The dark lord silently sinks into the abyss

Malgor felt nothing but a numbing coldness and saw nothing but pervasive blackness. He was falling, but not towards anything. He couldn’t even tell if he was falling up or down or in any direction at all.

“How can this be?” he yelled into the nothingness.

His words rang in his ears as the only thing to break the deafening silence. Already the passage of time started to elude him. He had never seen the abyss before but the legends he had heard rang true now. It was the definition of nothing. No sound, no color, no space, no time. And it was the place he was now trapped in.

He thought of his final fight. He played it all back in his head, wondering what mistake he made that landed him here. Then he thought further back. He thought of his great battles. His conquests as he swooped across the lands that mortals called home. He remembered his ambitions as he sat upon his dark throne in the land of shadows. How he wished for more than that he had been given. How his dark minions rose up in agreement. How he made the lands beyond tremble at his might. All to have lead to this.

What now? He thought this to himself again and again. He was trapped, but alive. It was not uncommon for dark lords to go into a deep slumber. Perhaps someone would find him and reawaken him. One of his loyal minions who could free him to take vengeance upon the world. But then he remembered the stories. All dark lords who had come into the world that way only did so after centuries of slumber. Would he have to wait as long among this abyss? Could his mind handle it? Centuries upon centuries of nothingness?

And even if he was awakened, which was only a possibility, what world would he awaken to? Would all of the people who came to fear him be long gone, his story forgotten? Would all of his enemies, the foes who defeated and humiliated him by locking him in this place be long gone, all having led happy lives in the knowledge that they had won? There would be no retribution. No vengeance. Only a world that had moved past him. With all of this in his head, he screamed out with fury.

“Damn you so called heroes!” he screamed, “I don’t care what I must do! I want vengeance!”

And as he screamed these words, a strange thing happened. A light enveloped him. Whiteness broke through the black curtain and he recoiled his eyes from it. When he opened them, he took a moment to take in what he saw.