SULLENDAY

I was almost certain I’d place last in the rankings. And since I didn’t feel like suffering THAT humiliation in front of everyone, I decided to wait until the courtyard was empty to check for my name. Unfortunately, each time some oaf found THEIR name, they’d cry out in anger and try to rip the list from the wall. A scuffle would break out, which would inevitably lead to more smashing and breaking of things. By the time the coast was clear and the last grimmie had left the yard, the sun had risen. Believe it or not, a new day had dawned.

So I finally made my way over to the list.

Immediately, I skipped the upper half of the scroll. Those were always just orc and ogre names anyway. To find my rank, I went STRAIGHT to the bottom, where I found some witches and warlocks and a scattering of goblins. But I didn’t see MY name. I was a little confused, so I turned over the scroll. And that’s when I found it scrawled on the backside of the parchment, squeezed into the scroll’s lower corner, inked in letters so small I had to squint to read them.

I didn’t think it was possible to rank AFTER last place, but somehow I’d managed it. I was the son of the Dark Lord Who Vanished, the kid who was supposed to claim the mightiest throne in the grim world. But I couldn’t even impress a crowd of idiots.

This was pathetic.

My head was spinning, so I made my way toward the tower and my bedroom, where I could lie down and sleep off my latest humiliation.

I got about halfway there when an orc ran straight into me. He was clearly in a rush, which was kind of strange. Orcs don’t generally run or do anything in a hurry, not unless something’s terribly wrong. He had a message in his hand, and I guessed it was bad news.

“What’s with the letter?” I asked.

“Bat-t-t . . .” he stuttered.

“A battle?” I asked.

“Yes. Elves. The border. An attack!” he said. Then he held the scroll right in front of my face. It laid out the facts about a raid carried out by some elves. They’d attacked one of the orc towers at Hadrian’s Hedge, the seemingly impenetrable tangle of man-eating vines that protected the border between the grim folk and the faire. The elves had beaten down the gate, but when they got inside, the stink of the place overwhelmed them and they had to retreat. The orcs were calling it a victory for the grim folk, but that was a bit of a stretch. Bad hygiene isn’t a legitimate form of warfare.

But an attack on the hedge IS a legitimate act of war. The elves had broken our decade-long peace. The truce was over, broken, gone.

This was news.

But it wasn’t what I’d call GOOD news. This wasn’t one of those happy “your life is going to change” moments. It was more of a sad “your life as you know it is about to end” one. So I snatched the scroll from the orc’s hand and ran straight to the general’s tower.

Actually, it’s our tower. I live with General Gareth Gorey, Commander of the Orc Legions and Regent of the Grim Folk. He’s the guy who took charge of things when Mom and Dad disappeared in that cloud of smoke. He was my dad’s most FEARED military commander and he promised to watch over me should anything ever happen to my parents. I’ve lived with him ever since Mom and Dad evaporated. And by “lived,” I mean cowered in absolute fear.

As I approached the tower, I found him standing in the doorway, huffing and puffing as he always did. The old orc has a perpetual scowl, the sort of look that could silence a dragon or make a harpy stop and think twice about screeching. He snatched the scroll out of my hand just as quickly as I’d taken it from the orc.

“We’re not ready for war,” he muttered as he read. “The ogre chieftain and the goblin queen are arguing about THEIR borders,” he grumbled. “And we can’t fight the elves if we’re already fighting each other.”

His announcement wasn’t a huge surprise. Since I was heir to the dark throne, Gorey tried to keep me abreast of military matters. I’d heard rumblings about the growing unrest. I knew the state of the grim world was rather . . . well, grim.

Ever since my mom and dad vanished, things have been a mess. The orcs have never had an orc king or queen—they’re just too disorganized to pick one. Maybe that’s why they were the first to bow to the Dark Lord—the ones who named him the Lord d’Orc. The rest of the grim folk have their own leaders. And at one time, those leaders served and obeyed my dad. The Dark Lord united the grim folk, but we haven’t had a proper Dark Lord in a decade. Gorey’s just the regent, which is kind of like a substitute teacher. They do the same thing as a real teacher, but no one respects them or pays them any attention. He’s got none of my father’s awe-inspiring powers, or my mom’s. He might be a fearsome fellow, but it takes the almighty power of someone like my dad to keep the grim folk in line. If Gorey tried to lead our people into war, the goblins, witches, warlocks, orcs, and ogres would just end up fighting with one another, acting like a bunch of grimmies trying to check their ranks on the Brute List—and we all know how THAT turned out.

“The elves won’t stop at one attack,” Gorey growled. “They’ll keep at it until they find a way through the hedge!” He looked up and locked his eyes on mine. “When the elves make their way east, Wick, it’ll be open war!” He raised a stubby finger and pointed it at me. “And we can’t gather the grim folk to battle without a DARK LORD!”

