The Dark Lord

by Jack Heckel

  Dedication

  To Taba, Isaac, Heather and Carleigh

  and everyone who ever role-played with us

  Epigraph

  “‘I think you are a very bad man,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Oh, no, my dear; I’m really a very good man, but I’m a very bad Wizard, I must admit.’”

  —L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: MYSTERIUM, MYSTERIUM!

  Chapter 2: ELDRIN

  Chapter 3: A HOLE IN THE WALL

  Chapter 4: VIVIAN

  Chapter 5: MORNING HAS BROKEN

  Chapter 6: SERIOUSLY WRONG

  Chapter 7: A WIZARD WALKS INTO A BAR

  Chapter 8: GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER

  Chapter 9: HEROES EVERYWHERE

  Chapter 10: AN UNEXPECTED PARTY

  Chapter 11: ANOTHER UNEXPECTED PARTY

  Chapter 12: OF MOONSONG AND MADNESS

  Chapter 13: WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

  Chapter 14: TROLLS AROUND A CAMPFIRE

  Chapter 15: A VERY BRIEF MEMORIAL

  Chapter 16: THE VILLAGE OF HAMLET

  Chapter 17: THE MONEY PARADOX

  Chapter 18: A LICENSE TO QUEST

  Chapter 19: THE MINES OF MARIA

  Chapter 20: RED FOUR

  Chapter 21: POLYGON MADNESS

  Chapter 22: RULES LAWYERS

  Chapter 23: HELLO, MY NAME IS AVERY . . .

  Chapter 24: AND THEN IT DAWNED ON ME . . .

  Chapter 25: THE TOMB OF TERRORS

  Chapter 26: IT’S A TRAP

  Chapter 27: THE SEMI-LICH

  Chapter 28: NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

  Chapter 29: THE DARK LORD RETURNS

  Chapter 30: THE DARK QUEEN

  Chapter 31: PURE CHAOS

  Chapter 32: THE FINAL SACRIFICE

  Chapter 33: ABD

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  By Jack Heckel

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Hello, my name is Avery, and I am the Dark Lord.

  If you have ever read any other accounts of dark lords or, gods forbid, been under the thumb of one yourself, your first thought should be, “What is a guy named Avery doing being a dark lord?”

  At least, that’s what I was thinking as I watched the final battle in the War between Light and Dark from the highest balcony of the tallest tower of my Fortress of Despair. Far below, on the poisoned steppes of the Plains of Drek before the bloodred gates of the stronghold, men, elves, and dwarfs united against all the forces of evil: me and my army.

  All day the Army of Light had been advancing inexorably, but every inch of progress came at a terrible cost in blood and death. It was awful to behold, and I wanted nothing more than to turn away, but I wouldn’t let myself. Since this war, for better or worse, was being fought at my bidding, I felt the least I could do was bear witness. And so I did, though I was not sure how much more I could take.

  The worst of it was the smell. No matter how hard I tried to abstract myself from what was happening on the battlefield, the smell would not let me. It was a mix of something burning and something metallic, something sweaty and something rotten. It got into my mouth and made me want to spit.

  Gods, what could make such a smell?

  The images that formed in answer to my unspoken question made my stomach lurch and my hands begin to shake uncontrollably. I grasped the rough wall of the parapet to still them, and reminded myself again that this was necessary and that good would come of it. The reassurance had worked well at one time, but over the past few months it had grown threadbare with overuse.

  I was brought back to the present as the stone beneath my hands shuddered violently. Looking down I saw that the Army of Light had fought its way to the very walls of the fortress and even now were battering at the gates. My defeat seemed certain. I mouthed a prayer of thanks and was about to retreat to my throne room to await the inevitable when I heard voices drifting up from a balcony below.

  “Cravock,” a familiar voice roared. “What news?”

  I peeked over the edge of the parapet and saw Morgarr the Slaughterer, the merciless general of the Army of Evil, and his sniveling reptilian servant, Cravock. Morgarr was standing in full battle armor surveying the carnage of the battle with an imperious glare. Cravock squirmed and prostrated at his heal. Morgarr should have been down with his men. Those were my orders. But I couldn’t blame him for disobeying. I wouldn’t have wanted to be out there either.

