“Yesss… I have risssen… Onccce more…” The words of the Worm weren’t physically spoken things. Instead, they echoed through the ether in a sibint, voiceless whisper, in the same way that the Lias minions. This was the least expected option, but even so, it rogress.

  “Tell me your name, I and you,” Tenbroum ordered.

  “My… he worm answered in fusion. There was more squirmih the bloodstaih. Worms robably more accurate, giveterns in the mud, but the Lich was less ed about the exa this thing took than it was about what could be learned from it. “I am… the ruiner offf nationsss… the sssumer of men… the wassster of livesss…”

  “I have read the stories,” The Lich said carefully, trying to decide whether feeding it more would prod it to life or if torment would do a better job of that. “I am well aware that you are the portion of Malkazeen that is pestilend death.”

  “I am not death,” the Worm whispered. “No, ssshe is sssomeone elssse. I am Pessstilenccce, decay, and… and…”

  “And what?” the Lich asked, losing its patienbsp;

  “And not Malzzzekeen,” it whispered. “But I will… we will all bee the Malzzekeen, in time… that isss the way of thingsss. First, we join and devour the nd and the people on it, then we flee from the sssun and—”

  “The sun is gone!” squeaked the chorus of rats. “The sun is shattered, and the Lord of Light is no more!”

  Tenebroum thought about punishing the rats for overstepping but decided against it. It would see where this went instead.

  “Dead… but that isss not the order of things…” the worms whispered, squirming more violently. The level of the soil was lower than it had been before, and the movements were easier to see. “If it isss gohen nothing ssstop usss from what mussst e .”

  “What es is that I will study the three of you, and when I have found a way to bind you to my power, then—”

  “We ot be bound until we are bound together…” the Worm responded.

  “I find that unlikely,” the Liswered sourly, studying the growing aura of the thing in an attempt to find insight, but it found little.

  The Wom was markedly less powerful than the Wolf. There was little reason why it should be the most talkative and intelligent of the three, a seemed to be. The Wolf was four times the size of Groshian and the Worm bined, and thanks to how well-fed it had been during its time with the Queen of Thorns, it was bursting with power. It should have been the master, but it seemed to be the servant. Rage and violence came before hunger or disease, though.

  The Lich set it aside. The why was not important. It was the how that was important.

  The Lich had already dissected both the Wolf and the rats for clues as to their nature. It was tempted to do the same with the Worm, but something about its nature… it decided against that for now. Experiments were much safer behind the walls of magic that were painted on the floor.

  “Tell me what you recall, and I will reward you with more blood,” the Lich lied. If the thing had needed more power to e back to life, it would have gdly drow in a ke of blood, but it looked quite healthy as things stood. Holy, it looked a bit too healthy, but that was just one more mystery to unravel.

  “I remember…” it paused as if it was searg for an answer. “I remember light, and then… darknessss…”

  “The Light!” Groshian squeaked in a chorus that made the wolf howl mournfully.

  “The Light is goenebroum answered with growing annoyance. “I slew it in single bat. Now tell me what else you know.”

  “You?” the Worm asked. Several of them had broken to the surfad were squirming about violently as if they were looking for something. “But you are jussst a ssspirit… You are not ssstrong enough to defffeat the light…”

  “I am the lord of death and darkness,” Tenebroum spat. “I have defeated both the Lord of Light and the All-Father, along with dozens of small gods. I am the most powerful force of all in the world, and if you do not find a way to make yourself useful to me, I will devour your soul and use it to fuel my other experiments and quests.”

  The Lich well uood that sometimes patieneeded to be afforded to certain spirits that had lost their bearings. Life ah was plex business. That said, to the Lich, this did not feel like a spirit slowly waking from a long sleep. It seemed like it was stalling for time.

  “We…” the Worm Answered. “We remember what God ffflessssh fffelt like, and how wonderffful it wasss to wreak havo the world above… A leassst until a new Lord of Light wasss chosssen.”

  “A new Lord of Light?” the Lich asked, fused. “Why would there be more than one?”

