hen all was in readiness, and Tenebroum had drunk its fill from every er of its fading region, it waited for the first new moon to strike. It had long deliberated on this moment and decided to pn its attack when the heavens were weakest. Truthfully, I should have dohis when Lunaris was dying; before she’d somehow mao rejuvehe Lich berated itself before setting that bme aside.

  That opportunity was lost to it now. It had been too focused on its pn, and as a result, it had not examihe pying field widely enough. That mistake would not happen again. It was impossible, now that it had almost two hundred pairs of eyes staring into the void now.

  Its new form had thrown off the st vestiges of humanity that had bound it until now. For so long, it had drifted among the world as a fog or rested in its phyctery as something resembling a man. Its drudges and its armies had been thought of as arms and hands and fingers. All of those metaphors were gone now. Creating a phyctery that could be measured in miles had ged it.

  Tenebroum no longer had hands. There weren’t enough hands in the world to do what o be do was a swarm, sunk seven irs deep into the nd that had once been a s, and now, when it reached for something, tentacles of darkness coiled around it, and dozens es moved to carry out its will.

  Tonight, though, its goal was entirely beyond the fearsome grip of the corpses that served it. Tonight, it was reag for the sky, literally. In the days leading up to the new moon, it had pnned carefully and sucked dry every reservoir in an effort to tap what it saw as a truly unlimited source of power: the endless night.

  To that end, it had bled the goblin tribes, sughtered any survivors it had found along the coast, and reduced the once mighty Oroza to a dead zone as it sucked the st dregs of life out of the Bckwater region. It martialed everything it had for this moment, and then, just after midnight, it strubsp;

  There was no moon in the sky, and it would be hours yet before the first grayish light touched the horizon. Only the stars were out, and the Lich had no doubt that it could punch ly through the thin barrier of stars, which were all that was lyiween it and the thing that it desired most when it us attabsp;

  The tower of darkhat it created so long ago already soared thousands of feet into the air. It was taller than any man-made structure Tenebroum had ever seen. That was not enough, though. Not for what it had pnned, and as the new glyphs and circuits activated, the whole thing became that much taller and thinner, s toward the sky.

  No one could see the assault, of course. It was a dark sword s through the night sky, but the Lich didn’t care. The element of surprise was a valuable asset, and the Lich would take it. When it was surging with power from this newfound source, all would know of its triumph soon enough. Such a moal event would be impossible to hide.

  Higher and higher, the spire soared as it raced toward the thin lines of force that were the stars and the are patterns that were woveween them. From the ground, all that Tenebroum could see were the little pinpricks of light, but up here, he could see they were ten thousand thousand tiny warriors, all battling back against the darkhat writhed beyond them.

  The Lich practically salivated in anticipation at that as it remembered the feast of shadows that Krulm’venor had given it so long ago. The feasts of Ghen’tal and Mournden were, but appetizers pared to the shadowy creatures that y before it now. Tenebroum had no doubt that it would o e only half a dozen of those strange, stantly shiftihans, and it would be overflowing with enough power to re-establish tact with its armies and tis quest. It had subsisted off the dregs of its former quests for long enough. It wao feast once more.

  When the Lich’s bde was more than a mile high, it began to feel the strain of its magics as the ground they were anchored to thrummed with power. It was no longer a miles-wide bde but a rapier no wider than the mage’s tower that had stood here so long ago. O was over five miles tall, it thinned further, being little more than a needle of perfect darkhat sought to touch the heavens.

  That would be enough, though. As its giant, celestial spear scraped the very heavens themselves, it pierced one of the nameless, faceless little stars that held back the dark, dissipating the warrior instantly into a thousand shards of fading light and toug the darkness beyond it.

  For a moment, Tenebroum brushed against something a and powerful. This monstrosity was a slug with no eyes and a thousand yawning toothless mouths. It was too old for teeth. It rimordial. All that the monster wanted in life was to fight its ast the stars a on the world below, but the Lich feasted on it instead, feeling raw, primordial power thrum through it. The monstrosity struggled in its grip, of course, but it could do nothing to stop a god of shadows from dev it whole.

