Soon enough, the dark lord found himself at a central hub, a marketplace of sorts, and he had to strengthen his willpower not to laugh at what he saw. Laugh, or devastate completely and utterly. He felt it could really be either of the two options. First, he saw a man with no legs biting off the heads of chickens to the applause and tossed coins of the audience. Further on at various stalls and kiosks, there were throngs of people buying and selling, but each transaction was done through shouted curses and screamed threats. One interaction had fallen into a fight involving hair-pulling and eye-gouging. It felt like a riot was going to break out at any moment just to improve the general atmosphere of the place.

  And the wares! Suspicious sausages in buns were sold along with murky gray stew. Bread, fish, and meat were on offer, along with other questionable goods. One merchant was selling “bottled nightmares” in colorful glass bottles. Another was hawking “cursed but mostly harmless” relics scavenged from a lost temple. Mirth began to quirk Malachar's lips in a smile until he came across one kiosk selling “authentic bone fragments of the Dark Lord”.

  He approached the vendor. The man had a filthy bandage covering one of his eyes. The other was almost crusted shut. He gave Malachar a mostly toothless smile and waved him closer, pointing at the piece of bone floating in a bottled solution.

  “Yes, sir! A hundred-percent authentic! Recovered from the place the dark lord last stood before the Hero of Light drove his spear into the Ash King's heart!” the merchant howled.

  “And what place was that?” Malachar asked. And the hero had a sword last time, not a spear, he thought.

  The merchant faltered a bit at his sepulchral voice but did not stop his sales pitch. “Why, none other than the Charnel Temple on top of the Crucible of Bone!”

  Malachar glared at him with an unblinking stare. “This is a chicken bone you put in some poorly-distilled rum.”

  “Sir! You accuse me of forgery?” the merchant cried, slipping the bottle away with a practiced motion. “Of being a charlatan?”

  Malachar wanted to crush the man's head right then and there but he caught himself. He hadn't come here for violence. So, with great willpower, he shook his head and went on his way. After navigating through the press of the crowd, he found himself at a grimy tent held up by broken battering rams. Malachar ducked inside, wanting a break from the stink and heat of all the people.

  “You're late for the service,” a gravelly voice said. Once his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the tent, Malachar saw a skinny old man wearing filthy ceremonial robes. And, to his horror, they were emblazoned with the old symbol of his religion: a dragon devouring the sun. Further on in the tent, he saw a familiar altar set up with a terrifying figure in armor holding a sword up high. Black candles burned on either side of it. This one, though, hadn't been defaced.

  “I am not here for any service,” Malachar said.

  The old man turned his head and spat in a bucket. “Seems like no one is. No one wants to give thanks and praise unto He Who Will Kill the Day. No one wants to shed their blood. No one wants to give skulls.”

  Weary, Malachar sat on a creaking bench. “Why would they give their skulls? They would die in the attempt.”

  The priest began to cackle. “Not their skulls, you ignoramus! Other people's skulls! The Ash King demands it!”

  The dark lord rubbed his temples. He felt a headache coming on. “Why would he want skulls?”

  The priest frowned. “Such isn't for us to know. We're mere mortals. He could be making a horrifying throne out of skulls for all we know. When He returns, He'll be happy to see all the skulls grinning up at him, ready to be used in whatever way He pleases.”

  Malachar didn't have much to say to that. He had spent the better part of a day constructing a fence made entirely of bones. But it wasn't as though he specifically wanted bones. Bones were just what he had.

  The old priest sat beside him. “Malachar the Devourer was supposed to return. Scouts say that Bloodrot Keep collapsed when a moat filled entirely with blood appeared around it. I am still trying to consult the texts to decipher what that means.”

  Nothing, Malachar thought. It means nothing.

  But the elderly priest's tirade wasn't finished. “And if He really has returned, I would have a word with Him.”

  Malachar let out a harsh laugh. “And what would you say?”

  He readjusted his dirty but well-cared-for robes and fixed him with a steely glint in his eyes. “I'd tell Him that He needed to appreciate dedication. Loyalty isn't exactly easy to come by these days. I've spent my whole life in His service and I've got nothing to show for it. My father and his father's father never had anything to show for their devotion either!”

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “But you pray for the End of Days,” Malachar pointed out.

  “I do!” the priest said. “I...I do. But a pat on the back before it all Ends would be appreciated. Can't He do that much?”

  “What would you want?” the dark lord asked.

  The priest straightened his slouched posture. “To be told that I did well. That's it. That's all.”

  Malachar felt a pain in his heart more acute than the blade of any hero. “What is your name?”

  The old man looked at him with curiosity. “I am Adso. Adso of Gorgenghast.”

  “Where is that?” Malachar asked.

