Chapter 185: The Turning

Chapter 185: The Turning

“Yesss... I have risssen... Onccce more...” The words of the Worm weren’t physically spoken things. Instead, they echoed through the ether in a sibilant, voiceless whisper, in the same way that the Lich commanded its minions. This was the least expected option, but even so, it was progress.

“Tell me your name, I command you,” Tenbroum ordered.

“My... name?” the worm answered in confusion. There was more squirming beneath the bloodstained earth. Worms was probably more accurate, given the patterns in the mud, but the Lich was less concerned about the exact form this thing took than it was about what could be learned from it. “I am... the ruiner offf nationsss... the consssumer of men... the wassster of livesss...”

“I have read the stories,” The Lich said carefully, trying to decide whether feeding it more would prod it to life or if torment would do a better job of that. “I am well aware that you are the portion of Malkazeen that is pestilence and death.”

“I am not death,” the Worm whispered. “No, ssshe is sssomeone elssse. I am Pessstilenccce, decay, and... and...”

“And what?” the Lich asked, losing its patience.

“And not Malzzzekeen,” it whispered. “But I will... we will all become the Malzzekeen, in time... that isss the way of thingsss. First, we join and devour the land and the people on it, then we flee from the sssun and—”

“The sun is gone!” squeaked the chorus of rats. “The sun is shattered, and the Lord of Light is no more!”

Tenebroum thought about punishing the rats for overstepping but decided against it. It would see where this went instead.

“Dead... but that isss not the order of things...” the worms whispered, squirming more violently. The level of the soil was lower than it had been before, and the movements were easier to see. “If it isss gone, then nothing can ssstop usss from what mussst come next.”

“What comes next is that I will study the three of you, and when I have found a way to bind you to my power, then—”

“We cannot be bound until we are bound together...” the Worm responded.

“I find that unlikely,” the Lich answered sourly, studying the growing aura of the thing in an attempt to find insight, but it found little.

The Wom was markedly less powerful than the Wolf. There was little reason why it should be the most talkative and intelligent of the three, and yet it seemed to be. The Wolf was four times the size of Groshian and the Worm combined, and thanks to how well-fed it had been during its time with the Queen of Thorns, it was bursting with power. It should have been the master, but it seemed to be the servant. Rage and violence came before hunger or disease, though.

The Lich set it aside. The why was not important. It was the how that was important.

The Lich had already dissected both the Wolf and the rats for clues as to their nature. It was tempted to do the same with the Worm, but something about its nature... it decided against that for now. Experiments were much safer behind the walls of magic that were painted on the floor.

Tenebroum decided it definitely wasn’t going to feed them further at that point. What little life energy it had given the worms couldn’t possibly account for such tremendous growth. So, until it had more of its questions answered, the only motivation the things would receive would be in the form of pain.

“I feel nothing,” the Lich barked. It was a lie, though. It did feel something in its soul. There was a strange sort of connection between it and the sarcophagus twenty feet away, even though that was impossible. It was a slender etheric thread, and when Tenebroum tried to sever it, a new sprang into existence just as quickly.

The Lich took a step back. It wasn’t fear that made it do so. Instead, it was an abundance of caution.

It had never touched the ancient stone sarcophagus or even approached it. Both it and its occupant were locked behind a triple ring of the strongest wards that the Lich knew. A quick check revealed they were intact and working as intended, and yet still, it did not feel safe.

The coffin was overflowing with worms now. There were so many they were falling on the floor now and squirming blindly around. It was meaningless because they couldn’t escape their confinement and had no way to chew through stone, but somehow, that sight put more fear into the Lich than anything had since Albrecht had so long ago.

Something was very wrong. Just to be on the safe side, the Lich ordered all the zombies to move away from the ring. In fact, halfway through the order, it changed its mind and directed them to a corner of the room. If something had managed to contaminate them, it didn’t want them to spread it to the rest of its lair. It would leave them in here and destroy them with fire if that was necessary.

“Don’t go...” the worms called out to the Lich as it moved toward the door. “You can join usss and become Malzzekeen too... maybe together we could become... more than the Malzzekeen...”

The Wolf growled at that, and the rats chittered excitedly, but the Lich ignored both. Instead, it was distracted by a strange motion in its body, and it looked down. It was strange to feel anything at all in a corpse, let alone one that had been tanned, treated, and left to work in the dark for decades. It wasn’t impossible that an insect would make it into its lair from time to time, but as Tenebroum looked down, it saw that wasn’t what this was.

There, in the middle of its chest, was the outline of a long, slender worm crawling around in the skin beneath its chest. It was a horrifying sight, not because it was disgusted by such things, but because it was impossible.

“This cannot be!” it roared. Lifting its right hand and using the scalpel on its sixth finger to cut the flesh open and remove the thing. It was exactly what it thought it was, and it immediately dropped it on the ground and crushed it under its heel.

But beyond that, there was nothing it could do. It didn’t matter if it was impossible. It was happening. There were more now. Worms were crawling around its current body in places that they never should have existed.

No, in places that they didn’t exist in until a moment ago. It was quite sure of that. The Lich still had dim memories of what it had been like to be no more than a swamp. It knew the feeling of leaches and slugs crawling through it, and this place had, thanks to the caustic chemicals it used to embalm all of its complicated creations, this corpse had been sterile.

Now, it wasn’t, though. Now, grey finger-thick earthworms and black flatworms were crawling under its skin and out between the stitches where the flesh was long ago joined together. Worse, the black mist that made up its true form was leaking from these wounds like it had been injured.

Tennebroum realized that it had been injured, though, and immediately fled the body, letting it drop to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut as it sought to put distance between it and those terrible worms. It had fought the All-Father in violent single combat for several minutes, and the God had done no more than total one of the many bodies that the Lich had constructed for itself, but to damage its soul, even in a small way?

As the Lich pulled away, it could feel it. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.