The Dark Lord's Commands

by M. E. Thorne

  “Well, if you hear from him, please let me know?” Aunt Grace asked. “I haven’t spoken to him in a bit and I’m starting to get worried.

  He probably fled to Canada to avoid a warrant or a lawsuit.

  That’s what I was tempted to say, but instead, I just assured her that I would contact her if I heard anything, then quickly hung up the phone.

  Tired, I finished my beer and grabbed another.

  Armed with hundreds of pages of documentation, receipts, and bank records, I decided to risk my political career.

  It wasn’t an easy choice. I spent several sleepless nights debating the best course of action, to see if there was a way to do the right thing while also preserving my future.

  Ever since I was a kid, I had dreamed of a career in public service. My parents had been my role models in that respect, working tirelessly for the good of their neighbors and the town I had grown up in. But I had seen their struggles, not only against local politicians but against the byzantine bureaucracy of the American government.

  Often their hands were tied, and their coffers empty, when it came time to help people. The rich and powerful prospered, while the little people suffered. Time and time again I saw their ideas crushed under the realities of politics and power. They were idealists, who wanted everyone to be happy. They struggled against the system, trying to change it from the outside.

  I decided to be different. I would work with the system to change it, to make my country a better place, to stand up for the average American struggling to make ends meet.

  To do that, I needed an education. So I studied, worked hard, and got myself a scholarship to an Ivy League school. For four years I worked like a dog, going to classes during the day, working at night, and spending whatever free moments I had to network and get to know those who were bound to be future leaders.

  It was during this period I met Orville, then the junior senator for my home state. He was impressed by my drive and work ethic, and he had invited me to intern for him during my senior year. I saw him as someone who really stood up for the average citizen, who believed that everyone deserved a chance for the American dream.

  After I had graduated, I went to work for him as an aide, quickly making my way up through the ranks. People saw me as some kind of prodigy, someone who understood real politics while maintaining the idealism and action-focused stance that brought younger voters flocking to Orville’s banner.

  I sacrificed any notion of a normal life outside of my job, in order to promote Orville and the values I thought we shared. While Orville seemed satisfied to remain a senator, I knew his seat could be my springboard to something bigger. To make my vision a reality.

  And by turning him in, I would risk destroying myself. It was the right thing to do, I couldn’t let Orville and the others continue to rip off the people while claiming to stand for law and order. The hypocrisy of it made me furious.

  I had turned over everything I had to the state’s ethics committee. They were supposedly an independent, impartial agency dedicated to enforcing the state’s ethics laws.

  For two weeks I had waited, feeling sick to my stomach with tension the entire time. When I finally broke down and called their offices, asking for an update, they had said they were researching my claims.

  Slowly, but surely, I noticed things were changing around the office during that time. Orville began canceling our meetings together, relying on other aides and advisors. Responsibilities were slowly reassigned from me to other staff members, and meetings were rescheduled without anyone notifying me.

  Franny stopped responding to my texts and messages, and she purposefully avoided me when we were in the office.

  I knew a freeze-out when I saw it.

  When I had called the ethics board again, a month after my initial claim, I was floored when they said there was no investigation open on Senator Orville Thatch, and that they’d never even heard of me before.

  My nightmare had only grown from there.

  Going through my personal computer for all the electronic copies and photos I’d taken while digging through Orville’s records, I found that they were gone. So were the duplicate emails I had sent to myself, even from the dummy accounts I had created. Someone had neatly gone in and deleted every sign of Orville’s crimes.

  Even the paper printouts I had stored in an unmarked locker at the local bus station were gone. As if they had never existed.

  Sneaking back into the senator’s office at night, I had tried to find the original files and records, but they were missing as well. Someone had gone in and removed all traces of his misdeeds, leaving the accountancy pristine and clear.

  Except for some small payments I located. They were for less than a thousand dollars each, withdrawing campaign funds and transferring them to a numbered bank account. When I had looked up that number, I found that the account belonged to me.

  Things had fallen apart with horrifying suddenness after that. Orville’s lawyers had gone after me, accusing me of the very crimes the senator had committed. When I tried to go to the party’s national ethics board, I was shut down. Nobody would listen to me. Either they were on board and as crooked as Orville, or they didn’t care.

  It was an election year, someone there told me, nobody could afford to rock the boat. Control of the Senate depended on our party picking up five seats.

  The part that galled me the most was that Orville never talked to me about any of this. He never drew me aside, tried to explain what had happened or justify his actions. The entire time he had acted just like his normal self, right until his lawyers had stuck their knives into me.

  Facing jail time and enough lawsuits to ruin me financially for life, I had agreed to completely drop the matter and sign a non-disclosure agreement, forbidding me from speaking any further about the matter. The lawyers withdrew, to let me settle into the ruins of my life and dreams.

  I popped open the last beer and drank the lukewarm beverage. The TV was still blaring through the same series that I had started marathoning hours before, but I couldn’t tell what it was about, even if asked at gunpoint.

  I’m sunk, the thought kept rocking through my muddled head. Sure, I had enough money in savings to last for the next five or six months, but I couldn’t claim unemployment and I’d never find a job again in politics or government.