  Then, just on the verge of Tenebroum’s triumph, the giay was ripped away from it, and the e was go took the Lich a moment to uand why. That was when it realized that the other stars in the area were spiraling and moving closer.

  Like a swarm of birds or a school of fish, the glowing dots reoriented, and as they did so, the shifting lines of power between them altered and reformed. That blocked the hole in the iet that Tenebroum had created. It roared in e and pushed harder against the flimsy boundary, even as it shed out at the stars that tried to encroa its position.

  At first, only a handful of stars got within its reach, and each of them was easily struck down by a sihrust through their heart as its slender, miles-long limb danced and wove around their blows. That only worked when their numbers were few. Ohere were dozens trying to strike it down, such a strategy became impossible.

  Things quickly shifted from the covert assassination it had po a full-on battle in the heavens as it swung and struck out against the increasing swarm of stars. At this point, it was light fighting a swarm of gnats, and it cked the tools to fight such a battle effectively.

  Worse, the way they moved and danced made it immediately clear to the Lich. They weren’t trying to strike it down. They were trying to bind it up in the magics that they used to hold back the night. Those glimmering things had beeed specifically to fight the darkness, and soon, Teneborum was almost entirely on the defensive.

  In that way, it was suddenly no different than the creatures that the tiny glowing warriors fought normally. The only difference was that its body was so far away that it was difficult to martial any real power from this distand was reduced to shattering and skewering the defiant little bastards o a time.

  Still, even with that, Tenebroum might have been able to force its way through eventually. Gnats were fragile things, and the night still had many hours to go. There were only so many stars in this part of the sky that could be brought to bear, and the Lich would not be denied.

  That was when the moon started to turn. One moment, it was nothing but a bck orb, visible only in that it blotted out a small portion of stars. The moment, it was a thin, glimmering line of light, like some giant god waking up from its sleep. Tenebroum had not pnned for this.

  The Lich’s schemes had called for a lightning assault that would allow it to tap the unlimited darkness above its head before anyone had noticed it was even there. It had dohis on the darkest night of the month to ehat the only person who might interfere would be uo. Now that the first part of its pn had failed, it would seem the tter was as well.

  Even as the moon’s crest began to widen, Tenebroum retreated. It was out of time. It had felt the moon’s light before, but eve had been pinned by those strange silvery arrows, it was not as vulnerable as it was in this moment. Right now, most of Tenebroum’s power was a mile’s long tower that stretched toward the sky, and as diffuse as that structure was, it might be obliterated in a single moment by the moon’s full power.

  So, the two deities raced. Tenebroum sought to shrink and resolidify itself, and the moon slowly increased its brightness as more and more of its wide surface began to glow with light. It was a hing, but by the time Lunaris had turned even three-quarters of her face to shine on the dark tower, it was gone.

  That didn’t stop the moon from releasing the full might of its pale glow for several seds. Instead of shining on a thin and vaporous tower that stretched to the heavens, though, the light found only an obsidian hard dome of pure darkhat was now only just rge enough to cover Tenebroum’s domain. The thing wasn’t as impressive as before, but it was more defensive, and it used much less power.

  It was the sed part that ed Tenebroum more than anything, though. Despite its taste of darkness, it had expended nearly half of its reserves in this moal uaking and had nothing to show for it. Oh, it had cost the sky a huars, and in a few months, it could try again, but without a more signifit adva would take turies to snuff out every star in the sky, assuming that the gods didn’t have some way of making more.

  Tenebroum coiled bato its ir ahed in frustration at this test setback, and brooded about what to do . It released its grip on the individual skulls that dotted its outer ring, letting the individual pieces of its soul argue about what to do . There were many pns there. Some were quite insane, but others were less so. Gradually, though, a sensus began to watch over the collective heads.

  A new pn had been decided on, and for it to work, the Lich would have to summon its fourth horsemen and dig deep into the earth.