“Years spent in a prison of his own mind. With agonizing slowness, he felt his soul merge with the fragment of his god. The spark of divinity consumed his being, cleansing him with its divine power. He lost all awareness, all track of the passage of time. What meaning could time hold for an immortal? Until finally, seconds or maybe years after the ritual, he awoke.”

Chapter 84

The lich’s call reverberated throughout the dead city. The profane name warped and twisted the very essence of reality. It held such blasphemous power, that an instinctual feeling of revulsion swept through Wil, and bile rose in his throat.

It took all of his strength to remain upright, every shred of his mana was used to resist what power the Lich was only passively exuding. If the creature chose to unleash its magic on the wall, nothing would be able to resist it.

The Lich stood, arms wide in triumph as the city rumbled and shook around it. Its burning eyes glowed in the darkness, twin orbs of fire that could match the suns for their intensity. In this place, in Aachen, it was a god.

From beneath the ground, a black tentacle erupted, stretching towards the sky as the clinging earth fell from its flesh. The glowing web of pulsating darkness, ever present in the city during the night, had gained a physical form.

No longer made up of corrupted mana, chained to the thoughtless will of the Lich. Its newly formed body rose from the ground, the buildings crumbling around it.

The sight of the massive tentacle filled the living with despair and dread, made worse when a second rose, than a third, followed by countless more. Even in the Night, the tentacles were visible, writhing and stretching skyward, their skin blacker than black, an absence of all light.

The mass of tentacles rose hundreds of feet into the air, dwarfing even the massive stone wall.

As they watched more and more of the appendages emerged, the sound of Aachen’s crumbling buildings was accompanied by the unnerving laughter of the undead Lich. Like nails on a chalkboard, the sound carried to all parts of the wall, grating on nerves.

The entire area was filled with the smell of rotting meat, of decaying flesh and corruption. With a sudden, shocking insight, Wil knew why the undead hadn’t assaulted the wall.

Aside from the Lich, no undead remained in the city.

Whatever it had done to summon this monstrosity, the Lich had sacrificed the undead horde to do so. Hundreds of thousands of the dead, twisted and combined to form these black tentacles.

As the earth heaved below its feet, the Lich slowly floated into the air, until it was level with the wall in front of it. By chance or design, it floated directly in front of the priestess of Secundus, and her glowing sphere of divine power.

Wil felt a moment of hope at the coming encounter. The magic the cleric wielded would allow her to wipe out an army of the undead, through the sacrifice of her life. Although the Lich was a powerful demigod, it still hadn’t taken that final step towards divinity.

The cleric channeled the power of a deity, the energy of the sun goddess herself. Surely the Lich would not be able to compare itself to a true god, no matter how powerful it had grown.

The cleric clearly thought the same thing as Wil, as she drew more and more holy energy through the altars and the prayers of the faithful, the divine power building around her as she prepared the sacrificial magic.

The Lich floated in the sky above, ambivalent to the rising energy, eyes blazing as it watched her preparations.

Like previous nights, the magic reached a crescendo, a blinding magical force that shrank to a pinprick of light, cupped in the hands of the goddesses’ chosen. Wil watched, his heart in his throat as he silently prayed for the spell to destroy this blight.

The cleric lifting the light above her head, the prayer still on her lips, as Wil felt hope burn in his chest at the bravery of the priestess. He had felt the intensity of that malevolent gaze, had felt his soul shudder in response. The cleric faced it calmly, something that Wil knew he could never have done.

The Lich, watching impassively, slowly lifted an arm and indolently pointed its bony finger towards the priestess and her channeled power.

With a grotesque smile, the Lich spoke its second word of the Night. The lich’s power swirled around it as it cast the spell. The pressure of the magic pressed down on Wil like a smothering blanket.

“Die”

With no fanfare, or bright lights, or even a massive spell matrix befitting the 9th Tier spell. The priestess simply ceased.

The light of the goddess, held in the cleric’s hands, flickered and faded, as the vitality left her body. With a faint ‘thud’, the cleric, who held the hopes of thousands, keeled over and collapsed onto the ground, dead.

Wil was shocked and numb, as screams erupted all around him at the display of horrific magic. He had heard of the legendary spell before, the 9th tier enchantment, Power Word: Kill. A spoken word, a pointed finger and instant death. Academically, he knew the magic, understood its power, but the reality of its casting was dreadful and inhuman.

