(First: This is a standalone vignette; you don’t have to read anything else to read this.)
If you’ve possibly never, ever, ever seen my blog before, you might not know that (as of the time of this writing) – I’ve recently released my second novel, “I HATE Your Prophecy” (I only mention it about seven times a day.)
This is a piece I cut from the book. The Susane inside isn’t quite the Susane I wanted for that book.
But somewhere, in some world, Susane is this way. Maybe I’ll write about her at some point.
For now, have this.
_________
Susane stirred in the light, bright, cheery, expensive mithril shackles. “Why am I alive, then?” she asked. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” replied the Dark Lord, “I have some bitter tea to swallow, and I don’t want to drink it alone.”
Susane looked pointedly at the table between them, upon which rested two cups of milky foam and sucrose, which might, at one point, have had a drop of tea poured into them.
“It’s a metaphor,” said the Dark Lord, tiredly.
“I get that,” said Susane. “I’m not stupid.”
“No, you aren’t. You just did a number of really, really stupid things in succession over a long time, beginning with embarking on this quest, and ending here, in manacles.”
“And you made me a prisoner instead of a corpse because you wanted to insult me? What are you, twelve?”
The Dark Lord shook her head. “There is a plague spreading over the land, and I cannot stop it, and I will need your help.”
“A plague?”
“Of stupidity.”
Susane started to speak, but the Dark Lord held up a (strangely overlarge, and very calloused) hand. “I’m serious.”
Susane looked at the older woman, who hadn’t even pulled back the hood of her cloak. “Whiskey,” Susane said, after a moment.
The Dark Lord looked down at her. “How old are you?”
“Why, is the Necromancer afraid of being a bad influence now?”
One might have expected the mage to snap her fingers for a servant, or possibly conjure something out of thin air, but instead she simply shrugged, reached into one of the folds of her garment, and pulled out a flask. She handed it over. The Chosen One took a long, long swig.
“For the record, this doesn’t mean we’re bonding,” she said to her captor. “It means that I want some kind of anesthetic if I’m going to have to continue this conversation.
The Dark Lord looked offended. “You could be in an oubliette, you know. You could be in a very dark room, lit primarily by the fires Goblins use in order to heat iron implements of flesh removal.”
Susane tilted her head. “Do these Goblins talk, and if not, is the dark room an option?”
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.
