On Death and Locals

The Dark Lord’s and Harold’s night after the fight was uneventful due to the human companion’s need of rest. The necromancer considered murdering and reanimating the barbarian as a skeleton, a zombie, or, if the Goddess of Luck would permit it, a death knight, but it was more of a passing thought rather than a serious one. The evil wizard had no patience to spend another half a year or even longer to raise another army of undead, especially, when a source of soon-to-be-dead individuals was no further than a couple days' walk. However, somewhere in the depths of his immortal mind, something that he would not admit to himself, the necromancer was not confident in his and his minions’ abilities to take down the combatant of likes of Harold, even in his sleep. Who knew what types of tricks that crazy human was hiding? And even deeper than that, lied the burning desire to meet with Chardra once again.

The Dark Lord had stopped remembering those days, when he was attending the school of villains, back when he was young and fresh out of the grave he dug up for himself. Even then he was still confident of his abilities and skills, but he was still unsure of his greatness. He asked himself whether a corpse was even capable of performing the necromantic rites his alive self could perform not so long ago. The name of the man he once was was already forgotten, but it’s not as if it was important. Life was boring, miserable, everyone took him for granted. Was he the village fool? A philosopher from the king’s court? Was he rukhian? Did the Rukh Kingdom even exist then? Who was to say? Not the Dark Lord, since his memory of the time before was spotty at the best of times.

But it did not matter, not to him, not to the world before or after, who was the Dark Lord before he became the undead necromancer of the world. His true journey began back then, when he woke up in a small wooden house, far away from everyone in the place where death and decay was strong. The Dark Lord was unknown to both himself and the world, but it was clear to him that he was destined for greatness, as only the greats were given the privilege to walk amongst the living once again. He quickly discovered the necromancy available to him, and easily he could create minions that would serve his great plan of world domination. He traveled through the lands unknown to him, terrorized the living, and gathered his troops. However, he was too big for his britches, as when the opportunity to attack a royal army presented itself to him, the evil wizard with no hesitation charged his undead soldiers ahead to destroy them. That was the moment that taught him in the ways of subtlety, as after a mere ten minutes his armies were no more. The Dark Lord found out for himself that the tactic of “overwhelm them with numbers” did not work on professional armies. The very same month he was taught another lesson: causing death and unrest in towns close to a capitol, would result in the capitol reasserting its reach on the townsfolk and any villains that would dare attack their realm.

So the Dark Lord had to leave the country to try and find some remote place to garner his armies, but wherever he went, the Goddess of Luck did not let him catch a break. Every city, every town, every villager along his way knew of him and how to defeat him. His powers were limited that to necromancy, so every wizard known was put on duty to defend the citizens from the incoming danger. With a fireball and lightning bolt in his back, the necromancer was forced to run away and to never be seen in those remote places again. All of that happened many decades ago, the danger of the Dark Lord turned into myth, and quietly forgotten by the common man. But the undead wizard never forgot. The lich’s hatred towards humanity only grew with time, as did his hatred to the Gods. How dare they take away what was rightfully his? How dare they take away the greatness he was destined to pursue?! They were nothing, nothing more than mere mortals and morons, who dared step in his way.

With those sentiments in mind, one day he received a message from a murder of crows traveling the lands, as they flocked around the wizard and spoke in human tongues. Intrigued by the proposition of the creatures’ master, and the promises of greatness, power, and world domination, the Dark Lord followed the instructions. Blood of a lamb, circle of seven ends, bones of an undead, and a feather of a griffin. A combination cruel and evil, regarded by those limited by morality as of the devil spawn, together lead to a rather anticlimactic scene, if the undead wizard had anything to say about it. It was, due to a lack of a better term, a school. A school for villains, as the necromancer was surrounded by every variety of evil-doer: petty thieves, ferocious gnolls, slimy rogues, self-important wizards and sorcerers, giants, and, worst of all, lawyers.

These were turbulent years of the Dark Lord’s unlife. His reputation has already preceded him, but not in the way he expected: as some of the humans in the student body have turned to the life of villainy as a result of his terror through the lands of Rukh. Some venerated him for it, some despised, many tried to kill him, but were turned in the process into his undead minions. The rest of the villains there were more neutral, if not completely apathetic to the necromancer’s plight. They mocked him for relying on the strength of his minions, making sure to rub it in his face, when many of the spell casting lessons were turned into ashen ruins due to his mishaps. And through all of that, despite the hatred to everyone and all, to those who tried to kill him, or more importantly mock him, there was the one, just one person, whom he knew he could trust. A drow rogue, dark elven outcast princess, who brought damnation to her underground kingdom, Chardra.

The drow was new to all of this herself. Chardra was young, impressionable, wishing for greatness. Outcast from her kingdom, the sentiment came with her to the school. The Dark Lord became infatuated with her from the first glance. She was to him the ideal partner: quiet, uncomplicated, self-conscious, everything that could be found in the partner destined to help the other find their greatness. And the Goddess of Luck smiled upon him back then, as the drow liked him back, as she was magnetized to his person, a confident man, who did not take no for an answer, knew his worth, and promised the greatness that Chardra desired, if not for her, for someone whom she could call her own.

This co-parasitic relationship began spontaneous, after one day of defending himself from a new batch of rukhian schoolmates, who blamed the necromancer for all their ailments. Of course, the Dark Lord was dispatching them with ease, but he forgot one crucial element that day as his back was left exposed to an uppity rukhian youngman, with a dagger and blackness in his heart. However, it soon was exposed to the outside world, when an even stealthier dagger found its mark. In his dying moments, the man saw the pale grey elven face of Chardra, whose maniacal smile told that the last moments of his life were dedicated to an obsession most unhealthy. And all the while the drow relished in her kill, as splatters of blood filled the air like fireworks, embellishing the moment of love and affection.

