Time ticked by full of characteristidecision as Tenebroum tried to decide the best course of a. It told itself, at any moment, Malzekeen might return. This could be a trick… an ambush, and I should wait a little lohat was only part of the truth, though.

  The truth was that it was it didn’t know what to do as it swam bad forth through the skies above Bckwater, trying to devour every soul that slipped free of its grasp.

  That, of course, was a losing prospect, but there was nothing else it could do in that moment. It was certain that the only way to sever its e with the worm had been to shatter the only thing that the two of them had in on. That had been successful but at a terrible cost.

  Now I need someone smarter than what I’ve bee to help it decide… As Tenebroum had that thought, it realized that it still had that, at the very least. As soon as it realized that, it fled down at high speed, leaving more bits of other people’s souls in its wake as it fled to the library.

  Malzekeen might well e back. There was nothing it could do about that. It might be in a day, a week, or even a year. The darkness couldn’t prevent that in its current state. All it could do was heme and grow weaker, and that was the st thing it wanted. Its enemies were going to e back, one way or the other. If not the ghastly chimera, then the forces of light or even one of the meddling gods like Lunaris. Someone would smell its weakness like blood ier, and it had to be ready for that.

  So, it dove through three floors of stone and into the library, hoping that it wasn't pletely wrecked like so many other parts of its stronghold. There, it found the room pletely intact. Here, there was row upon row of mismatched pottery. Only a few of the heads in this room were eveively fresh. Most of them went back for years and decades. It was an are treasure trove. Normally, it would be picky and choose the right mage es for the job, but it no longer remembered which jar held which head, and Tenebroum could not reach out to the Skoetiikos to find the answer. So, picked o random and dived toward it.

  As it did so, there were some sounds eg through the halls to indicate that either its surviving acolytes or some of the rger shards of its soul had gone berserk in some distant part of the byrinth. For now, Tenebroum ighat. Every minute and every distra would cost it a part of its mind as it dwihe smaller it got, the slower it lost strength, but if it did not find a way to reverse this process in a day or a week, it would be nothing but a handful of murder victims lingering in the heart of what was once a s.

  The head that it chose beloo young master Bartholomew, aal mage that focused oh magics. Tenebroum found that out immediately, but it took loo remember where it had collected him from. That answer came back to it only as it forced energy in the mage t him to life. The man had been one of the men that the very te t Kelvun had hired to dig a al through its s.

  The darkness bristled at that memory but stayed focused oter at hand as it ahe mage’s slowly awakening soul.

  “Tell me what I must do to solve this problem!” Tenebroum roared into the man’s mind.

  The most ued thing happehen. The man actually fought him. Not for long, and not successfully, but for the first time in decades, one of its servants squirmed in its deathless grip like it had a ce to escape.

  “Tell me!” Tenebred again.

  This time, the spirit gasped and filed. “I don’t uand the question… the problem? What is it you need?”

  Patience was the very st thing that Tenebroum had at that moment. Still, it stopped itself, and instead to pour a book's worth of information into a sihought, it carefully expined what had happeo the mage and told it all about the destru of its phyctery and its eventual dissolution as it drifted sloart. Having a physical form, even in the form of this borrowed head, seemed to help with that, but the darkness was still losing power, and it did not think that Malzekeen was the cause.

  “You must build a new ohe mage said eventually, “or you will tio devolve into lower energy states as you equalize with the natural world.”

  Tenebroum took that in and was shocked that it had not sidered that itself until the head said as much. Am I really so asked itself, balking at the obvious solution as it fled the mage’s head and sought the closest drudge that was still in one piece to do everything that o be do.

  The darkness skipped over several that bore the telltale signs of rot that indicated a brush Malzekeen before it found an aging spe that was deactivated but otherwise unharmed. Tenebroum hated that it couldn’t simply be to its ir and have these things e to it, but even worse was climbing into such a flimsy thing and f itself to its feet. Walking had always been plicated for the darkness, eve had been a Liow, though, it staggered down the hall toward its library and was barely able to stay upright with the use of the wall.

