When the sun set on Rahkin that day, Tenebroum vowed it would be the last time that anyone there would live to see it. Even as it reviewed the situation on both sides with its dark Paragon and discussed the intelligence that the rats had offered about the mages and their schemes, it could see that a frontal assault was probably not the optimal move, but it no longer cared.

Just as it had refused to let the first village it had ever devoured slip away into the light, it would not let this city do so either. Not even if it was the last and the largest stronghold in the area. The Lords of the realm had refused to bend, and now they would be broken.

Though the walls still stood, they were brittle things, and the men that stood upon them no longer wore armor with the matching heraldry of its enemy. Instead of professional soldiers, half of the defenders now were simply whoever was strong enough to fight, wearing whatever would fit.

Even with those signs of desperation, though, the light inside was growing, not ebbing. Even as its general assured it that victory was imminent, the Lich did not feel comforted by its endless simulations and counter stratagems.

“With a few more waves of attacks to redirect the defenders to the north, we could free up the gates and the southern approaches,” the dark man assured him. The Lich did not doubt that was so, but even after listening to all of that, it still pronounced its judgment coldly in the thing's mind. “No. This will end tonight. Rally your forces accordingly.”

For the longest time, the Lich had kept its dark Paragon in the bodies of random, broken-down drudges. This was both because it did not need more than that and also because Tenebroum wanted to be sure that its servant could never hope to challenge it. However, with the unpredictable state of the battlefield, it had finally built an appropriate body for the spirit, adding it to the tiny pantheon that was growing in its shadows, one creation at a time.

Now, instead of a decaying skeleton, the Paragon animated a set of carefully inscribed mismatched plate mail made up of pieces taken from the generals and heroes it had already outwitted. There was no head or even helmet, though. The Lich would not grant it the ability to hide its expression any more than its thoughts. So, its artificial, patchwork spirit stood there, encased and exposed simultaneously as it flickered in violet and cyan flames in the mockery of a real man.

Though Tenebroum had certainly built its general to be capable of fighting if necessary by using all that, it had learned from Krlum’venor and its shadow drake, that was not the intent. The intent was just to make it capable of defending itself from the strange attacks the humans sometimes surprised them both with.

The body that Tenebroum wore today was an entirely different story. For months, it had been transported from battlefield to battlefield, but it had not actually been used since it had slayed Siddrim the year before.

It had been repaired and upgraded in the interim, of course, but the Lich had felt no need to join the battle directly, especially not since the Moon Goddess’s ambush. That changed now. In fact, the Lich hoped that she would try to intervene, for it had brought several sorceress servants to the battlefield for just such an eventuality. Tonight, it would happily act as bait to win a battle like this that would all but bring about the end of its war.

Though the Lich much preferred to let its spirit drift among the ravens or haunt the battlefield as a dark mist, it would face the Templar directly this time. It had even brought a few trinkets to try to capture the divine spark that the man wielded so effectively. If the darkness could not capture one more piece of the Lord of Light, snuffing it out would be almost as important a victory, though.

When the darkness moved into its construct, it felt its world diminish and shrink as it began to flex and test each joint and limb. Remembering what it was like to be a singular thing rather than a divine entity of awesome power took longer than it had before. It was more stifling, too, but Tenebroum ignored it as it nestled deeper among the hollow bones of the holy men that had made up his combat form.

Over the last few months Tenebroum had designed many specialized forms, including one body was nothing more than a tarnished silver skeleton covered in a skin made up of the mouths and faces of the dead. That body was almost solely occupied with a large series of multichambered lungs that could constantly inhale even as it channeled the air to the vocal cords of almost twenty different mouths.

There were still some bugs to be worked out, but when it was complete, it would allow it to cast impossibly complex spells that even a full choir of decapitated mage heads could not do presently. Such things were not required of mortal enemies, of course, but the Gods it was pitted against would need more power, and given enough time, Tenebroum was more than capable of making a weapon appropriate to any foe or battle.

The Templar was not a God, though. He was a pretender, and even though he’d defeated a number of Tenebroum’s lesser constructs, he could not hope to stand against the full force of a divine being or the deadly body that it wielded. After all, what could a spark do to it after it had already withstood the bonfire?

The Lich listened to its Paragon drone on a little longer while it manifested its four shadowy blades and then, without a word it began to stride toward the front lines. All around it, troops stirred to life as they realized its intent, and they began to stir. Blocks of war zombies began to march, cavalry charged forward, and other stranger things moved according to their general’s plan. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Tenebroum reserved one of the war zombie bands for itself, pulling the formation to it and using them both as shield and disguise as they marched toward the rubble that had been the shattered gatehouse. This part, at least, the Lich enjoyed. There was a different flavor to the screams and the swirling violence when one was a part of the churning maelstrom of war as opposed to soaring far above it.

