Dark Lord, School's Out

by Jamie Thomson

  Bad Judgment Day

  Sooz gave him a sideways glance.

  He stared at her, blinking strangely, stroking his chin in thought. “I could arrange for you to become a real Vampire if you like, Sooz. I have friends, Vampire Lords, in fact. Relatives, actually. They could bite you, transform you. What do you say?”

  Sooz’s jaw dropped. Become a real Vampire? Wow! She had to admit, back home on earth, she’d dreamed of that sometimes. She was a Goth, after all.

  “You could be immortal. Be by my side forever. You’d truly be part of the Dark. I could trust you completely then,” said the Dark Lord.

  Sooz frowned. To dream about Vampires was one thing. To actually be one was another. And she didn’t want to live forever anyway, and certainly not with a twelve-foot Lord of Evil.

  “But then … Well, I’d have to drink blood. You know, kill people to live, right?” she said.

  “Well, yeah! Duhh!” said the Dark Lord. “You’d be a Vampire, of course you’d drink blood! Anyway, that’s half the fun.”

  Sooz shook her head. “I can’t do that. Sorry.”

  The Dark Lord leaned forward. “What do you mean? Why not?” he said, annoyed.

  “I can’t kill people so that I can live, Dirk, I can’t. It’s wrong!” she said.

  The Dark Lord’s face creased up in anger. “Foolish child, the path of mercy leads only to weakness and death! And I’ve told you, do not address me as ‘Dirk’!” he said, his voice rising at the end. But then he paused, the anger fading as another thought came to him. He sank back into his Throne.

  “Well, what if we arranged for you to use donors? You can feed without actually killing anyone you know, if you’re that squeamish,” said the Dark Lord.

  “No, my Dark Lord, no. I don’t want to be a Vampire. It’s just too … well, not for me,” said Sooz as diplomatically as she could.

  “But why not? I don’t understand,” said the Dark One.

  “Look,” said Christopher, “she doesn’t want to be a Vampire, all right? Forget it!”

  “What did you say?” said the Dark Lord.

  Christopher couldn’t take it anymore. He jumped to his feet and shouted, “She doesn’t want to be a Vampire because she doesn’t want to be with you forever and ever, you crazy tyrant!”

  Gargon visibly flinched. Agrash began to back away. The Dark Lord sat there unmoving for a moment, gazing at Christopher. Christopher blinked. Uh-oh, that temper of his … He gulped.

  Suddenly, the Dark Lord’s face became a mask of insensate anger. He grabbed Christopher around the throat and pulled him up to his face, so that Christopher’s legs were several feet off the ground. Christopher’s eyes bulged and he couldn’t breathe. He dangled like a rag doll. Feebly he batted at the Dark Lord’s taloned hands but he was only a child, a puny human child. The Dark One reached up with his other hand, as if to crush Christopher’s head like a melon.

  Bad Judgment Day

  “Nooo!” shouted Sooz. “Don’t do it, Dirk!”

  The Dark Lord looked down at Sooz. Then back at Chris, who was starting to turn blue. His fierce yellow eyes narrowed. He pointed a taloned finger at Chris. And then stabbed it into the side of his face. He ran the razor-sharp talon down the side of Chris’s cheek. Blood flowed freely. Christopher squirmed in pain. Then the Dark Lord Dirk blinked.

  “It’s me, Chris,” gasped Christopher. “Your friend.”

  The Dark Lord frowned.

  “Bah!” he shouted, tossing Christopher to the ground. “You are not worth killing!” Chris lay there gasping for breath, trying to staunch the blood running from his cheek.

  “How could you, you monster!” said Sooz. She stood there stamping her foot. “He was your friend. He saved your life, you big, horrible bully!”

  The Dark Lord looked away, unable to look her in the eyes. He actually felt … What was it? Ah yes, guilt. How absurd!

  Bad Judgment Day

  Behind Sooz, Christopher began to cry. Agrash ran forward to offer his handkerchief. Christopher looked at it in disgust and waved the Goblin away.

  “You should say you’re sorry,” shouted Sooz, “and start behaving yourself!”

  Agrash, Gargon, and Skabber shifted their feet uncomfortably. It wasn’t wise to tell a Dark Lord to behave himself, especially as Christopher had gotten off lightly, all things considered.

