Whey was burning, and chaos was at its peak, Tenebroum left the warehouse where skulls flickered and screamed and moved to a body that it had specifically built to fight the dwarven God. Then it walked to the cathedral, which would hopefully bee their battleground, and began to summon the All-Father.

  It ehe pain ah that Krulm’venor was harvesting, of course, especially with the overtones of fear and madhat pervaded the normally muted dwarven psyche. For so long, the dwarves of Hammerheim had beeirely immuo the rise and fall of the world around them. Everoubles of other cities barely reached their stout iron walls. The Lich could have basked in that shod fear all day, but if it did, it would have missed this window of opportunity to strike at their God while he was weak enough to kill but strong enough to answer a challenge.

  The body that Tenebroum had built for the occasion was a giant pared to the forms it normally wore and only barely fit down the hallway that led to the cathedral. The form that Lich had chosen was as close to the true form of the All-Father as it could find, based on the iography of the dwarven religion. Unfortunately, this arra limited it to just four real limbs, but it would make due. It was worth it to mock the proud God with his own fabsp;

  The real only difference, beyond small spikes and other stylistic elements along with the yers of intensive entments, was the small third arm built into the chest that could move the outndishly sized pte mail beard from side to side as a sort of auxiliary shield. If the Lich was going to waste so much Mithril and steel, having su affectation structed, it might as well put it to use.

  Though it was structed solely of materials that had been gathered from dwarven heroes, that would have been impossible for most to notice, as every piece had beeed down a into something new in case the All-Father had some unknown hold on the inal. It would have been terribly ironic if Tenebroum lost this fight because of that kind of overfidence, in the same way, that the All-Father’s avatar had lost their first fight because he thought to use the ghosts of the dead to face the Libsp;

  Tenebroum was not so foolish as to do that. Even so, despite using dwarven fewights to do the work, it was somewhat inferior to the inal. There was just something about dwarven craftsmanship that could not be replicated by the hands of the unwilling dead, but hopefully, Tenebroum could pry those secrets loose today.

  Fortunately, the Lich had access to magic that the dwarves never would. They might have their runes, but that was only the smallest part of the greater magical whole, and when it came to this armored form, not a single inch was wasted on the inside or outside. Those protective spells, along with the liquid metal bubbling away in the ter of this struct’s hollow core, would allow it to heal or at least cope with a signifit amount of abuse.

  When it reached the iron-floored cathedral, the drudges were just finishiing up the embalmed dwarven heads that were going to sing this spell iend exiting in a silent single file line. Dwarves had no talent fid certainly did not enjoy it but could be vio coax a spell ience when they were forced to by a monster like him. Sadly, it expected most of them to spontaneously bust within minutes as a result of the unnatural act, but the Lich didn’t care.

  Either it would get the attention of the dying God and put him out of his misery, or the All-Father would resist Tenebroum’s call and bleed out in the dark. With the way the dwarves of capital were unraveling, it doubted very much that the deity had much loo live iher case. Tenebroum could be sustained by dev the souls of the dead, but none of its peers could say the same.

  Strictly speaking, the Lich did not know if this would work. It didn’t have to work. The only hold that it had over the All-Father were the dead hostages. Still, Tenebroum thought that would be enough. On the broken anvil altar were arrayed an assortment of skulls from high priests that had been gathered a aside for the purpose. It owerful bait but not necessarily irresistible.

  The God could simply ig and watch as Tenebroum devoured these hallowed souls o a time. That was why it had made the entire performance as Bsphemous as possible.

  Some of the corrupted skulls that looked down on the whole thing were already g or babbling, but that only added to the atmosphere as eighty-eight deep base voices began to sing with notes so low that the iron floor beh the Lich’s steel feet vibrated. The spell that it had written for the occasion was posed in dwarvish so that the All-Father might hear the litany of curses and insults in the summoning.

  Dwarven honor and rage were a potent mixture, and the Lich was relying on the All-Father’s injured pride as much as his desire to save the souls of his priests as the Lich as much as it lifted the first crystalline skull from the altar and dropped it into the giant steel mouth of this body. In a single gesture, it crushed the thing to dust, feeling the spirit briefly effervesce from the jagged bits of crystal as the dark portal opened in its designated spot, being for the All-Father to join it.