  I couldn’t even get a job as a dog catcher.

  What would I do? Slamming the empty bottle down, it bounced off the carpet and rolled off into the corner. I leaned my head against the back of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling till everything faded to black.

  Chapter 2

  “Dark Lord, we need you!”

  The voice, pleading and desperate, wailed through my living room.

  “Please,” She cried, “we are dying, and only your bloodline can save us.”

  Dimly I came to, waking from shapeless dreams. Colorless static played across the ceiling, and I heard the woman speaking again.

  “Dark Lord, please say that you can hear me!”

  Stretching my stiff neck, I sat up. The TV’s screen was a blast of meaningless pixels, but I heard the woman’s voice, distant but clear, echoing through the speakers.

  “Dark Lord!”

  My mouth tasted like the inside of a toilet stall. “What?”

  “You can hear me!” the woman cheered, a note of hope in her voice. “Dark Lord, my name is Vexile and I am trying to contact you from across a great gulf. I will not be able to reach you for much longer.”

  “Wait,” I rubbed my eyes, trying to figure out what was going on. “Who are you? Is this some kind of prank?”

  “This is no jest, Dark Lord!” the woman sounded panicked, “I can only imagine how strange this is for you, but I only speak the truth. Your people are suffering, they need a Dark Lord!”

  I stumbled over to the kitchen and stuck my head under the faucet, sure that I was still drunk. The water was bitingly cold.

  “Dark Lord?”

  �
�Why do you keep calling me that?” I grabbed a towel and wiped off my face, before pouring myself a large glass of water. If I was going to be talking to a delusion coming to me through my TV, I intended to be sober when I did it.

  Because I’m pretty sure all the stress I’ve been under has finally driven me mad.

  “I do not have time to convey the full story to you,” Vexile said, “but you are the scion of a noble bloodline, one that originated from my world.”

  “Your world?”

  “Yes,” she spoke with conviction. “Dark Lord, how much do you know about the history of your father’s family, your grandfather and his father?”

  “Nothing,” I admitted.

  I had never known my great grandfather, Priam; he had died long before I was born. My grandfather, Lawrence, had been a taciturn, solemn old man, who had the thousand-yard stare of a war veteran. He had never discussed his past, like where he had been born, where he had grown up, or anything of that sort.

  “They were the last of the Dark Lords’ bloodline, fugitives from my world,” she said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. “Your family was hunted to the edge of extinction, and the only way they could escape was by using magic to jump realities and to hide on Earth.”

  This is nuts, and I’m talking to my TV.

  “You don’t believe me.” Her words hurt, they were laden with misery and doubt.

  “I’m drunk, my life just imploded, and I’m talking to my TV,” I said, irrationally mad at myself for hurting the person on the other side of the screen.

  Drinking another glass of water, I realized I actually didn’t feel that intoxicated. I had a small headache, but I’d only had six beers before falling asleep. I was pretty good at holding my drink. I had to be when my former job called for attending black-tie socials and business lunches.

  “Suppose I believe you,” I said, the words surprising me. “Why are you contacting me, what do you want?”

  “Our people are dying, Dark Lord,” she repeated. “Long ago, your family ruled over our nation as the Dark Lords. But our enemy waged a bitter, bloody war of conquest against us, killing all those who resisted and enslaving those who could not.”

  I sat back on the sofa, rolling the drinking glass between my palms. “Why?”

  “To them, we are lesser beings,” she answered simply. “The Luminark see us as evil abominations that need to be destroyed or enslaved.”

  Luminark?

  Looking more closely at the TV screen, I saw a shadow weave and blur behind the static. It looked like the silhouette of a human woman, but it was impossible to say for sure.

  “So now you’re looking to get the band back together?” I asked.

  “What?” Vexile clearly didn’t get the reference.

  “How long ago was this?” I pressed on.

  “Time moves differently between realities,” she answered. “While a few decades have passed since your family arrived on Earth, two centuries have passed here. Your bloodline is considered extinct, wiped out by the Luminark and their inquisitors.”

  “And now you need someone to come back?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “While most of our people are still enslaved by the Luminark, some have escaped, fled to the wastes that were once our kingdom. We live in ruins of stone and dust, much of our power gone, stolen. Only someone with the blood of a Dark Lord can restore what was and bring us back from the brink of destruction. We need a ruler, a king.”

  A king.

  I never wanted power or influence for their sake alone. When I aspired to hold elected office, I did so out of a desire to serve the people and to make their lives better. I saw how hard they struggled day in and day out, many of them scrambling to just feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads.

  But, because I had done the right thing, at the right place, at the wrong time, that path was blocked to me. My dream was dead.

  At least, in this world it is.

  Maybe somewhere out there was a new chance to start over and to do so on my terms. No corrupt politicians, cowardly coworkers, or hypocrisy-laden bastards to get in my way.

  I looked towards the TV. “How does this work? What would you need me to do?”

  “I can bring you here!” Vexile said, “I am using an artifact left by your great grandfather to bridge the divide between us. With it, I can temporarily create a portal, allowing you to step over here.”

