Ohe Tenebroum’s forces had been pushed out of the valley that sheltered the dead city of Abenend on its third assault, it had never mao get a close enough to iigate again. This wasn’t due to any iude on the part of its servants, though. It was because of the talent of the mages.

  In many ways, the Lich feared them more than the gods arrayed against it. Humans were fragile things, but they were clever too, and the mages came up with all sorts of are termeasures to keep its minions at bay. In fact, some of them were so voluted and ued that it took some time to uheir secrets.

  First, there was the of air they’d mao weave over the entire Collegium. Many bck birds had crashed to the earth ruined before the Lich had figured out that the fragile things had been failing at higher rates than usual and had them per trees further from the grounds io watch fns of weakness among the mages.

  That worked well until the mages started to pick them off, o a time. At first Tenebroum thought that was being doh spells that detected evil in some way, but when it it had the fly further afield, cirg well out of arre, it still found that they were being sniped from the mage’s st hold out.

  The aurned out to be rune carved arrows that were drawn to uh. It was a clever bit of magid Tenebroum filled away those tricks vowing to find some way to use them against the gods themselves iime.

  After that, it started to use shades and wraiths exclusively, even though they couldn’t pee the pound directly because of a wards inscribed into the bedrock itself. It was deeply frustrating to know that its enemy was behind fragile stone walls w on new sinister pns like their crystallized dragon fire that had wou so retly, but it couldn’t stop them or even spy on them.

  After that, the lights started to go up. Visually, they didn’t seem to be anything special at first. They were just paper nterns hung outside the walls of the castle with a tiny shard of sunlight instead of a dle or an oil mp. They were a nuisa first, though Tenebroum would extinguish the ones furthest out when it could.

  Soon, there were hundreds, and then thousands, though. Every day, they seemed to amplify in the light of one of the suns, and every night, they would dim back to their ntern strength. At first, the Lich thought the whole thing was a y, but soon after, the entire valley was lost to their collective glow, and it was forced to build creative spies from the eyes of keen-sighted men and women and the bodies of sure-footed goats to spy on their tinued activity from the closest mountain peaks.

  In time, these clever structs were dashed as well by the mages and their protective spells, but not before they saw what was happening. The mages weren’t just baring the darkness from their long river valley. They were barring winter from it as well. Even as the icy fist closed around the world with more force than usual, id snow never settled for long on the glowing valley.

  That let them import thousands ees and put them to work. Before Tenebroum’s rise to power, Abenend had been a sleepy backwater, and after it’s victory over Siddrim it had been reduced to ash. Now, even with stantinal fallen, it was strohan it had been before. In fact, in all the world that Tenebroum could see it was the only pce that was growing and flourishing.

  Some of the towns and duchies that the darkness had cimed for its own on its long march east were still doing fine. People still got married, had children, and harvested their crops between prayers for the darko keep them safe. There was no growth there, though. There was no vitality. All there was were people in fear going through the motions.

  Not so in Abenend. There, even as the Lich id siege to Rahkin and prepared to fight the mages when that was do saw that they were getting stronger. Whe vestiges of the Siddrimites received hat their fortification alongside the Oroza had been fhey aba and quickly retreated up into the mountains to make on cause with the mages, turning the whole pto an armed camp.

  The priests might no longer have any magic of their own, but they had strong backs and experieh war. Soon, all passes except the main one were barred by trolled avanches or manned palisades, and the main pass beside the river quickly became a new fortress in its ht.

  Aside from the northern kingdoms, and the far away isnds across the sea, that tiny valley swaddled in light was now the biggest threat to the Lich’s pns, and it was still gallingly near its ow of power as it was less than two hundred miles from the spire of darkness rising from the ice shrouded ruins that had once been Bckwater.

  Even lightning strikes to try to sabotage these defenses, or at least sew fear and et with little success. Calvary icked off by the mages' arc lightning and fme strike spells before they ever did real damage, and even something subtle as a neuroid couldn’t get close enough to do real damage before it was detected and eliminated.

