Chapter 14
A Reckoning - Part 1

Reck-on-ing
Noun

1. The action or process of calculating or estimating something.
"An Apocalypse is not, by any reckoning, good for the economy."
2. A person's view, opinion, or judgement.
"Arien reckoned that if he survived this reckoning, then he would make a very good king."
3. A settling of accounts...

***

"Excuse me?!" Rose said, extremely put off that anyone would try to claim her allegiance as if she were an odd black sock, which had been lost for some time behind a dresser, was now hardly recognizable and extremely dusty, yet obviously theirs.

"I wished you happy birthday. Has anyone else done that today?" Lorred drawled, inspecting his fingernails. They were looking ragged from erecting the first crucifix manually, just to see what it was like. He blinked and his nails were back to being as perfect as his jaw line.

"Well, no," Rose said, glaring pointedly at Gerald and Arien,* "but you also said I was here to join you. I don't appreciate anyone making assumptions about me. You also haven't said who you are."

"I'm the Dark Lord. I am your father..." He waited patiently for the appropriate "NOOOOOOO," but it never came.

Rose turned to Gerald, raising her eyebrows, "Him?"

Gerald nodded.

"What?" Lorred asked, worried that something was wrong with his appearance. Nothing was, technically...he still looked like each person's ideal type of man. However, this created a problem when it came to Rose, because she didn't have any idea of what an ideal man looked like. She'd never taken the time to think about it because, quite frankly, there were way more important things to think about in the world, and none of them had anything to do with men.

Whether this was due to her upbringing in a cult full of women where the only fully-grown man was rather abhorrent, or due to her general personality and sexual preferences (which were not at all formed at the time) is of no consequence. What is of consequence is where others saw chiseled jaw lines or well defined muscles, Rose saw extremely bland features which were non-descript in every way. The whole effect was extremely underwhelming.

Rose looked back at Gerald.

"Are you sure it's him?" She asked.

Gerald, who could see a man who looked like everything he'd ever wanted to be in his life, including a very prominent chin, was very sure and nodded emphatically.

"Him...It's just, he looks so...underwhelming," Rose said.

"Oh enough of this! I am The Dark Lord, and I'm your father." Lorred exclaimed. Then he did something - a flexing of sorts - and Rose suddenly saw an aura of darkness spread out from him, and Onyx welled up, breaking through Rose's frayed psychological wall to answer him.

"Hello, Father," said Onyx Rose. "The pleasure is all mine."

A gasp came from one of the werewolves who loudly whispered, "Hey! She's the Dark Lord's daughter?"

"Yes Fflur, we've been o'er tis nowr at lee-ast twice," someone else hissed back.

"Well I was a li'l busy what wiv all the dead pea-pole. Ya know, several of them are quoite fresh," Fflur protested.

"Shut up!" A third werewolf spat.

Lorred peered around Onyx Rose to see who was causing this interruption, but he couldn't tell one hairy person in fur pelts from another. He shrugged - all Welsh werewolves looked the same. It didn't really matter. He was going to kill them all soon. (He didn't realize this but he was muttering his thoughts aloud)

"Right, so this isn't really starting off how I pictured," Lorred said, "but it looks like you're coming to your senses."

"Why should I join you?" Rose asked, battling Onyx down for a moment. Her internal struggle was visible - her face was twisted up, one corner of her mouth kept twitching, and she was getting large pit stains from the effort.

Lorred was dumbfounded. He'd assumed if anyone would be on board for a good bout of destruction, it would be his own daughter. (Again, parents everywhere shall commence laughter at the thought that their child wouldn't question their values). Not that he knew her. He had, after all, been sealed away in that ghastly prison of anti-matter and star dust.**

"Because it's who you are," he replied, "it's why you were created. Your fate is written in the stars, not to mention that vastly overrated book of prophecies everyone here seems to own. I mean, he isn't really THAT accurate if you ask me." (No one had, and Gerald, for the first time in his life, felt defensive of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle twice removed.)

"It's not who I am. I'm not joining you, and neither... is... Onyx!" she rasped.

"My darling girl, you act as if you're two different people," her father said, "wouldn't it just be easier to accept that you're truly evil and stop trying to live up to other people's expectations of you?"

This logic, which was both reasonable and contradictory to his previous statement at the same time, caught Rose off guard. On the one hand, she thought of herself as living by her own standards and not just doing things other people assumed she would do. On the other hand she realized that almost everything she had done in the past week, and potentially a good deal of her life, had been blindly following paths others set out for her. It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps she didn't actually know who she was at all, and maybe Onyx might not be as small a part of her self as she once thought.

Onyx, sensing internal doubt worse than a writer who's hit the middle of their first draft, took advantage of the moment of weakness and once again took control of the situation. This time Onyx was so forceful, Rose was thrown down into the deep recesses of her mind.

Gerald watched Rose's struggle quiet. In the stillness of the moment he realized there were no other sounds of life around them. No birds in the background, no barks or baas. It was the silence of the approaching predator, the quiet before the breaking storm. Even their small band held their breath with anticipation.

Then her eyes turned black.

"You're going to want to run now," a familiar voice said, and Gerald whirled. Fate was hiding behind the nearest crucifix.

"She's with them now," Fate said.

"With whom?" He turned to look in the direction Fate was staring and saw another mob of crazed OMEGA SHAVE salesmen careening down the street across from the square.