  She was quiet for a moment, before continuing. “It will be a one-way trip though. Once you step through to our world, I have no way of sending you back. Simply put, the artifact only has enough power for one more trip.”

  Calmly, I got up and put the glass back on the counter, then took a moment to inspect my apartment.

  There was nothing there I needed. I had no family left, no job, no future. Vexile might not have known it, but she was trying to summon me at the lowest moment of my life. To ignore the desperate need in her request, the pleading in her tone would be criminal, even if I had a reason to stay.

  I walked into the bedroom, quickly got dressed by pulling back on my suit, then packed my overnight bag with a handful of clothes. I considered bringing my keys and phone with me but then realized I would no longer need them if I was leaving that world. Instead, I wrote a quick note and stuck it to the fridge, apologizing to the landlord and telling him that I was leaving the country and would not be coming back. I added that he could keep or sell my stuff.

  The only other thing I grabbed was an old, dog-eared book sitting on one of my stacks. My copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince.

  “I think you got a bum-wrap too,” I told the long-dead author, tucking the narrow tome into a jacket pocket.

  “Okay, Vexile,” I stood in front of the TV. “I’ll come help you. Just tell me what to do next.”

  She spoke quickly, clearly overjoyed that her petition had been answered. “I’ll open a portal through the medium on your side. Just step through, and you’ll be brought here.”

  Giving my old, abortive life a final look, I then turned as watched as the TV screen flared to a brilliant, almost blinding shine. Unknown and incomprehensible shapes danced behind the screen, and then suddenly it wasn’t a screen at all.

  It was a doorway to nothingness.

  With nothing left to lose, I leapt through.

  Traveling through the gap between realities was a harrowing experience. Colors, impossible to describe, blurred by, warped into multihued sheens and patterns that were as alien as they were cloyingly familiar. Every time I tried to focus on them they shimmered away, like oil on water. Shapes, formed from incomprehensible geometry, loomed beyond them.

  I zoomed through this bright, terrible darkness, pulled towards some unknown source.

  “Almost there!” I heard Vexile’s voice, calling from some unfathomable distance. “Just a bit more!”

  Ahead, a bright, white light bloomed, like a supernova.

  “Dark Lord!” Vexile called.

  I had no control over my course or my speed, but I willed myself towards the light, hoping I could reach it. The madness seethed around me, growing closer. I could feel it pluck at my jacket and pants.

  “Vexile!” I yelled.

  “This way!” I saw a shadow dance in front of the light. “You are almost here, Dark Lord!”

  The light grew brighter, blindingly so. I raised my arms to cover my face as I crashed into its luminous core, the darkness receding.

  And suddenly, reality and the laws of physics reapplied themselves. I felt myself falling, then hitting some kind of hard surface. I rolled with the impact, coming to a stop on my back, my whole body feeling wrung out and beaten.

  Blearily, all I could do was look up as a woman’s face came into view.

  “Welcome to Duskhaven, Dark Lord.”

  Chapter 3

  When I awoke, I was in a large, four-poster bed.

  I blinked and looked at the faded red velvet drapes, noticing that light was leaking through some of the more threadba
re spots. The mattress was lumpy but comfortable, it creaked when I moved. The grass inside poked at me, but it smelled green and fresh.

  Pushing the drapes aside, I saw I was in some kind of palatial bedroom, the luxury having long gone to seed.

  The tapestries on the wall were in even worse shape than the bedding. The colors had long ago bled out of them, leaving the once beautifully embroidered scenes colorless and nearly incomprehensible. The furniture was in equally poor shape, though I could see that someone had spent time fixing and replacing the parts that had rotted away, then polished them till they shone.

  A single, dirty mirror hung by the bed, its surface blotched with stain and age. My jacket was hanging off the edge, and my shoes were sitting on the floor in front of the glass, along with my bag.

  I took a moment to inspect myself as I put everything back on. Despite my travel between realities, I looked the same as before, just slightly more mussed up. I did my best to straighten my hair, then turned towards the room’s only door.

  It cracked open as I approached. A nervous-looking woman stared at me through the crack, her eyes going wide as she saw I was up and moving.

  “Dark Lord,” she burst into the room, then bowed low before me. “Are you well? I’m so sorry for the dangers you experienced during the trip here.”

  I came to a pause, inspecting her.

  She was beautiful, but raggedly emaciated, with doll-thin wrists and ankles poking out of her drab and baggy robe. Her hair, a deep, dark black, was a wispy mess, with split-ends sticking out everywhere. As she slowly rose, I saw her skin was marred by angry red blemishes, like a half-healed rash.

  But despite all this, she truly was gorgeous. Her face was defined by high, narrow cheeks, a tapered chin, and huge, almost luminous eyes. She looked like some innocent angel, hard-treated by the world.

  “Vexile?” I uttered.

  She quickly bowed again, a wet, cough escaping her lips, “Yes, Dark Lord. Are you well?”

  I ran a hand across my chest. “I feel fine, just a bit sore I guess.”

  She smiled radiantly. “I am so happy to hear that. We were afraid for a minute that there wasn’t enough magical power left in the artifact to bring you over, that you would be lost in the gap between worlds.”