Now that his citadel had finally collapsed, trapping and probably killing all the rest of his cultists inside, Malachar was finally alone. He didn't feel any sense of loss at the death of his supplicants. Both he and they knew they had signed away their lives the moment they joined his following. They were probably happy to die, considering themselves the fortunate dead.

  Pathetic. But necessary.

  He looked at the ruin that had once been his dark castle, Bloodrot Keep, and saw that its once mighty towers and walls had been reduced to a pile of spiky rubble in the collapse. It would be no bother for him to use his sorcery and call forth another lair. He had done so plenty of times in his past lives. His magic would rip the necessary materials from the surrounding area and assemble the structure without his thinking about it. Entire quarries would be torn out of the nearby land, the bedrock used to make something far more organized and useful to his conquest.

  But then he looked up at the sickly, dying sky and thought he would worry about that later.

  For a time, he merely stood there. This was starting again. The very first stages of conquest would begin again. The cycle was beginning again. And the same result would happen again. Right now, his heart should be pounding, his blood should be racing, but all he felt was a bone-deep fatigue. He wasn’t excited. He was tired.

  Through whatever blasphemous ritual his cult had conducted, they had revived him to be at the peak of his power. But even though his body was whole, he still felt the aches and pains of old wounds and injuries that had accrued over countless centuries. He still bore the scars of past battles and of deaths that couldn't be numbered by anyone living today.

  He was still mighty. Still the deadliest being on the face of the world. Even without his infernal magic, he still was formidable. He had the strength to crush a man's skull with his bare hands. He should know. He had done it before, plenty of times, popping men's heads like they were grapes.

  But as he looked down at those hands, he didn't want to do it again. He tried to imagine the face of the last hero who had slain him. He tried to imagine breaking the skull of the Chosen One, watching it splinter slowly, starting at the thin temples right beside the eyes until they, too, popped. But he soon grew tired of the grisly mental experiment. He tried to reach into his black heart and find some hint of hatred for the boy. Or for the girl. The hero's gender and background always varied slightly but they were always from humble unassuming beginnings. And yet here was Malachar, mighty warlord, godlike sorcerer. Untouchable. Unstoppable. With demons at his beck and call, armies of monsters at his side, he was still cast down. He was always cast down by a hero that the gods, or fate, or some cosmic quirk had chosen. And he was always killed.

  He should be outraged. Enraged. Malachar closed his hand into a tight fist to try and summon up those powerful emotions but they just wouldn't come. He shook his head and sighed at his lack of inertia.

  Wanting to simply move, he walked toward the next tallest structure other than his ruined keep. It was short and squat, one story, but it looked to be the very beginnings of a one-room outpost. Made from the same black stone from his castle, it was menacing and imposing in the same way the puppy of a fearsome hellhound was. Small, but it would be deadly one day. To his dismay, he saw the roof was collapsed. Why was there even an outpost so close to his keep in the first place? What had happened to cause the roof to fall in like that? Had his standards and practices diminished so much?

  Now wasn't the time to lament over what he had lost. Now was the time to plot and plan, to draw incredibly complex runes in the earth to call forth indescribably evil creatures. He knew this, but he just couldn't bring himself to start. He was so wrapped up in his own ennui that he didn't notice the huge, bristling shadow fall over him.

  “Ah, I see my meat now comes in cans,” an unnaturally deep voice growled, causing the ground to shake with every syllable. “I will eat well today!”

  Malachar finally turned to see a colossal creature had appeared behind him. If it had crawled out of the earth, he hadn't noticed. And it didn't have wings, so it probably hadn't swooped down from the sky. Had he really been that inattentive? The monster loomed over him, looking like it was made entirely of rotting meat and teeth that had been pressed into a shape resembling a human.

  “Do you not recognize your lord and master?” Malachar asked.

  “I felt that the Ash King had been returned, but all I see is a small, unarmed man,” the creature said. It arranged some of the teeth in its lopsided head to form a savage grin.

