Tenebroum had no idea where Krulm’venot off to. That a, and not just because that vile godling could have helped with pest trol o started b deeper into the earth. It was also that the Lich hated the idea that the arrogant dwarf might have finally mao slip his leash. Tenebroum found that idea almost as intolerable as the idea that Oroza had gotten away and vowed to recapture him, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary.
It would either own its hound or it would have the beast put down. There was no third option.
The hard part was now over, fortunately. After dealing with the overnd logistics from its Wyrmspiunnel, it finally had what it o dig a very deep hole. These things were not easy when its army ractically down to a skeleton crew, but in the weeks that followed, it made do without any losses.
The dark titan had bee just where the Lich had finished with it. This wasn’t because it maintained some loyalty to it. It was because its leaden armor preve from phasing with the stone and esg into the depths without the Lich’s magid there was no other way out of the side tu had been cast aside into when the work was done.
It was impossible to determine what impact the long isotion might have had ohing, but that didn’t matter as long as the creature obeyed. It did, too, however grudgingly. As soon as the Lich touched its soul, it began to move and obey orders once more.
The Lich didn’t care about tormenting the earth elemental too much, though, because it had never figured out how to do so in a satisfying way. Even at the height of its power, the thing was pletely alien to it, and unlike Krulm’venor or Oroza, it had never found the right levers to make it suffer properly.
Of course, Tenebroum hadn’t even been expeg to find the thing, anyway. It had barely sehe creature until it ractically on top of it. It had e for the Devourer. Though the mae would have to be taken apart and then reassembled to dig vertically instead of horizontally, it was the perfect struct for what came , even if it had in dormant for such a long time.
Tenebroum’s current pn was a simple o was going to dig ever deeper into the dark and searore shadows to feast on as it made its way toward its real goal: the All-Father’s fes. It had only the dimmest idea of where those might be, of course, thanks to the God’s memories, but that was as good of a pce as any to start. If the stars held bae source of darkness, then it would dig as deep as it o find the power that it needed. If the stars held bae o of darkness, then it would snuff out the All-Father’s fes and find another.
All of this would, of course, require it to further mar its glorious uemple as rigging and scaffolding were set up so that the Devourer could be put into pce. The thing was made of bone and steel, along with the clever arra of the teeth and cws of over a thousand kobolds that had been gathered throughout Krulm’venor’s long trip in the depths. It was a plicated devi that almost everything was a moving part, so some work had to be redone by its remaining fewights before it could be locked into pce. Such progress was slow, but every day, the glittering crystalline monstrosity stood a little higher and a little more plete until, one day, it was so tall it practically touched the ceiling.
Of course, even after the Devourer was assembled and rattled to life with graceless motion, there were other problems. As the thing started burrowing downward at the rate of a doze a day, the noise of all those crystallih and cws scraping against stone was so loud that it even threateo overwhelm the volume it was capable of speaking through the steam-fed pipe an.
That was just an inveniehough. The real problem was the sheer amount of waste rock that the thing geed. There were other problems, too, like the way the vibration damaged nearby pos and the way the whole ir could shake quite disturbingly at times. Thanks to Tenebroum’s stant stru and the growth of its ir for nearly its entire existehere was some capacity to dispose of such dross, but not on this scale.
Rather than speed up digging, that quickly became the dark titan’s full-time job: liquifying and disposing of as much rubble as possible. This had the added side effect of strengthening the walls of the ever-growing well, but it was mundane work for a creature of such terrible power. Those magics became much more useful when the Lich’s efforts ran into tunnels and caves periodically, letting it reinforce such areas without sending its digging traption crashing to the floor.
While its digging never paused in such pces, Tenebroum’s attention did. It turned out that most of the grouh the earth was taken up by stos godling's infinite jourhrough the darkest pces of the world made it seem like there would be more caverns, but they were indeed a rarity, and each time the Lich’s efforts discovered o would explore it in search of anything that might be able to killed or put to better use. At this point, shorthanded as it was, it would even sider reanimating goblins as drudges, if only to dispose of excess rubble.
