Kelvun never made it to the lair of the Black Skulls, or to the gold vein that his dreams told him was there for the taking. The darkness didn’t make him suffer too much for that decision, though. It wasn’t his to make, after all. After the night of blood and fire, his expedition spent another few days in Holt as they helped to shore up the battered defenses of the village, and then they left for the long trip home.

It was just as well. With the fire spirit caged and awaiting all the experiments that the Lich could think of, and with the help of his library it could think of a great many indeed. With its new toy, both the Viscount and Grod got very little of its attention. Those pawns could think for themselves while it focused on what really mattered: power.

Not the petty spread of influence it had been focused on up until now, where it managed to gain a few feet in this direction or another hillside in that direction. The darkness was not aiming to become the god of meadows and pastures. It wanted, no, needed to consume everything, and for that it needed more power, not more shepherds and trees.

It turned out that quite a few spirits could use those things, of course. They put out a fair amount of mana, but it was the wrong flavor for the darkness. The subtle trickle of mana from a tree was less than the dream of a suffering child, but it reeked of light so it was worthless. The darkness could only make use of it if the land itself was poisoned, in the same way that the fire spirit could only harness it if it was burning.

That was why its grip on the river was shrinking instead of expanding. In all these months, the darkness hoped to have reached the sea by now, but instead its reach had almost been pushed back to the swamp. This had as much to do with the other spirits that no doubt dwelled within it as it did with the clean water resisting its corruption, but both things were problems that could eventually be dealt with, once they were understood.

So the darkness learned, by destroying the fire spirit over and over again. In its cage it was separated from the whole world, so when a bit of tinder was lit from that wicked lamp and used to start a natural fire, it created a copy of the original, rather than expanding the might of the spark it held hostage.

Most of the time, the Lich would let it burn for a few minutes and watch as the mana current slowly stirred to life, gaining additional complexity minute after minute, and then it would sunder it to pieces to better understand how the pieces fit together and what they looked like.

Sometimes it would let the thing burn higher and faster before extinguishing it, or rending its soul apart, letting it gain full sentience and become a shadow of its former self. On those occasions, it would speak to it for a time, alternating its blustering and raging with begging and pleading. The lich let it go on like this at length, just to see what the fire spirit might say. It learned some things this way, but less than it did by simply shattering its spirit and studying the pieces before they faded completely.

It found out that its name was Krulm’venor of course. It seemed strange to the lich that it should bother with a name, but it was fond of shouting it out whenever the darkness allowed it the strength to speak.

“I am Krulm’venor and not to be trifled with!”

“You shall rue the day that you showed Krulm’venor disrespect!”

“I shall melt you down and add you to Krulm’venor’s collection of the vanquished!”

The spirit was a broken record when it came to such things, but it amused the darkness to hear it repeat itself so often. The Lich thought that it would have made the perfect court jester, if it had a court, and if that court had visitors. As it was, all it could do was teach the swamp how spirits worked by dying repeatedly, because it had no real knowledge of how it came to be or how it had fallen from godhood to the wretched little thing it had become.

That fascinated the swamp as much as anything. If it had been a god, it would remember every detail. The days when whole seasons had slipped by it unnoticed were long past now.

Trapped in the lantern the core of the captured godling couldn’t feel any of these torments of course, but the Lich let it watch, and it knew that it could see what was happening because of the tiny tremulous screams of outrage and anger that escaped the lantern. It had seen the Lich casually dissipate it a hundred times, and worse, disrespect it on a number of occasions.

The lich thought that it might be able to do this every day and never grow tired of it, even if it hadn’t been making terrific strides in understanding the nature of spirits and how best to detect and kill them. That had been its plan - to murder the other spirits that called the Oroza home, but it was only after it started to plan the weapons it could use to murder them, that it realized its time would be much better spent looking for ways to trap them.

This was an oversight, but only a minor one. The swamp was growing bored with its pawns, and found the ideas it had stumbled upon while tormenting Krulm’venor much more interesting.

