Misfits of Carnt

4 - What the Dark Lord Has Been Doing in the Tower All This Time

The Plain of the Dead, Battle of the Four Armies Festival

The necromancer LeDuke was imprisoned in a tower tall enough to peer over the mountains into the lush green valleys of the Vale. The various races of the idyllic landscape lived in peace and harmony. The wizard hated every stinking moment of it. New Silkweed Vale's halflings held a festival celebrating the victory of the Four Armies every year with competitions for the best mead, most enormous vegetables, and a particularly irritating corn art event where each artist would submit a scene made entirely from different shades of corn kernels. Of which there would inevitably be a caricature portrait of the grand sorcerer himself, making fun of his long nose or ceremonial headdress. The worst part was that they were callously labeled 'Duke' and not the proper form of his name – LeDuke.

While the corn art that took cheap shots at him would never win, they were consistently voted as the audience favorite. One particularly nauseating year, a design featured his bugged eyes as actual bugs and his thick black hair as snakes. He remembered seething with disgust when he viewed the proceedings through the seeing stone. There were countless cackling halflings, and he was helpless to react. Back in the height of his power, he would have had the offending artist dangling by the entrails from the All-Seeing Tower while wearing a resurrection ring, so the nitwit would die over and over after the body healed itself again and again.

And the halflings weren't even the most irritating of the Vale races. The elves had their fair share of annoying festivals, too. In the Great Forest Vale, they would climb to the tops of the tallest trees and sing the hymn of the Battle of the Four Armies when humans, halflings, dwarves, and elves, alongside various other magical creatures, formed an alliance to strike down the Sky Lord from the All-Seeing Tower. It was bogus that he had to hear the song of his minor setback in his world domination plans whenever the elves imbibed too much of their rancid elderfruit wine.

Especially since he liked being called Sky Lord way better than his given name. The world used to tremble at the mention of LeDuke, Sky Lord of the All-Seeing Tower, Master of Realms, Destroyer of Worlds, Sorcerer Adept, Mixer of Fine Libations, among other nicknames. (Mixer was coined during one of many soirees he'd thrown for nobles loyal to his cause.) Now, only a few lousy minions called him Sky Lord. Most folks called him Duke. He never quite forgave his mother for calling him Duke after she had imbibed a few too many of his libations.

However, the song and the corn art weren't the worst. The vilest truth about being stuck in an All-Seeing Tower was the fact that his betrothed, Lady Ameria, was married to Lovantus, the very man who had struck him down at the Battle of the Four Armies with an axe forged in the fires of the ancient dwarf master smiths. If LeDuke had known that the forges weren't just a myth to give the poor saps of the world hope, he would have murdered every last dwarf in the kingdom. Instead, he had just sent a gargantuan demon to the Underdark to slay anyone trolling around for a master smith. Who would have thought Lovantus and his party of fools could defeat a three-story-tall monster?!

After the Battle of the Four Armies, he'd had to limp back to his tower and seal himself inside just to keep the masses screaming for his head at bay. Unfortunately, the only minions left in the building were the servants who cleaned lavatories and chipped the gunk from the fireplaces. Even the tower cook died in the battle. LeDuke hadn't had a decent meal since he sucked the meat off the thigh bone of the last human king to defy him while the man's family watched in horror.

LeDuke sighed and poked the love pheasant on his plate. Usually, he'd rejoice in dining on a bird known as a harbinger of fertility. Still, since they were one of the few animals that would fly close enough to the tower for his incompetent minions to hit with an arrow, he ate them at least six times a week. The mage had contemplated eating his servants on more than one occasion, but he enjoyed a clean lavatory.

"Oh, chin up," His mother said from across the long feasting table. "I was raised on a goat farm and had nothing but goat cheese for most of my life, and I still found ways to love it."

"It's not the bird, Mom," the Sky Lord said, irritated by his parent. Even though he had conquered the world, his mother had an uncanny ability to make him feel like a teenager again.

"You can't just go about life sulking all the time," his mom, Pip, persisted. "Life is waiting to be lived. You just need to seize the opportunity. The only person between you and your happiness is you."

"Mom! I won't be seizing any opportunity from in here!"

"Then just do your magic."

"It's blood magic! I need sacrifices to augment its power."

"You've got servants. You are always complaining about how inept they are."

"So maybe I kill you and everyone left in this tower. That will probably extend the range of a spell to the borders of my kingdom at most. Then, don't forget about maintaining it. I was sacrificing at least 750 people a week at the height of my power."

"Excuse me for trying to remain positive. At least you still have a kingdom. I just had a farm."

"I know. I was there. And furthermore, I only have a kingdom because Orc feces sterilized the land. The Vale races won't come here because they can't grow anything."

"But it's a kingdom at least," Pip said, and a silence fell over the room.

It was magnified by the fact that the table would seat thirty, and there was a giant portrait of the Sky Lord himself, attired in his royal garb and holding a burning scepter, gazing down on them while they ate. It was the painting that was most parodied by the corn art. A particularly loathsome piece had featured him holding a particular male organ instead of a scepter.

After a while, Pip broke the silence. "Do you know why I named you LeDuke?"

"I know, Mom. I've heard the story a thousand times," the ex-Slayer of Kings sighed.

