Even as it debated the decisions with its tiny pantheon of underlings and slowly began to make preparations for larger tasks, its minions spread in all directions. Some of those were fast moving cavalry units that galloped throughout the night on discordant hooves before they sheltered by day in bogs and ponds. The infantry units moved slower, both because of their short, human legs and the fact that they had to dig their own graves wherever they went.

There were only three areas of concern now, though. The first priority was to surround Abenend.

After that, some small measure of its forces was sent to the north to keep an eye out for any northern armies that might wish to disrupt things. A few scouting parties were also spared for the lands it had not yet ravaged to the south-east of Rahkin. Unfortunately, the northern part of Dutton County was already nearly abandoned.

At least, that was what the Lich believed, it was only after almost a week of scouring out every trace of life at each isolated farmstead that its scouts reported a small village on the banks of the Tolden river that was still prospering.

Normally that would have been enough for the Lich to descend on it and feast on the still living morsels itself, even if it was currently busy with arrangements for Abenend were it not for one small complication. After many days of discussions with its Dark Paragon, it had decided that further frontal assaults would be fruitless. This left them with two options: tunneling under the mages’ school-fortress or laying siege to it.

Of course, in a broad sense they had laid siege to the area for years now. It had done little good, though. The Wiley wizards somehow used their magic to sustain themselves even as the world collapsed around them.

Tenebroum was just beginning to discuss a different sort of siege involving standing stones more than soldiers, but that was halted when the men and women with light in their eyes were found. That was enough to stop everything.

Its troops retreated undetected, and instead a swarm of black birds was launched to go find out what new torment had been unleashed. It took days for more than a few of them to gather, but they revealed no dire news.

Indeed, other than the fact that two dozen of the two hundred people in the tiny armed camp had glowing eyes, everything was as it should be. They were just humans preparing for the coming harvest. Other that a palisade and a sturdy gate they were as defenseless as anyone else.

Still, the Lich doubted. There had to be more than meets the eye for such a strange occurrence to unfold. He suspected the work of the dead Templar, or if not him then evidence of another fallen star. The latter prospect was terrifying.

If the gods were continuing to intervene in small ways at the edges of its domain, then who knew where they might strike at it next? The moon goddess might attack him again from anywhere in the sky, and the All-Father theoretically had everything beneath the ground within his domain. Then there were the gods of the sea and of nature to consider.

Tenebroum didn’t feel fear, but suddenly it’s paranoia raged out of control and it sent spies in every direction and dark messengers to check on its distant strongholds while it focused on this one. Something wasn’t right.

As each of its minions reported back, though, all they had to say was that everything was as it should be. No reports contained anomalies, and no devastating attacks had been launched in unexpected places. Even the kidnapped nature goddesses were still trapped in their cells so that Tenebroum could experiment on them as time allowed.

With trepidation, after several days it sent the dreamer forward to explore the minds of the villagers next, to try to get more information from their sleeping minds. The results were unexpected.

The evidence of the light’s touch had made the lich fear the worst, but all it had found were the embers of hope. “This is where the Templar laid his head while he recovered from your last battle, sire,” the ephemeral Dreamer whispered. “There was a mage too, and some children, but they are gone now.”

“Where did they go?” Tenebroum demanded.

“West,” the Dreamer said, playing a piece of a vision that showed the small band leaving. “To take shelter with the mages at Abenend.”

Even before the spirit had finished speaking, Tenebroum ordered a segment of his cavalry along with a small portion of the gathered raven flock to set out in search of the group. If they’d been forewarned about its coming, then they must be pawns of some importance.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The trail was weeks old at this point, so magic would be of little aid. Still, it controlled all of the land between here and there, so there was nowhere they could hope to hide from its deathless eyes.

“Shall I dig deeper and discover who might yet serve you with their whole heart?” the Dreamer asked.

“Not this time,” Tenebroum answered, shutting down the topic immediately. “They have been touched by the light, and I want only to consume them.”