  When the sky and nd failed it, the Lich sent its legion of rust to dig beh and find some way through, but ahquake of almost certainly unnatural in colpsed the tunnel as soon as it got near enough to the surface to be detected.

  At one point, the Lich sent a few of its rodents in to try te the gap that way, but based on the way that Groshian’s other nearby parts screamed for a day and a night, it was safe to say that the mages found them immediately and did something horrible to them.

  It was only when the lights of Rahkin were snuffed out, and every mage that had beehere to bolster their defenses died, that Tenebroum was finally able to turn its attention to the troublesome valley. That was when it had started to poison the very mana itself with its Strangulite powered monoliths. The results were subtle enough not to be noticed at first, but that could not st forever.

  In time, the Lich’s vigint goats noticed small groups attempting to reach the summit of the mountains it was using to poison them. While these efforts were sometimes successful, it was very easy for the Lich to tear them apart by night before they reached the peak, so these expeditions were invariably costly and only rarely successful.

  It was from the souls of those that it murdered there on those high gciers that it learhe most.

  “Dozens of my brothers died trying to use teleportation to reach these cursed high pces,” the soul of Artem moaned as the Lie in the search for answers. “Magio longer works as it should there, and even the Archmages do not know why.”

  “Of course they don’t,” Tenebroum gloated. “And they will only figure it out when I cim their souls for all of eternity!”

  It was heartening to discover with every new expedition, it cimed that they still had no idea what it was doing or why it would damhough.

  Week by week and month by month, the web of tainted artifacts slowly became a noose, aually, that noose began to choke the revival of the mages and their allies. At first, this was only visible in the number of lights that failed after a storm went through, leaving gaps iherwise perfect field of lights that were hung all throughout the valley now.

  These were repced, but it was done slowly enough to show the limits of its enemy’s resources. In time, the Lich dispatched more bckbirds to spy on the pce since, uhe wraiths, they could e least a little light. To the Lich’s surprise, almost none of them were detected immediately, as so long as they were circumsped stayed moving, the mages could no longer shoot them out of the sky as they’d doh such impunity for so long.

  That was when the Liew that their destru would e sooner rather than ter. Ihan a year, it was certain that it would purge every scrap of light from that pd devour everything that lived there.

  Still, despite its eagerness, the Lich did not rush things. It khat these mages were the favorites of Lunaris, and that wheime came to crush them, she would do everything that was within her power to aid them.

  That was so predictable that it nning a trap for her too, should su opportunity arise, of course, but for now, it focused on other, smaller details, like f Groshian to attempt to infiltrate the pce a sed time.

  “No, please!” the rats wailed piteously as the Lianded hundreds of them into dozens of cages that were to be dropped at random along the length of the valley by rge six-winged buzzards that the darkness did not expect to survive the trip. “It… the mages did things to us! We ’t! Never again! The pain!”

  The Lich silehem with a single and before it tinued. “You will go, and you will die, in time, like all my other structs. This is the way of things, but until then you will feast on their fields that are heavy with wheat. If you , you shall devour their books and learn their secrets.”

  “Wheat? Secrets?” the rats echoed, their hunger growing.

  “Indeed,” the Lich said. “There are many things worth feasting on, and the winds of magic are ging; you will find ways to do more damage and undermiheir foundations further. Iurn, I will tio spread you far and wide so that you grow strong and bee a stronger servant to me.”

  To say that the small, hungry god agreed to those terms would be inaccurate, but it did obey, and that was enough. The Lich had dissected many versions of the rats, but it had found nothing remarkable, and it doubted the mages had either. It didn’t matter to it if the rat god had ten thousand bodies or ten thousand and one. All that mattered was that it bored to advaenebroum’s pns, and it could think of er way to exacerbate the deg situation of the mages than by unleashing famine and disease to apany their growing troubles with magic itself.