Becoming the Dark Lord

“Now...” Marten said, “do not trust anything you see or hear. Even if it’s someone you know. Even if it’s someone who should already be dead.”

Loud sounds started echoing from every direction, like stone grinding against stone. The sea itself was unnaturally calm, yet the noise kept coming. The fog thickened fast. Luke lost sight of the other ships. The sound of rock scraping rock seemed to come from everywhere at once. Triss’s crew stood tense, weapons drawn, watching every direction.

“First a giant-ass whale, now this fog,” Randall muttered.

“Did you see how big that thing was?” someone asked.

“There was no way not to,” Doug answered.

Was it just me, or was that whale actually hunting me?

It was the second time he had run into that monster since crossing paths with it in the storm.

“Luke, we lost sight of our ship,” Eleanor said, coming up beside him.

The fog was so thick they could barely see a few steps ahead. People on Triss’s ship moved cautiously. Some were already using wind magic to try to disperse it.

“Don’t worry. I put Predator’s Mark on Evangeline, and she put one on me,” he said.

“You stealth-class people could probably track where the rest of us hide our asses if you felt like it,” Randall said from the rail, peering through some kind of binoculars.

“Marten,” Triss snapped.

The man was pacing across the deck. “My ship. My ship. No. No, it got dragged into this place.” He sounded close to panicking.

“Just keep going straight,” Luke said, pointing. “My ship is that way.”

“This damned fog,” Doug muttered.

Eleanor was peering through the sightline of her bow. The fog was dense, but Luke could still see Evangeline’s red silhouette because of his skill.

“Oh, shit. Helm starboard. Starboard!” someone shouted, and suddenly the bow slammed into something.

“What? Was that there before?” someone else said.

Luke and Eleanor ran to the prow. A massive stone wall blocked the way.

“That wasn’t there before,” Luke said.

Evangeline’s outline was on the other side of it. Then the grinding sound continued, and they saw the wall shifting along the side. In the next instant, it sealed off part of the waterways.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Eleanor said.

“A moving labyrinth...” Luke muttered.

Charlie and the others were cut off now.

Could climbing work?

The fog above was thick too. He could not make out much. Then laughter echoed through the mist, not from the ship, but from somewhere outside it.

“Put out the torches!” Marten shouted. “Put out the damned torches!”

He ran across the deck.

“Move around in the dark? Are you insane?” someone said.

“Put them out. We already made the worst mistake possible. We entered this place announcing ourselves to whatever lives here,” he said.

Luke studied the blocked path. Some streets had opened up, but the fog hid most of it. The mist was getting even thicker, then the labyrinth stopped moving.

“What’s coming for us, Marten?” Triss asked. “And what did you mean earlier, when you said we might see people we know who are dead?”

Eleanor pulled Luke aside. “Tell me you put a teleportation pentagram on the other ship.”

“I didn’t.”

“Damn it,” she said.

“I had no idea a giant whale was going to show up right when we were about to go back to our ship,” he replied.

Even though only Luke could use the teleportation pentagrams, if he had access to the other ship, they could at least coordinate better and talk strategy.

“What do you think? Can we climb it?” she asked.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

The laughter drew closer. Closing in through the fog.

Eleanor pulled an arrow from her quiver. “Did you hear that? The laughter. Again.”

More laughter drifted through the fog. Then the mist began to close in, thickening until they could barely see a hand in front of their faces. Everyone went silent, alert, weapons drawn.

“Do not... make... any noise,” Marten whispered from somewhere in the haze.

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“Wh... why...?” Triss asked.

“Why do you think I abandoned my ship with the others the first time?” he shot back.

Luke stayed focused, trying to see through the fog. Even with Sariel’s Eye tracing the flow of mana through the world, the mist was nothing but a wall of it.

Evangeline’s silhouette is moving away. Why?

He kept one eye on her while listening to the ship around him.

“Oh no!” someone screamed. Footsteps pounded across the deck, then the person collapsed in panic. “No, no, that can’t be, they weren’t supposed to still be here.”

“What? What the hell happened to you?” someone shouted back.

Luke and Eleanor stayed poised. Then more screams started erupting all over the ship.

“Listen up! Gather together! Stay close. Do not stay alone!” Triss yelled.

Someone was dragged. Luke saw the man hit the deck and get pulled toward the fog. He moved to help, but then others came running in blind panic. Triss’s crew clustered together on the deck.

“The fog moved,” someone said.

“Of course it moved. It’s fog.”

“N-no, you don’t get it. It really moved.”

Then, through the shouting, figures began stepping out of the mist. They were not dressed like anyone in the event. No. They wore clothes from Earth. A man in a suit. Someone in military uniform. A police officer. A mailman.

