Life with Smeagol settled into a bizarre, yet strangely comfortable, rhythm. Maya had upgraded his diet from tuna to a rotation of expensive, flaked salmon, thinly sliced roast beef, and, on one memorable occasion, a single, defiant caviar-topped cracker he had pointed at with a tiny, imperious claw while she was watching a cooking show. He'd refused to eat from a bowl on the floor, so now he dined from a small porcelain saucer placed on the coffee table, which he treated as his personal high table.
He'd also claimed the prime spot on the sofa—the center cushion, which had to be fluffed precisely twice before he would deign to settle. His current obsession was the evening news. He'd sit, coiled and intent, his luminous golden eyes fixed on the screen, tail-tip twitching at reports of political unrest or stock market fluctuations. He seemed to find it all deeply, personally offensive.
"Barbaric," he'd mutter during a segment on a city council dispute. "No centralized authority. No fear. It's governance by committee. Disgusting."
Maya, sipping her wine on the adjacent cushion, had just learned to nod. "Mm-hmm. It's a real shame."
The peace was shattered on a Tuesday night.
Maya was in her bedroom, trying to mentally prepare for another day of Brenda's smugness, when she heard it—a sound like tearing fabric, but deeper, as if the air itself was being ripped open. It was followed by a guttural chittering that raised the hairs on her arms.
Her first, sleep-deprived thought was that Mr. Whiskers had finally snapped and was tearing open the suede pillow she'd hidden in the closet. She hurried out of her room, ready to scold her cat, and froze in the hallway.
Her living room was not as she left it.
The air near her balcony door shimmered with a sickly green light, a vertical rip in reality through which two creatures were clumsily clambering. They were the size of large dogs, with slimy, grey-green skin, bulbous yellow eyes, and mouths full of needle-like fangs. They moved with a crouched, skittering gait, their long claws scraping against her hardwood floors.
Goblins. There was no other word for them. They looked exactly like the low-level minions from the fantasy games she sometimes played to unwind.
Mr. Whiskers, far from being the aggressor, was a puff-tailed, hissing statue on top of the bookshelf, his eyes wide with terror.
And Smeagol… Smeagol was standing on the center cushion of the sofa. He was no longer a pathetic, shivering lump. He was coiled power and pure, undiluted fury. His small form seemed larger, his shadow stretching up the wall behind him, twisting into monstrous, unrecognizable shapes. The air around him hummed with a palpable, static energy.
One of the goblins spotted him and let out a screech of recognition, pointing a clawed finger.
"The Usurped One!" it hissed, its voice like gravel in a tin can. "The traitor Morvana offers a bounty for his head!"
The other goblin sniffed the air, its yellow eyes landing on Maya. "And a bonus for any witnesses!"
They lunged. Not for Smeagol, but for her. They were smarter than they looked; take out the easier target first.
Maya screamed, stumbling backward, her mind a blank slate of pure panic. She tripped over a throw rug and landed hard on her side, the breath knocked out of her. The lead goblin leaped, its fanged maw wide open, the stench of rot and swamp water washing over her.
"ENOUGH."
The word did not just hit her ears; it struck her bones. It was Smeagol's voice, but magnified a hundredfold, layered with echoes of crumbling mountains and roaring infernos. It was a voice that commanded absolute obedience.
The goblin froze in mid-air, suspended by an unseen force.
Maya watched, breathless, as Smeagol raised one tiny, clawed hand. His eyes, those molten gold pools, were now blazing with an inner black fire. He didn't speak an incantation. He didn't make a grand gesture. He simply made a slight, twisting motion with his fingers.
The shadow stretching up the wall behind him detached itself. It flowed across the ceiling like spilled ink, then dropped down, enveloping the frozen goblin. There was no sound. No struggle. The creature was simply… unmade. One second it was a solid, terrifying monster; the next, it was a wisp of black smoke that dissolved into nothingness, leaving behind only a faint, acrid smell of ozone and extinguished life.
The second goblin skidded to a halt, its predatory glee replaced by abject terror. It looked from the empty space where its companion had been to the small, seething form on the sofa.
