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HSerrata t1_iy9gy6b wrote

[Waking by Hand]

"What was that?" The Dark Lord stopped walking and turned to look at General Avery. The Dark Lord was not wearing her imposing, horned helmet and her long silver hair flowed freely.

"Nothing my lord!" General Avery fell to his knees and apologized profusely as soon as he had her attention. Even on his knees, the lean elf was still almost as tall as the teenage Dark Lord. "Forgive me! It's not for me to know your plans!" Even as Avery begged for his life, he couldn't help but notice the Dark Lord's warm smile.

He couldn't help the sniveling, try as he might; but, deep down he knew she wouldn't actually hurt him. There was a reason General Avery was loyal. The Dark Lord was actually a polite, pleasant person. She giggled at him as she reached her hand out to help him up.

"I told you to quit doing that...," she said. General Avery accepted her assistance. She was much stronger than one would assume based on her appearance; there was a reason she was the Dark Lord. "...But seriously, what did you say?" she asked once they started walking forward again. General Avery was escorting the Dark Lord for her daily rounds and giving her the appropriate reports. But, he was so comfortable around her that he accidentally spoke his mind.

"It was merely a bad joke, my lord," General Avery shook his head. But, it was more than that. The elven General was concerned about the campaign and his own sanity. Every fiber of his body was telling him to keep his thoughts to himself. All he had to do was keep quiet and follow that programming; but, he really wanted to make a different choice. The more he wrestled with it, the more he realized he could make a different choice. It was difficult but not impossible. "..it's just that...," he struggled to get the first words out. But, the Dark Lord stopped walking again and gave him her full attention.

"Just what?" she asked. The Dark Lord's kindness was enough encouragement to help Avery through. He was having trouble putting his ideas together and he blurted out the half-formed question.

"Why are you conquering the world with a children's card game?? HOW??" he asked. She tilted her head at him.

"That's an insightful question," she said. Her observation was followed by a sudden question. "What's your favorite number?"

"One, why?" General Avery answered. The Dark Lord nodded and smirked.

"Oh boy, you're in for a few surprises," she said. "First of all...," The Dark Lord stepped closer to General Avery and offered him her hand. "....my name is Emily," she said. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Avery."

"Thanks...," Avery shook her hand. They'd obviously met before, he'd worked very hard to achieve her goals. But, this time it felt like he was meeting her personally; and, more than that. Something about their handshake and the way she met his eyes. He felt like he was her equal. "...what do you mean surprises?" he asked.

"You'll see," Emily replied. "I don't have a lot of time right now; but, I can answer your other question. You wanted to know why I'm using a 'children's card game'...," Emily used air quotes. "...to conquer everything, right?" Avery nodded.

"The simple answer is, that's my class. I'm a Card Mage," she said. She made a motion with her hand in the air and suddenly she was holding several cards splayed out between her fingers. She flipped her hand over again and they were gone just as instantly. "...A necromancer would try to conquer the world with the undead, a wizard would use magic, I use cards," she said.

"As for how I am achieving my goals using a Children's card game...," Emily shrugged and winked. "...I'm just kind of making it up as I go along. I'm doing okay so far," she giggled. "If it works, it works."

"Ohhh..," Avery found he was somewhat disappointed with her lack of plan. This whole time he thought he was serving a greater ideal. He thought the Dark Lord was special and unique; but, he was starting to realize he was just some school girl. His loyalty flickered in the back of his mind. It happened for the briefest of moments; he let a stray thought take form: "I could be a better Dark Lord."

"Hey, Emily, where's the patient?" A new voice startled Avery. He turned and saw another teenage girl, this one with dark violet hair, standing with them.

"Hey, Vivi," Emily nodded at Avery. "This is Avery. He just Woke up," she said.

"Great, it's nice to meet you Avery," Vivi offered him a handshake and he accepted it.

"Thank you... who are you?" She grinned.

"I'm going to take you to Mundo, he'll answer all your questions," she said.

"My lord?" Avery looked at Emily out of habit and she nodded at him.

"Go ahead, Vivi will take care of you," she said. Then, she added a reminder. "My name's Emily."

***
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is story #1778 in a row. (Story #333 in year five.). This story is part of an ongoing saga that takes place at a high school in my universe. It began on August 22nd and I will be adding to it with prompts every day until May 26th. They are all collected in order at this link.

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BlueOrangeMorality t1_iy9ko1x wrote

"...can't stop me, little heroes! The power of your cards is as nothing to my undefeatable Dragon Army! Once I have defeated the last Dragon Priest, the world is mine, and a thousand years of darkness shall be my reign!"

He gloated, his array of magically-charged Dracomancy cards orbiting him like a crown of dark stars.

