The Dark Lord of Crafting

My body went rigid. This was the unkillable evil I'd been warned about, and his hand was on my shoulder. He'd seen through my disguise, of course he had, and the zombies in front of me had stopped moving. If they stayed that way, I could climb over them, but I doubted either the demon or the mobs would let me scramble away. My hand tightened around the hilt of my sword.

Did Bojack have a soft spot? No matter how tough his skin was, wasn't I strong enough to drive the point into his throat?

Why wasn't I afraid? Even knowing I would come back, there had to be something seriously wrong with me if this situation didn't result in at least a little stress.

Bojack turned me. Irresistible, and yet almost gentle. His other hand went under my chin, and he lifted my face so that our eyes met. His were huge, a brown so dark that the irises blended with the pupils.

"Do you remember me?" He asked. In the moment, all I could think was how surreal it looked for a horse's mouth to move and a human voice to come out.

"Sort of," I said. He wasn't killing me yet. If the demon liked to play with his prey, there could be an opportunity for me to attack. It wasn't hopeless, yet. "We took notes."

"Ah, the famous Captain's log." Bojack's nostrils twitched.

"How do you know I call it that?"

"We have spoken before. Come sit with me, and we will do so again."

The remaining zombies parted to let us pass, and Bojack led me back to the Anchor, his fingers still tight around my shoulder. In my mind, I brought up the sword and drove it into his neck, but in reality, I walked.

"My notes didn't say we had talked."

"They wouldn't," he said. "I usually rip off your hand before we do. That has tiresome consequences. I'd rather we spoke without violence."

The demon who was holding me captive would rather we spoke without violence. He let me go and sat on the diamond cube that contained the anchor, patting the space beside him. There was enough room for us to sit side by side, though it was a little high for me. I hesitated, still keeping my sword hidden and close, but my curiosity was too powerful to resist.

I took the seat.

"You usually have questions," Bojack said.

"I assumed you would tell me what this was about."

"Interesting." A phantom wheeled overhead, accompanied by a light shriek. The demon snorted. "My name is Orobas, Fifty-Fifth Harbinger of the One Who Knocks."

This was no time for a Breaking Bad reference. The silence stretched.

"What did you want to talk about?" I said.

"The future, the past. Everything."

Was the demon uncomfortable? His body was tense beside me, but I didn't feel like he was about to attack. What was he dithering about?

"Come on, Bojack, how long have we known each other? You can tell me anything."

His lips curled back from large, square teeth.

"That name. You always call me that."

"I don't know many people with horse heads. You remind me of—-"

"Yes," he spoke over me. "There was a performer in your world who looked like me, a humorous, weeping clown."

That was…basically an accurate description of the show. We really had been talking. There was one question at the forefront of my mind.

"How long have I been here?"

Bojack leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. It was obvious he did not see me as a threat.

"Five months, or thereabouts. The Dark Lord tasked me with breaking you. We have not had a hero in captivity in so long. My counsel was to treat you more softly, keep you in this world as long as possible, and deal the greatest possible blow to the veil, but he would not hear of it. He is afraid of anyone who shares his power."

Five months was a long time, but it could have been worse. Esmelda wouldn't have had our baby yet. The Free Kingdoms could still be resisting Dargoth.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"To make you an offer, as I have made before. The current Dark Lord is unsatisfactory. He has held his seat for too long, and become complacent, or worse, subversive. Discord flourishes in flux, and its hold upon this world has become stagnant. Those who are already high among the Harbingers collude to maintain the order as it is. They will not risk their positions in a coup. But in you, I see opportunity."

That was a lot to take in. The demons were not a perfectly unified coalition. They had politics. Well, demons would have politics. And some of them were unhappy with Kevin.

"You're saying I could be the next Dark Lord?"

"I am."

Any route that led out of this valley was enticing, but not if it meant becoming like Kevin.

"You said you were supposed to break me. What does that mean? Like, mentally?"

Bojack shook his head. "The Dark Lord calls it griefing. Whenever one of Mizu's chosen are captured, a Harbinger is tasked with maintaining their confinement. It strains the veil, and provides us with a valuable resource, the lesser entities you insist on referring to as mobs. All heroes resist, for a time. Eventually, they all stop choosing to return."

I sat straight up. "What do you mean, choosing to return? Since when have I had a choice?"

The demon turned his gaze on me, his oversized eyes regarding me placidly. "When one of her champions dies, Mizu plucks them out of the stream of souls and offers them a choice. To continue onto the paths of the dead, or to defy nature and return. When this life grows too painful for them to endure, the cycle of rebirth is broken, and they move on. But you will not move on. No matter what I do, no matter the torment I inflict. You return without your memories; without the knowledge of what has come before and what will come again. It’s been deeply frustrating for me, William, to have to wage a war of the mind with one whose mind is too fragmented to admit defeat.”

It took a while for that to sink in. I stood up, then sat down again. Reincarnation was optional? The only one who was keeping me locked in this game was me. Did I have my memories on the other side? It sounded like other heroes hadn't shared my forgetting things problem. But I kept choosing to come back, and apparently, choosing to refuse to join in Bojack's conspiracy. The first one I could understand. There were still people that mattered to me here, people I needed to protect. The second was more confusing.

