No sooner had Malachar opened his door than he saw all his hard work had been for absolutely nothing. Standing in neat rows, each and every little plant was afflicted with a malevolent illness. Leaves curled and withered like burnt flesh. Stems cracked and snapped like broken bones. And all around his field hung the smell of sulfur and rot.

  The dark lord left his home and walked his field of dead things, trying to take the measure of the extensive damage. Nearby, his skeletons stood at the ready, waiting to be told what to do. He wasn’t angry at them. His failure wasn’t their fault. And they couldn’t possibly comprehend what had happened to his field. They didn’t distinguish between alive and dead. They just understood orders.

  Heaving a sigh, he crouched down over the sign that Garrett had made for him. “CARROTS” it read in big friendly letters. But the ink had already started to run, making the word seem like it was being sarcastic. And what else could it be? Carrots didn’t grow here. Could the clump of lifeless fronds even be called “carrots”?

  And his spinach. They were starting to display vibrant, tender leaves that he knew he would be able to harvest and use in all sorts of recipes. But now each spinach plant was just a stunted pile of soggy, dead vegetation, making for a long line of orderly mush.

  He should be angry. He should be furious. But looking over his crop of failure, he only felt tired. Malachar sighed. So much lost. So much work for nothing. A skeleton had picked up a filled watering can, ready to start the day's labor but Malachar held out a hand.

  “No watering today,” he said. “Yank up the vegetables and put them all into a pile. We will burn them once they are gathered up.”

  The skeleton looked at him, as though it was surprised. But, of course, the undead worker wasn't surprised. It wasn't anything but it seemed like it was waiting for something. An explanation, perhaps. Or perhaps Malachar was just lonely and was starting to lose his mind from all the extreme isolation he had put himself through.

  “We will burn them because I don't want whatever blighted these crops to spread to what we will plant next,” Malachar said.

  The skeleton continued to stare at him.

  “And, yes, we will plant. Again,” the dark lord said. Because, though it was backbreaking labor, this was somehow still better than using sorcery to build yet another cursed citadel or raising a frothing army of hellions. And far better than being slain yet again by some obnoxious little hero.

  He crouched over his turnips. They had just started to sprout their long leaves, indicating that they had started to grow their bulbous, white heads underground. He yanked one out of the dirt but instead of seeing a round, white body with a purple top, he only saw rot.

  The dark lord surveyed the rest of his crops. The carrots and turnips were all rotten. And, to his dismay, so was the broccoli. All it took was a glance to see their blackened, twisted shapes to know they were all dead. The same held true for his peas, which had just started to sprout vines. His kale just looked like paper that had been rolled up into balls and then set on fire. And his potatoes were just shriveled bloated roots that looked more like fat maggots than healthy tubers.

  Malachar pushed his hair out of his face before tying it back with a piece of twine. He really should cut the damn thing off but he still had some vanity left. He liked long hair, but that didn't make him feel any better as he looked at his field. His whole crop was dead. Dead and worthless.

  And yet...he saw the unmistakable signs of something living. Something had survived the catastrophic crop blight. Between the row of carrots and spinach, he saw a short, spindly stalk with irregularly shaped buds along its length. He went to pluck it from the dirt but stopped.

  “The soil needs something alive,” he muttered. “To remember how.”

  He informed his six skeletons to leave the weed alone and then continued his long funeral march down his rows of failed crops. Before he made it to his bone fence, he had to stop and peer at the ground, where a clear boot print had been left. And it certainly wasn't his.

  The dark lord glanced around and tried to find the interloper. He didn't think they were the cause of his failed crops. He didn't feel any residual magic. No, the death of the crops was the land's doing. Still, he didn't see anyone in his relatively flat field, but one of the scarecrows was turned at an unusual angle. And right at its support pole, he found a stake. It was just a small, wooden piece, but when he read the words scrawled down its length, he felt a wave of profound weariness.

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  Nothing heals. This is how the ending feels.

  The words could only mean one thing. One or maybe a few members of his cult had survived the collapse of Bloodrot Keep. And they were watching him, knowing full well who he was. He was momentarily impressed by how stealthy they were. Perhaps they were using spells of invisibility or maybe even shadow-walking. No, they weren't. He would have felt such high-level magic.

  Still, he would have to be more careful. It wasn't their fault they had spent their entire lives praying and sacrificing for his return that heralded the end of days. Of course they didn't know what to do now that they saw their lord and master trying to grow crops where clearly nothing wanted to grow. But still, he wanted to at least have a word with the one who had been leaving behind clear reminders of his old worship. Maybe establish some ground rules.