Off to my right, a huge flashing pattern of green lights came on. A cue, I realized, one which conveniently drew my attention away from the climax of the dark lord's speech, just as scripted. I half-turned, involuntarily, before I had even realized what it was.

"Villi-Anne! Am I boring you?" he snapped, turning on me.

His script meant he wasn't supposed to notice the bank of flashing lights, so he didn't. He just turned his attention to me, a tertiary character in his 'empire of evil'. I felt the weight of his amplified presence for the first time, staring up at him, and I hesitated.

His question was my cue, but I still shivered. He was designed to be frightening. From his sinister armor, to the scraping claws of his enchanted gauntlet; from his harmonically amplified voice, to the glow that came from somewhere inside his helmet like phantom flames where his eyes should be. The throne room, the castle... all meticulously workshopped, designed and redesigned, engineered for maximum affect.

"Villi-Anne!" he barked, subwoofers cranked until my bones rattled with the repeated prompt.

Shit, I thought, startled out of my reverie.

"N-no, my Lord!" I responded, internally wincing from the unscripted stutter. I hunched over, flexing the clawed card-gauntlet menacingly, as my script described. "I was just thinking what delicious torments the heroes are in for, Master, once we've defeated them!"

The dread lord Malevilar, ruler of the Really Badlands, King of Evil and Master of Misdeeds, leaned closer. His breath hissed warningly, like a rattlesnake's tail, as he loomed.

"Once 'we've' defeated them?" he repeated, gauntleted fist creaking with barely restrained rage.

I knew it was part of the script, yet I couldn't help but shrink for real. He was terrifying. Part of me wondered what he would be like if he was genuinely enraged. That same part of me wondered if I could tell the difference, before it was too late.

"Aaaand, cut!" came the shout, just as I gulped.

Interrupted while drying my hair, I grabbed my sweatpants and sports bra from my luggage, tugged them on. I hadn't even finished unpacking, and didn't know where my sweatshirt was. I decided whoever it was would just have to put up with my muffin top. My sweatpants stuck to my still-wet skin, but I ignored it, and went to answer the door.

"Hey, Anne. Got a moment?" the dark lord asked, as he tried and failed to wrangle chronic helmet-hair into some semblance of presentable.

Filming over, we were mostly done for the day. I had gone for a shower, having jumped at the opportunity to peel off my work armor. Meanwhile the dark lord had--as usual--made his rounds to check in with his core team. I hadn't expected him to check in on me; I was still new. This was our first face-to-face, off camera.

"Um! Shit. I-I-I mean, yeah. Yes sir, sorry sir," I stammered, backing away so the dark lord could storm in as he pleased.

He didn't, though. He stood in the doorway, waiting until I looked his way. For a moment I stared, confused, as he searched my face.

"It's not an order, Anne."

It was... disarming, in a way I wasn't prepared for. His voice was strong, but his tone was gentle, unhurried. It was disorienting, and felt out of character.

Then it hit me. This wasn't the dark lord Malevilar. This was... well, shit. Whoever he was when he wasn't being the dark lord, I guess. A man, a person. I didn't even know my boss's name.

Wincing inside, I gestured for him to come in.

"Yeah, no, sorry. Please, excuse the mess." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as he passed me, trying to reorient myself.

He nodded and stepped into the room, his armor scraping the door frame. I closed the door behind him, then realized I didn't know what to do with my hands while my boss, the most dangerous man on the planet, watched me drip on the floor.

He set his great horned helmet on a table, and looked around. The suite was cluttered--old furniture, new books, most of my luggage, and a computer. The table I had designated as my workbench was entirely buried in scripts, pieces of my armor, and a portfolio of palette options and accessories I had been given by his image consultants, a few options already highlighted. Two doorways--one leading to a bedroom with an unmade bed, one to a bathroom wet with steam--stood open on one wall. Condensation from my shower frosted the windows on another.

He absorbed it all, methodically. His gaze held no judgment, no recrimination. I was surprised to notice that, for all his massive size, he was careful and concise with his movements, even turning his head in measured increments. He also had surprisingly kind eyes, and he turned them on me.

I realized I had been staring at him, and flushed crimson. He was considerate enough to pretend not to notice it, and he walked towards the window instead. His back to me, I had the opportunity to gather myself.

"I wanted to check on you, see how you're settling in," he said.

He waved his hand, and something in his armor flashed. The moisture that obscured the view dried in an instant, revealing the snow-capped peaks of the Drake Mountains around us. He leaned on the window sill, taking in the view, a reason to let us talk without me feeling stared at or judged. A casual exercise in unexpected civility, from a man whose entire reputation was being a monster.

"If you need more time to prepare mentally, I can come back later, or we can make an appointment," he offered.

Once again, I had been so busy thinking that I had missed my cue. I hid my face in my hands, feeling my wet hair stick to my cheeks. With an effort of will that was surprisingly difficult, I forced myself to straighten up, claw my hair back out of my face, and respond.

