Tenebroum-Chapter 211: A Taste of Light

They were married after the harvest, less than a year after his return. Everyone would have said that was long overdue, of course, but Leo hadn’t noticed. He’d been too busy spending time with Cynara while he worked through his complicated emotions and what he wanted versus what it was he thought he should be doing. Still, no matter what he thought the right thing to do was, his heart won out, and on a bright day, they stood before the entire village and said their vows.

It was a simple ceremony, as all things were in Wayward, but the cake that was served was made from real wheat that had been ground from their own fields and real sugar that had been boiled from sugar beats they’d only recently harvested. It was the best, and perhaps last, good day of Leo’s young life.

It had been so strange to see Cynara in a borrowed dress and blushing nervously, considering that he’d always looked up to her as a warrior first and foremost. Those days were long behind them now, though. He was taller than her now and had been for a long time, and even if she was four years older than him, he didn’t care. They were both in their twenties, and neither even remembered their parents, so it wasn’t like anyone could tell them what to do.

At this point, all either of them wanted was to be together, which was easy enough. Reggie and Toman were already helping Leo to build a small house for the two of them. By the time the first snows of winter fell, they would be safe and warm together in a way that no one could interfere with. At least, that was the plan. They never made it that far.

It was later evening, when the fires were lit and dancing was started that the thing struck. Leo had not noticed anything amiss in the woods while cutting down trees in the days leading up to his wedding, but then how could a man in love notice anything at all. The Lich might have hidden an army in the shadows of those groves, and he would have been too busy thinking about the way that Cynara’s hair smelled or the way her laugh sounded as he counted down the days to their blessed event.

So when the beast howled and smashed down the beginnings of the palisade that they’d been building to flinders, it took everyone by surprise. No one was wearing armor, and only a few people had anything, even approaching a weapon nearby, and the first man that the giant wolf-thing picked up and bit in half didn’t even have time to scream. He was just gone, and only his boots and a bit of his legs remained.

The next surprise, though, was when the thing spoke through its second head while it continued to devour with its first. “Yes! At last! We taste the light on this one. I have found it at last!”

At first glance, Leo had thought it was a wolf, albeit one that was larger than a horse. That was not the case. What stood before it was not a wolf but a chimera of some kind. Even as almost everyone else ran, either for safety or for weapons, he stood there, studying it. It had the head of a wolf, the head of a rat, and the mane of a lion, and it stood almost twice his height. It was a terrible monster, but it was far from the most terrible monster he’d fought so far, and he did not shrink from it. Instead, he took a step toward the thing.

“Leo,” Cynara hissed, “You can’t. Not dressed like that.”

“I would protect you even if I was unarmed,” Leo answered before kissing her, “But I am never unarmed so long as I have the light.”

The monster tensed as if it was about to pounce toward Sam, and the dark eyed boy she’d been dancing with, but paused the moment Leo shouted out, “No! you will not have them!”

That gave the chimera a moment of pause, but even so, it might have continued to ignore Leo until it saw the silvered blade manifesting in his hand. Then, both its head and all of its aggression focused on Leo instead.

When the Goddess had given him the weapon, it had glittered brightly even before he’d wielded it in anger for the first time, but now that he’d purged so much evil with it, the thing burned with inner light as much as a reflected light at this point, and it shimmered like a piece of the sun itself. That glare made the thing flinch ever so slightly when it saw it.

“You think that you can defeat me? Even with that?” The wolf rumbled in a dark tone that promised violence. “I shall feast on your strength!”

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That was the only warning that Leo received before the monster bounded forward. Cynara stayed by his side, but only for a moment before she decided that she should get her weapon or perhaps her armor. He didn’t care so long as she was out of danger.

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Leo, on the other hand, stood there perfectly still, waiting for the thing to reach him. He didn’t have to wait long. Despite the fact that it was almost a hundred feet away, it only took a few strides before it was on him like an avalanche. That was when Leo moved.

The wolf's head struck at him first, with reactions almost too quick to follow, but he could tell the blow was meant to miss and drive him toward the second blow, which would come from the rat’s giant incisors. Leo sidestepped the first blow, and then, instead of parrying those awful yellowed teeth with the second as he’d intended, he cut right through them and deep into the lower jaw of the beast as it recoiled in pain.