Once the Lich had determined that the danger was minimal, it sent a single neuroid to the tiny village, protected by half a legion of war zombies. They didn’t attack though, they just got close enough to an unwatched portion of the palisade to fall under the spell of its minion's psychic screams.

By the end of the first night, half of the village had torn the other half into bloody shreds over paranoid delusions and imagined grievances. Even after its units retreated before the light of day, the killing continued. Later that night, its constructs returned to find only a bare handful left that hadn’t been driven out of their mind by the maddening magics.

That all of them had light in their eyes seemed to indicate that the Templar’s blessing granted some kind of resistance, but it wasn’t enough. Tenebroum took things slowly after that, sending back its minions each night just closely enough to ratchet the pressure up on the survivors as other minions studied which ones would crack first.

It was only when there was a single survivor left that they finally moved in and hauled her away for further study. Her mind was completely broken at that point, and she was covered in the blood of her family, but she generated such a rich flavor of suffering that the Lich could not bear to put her down until it had delved more deeply into her mind.

That would have to wait though. It had wasted more than a week of its precious time focused on this anomaly, and even as it devoured the light tainted souls, it turned its attention back to the true threat: the mages of the Magica Collegium.

There, at least, the plan was simpler. Indeed, it was already ongoing. While it had focused on understanding the light’s resistance to malign magics, its library had done the calculations, and all that remained was for its somber earth titan to do its job and create obelisks and standing stones at the required points, so that skeletal dwarven artisans could come along and carve the necessary runes to complete the spell.

The theory was a simple one, it was only the scale that was grand. The mages had built their school in a very defensible and highly auspicious place. Perhaps at one point an army of Templars and Siddrimites might have been able to march into that valley and pit the love of their God against the combined might of centuries of learning and study, but no mortal army had dared attempt it, almost since the founding of the institution.

The forces of darkness had already annihilated the surrounding town, but in the three waves since the initial attack they had done very little damage to the walls themselves. The mages simply possessed too much firepower and too many tricks. So it would take those away, and then it would slaughter them to the last and feast on their secrets so that it would be its future enemies that might know that pain rather than its own forces.

Such a large plan required many parts, though. Its last few attacks had come from forces that had gotten as close as possible via the caves that ran throughout the mountains. Those entrances had long since been collapsed, but without much in the way of dwarven interference, it would not be hard to rebuild tunnels that went right into the basement of their fortress.

All it would take, was time. That too was fine, since the fourteen monuments that would have to be raised, and the Strangulite that would have to be fabricated to power them would also be extremely time-consuming.

What Tenebroum would have preferred to do was create a magical deadzone that blanketed the whole area, but the equations and forecasts had dubbed that infeasible. Were it to stop all mana from flowing in along the usual routes, more would just come in from elsewhere. Even if the Lich managed to succeed, then it would not be able to follow up with the coup de gras, because its own constructs would have difficulty operating in such an environment.

Instead, it would have to settle for twisting the current of magic that flowed along the Wodenspine range, and make them unpredictable and alien to the mages. Anti elements in the peaks would poison the currents that flowed through them as surely as it had crippled Oroza when it poisoned her waters.

That wouldn’t stop them from casting their spells, though, but poisoning the nature and flow of mana would make the results very unpredictable. Albrecht had experienced only the smallest taste of that once the darkness wormed its way inside the man’s soul all those years ago. Soon, his peers would get a taste of the very same thing, and in the chaos, the Lich would storm their fortress and murder all of them.

Oroza. For a moment that word sent a thrill of rage through it, and Tenebroum only pushed it down by force of will. She is not a priority, it repeated to itself for the hundredth time as it forced itself to calm down. Her river has been poisoned in every way, and she will die along with it while I focus on more important matters.

The Lich had many more important tasks to do, of course. It had to split the soul of its paragon into perfect copies to prepare for all the wars to come, it had to finalize the spirits in its dark garden, or at least end them and give them up as failures, and of course, it had to use the very air itself to create a dread sort of alchemy. Compared to those tasks, Oroza’s ultimate fate was less than meaningless. Whether she died tomorrow or a decade from now, she could barely even challenge it in the waters of her own river anymore.