  Domination, Malachar thought. He remembered that sometimes after he was resurrected, he had to show his strength to some of the lesser creatures. He had to prove his might and his talent for violence. The display of savagery would prove as a warm-up exercise before he resumed his eternal conquest. But right now, he was in no mood for pointless tussling. He wanted to make his point quickly and be done with it.

  “Come then, and eat this small, unarmed man,” Malachar said.

  The rancid pile of ambulatory meat gave a wet, sloppy laugh. “I've never known anyone to greet their death so eagerly!”

  Malachar allowed himself a smirk. “Neither have I.”

  He closed his eyes as he thought back to his final memories of the last battle. The boy, yes, it was a farm boy last time, the farm boy knelt, bloodied and near-death before him. It would take only one last swing from Malachar's flaming greatsword to cleave his head clean off his shoulders. And yet the boy smiled. He dared to smile in the face of certain death! Then, the last thing he saw was a flash of some divine weapon, usually a sword, and then it was all over for Malachar.

  The animated offal swung a heavy arm at Malachar. But instead of ducking or dodging, the dark lord held up a hand and sent out a wave of pure destructive energy at the monster's putrid limb. Meaty chunks fell away as the arm was robbed of its animating magic and hit the ground with nauseatingly wet slaps.

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  Instead of realizing that this was indeed the Ash King, the walking vultures' buffet merely cried out. “I...impossible!” it cried with a noxious burble as it readied its other arm for another strike.

  Malachar rolled his eyes. Why couldn't the beast just submit already? He readied the spell that would finally end the monstrosity once and for all, sparing little thought to the incantation as he tried to figure out what had went wrong last time. He had always raised his armies, either from the fiery depths of hell, the darkest of the ancient tombs, or from the portion of the next kingdom's populace that wanted to raid and ruin. Once raised, he would crush the surrounding kingdoms. Once crushed, he would bask for a bit in his victory, perhaps deliver a monologue to his awestruck congregation. But then...

  Then his doom would come at the hands of some bright-eyed youngster who thought he was doing Good. Good, with a capital G. The uneducated youth couldn't possibly understand the complexity of his conquest. He couldn't possibly understand the importance of the slaughter. How could he? The hero was usually no older than seventeen years of age. What human comprehended the necessity of the cull?

  The putrescent golem attempted to grab the dark lord with its thick, clumsy hand. But before its bloated sausage fingers could wrap around Malachar, the magic that kept it moving was dispelled again. More fatty chunks fell to the ground and the creature's other arm crumbled.

  Malachar didn't notice as he continued his brooding. Was it the hero's fault he had to die and be reborn? Or was the hero just the instrument of his demise? If he weren't killed by the hero, would something else happen to dispatch him? He had murdered plenty of heroes in their many attempts in the past. Though they all looked different, each one had the same glassy-eyed confidence that, no matter what they did, it was absolutely right. And, once vanquished, another hero would rise to take their place. No, it wasn't the rustic, ignorant heroes that spelled his doom.

  Malachar watched as the monster reared back in a last-ditch effort to slam him with the rest of its diseased body. He let out another sigh. Why had he thought creating meat golems would be a good idea? Sure, they terrified the opposing armies, but they were just a bit much for most tasks. He intensified the nullifying magic field around him, not wanting to get any of the gore on his armor, and waited for the creature to propel itself into its own destruction.

  Malachar understood now. It wasn't heroes that spelled his demise. It was inevitability. He was killed because he had always been killed. And even if he won the initial conflict against the hero, it would only buy him time until the next one came for him. Murdering the hero only restarted the cycle later. No matter what, he would face the same end.

  The noxious meat giant collapsed into pieces in a series of oddly satisfying but still nauseating plops and splats. He wiped away the fine mist of blood that had sprayed over his helmet and let out a weary breath. It hadn't been much of a battle and hadn't done anything to ease the turmoil in his mind.

  He looked past the still-quivering mounds of meat and saw there were a surprising number of skulls and bone fragments peeking up from the ground. A ferocious battle must have been fought in this location but Malachar couldn't remember. There had been so many epic wars in his past lives that they all started to blend together.

