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Sleep was just a way to pass time, to spend hours without thinking, without trying to find anything to think about. The dark lord slept every night, though he did not require sleep, simply to fill the hours. He dreamt often, but rarely remembered about what. He held his daily meeting with his commanders, then waited out the day staring at the dark and menacing spires of the northern mountains. In his youth, he had spent every free minute reading or training. Now he wanted for nothing, strived for nothing, had no meaning or purpose to meet. He simply existed.
This morning he awoke to a strange feeling. It took him a moment to recognize it, and he remembered the dream. He rose immediately and walked to the large amethyst stone encased in glass near the balcony doors. Light streamed through the crystal, throwing daggers of white and rainbows into the dark corners of the room. Why had he been dreaming about her? Why had he woken with her name on the tip of his tongue?
He touched the glass, then lifted it free and set it upon the floor. He felt compelled to touch the stone, but resisted. The orb would punish him for his sentimentality. It made him weak. "Just a reminder," he told himself. "Of the cost, the price of resistance." That was all it was. His heart was hardened to past, to the things that he had once cherished. Then why was he still dreaming about her after so many centuries?
"We met in the caverns," he whispered to the stone. "You saved my life." It became hard to swallow, and the dark lord turned away. He jerked open the glass doors and stepped out into the rare sunlight. The sun was low on the south-eastern horizon, below the ever-present blanket of clouds. It boldly cast beams of light all across the landscape, breaking up the jagged black peaks. He'd expected the whispers, the pain of the orb, but it lay silent. Its attention must have been upon something else, though he could not say what. In its absence, the dark lord's reflection persisted unabated.
He had been dreaming about the caverns near Land's End. He could still hear the echo of dripping water, the eerie ensconced quiet. He could smell the damp darkness, feel the many feet of earth between him and his beloved sunlight. The most frightening days of his youth had been in those caves . . . and the happiest. Amy had agreed to be his wife beside the iridescent pool known as Lantern Lake. It had been their secret place, where the only people in the world were the two of them. Back then, he imagined the world was perfect.
The dark lord sighed, and returned to the crystal. He carefully replaced the glass. "If you had not saved me then, you might have lived," he told the stone. "The gemma calbren lived almost free of my rule for a time." The sensation he'd awoken with was gone. The stone was just a lifeless piece of earth. "Perhaps it was best you did not live to see what I would become." He nodded to himself, and turned his back on the only reminder he possessed of his long-dead past. "I killed all of your people."