After all, the only victim more appetizing to the hungry dead than a suffering human was a spirit bursting with essence. It abandoned spiritual weapons for the moment, though, and instead sought to make traps that it could create to harvest them. While it did so the darkness finally took a moment to gaze at the outside world and was surprised to notice that over a month had already passed since it had last viewed the world beyond this room.

In that time Grod had subjegated his northern neighbors, the Stone Fists, conducted several large raids of villages on the coast, and was now moving east, intent on finishing the raid on the human lands that the now dead Burning Skulls had started.

That hadn’t been a part of the darkness’ plan, and it considered stopping it, even though it would probably have to kill the goblin leader to do that at this point. In the end, it was a couple of thousand goblins, though, and the idea of that much bloodshed was too much to resist. It would just have to make sure that its human pawn, the viscount, was far from danger, in case Grod proved too successful for his own good.

Kelvun kept a bland smile on his face while he observed the dancers at the third and final gala being held in his honor. Despite not actually accomplishing his mission to map the badlands, he’d still returned home a hero, and his father had not yet gotten tired of celebrating that fact, much to both his and his older brother’s annoyance.

Sure - right after he came back to Fallravea, his father had been pissed off enough to demand to be called Lord Garvin, but he’d gotten over that as soon as he noticed how the knights were looking at his son. After that, he wasn’t a foolish young boy - he was a hero.

Leo’s obvious frustration was the only thing that was actually good about it, though. The man was almost as green as his crushed velvet doublet with envy. He’d expected to return from the King's court as the talk of the town, but instead he’d barely been noticed, and instead he’d been forced to endure the story over and over again.

Kelvun’s smile gained some genuine warmth as he thought about that and took another sip of wine. It was worth the temporary exile being forced on him to watch the pretentious little lordling squirm. He wasn’t happy about being sent away, of course. Not when he’d just caught the eye of so many young eligible ladies of the court, but they would still be here when he got back.

Leo might have prevailed upon father to send Kelvun back to the river with craftsmen and soldiers as part of a toll scheme that some aristocrat or another had proposed to him, but even if Leo was here by himself, he’d be stuck in Kelvun’s shadow for a long time to come. Not just with father, either, but with the people that mattered.

Leo had spent a season lounging around court and learning to dress nicer, but Kelvun had led two successful expeditions and beaten back the largest goblin raid that anyone had seen in a generation with nothing but a few knights and a pair of giant brass balls.

At least that’s how the story went when his father was in his cups.

“There he was - my youngest son,” Lord Garvin would say. “Leading the charge, outnumbered ten to one? Do you know what he told Sir Farvus before he charged? Do you?”

Kelvun had heard his father say that same thing almost a dozen times in the weeks he’d been back. He’d practically memorized it. It was embarrassing, really. For both of them.

The truth was that Kelvun had never been more terrified than that night, and it was only because he’d managed to get himself drenched in goblin blood that no one knew he’d pissed himself. He’d barely managed to hold on to his sword, when what was supposed to be a few bandits or something had suddenly resolved into dozens of gibbering goblins with spears and spells.

It was only because of the protection of the darkness that he’d lived. It had to be.

There was simply no other explanation on how he could have ridden through such a mob with so little armor without suffering a scratch. That’s what happened, though. He just kept going, and swinging his sword, and he just kept right on living while the knights charged along beside him.

He hadn’t even noticed the goblin mage he’d run down until it was practically under his horse's hooves. One second there had just been confusion and darkness, and the next - well, the thing’s staff had briefly glowed with light bright enough to spook his horse as it shattered under a well-placed hoof.

And now he was no longer Kelvun Garvin, third in line to the throne - he was Goblinsbane, protector of the west. It was enough to make him laugh when he was alone with his friends, but in public occasions like this he had to play the role of dutiful son, no matter how ludicrous.

So he was going back to the swamp by his father's request. Starting tomorrow he’d be going down river with two boats, three dozen men, and all the supplies they could cram in to the boats without sinking them. It was another duty he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be carrying out, but it would be fine. They’d sail down river for a few days, then he’d spend a few weeks watching other people work hard from the shade, and finally he’d come back with one more success under his belt. With any luck, he’d be back just in time to welcome Theon home and rub it all in his face too.