  Ohere, the Lich wrestled the lid off of the jar it had just interrogated, and then, grabbing the mage by the hair, it headed toward its treasury. On the way there, it saw no signs of the battle that it could hear, but it made no attempt to look for it. The very st thing the darkness needed right now was a fight. It was trapped inside a fragile, limping relid it was slowly bleeding to death on a spiritual level. It needed no other hardships.

  Fortunately, it found her, as it made its way to the treasury. Well, none, but the difficulty of retrieving and carrying a bag of gold with it up to the surface. The zombie that it was wearing was strong, but bance was made harder with such a heavy weight. Eventually, the darkness was forced to retrieve two bags just to ba out as it trudged toward the surfabsp;

  Along the way, it saw many terrible things. Even if that monstrosity had only been in its ir for a few hours, it had wreaked havoc. Walls were knocked over, ses of tunnels had partially colpsed, and everywhere the soul web was snarled. It seemed to recall that the Temprs had done less damage when they invaded, but it was hard to say. The darkness kept fusing that invasion with some of the smaller ones done by adventurers before that.

  Then it reached the uemple and found that its flock had been sughtered, almost to a man. There were still a few praying, including Verdenin, who seemed to be dying, but Tenebroum ighem. Their survival didn’t matter pared to its own, and right now, it did not need prayers; it needed a smelting cup and enough preetal to fill it.

  The to the surface was lohan the darkness remembered. It had been so long that it had traversed the path in physical form that it could not remember when it had done so. The past didn’t matter, nor did the difficulty. All that mattered was reag its desperate goal.

  There was no oo stop it on the surface, either. Ihe only obstacle it found there was that the bst furnace was almost out, and it was forced to set down its heavy load arieve a great deal of dried peat and charcoal, which had bee aside previously to get the thing back up to temperature.

  Tenebroum had never known much about the metal works of its ir. It relied on its drudges and fewights for that expertise. It khat fire melted gold if it was hot enough, though, and it khat it needed molten gold and the mind of a mage to repce what it had lost. How that worked? Why that worked? It had no clue. All it knew was that it was dissipating like fog on a sunny day, and it had to stop.

  So Tenebroum loaded up the crucible with gold s that it had looted from a dozen cities. Part of it worried that some of this gold might yet bear another spirit's touch, but right now, there was nothing it could do about it. Right now, anything was better than nothing. So long as it wasn’t Malzekeen’s gold, it would be enough for now.

  What followed was a messy, clumsy process. The s were slow to melt, even after Tenebroum figured out that it could work the bellows to increase the heat of the fire. It caught itself on fire twice, which was annoying, even if it did no real damage. Each mishap and mistake was more salt in the wound, though. A day ago, it had been a God; it had held the souls of hundreds of thousands and powered a war mae that funed like clockwork, even half a ti away. Now, it was a bare chorus of ten thousand minds that were slowly bleeding away while it was forced to do all of the work itself.

  It was humiliating, but worse than that, it was ineffit. To the lingeriiges of Siddrim and the All-Father that it still held onto tightly, that was the most unfivable sin of them all.

  The remnants of the God of craftsmen ged agaienebroum finally poured out the golden crucible onto the head of the mage, creating a tiny, ugly version of the phyctery it had possessed until retly. It was an effort that bordered on failure.

  The head was hardly the heart that Albrecht’s preserved corpse had been, and the darkness gs teeth in frustration as it tried to uand why. It had taken the mind of a mage and e in gold, just as it had done so long ago. This time, though, it wasn’t a new dark heart that it could gather endless amounts of power into. If its inal phyctery had been an o, then this one ond or a very small ke.

  Still, it was enough to staunch the bleeding. Even though Tenebroum felt like it filled the hing up to bursting, it stopped heming souls, and that was the important part. Now, it could even trol a number es once more, though they had to be close for it to do so.

  This was still an uable situation, but it was able to think and pn again, and using its drudge to carry its nehyctery around, the darkness went back down into its ir to ask its library fuidan what to do . Bartholomeent, but it had many es that could advise it on such things.