The Dark Lord’s first reaction was, surprisingly, mirth. He thought the heroes had simply misspoken. Three halflings in a trench coat was an uncommon archetype, but nothing he’s never heard of.

As such, imagine the simultaneous mix of revulsion and fascination that welled from within him, like a snowball so yellow that it passed the invisible, but commonly agreed-on valley of distaste right into the hellish depths of morbid curiosity.

The three trench coats were utterly drenched with sticky fluids, smelling like something fishy that had been left to dry in the sun and then promptly forgotten about. They were black. Or at least, the Dark Lord hoped they were black, and not some colour that has since been dyed improperly.

The halfling that once stood before him bravely was now sprawled on the ground, his jaw in a state that can only be described as too open. The chest heaved and ho, indicating a modicum of life still inside him.

The Dark Lord, who had a gigantic god complex since he was little, then chose to invoke a blasphemous name in his complete shock.

“What in god’s name is this abomination?”

The trench coats stood. Sat. Laid? Somehow, they were upright with nothing to support them. One collar started flapping incessantly.”

“We are trench coats,” a muffled voice came through the middle coat. “Fairly common around these parts.”

“I’m sorry, but I am physically convulsing from the sheer, visceral disgust, like thousands of bugs crawling about in my bloodstream—which, trust me, is a torture so horrendous that I’ve kindly elected to keep it out of my personal torture dungeon,” the Dark Lord gagged. “Talking trench coats. Hacked from a halfling’s poor, undersized throat. And you call yourself common?”

“Hey,” the right coat complained. “Don’t bring race into this. We’ve had a hard time trying to make others take us seriously.”

“Race?” the Dark Lord whispered, bewildered. “You are—”

“You are deliberately misunderstanding the point, Dark Lord!” the middle coat shouted again, to vigorous collar flaps from the other two. “We are no men! And we are here to take you down!”

“Trench coats,” the Dark Lord shook his head. “I don’t see how you can…”

The coats started trudging towards him, the bottom of their floating coats barely swishing the floors. The Dark Lord was prepared to simply laugh, then burn every bit of thread up with the strongest fireballs he could muster.

Which he did. He was a powerful being. It came with being named the Dark Lord. It took a certain amount of prestige and ability to simply being known by a sole title that no one else dared to claim.

The trench coats, unfortunately, could not stand against fire that sprouted from every which where, hotter than the average hellfire pillar. The Dark Lord would know—the devil often tried to obtain this very spell for himself.

But as the coats burned, the Dark Lord had the audacity to breathe in deeply, in preparation for a solid sigh of satisfaction.

The smell had spread. Even the choking ash paled in comparison. What wafted through the air now was something so pungent that it would have killed a lesser man.

In the Dark Lord’s case, he stumbled to grab hold of a nearby pillar. He struggled against the innate desire to breathe deeply, in order to prevent himself from drowning from the inhuman odour that now spread across the room.

That day, the Dark Lord did not die.

But he gained a new nightmare. Something which no hero had ever done before.

And he realized—sometimes, even gods can cry themselves to sleep in a room filled with lavender incense to drown out the smelly memories.

r/dexdrafts