  “Behave myself?” said the Dark Lord, all feelings of guilt gone. “BEHAVE MYSELF? I am not some schoolchild, some brainless human boy to be put in detention when they have become inconvenient! I AM THE DARK LORD! I AM THE INCARNATION OF EVIL! I AM THE BURNER OF WORLDS AND IT IS YOU WHO HAS MISBEHAVED, DEFYING ME LIKE THIS!”

  As he said this, he rose to his feet, his yellow eyes blazing, his Ring burning with energy, his face livid with a kind of angry insanity.

  Sooz stepped back, terrified, her arm raised in futile protection. Chris desperately tried to shuffle away, his blood hissing as it dripped on the self-cleaning floor. Gargon, Agrash, and Skabber had already moved well back. The Dark Lord raised his arms, and began to mutter the words of an awful spell. Terrible energy began to crackle and flow between his hands. But then he stopped. A kind of sanity washed over his face, a kind of calm.

  He put his hands on his hips. “Oh, well, perhaps you don’t deserve death. But you do deserve detention for what you have done, Darklands style! No more weak-minded mercy and friendship and all that nonsense! Take them away, Gargon, and put them with that idiot paladin in the Dungeons of Doom.”

  Gargon frowned. “Are you sure, Master?” he said.

  Anger flickered across the Dark Lord’s face. “Don’t push it, Gargon! Take them to the Dungeons or there will be blood, and it won’t be mine, I can assure you!”

  Sooz looked up at Gargon. “Just do it,” she said. “It’s best for everyone.”

  Gargon stepped forward. Tenderly, he held Sooz and Chris by the arm. “Sorry about this, my Lady,” he whispered.

  “What are you doing, Gargon, by the Nine Nether-worlds?!” said the Dark Lord. “What is the matter with you people? You’ve all turned into weaklings since I’ve been gone! Skabber, put ’em in irons first. We’re doing this right, just like the old days, got it?”

  So it was that Sooz and Chris were led away in manacles to the Dungeons of Doom beneath the Iron Tower of Despair. Behind them, they could hear the Dark Lord Dirk declaiming from the Throne.

  “All right, with those millstones around my neck out of the way, we’re going to get moving with things! I want the Slave Pits reopened. I want round-the-clock work shifts—get all those humans back into the Pits, and no more cursed Treasury-draining wages! Old-school slavery is back! And get RakRak here, I want messengers sent to the Ash Mountains and the Plains of Blood. Summon the Orcs! All of them! And reopen the Breeding Silos. We need to put together a big army as soon as we can, for we’re going to war!”

  The Dungeons of Doom

  Sooz, Christopher, and Rufino were sitting on rough stone benches inside a stone prison cell. A large prison cell, but still … A bloody scab marked Chris’s cheek. It was going to leave a permanent scar, running from cheekbone to chin. No one was going to believe how he’d gotten it either! Assuming he ever got to show it to anyone, that is.

  The walls of their cell were of rough stone, and the floor of compacted dirt. Beside them was an old wooden tray with a water jug, and a hunk of black bread. At least it wasn’t moldy, and that’s about all you could say that was good about it.

  The door was of black iron, with three locks. The jailor, an Orc called Grimgrunge, had said they were enchanted locks and that there was no way anyone could get ’em open without the key. Grimgrunge had been very polite, in fact. He knew Sooz had been ruler here recently, and you never know with Dark Lords—she was out of favor now, but could be back in favor tomorrow. It was best to hedge your bets.

  On the door of their cell a plaque had been hung. The Dark Lord had written on it himself. It read “Dungeon Cell Number 13: The Dark Lad
y Sooz and her toadying lickspittle playmate, Christopher—for Insubordination, Mutiny, and Talking Back to the Dark Lord. And the Paladin Rufino for … Well, for being a paladin.” Christopher had been particularly annoyed that he’d been relegated to “Sooz’s playmate” and little else.

  The three were talking among themselves in low tones. “Well, I haven’t been tortured, which was a surprise, I must say!” Rufino said.

  “Yes,” said Chris absently. He was examining one of the crystals that Sooz had in her bag, the Anathema Crystals that she’d found in the Dark Reliquary. “Sooz insisted.”

  “What do you mean?” said Rufino.

  “Oh, nothing, it was nothing,” said Sooz, embarrassed.

  Chris looked up. “It wasn’t nothing! She made Dirk promise not to torture you or harm you in any way. He nearly blasted her for it. But then he gave in—it was something to see, a huge Dark Lord giving in to little Sooz! Ha!” said Chris.