  “Your Great Wickednessss,” Cravock hissed, “the enemy isss at the gatesss. You mussst do sssomething before it isss too late.”

  “I must?” Morgarr roared. The hell-forged plate that encased him rippled as it tried to contain his rage. He hefted Death Slasher, his black double-headed battle-axe, and pointed its curved blade at the half-lizard, half-man. But while Morgarr’s attention was on Cravock, and Cravock’s attention was on Death Slasher, the living eye embedded in the handle of the battle-axe was staring up at me with a burning hatred. It was hard to say if the Army of Dark was more afraid of Morgarr or that battle-axe, but for me there was no contest. Death Slasher was terrifying.

  I ducked back out of sight while Cravock whined, “Pleassse forgive me, Great Dessstroyer. I meant no insssult. It isss only that I thought—”

  “I do the thinking, toad,” Morgarr shouted. “You do my bidding. Order out our reserves, the blood orcs, the twelve-headed rage demons, the viper dragon—empty the fortress if you must!”

  I almost felt bad for Cravock, because I knew he wasn’t going to be able to do any of those things. Earlier this morning I had given orders to ensure that the blood orcs were led into an ambush and destroyed. Last night I had painstakingly removed each of the twelve heads of each of the twelve-headed rage demons. And a couple of days ago I’d freed the viper dragon from his magical enslavement with the command to fly off and never return.

  Cravock hissed, “Your Wrathfulnessss, we have no reservesss. The blood orcsss have been routed, the rage demonsss dessstroyed to the lassst head, and the viper dragon hasss not been ssseen sssince the night before lassst. All that we had hasss already been deployed. Only the power of the Dark Lord himssself can sssave us now.”

  “That displeases me greatly,” Morgarr said quietly. “I must have an audience with my master.”

  That was my cue. I left the balcony and made my way down to the throne room. As I descended, the Fortress of Despair shook with the impacts from siege engines and explosions from magical spells. I could hear distant shouts of triumph. The enemy had breached the gates, and from the number of abandoned guardrooms and barracks I passed, my army had been broken. Even the murk-scaled kobolds and mindless gibberlings that normally lurked about in the shadowy corners of the keep had fled. The forces of good would face no further resistance. A vast weight lifted from my shoulders.

  When I reached my inner sanctum, some signs of normalcy returned. Flanking the entrance were my ever present gaunt-fiend honor guard. They snapped to attention and I swept between them as the doors closed behind me. I mounted the stairs of my dais of skulls and arranged myself atop my throne of skulls to wait the end. To pass the time I pulled out a small notebook and began chronicling my last day as the Dark Lord. Everything had to be properly documented if I wanted to have any chance of including this in a later publication.

  I had barely begun recording my impressions of the final battle when there was a loud boom and the doors to the chamber were thrown open. Morgarr stood in the vaulted doorway, bowing, his great multihorned helmet tucked under his
arm. I gave him a negligent backhanded gesture. He ducked his head and ran forward, prostrating himself before the stairs to my throne. He remained there at my feet not daring to meet my gaze, though I could not say the same for his cursed battle-axe. Its red eye glared at me knowingly.

  “Rise!” I commanded, and then realized that I was still holding my notebook. Hastily, I shoved it under my seat and tried to assume my most diabolical expression.

  By the time my gaze was properly ominous Morgarr had already begun to plead. I cleared my thoughts and tried to focus on the behemoth of a man before me. “. . . I have done all that I can, Dark Lord. The enemy has breached our defenses. The legions of undead have been shattered. The beastmen and brigands have fled like dogs. The blood orcs are no more, the rage demons have lost their heads, and the viper dragon has abandoned us. The Heroes of the Ages will be here in moments. There is nothing more that we can do. We are lost without you, my master. You must unleash your powers to save us . . .”

  I will spare you the rest of what he said. Suffice it to say there was a lot of blame shifting, minimizing, and justifying going on. When he finished I fixed him with one of my well-rehearsed, pitiless stares.

