Worms were crawling all the to the edge of the boundary cirow. They were p out of the sarcophagus like there was some sort of portal in there. They were flooding the pce, but except for the few that had sprung from the corpse that Tenebroum had been wearing only a moment ago, there was side the binding rings.

  That was good, but there should have been all outside the binding rings. The spirits were separated from the rest of the world; at least, they should have been.

  The Lich woke up every head in its library at oo demand answers but khat suswers would take time, even if they came at all. While it did so, it was torween fleeing the room and sealing the stone door aween watg what might happe. If it stayed, then whatever foul magic it was that ected it to the Worm might get stronger, but if it fled, then it wouldn’t be able to see or stop what happened .

  The very idea of fleeing in its own pce of power reposterous, but that’s exactly what was about to happen. It would have, too, if it had not seen the worms from its corpse ing their way across the floor toward the cage of rats.

  Tenebroum silently ordered the closest drudge to walk over and stomp every st worm until there was nothi. It might not be able to do anything about the overflowing sarcophagus yet, but fire-wielding fewights were on their way. They didn’t have a tenth of the strength of Krulm’venor, but they were more than enough to sterilize this room.

  As the zombie crushed all the worms until they were nothing but goo with thick booted feet, the Worm cried out. “You don’t o do thisss… you join usss…”

  “I do not have partners or allies, and I do not join pantheons,” the Lich barked. “And I only use servants that—”

  “Not a pantheon…” the worms whispered. “No… A creature like you… we desire your power…”

  The Lich should have roared in e. It wao, but instead, it could only stare in mute horror as the drudge that had crushed the worms began to bulge and bloat. Tennebroum ordered it to move back to the far end of the room, but it didn’t reach it before it exploded in a shower of ft and roundworms of all shapes and colors.

  The door to the room slid shut behind its ephemeral form with the loud sound of stone grating against stone. Such a burial wouldn’t stop the Lich from doing as it wanted, but it would keep whatever was happening here from spreading.

  Realistically, it should draw the life force out of these cursed things and devour their spirits whole. It had sidered that with Groshin many times, but now it was gd that it had not. There was no telling what terrible effect that might have had.

  The worms were everywhere now. They were in all three circles and on several of the drudges. They were on the walls and the ceilings. Tennebroum was more than a little disturbed. Fortunately, that’s when the fewights arrived.

  The dwarven ghosts were usually used to hammer armor into shape and make metal skeletons for one of a hundred different projects. For that, they wore iron gaus bound to their souls so they could use tools and i with objects. Today, they had a different task: extermination.

  “You want my power?” Tennebroum asked. “Then burn with it.”

  As the Lich finished speaking, fire flooded the room. In fact, the light of it was unfortably bright enough that it moved to hide in the shadow of the sarcophagus lid that had been propped against the near wall. It didn’t o see everything to know what was happening, though. It could hear it. It could hear the shrieks of the rats and the howl of the wolf as much as it could hear the crisping of the worms as the world filled with fire.

  Acc to the legends, that was how Siddrim purged them, wasn’t it? Tenebroum thought to himself.

  The fire went on for almost a minute before the oxygen was pletely depleted, and the fewights fled as slender blue fmes before they were extinguished pletely. This let the Lich spread out pletely in the darko see what it had wrought.

  The results were not what it had hoped. It had expected to find only charred bodies that had goill. The Queen of Thrones herself had mentiohat this wolf could die if enough damage had been doo it, but somehow, despite its wounds, it was still snarling even as it was covered in burns. Some of the mice were moving, too, and the Worm’s sarcophagus was beginning to again.

  “Fire… heat… it isss not enough…” the Worm whispered again. “Not without the light that esss with it.”

  The Lich’s blood froze at those words. Light was the ohing it could not wield against these things. It had minions that could use any of the four elements, shadows, acid, and any number of other strange ons. There was no light, though. Instantly, its mind started to race through the antielement options it might have. There was nulite in its ir, but for everything else—

  Tenebroum’s train of thought was derailed when it Heard the wolf growl more loudly and then pad forward, one shaky step at a time. The beast shouldn’t have been able to move forast the rings that bound it, but it only took the quickest g the rings to see what had happened.

  The marks that had been painted on the floor had been made in a dark pigment that wouldn’t be harmed by the fmes, but the worms that had nded on them during the gorey explosion had been buro a crisp until they carburized them. One fwed ring could ruin such a w or even make it dangerous, as the mages of Abenend had found out the hard way. In this case, it had set the Wolf free. No, it realized, to its’ horror, it had set them all free.

  “There is no choiccce,” the Worm whispered as the wolf ripped open the cage and began to devour the rats, being oh them. “Malzzekeen will flourisssh and devour everything until the light ssstopsss usss. Even you…”

  The Lich had its remaining drudges charge the thing, but it khey stood no ce. Even before it had finished ripping them to pieces, its tail was ging into that of a rat, and its sed head was growing. This was the worst-case sario in its mind, and even as it retreated through the door made of eight inches of solid stone, drudges were pushing a heavy wooden beam across it to make it nearly impossible to open while reinforts headed this way.

  The Lich wasn’t sure what it would do if they breached the door. It had many projects that were halfway through stru, but other than its huard, it had very few warriors in its own inner sanctum these days. They simply were not here were its own structs, of course. It would likely have to animate one of the more powerful models and—

  “Ahhhh… I see at st,” a new voice whispered the way that the Worm had. It was a chorus too, like the rats had been before now, but it was subtler and dripping with maliew or not, though, there was only one person it could be. Malzekeen.