Soon after the two began a close relationship. The Dark Lord and Chardra lived together, talked about their wants and needs, acting like teens of a romantic tragedy play. However, unlike such story, this one did not end with both of them taking their lives, but in a much less satisfying manner. Their relationship began well for both of them: the necromancer found an admirer he could claim all for himself, and the rogue found the man who had ambitions beyond what she hoped for herself. They studied together, laughed together, killed together. The Dark Lord shared spells that would help Chardra to become all but invisible. Chardra helped the necromancer come up with spells most devious and insideous that would make men run in horror.

Months passed and they treated each other like pets, but with time the spark slowly faded, as the number of rukhians seeking revenge against the Dark Lord died to barely a trickle. There were less fights and less revenge-struck would-be-murderers, and with it there was less and less reason for the two to stick together. It did not help that Chardra began to excel in her classes of fencing and tactics, and more and more of her classmates fell for her natural charm. The drow noticed that easily, and as a person of a royal court she knew how to exploit such a position. The fascination with the necromancer’s ambitions was replaced by her newfound focus of manipulation. The Dark Lord was no fool and saw what was going on and in a selfish fit of mind gymnastics refused to abandon this relationship. He knew, he told himself at the very least, that he would be able to change the young and naive rogue, that she would once again leave her foolish goals of world domination and focus on his goals of world domination.

However, it was not meant to be. Chardra grew tired of the necromancer, when she realized that she had exactly what she once seeked in the man beside her. The Dark Lord grew boring and stale, his tactics lowly and simple, cowardly and roundabout. He was everything that she despised as every drow man of the court from which she was so unceremoniously kicked out of. She could do much better than a man, whose ambitions clashed with hers, and whose methods rubbed her wrong, in more ways than one. The drow seeked someone more interesting, productive, heads-on, but all the men of the school were nothing more than self-admiring idiots who would just as soon throw her under a carriage, just as she would them. She wished to have a relationship with someone who was not part of this insufferable bunch, so she had to stay alone for the remainder of her school stay.

When the day of the breakup creeped up and Chardra publicly cut off the relationship between them, the Dark Lord was furious. Those who witnessed the display of rage and child-like fit, either did not survive or became so fascinated with the drama and display of power the two selfish ex-lovers demonstrated that they decided to befriend them, if one could use such a word for the relationship: the gnoll chief Az, duke Drake of Boravia, Zilvod the demon-kind, the famous TEW, and lawyer Jerry, all were present back then, and all wanted in on the drama, to exploit, profit, and most important be entertained by it.

After the education ended, they agreed to gather together every five or so years, to catch up and share stories, tips, and plans for world domination, but mostly it was nothing but a front for the group to gather together, and watch the Dark Lord and Chardra butt heads. This tradition lasted for decades, and every time the tensions grew. The necromancer and the drow argued every time, fought every time, and every time it all ended in a disaster of a massive scale, that would be told by locals as tales of fatal hubris, not knowing that all of the important guests would survive and continue terrorizing the population of the peaceful world.

Last year congregation was no exception to the rule, and just as before the event ended up in a disaster. All of the guests arrived to the Dark Lord’s castle, and as an ego of a villain tends to blow up in a massive tantrum when provoked, so did the Dark Lord annihilate the world around him with a massive upscaled fireball. No castle left, no minions, no clones to inhibit. All of this was for not, as all of his former classmates were left alive. Sure, he knew that he would not have killed them with something as simple as a glorified party trick. More than that, he was counting on it. He did not want to kill those people, not so easily. They were, in their awful villainous way, friends, or acquaintances at the very least. It would simply be dumb to just outright murder them. He had plans for each of them, as part of his world domination plan, which he kept to himself.

But of all of the guests who have been at the reunion, Chardra stood out, as usual. He knew that one day she would bring a man to one of these meetings, but he was insulted by the presence of his current company, Henry. That man was a complete opposite of him, of the Dark Lord! While the necromancer thought through brilliant tactics, the barbarian charged into battle head-on. The wizard was an undead, who would live forever, and this human would die in a measly twenty years or however long they lived for. But most insultingly was the way the drow boasted the guy in front of him. The Dark Lord was sure, no, certain that she only did this to spite him! She was simply still longing for him, hoping to reunite once again in the most unholiest of unions, that would destroy the world and bring it to their knees, and!...

That’s what the Dark Lord told himself. And, honestly, it was better this way for everyone. Otherwise, only the devils know what horrors the heartbroken and depressed husk of a man, in the likes of the Dark Lord, would unleash upon the world, if he was ever to stop thinking of himself in such a high regard.

That night, the night of the fight with Harold, the Dark Lord spent mostly quiet. He was staring at the barbarian next to him, peacefully unaware of how vulnerable he was, in the presence of a grand necromancer. That moment, the evil wizard barely could hold himself from destruction of an insolent soul next to him, as he realized that the moment reminded him of the night, when Chardra, supposedly, broke up with him. Back then, he also sat in one place, mostly quiet, without uttering a single word, staring at the empty bed in the apartment, where Chardra slept early the same day. It felt empty back then, the heart, that is. But today, the undead an unbeaten heart has felt something, it has not felt in a long while. It was somewhat cathartic, having someone vulnerable, but strong next to him. It reminded the Dark Lord of the bad old times.

“What about you? Since we are going to be waiting here all night long, might as well entertain me.” he asked the death knight next to him. The undead barbarian slowly looked at his master quizzically. “Oh right, you can’t speak”. The death knight continued the death stare. “Or remember anything before me. Yes, yes, I know. No need to be so stingy about it”.

The night was long. And it was lonely. But not as lonely as it could have been, come to think of it.