To the enemy, it was just another wave of undead warriors. Their archers and mages never once noticed that every bolt and blast seemed to miss Tenebroum. Instead, its minions were stuck, one at a time, removing almost half of them from the field before the formation reached its goal.

It didn’t even have to get close to the shattered gate to know that he was waiting for them. The Lich had known that he would be. It had seen him as a beacon across the battlefield, and given the shadows that billowed around it, even in the heavy armor of this body, it was sure that the man with blazing eyes could see it just as easily.

There were no words exchanged when the Lich trudged up the slope with its remaining vanguard. Normally, it would have used the bloodthirsty mob that was Krulm’venor to clear the path, but given talismans that the mages had, it was inadvisable. Instead, its war zombies charged into the grinder and were cut down, one after the other, buying time and distance with their heavily reinforced bodies as they endured blow after terrible blow.

The Lich’s army was everywhere, and its numbers seemed limitless. Despite that, they were spread across the entire length of the wall. So, at this spot, there were enough warriors to outnumber it. At least, that was true at first. There were perhaps fifty ragtag humans left standing by the time it was reduced to only a bare handful of leathery, riveted war zombies that had not been beheaded or crushed yet.

It became a tangled storm of swords as the scrum was reduced to a chaotic melee. There, the Lich had an advantage that no one could match: with so few minions in such close proximity, it could control each of them very specifically. So, despite the chaos, its final few minions became extensions of its limited body, acting as one and taking out many times their own number. The living lasted no longer than its zombies did, though, because each time the Templar flared to life with holy fire in an attempt to smite it, the Lich used those dark shadows to lash out far beyond its normal reach.

Its blades that were exposed to that light directly dimmed and shortened for a moment with each blast as they were reduced to nothing but their rusting cores. Their shadows sprang to life for that instant, becoming more like whips than blades as they sought out the closest living thing and murdered it.

After all, there were shadows in every suit or armor and unwatched vulnerabilities under the enemy’s guard. So, every time the Templar flashed to life to heal himself or to attempt to strike down the Lich, two or three of the men closest to it died painful deaths as their shadows became infested by its own for an instant before they were ripped to pieces and diced like soft cheese.

When the battle had begun there were nearly a hundred warriors, both living and dead, but after twenty minutes of fighting only two remained. Horns were blowing in the distance, calling for more reinforcements, but they would never arrive in time.

Instead, this was a battle that would be decided only by two warriors, and one of them was already bleeding. The Lich didn’t think much of this pretender, even up close. It had already studied him through the unguarded eyes of the man’s squire, but it saw nothing that the man had admired so much.

He was a brute and nothing more. Every attack was an exercise in power, but compared to a dark god, power was the one thing he didn’t have. The Templar bore a heavy glowing blade and hammered it home over and over, but the feeble light he used was nothing compared to what Siddrim had burned it with or even what he’d used on the warf the day before.

“Whats the matter,” the Lich rasped in a voice that was rusty and discordant. “Why won’t you show me how brightly you can burn.”

“You’d be ready for something so straightforward, wouldn’t you?” the Templar growled through gritted teeth.

His light burned bright enough to keep the darkness circling him like a hungry swarm at bay, but only just. The Lich proceeded to batter the man with a swarm of attacks. It even taunted him with the knowledge that it had killed his god and his squire, but still, the man did not react.

“I know what you’ve done!” the Templar spat, offering no further insight into what he was thinking.

“Then you should know that you’re next!” The Lich shrieked, redoubling its efforts, becoming a storm of blades.

It delivered a dozen minor wounds before it succeeded in knocking the Templar from the place they fought atop the rubble and sending him tumbling down the slope to the ground below. Despite that, the shadows found no purchase on the man’s soul. There were no stains to infect or guilt to blossom.

“What do you think you can do with your tricks that your god could not do with your healing and your light?” The Lich gloated, pointing all four of its blades down at the fallen warrior. “You have fallen, and soon your city will too!”

“I guess I’ll need a new trick then,” The Templar said with an inscrutable smile as he dropped his weapons and pulled something from behind his breastplate.

The Lich had a moment to study the swirling prismatic shard that the man was holding. That’s how long it took it to realize that was the same shard the rat had told him the man had refused last night. He’d expected the mages to lay their trap, but now, suddenly, it was in the hands of this brute.

It surged forward, twining its four shadowy weapons together and launching them at the strange object like a pike of pure darkness. They never reached him.

“Burn!” The Templar yelled. After that, everything was erased in a curtain of fire.