toward the last pair of glowing eyes on a nearby rooftop, Leo suddenly understood the true meaning of its words.

It's going after her next, he told himself, shocked by the realization. For the last few minutes, they’d been fighting around the well and the ruin of the building that they were trying to turn into the smithy, but now the thing was surging down the street on an uncertain number of limbs toward his wife. Leo wasn’t about to let that happen and charged alongside it, taking advantage of the moment to slice off half a dozen limbs on the nearside, sending it careening to the ground.

“You cannot have her!” he roared, taking a blow from his blind side that sent him tumbling end over until he was stopped only by the timbers of a collapsed wall.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“I can have everything! The beast roared. “My hunger is infinite, and so long as there is no Lord of Light, then I will consume the entirety of the world!”

“As long as I have this light, you shall not have hers,” he grunted as he rose to his feet.

That was enough to make the misshapen flesh beast turn to face him with two of its four twisted heads.

“Did you not feel that way about the rest of your friends?” it chuckled darkly. “They were worth sacrificing, but she is not? It was all in vain. I have eaten the world, and I shall feast on it again.”

Those words hit Leo like a punch to the gut. If he couldn’t bring this monstrosity when all of them had fought together, united, then how could he hope to do it on his own?@@novelbin@@

“You have been defeated before, too,” Leo stood, unwilling to admit defeat. He had no idea how he would win; he only knew that he had to, and with each step forward, that certainty deepened. The only way it was getting to Cynara was over his mangled corpse. “Every name you’ve listed is a name that has destroyed you utterly. You will add my name to that list.”

The creature hissed. “I don’t even know your name! You are not worth remembering!”

“I’m not,” Leo agreed. “But once upon a time, I was worth saving, and so was every person you slew tonight.”

He started hacking at the thing again, but this time it was different. Even now, the fireflies were stirring around him. That’s when he knew he wasn’t alone.

In the light of his sword, the souls of the dead flickered and stirred around him, slowly coming to life. The details were vague, but one at a time, he recognized them as his slain brothers and sisters, not that he’d ever had any doubt.

For a few seconds, they joined him on the battlefield as a storm of swirling swords along with disembodied arms and legs. Then, one at a time, they began to merge with him.

With each absorption, there was a flash of recognition at whom the spirit had been in life before their power flowed into him, making his light burn that much more brightly. Sam. Rin. Jamin. Tara. One by one, the ghosts of everyone he’d ever fought beside merged with him, lending him their last bit of strength. His sword was barely recognizable now. Indeed, it wasn’t even visible. It was a pillar of holy fire, and it charred the flesh of the beast that it was facing.

“No!” it bellowed out of a dozen mouths. “I was supposed to smother you in the cradle before you gained your strength!”

Leo ignored those words and continued to hack away. He’d never been the tallest of his siblings, but right now, he felt like a giant. He was overflowing with a lifetime of other people’s souls, and for the first time in the entire fight, he felt stronger than the thing he was facing.

Unfortunately, he had no idea how long this would last, so he pressed the attack as hard as he could. There was no subtlety now nor any attempt to dodge or parry blows. He trusted the blazing aura around him to handle most of the defense and for the light to heal the wounds of any attacks that made it through that incandescent storm before they could slay him.

Now, he threw every last ounce of his strength into defeating this beast once and for all. He attacked; it was a berserk fury that was as much fire as it was force. Well, light, at least. The holy light that surged around him did nothing to harm the ruined buildings or even Cynara, who glowed very lightly in her own right as she looked on in awe. It even made the flowers blossom, and the weeds grow. To the screaming monstrosity of flesh that he faced, though, he might as well have been a bonfire. Its questing tentacles turned to ash before they ever got close to him, as he hacked it apart a piece at a time, and the thing was constantly fissioning now into rats, worms, and other stranger animals in an attempt to escape him.

Some of them did. He had no doubt that was the case. He had no way to stop them. All he could do was keep fighting the ruin that was the main body and hope that would be enough.

It was disgusting work, but as he reached the core of it, he found the things black heart pounding away. “Noooo!” the creature screamed through its remaining mouths.

Leo didn’t even hesitate. He just thrust his sword deep into the thing, annihilating both of them in a burst of terrible energy. One moment, the silvered sword was a blazing pillar of light in his hands, and the next, it was annihilated as it canceled out against the terrible well of darkness that it had found in the center of that monstrosity.

Leo was tossed backward like a rag doll by the force of the explosion, and debris went spraying in all directions, but none of it belonged to his opponent. Instead, where that terrible blast wave struck it, it simply ceased to exist. One moment, it was a pile of postulate body parts, and the next, it had simply vanished as if it had never existed.

Leo rose to his feet once more quickly, only to find that he had nothing to fight. He’d won. That took a moment to sink in. However, as soon as it did, he looked to Cynara to make sure that she was okay. Once he saw that she was, he finally released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and looked at his hands.

Leo was still glowing so violently that his flesh was almost invisible compared to the storm that his aura had become. While he did that, Cynara finally rose and ran toward him but stopped partway, shielding her eyes. “Leo?! Are you in there, Leo? What happened to you?”

Leo wasn’t sure. He didn’t know either, to be perfectly honest, but he hoped like hell that it would stop sooner rather than later.