"Um...Gerald?" Arien shouted, "We've got company!"

"More comin' from the other end of the square!" shouted Caradoc, "Those Aryan Elves decided to show up, and they don' look so peaceful anymore..." (This is true since they were decked out in armor and carrying a lot of weaponry, however, one shouldn't judge an elf by its outfit.)

"There are too many of them, we need to get out of here," Gerald shouted. At once the werewolves turned back into wolves and Gerald and Arien jumped on their backs.

"Rose!" Arien called out, and she turned toward him. Gone was the resting bitchy face, and the weird, awkward, smile. In its place was a mask of calm resolution. She still wore her tattered and dusty cult robes, but she wore them like a queen. A dark queen, with the cool, collected face of death.

Arien's words fled faster than Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. His friend was lost, and saving the world would take a miracle. As the wolves sped toward the higher and more defensible ground of the castle ruins, Arien's resolve solidified. Even if he never got to be king, he would do his best to act like it in his final moments.

***

The OMEGA SHAVE salesmen - and women - (a product line for women had been added in the early hours of that morning which was pink, smelled horrid, cost twice as much, and was quickly outstripping the original product in sales) - rushed into the square after their targets, but were distracted by the appearance of Lorred and Rose, as well as the advancing brigade of Aryan Elves.

They became quite confused about who exactly they were supposed to be attacking. It took a lot of hand-waiving and explaining by Lorred to move them on their way since their brains, understandably, weren't working very well.

The elf leader at the other side of the square also hadn't been given very detailed instructions. His orders arrived in the form of a work memo, which was clearly relayed through multiple levels of middle-management, resulting in "attack," and the day, time, and location being the only intelligible bits. In order to at least make sure he got one bit of his job correct, he yelled "ATTACK" very loudly, but only him and two others who began yelling and running toward the salespeople. It didn't take them long to notice their compatriots were several yards back and so they turned around to regroup.

"OY! You lot are supposed to be attacking with us," yelled the leader, Misgov.

"Well, you see, I think there's been a bit of a mixup," said a large elf wielding a broadsword. "It's against our morality clause for any union member to engage in violence."

"What are you talking about Elias?" Demanded Misgov, "I'm not aware of any unionist morality clause, and you're carrying a weapon. What did you think you were going to do here, answer customer service requests? You work for the Company and the Company says you fight."

"Nope, nope, can't do that, violence violates the union contract. The Company gave me this sword, but I was under the impression we were here to intimidate delinquent payers, not murder people." In his defense, the memo which he and the rest of the brigade received was filtered through even more management and the original directive had been completely lost.

"Well, the Company has been hired to do this job, which involves murdering people, like the good-old days," Misgov argued, trying to salvage the situation, and his job. "As employees, you all have to perform the work the company has engaged in or you'll be fired."

"No, there's a whole section in the C101a about subsidiaries contracts that explains this," Elias said. "Any work which the Company engages in that is against union policy cannot be undertaken by union employees. No union jobs shall be at risk. You'll need to hire independent contractors to do this work. Unionists hate, but we don't kill."

Elias turned around and yelled to the other union members in the brigade to pack everything up while another elf - one of those who had run initially - turned to the other runner.

"Well, I guess it's just us Rhiylen. Good thing I've got an escalation clause in my contract. If I die, my wife gets three times what I make if I live."

"How much you makin' Jed? That gonna be enough to feed your family if you die?" Rhiylen asked.

Jed realized the implications and the satisfied look on his face melted. He inspected his bejeweled scimitar, a family heirloom*** which he'd brought from home.

"Guess I should have joined the union when I had the chance," he said.

The three remaining elves made their way toward the castle more slowly than they had originally. Health insurance costs in the Aryan lands were ridiculously high and they needed the money...

... To Be Continued...

_______________________________

Next Time on The Dark Heir...
A reckoning is continued...
Arien is bequeathed a scimitar by a moistened bint.
Rose issues an invitation.

_______________________________

*
To be fair, Rose had also forgotten it was her birthday.

**
It was actually a very luxurious prison comparatively. An entity such as The Dark Lord rarely takes corporeal form, and as such, doesn't really need much in the way of physical comforts. His prison afforded him a very nice view of a black hole, several supernovas, and a flat round world held up by four elephants riding on the back of an enormous space tortoise. He'd been locked away there since almost the beginning of time, since his very nature was anathema to the annoying entities who seems bent on creating more and more stars and galaxies and living things to go in said galaxies. The tortoise had only just managed to pass outside of his range of view because tortoises, even the space kind, are very slow-moving creatures.

***
The bejeweled scimitar actually once belonged to the Old Kings of the Kingdom, bequeathed in an obscure ritual involving a naked lady in a lake, and was the source of their power. Unfortunately, over time all memory of this aquatic ceremony was forgotten, and the sword had been gaining dust in a storeroom for a century before the elves attacked.
When the Aryan Elves led their campaign to overtake the Kingdom, one of Jed's ancestors cut off the ruling King's hand who wielded the sword - found in said storeroom - and also the King's head. He was also one of the first elves to realize that removing a government from power, while it sounds noble and has initial perks - notably a lot of killing - is much more of a headache to deal with than anyone ever thinks it will be, and took his prize scimitar and went home.