Chapter One
I sit up out of the cold water of the pool, gasping for breath. Again.
Twelve seconds.
Done done done with this shit, for real. No more.
Ten seconds.
Anyway. Naked in a rancid pool of chilly water at the top of a hill.
Edge of the Kingdom, right up against a wilder-haunted forest. I’m healthy and hale of limb once again, and also about three years younger, with a lot less muscle tone and a ghastly sort of pixie cut.
Same as always. I figure it’s what I looked like when all of this kicked off, when whatever happened happened and I got here from Earth some-fucking-how.
Six seconds.
I focus on breathing. Calm and centered, that’s me.
Four seconds. Sound of someone scrambling up the rocks.
Take a deep breath. Hold it. Let it out.
Two. One.
“My lady!” Tserigern says. I mouth the lines with him. My timing is perfect. “So it’s true, then. Gods preserve us. We have a chance.”
I look over at him with my best expression of doe-eyed innocence. He climbs the last few feet, dusts off his motley robe, and approaches reverently.
Tserigern is a wizard, a very old and famous one.
Everyone says he’s the most powerful wizard in the Kingdom, but frankly I’ve never seen him do magic for shit.
Light the way in caves and get cryptic messages, that’s about it.
You could replace him with a flashlight and a walkie-talkie.
But he at least looks the part: He’s a bony old motherfucker with a beard you could lose a sheep in, like Santa Claus after a debilitating illness.
He has kind, crinkly eyes and a sly grin, a weathered, avuncular voice perfect for laying out the mysteries of the universe for an awestruck young na?f.
Just the guy you want on your side when you wake up all nudie in a weird fantasy universe with no idea what the fuck is going on.
He bends to one knee and offers me his gnarled hand.
“My lady,” he says as I wrap my fingers around his, “I—”
He doesn’t get to finish, because I grab the back of his head with my other hand and slam his face into the fucking rocks.
I hear his nose break with a crunch, and my heart sings, it’s so goddamn cathartic.
He lies out flat and I swing astride his back, both hands in his hair, and start pounding his stupid fucking face into mush against the stone edge of the pool.
Seeing as how he’s a little occupied, I say his lines for him.
“I know you must be frightened”—crunch— “but I swear to you, I mean you no harm”—crunch, you fucking liar— “I have hoped against hope for your coming, and I thank the gods my reading of the texts was true”—crunch, they didn’t predict this, did they, motherfucker?
— “you must come with me, the fate of the Kingdom is balanced on the blade of a knife”—ca-crunch.
Holy fuck, it’s better than sex. I don’t stop until long after his legs have quit kicking and bits of blood and brains are floating in the water.
“I’m done,” I tell the body, leaning back and breathing hard.
“Hear me? Done. I’m not some holy savior here to protect your fucking kingdom.
” I’ve been doing that for, hold on, let me check my watch, fucking ten centuries, and where the fuck has it gotten me?
A fucking snake-woman eating my goddamn fingers, that’s where.
I strip off his nasty-ass robe and wrap myself in it. He’s wearing trousers, too, but I’m not touching them without a hazmat suit.
“What am I going to do instead?” I say in response to an inaudible question. “I will tell you what I am going to fucking do. We have an expression back home concerning what course of action to take if you find yourself under no circumstances able to beat ’em. I intend to follow its advice.”
I tie the corners of the robe under my chin, plant my hands on my hips, and let it flap behind me like the cape of an extremely inappropriate superhero.
“I,” I announce to the world, “am going to become the fucking Dark Lord.”
* * *
Okay. I’ve been going full speed ahead in the interest of keeping my res fucking in medias, but it’s possible you have some questions, such as:
How could you beat a friendly old man to death like that? and
Didn’t you die, like, two pages ago? What’s the deal?
To which I answer:
The key is getting a good grip on the wispy bits of hair on the back of his bald-ass head. Once your fingers are really dug in there, then it’s pretty simple.
It’s a long fucking story.
To keep confusion to a minimum, though, here’s the airline safety video version: Hi! I’m Davi. I’m in my early twenties, dark hair, light brown skin, freckles like someone flicked a paintbrush at my nose, body you’d probably swipe right on but maybe not brag to your friends about afterward.
For the last thousand years,2 I’ve been trapped in a time loop, like in that movie or that other movie.