  Rufino looked over at Sooz. “Thank you, my Lady. Thank you,” he said. “You risked much for me. I shall never forget it, never!”

  Sooz made a fluttery gesture with her hands, and went red with embarrassment.

  Rufino, seized with a feeling of chivalrous gratitude, as was the way with paladins, dropped to one knee and bowed his head before her. “I swear to serve you, my Lady, to die for you if needs be!” he said theatrically.

  Sooz looked even more embarrassed. Chris raised an eyebrow. “Cool,” he said under his breath. It wasn’t every day a knightly paladin swore to serve you, after all! He nodded at Sooz encouragingly. Sooz stared back. “Go on, Sooz, be queenly,” he whispered, gesturing toward Rufino.

  Rufino glanced over at Chris, and then lowered his eyes once again. Sooz blinked.

  “Umm …” She stood up and laid a hand on Rufino’s head.

  “I … um, I, Sooz …”

  “Queen Sooz!” interjected Chris.

  “Er, yes, Queen Sooz … I, Queen Sooz of Whiteshields, do … er, recognize the Paladin Rufino as my … er … right-hand dude! Arise, Sir Rufino!”

  Rufino got to his feet. “Thank you, my Lady,” he said. “I will not fail you!”

  “No, I’m sure you won’t,” said Chris, a wry smile on his face.

  “What’s with the crystals anyway, Christopher?” said Sooz, kind of wanting to change the subject.

  “Well, when me and Dirk—good Dirk, that is, not bad Dirk, that is not-so-bad-Dirk, I suppose, as opposed to really-bad-Dirk—were sneaking around in the White Tower we found this room with a kind of diorama of the Dark Lord getting banished and turned into a boy by Hasdruban. He used some kind of crystal to do it—looked sort of like one of these. Very much like one of these, in fact.”

  “Anathema Crystals? Hmm,” said Rufino. “Interesting. Do we know how to use them?”

  “No, we don’t,” said Chris. “But if we did … Well …”

  “We could turn him back into a little boy!” said Sooz excitedly.

  “Yup,” said Chris. “Maybe we could. Get our old Dirk back.”

  “That would be better!” said Rufino. “But how can we find out how to cast the spell?”

  “I don’t know—short of asking Hasdruban himself, but he’s as likely to lock us up as talk to us,” said Chris. “Or maybe he’s got it written down somewhere in his book of spells or his White Library or whatever he’d call it.”

  “The Library!” said Sooz, excitedly. “I don’t know about a White Library but I do know the Dark Library is full of stuff, thousands of years of stuff,” said Sooz.

  “Perhaps,” said Rufino. “But how do we get in there?”

  “There must be a way. Somehow …,” said Sooz. The conversation tailed off as they realized there was no easy way of doing so. They were trapped here in the Dungeons of Doom. Each sank into their own thoughts.

  Some time later, Grimgrunge slid open a small panel on their cell door. “Got a visitor for ya,” he growled. “Stand back in the corner, away from the doors.”

  The trio stood back, as each lock was laboriously opened by the great Iron Keys Grimgrunge kept at his belt. In came Agrash Snotripper.

  “Hello, my Queen. And Christopher, Rufino,” said Agrash. In his hands he held a big plate of fine food from the Storeroom—a spiced stir-fry, and a bowl of one of Sooz’s favorites, Syndalon lamb curry, plus some honeyed oatcakes and some chocolate brownies.

  Once the chocolate brownies had been made with real chopped-up Brownies (a kind of Gnome), but nowadays, it was just regular stuff, the recipe having been brought to the Darklands from earth by a famous Skirrit chef.

  The faces of the imprisoned trio, who’d had little more than black bread and water so far, lit up with delight at the sight and smell of the food.

  “Hello, Agrash, it’s good to see you,” said Sooz.

  Agrash grinned and stepped forward. Unfortunately, as he did so, a large droplet of snot was dislodged from his improbably long nose to fall with a splash into the curry.

  “Just put it down on the table. We’ll eat it later,” said Sooz. Agrash put the plates down.

  To change the subject, she said, “So, what’s happening upstairs?”

  “Not good, my Lady. The Dark Lord is amassing another big army. He’s started casting the Black Vapors of Gloom to cover the sky in darkness, though that spell takes a few weeks. He’s going to invade the Commonwealth, but instead of Goblin Battle Balloons, this time he’s got some plan for getting inside the White Tower to plant a magical bomb or something so he can take out Hasdruban from the start.”

