I Swear I'm Not A Dark Lord!

Endorsements

Taylor went to the folly shrine and prayed his way into the void to ask the gods about Knexenk, the supposed goddess who gave out classes. They confirmed they made the 'Giver Goddess', but his other questions met with the usual non-answer of 'we don't interfere'.

Instead, Strife taught him a game similar to chess, played on multiple boards at once, arranged in a stack. Most of the action happened on the center board but, under the right conditions, rules permitted moves on the other boards as well. The extra boards would shift up periodically, depositing some pieces onto the main playing field and taking some away. He understood the game just well enough to know he was doomed to lose from the very beginning.

He fought anyway, learning as he lost. As he entered the brutal (for him) endgame, Taylor had an epiphany: the levels of the board represented time, with the center board acting as the present. The extra levels moved at set intervals, but players could affect how those levels interacted with the main field by the tempo of their moves. Pieces could be pulled from the past into the present, like leaning on history to affect the current move. Pieces could be placed in the future, but they could only arrive in the present by the passage of time.

The loss was every bit as brutal as Taylor expected. He wasn't sure it taught him much, except to reinforce an age-old wisdom: the perfect strategist ensures all roads lead to victory.

His contests with Kistur had no witnesses besides the gods they prayed to, and sometimes the mansion's curious staff. But apparently, they were not a secret. One day, Kistur showed up at the house not on his usual oversized horse, but in a carriage with Curator Jane and a black-brindled dogkin man with captain's pips and a green sash embroidered with yellow. Kistur looked uncharacteristically meek, sitting across from the two adults but unable to face them. Someone was in trouble.

Taylor hoped it wasn't him.

He watched from the front steps, staff in hand, as the carriage pulled through the gate and up the drive to park at the base of his stairs, wondering what was going on. Blake appeared at his elbow. If he wasn't such a fair gardener, he could have been a butler.

"Blake, I think I shall need the sword today."

"Very good, Young Master." He took the proffered staff to the umbrella stand just inside the front door and exchanged it for his latest wooden sword, the only one he hadn't broken yet. The house only had two good umbrellas, so there wasn't a need for a separate weapon receptacle.

"Don't mind us, Bilius," called the curator as she left the carriage, followed by the captain. "There was a rumor Kistur's been running off somewhere to train, and he claims he comes here. We're just here to verify the facts."

"Got caught too many times, huh?" he taunted the embarrassed recruit. "What? No challenge today?"

"I'm going to wipe that smug look right off your face!"

Taylor pointed at his mask. His plain, obviously devoid-of-expression mask. "This face?"

"I'm your greatest adversary, d'Mourne! I can see through your mask, and I can tell when you're being smug!"

"Tch. Less proclamating, more fighting."

The boys went to the training yard, adults trailing behind them. Blake had recently reset the flagstones in the yard with a little help from Taylor's magic, and it was looking its best that day. The flat stone space was perfectly square, bounded by green lawn, with a few comfortable chairs nearby for spectators or, as Taylor liked to use them, lounging in a post-workout high. They bowed to the gods Abnoba and Wiñuri, martial skill and growth, and took their positions.

Kistur opened with some kind of new rush-and-slash technique, which Taylor countered with footwork. He crouched low to the ground, crabbed to Kistur's flank, and slapped him in the ribs with the side of his sword.

"You always turn off your brain when you try to overrun me, you know. You can't adjust if you do that. Fight right, or I'm gonna embarrass you."

They fell into their contest in earnest, giving and taking bruises, pressing their opponent to the edge of the square (touching the grass with a foot was a loss), feinting and luring each other into traps, and resorting to knees and elbows when the fighting got close. Kistur had gotten much, much better. There was one moment, when their swords tangled and spun, trying to disarm each other, when Taylor was on the edge of his old mental state he used when fighting, that place where perception, decision, and action were a unified whole. But Kistur's technique fell apart, the challenge evaporated, and the opportunity was lost. Taylor knocked his partner's sword away with contempt.

"Dammit, Kistur. I was almost there. So close!"

"Shut up, shrimp!" The recruit threw fists, and Taylor dropped his sword to respond in kind. He'd been trained by the best wrestler of his last world and didn't mind a little hand-to-hand.

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They grappled, Kistur's nearly-adult size against Taylor's skill and low gravity. Kistur got thrown out of the boundary twice, but at great cost to Taylor's stamina. Kistur got the last win, as he usually did, by being larger and stronger and outlasting Taylor at the end. It was a humiliating pin, with Taylor on his back and Kistur's legs locked around his neck.

"Okay, I give up!" he laughed, "you learned the splade!"

They laid out on the flagstones, sweaty, gasping for air, laughing, the adults forgotten. That is, until the curator stood over them. Even her shadow was trim and severe.