  “Why would there only ever be ohe Worm answered. “That isss the way offf thingsss. We ssstrike one down to begin the age of strifffe, and a new one ssstrikesss usss down in turn to renew light and lifffe to the world. It isss you who are the aberration.”

  “Abberation?” The Lich asked. “Expin yourself.”

  “’t you fffeel it?” the Worm asked, in its slimy voice. “Our e? It issss not your time, and thisss isss, not your pccce…”

  The thing was beginning to talk nonsense now, and Tenebroum was very close to ending this versation. Only the strange ing of the worms and their tinued growth kept it here watg.

  “There is no e,” the Lich growled, shifting unfortably as it tried to put a finger on this feeling that it was feeling.

  “But we are ected, ’t you feel it?” the worms asked? There were so many of them now that the earth was all but gone, and they were squirming almost to the edge of the sarcophagus.

  Tenebroum decided it definitely wasn’t going to feed them further at that point. What little life energy it had given the worms couldn’t possibly at for such tremendous growth. So, until it had more of its questions answered, the only motivatiohings would receive would be in the form of pain.

  “I feel nothing,” the Lich barked. It was a lie, though. It did feel something in its soul. There was a strange sort of e between it and the sarcophagus twenty feet away, even though that was impossible. It was a sleheric thread, and when Tenebroum tried to sever it, a new sprang ience just as quickly.

  The Lich took a step back. It wasn’t fear that made it do so. Instead, it was an abundance of caution.

  It had ouched the a stone sarcophagus or even approached it. Both it and its oct were locked behind a triple ring of the stro wards that the Liew. A quick check revealed they were intad w as intended, aill, it did not feel safe.

  The coffin was overflowing with worms now. There were so many they were falling on the floor now and squirming blindly around. It was meaningless because they couldn’t escape their fi and had no way to chew through stone, but somehow, that sight put more fear into the Lich than anything had since Albrecht had so long ago.

  Something was very wrong. Just to be on the safe side, the Lich ordered all the zombies to move away from the ring. In fact, halfway through the order, it ged its mind and directed them to a er of the room. If something had mao ihem, it didn’t want them to spread it to the rest of its ir. It would leave them in here aroy them with fire if that was necessary.

  “Don’t go…” the worms called out to the Lich as it moved toward the door. “You join usss and bealzzekeen too… maybe together we could bee… more than the Malzzekeen…”

  The Wolf growled at that, and the rats chittered excitedly, but the Lich ignored both. Instead, it was distracted by a straion in its body, and it looked down. It was strao feel anything at all in a corpse, let alone ohat had been tareated, ao work in the dark for decades. It wasn’t impossible that an i would make it into its ir from time to time, but as Tenebroum looked down, it saw that wasn’t what this was.

  There, in the middle of its chest, was the outline of a long, slender worm crawling around in the skih its chest. It was a horrifying sight, not because it was disgusted by such things, but because it was impossible.

  “This ot be!” it roared. Lifting its right hand and using the scalpel on its sixth fio cut the flesh open and remove the thing. It was exactly what it thought it was, and it immediately dropped it on the ground and crushed it us heel.

  But beyond that, there was nothing it could do. It didn’t matter if it was impossible. It was happening. There were more now. Worms were crawling around its current body ihat they never should have existed.

  No, ihat they did in until a moment ago. It was quite sure of that. The Lich still had dim memories of what it had been like to be no more than a s. It khe feeling of leaches and slugs crawling through it, and this pce had, thanks to the caustic chemicals it used to embalm all of its plicated creations, this corpse had been sterile.

  Now, it wasn’t, though. Now, grey fihick earthworms and bck ftworms were crawling us skin and out betweeitches where the flesh was long ago joiogether. Worse, the bck mist that made up its true form was leaking from these wounds like it had been injured.

  Tennebroum realized that it had been ihough, and immediately fled the body, letting it drop to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut as it sought to put distaween it and those terrible worms. It had fought the All-Father in violent single bat for several minutes, and the God had done no more than total one of the many bodies that the Lich had structed for itself, but to damage its soul, even in a small way?

  As the Lich pulled away, it could feel it. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.