Published at 1st of December 2023 10:41 am

Chapter 64 Blight

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Once the rain started, it didn’t stop until the parched land was transformed into mud. The Lich hadn’t been the one to cause such widespread destruction, of course, but once he’d given Oroza free rein to refill her river, it hadn’t felt any need to hold her back while she thrashed and raged inside the abomination it had inflicted on her. Even as its underground reservoirs had filled, the river emptied, and no matter how many tears poured from the sky in memory of all of the good and loyal priestesses that had died for the sake of its schemes, it didn’t care. So while the people suffered as a consequence of her suffering, the Lich merely reveled in both.

At first, the long-suffering people of Greshen welcomed the rains. All they wanted in life was mild weather and healthy children. It took weeks for the torrential rains from the constant storms that swept in from the sea to the south that the goddess had mastered during her exile for relief to become torment. In the summer, boat traffic had ground to a halt in the face of a vanishing river, but in the winter, even as the barge traffic resumed, the roads had become almost impassible to wagons. Only small groups of riders with good horses could move about with any freedom as the whole world seemed to flood in an overreaction to everything the earth had endured earlier in the year.

This caused no end to mudslides in the rural villages that dotted the Wodenspine range’s foothills. Not all of these tragedies were random, though. The Lich targeted Garhaam and Bellmor to be swept away specifically. The former had to be buried in eight feet of mud because of the monastery it hosted, and the latter was devastated in a flash flood from the river it hugged in the hopes of displacing them because it was too close to the ever-expanding range of its pet lizardman tribes. The Lich’s dark hand would never be noticed amidst all the other very natural tragedies that occurred that season, though. Everything would be blamed on their evil Lord, and all of that blame would be recorded by Kelvun’s ghost.

No amount of rain could wash away the blood that had been spilled in gutters for the last few weeks, though. Just like no amount of inquisition or persecution could purge the rot that was taking hold in granaries around the county. Indeed, even as tortures continued in the capital where the devout and the corrupted were sifted and judged, the ergot that blossomed amongst the grain stores of the city would only add fuel to the pyres of distrust.

It would make good honest people see horrible things, and even if they weren’t real, they would still damn others in their life to slow, painful deaths until they finally confessed to dark deeds they’d never done. Trust quickly became rarer than food as once kind, happy neighbors would blame sicknesses in both their household and their farm animals on each other.

Soon it wasn’t just the official witch hunts that were being undertaken. Thanks to the late Lord’s many plans, thousands of strangers had moved to the county in the last few years. They spoke to each other in unfamiliar dialects and accents that did nothing to help with mutual understanding. Sometimes they even worshiped foreign gods. It took only the slightest push from the darkness in the form of dreams for the people of every village and town to begin to blame their misfortunes on the new arrivals or the bitter old spinster that lived at the end of the road. Even with all of that, though, the darkest winter in memory had yet to truly explode while the rains tamped down the building fury.

It was only when the cold started to arrive that tribunals were quickly put together and blessed by the local priests. Sometimes this was done in earnest fear, and other times it was with a jaded eye toward new lands and old grudges. In Isiqha, while winter flurries hinted at the heavy snows to come, old lady Fotenoi was fed to the flames because she was a midwife and an herbalist that had charged too much for her remedies during the drowning years ago. Elza Brom joined her for the crime of having dark eyes and two black cats that were said to feast on the souls of sickly children. The two were roasted in the town square by a group of villagers as eager to stay warm as they were to see the women punished.

That winter, there would be few Yule feasts. Not even the mild weather could offset the lack of food and goodwill. They were hard, bleak times, even for the good and the righteous. To the Lich’s annoyance, it did make the light burn brighter in a few as they sought redemption for the things they’d done wrong. Most turned to envy instead, though, blaming others for everything that was going wrong in their life.

In the span of little more than a year, the region that had been perceived as one of the richest of the southern domains had been brought to its knees. In truth, it had suffered for years in the wake of the goblin attacks, and only the outrageous revenues from the Count’s gold mine had been able to hide all of that human misery behind a gilded veneer.

The plague had touched Greshen only lightly, but nothing could stop the brewing famine, and this pleased the Lich greatly. Only in the area directly around Blackwater did it make even the smallest efforts to stem these terrible trends as the black mold and red rust spread amongst the last of the crops that still lingered in the fields and those that had been quickly harvested at the start of the storms.