When I die—and I always die, for reasons I’m about to explain—I wake up here, now, naked in the pool.
Tserigern turns up to give me his spiel.
What he would have told me, had I not enmushified his head, is that the Kingdom is in dire peril from the impending rise of the Dark Lord, and only I can save humanity from the monstrous armies of the Wilds.
Chosen by the fucking gods, promised by prophecy, generally just absolutely lousy with momentous portent.
Get your ass in gear, Davi, there’s heroing to do.
There was a time when I bought this horseshit.
I mean, it’s not like he’s completely off base here.
Try to maintain appropriate humility all you want, it’s hard to believe the world doesn’t revolve around you when it rewinds the tape every time you fall on your head.
And whatever prophet wrote the one about the Dark Lord destroying the Kingdom makes Nostradamus look like a stock-picking hamster, because that shit happens Every. Fucking. Time.
It’s not always the same Dark Lord, and sometimes it takes a little longer, but they always turn up.
And as of a few minutes ago, I have fed 237 quarters into this fucking game and I cannot get past the last boss.
I have tried everything, and it always ends with me getting sliced into sashimi.
I am becoming a little peeved about this, hence my admittedly emotional outburst slash face-smashing.
So! Yeah. Davi. Freckles. Time loop. That’s me.3
* * *
Anyway. Dark Lord! Plenty of other people have managed it, why not me?
There’s actually a whole itemized list of reasons.
The two big ones are (a) I’m a human, not a wilder, and (b) my total current resources consist of a ratty cape and whatever Tserigern has in his pockets.
I may have a bit of a hole card in re (a), but (b) is definitely going to be a significant obstacle.
I don’t know exactly how they pick the Dark Lord, but a major factor is personal charisma as measured in armed henchpersons; most candidates turn up with armies, and I don’t even have pants.
When I go with Tserigern, as I usually do, he helps me manage this transition.
He’s not the most popular guy in the Kingdom, but he can provide me with an entrée to high society and also pants, probably not in that order.
Having tenderized his face region, I am more or less on my own in the pants department and also all other departments.
I will have to be extremely lucky to get this enterprise off the ground.
Fortunately, in this very specific time and place, I can manufacture my own luck.
I tear some strips from Tserigern’s grody robe and tie them around my feet, because fuck if I’m putting his boots on.
I also help myself to the contents of his pocketses, which are distinctly subpar.
Dude is supposed to be a badass wizard and he only carries around enough thaumite to stock a village rectory.
Then it’s down the hill and into the forest. The spot where I wake up is on the shifting border between the Kingdom4 and the Wilds.
Every year, the Guild pushes its patrols a little farther out, and the Guildblades kill a few more gangs of wilders, with axe-wielding peasants following behind to turn the forest into farms.
Ordinarily I’m all for this, of course. It’s hard to shed many tears about people who kill you over and over, right?
But if I’m going to be Dark Lord, I need to flip my perspective.
Screw those humans and their jerk-ass Guild, coming into our forests to kill us for our pretty stones! What a bunch of total dicks!
Honestly, you can see why they’re pissed at us.
Anyway, once I get to the bottom of the hill, it’s pretty easy going.
This is old forest, and the big craggy trees drink in so much light there isn’t much left for pricker bushes.
I walk on a soft carpet of decaying leaves.
Another strip from Tserigern’s robe becomes a makeshift pouch, and I gather a few handfuls of maidensrest vine for purposes that will eventually become apparent.
So far, so good. There’s a crunch of footsteps ahead of me, and I freeze and try to memorize exactly where I am. Half a second later, a couple of orcs emerge from behind a tree.
I mean, I call them orcs, because I’ve had the benefit of a classical education.
What they call themselves means something like “the tusked ones.” They have greeny-gray skin and curling tusks at the corners of their mouths, which to me says orcs.
They’re pretty common among wilder bands on the border, especially north of the Kingdom.
I have personally slain enough orcs to fill a soccer stadium. 5
These two orcs are a bit ragged-looking even by raider standards. One has a sword, the other a spear, and their dress sense might euphemistically be called “rugged.”
The way they’re gaping at me isn’t promising, but you have to start somewhere. I put my hands on my hips, push my cape back over my shoulders, and tell them, “Hello, my friends! I am the next Dark Lord! Will you join me?”