"L-Lord Malakor!" it stammered, dropping to its knees and pressing its face to the floor. "Forgive us! We were only following—"
"Silence, worm," Smeagol—Malakor—rasped, his voice back to its normal, grinding-stone timbre, but no less terrifying for it. "You will return to the one who sent you. You will look upon her face, and you will tell her this."
He leaned forward, and the temperature in the room dropped sharply. "Tell Morvana that I live. Tell her I have found a new domain. And tell her that when I reclaim my throne, I will not be so merciful as to grant the swift oblivion I gave your companion. I will ensure her suffering is a symphony that lasts for eons. Now. Get. Out."
He flicked his wrist. The remaining goblin was yanked off the floor as if by an invisible giant and hurled back through the shimmering green rift. The moment the creature passed through, the rip in the air sealed itself with a sound like a thunderclap, leaving the living room suddenly, unnaturally quiet.
The only sounds were Maya's ragged breathing and the frantic thumping of her own heart. The shadow on the wall receded, snapping back to its proper, Smeagol-shaped form.
He turned his head, those blazing golden eyes settling on her. The fury was gone, replaced by his usual haughty impatience, but it was undercut by a new, wary tension. The secret was out.
Maya slowly pushed herself up onto her elbows, her whole body trembling. She stared at the spot where the goblin had vanished. She looked at the scorch mark that wasn't really a scorch mark on her floor. She looked at the creature on her sofa, who had just spoken of thrones and usurpers and oblivion.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Finally, Maya found her voice. It came out as a shaky whisper. "You… you owe me a new throw rug. I tripped on that."
Malakor blinked. It was the first truly nonplussed expression she had ever seen on his face. He stared at her, then at the rug, then back at her.
"Your dwelling was just invaded by extra-planar assassins," he stated slowly, as if explaining something to a very simple child. "I have just unveiled a fraction of my incalculable power to protect you. And your primary concern is… floor coverings?"
"Well, it's a West Elm rug!" Maya said, her voice rising with a tinge of hysteria. "And you just… you just deleted that thing! What was that? What are you? And who in the hell is Morvana?"
Malakor let out a long, weary sigh, the kind usually reserved for dealing with particularly obtuse underlings. He settled back onto his cushion, arranging his tail neatly around his feet. The domesticity of the gesture was utterly surreal.
"It would seem," he said, his gaze shifting to the now perfectly normal balcony door, "that the time for dissembling has passed. Very well, mortal. You have saved my life. It is only fitting you know the magnificence of the life you preserved."
He drew himself up, his chest puffing out.
"I am not a cat. I am Malakor, the Unseen, Lord of the Abyssal Planes, Breaker of Worlds, and rightful ruler of the Nether Realm." He paused, clearly expecting a reaction.
Maya just stared, her mind trying and failing to process the titles. "Breaker of Worlds?" she repeated faintly.
"It was mostly one world," he admitted with a dismissive wave of his claw. "And it was being very noisy. The point is, I am a Dark Lord. A Final Boss, if you will. And that…" He gestured with his chin toward the space where the portal had been. "…was a failed assassination attempt by the forces of my former second-in-command, the traitor Morvana, who currently sits upon my throne."
He looked back at Maya, his golden eyes glinting in the lamplight.
"So. Now that we have established the hierarchy of this situation, there is work to be done. First, my throne is insufficiently lofty." He pointed a claw at the sofa. "We require more pillows. Secondly, I require intelligence on this realm. Bring me the device that shows the talking heads. The 'evening news.' We must discern if this world is worth the effort of saving… or conquering."
Maya remained on the floor, surrounded by the evidence that her life had just been irrevocably changed. She had a Final Boss on her sofa, complaining about the pillow situation and demanding to watch CNN.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. Then another. The panic was receding, replaced by a strange, bubbling sense of absurdity. It was either laugh or cry.
She decided to laugh. It was a slightly unhinged sound, but it felt good.
"Okay," she said, pushing herself fully to her feet and brushing off her pajamas. "Okay. Fine. More pillows. But you're helping me fill out the insurance claim for the rug."