“My dear, I finally found you,” an old woman said, leaning on a cane.

“G-grandma?”

“It’s been so long since we saw each other.”

“Is it really you, Grandma?”

What the hell is this?

The people emerged slowly from the fog, surrounding them. All of them wore warm, familiar smiles. Warm and wrong.

“Luke...” Eleanor said.

“I know. It’s wrong.”

“Don’t go near them,” Triss said. “Kill the bastards.”

“Kill them? That’s my grandmother, damn it,” one man said. “Grandma, come here. Please.”

“My sweet grandson, come to me. Come stay with me and the others.”

Luke raised a knife, ready to throw it at the old woman, and then...

“Luke?” a voice called from the fog. “Luke, my son. I came back.”

He threw the knife before the woman could fully emerge. The shape unraveled.

Too close.

“Eleanor, we need to...” He stopped.

Eleanor was staring at a woman.

“Mom?” she asked.

“My daughter, where have you been?” the woman said. She looked like Eleanor, only older, with longer hair.

“You were on a plane when the event started. I was worried,” Eleanor said, lowering her bow.

“Sweetheart, I’m fine,” the woman said. “Come with me. I’m scared. Come here.”

“Mom, I felt so guilty.”

What the hell are you doing, Eleanor?

Luke looked at her and saw how wide her pupils had become. He threw his kukri at the woman reaching for her. The blade hit. Blood sprayed, and the woman retreated into the fog.

“Mom! What did you do, Luke?” Eleanor shouted.

He grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him. “Eleanor, that is not your mother.”

Her pupils slowly returned to normal.

“Illusion,” she said, shaking off the trance. “Hypnosis?”

“Everyone, do not look at whatever is calling your name!” Luke shouted.

But for some of them, it was too late. At the same moment, the people in the fog changed. Their pleasant expressions twisted into irritation. Then they opened their mouths and showed rows of teeth like sharks. A scream tore across the ship. Blood sprayed through the air. Someone got dragged.

The only thing Luke caught was something like a cord, except red, wrapped around the man’s leg. He slashed through it with his kukri, and black blood burst from the thing. Raising his hand, Luke fired a [Shadow Ball] into the fog. The explosion went off ahead of them, higher up, burning away part of the mist.

“Disperse the fog!” he shouted into the chaos. “Light the torches! Start fires!”

Luke kept hurling his magic while others struck at the fog too, sometimes even hitting each other in the confusion. Some of them seemed to be seeing illusions only they could perceive.

“They’re all over me. Ants. Ants!” one man screamed, dropping to the deck and thrashing, even though there was nothing on him.

Triss swung her axe in a brutal horizontal arc, and the force of the strike tore a section of fog off the deck.

“Get rid of the damn fog!” she roared, and then her body flashed for an instant.

Luke felt energy surge through him, like he had just swallowed a thousand cups of coffee. An unnatural courage rose in his chest.

Some kind of group magic.

She was a barbarian. Morale magic was part of her toolkit. She had not become captain by accident. Some of the people on the deck started pushing themselves back to their feet. The fog began to thin.

“Come on, you bastards. I’ll kill every last one of you!” someone shouted into the mist.

Marten stood rigid, revolver aimed in every direction. Within a few minutes, the fog began to pull back, and that strange presence retreated with it, growing fainter and farther away.

“Port side!” Triss shouted.

The ship turned into the waterway she indicated.

“Standing still in that fog clearly wasn’t a good idea,” she said.

Marten took a deep breath. “I need to find my ship. I can’t lose it.”

“The plan stays the same,” she replied.

“Look. Artifacts in the water!” someone shouted, pointing.

Luke and a few others moved to the rail. Three artifacts floated there, glowing.

“So who’s brave enough to risk going after them?”

Luke raised a hand. The artifacts trembled, then drifted through the air toward him.

“And since when do I need to go all the way over there?” he said.

The artifacts dropped into his hands.

“That’s the plan,” Triss said. “We gather the artifacts scattered through this place. We find the Beacon. And after that... what happens depends on whether we survive whatever’s waiting inside the dungeon.”

“If you keep the torches lit, the Stalkers will be drawn to us,” Marten said.

“Better that than leaving ourselves at the mercy of whatever lives in the fog,” she shot back.

He clicked his tongue. “We had the rotten luck to enter this place already drawing attention.”

“Now explain exactly what you know,” Luke said.

“All I know is that sometimes the fog comes. Nothing you see or hear in it is real. When it happened to me and the others, we abandoned ship. And don’t think those things only show up whispering names and doing nothing. We provoked it. Next time, it’ll be worse.”