Little Nephew

Dark Lord Khor

I did not know why she was here, but I was not very pleased when she arrived. She looked injured, and I was not running a god-forsaken hospital around here. This was not my job. However, given our agreement and circumstances, I knew I had to at least try to play nice, play the game, and set the stage. We were getting close, so close I could taste it. Patience Khor, patience, all good things come to him who waits, I reminded myself. “So…. you have come to me????!!! Are you not supposed to be the most powerful being in the universe dear????!!!! What do you possibly think I can do for you???”, I asked, looking at her injured body. Not for one minute did I believe the lies she was selling. Verena, Ahmar witch, the Queen of her people, injured? What a joke! Who did she think I was?

She was useful, for now. Her arrival to this realm was timely, I had to give her that - I needed the First Dragon and everybody else distracted, that much was clear. I needed my enemies to fear her, so that I could do what I needed to do, once and for all. She was a beautiful distraction, but distraction none the less. “You are saying she-elf did this to you?”, I snickered now, looking at the gashes on her body, some made by a blade and one obvious bite mark, a dragon if I was to be precise. How did she-elf have a dragon??? What really happened here??? A lot was riding on my partnership with Verena, a lot I needed from her still.

She was sitting on a large ottoman in my office space, sipping human blood I gave her, yet she was not healing quickly, which I found extremely odd. For somebody with her power and her magic, she could have healed herself tenfold by now. Something was not adding up here. “Why did you agree to help me, Khor? Is it our history which makes you bound to me, or our shared goals? Or do you still find me useful?”, her raspy voice demanded answers. She was always intelligent, that much I knew. However, I had no plans to divulge my secrets, nor did I want discourse between us. “There are many things we share Verena, many qualities I have always admired in you, always. But there is one thing which we both share, from which we drive our despair, motivation, and our strength. We are lonely. It is that loneliness, those moments are the reason why we remember our deeds and our dead. It is in those moments of death, especially when we bestow it on others, in those simple moments when their life is at our command, we both live for that moment. We hold that life at our fingertips, and then snuff it away, seeing their light fade away. And after every life we take, we are reminded yet again, how agonizingly and deliciously we are absolutely alone”, I mused.

“How very poetic Khor”, she snickered. “Yet I have not come for you to regale me with the stories of our similarities or differences. We are beasts, both of us, beasts and shadows the stories are written about, stories to scare little children away. We are those creatures that go bump in the night. Yes, I get it. We derive the same pleasure from the same things. However, I am not here for you to remind me of that. I am here to remind you that we need to build an army. And most importantly, that you need to heal me”, she spat back.

“Build an army??? We had already declared the war, Verena!!! The moment you went AGAINST MY ORDERS AND AGAINST MY WISHES and attacked the Tribrid!!! You do not arm yourself once the war has started. You should have built an army so strong and vicious; nobody dares to fight you!!!!” I yelled at her now, furious she defied me. Dragana belonged to me, every drop of her blood, every ounce of her magic was MINE, AND MINE ALONE, I thought to myself. “Funny you say that Khor, when our agreement was that I would be the one to get the Tribrid, and you will be the undisputed, feared, King of this realm. That was our deal after all, was it not”, she said, her voice laced with a dangerous tone. Her whole demeanor shifted, she no longer looked as weak, and somehow, at that moment, I understood this was a trap. She was luring me into a trap, and I needed to make sure that I did not fully reveal my plans.

“Verena, of course! I had not changed our plans. Remember though that I need her blood for our serum?? That too was a deal, was it not?”, I said, reminding her. “It was”, she spat venomously. “However, Khor, do not presume to TELL ME or try to command ME as to what I will do, and how I will obtain that which has been promised to me! My strategies are of no concern to you. What I do, and how, is none of your business, as long as you uphold your end of the bargain! Are we understood, little nephew?????!!!!”