Just to make things clear, when Gorey says “Dark Lord,” he’s talking about me.

I’m the one who needs to rise up and unite the grim folk. The Dork Lord. The kid who couldn’t even make the Brute List.

In the 1,011-year history of our people, the grim folk have never fought a war without a Dark Lord.

I grew up hearing stories about the breathtaking acts of sheer malevolence my parents accomplished. Gorey had told me how Dad would call up a swarm of locusts while Mom brewed a tornado of smoke and ash. Together they’d turn a bright and sunny battlefield into a darkened nightmare of shadow and flame.

That’s my legacy. Those were my parents. The Dark Lord and Dark Lady. And now it was time for me to fill their grim and steely boots.

Unfortunately, that was going to be a bit of challenge.

There’s more to being the Dark Lord than I’ve let on . . . in fact, there’s something we haven’t even discussed. And that’s no accident. This story would scare anyone who wasn’t out of their mind. This is the really frightening stuff—the darkest part of my already dark story.

Gorey had told it to me about a hundred times, but apparently that wasn’t enough, because he went ahead and said it ONE MORE TIME.

“To claim your dad’s throne, you must undertake the most perilous quest imaginable, the Journey to the Chamber of Mystery,” said Gorey. Then he dropped his voice a little lower, like he always did—just to make this next part seem more dramatic. “You’ll need to duel with creatures of astonishing strength and unthinkable evil: a giant cyclops, a fanged vampire, and a giant-fanged vampire cyclops. And you can’t do it alone. You need to fight your way to the finish, and it will take an army of loyal and trustworthy followers to do that, Wick!” Then he dropped his voice even lower, to an octave that I hadn’t even known existed. “When you stand before the Chamber of Mystery, you can’t just WALK into it and claim your crown. No! You must PASS through a searing wall of FLAME—through a cascading waterfall of fire and smoke! That’s how you take the throne!”

I shivered a bit. Even the thought of smoke makes my eyes water. I knew the story. But here’s the truth: I thought our truce with the faire folk meant I could take up the journey in another decade, or maybe two. I assumed I had years to master my skills as a warlock AND a leader. But man, was I WRONG.

It was all happening NOW.

“I’m not ready,” I sputtered.

“Not ready?” Gorey hollered. “Hell’s bells, boy. You’re not even close! YOU need to make a plan of attack! You don’t have your father’s magic. So you’re going to need to find some other way to attract that horde of followers. From this moment on, I’ll want regular status reports on your progress. Time’s up. Your mission starts now!” Gorey scratched his horns, huffing and puffing while he thought. “I’ll send every available orc to the hedge. We can probably hold back the elves until the end of the year, but that’s all I can promise. So get to work!”

The end of the year was only six months away. That was it. That was all the time I had left.

I raced off to my room, and the general sat down at the feast table, grumbling to himself about the coming war and cursing under his breath. I was forced to close my door just to silence his gripes. I had a lot to think about. The whole future of the grim folk was on the line. And, worse yet, tomorrow was the first day of school, so I knew I’d have to face all those grimmies who saw me fail at the Brute List.

In the past, stuff like that list hadn’t bothered me, but today it did. I didn’t have decades to gather my horde. I had to do it NOW, which was kind of a problem, given my questionable reputation as the Dork Lord and my generally low level of skill as a warlock. I wasn’t ready for a harrowing, death-defying trek into a perilous land.

And I definitively did NOT have an army of followers. Heck, I didn’t even have a band of disciples. A small group would be impressive. Maybe twenty or thirty strong-backed ogres? A dozen orcs? Six warlocks? But no, I had only two friends: Oggy, my half-orc, half-goblin schoolmate, and Hal the dragon.

That was it. Two followers. An army of two.

My father had thousands of followers when HE marched on the chamber. How did Dad do it? Gorey says he taught himself powerful, mind-blowing spells at an impossibly young age. But even with all that raw power, it took HIM four years to raise his army. I don’t know if I’ll have six months or six weeks to gather MY followers.

I had work to do. So I spent the whole day planning. I found an old journal and scribbled down my ideas, chronicling everything that had happened since yesterday. Becoming the Dark Lord was going to be one tough task, so I guessed future grim leaders might want to know how I did it. Also, if I took up this mission, there would probably be a lot of blood and gore. In general, people LOVE to read about that kind of stuff, so I figured I ought to write it all down. I was about to embark on a grave and terrible journey—a path that would lead to struggle, turmoil, triumph—and, let’s face it, probably a good bit of humiliation.

But most of all, it was going to be epic.*

I scribbled in my journal until I came up with a plan. Well, maybe it wasn’t actually a plan. I didn’t have all the details worked out. But I PLANNED ON HAVING A PLAN sometime in the VERY near future.

I did have a name, though.

OPERATION DARK LORD