  Several days ago I had decided that when this moment came I would have to kill him. Not that I wanted to. Left to my own devices I would have preferred for someone else to deal with him, but I’d done a back of the envelope calculation and knew that if I left him to the Heroes of the Ages there was a pretty good chance that he would take one or two of them out on his way to the grave. That I couldn’t have. They had an important role to play in rebuilding the world after my defeat and I was already down to five so I didn’t have a lot of them to spare.

  I need to make it clear that my hesitancy in killing Morgarr wasn’t about whether the man deserved what he was going to get. He was the most loathsome creature I had ever met. He was a cold-blooded killer and a fiend, and had been since long before I came to this world. Still, I’m not that good around blood and death, and had made it a point up till now not to kill anyone myself. Sure, I made certain everyone thought I was a mass-murdering psychopath—you kind of have to when you’re trying to be the Dark Lord—but usually when I had to give a public demonstration of my power I simply transported my victims somewhere on the other side of the world. The melting bodies and horrific screams that accompanied this were nothing more than illusion and good stagecraft.

  I sighed. Having committed to do this I was determined to follow the proper forms. I rose silently from the throne, letting the full length of my great dark robes spill around me. With the added height of my boots and the advantage of the pile of skulls on which the throne was built, I towered over the kneeling Morgarr. I gazed down on my general in silence; a single thought filled my head.

  I’m not going to have to wear this ghastly makeup after today.

  “You have failed,” I hissed in a terrible rasp that I had spent several weeks with a speech coach to perfecting. It was theatrical and absolutely wrecked my throat. I made a mental note that I needed a good tea with honey after all this.

  I raised my left hand with a flourish, twitching as I stretched my fingers as wide as possible. I had begun to unleash the spell of obliteration when Morgarr did something unexpected. He flinched. It was the only hint of humanity I think I’d ever seen from him, and it made me hesitate.

  He’s Morgarr! I reminded myself. How many has he killed in your name! “How many more will you kill if I leave you alive?” I asked aloud as I stared down at the man.

  He met my eyes; they were remorseless. “As many as I can, my master,” he vowed.

  “As I thought,” I whispered hoarsely, and purple bolts of energy flashed from my shaking fingertips consuming his flesh. Morgarr the Slaughterer was dead. Only the bones and the armor were left, and the battle-axe.

  The eye of Death Slasher was fixated on me. I cursed it and wished, not for the first time, that I had a spell that would destroy it, which is ironic because I had created it. Unfortunately, invoking it out of existence was impossible. I’d done the research and there was simply no way to resolve the cosmic morality term without it. Something about evil balancing good. I’ll admit, subworld physics was never my strong suit. To simplify things you can think of the battle-axe as the remainder on a nasty long division problem: irritating, impossible to ignore, and always leaving you with the sneaking suspicion that you messed up the arithmetic.

  I put aside the finer points of arcane mathematics, strode over to the battle-axe and stared down at it. It studied me in return behind its unblinking eye. I dropped my Dark Lord voice and said, “Don’t look at me like that. He deserved it, and you’ll get yours too. One day. Somehow.”

  The eye seemed to grow even more malevolent. I picked it up with a shudder, and quickly dropped it into a folded piece of reality: a useful thing, about the size of a large wallet on the outside, but that opens onto an extradimensional space inside large enough to hold a studio apartment’s worth of furniture—at least that’s as much as I’d ever put in there.

  I was wondering what to do with the rest of Morgarr’s remains when I heard the sound of clashing weapons and shouts of battle from the hallway outside. I was running out of time. I rushed to my throne, scooped my notebook into the extradimensional space, folded it, and tucked the whole thing back into my cloak. I had only retaken my seat when the doors to the chamber flew open again, and the Heroes of the Ages stepped in.

  Finally.

