27 - The Five Undead Love Languages
The All-Seeing Tower, Around Dinner Time
LeDuke was ready to make his boldest move since the Battle of the Four Armies. He planned to capture the heart of a woman, and her name was Jennifer, the moon mage, the most powerful person he had ever met besides himself. The funny part about his newfound obsession was that he hadn't thought of his former lover in weeks.
Ever since his minor setback when the Four Armies slaughtered his forces, he’d fall asleep thinking about Lady Ameria and wake up every morning with a dream about her still fresh on his mind. He felt as if he had blinders on where he could see nothing but her. She had broken his heart, and somehow, he still couldn't get her out of his head.
After retreating into his tower with Lovantus and the Silent Legion on his heels, he had gone straight to Lady Ameria's quarters. He had planned to run away with her. Use the last of his magic to change their faces and slip into the ranks of the invading army. Maybe they would find an island somewhere and retire.
However, she wasn't there. When he had finally found her, she was about to jump from a window into Lovantus's waiting arms below. LeDuke had begged her to reconsider, which said a lot about what he had felt about her. He wasn't the begging type. He got what he wanted out of life by flaying people alive.
Lady Ameria was different. She made LeDuke want to be a better person. Even though she had first agreed to be his bride on the terms that he wouldn't slaughter her entire family, LeDuke felt they had really formed a relationship. He had even planned to release her uncle from the Dungeon of Despair as a birthday present and maybe as a distraction for his mom.
However, all that had come to an end when she jumped out of the window. His mom used to tell him that stress was a relationship killer and the reason Lady Ameria had run away.
"Take your dad," she had once said. "He died when a cart careened out of control and broke every bone in his body."
"It sounds like the cart ended your relationship, not the stress!" LeDuke had responded.
"It was a stressful situation – a woman like me, with a 3-year-old boy and a farm, all on me own."
However, LeDuke could see his way out of the heartbreak haze when he met Jenny. He was free of the shackles of lost love and seeing the world anew for the first time in ages. He wished he had twenty virgins to sacrifice, then he'd really be able to show Jenny a good time.
There was something about the way the woman carried herself that was powerful and exciting. It was like she could say anything she wanted, and the rules of etiquette and society be damned. It was refreshing to have someone around who wouldn't grovel at his feet and went for what she wanted.
After days of trying to sneak a moment alone with her without his mom blundering into all the dates he had carefully planned, he finally realized that all the coy playing around was the antithesis of Jenny. She didn't care about all the things other women cared about, like wandering into a field of dead bodies shaping the words "I LOVE YOU", or receiving a bouquet of black roses that would only grow from the skull of a living person.
She needed a clear signal that he was over Lady Ameria and ready to seek her out as his bride. Unfortunately, she had no immediate family members he could threaten to throw into an active volcano, so he would do the next best thing. He'd lie naked on his bed until she entered the chamber door.
The only question now was how to sit. He tried out several positions, leaning on an elbow, hand aside the head, spread eagle with nothing but a pillow to cover his manhood, lying on his stomach with hands under the chin, standing in repose, but none of them seemed to work. He needed something to show his power.
In the early days of courting Lady Ameria, when she was still tooling about with her adventuring party, he would send images of his little necromancer to her seeing stone. She had called them "disgusting" and "harassing". Still, he knew that she would be comparing him to Lovantus, who he assumed was very small, almost imperceptible. Wasn't it always true that the biggest men had the most miniature soldiers?
His mom would always say, "It's your thigh that makes it look big. Since you're only 5' 4", the thing could be any size and look massive."
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He really hated it when his mom gave him advice, especially when it was about sex. However, that didn't seem to stop her at all. She'd speak her mind to the Lord of the Abyss himself if she thought that she had a better way of doing things.
Tonight, he really needed to get his mom out of the picture, so he had Fweb take her to the Tears of the Sun geyser, the only one to spew both lava and steam in one spectacular show. She couldn't resist a good show, and as luck would have it, today was a fortnight after the Thunder Moon, which meant it would be erupting any moment now.
It would have been nice to take Jenny to see it, but it would have been like any other date with his mom in tow. A few days ago, he'd had half of his servants slaughtered to write that "I LOVE YOU" in dead bodies, but his mom was too cold and wanted to go inside. When he had come back the next day with Jenny by herself, scavengers had made off with some of the corpses, and it said, "I O\C OU," which didn't have the same impact.
"I overcharged? You owe me?" Jenny had asked, confused.
But all the bumbling around was behind him now. Jenny would know his feelings as soon as she opened the door, which she did right as he experimented with an embarrassing pose. She hadn't even knocked. Why do people never knock?
It was a moment frozen in time. One that if word ever got out, there would be no end to chortling halflings and their damnable corn art. She stood in the doorway to his chamber, her face contorted in shock, disgust, and maybe even confusion. On his hands and knees with the full glory of his butt in the air, LeDuke's lips contorted into a kiss.
"Oh, god," Jenny said.
He leaped from his pose to pull the curtains shut on his four-poster bed.
"Oh, god," Jenny said again. "I knew it would come to this."
"It's not what it looks like," LeDuke lied. "I was practicing for when I would see Lady Ameria again."
"Uh-huh," Jenny said. "And that's why Fweb told me to be in your chambers at a particular time?"
LeDuke wrapped himself in a blanket and threw the curtains open. "Okay, fine. It was my plan all along. I panicked at the last moment when I saw you there. I couldn't... You just... I get all tongue-tied around you! I have killed countless people and never had a problem giving a lengthy speech before their deaths, but then you come around, and I feel like I'm back in my village again! A poor, no account, good-for-nothing who won't amount to anything. I've conquered the known world! A woman shouldn't give me a second thought."
"Well, that's your problem," Jenny said. "I can't believe I'm giving you this advice. You've been trying to send a dick pic to my seeing stone ever since I came here."
"It's a symbol of masculinity and vitality."
"More like toxic masculinity. Look, conquest is the wrong message to be sending here. I'm not a prize, and any asshole who treats me like one is just going to gaslight me and walk all over my feelings in pursuit of their own. It takes two people to make the magic happen, and there isn't any on this side. Now, you're getting over Lady Ameria, that's good, but maybe you should look inward before you seek out someone else. She left you, remember?"
"That was to save me from Lovantus. They would have torn the tower down, brick by brick."
"Right, keep telling yourself that. You're making so much progress."
"I should have your head on a pike and displayed for all..."
"I'm right here," she said. "Now's as good a time as any to take my head off."
LeDuke hesitated. He wasn't sure why. The moon mage must have bewitched him.
"I didn't think so," Jenny said. "You can't kill me because I am telling you the truth, and there is a part of you that wants to hear it. You've been locked up in this tower for so many years, I'm sure you've had plenty of time to mull over the past."
"Begone!"
"You're not going to get any better until you admit it."
"BEGONE!"
Jenny shrugged and turned around. She shut the door behind her and...