As the game progressed, Sal actually asked for Dirk’s advice on several occasions, and most of the time what Dirk suggested made sense. After all, he did have an innate grasp of strategy, and it served him well. They won the game in the end, and Sal wasn’t so proud or arrogant that he couldn’t see that Dirk had had a lot to do with it. Winning was everything with Sal, and he wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to improve his performance as captain just because the advice he was getting was from a nerdy geek.
So Dirk and Sal struck up an unlikely friendship. They’d meet, as if by accident, though both had kind of tacitly arranged it. Sal didn’t want the jocks to know he was buddies with the “uber-Nerd King.” So they’d sort of “bump into each other” at the vending machine, or by the back wall of the school that overlooked the garden, as if they both happened to be there at the same time “admiring” the principal’s vegetable patch (i.e. dreaming of ways they could get in there and rip it up; Grousammer’s patch had been trashed so often he’d actually put barbed wire around it in an attempt to keep the vandals at bay).
Sal and Dirk would discuss sports—but not in an “I support the Dodgers, and hate the Angels” or “There’s only one Albert Pujols” kind of way, but really serious talks about tactics and strategy, especially baseball and soccer—Sal’s main interests. Dirk studied these sports carefully—it was important to him that he cultivate this relationship with Sal. It was a way of getting full acceptance in school, and once he’d achieved that he’d have the perfect platform on which to build his power base.
So Dirk got better and better at tactics. After a while, he found that team captains were selecting him first because his strategic knowledge was so valuable. Sal even made Dirk his cocaptain. Sal was like King Arthur, and Dirk was his Merlin. He even tried to get Dirk onto the squad, but that wasn’t possible, as the coach did the selection, and no matter how you played it, Dirk simply wasn’t good enough to be on the team as a player in his own right. So far, anyway. But he was good enough to be the official scorer, so he was always on the sidelines, ready to give Sal advice on where to position himself, or how to exploit weaknesses in the opposition’s lineup.
Dirk was quite satisfied with his position as cocaptain/adviser/Merlin. Of course, he would have preferred to be in total command, but he recognized he didn’t have the physical skills necessary for such a role. But he had considerable influence, and pulling the strings in the background suited him well. More important, he and Sal became friends of a kind, and it gave him protection, and even influence, with the jock types. It was a very important strategic alliance for Dirk.
The school won more and more games and was closing in on first place.
Sal became more and more reliant on Dirk so their relationship began to change subtly. Dirk began to get the upper hand. No longer were meetings “held in secret.”
Instead, Sal had to come to Dirk to be part of his Court, hanging out with the likes of Sooz, Christopher, and various others like Chess wizards, Warhammer nerds, computer freaks, role-playing gamers, Goths, and so on.
So it was Dirk that forged a position for himself in school. Dirk commented on it in his own way in his diary:
March Doom 29
Christopher can be very useful at school.
He explains my commands well to my
assembled lackeys. They don’t all do as
they are told—in the good old days I
would have simply destroyed one of them
as an example to the others. The human
girl called Sooz does well though.
Christopher tells me she has a “crush”
on me. I thought he meant she was going
to try and crush me in some kind of coup
but he has explained that this means she
“likes” me. As far as I can tell, this will be
very useful. She will obey my commands,
not out of fear, but because she actually
wants to. Perhaps I can use this as a
new way of getting what I want.
Anyway, I have rewarded Christopher
by naming him as my chief lieutenant,
but he still refuses to call me “Master.”
Normally I would punish him, but
unfortunately I need him to help me make
sense of this strange world. Perhaps if I
conquer earth, or take him with me back
to the Darklands, then I can punish him
fittingly. But for now I must be “nice” to
him. Which is difficult for me.
In the meantime I have come up with
an excellent plan for the conquest of
the school.
Notes:
1: Must find a way to bring an army of
Orcs, Goblins, and Nightgaunts to earth.
Breed them here, perhaps?
Sooz’s phone thrashed out the latest AngelBile track she had as her ringtone, a song called “I Can’t Die, If Dying Is Without You,” currently number two on the Gothic music charts. She looked at the caller ID and picked up.
“Hi, Chris,” she said brightly.
“Hi, Sooz,” said Chris. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“My dad got me some Morti tickets! Do you want to go?” said Chris.
“Morti! Gah! I dunno … umm … is Dirk going?” said Sooz.
“Well … yeah, he is,” said Chris.
“Oh, okay then, I’d love to come,” said Sooz.
“So, you wouldn’t have come if Dirk wasn’t going, is that it?”
“No, no, of course I would have!” said Sooz unconvincingly.
“Yeah, right,” said Chris bitterly.
“No, really, honest! Umm … anyway, did you hear about the report card on the principal?” said Sooz, changing the subject.
“Yeah, I heard,” said Chris, still a bit miffed, but getting caught up in the excitement of the whole episode—the story was going around the school like wildfire, along with many photocopies of a report on the principal, a pretty rude report. “Fantastic, wasn’t it? Mousehammer completely lost it when he saw it, didn’t he?”