  The first dead dwarf, Thuall’kenden, died at the ripe old age of 341. He pyed the harp and was survived by seven sons. He only had a ce to experience a few flickering moments from his deadly dull life before The Lich devoured his soul and stripped a lifetime of turies down to a bit of essence. Jarden-bar didn’t fair much better. He lived for 332 years and died the st member of his before he was id to rest; his soul vanished into the ether in an instant as well.

  Several heads in its choir had already burned into ders, and the wailing of the crystal skulls in the background had increased markedly because of all the light and activity, but still, the portal from the depths of the world to this cursed pce stood uhe Lich was just pig up a third skull to repeat the process, and the throbbing song was just reag a cresdo when the All-Father finally stepped through the dark portal which was nothihan an iional rent in the inviobility of the area tained by the vast circle that surrounded bckwater, and showed himself.

  “You called, and so I have e to end you,” the All-Father growled. “Your insults and your depravity will not be allowed to stand!”

  As he spoke, a hammer with a red-hot head appeared in his hand, somewhere between a fehammer and a warhammer. Tenebroum had expected that sort of on and was not surprised. What it was surprised by was that the All-Father was shorter than it expected. It had built this body to be the exact same height, based ious texts, but instead of being a nine-foot-tall dwarf, he was closer to seven and a half. This uionally made the irony sweeter to the Lich, though, and it said nothing about it.

  Instead, the Lich said, “Stand? You’ve spent this whole time hiding on your knees, little God. Perhaps if you’d joihe fight earlier on, the realms of men might have yet stood a ce.”

  Even if the God was shorter than the Lich had expected, he was still imposing. He glowed with a soft e light and, worse, perfectly crafted armor. He might be as tall as a man, but he was as wide as any three of them and could easily have wrestled the Lich’s juggernaut into submission.

  “The realms of men rise and fall without me and mihe dwarf grumbled as it regarded the Lich with burning eyes. “They have fallen to dark before, and they will again. It is you who are transitory in all this, not I. Earth and steel will endure even your deprivations. Tradition is forever.”

  The Lich drew the battleaxe it had created for this occasion as it sidered the God’s words. “When all is darkness, nothing will be allowed to rise again,” he said finally, ahat despite everything, the dwarf was still maintaining a solid sense of who he was. He flickered some moments, indig there was some strain, but that was the only sign of problems. Given that the Lich had destroyed his entire world, he expected to see more damage, mentally and physically.

  “You think you’re the first ohat ever tried that?” the All-Father ughed. “You think you’re the first vilin to shatter some arrogant light god’s chariot? I’ve already fixed that and made the damn sword. My part in all this is done, or it would be if you would learn to leave well enough alone.”

  Chariot? Sword? The Lich’s mind wondered about both of these things, but before it could sider that, or the implication that this had all happened before, the All-Father charged the Lich with all the force of an avanche.

  The Cathedral of Skulls was built to be bait and insult, but it was also built to be an arena. That was the reason so much stone had been carved away and witchfire braziers burned in the background. It was also the reason why the floor had been pted in iron; because the blows that these two heavyweights could infli each other would shatter stone.

  There was no art to this bat. There was no dance of bdes with eborate dodges and parrying like it had once doh Siddrim and ter with that cursed Tempr. This was more brutal than that. This was a force of nature. It was ahquake, given human form, and the Lich worried a little at the damage these terrible blows might do to the rest of its ir.

  That didn’t stop him from taking the full force of the hammer on his left shoulder even as it brought its dark axe down on the dwarf god’s head. The force of the axe was only enough to dent the helmet, but the shadowy edge that maed along the edge of the bde a moment before impact was enough to split it, too, sending the piece of armor tumbling away, even though the head beh it healed almost instantly. At the same time as it struck, though, Tenebroum's body was throwirely off bance by the hammer blow, ae the reinforced skeleton that had beeed to hold the weight of this giant suit of armor, the cvicle still fractured. The Lich staggered back from the blow as the liquid metal flowed like mercury to repair the damage.

  What distracted Tenebroum wasn’t the force or the pain, though; it was the strange magical iions that had occurred at the moment of impact. Its struct had tried to harvest the heat of the hammer to power a few of its spells, but the hammer had likewise tried to do something with the metal, and as the traitorous substance respoo the call of the deity, several lines of inscriptions that powered those spells were erased, resulting in a spray of sparks rather than the magical aura of prote that should have beeed.

  So even after all this time, he has some surprises too, the Lich mused. This was about to get very iing.

  Book 2 (Ch. 51-100) is stubbi week. It is avaible for Preorder here.