The farmers had prayed for months for rain and left the crops in the ground until the very last minute in many places in the hopes that some miracle might save their harvest. The result was that their often requested blessings built up and were delivered all at once as a curse. Though most families would survive for another planting, not all of them would, and that was a lesson that was hammered home by the children scavenging the empty fields for grains of wheat and barley along with the birds each day until the snows fell.

As the world slowly turned to ice, people’s hearts were no exception, and the Lich watched with undisguised hunger as villages turned on their weakest members in an effort to save enough grain for the spring. Many people just disappeared into the snow that winter, and a rash of the elderly and infirm passed away in their sleep with a pillow pressed into their faces.

The fact that the Lich had not been the one to force these once-good people to take such drastic action only pleased it more, and it rewarded the culprits for such things with unending dreams filled with guilt at what they’d done and dread that they might yet be caught.

The only area spared from the fog of distrust was the region immediately around Blackwater. It was a relative oasis of peace and plenty as the rest of the region descended into chaos. This was because of the Templar presence, of course, but there were also more pragmatic reasons. The Lich wanted to consolidate power and prestige on the heart of its growing empire, and while its tools for encouraging the men that dwelled there were limited, it had many, many tools to crush the smaller surrounding towns and villages.

Fallravea itself would need no further efforts on the part of the darkness. By the time the holy men had finished with it, it was a broken husk of a city. All its buildings would still be standing, of course, but its heart had stopped beating, and its reputation was cursed by people as far away as the capital. Almost all of its best families were ruined, and its harsh governor that ruled in the name of the infant count, was a brutal tyrant that would soon crush all the joy that could be found within a day's ride as he forced the River Goddess’s worshipers to convert to his Lord of light.

The Lich considered murdering the man just to see what the church would do about it, but for now, it stayed its hand and chose not to inflame them any further. Forcing a confrontation before the time was right would not be advantageous, and it was still concerned that it might have to disappear the templars roaming the area should they dig too deeply. After all - they foolishly thought they’d already fought and defeated the worst monsters in the region, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

They’d beaten only what it had built specifically to test them and nothing more. It had other weapons in its arsenal that would easily grind them to dust. The juggernaut had been built specifically to counter light wielders. Its flesh had been soaked in darkness before it was reattached, and the eighth-inch thick verdigris-covered scales that had been riveted to its hide would resist the glare dozens of times better than the thin skin of its leviathan. Besides, if it succeeded in its current tests with its shadow dragon, then it could simply immolate the warriors from the sky whenever it desired, leaving the church no leads to chase it down with.

The dragon flew now, but only because of the innumerable air spirits that had been woven into its cured flesh to render it as light as a feather. It was almost as fragile as one too now, and the Lich might have set the clumsy project aside to focus on other things were it not for its breath weapon.

Drakes had no ability to belch fire naturally like their cousins, the true dragons, but thanks to the shocking influx of shadow energy that Krulm’venor had located for it, the black fires that its creation could belch defied belief. Though they were not a limitless font of flame like the godling, the shadow dragon’s breath was more devastating, erasing even towering trees in seconds as the darkness unmade the physicality of creation and whatever was caught in it effervesced into nothingness. In that sense, it was an acid, not a fire, but no matter what it was, it was lethal, and the Lich would hoard it until just the right moment before it unleashed it on an unsuspecting enemy.

The only thing that stayed its hand now was the one-armed priest. Despite the darkness that so obviously festered in the wounded man’s heart, his comrades had yet to drive a stake through it. This made the Lich wonder how much corruption they really saw and how much he could taint the man before they decided he had to be dealt with. It was an interesting experiment that the Lich would not rush, and since it could keep tabs on the troublesome group through the man’s dreams, it saw no need to strike them down just yet.

For now, it would do just what it had done for the last few months. Nothing. It would let the world think that good had won while it planned for the next phase. Darkness could never move openly until it had a way to banish the light in the same way that man currently used light to push back the dark, but that day was coming. All that the darkness needed was time to breed more sheep for the slaughter and the way that Blackwater was growing and would continue to grow as the famine took hold further inland. It would only be a few more years now before it was ready to challenge the gods themselves.

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