“It was Dirk, wasn’t it? That’s what they’re saying at school,” said Sooz.
“Yeah, it was him all right,” said Chris. “He stole a report card and filled it in himself.”
“He stole one? How?” said Sooz.
“You won’t believe it! You see, he told me he’d managed to get some kind of spell or something to work. Or to put it in Dirk-speak, it went something like this, ‘My evil genius knows no bounds for I have managed to get one of my spells—the spell of the Sinister Hand—to work here on this benighted plane you puny humans call earth. Mwah, ha, ha!’”
“Ha, ha, that’s good Chris, sounds just like him! So what does it do, this spell?” said Sooz.
“It’s really weird. He says it lets him detach his left hand and send it off on its own.”
“What? Gross!”
“Yeah! So he sent his arm off on its own to creep through Mousehammer’s study window and steal a report card!” said Chris.
“Ha, I don’t believe it!” said Sooz.
“That’s what I said! But … But then …”
“What?” said Sooz, fascinated.
“Well, I went to see him, right? In his room. And I can’t remember seeing his left hand at the time. He could have just had his sleeve pulled down, but I have to admit it didn’t look like that. Then his eyes sort of glazed over. He said later that he was ‘Guiding the hand with soul power.’”
“Soul power! Ooo, creepy—but cool! And I love the name, the Sinister Hand!” said Sooz, lapping it up.
“Heh, yeah, typical Dirk. Anyway, Mom called me away and I had to go. Later I saw Dirk—and he had a blank report card. But what was really weird was that his left arm looked kind of green and pale, and it was obviously hurting him. And there was a scar and everything! Just above the elbow. All red and nasty and swollen.”
�
��Wow … ,” said Sooz. “I mean … I mean … It couldn’t be real could it?”
“Well … I don’t know. He could have painted the scar on I suppose. He must have painted it on, right?”
“Yeah,” said Sooz, trying to sound certain. “Of course he must have …”
“I mean, could he really have sent his hand off on its own with a magic spell? Could he?”
Part Three:
Trial and Terror
The Plan
Dirk felt it was time to take stock, to retrench and rethink. He wrote how he felt in his diary:
April Gloom 21
Christopher finally came through on the
Morti tickets. I really thought that the lead
singer was really Gargon but my hopes
were cruelly dashed. It was painfully
obvious that the “band” was actually humans
dressed in absurd rubber suits to make
them look like demons. Gargon is not on
this plane. There is no rescue mission. Nor
will there ever be a rescue mission. Morti
himself is nothing but a simple musician,
even if the band does sound like one of
the Nine Demon Choirs of the Netherworlds
on too much coffee.
But I think I’ll keep my Morti bag
anyway—I just won’t call it the Bag of
Dread Gargon, Hewer of Limbs, anymore.
It’ll just be my Morti bag.
April Gloom 27
Things are going from bad to worse.
Today the Pure Guardians, Purejoie and
Dr. Jack, took me to something called the
Shoreham Air Show. It was a sobering
experience. Human ingenuity is far
greater than I had imagined. I’d read
about their flying machines but nothing
had prepared me for seeing them “in the
flesh” as it were. The noise alone was
enough to make my heart quail, let alone
the heart of an Orc or a Goblin. And the
weapon payload they are capable of! My
Winged Nightgaunts wouldn’t stand a
chance. Even a score of Black Dragons
couldn’t take on a squadron of these “jet
fighters.”
I admit to a crushing sense of
despair. I will have to revise all my plans.
Whatever troops I could breed here or
bring forth from other worlds will not
be able to defeat their tanks and planes.
It would take several lifetimes to create
the kind of numbers I would need. Can
it be that Hasdruban has truly defeated
me?
May Dismay 3
I’d been toying with the idea of conquest
as a means to find the resources to
return home, but I now realize that even
conquering the local school is beyond me,
let alone the local town! Even if I
managed it somehow, my conquests would
be impossible to hold in the face of this
remarkable human technology. Either I
remain here and attempt to take power
through the usual channels, or I find
some other way to return home. Staying
here would mean waiting years to grow
up, and then becoming a senator and then
president, or joining the army, becoming
a general, and launching a military coup.
Either way it would take decades.
Gargon is not coming either. No, my
only certain hope is to open a portal
to the Darklands and return home, even
though it is fraught with danger. No
doubt by now Hasdruban and his fanatic
do-gooders will have had much time to
entrench their power.
I will have to come up with some kind
of spell or ritual for opening the way
between earth and the Darklands, as
the usual spell for this kind of thing—the
Ceremony of the Eclipse of the Gates of
the World—isn’t possible on earth due
to the impossibility of finding the required
ingredients, such as the egg of a dragon.
Dirk began researching a way to travel between the planes. He had to create a new spell or ceremony that would do the job. He worked late for several nights on his plans. In fact, he’d been working on it for so long that he hadn’t had much time to spend with his lackeys, lickspittles, and worshippers, as he called the Court in Exile, or “friends” as everyone else called them. So, when he was ready, he summoned his closest courtiers: Chris, the “Mouth of Dirk”; Sooz, the “Child of the Night”; and Sal Malik, the “Sports Lord,” for a lunchtime meeting at school.