There were no goblins to be found, though. Not at first, at least. Instead, the first thing it discovered were dwarves or at least the remains of some. Their souls had long since departed their bodies, but the evidence showed they were up to a stru project of their own that had been interrupted when their entire race had been iionally ied with madness. After that, it found a of kobolds that it toyed with for a while.
Tenebroum made sure to kill those with shadow magic to leave the bodies whole, so their prodigious digging talents could be put to use wherever necessary. Even such additions did little to speed up the progress of things. Digging this deep was a borious business, and the Lily focused on it when it found something iing.
After the kobolds it was a den of giant spiders and then a subterranean river that quickly evolved inte subterranean ke only a few doze below that. Tenebroum’s structs had no need for breathing, though. They merely kept digging, no matter what they found, and when another cavern plex was found below that, the waters above were quickly drained into unimportant tunnels and offshoots to drown whatever might have lived there.
After that, there was a cavern of endless fungus that briefly gummed up the plicated pos of the Devourer. The Lich was briefly ied in the slow-moving fungal people that occupied a small portion of the rger cavern, but os experiments showed that the creatures her had souls to capture nor boo reuse in rge projects, it sent a few fewights to burn the ptil it was nothing but ashes. That was the st form of life that it saw for quite a while.
There wasn’t a lot this deep, though. It recalled that Krulm’venor had mentiohat once, but increasingly, the few caverns that were found were pletely empty without so much as a stray shadow to devour. Such ideas swirled around in its mind from the souls of other dwarves, too. Above a certaih, monsters existed, and below a certaih, there were only shadows and worse. Dwarves preferred to live in the quiet area betweewo, but Tenebroum wao drill well past those depths and keep going until it reached the ter of things.
After a while, whole weeks could pass where the Devourer found nothing but bedrock. Those times were enough to make the Lich sed guess this whole pn, but it would not be denied. It could not yet have the night sky, so it would have the dark heart of the world instead. It felt sure that the swirling shadows that had devoured so many dwarven cities were still down there, and it would feast on all of them. Ironically, that would make the depths safer than ever for the dwarves, but it was uhat there were any of the little me at this point.
Its tinued diffing efforts found a slender vein of gold, once, which excited the Liough that it paused the rger mining project to start a smaller one almost a thousa beh the surface, but that was only a distra to pass the time. It he gold, of course, but even a veiimes as rich found have been a distra.
In the fragments of dwarven memory, it khat there was more wealth than it could ever put to use in the dwarven God’s ir. Of course, finding that was the question, but barring another eo fight, the Lich could ti this pa perpetuity until it found what it sought. The Devourer was a very effit mae, and digging ever deeper cost Tenebroum very little.
It also gave the Lich plenty of time to pn and begin to y out how its structure would o ge in subtle but important ways to aodate the wellspring of evil that it hoped to tap. Most of the work had already been done in its rebirth, of course, but based on its first dual with the Moon Goddess’s minions, there were some improvements left to be made. At this time, though, it saw o reinforce the well, which was growing ever deeper with runes in the same way that it had doo trap Siddrim so long ago.
It imagined what that would look like, as delicate golden glyphs spiraled down into the dark, repeating its true name over and over. It would have been a work of pure beauty, and the part of itself that had once been Sidrim saw value in that, but in the end, Tenebroum decided against it for reasons that were more utilitarian. Such measures were time-ing and not strictly necessary.
No matter how deep it dug, though, and no matter how many side passages it explored, it never found its wretched little godling. That surprised it, given that it had to be much closer to Krulm’venor than it had been on the surface, but then it had yet to find the Queen of Thorns or the Voice of Reasoher, which was evidenough that it remained quite diminished in some ways. Tenebroum would fix that if it was the st thing it did.
