"Dark Lord?" Taeauna asked him, her impossibly white face within easy reach of his arm, its sheen of sweat shining in the moonlight. "You seem… angered. Mind-mazed. Please aid us. I–I am desperate."

Dark Lord. There was that phrase again. What was a Dark Lord? He knew what the Dark Helms were: Holdoncorp's creations, sinister villains, ruthless slayers in black armor. The Holdoncorp game designers had thought up many smaller mischiefs, too, but he knew about them. He knew all about Falconfar.

So what was a Dark Lord, and how had he become one?

He stared into the Aumrarr's gravely anxious gaze, and then around his room. The severed phone, the blood-soaked bed sheets, the sliced-off end of an armor strap that was dangling from Taeauna's shoulder to brush his own gut. He could feel its caress.

He wasn't dreaming. This was all real.

Or he was losing his mind.

His eyes fell to his wrinkled boxer shorts, covered with its familiar greeting of "Hello, Sexy!" as well as spatters of dark, wet blood that wasn't his own. Blood that shouldn't-couldn't-be there. But was.

"Suppose you tell me," he said carefully, "how I became a 'Dark Lord.' And what this evil is, that I've done. Uh, and who 'us' is, that I've done it to. And what you want of me."

The Aumrarr stared at him. "So it's true. One of the wizards has stolen your memories."

"Stolen my-?"

She flinched back from his shout as if he'd thrust one of those black swords right into her, and Rod swallowed whatever he'd been going to shout, waved an angry hand through the air between them as if to clear something aside, and snapped, "Explain. Please."

"Yes, Lord Archwizard," she agreed hastily, sliding sideways off him with more grace than he'd thought any gravely injured person would be able to manage. On her knees, shattered armor dangling from her, she began, "There are not many of us Aumrarr left, for Falconfar has grown darker. There are ever more Dark Helms, the wizards command fearsome beasts to prowl and strike at will, and…"