Dirk stood on a chair, to give himself extra height, so that he could talk to them from a position of authority. Or at least that’s how it made him feel.
“I have made a decision!” he announced portentously, and paused to see what reaction he’d get. Chris raised his eyes to heaven, as if to say, “Oh no, what’s he up to this time?” which slightly irritated Dirk. Sooz smiled indulgently at him, if somewhat nervously, which pleased Dirk. She was so loyal. Sal just raised an eyebrow, like the excellent general he was, withholding judgment until he had all the facts.
“I am giving up my plans of world conquest. I am sorry, Sal. I know I promised you the position of Lord High Overseer of the Armies of Darkness, but that won’t be possible now.”
Sal shrugged his shoulders as if he wasn’t bothered that much anyway. Christopher thought otherwise.
“Hold on a minute, you promised me the job of Lord High Overseer of the Armies of Darkness!” said Chris angrily, flicking a covert glance at Sooz as if he was worried what she might think of him if he was no longer going to be a Lord High Overseer.
“Ah,” said Dirk, his eyes darting from side to side, as if he’d been caught in a lie, which in fact, he had. “I was going to tell you about that. Umm, you see, Sal would just make a much better general. And you, well, you’re just perfect as the Mouth of Dirk …”
Dirk watched their faces. Sal looked pleased at this, even though it was obvious he thought of the Court in Exile as a game, and never really took it seriously. Still it was clear he liked the idea of being a great general, and he glanced over at Chris with a tinge of triumph in his eyes.
Chris looked a bit miffed though, so Dirk added, “In any case, the position of Mouth of Dirk is much more powerful, for you are much closer to the Throne of Skulls than a general, who will often be out campaigning with my Legions of Doom and Dread, and such.”
This seemed to mollify Chris a bit, and he looked over at Sooz to see what she thought, and then over at Sal. But Sal put on an air of nonchalance, as if all this status stuff was beneath him anyway. Sooz looked on, somewhat disdainfully, as if she’d seen a hundred boys argue over stuff like this, and muttering under her breath something like, “Boys—they’re all idiots.”
In general, this was a constant problem—not so much that Sooz thought all boys were idiots (anyway, she had a point) but trying to balance the rivalries between his minions and servitors. Orcs and Goblins were easier to control because they responded so well to threats. These human children were much more complicated, and he couldn’t use things like the Spell of Agonizing Obedience or the Vorpal Blade of Dismemberment to get things done. In fact, oddly, he noticed he didn’t even want to use such spells on them anymore even if he could, because he didn’t actually want to hurt them. It was almost as if he cared about them. Surely not, he thought to himself!
“Well, what are your plans then, now that you’re not going to bother with enslaving humanity?” said Sooz, breaking his train of thought.
“Ah, yes,” replied Dirk. “I intend to open a portal between this plane and my own l
and, so I can get home. It will be dangerous—I’m not sure what will happen if I return. If I go back and remain in this body, without my powers, I will be easy meat for the White Wizard Hasdruban and his fanatic Paladins, Witch Hunters and other absurd do-gooders. If, however, I regain my original form and my powers, then it may be that I can get back to my tower in secret, rebuild my power and my legions, and take Hasdruban by surprise! My triumph will be complete, and my victory will be total! Mwah, ha, ha!”
His maniacal laugh echoed down the school corridors. It attracted the briefest of looks from passersby—the sound had become quite commonplace around the school these days and people were getting used to it.
“You’re planning to leave us?” said Sooz.
She looked rather upset at the idea. Of course, thought Dirk, she can’t bear to be parted from her Dark Master, Dirk the Magnificent, Lord of the Legions of Dread! She really was an excellent minion! He would have to reward her one of these days. Then Dirk’s brow furrowed. He realized he didn’t like to see her upset like this. That was confusing to him—you weren’t really supposed to care about minions. So he tried explaining things, so she’d understand why he had to do it this way.
“Yes, I must try to get back. I’d take you with me, all of you, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s even possible. And if it is, it’d be dangerous—what hope would you have against the armies of the Commonwealth of Good Folk, their unstoppable Knights, Inquisitors, Magi, Elven bowmen and so on. No, it wouldn’t be safe.”
All three of them were looking at him oddly. It appeared they weren’t buying the “it isn’t safe” angle, so he decided to add some kind of general platitude—one of those lines that seemed to make these humans feel better.
“I couldn’t bear to lose any of you. If you were killed over there, I’d feel just terrible. Guilty even.” He smiled at that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt “guilt”—if ever, in fact.
“Don’t worry,” said Sal. “We won’t be going with you, not because it’s too dangerous, but because you won’t be going anywhere either! It’s just a game.”
“Don’t say that, Sal,” said Sooz angrily. “You know he can’t help it. Anyway, the point is that he wants to go. Alone. Without us …”
Dirk just smiled placidly. He’d learned how to deal with people not believing him. The important thing was that he believed in himself. And he did. Totally.
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