  His musings led him past the small, ruined outpost to an open field, mostly flat and without any revolting streams of viscera and humors. He couldn't even see rivers of magma which were so common in the deeper reaches of the Ashlands.This was the kingdom of rot and ruin. The land of death and decay. Nothing grew here. No one ever came here. Heroes certainly didn't. They only came after him once he led his monstrous armies into the neighboring kingdoms.

  Heroes wouldn't come if he didn't start the war again.

  Malachar was done. He was finished with the endless struggle. He was tired of the constant, inevitable failures and the inescapable, inexorable demise that would follow.

  He wasn't hiding. He simply wasn't playing anymore.

  Malachar pulled his helmet off of his head, letting it hit the barren soil with a weighty thud before it disappeared into nothingness. Once freed, his long black hair flowed behind him. It was shot with streaks of gray and anyone who hadn’t seen his magical resurrection would think he was a man in his early forties. But he seemed ageless. Ageless and so very, very tired. Scars crossed his ash-gray face, some ceremonial in sharp, precise angles but others were messy, received from countless battles.

  Malachar ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. What would he do now? If not slaughter and conquerer, then what would he do now? What could he do now?

  His eyes were drawn to the bare dry soil beneath his booted feet and he saw something obscene, something almost blasphemous in his land of eternal torment and suffering. Against all odds, a single, spindly, sickly green shoot sprouted out of the rocky dirt. He squatted over the plant so he could investigate it more closely. He saw it had little buds along its thin stalk, like tiny middle fingers shown to the heavens. A plant?

  A plant that had somehow survived against all odds and dared to poke its head out of the dead soil. Those diminutive growths along its stem held the potential for so many things. Was the plant going to grow thorns? Poisonous leaves? Deadly blossoms that emitted the smell of a month-old cadaver?

  Or maybe it would grow food. Some sort of food that could provide sustenance for his less-monstrous troops and make them strong. He didn't know what the sprout could possibly be. He only knew that this tiny plant had to be protected at all costs. No matter what, it had to survive. And Malachar the Ash King was going to help it.

  He rose to his feet, dusting off his knees, and gasped when he reached his full height. Now that he knew what to look for, he saw dozens of similar shoots growing in the empty field. Malachar plucked one from the soil to investigate it more closely. Its roots were whisper thin and asthmatically shallow, hardly able to grasp the dirt and hold itself in place.

  A fierce wind whipped across the field and Malachar felt more afraid than he had in eons. That wind was strong enough to rip the little plants from the ground! He had to do something! Without a second thought, he sprinted over to the ruins of Bloodrot Keep to see if he could find something, anything he could use as a buffer against the hellish wind. Luckily, he found an easy crossing across his blood moat and get at the crumbled black stone walls of his former base of operations. Using his prodigious strength, he lugged enough stones, slabs, and detritus to make a rudimentary wall around the delicate shoots.

  But it was one thing to pile rubble on top of rubble; it was another to keep it in place. He had to find some kind of paste or cement to hold his wall together. He looked at his blood moat and saw it in a different light. As much as it delighted him, blood would be a poor sealant. It would attract insects, vermin, and all sorts of disease. Blood was an awful substance to work with, now that he thought about it. And it would wash away when the rains came.

  But mud would work. Mud would be good enough for right now. Malachar crossed the blood moat which was already attracting flies and searched for water. He knew of no nearby rivers or streams, but he used his gauntleted hands to dig deep into the soil. After enough work, the dirt became moister, and when he dug even further, it became a thick mud.

  Malachar spent the rest of the day scooping up the mud and piling the rubble into a protective, five foot wall around the acre of plants. As the weak, blistered sun sank below the hellish horizon, the dark lord finally allowed himself to rest. He sat among the weak, helpless shoots, exhausted and dirty. He had no bed to retire to. He had no home to return to. And after building a lean-to against his new wall, he was content with what he had. As he lay in the dirt and gazed at the star-smeared sky, he thought about what he would do the next day.

  The world may be ending, he decided. But tomorrow, I will water these plants.