Friday Fodder – Darkness

When Vextah Cavernheart emerged from the primordial tar, screeching and thrashing, nobody could have known how the world was about to change. People looked at her glowing red eyes, jagged black wings, and dark violet aura suspecting nothing.

Vextah’s rise to power would be swift and severe, like the Storming of the Bastille. It would be so frightening, it would make Stephen King novels seem like they were written by Beatrix Potter. It would be so dark that it would make The Prisoner of Azkaban look like The Philosopher’s Stone. Her reign would be so absolute, so supreme, that it would make other dictatorships look like employee of the month races at small-town craft stores.

Her influence would spread far and wide across the Earth like rivers across the Earth. She would be so wicked and seductive that almost nobody anywhere could resist her for long, even when they pinky-promised. People would look at what she was doing and exclaim, “OMG!” But then they’d think about it for a little while and say, “Well, okay.”

Her plan for world domination would take her all over the map, or at least anywhere that had modern plumbing. Her followers would chant her name in the streets and, at a certain point, it would be infeasible for her to take a picture with everyone who asked. One day she would grow tired of hearing people recite the evil scripture to her, even though she herself had written parts of it (with a little help from a ghost). If somebody said “Hail Vextah!” when she wasn’t in the mood, she would just snap their necks and with their dying breaths they would say “Thank you.” Vextah would roll her eyes at this, but nobody could tell because her eyeballs were glowing red spheres.

Seeking privacy, she had her slaves build a dark spire that towered far above the clouds. Her chambers were so high up that when she rang for her slaves, half of them would die on the stairs. She had to replace them with living gargoyles, which really put a damper on the magic of workplace romance. She tirelessly searched the Earth for her dark prince, from a distance through her evil eye. Men found her captivating. “Let me go!” they would shout… but that was men for you.

She had a dastardly, depraved sense of humour, and would often crack jokes at the office. She must have been one of the funniest beings in the world because her slaves always, always laughed, sometimes to the point of tears. On days off, she loved to bowl; it reminded her of all the childhood summers she had spent horsing around with skulls. She preferred people to pins because people knew when they were supposed to fall down.

She always picked the worse of two evils. She was truly malevolent and never an innocent bystander. Even on days when she felt like she was off her game, she would at least hiss at a baby in a stroller. She had heard somewhere that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. “Really?” she would mutter. “Isn’t that a little reductive?”

Where she went, so too went Devastation and Decimation and Destruction and Odie – all the hellhounds. She couldn’t leave them at home or they might chew up the evil upholstery.

For a time, it seemed that her reign might be eternal. Mankind stopped raising armies, so all she had to contend with was the odd vigilante warrior-priest. They’d say something like, “I’d rather die than continue to be trampled upon by your hooves,” and Vextah would trample upon them with her hooves. Just out of spite, really.

Then one day came the Redeemer: a hero so handsome and brave that people would unconsciously be looking for a reason to dislike him. He had rippling muscles and a chiseled jaw. He wore shining sacred armour and was supposedly very well-read.

Vextah was curious. She watched him through her evil eye and wondered if she could convert him; he would make a gorgeous dark prince. However, when he finally reached the spire, he started reciting a prayer that made her feel weak. “Stop that,” she asked nicely. The Redeemer swung his sword at her and missed. That was the last straw; she sent a spear-like tendril through his calf to slow him down. But he swung his sword again and sliced her throat. This was not the meet-and-greet she had been imagining.

Choking on black blood, she stumbled over the balcony and out of the spire. On the way down, her wings refused to unfold and she plummeted to the ground. Lying down in the impact crater, she passive-aggressively cast a spell that brought forth an undying firestorm inside the tower, torching everything and everyone. Maybe it wasn’t so passive after all? She sort of put her hands in her pockets, whistled nonchalantly, and walked away.

Months passed. Vextah found herself in a cave, just checking it out to make sure everything was adequately horrible in there. It was, but ever since the spire burned, she had been struggling to revel in misery of any kind. Deep down, she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have doomed the Redeemer. Perhaps the lack of a fated nemesis was sucking the fun out of things.

“Is everything okay?” people asked, hopefully.

She was also tired of behaving how everyone expected her to. Most of the time, all she wanted was to love and be loved. She hoped that one day she could. She decided she’d just have to fight a little harder for it, or force somebody into submission.

Then, opportunity came knocking: “I have walked through fire!”

Vextah spun around to see a manly silhouette at the mouth of the cave. “Redeemer!” she cried. “You’re alive!” Now was her time. Who cares what people would think. Bats in her belly, she flew across the cave and latched onto the man. “Thank the devil!”

Then suddenly, she felt a blade pass through her thorax. The pain was sublime. Her body started melting into hot tar.

“Ouch!”

She screamed so powerfully that her voice lived in every cave, forever. It was a good thing that she liked caves. They were dark and dangerous and full of beasts and creepy crawlies. Nowadays, whenever anyone comes into a cave and shouts, she mocks them.

She does?

She does… does… does.

That fateful day, the Redeemer stepped out of the cave and watched the clouds part. He moaned at the warmth of the sun, shining upon the land for the first time in years. Little did he know that in a matter of seconds, the story he was in would be over and he would cease to exist. Everyone would forget what he’d done. He probably expected someone to write epic tales of his feats… but they never did. Life continued on, a little less extreme and much closer to the middle.