  “And no prophecies in the field,” he grumbled to himself. Then he took the stake and drove it into the ground next to the strange weed. Malachar didn't know if it needed a support pole or not, but in case it grew vines to hold itself up, he wanted it to have whatever it needed. Then he took a watering can out of a skeleton's hand and watered the thing that shouldn't be living in the Ashlands.

  ****

  Days passed. All the dark lord did was just provide water for the weird little weed. At first, it didn't seem to be thriving much at all. It wasn't dying either and Malachar took that as a good sign. At least, it was a sign of resignation, of a pouting acquiescence. If you're not going to give up, this one thing is fine. I guess.

  But, after two weeks had passed with no real change, the twisted plant suddenly began to grow as quickly as a malignant cancer. It sprouted grasping vines that not only grasped the stake that some cultists had left for him, it engulfed the annoying thing completely. Other than a vague shape, he couldn't see the stake at all, let alone the unsettling prayer written on it.

  Malachar was about to find some more poles for the plant, but before he set off, he stopped himself. He and his skeleton workers had toiled so hard in the field for so long trying to get plants not native to the Ashlands to grow. And after all that hard work, every single crop had died. Was it because the Ashlands were so hostile to foreign life? Or was it because he worked the ground too much and didn't leave well enough alone?

  Land needs rest. You can't force life to happen. Malachar shook his head with a wry smile as he remembered Garrett's words. Perhaps he would visit Goldengrove soon. He'd have no vegetables to sell, but he wouldn't have wanted to sell them anyway. And he didn't need money. No, he just wanted to see how everyone was doing. But all in due time. He was still recovering from the blunt-force friendliness of the town.

  He left his home like he always did, filled up the watering can because that was the one thing he had to do that day and proceeded to water his one weed. It had flopped to the ground over the course of the night, but it hadn't lost any of its size. Its pale leaves were now ash-gray, shot through with black veins. Its vines clung to the loose soil like it was afraid of the sky. Malachar tried pulling some of the stubborn weed up but found it difficult. Not impossible, but it resisted, like it didn't believe he meant it. A smell of cold earth and extinguished candles filled the air. A few feet away, the vines had plunged into the soil and pulled up a skull, an arm from a mummified corpse, and a rusted sword. But the tendrils were still wrapped around the finds and didn't look like they were going to be giving up their “treasure” anytime soon. He wasn't sure why, but he was oddly proud of the bizarre plant as it held his loose, dead soil in place.

  “I will call you 'gravebind',” he said. And thus, it was that the Ash King had his first crop. Of sorts. He briefly wondered if he could eat the vines then stopped himself from getting too excited. Things had a way of dying around here.

  The dark lord took a drink from his watering can after making sure the newly-named plant had its fill first. He felt content for the first time in a long time and let out a sigh. But the sound of happiness soon turned into one of vexation. There were little things growing among the vines of the gravebind! Almost too tiny to see at first, he squatted to get a better look.

  There it was. Terro. The early stages of the horrible little screaming potatoes were growing naturally among the gravebind. Soon, he would have delicious, ugly tubers as long as he didn't interfere with them or try to plant them in neat, orderly rows.

  He just hoped the gravebind didn't choke them out before they could grow to full maturity.

  The Ash King stood, dusting off his hands and knees. Was this how farmers did it? He had the opinion that they meticulously planted their seeds, slavishly watered them and kept them clear of weeds, and then broke their backs harvesting them. If there even was a harvest. And, then, he and his armies swept through, killing everything and everyone.

  How many farms had he destroyed in his centuries of conquest?

  Malachar, Ash King and Harbinger of Death, wasn't about to start thinking about all of that. He had too much work to do. He would check his well and make sure the water was still pure and clean. He would leave his field alone, only checking it for signs of outsiders “helping” him.

  And he would finally start clearing away all this goddamn ash. Malachar knew this was where the Ashlands got its name, but enough was enough. He would add some to his huge pile of ruined, dead crops and let time do what it did best: bringing everything back to the soil. He didn't think any blight or disease had killed his crops. Not anymore. No, the land itself had said, “Not here” to the seeds brought in from Goldengrove. The land had told his tentative crops, “Sorry.” And, ultimately, the land had told the dark lord, “NO.”

  And Malachar was finally, finally, ready to listen.

  He used his former flaming greatsword to shovel the windblown ash into the pile of rotten vegetation. Malachar would work the compost amenities into the soil as an apology and hope for the best. Because that was what farming was all about. Putting the right seeds with the right care into the dirt and hoping for the best.