The divine magic failed as the priestess died, and whatever hope the living had of stopping the Lich died with her. The garrison on the wall was nearly ten thousand strong. Warriors, rangers, clerics and mages, all Ranked and skilled, but they were useless against this single enemy.

Their strongest cleric, a Rank 10, was killed on command by the undead demigod’s single, spoken word.

The Lich, losing interest now that the priestess was dead, and the divine ritual stopped, turned around to look at the city, and the thousands of black tentacles rising from the ground.

Concentrating, its dark Mana gathered thickly around it as it channeled the entity of its power into its call.

“Cyäegha!” The call rang out for a second time this Night.

From deep beneath Aachen, the dark god responded.

The ground ceased rumbling momentarily, before collapsing completely inwards as a sinkhole formed in the center of the city, rapidly expanding as the earth fell into the void below.

The tentacles, already hundreds of feet long, stretched further into the sky, as if they were pulling something upwards from the depths below.

From the earth, a black void rose, a squirming and wriggling mass of bundled tentacles. Hundreds of feet long, it slowly floated upwards as black and rotting vines emerged from the bulk of rotting flesh. They stretched to reach the ground around Aachen, smashing into the few remaining buildings, covering the earth.

Higher in the air it climbed, until Wil and the others had to crane their necks upwards to see it. Reaching a peak, the bulk unraveled as tentacles and fleshy vines separated, stretching in all directions. It was as if gravity itself had not hold on whatever the Lich had summoned from below.

Despite its terrifying size and gravity defying abilities, Wil couldn’t feel a shred of mana from the creature. Even now, the Lich glowed like a black sun in front of the wall, blinding in its power. But Wil sensed nothing from the mass of tentacles untangling in the sky.

It was like it was nothing more than undead flesh held together by the Lich’s power.

From the black mass of writhing tentacles, a single, shining white eye emerged. Unblinking, its vacant stare was unfocused to the world around it.

Like the undead who assaulted the walls before, there was no consciousness, no intelligence behind the monstrosity, only instinct. It hung there, a dead god, unable to think for itself, answering the call of the Lich.

If the Lich was disappointed by the lack of response, it didn’t show it. It merely floated silently, watching as its god emerged into the world and hung in the sky. A silent companion to the black moon above.

The living waited, horrified at what was occurring. Many of those on the wall turned and ran, forgoing their oaths to defend the wall at all costs. They may incur the goddess’s wrath, but they were willing to risk a chance for her mercy when compared to the floating monstrosity overhead and the murderous Lich.

The Lich slowly floated towards the unblinking god. The fragment of Cyäegha did not react to its presence, there was no acknowledgment, even when the lich slowly reached out and placed its hand on the creature’s bulk.

The lich’s god was dead, and no amount of its Mana could awaken it. There was still a connection between them. The Lich and the fragment of divinity were linked, neither could truly die without the death of the other.

But, they were tethered to the city below them, the physical link that kept them in this realm. He could feel the true god beyond the seal, this divine fragment was separated from the whole by the god’s above.

Cyäegha was not truly here, only a small piece, a tiny fraction of its divine being was present. An Avatar in the shape of his god but lacking its power, its consciousness, or its authority over the heavens.

The lich removed its hand from the creature, knowing that this abomination was not its god. But through it, the Lich could reach past the heavens, reopen the gate to the Aether and reunite with its true god again.

But to do so, this world, and its gods, would need to die.

Aachen, the divinity shard and itself, inextricably linked. The Lich could not escape this place, but for this realm to end, it would not need to leave. It was trapped here, but its power could not be so easily contained.

Turning back towards the living on the wall, the Lich channeled its powers into the bulk behind it. The writhing mass of tentacles began to bloat, to balloon outwards as more and more mana was fed into it until it was as round as the black moon it shared the sky with.

If the Lich could not leave this place, it would unleash a blight upon the land, a plague to bring death to the living.

Wil watched in horror as the one-eyed creature expanded outwards, filling the sky with its bloated bulk, before it burst completely. The explosion spraying geysers of black blood and small fragments of rotten flesh to coat the land below it, and the living on the wall.

Watching the disaster unfurl and the blood rain fall. Wil whispered a single word that perfectly encapsulated his feelings.

“Shit.”