  “We had been w what the e was between an immortal being like the Worm and a paltry specter like you, and now we see it at st,” Malzekeen purred. “It’s the gold, isn’t it. You robbed our tomb and cut your throat; isn’t that ironic…”

  Even as warriors flooded down the corridor to stand ready against whatever was about to happen, The Lich suddenly realized what it was that the caged god was talking about. “It’s my gold,” the Lich roared as it fled back to the heart of darkness: its throne room and the phyctery it tained.

  Every resource that it had in the pce was in motion now. Drudges were fetg ued alchemical pounds, and half-finished warriors were springing to life and shambling toward the lonely hallway where all hell was breaking loose. Everything was being mobilized.

  “To think if you’d left that gold where it belohen you would…” the distant eg voice paused. “Oh, but you couldn’t… could you… Tenebroum…”

  To hear its own name from the lips of another was enough to stop the Li its tracks for a moment. Such a thing was impossible. It was unthinkable. It was the ohing that was not written in the Skoetiikos. It was the one fact that the library did not know. It was forbidden. The only pce it eveed was in the great manda that surrous territory, which let it dictate the very rules of the world here.

  Even in that pce, though, had been specifically carved by a handful es us watchful eye, and they were obliterated afterward. There was simply no way that Malzekeen could know unless…

  Suddenly, it looked down at that slehread that seemed to unravel off of it and back toward that monster. It was reading its mind through this cursed link.

  “I am,” it purred. “That and so much more. You are but a paltry ghost, but you’ve been up to so much. And you have such strength, too. We ot wait to devour it.”

  Tenebroum paused, almost to its throne room, and assessed itself. It did not feel weak, but not that it was fog on it; it could detect a notable drain.

  In the distance, something boomed. The beast was trying to get free.

  With all the souls like this, it had gathered, it could probably ehis a long time, but that wasn’t good enough. It o sever this strange e ond for all. There was only one way to do that, though, and the thought was terrifying.

  The e to the Lich was through the gold in its phyctry. What it didn’t know. What it could never have known was that that gold had already touched something else. That was what those adventurers found, and that was what Cutter and Riley had stolen from them. That was the core of everything.

  Suddenly, certaiions that Tenebroum had never asked before were answered. Why did it have powers over disease in those early days? Why did it slip so easily into the s and its many predators? More than anything, why did it all feel sht?

  The Lich was horrified by those realizations and more as it sped to its throneroom. There was a terrible bang again. This time, it was apanied by the sound of crag stone. Eve inches of limestone wasn’t enough to keep that thing at bay.

  “Nothing stop me,” Malzekeen whispered in his mind. “I’m ing for you, Tenebroum, and there’s nothing you do about it…”

  It briefly tried to reverse the link and pry into the mind of this fy, but it was a terrible idea, and it only sped up the power that was being sapped from it. The Lich stopped and ig. It had already made up its mind.

  It issued a and that it hought it would have to make, and suddenly, its lizardman huard that had stood still for so long sprang to life. They hesitated only briefly as Malzekeen tried to stop it, but whatever hold it had over Tennebroum was tenuous, and it only barely exteo the Lich’s minions.

  “You think this will stop me?” Malzekeen roared in Tenebroum’s mind like the beast he was. “I am primeval. I am unstoppable. You ot hope to defeat me!”

  As the beast blustered and shattered the stone doorway that held it back, the Lich’s eight lizardman warriors brought their halberds down hard on the phyctery, hopelessly mangling it. Albrect had stood there silently for such a long time, and now, with n at all, he was beiroyed. The warriors delivered blow after terrible blow until the golden shell was in pieces, and dust was leaking from the mummified corpse.

  And just like that, the ghostly link vanished, along with a good k of what made the Lich who it was. For a long time, it had been a maelstrom. It had been lightning in a bottle, but now there was no bottle, and it began to unravel immediately. Now, its soul spun out of trol, heming spirits rge and small. With eae, a bit of expertise or knowledge vanished, and Tenebroum slowly but surely unraveled into nothing.

  It was ing u was no longer a Lich. It was merely one specter among many, desperately flying through the dark as its world ended. It wasn’t alohere were tens of thousands of spirits flying to pieces in all dires, and it had no idea what would be left when every st spark and shard that made it who it was was gohe st thing that Tenebroum saw before it flew off to hide in the darkest er of its ir was that awful chimera tearing its way through the guards it faced.

  It had bee exactly like the texts had said it would. It was a derawo-headed predator, as rge as a man, with the head of a wolf and a rat, ringed all around in a terrible mane of worms, and any minute now, that thing would be hunting it.

  Hello everyone, I made a Merry Lich-mas banner, but sadly I 't use it today. Why? Because Tenebroum Book 2 is out!

  The audiobook won't follow until the beginning of January, and the physical book is ing soon, but for those of you that want to pick up the ebook you find it here. In the final draft of Book 2, not only does the Lich finally get its long lost on the cover... It's also almost 10% lohan the version you read on RR, and expands upon several key, climactic ses (I'm sure you think of a few that I might mean.) If you like the inal, you'll love the final version!

  (Lich-mas Bao return on Sunday. Thanks for reading!)