  I had been waiting years of their time for this meeting. I recognized them all through the tales of their deeds, of course. There was Feldane the Archer, scion of the elves; Mad Jarl of the Dwarf Mechanism with his living armor (it was a bit squatter than I thought it would be); St. Drake the Suffering (the gibberlings and I liked to call him St. Dork the Insufferable); the masked rogue known only as the Weasel; Mystia, sorceress of the Enigmatic Isles; and Valdara.

  How to describe Valdara without coming off as a creep . . . she was a warrior woman. Oh, forget it, there is no way to do her justice without being a creep. Valdara was tall and long of leg, with gorgeous bronze flesh and red hair that fell in curls over her shoulders. Even in the guttering torchlight of my chamber her green eyes shone, and I couldn’t help but admire the curves of her body and her taut bare stomach. After the horror of the last few days it was wonderful to look on someone so beautiful, even if she was here to kill me.

  It was Valdara who spoke, which was good because I really didn’t want to look away. She pointed her gleaming blade at me. “Dark Lord, for all the evil you have wrought, for the suffering and pain you have caused, the free people of Trelari call you to justice.”

  I watched every syllable escape those red lips of hers. I wanted to explain everything, perhaps over a nice dinner and a bottle of wine, but that was not to be. This was my final data point, and my entire research project, not to mention the future of these people, depended on me.

  “Foolish mortals! You would dare defy me? Come! Show me what the ‘Heroes of the Ages’ are capable of,” I said, adding an evil rattling laugh to the end.

  They did their best—arrows and magical energies flew at me, some kind of superheated steam from the clanking armor blasted me—but it was no use. My power was far superior to theirs. After all, I literally held the key to their reality. Well, I should say that I wore it around my neck on a silver chain. There wasn’t much that I couldn’t do.

  I laughed again, but with less rattle because my throat was starting to hurt a lot. “Your power is as nothing compared to me. Now you face the fury of the endless abyss itself!”

  I raised my hands to the sky, letting a little power trickle over my fingertips for show, then I unleashed enough of it to convince them I was trying without risking injury to anybody. Blackness swirled about Mystia and Feldane on the wings of flapping phantasmal ravens, blinding them and driving them to their knees in terror. A great wind tore across the room toppling Jarl’s mechanism. With a crack, a rope of infernal magic whipped ou
t and ensnared the Weasel as he or she (or it?) tried to slink behind me through the shadows. Only Valdara and St. Drake were still standing. They struggled against the buffeting, trying to reach me.

  Bracing himself against my magic, St. Drake held aloft a staff that blazed with a mystic light. “Dark Lord,” he shouted, “Your defeat is at hand. We come bearing the Mage Staff of Mysterium,” he shouted.

  I let the swirling darkness diminish. “No . . .” I rasped, putting an emphasis on my pause as I stepped back. “Not the Mage Staff. It isn’t possible. I sent it into the void myself.” I gurgled out the last bit and held up a quivering hand. I was worried that I was overacting, but they didn’t seem to notice.

  “You’re a fool, Dark Lord,” Drake shouted, and then intoned significantly, “Even you cannot destroy that which is eternal.”

  I cringed at the truism. I’d written it into the world’s pattern to add a bit of color, but it wasn’t my best work. The staff on the other hand was a stroke of genius and cheap to make. It was nothing more than a plain wooden rod onto which I’d affixed a shard of purple glass that I’d charmed to emit a muted glow. It was a constant source of amazement to me the nonsense you could get people to believe if you cloaked that nonsense in mystery and burnished it with antiquity.

  I thrust my arms forward as if to send more waves of magic against them. All I was really doing was making sure that Drake wouldn’t be able to reach me. According to my simulations, if St. Insufferable defeated the Dark Lord this world would end up a theocracy. For reasons that involve having attended a Catholic boy’s school as a child, I didn’t want that. Besides, I knew who I wanted to defeat me. Valdara was going to make a great queen. She was just, wise, and would look much better as a statue.

  With a flick of my fingers I sent a single, sudden and violent burst of air against St. Drake. He tumbled backward and was pinned to the wall. He struggled and prayed to the Seven Gods, but my power was too great. “Valdara!” he shouted. “I can’t reach him. I haven’t the strength. You must take it.”