Tenebrarded the golden cage full of squirming rats impatiently as it scryed into their flimsy souls. It did not fi there, nor even signs that it would normally think of as intellige never did. Instead, it found only fear and hunger-fighting their eternal war against one another.

  “Tell me about Malzekeen,” it anded again. “Iail this time. Everything that es to mind.”

  “W-we don’t recall details; it’s been much too long for them. They have tried up and blown away.” the rats cried out as one in a keening, squirming chorus. None of them could make whole words, but each of them could make parts of words in a way that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “All we remember are the wrath and ruin… That eerrible light… Then all of it, everything, and everyone was gone.”

  The Lich was uain if they were referring to the fate that had befalley, or if they were instead referring to the wolf and the worm that it sometimes spoke about instead. The two cepts were almost as entwined i’s mind as it was in various texts that the Lich’s servants had pored through.

  “Nothing?” the Lich grumbled in annoyance. “Remind me, whie is wrath and which is ruin?”

  “Wrath has the sharpest teeth,” the rats called out, “Ruin’s bite is much slower but even deeper.”

  The Lich sighed mentally. I hated dealing with this broken thing.

  It had already found some answers in the mind of its library and more in a books in pces like Sidddrimar, stantinal, and Rahkin. It had specialty structs in those and other pces that did nothing but read and remember. Those undead were uncharacteristically thoughtful, and so it had made them uncharacteristically weak to prevent any problems as they sifted through turies of knowledge, looking for an uain number of needles in a variety of different haystacks.

  Its readers were little more than drudges, save that they’d been given the minds of learned men, and their skulls had been sliced open ly and hinged on top. This was so that when those minds were full, they could be repced, and fresh minds could be installed so they might tiheir researbsp;

  It had found a number of surprisiails so far, but many of them were tradictory. Malzekeen seemed to be both a pd a group of dread gods that may or may not have been from that pce. The details were unclear.

  All that everyone agreed on, was that the pce was either lost in the northers which were apparently created when Siddrim smote them for their foul ways, or it was off the east coast of the ti, suh the waves because the Lord of Light had decided that it was so foul to his sight and so irredeemable that it had moved the very world from its p the heavens to drown them.

  Though the Lich thought that either story ossible, and its presen both locations was unlikely, it had dispatched servants throughout the area to search for the a ruins. Despite those efforts, and the fact that it apparently had one of the survivors in its hands, it still could not find any clues to narrow the search area down further.

  As a st resort, the Lich had brought a caged sample of the rger swarm back to its ir so that it could iigate them more thhly in its soul fe, but even that had limited utility. Individually, the rats were simply too insubstantial.

  They required some critical mass to take on the spark of true intelligence. While that was an iiail, it was happy to study, no matter how many of the rat souls it had to shred for answers, it did not help Tenebroum find the ahat it was looking for.

  “What of the wolf and the worm then?” the Lich asked again, with growing impatienbsp;

  “What of them?” the rats answered. “They are our brothers, lost to us for all this time.”

  “Do you think they yet live?” the Lich asked.

  “Always dying, but never dead,” the rats agreed. “Unless new deities of wrath and ruin have risen to take their pce.”

  The Lich paused to sider whether or not it qualified as wrath or ruin, but decided again it. It wasn’t sure if it know of course, but it liked to think it would. If things were so broad as that, then surely its eternal avariess and greed would have long ago stolen Groshin’s power too, wouldn’t it?

  If it had to characterize itself, it would give itself the bels of darkness ah more than anything symbolic. Is wrath the same as death in the end, though? It wondered.

  It couldn’t say. Instead, it passed along the philosophical question to its library auro the topic at hand. “Were you always separate creatures, or were you more than that?”

  “My brothers were never far from us,” the rats squeaked. “Not until the Lord of Light burned us to ash and dust.”