"No, sorry. I'm just... it's not what I expected, sir," I managed.

He chuckled, nodding out the window. I could see his face, reflected in the glass, as he scoured the mountainsides with his eyes.

"You're not the first to feel that way," he agreed. "What was it you expected?"

I darted into my bedroom for my towel, and started drying my hair as I answered.

"Most of us grew up knowing you as a monster. No offense, sir."

"None taken," he laughed, boyishly pleased.

"Well, um. I didn't exactly audition for this role. I was selected--kidnapped, really--pulled out of my chemical engineering degree for this. I mean, I get it, you can't exactly advertise that the dark lord needs minions, but I was expecting... I don't know, exactly. Evil stuff. Spikes, spiderwebs. Torture chambers and a harem of enslaved elves, maybe. Not... uh, this. Not, um, karaoke nights. Definitely not a staff canteen with a Michelin star."

He smirked, but held his laugh. I realized he was thoroughly pleased with himself, and for some reason that made me angry, a little. The anger made me bold, and I rambled on.

"What's the point, even? I mean, sure, take over the world. Everyone knows the threat of the dark lord is why we dump, what, a quarter of the GDP?, into heroes, magic items, healing research, crap like that. No one likes having to enlist into the Armies of Light, having to fight your summoned dragon monsters, but we get why we have to do it. You threaten everything, and when we can't stop you, whole cities just... just vanish."

In the reflection, I saw the smile disappear from his face, but he didn't look angry. If anything, he looked... resigned. Hair mostly dry, I threw my towel into the bedroom, and started searching my luggage for my sweatshirt. I yanked hard at whatever my hands found, still mad, and pulled out fistfuls of clothes.

"And... and," I continued, unable to stop myself, "And you have all this power. Even with all our military spending, all the heroes and stuff, you could probably wipe out half the world if you wanted to. But you... I don't know. You're fixated on this 'Ultimate Dark Dragon Deck' thing, despite having an army large enough to invade the entire Alliance. You could beat everyone in a single day with saturation bombing from your Fell Drakes; or unleash a bioterror plague with the Dracolich Necromancers, but instead... I don't even..."

I found my sweatshirt, squeezing it ferociously, unable to even process that I should put it on. I was in full vent mode. I needed to say it, to scream it.

"But no, you've got everyone convinced that the world's only hope is some... some tween! Some dork you've got calling himself a 'dragon priest'--whatever that means--with a special summon spell that you made, getting enough of a deck of magic cards together to... to play some stupid game at you!"

My shriek echoed in the suite, and he shifted at the window. Some small part of me, call it my survival instinct, suddenly twanged inside, reminding me that I had just screamed at the most dangerous man in history. The most dangerous man, standing not twenty feet away, in my small suite in his castle; while I sat on the floor with nothing but a scrunched up sweatshirt to defend myself, if he decided he was offended enough to rebuke his new minion.

"Um. Sir," I amended, squeaking the word.

He sighed, but he did not turn. His gauntlets scraped at the windowsill as he moved his hands--hands that could kill me a thousand ways, while I could do literally nothing to stop him. I realized I was shaking.

"Anne... I apologize," he said, finally.

I felt nauseous. So this is how I die, I thought. Shooting off at the mouth, blowing a gasket at the dark lord, while sitting on the floor in my underwear.

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BlueOrangeMorality t1_iya0s4y wrote

(cont)

"Did it ever occur to you to wonder where the Army of Darkness recruits from?" he asked, still facing out over the mountains.

"We, um... No, sir. We learned in school that you summon some... demons, or something, and bind them to dragon eggs to make your Drakenguarde guys. Soldiers. Sir," I answered, still making my peace with death.

He huffed a tired laugh, and rocked his weight to one leg restlessly. It occurred to me that his armor must be enchanted for comfort; otherwise, the weight of it would be hell on his feet. Here he was, having been blasted by an uppity underling for ten minutes, wearing dread plate armor that looked to have the mass of a small car. Yet he moved like he was wearing nothing more burdensome than a bathrobe, and the weight on his shoulders was the mantle of leadership, not the mass of metal.

"No, Anne. You're smart; that's partly why I chose you. Think. Where do I really get my recruits?"

He was asking me to think. He wasn't asking me to plead for my life, to beg for mercy at the hands of evil incarnate. I risked pushing myself to my feet; in doing so, I discovered my sweatshirt, briefly forgotten, clenched in terrified fists. Still jittery with adrenaline, I shook it, pulled it on, fanned my damp hair out behind me.

Me. He had recruited me. Just two weeks ago, in fact--and it hasn't occurred to me to check, to see if I was a missing person. My parents had died years ago, and I didn't have any siblings. My aunt had passed away last year. No one was likely to miss me. No one probably had missed me.