“I know not who you are or for what dark purpose the Lich created you, but you picked the wrong village,” Leo shouted as he pivoted back into a guard position to await the next surprise.

“You think that shade created me?” the thing laughed through its wolf mouth while its rat mouth slowly healed in a grisly, slow-motion sort of way. “It is but an echo… a memory… It has only lived for decades, but I have existed and have already devoured it.”

Leo had no idea if that was a bluff that was meant to intimidate it or not, but he didn’t have time to weigh the truth of the words because the thing attacked again and again. It snapped twice at him, predictably, and then it tried to rake him with its claws. Even rusty as he was, without armor, he was moving incredibly fast, though, and dodged each of these blows. It wasn’t until the thing’s mane attacked him that it finally struck a blow, though.

What he’d thought was just some strange decorative element suddenly became a tide of tentacles, and even as he forced the wolf to pull back with a feint, a wave of them came after it, latching painfully to his flesh in a dozen places. Leo felt them start to pick him up, but with the backswing, he severed the connections, sending him tumbling instead as the stumps that had latched onto him slowly shriveled up and flaked off of him.

The wolf growled at him and then prepared to pounce while he was on the ground. It would have, too, if an arrow hadn’t suddenly sprouted in its eye socket. He didn’t know who fired it, but as the beast howled in pain, he rose to his feet and saw his wife standing in a nearby doorway, holding her bow.

“You think your friends can save you, whelp?” the rat roared. “I’ve devoured whole towns a hundred times larger than this one with no effort at all.”

The chimera lashed out at him again, but this time, Leo was ready for the third attack, and he sliced away the tentacles before they ever reached him. One of the Johansen boys wasn’t so lucky. There were other warriors joining the fight now, but the monster seemed to ignore them and their steel blades. Leo didn’t quite understand why until Kal got too close to the main while he was hacking away with his axe, and the slimy tendrils reached out to grab him.

Leo shouted a warning, but it was too late. They didn’t yank the older boy off his feet as they’d done with Leo. Instead, they drank him dry in moments as his skin became wrinkled and sunken. One moment, he’d been a young man with his whole life in front of him, and the next, he was a desiccated corpse.

“What out for the mane!” he yelled, though he wasn’t sure anyone heard him over the din of battle.

Leo only had a few moments to wonder why he hadn’t met a similarly grisly fate, but the answer sprang to mind almost immediately: the light. It was only the blades that had been illuminated that the thing seemed particularly concerned about. None glowed half as brightly as his, of course, but even Reggie’s dully-lit blade made wounds that didn’t heal immediately, unlike the steel weapons that most people had.

Unfortunately, every time it was sorely wounded, it just devoured another villager, and in seconds, it was as good as new. It still fought Leo, but now Leo understood. This wasn’t a single combat to the death against an unintelligent beast. This was a battle of attrition. The fight continued on, and he and other warriors both struck excellent blows that would have killed or maimed anything else, but it would simply devour another opponent and keep on fighting.

That didn’t really hit home, though, until the thing sent Toman tumbling to the ground covered in blood. The older boy had fought fiercely, but he hadn’t noticed the subtle shift, and the beast had whirled around, raking him with one of its terrible claws.

Leo wanted to rush to him and save him, but there was no time for that. He wouldn’t have been able to do that even if it was Cynara who lay dying at his feet, no matter how much he might want to. Instead, all he could spare was a quick glance at his dying friend and a silent prayer that he would manage to heal his own wounds and recover.

“This ends here, beast!” Leo yelled. “I’m sending you back to the lowest pit where you belong!”

The beast turned and regarded him, and Leo thought he saw something like recognition flicker across its bestial features. “You are no Siddrim,” it growled, “You are no Eldrim or Tearin-Far or any of the other Sun Gods that came before him. You have no chance to defeat me!”

Leo had no idea who most of those people were, but despite those bold words, the monster seemed more cautious than it had at the start. That made sense, though. It wasn’t just his eyes and his blade that were glowing with light now. It was his whole body. He was radiating enough light to turn night into day now, and that worried that thing. He could tell.

Leo was tired, too, of course, but there was nothing for it. This was the reason he’d been gifted this blade. He could tell. He could feel it in the way it moved in his hand. The Goddess had told him that he would purge a great evil, and though he hadn’t been impressed by this at first sight, there was obviously more to this monster than he’d first expected.