Ch. 1: A Fall, Pool Jets, and Resurrection

A story in which a newly incarnated dark lord decides that he would rather live a simple life in a quaint village rather than take over the world.

Dark lord and demon lord get used interchangeably in the story.

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The goddess peered at the newly minted dark lord kneeling in front of her with sheer disbelief.  She had just resurrected him and that was the first thing to come out of his mouth.

“What do you mean ‘no thanks’, it’s not a request. Your task is to conquer a new world. Uh hello, that’s pretty much the job description,” she said.

“Listen here, lady,” he said, as he struggled to stand upright to meet her gaze. “I don’t know who the hell you are or what you’re going on about, but I didn’t fill out an application to be the ‘new dark lord’ or whatever crap you are spouting. I am just an engineer, so if you have any job openings for that I can get you a copy of my CV, but if not, stop wasting my time” he said.

I hate the ones from Earth, the goddess thought to herself, always so incredibly arrogant and migraine-inducing.

“You listen here,” she said getting visibly enraged, “first of all it’s goddess, not ‘lady’, and second you filled out the job application when you tripped down those stairs and begged any deity listening to give you another shot at life. Honestly, who dies tripping down three steps, they barely qualify as stairs?”

“They were hard stairs,” the dark lord shot back.

“They were carpeted stairs and they had additional padding for your grandfather, you absolute moron. Grandpa Ja tripped down those same steps and he barely had a sprained wrist. And, don’t even think about lying to me again. News flash, I am a goddess, I can see everything.”

“Everything? Even what happens at the family pool parties?” Dark Lord Rend asked with a hint of embarrassment.

Stolen novel; please report.

The goddess began to blush.

“You know what, I believe you,” he said, clearly flustered by the revelation.

“That’s not what pool jets are made for, you pervert,” she said.

“Hey, cool it. It’s not what you think—, you know what stop trying to change the subject. I am not going to go conquer a world for you,” he said.

“You pesky little ingrate, you are not conquering the world for me; it is what the universe demands. The cosmos requires a balance. Your job, along with the hero, is to provide that balance. You both go to a new world, do battle, one of you wins, rinse and repeat. What’s so hard to understand about that?” She asked, rhetorically.

“Wait, what’s this about a hero? Why can’t I have that job instead?” the dark lord asked.

“Sorry, the position of ‘hero’ has already been filled, by a worthy applicant,” she said giving the dark lord a disgusted once-over.

“By who?” The dark lord demanded.

“By someone who doesn’t go to the family pool and abuse the jets,” the goddess said sheepishly.

“Hey—” the dark lord objected.

“Shut up, you are going, and that’s final. You’ve already been granted the power, so now you are the only one capable of taking on the hero and vice versa, well at least I think you are,” she said with more than a little uncertainty.  “Anyways, don’t expect me to go looking for a temp to fill in for you. I don’t have that sort of time.” Her voice raised, clearly irritated by this conversation.

He hung his head in defeat, seemingly accepting his fate. She looked at his swollen face and felt some mixture of pity and stifled laughter.

I guess I better heal him before I send him on his way, she thought to herself.

She gathered her thoughts for a moment, cooling her mind, and spoke in a calm voice, “I will make it simple for you; light needs darkness, life needs death, good needs evil, a hero needs a villain, yada yada, and so on and so on. You get the point, right? Now, let me heal you so you can be on your way.”

“I won’t do it,” he said stubbornly, “I just want to—"

“You want to what?” Interrupted the goddess, now with renewed fury. "What? You want to homebrew another batch of beer that you share with all zero of your friends? Or would you rather go back to binge-watching shows on your laptop and waiting for that "perfect project" to fall into your lap or—"

“I don’t know,” he loudly interjected his eyes meetings hers with such ferocity that the goddess unconsciously staggered back half a step. “I don’t know what I want to do, but it’s not this!”

Good, his powers are starting to emerge. Keep embracing that anger and the darkness, and you will be consumed, and I will have my dark lord, she thought as she composed herself.

“I tire of this conversation, but your insolence will not go unpunished, so I am not healing you. Have fun with that balloon face and broken bones. Now, be gone!” She said with a snap of her fingers.

“NO—” his yells of protest faded into the void.

“The nerve of some people,” she said to herself.  “What, did he just expect to be lazy good for nothing in his second life too?”