And the same week I had posted about feeling lonely, on a message board about depression, the dark lord Malevilar had had me kidnapped.

"Those villages," I gasped. "Oh fuck, the suicides. The-the-those, um, the kids, the extremists, who ran off to join you!"

So many reported lost, or missing. Suspected magical suicides, where no body was ever discovered. Radicals and rebels, who abandoned their families, disappeared into the mountains.

"All of them, and more. Yes."

He turned, facing me. Something haunted, hounded, lurked behind his eyes.

"In history class, you learned that I rose from the calamity left in the wake of the Ghoti Genocide. That I was a rogue mage, or maybe a junior officer, who stumbled on some sort of superweapon." He clenched one armored fist, and sparks danced around the metal. "You probably learned that I went on to slaughter whole kingdoms, before the Alliance was able to contain me, right?"

I nodded, not sure what to say, not sure what to think. I dig my fingers into my hair, as if to hold my blown mind in my skull. The word flabbergasted floated briefly to the surface of my consciousness, before sinking once more into subconscious depths below.

"But none of that is true... is it," I whispered.

"Well, the Ghoti Genocide part is," he admitted, heartbroken by the memory. "I was sixteen, a student thaumaturgist, when it happened. My parents... were killed by my uncle, who was a member of the New Sicarii. He nearly killed me as well, but I escaped... mostly."

He gestured to the armor, the armor he wore like a second skin, that no one ever saw him without. The armor keeping him alive.

"After I stabilized myself, I gathered other survivors. Other outcasts. I gathered the hopeless and the helpless, and raised a flag they could rally under. Since then, I have spent everything, anything I could beg or borrow, steal or summon, to making sure nothing like that ever happens again. The world was... is... full of rage, of the desperate, the disenfranchised; they needed something to hate. They needed something to fear."

"Oh fuck," I whispered.

He looked at me, from under his brow. For a moment he seemed sinister; then he lifted his head, and the shadow of the dark lord lifted with it. I pulled my fingers from my tangled hair, covering my mouth and trying not to interrupt him again. My melting brain could leak from my running mouth later; I had to hear this.

"I picked you, because you needed something, and because you knew what it meant to have nothing. I picked magic cards, because it was something that anyone could use. I can pick my heroes, select them specifically for peak drama, to maximize the hate and fear that people feel for me instead of each other. I can be the enemy the people need, give home and purpose to the outcasts. And if a few plucky adventurers is the sacrifice the world needs to make peace with that arrangement, so be it."

He stepped closer, raising hands as if in supplication. In each palm, a card appeared--gilt edges, silver letters, emerald and sapphire dragons embossed on the back. They were all his; every weapon the heroes wielded, every card, forged by his dark power.

"With weapons such as these, even a child can lead them," he intoned, the power of the dark lord echoing in his voice. "And the child will do so. The world is better with villains in it, because the people cling to childish notions such as heroes. The world is better with 'stupid card games', because the alternative is knives and fire, dead parents, brother killing brother. The world is better with our silly dramas and sinister broadcasts, because that is what the world needs. We are the villains, and we will save them all."

The cards floated over his raised hands, waiting for me to take them, waiting for me to grasp. They were part of a game I hadn't comprehended; a game I had, in my ignorance, dismissed. A game that had changed the rules of the world, because the rulers of the world were forced to play it. A game with impossible stakes, a game worth betting everything on. A game he was now inviting me to be a part of.

I stepped forward, and felt the push of his power against my skin. My hands tingled as I took one of the cards, and I finally understood.

"And... action!" shouted the director.

The dark lord Malevilar, seated on his throne of dragon bones, blasted yet another churlish adventurer who dared oppose him without wielding the true magic of the Dragon Deck. He was mighty; he was unstoppable. Only the chosen heroes could stand against him, and even then, they would require the support whole of the world and its magic, united, to stand a chance against the powers of darkness.

At the dark lord's side stood his newest lieutenant, proud in her role as the right hand to the master of disaster. I caught the cue as the camera panned my way, zooming in on me. With a diabolical cackle, I clutched at imaginary throats with the clawed gauntlet of my new armor.

"They stand no chance against you, divided and unprepared as they are!"

He nodded, and flames coated his armored fists as he rose. Standing, he towered over the room, wrapped in power and terror. With grave tones, he proclaimed his impending victory.

"Send me your pathetic armies, send me your wizards and soldiers!" he threatened. "None can stand before me! And when I rip the last Dragon Card from the hands of the last Dragon Priest, I will be invincible!"

"Magnificent, my dark lord!" Villi-Anne cried hammily, as I chewed the scenery for all I was worth.

Childish, yes. Silly, even. But now, knowing why, knowing it mattered? Now, I meant every word.

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