If the demon let me out, made me Emperor of Dargoth, or whatever, couldn't I just betray him later? Kevin was acting against their wishes. Why not accept the proposal now and go back on it when I was in a better position?

"Sorry torturing me is so inconvenient for you. Who's the One Who Knocks?"

"Our master. It is our duty as Harbingers to prepare the world for his arrival. To that end, we need the aid of a hero. When he cooperates, the Dark Lord's power is ideally suited to preparing the path. We have waited many years for another like him to appear. Without that cooperation, it would be another age before we were ready. Corrupting an agent of Harmony makes the transition vastly more attainable."

"So you want me to be one of the bad guys?"

Bojack shrugged. "Kevin's language, the one you share, is rich in artifacts of a mythology that has nothing to do with reality as we see it. You call us demons. What are demons to you?"

"It depends. In popular culture, demons are evil spirits, or sometimes, just magic people with horns. It's lost a lot of its original context." I didn't really feel like explaining Earth religions to my captor, but the longer we talked, the more I might learn. "Listen, if we're going to have this conversation, I have a condition."

"Name it."

"Let me take notes." I expected him to refuse. There was no record of conversations like this in my journal, which meant he had never let me keep my hand long enough to make one. No way this was the first time I'd made the request. Bojack, however, merely snorted.

"Very well."

I popped up my Journal and started recording a new "Captain's Log" entry. It wouldn't transcribe what he said, but as long as I kept it open, it would create a record of my half of the conversation.

"Okay," I said, watching to see if he looked like he was about to tear my head off. "On Earth, the word 'demon' comes from one of our religions. God made the universe and everything in it. His servants were called angels, and one of them rebelled. That angel became the devil, and all the other angels that joined him were called demons. They try to tempt humans away from God so we go to hell instead of heaven." It was a gross oversimplification, but I wasn't a religious scholar, and the details would just get us bogged down. "Everything I've heard about you, and the little mentions I've gotten of Harmony and Discord, seems to fit pretty easily into that narrative. So Harmony is like God, and The One Who Knocks is like the devil. Am I wrong about that?"

Bojack slid his hand onto the diamond case and leaned back to stretch his spine. A troll appeared twenty paces away from us. It was as tall as Bojack, but thicker limbed, and twice as broad. With heavy fists, it beat its chest in a threat display before getting a confused look on its dog-like face and shuffling off.

"There is consonance between the tales." He said. "But Harmony did not create the universe. You could say that the One Who Knocks is a fallen angel, that isn't too far from the truth. And there is no point in denying that I am playing the role of a tempter here. Our goal is to prepare this world for His arrival, to wrest it from Harmony, and bring it into the embrace of Discord. It is a war, but not one that will end in the erasure of humanity. Humankind is as useful to us as it is to the angels. The two sides are not as simple as evil and good incarnate."

"Are you going to tell me that Discord isn't evil? You're attacking Plana. The mobs literally eat people."

"Good and evil are relative. You name your enemies evil, and your allies good. One can easily become the other."

When had this turned into a Ethics 101 debate? "What you're doing is evil," I said. "What Kevin's doing is evil. He was going to enslave the lillits, wasn't he? There's no gray area about that."

"Humans commit evil acts and good ones. Were you to take the Throne of Shadows, you could treat the lillits however you saw fit."

"And what about the rest of the people on this planet? What happens when your dark god breaks through the veil?"

"Discord is change, evolution. It will be painful for many. But change is not destruction. The people of this world will be more than what they are now, not less. We seek to make them free."

"Free from what?"

"The tyranny of Harmony."

This really was sounding like a fallen angel speech. I didn't buy it. When one side was normal human life, and the other was a menagerie of nightmares, it was hard to take the "we're not so different, you and I" angle seriously.

"Why did Kevin join you?"

Bojack shrugged. "The title appealed to him. He cares less about humanity than you seem to. When offered power, most will accept it. We made a pact."

There had to be more to it than that. Why would Mizu send someone like that to be a hero? Something had made Kevin the way he was.

"What kind of pact?"

"In exchange for siding with Discord, we made him a king. We serve him within the bounds of our oaths, and he was allowed the freedom to pursue his own interests. Too much freedom. The result has been centuries of delays."

It sounded like Kevin wasn't following their game-plan. Did that mean he wasn't all bad? Postponing Armageddon was a noble pursuit, but the Dark Lord could do it for selfish reasons. I paused the conversation to summarize everything he had told me so far in my journal, and Bojack didn't stop me. That brought us to the central question.

"I've refused you before," I said. "Do you know why?"

His long face drooped. The demon looked tired. "I will require you to swear an oath. If you seek to hinder our efforts or refuse to use your power to aid us, the oath will afflict you with a curse. For as long as you resist, the curse will weaken you. Eventually, it would kill you. I have learned from the mistake of my predecessors, and the terms will bind you more tightly than Kevin was bound."

"Why do you think I would accept that now?"

"Because we have your wife."