  “Yes, but as a siity, or a pantheon, or something else?” The Lich demanded. It was trying to stay calm. When its ped too out of trol, the rat swarm was disrupted and lost almost all ability to speak for a time. It was annoying but only slightly more frustrating than the current quality of answers.

  “We have never been a siity…” the rats answer with hesitation. “Hunger never applies to only one.”

  Somehow it khat was the wrong answer, but still they said it anyway. That was enough to make Tenebroum worry that the things were trying to be deceitful toward it, but thy seemed to ck the intelligence for suplex lies, especially in small numbers.

  It had figured out ohing though. It was fairly sure that Siddrim had iionally not destroyed them pletely in order to try to imprison those natural evils. This fact teue against Malzekeen being a drowned isnd somewhere. After all, if the isnd sank how would they find all the little rat corpses ahem away in a sarcophagus.

  No, whoever had dohis had made sure to have pieces of the dark gods left to imprison so something new wouldn’t rise in their pce. That much it could determihout having to ask a all. Tenebroum wished it could get more answers from Sidrrim’s soul on all these things, but it was so long ago that the only answers it had were a smug satisfa that it had triumphed, which was less than useless.

  It left them there and had a drudge seal the room as it soared off into the night sky beyond its absolute barrier so that it could look at the stars and sider what it already knew.

  It khat the Malzekeen probably came from the city of Malzekeen, or at least they met their end there at the hands of an angry sun god. Where that was exactly didn’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things.

  What mattered was which of the many versions of history were right. To date, the most iing books it had found were actually in the bck libraries buried beh Siddrimar. Those hidden histories trasted more than a little with the publies that its heads had read elsewhere, but because it had eaten their God, Tenebroum knew better than anyone how corrupt and untrustworthy Siddrim’s church had bee i tury.

  There had been several attempts to fix that and at least two reformations, but as the Lord of Light took less and less i in the world he ruled over, corruptio in. Still, broadly speaking, Sdirrim’s adherents seemed to believe in a cyclical view of history. There were ages of light and ages of dark, and the world kept spinning.

  Different saints throughout the church's history took that to be literal, while others thought that it was a metaphor for corruption and vigi was impossible to say which was true with aainty.

  Given how much damage Tenebroum’s forces had doo the world so quickly, it uood hile that bance was, too. But it saw no way that light could win now that darkness was all but paramount. It was only the thought that the light had once believed the very same thing only a few years ago that gave it pause.

  I will take nothing fraenebroum told itself as it gazed across the night sky and gred at the waxing crest moon with suspi. I will find every advaake every precaution, and kill or corrupt every enemy until the whole world belongs to me and me alone!

  This ractically its mantra, and it had only strengthened as it learned how big the world was. For a short period of time it had assumed that it had already quered almost all their was to see, but as it sulted maps and learned from the souls of merts and mariners, it began to uood just how many other nds there were to be quered.

  Though the darkness doubted they would stand any more of a ce against it than these pathetigdoms had, it would not grow overfident. It promised itself that. Especially not as long as the moon still hung in the sky. That woman was not to be trusted, and even now, it was certain that she was marshaling her forces for some ribsp;

  It had tricks of its own. It already possessed spirits of almost every element, and its work on its new nature goddess was going well. She still thought that she was free, but in time, his six-armed Queen of Thorns would do terrible things to the gueril forces that had beset it on more than one occasion. The Lich had spent months carving those three spirits into one, and it wouldn’t be long before they had its brand on their soul, and it could finally be unleashed on an unsuspeg world.

  She was just the first of its neons, too. O struck down Abendend who knew what strange magics it would be able to unlock, and if the wolf was still buried beh that a pce as Groshin had promised it, well, Tenebroum was sure that soon it would be the orapping the moon, not the other way around. It had already dragged the sun from the sky, so why not Lunaris as well?

  Tenebroum watched her as she traced her slow track across the sky, just as she did every night as he sidered all these plex ideas. Now, it just had to find the worm, and the table would be set.