  “It is...it was a city near the Cauterized Sea. The eternal wind storm grew and everything was torn apart,” the old priest said. Malachar knew the name of the region. It was once a lush, fertile valley, but he had completely destroyed it with a summoning circle that sent the winds whipping in an unending gale. The storm moved with such speed, it would shred the skin off a man in less than five minutes.

  Malachar unslung the bag of white gravebind flowers and handed it to the priest. “Take these, Adso of Gorgenghast, and hand these out to your congregation. The red wind is coming and you must be ready.”

  “There is a red wind coming?” Adso asked. “How do you know?”

  The dark lord said nothing. He only stood, dusting off his trousers.

  “Who are you?” the priest asked.

  Malachar was silent for a moment. Then he said “I am Eli. A farmer.”

  He left the tent before the priest could continue and followed the crowd toward what seemed like the center of town past the grotesque marketplace. The horde of people thinned considerably and Malachar was thankful for the reprieve from the crush of humanity. But that's when he learned the real reason why the town was named Shallow Grave.

  A massive sinkhole, big enough to swallow a team of ten wagons lined up in a row, sat in the middle of town. The people moved around the chasm, keeping a healthy distance from it as they went about their business. Malachar approached it, trying to see the bottom, but darkness swallowed up any hope of an end to the obscene rift. Memories began to surface, but nothing solid made itself known. He knew this pit and he knew it well. But beyond that, he couldn't say.

  “They say that the cult of the Ash King threw sacrifices in there,” an old woman said. She had sidled up to him without him noticing.

  “Is that so?” Malachar asked. She could very well be right. He knew he had called for plenty of sacrifices during his reign and he had a cult eager to do his bidding.

  “Nah, Tilda, there was some sort of dark magic that was worked here,” an old man said. People had started to gather around the pit, trying to see what the other folks were staring at. It was a behavior as old as time, to look where a large group of people were looking at.

  “Yeah! The spell backfired, so they say. But the magic never really went away. It just sits down there like a poisonous gas,” a middle-aged woman holding a baby said. She was surrounded by a gaggle of skinny, dirty children who stared at Malachar like he had two heads. Or he was simply the largest man they had ever seen in their lives.

  “No way! There was a demon the dark lord banished because it wouldn't listen,” a teenage boy said, stepping beside them. Once he had caught the attention of the gathering, his narrow chest puffed up with importance. “And then he had lots of babies thrown in there to keep the demon buried under innocent souls. I know this because my cousin's friend is a member of the Temple of the Apocalypse who survived the fire. He even knows how to read. That's how you know he's telling the truth.”

  All the people could have been right. There was no way Malachar could be certain because he felt something down in the lightless depths. Something recognized him. Something acknowledged him. And something whispered to him in a voice only he could hear.

  “MASTER.”

  His heart thrummed in his chest and his breath caught in his throat. He wasn't the dark lord. Not anymore. And he wasn't about to call up whatever the hell was lurking down in the lightless depths.

  Malachar stepped away from the sinkhole and pushed past the crowd that had formed around him. Luckily, the whisper from the pit faded the further away he got. But he couldn't help but feel a yearning, a longing for his return coming from deep within the dark chasm.

  Now that there was enough distance between him, the people, and the pit, Malachar was able to catch his breath. No one was looking at him. No one cared enough to look at him. And he took comfort in that apathy.

  To not draw further attention to himself, he stopped by a small shop, bought a carton of yellow eggs and a plow without thinking about it. Then he left the town without anyone paying him any attention. As soon as he could be sure no one was watching him, he stepped into the shadow of a dying tree and entered the empty spaces between places. He reappeared on his farm and he took comfort at the eyeless gaze of his skeletons.

  Malachar set the eggs down on a barrel and threw the plow aside. Then he slumped against the outpost wall and contemplated what he had found. He expected depravity, but all he had found were just people surviving. Ugly, cruel, and desperate...but alive.

  He ran a hand through his graying black hair. “A kingdom is not conquered. It is maintained. And I have never done much in the way of maintenance.” But, no. He wasn't running a kingdom, not anymore. A farm. That's all he was running now.

  His thoughts returned to the pit. The shadow in the pit, whatever it was, had stirred at his approach like a well-trained dog. Malachar had no idea what it could be. He simply didn't remember which one of the horrors he had summoned and forgotten. And he didn't want to find out. Hopefully, if he stayed away for long enough, the thing, whatever it was, would go back to sleep. Go back to sleep and leave everyone alone.

  The sun was still high in the sky. Malachar hadn't wasted any time riding to the town of Shallow Grave so there was still plenty of light in the day. But as he removed his cloak, a slip of paper fluttered out of his pocket. He picked it up from the ground and read it.

  “You are not as retired as you think,” it read.

  Malachar burned the note to ash.