"Are you boys finally done?"

"No," claimed Taylor. "Food is next."

"Not today. The captain and I have agreed to let your little, let's call them 'training sessions', continue. Recruit Kistur is due back in Midway. And I need to have a chat with my ward."

"Right. That's me told off properly. I'll get you next time, Bilius." Kistur hauled himself to his feet with several shoves and a long groan, and soon departed in the carriage with the Captain. Jane watched them leave.

"I notice you have very few bruises, though Kistur hit you rather hard. Have you learned enhancement magic?"

"Is that a problem?"

"Show me."

"But, I'm so tired."

"Too bad. With enhancements, you won't be tired anymore, will you?"

"I'll be more tired later. You're just pushing the pain into the future, like debt." Taylor raised himself with a variety of grunts and groans. "I'll do it, but I won't be at my best."

He took up the discarded sword and performed several combinations under the power of body enhancements, inhuman feats of fast parries and strikes, long lunges, deceptive fades, pommel strikes, and a spinning ground-level attack meant to cut down enemies at the ankles.

"Enough?"

"Indeed. Might I enquire what's for lunch?"

Lunch was meat pies in a flaky crust, eaten outside on benches in the flower garden and washed down with a cider made from spring apples. Cook had anticipated Kistur's presence with a sizeable basket of the little gems. Too bad for Kistur; more for Taylor.

"Ophelia mentioned you had learned a few spells, but I think she withheld some crucial facts."

"I don't think she knew. She saw me do some light spells, and she knew about the divine statues. I never showed her enhancement magic." He decided to come clean before she asked. Mostly. "I've stayed away from the offensive stuff, except Stunning Bolt and Flare. I've dabbled in almost every other branch of magic just to see what's possible. My main focus right now is mana control and body enhancements."

"Are you perhaps considering a career as a dark lord?"

"Um … no. Extra no! Why would you even say something like that!?"

"Oh, I don't know. Early, extreme aptitude for magic. Secret combat training. Willing to fight to the death at the drop of a hat. Cursed at birth. We should hang a sign by the gate that says Dark Lord in training. Enter at your own risk!"

Taylor looked at his guardian in shock, and received an even greater shock: she was smiling. It was just a little, and if he didn't know her he would have missed it, but the smile was real.

"This dark lord job — does it involve heroes showing up in my house at odd hours, challenging me to duels?"

"Surely. That's the measure of a dark lord's success."

"Then I'll pass. It would cut into my fishing time. I just want to be strong enough to live whatever life I want to, anywhere I want to."

Jane took another pie from the basket between them, thoughtful. "What a very dark lord thing to say."

"Stop it!" he laughed.

They both savored their lunches until Jane had her fill and dusted the flakes of pastry from her hands.

"On another note, the Captain of Recruits wants a figure of Abnoba for his training hall. He says he'll pay you five gold for one. It's an impressive amount of money. I advise you to take it."

Until that moment, the only people who prayed to his statues were himself, Kistur, and the mansion's staff. And Ophelia, if she was using his gift properly. "I have a couple of reservations about that. First, I won't make a divine figure that isn't used. He has to promise people will pray to it, or it isn't worth doing. Second, we shouldn't have a bunch of people praying to a subordinate of Strife alone. We should have people praying to other gods, as well. If you order a figure of Feythlonda or another secondary god for the town to pray to, I'd feel better about this."

"That's a lot for some figurine. They're compelling to look at, I won't deny it, but I can't justify five gold from the town's budget for one."

"The reason they're so compelling is because they're more than just shaped stone. When I make one, the gods take a ton of mana. I couldn't tell you why they've taken an interest in my figures, but they have. I've been training under deep depletion so I can stay conscious when it happens.

"Just look around you. Blake prays to Feythlonda, and his garden has never been better. Cook prays to Omoyon, and her cooking has improved. Not that it was ever bad, but it's even better now. I pray to Wiñuri, Shitukan, and Abnoba, and my skills are growing abnormally fast. I pray to Lanulculte when I'm fishing, and the river is always good to me.

"It's not some crazy coincidence. The Captain is Dogkin, and they're especially attuned to spiritual energy. If he thinks it's worth five gold, you shouldn't discount it. Even the fluffball was impressed, and he's an elder."

Of all his arguments, his stereotype of beastkin swayed her the most. "For that price, I want a harvest goddess and a contract god. But," she held up a finger to stall his objection, "I'll sweeten the deal by getting you a Merchant Guild account. Most children don't get their first payouts on a guild card."

As Merchant Guild accounts required references, connections, and up-front fees, Taylor took the deal. Jane was both doing him a favor and keeping an eye on him. If he spent money through his guild card, she could monitor what he spent it on.