She ignored him and continued, "I named you LeDuke because I knew you'd do something great one day, and duke was the greatest thing I could think of. I added Le because that's the Elvish word for the, and the elves have such a beautiful language."

"I know, Ma!"

"The point is that you didn't become just a duke, but a king! You far surpassed anything I could dream."

"I'm going to my room," LeDuke said, and left the love pheasant untouched.

"Are you going to eat that?" his mom called after him. "Because if you won't, I will. No use in letting a good bird go to waste."

Later that night, LeDuke sat in his four-poster bed. He had dumped his dark high-necromancer robe on the chair and wore nothing but his knickers. The room was spacious, nestled on his tower's forty-seventh floor with furnishings adorned in sharply jagged black lines. There was a mirror he had smashed shortly after he recovered from his defeat. Back in the height of his power, the elven mirror makers would have scrambled to make a replacement. Now the Mirror Makers & Glassworkers Union was busy making likenesses of him for target practice.

LeDuke reached under his pillow and pulled out the seeing stone. He sung a few incantations and cut his hand. There were scars from way too many uses of the blade on his own skin. Previously, he'd just use the blood of a man slave, but they were all freed by Lovantus and his armies. He squeezed, and a few drops absorbed into the ball.

“ Seeing the stars, a gaze from afar, my true love is out there, we watch the same sky, time passes by, my love knows I’m here, ” he sang while the mists stirred inside the crystal. “ Seeing stone, I am alone, show me my love, Lady Ameria, ” and her form appeared in the haze.

The raven-haired beauty with cracked crystal blue eyes stood on the grand balcony of the castle Traldalor that overlooked the town of the same name. Lovantus, the lummox, was addressing the crowds gathered for the festival while she stood by his side in a blue gold trimmed ceremonial robe. She was just as beautiful as on the day when LeDuke killed her parents. It was a lovely day. She had agreed to marry him to spare her younger brother, who he ended up killing anyway a year later after they got in a dispute over a lawn game. Her forlorn eyes were all Sky Lord needed to see to convince himself that she secretly missed him. He imagined that she was thinking about her time in the All-Seeing Tower when she looked out to the horizon every night.

LeDuke slipped his hands into his knickers just as Fweb, a thin grey goblin with warts, sharp teeth, long ears, and scraggly hair, burst into the room. The Sky Lord pulled his hands from his pants and covered the seeing stone and his lower half with a pillow.

"Don't you knock?!" LeDuke screamed, while he wrapped himself up in a blanket.

The creature was out of breath, and panted, "Sorry, but ever since the decanter of endless magic went dry—"

The decanter of endless magic was a bit of a misnomer. It was filled with the nectar from the fruit of a Treefolk. The juice was a fuel source that powered all the tower's needs, including the magic mirrors and the central lift itself. A few drops would keep the lights on in the building for an entire week. The last of the magic was squeezed from the decanter a month ago. Now, the only way to send messages throughout the tower was to climb the stairs. It was a shame LeDuke wasn't a flora mage, or else he would have used the magic in the decanter to get revenge on his enemies long before it had run dry.

"You'd best have a good reason to be interrupting my study time, or I will hang you by your toes," the necromancer seethed.

"I'm sorry, Sky Lord. I didn't see you touching yourself again, sir," the goblin said.

"Who said I was touching myself? Women used to kill each other just to be with me. Literally. The concubines were always jockeying for power."

"It's just that there aren't any women around, except your mother."

"What are you implying about my mother?" LeDuke hissed and crawled out of bed.

"Nothing," Fweb pleaded. "I was just saying. You haven't been with anyone in a while, and it's natural to want to touch—"

The wizard grabbed the goblin by the neck, dragged the creature to the window, and thrust the minion through the grey stained glass. The shards fell to the black soil below. Fweb squealed and shrieked while groping its master's hand. The sorcerer contemplated dropping the pitiful being to its death, but that would be a waste of some precious blood for his magic. He wouldn't mind summoning a doppelganger of Lady Ameria, even if it was only for a night.

"You have a visitor," the goblin croaked, while it clawed at its lord's iron grip. The minion was sure tonight would be its last. However, death did not come. The mage laughed.

LeDuke saw a glint on the land below. At the foot of his tower, there was a figure. The Sky Lord pulled the goblin back inside and threw the creature to the ground, too elated by the possibility of human contact to even think about murdering his minion. Fweb heaved and spat and then felt around for the glass pieces that were protruding from its back.

The Sky Lord stood tall and deepened his voice, "Bring the visitor to the Grand Hall and summon the other servants. And don't pluck those out here. You'll get blood on my rug. It's made from the hide of a Talking Lion. Which makes it one of a kind because I slaughtered all the Talking Lions! So, get out! Git, git!"

The necromancer put his boot into Fweb's back and jammed a piece of the glass in farther. The sad thing yelped in pain as it tumbled from his room, and LeDuke turned toward his shattered visage in the mirror. He smiled for the first time since he could remember. Even if the person below was some wayward adventurer seeking to prove himself back home, the mage would, at the very least, have someone new to torture.

Either way, he would hear the person out. Anyone who would cross the plains of the dead, brave the hellspawn of Mt. Cynid, and cross the wastes of Warth just to seek an audience with him would be interesting indeed.

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