  “How’s he going to do that?” said Chris. “He’ll never get in there, not as the Dark Lord! Nor will any of his minions—it’s protected against evil.”

  “I know, that’s why I’ve come to tell you. He wants you to do it, Christopher.”

  “Me? Why would I do that? Especially after what he’s done to us!”

  “Well,” said Agrash. He glanced over at Sooz. “That’s why I came … He’s … He says …”

  “Yes, yes, spit it out, Agrash, we can take it,” said Sooz.

  “Well … he says he’s going to make Chris do it. If you don’t, he’ll take it out on Sooz. Torture her or something. He’s ordered up a special rack to be made for her and everything.”

  Sooz’s jaw dropped.

  “That evil swine!” said Rufino.

  “Wow,” said Chris. “That’s really twisted.”

  “He wouldn’t really do it though, would he?” said Sooz, visibly upset.

  Agrash shrugged. “Maybe, yes. He’s falling back into his old ways more and more,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Though he did say he’d get someone else to do the actual torturing, if that’s any consolation. One of the Orcs probably. Some of them are pretty nasty, you know.”

  Sooz was ashen-faced.

  “It’s a hollow threat,” said Chris. “Anyway, I’m not going to blow up a bunch of innocent people for him, even if one of them is that nut Hasdruban!” said Chris.

  “I shall tell him,” said Agrash. “But … he really is getting more Dark Lordish. He might … well … he might actually …” But he couldn’t bring himself to say what he might do, and his voice trailed off.

  “Well, we’ve got to do something,” said Chris. “Agrash, can you get us out of here?”

  Agrash turned a paler shade of green. “Ah … That’d be … That’d be really dangerous. I’m sorry, I’m not the heroic type, I mean, they’d kill me …”

  “All right, Agrash, don’t worry,” said Sooz. “But if you can’t rescue us, can you get into the Library, find something out for us?”

  “Oh, I can do that, my Lady,” said Agrash. “He lets me in there quite often to work on the newspaper, The Daily Massacre.”

  “Great, this is what I want you to do …”

  The Fall. Again.

  Sooz, Christopher, and Rufino were staring at the door expectantly. The locks were clicking open one by one. At last the great iron door swung toward them with a creak. Gargon, duc
king his head, stepped into the room. He stared at Sooz for a moment, his face sick with worry. Then he stood to one side and held the door open.

  In walked the Dark Lord, along with a particularly burly-looking Orc wearing a hood and carrying some kind of large leather bag.

  Christopher and Sooz backed away. Rufino stepped forward, fists raised defiantly. The Dark Lord muttered a few arcane words and waved his hand. The Great Ring glowed and Rufino found his arms encased in dark, shadowy chains. Around his feet, heavy black clamps held him motionless. Dirk grinned.

  “A new spell I have been working on,” he said. “Shadow Shackles. Actually an idea I got from those car clamps back on earth.”

  Rufino struggled against his bonds, but he could neither move nor speak.

  “So much for the paladin. Now, Christopher, you have refused my command, even though you know you are the only one of my servants who could enter the White Tower.”

  “I’m not your servant, and I’m not going to murder people for you, either,” said Chris.

  The Dark Lord leaned forward, his horned face a few inches from Chris’s.

  “Oh yes you are,” he hissed.

  “Oh no I’m not!” said Chris.

  The Dark Lord’s hand formed a fist—dark energy flickered and flowed around it.

  “You going to cut my face again or something?” said Chris.

  The Dark Lord just smiled a sinister smile. “No, no, Chris, I’m not going to hurt you. Instead …” Rather than finish the sentence, he turned and gestured at the big hooded Orc.

  “This is Og. Og the Torturer, a real old-school Orc, oh yes, and a long-standing favorite of mine.”

  Og the Torturer grunted, and bowed. He let the leather bag he was holding fall open to reveal a row of rusty torture tools—blades, hooks, thumbscrews, and branding irons.

  Sooz gasped. Chris shuddered. Rufino strove to free himself but to no avail. Gargon frowned. Og laughed. It was an evil sound.

  The Dark Lord turned toward Chris and Sooz. He grinned at them.

  “So, it’s do as you’re told, Christopher, or Sooz will be spending some time with Og and his bag of hideous horrors!”