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Milo hides in an alleyway, nursing his wounds.
His heart is pounding, and his body aches. But he bandages his wounds with shaking hands, using a stolen bag of first aid equipment. He left an apology note on the kitchen table.
He feels bad. He doesn’t want to steal from people, but he doesn’t have a choice. Not if he wants to eat, or not bleed to death.
He finishes bandaging his wounds and gets to his feet. He is in pain, he is exhausted, he is starving. But he is too close, he needs to get away. Get out of the city, quickly.
He runs as fast as he can, which isn’t very fast. His body throbs with pain, the sort of pulsing pain that makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. And he is weak from lack of food, from all of the weight that he has lost since being imprisoned.
But he runs anyway. Even though it hurts, even though all he wants to do is curl up on a patch of grass and pass out. He runs, because he made it. He’s free. And he is never, ever going back to that dungeon again.
He tries not to think about that inevitable future, where the dungeon is one of two equally bad endings. He can’t think about that, or he’ll go insane.
So he runs, runs right out of the city and into the forest. He finds a small cave and settles down in that, curling up. He eats the bread that he stole, and drinks from his water pouch. Then he falls asleep, frozen to the bone yet more comfortable than he has been for longer than he can remember.
When he wakes up, he isn’t comfortable. The ground is hard stone, his arm is pressed against hard stone, his wounds throb and how did I get back? I was supposed to escape, how did they- what are they gonna-
Are those birds?
He blinks, opening his eyes. And it isn’t like his dungeon cell, because it is bright. He sits up, rubbing his face. And sure enough, he can hear cheerful birdsong.
He moves like someone under a spell to the entrance to the cage. The sky is bright blue, the grass bright green. Colourful birds sing in trees. The sun glows warmly, a pleasant breeze ruffles his hair.
Tears burn in his eyes. This is what the world outside his cell looks like, warm and bright and colourful. This is what he has been craving. This is freedom.
He gathers up his meagre possessions and begins walking. He doesn’t know where he is walking to. He doesn’t know what he is going to do. But he knows that he wants to stay out here.
He can’t go home. It would put his family in danger, and he loves them. And they are the only people who love him, who can look past the stupid mark on his arm to see that he wasn’t born bad.
He misses them so badly. He wants to go home so badly. He feels so alone, so frightened, and all he wants to do is curl up in his dad’s arms and let an adult handle everything. But he can’t. So he carries on alone, ignoring the painful aching in his chest.
He walks for days, weeks. He steals food when he passes through towns. He drinks water from streams. He hides the mask on his arm underneath bandages, he hides his face underneath the hood of his cloak.
His injuries slowly heal, fresh cuts and welts turn to scars. He gains a little weight- the meagre amount of supplies he is able to steal or forage are still more than he was ever fed in the dungeon.
After a few weeks, he notices a castle at the top of the hill. More a ruin, really, all dark, crumbling brick and towers.
He asks someone in the marketplace about it. “Oh, it’s old. Probably totally unsafe.” She reports. “Don’t go exploring it, now. I know how kids are.”
Milo promises that he won’t, slips some bread from her stall into his battered stolen backpack, and immediately heads in the direction of the castle. A dark, crumbling ruin. The perfect place for a villain to live.
The hill takes a long time to climb. He is certain that the weather gets worse as he climbs up, the air gets colder, the birds stop singing. And is that thunder?
Maybe some past villain lived here.
He read every story when he was younger. Studied them like it could save him, because back then he thought it could. If he knew how every other story ended, maybe he could find a way to make his end differently. If he knew what the other villains did wrong, maybe he could do it right.
But that was before the dungeon.
He won’t kidnap the damsel, whoever they are (he heard about a princess, but his knowledge of the world has been extremely limited for years), he won’t do anything to advance the ‘story’. Maybe, if he just sits in this castle and stays out of trouble, the hero won’t come for him.
But he knows that she will. It doesn’t matter if he does anything, because he has this stupid mark on his arm. A skull with a lightning bolt, which would almost be funny considering how many times he has been struck by lighting (twice, to be precise). But it isn’t funny. He can’t even look at the mark without flinching, without his heart sinking.
Because he was born with this mark. The Mark of Destruction. And that means that he is the villain.
And the villain is always defeated by the hero.
———
His castle is nice, all things considered. Sometimes he wakes up with cold fear, sure that the stone underneath him is the stone floor of his dungeon. But he steals some blankets from the nearby town, and that helps.
He has a nice stock of food, mostly stolen, though some is scavenged. He tried hunting, but found that he didn’t have the heart for it.
Admittedly, the castle is literally falling apart around him. But he is able to fix any damage and besides- any building falls apart around him.
So he’s good. He’s as safe as he can be. He’s happy.
He is.
He has almost enough food, and that makes him happy.
He isn’t hurt every day, and that makes him happy.
He is entirely alone.
Safe.
Fed.
Unhurt.
And alone.
He curls up in his blanket bundle, sobbing into his hands. He wants his mom and dad so badly that it hurts. He misses them. He needs them. He hates being alone!
He would do anything to go back to them. But it isn’t safe.
He cries, his body wracked with the sobs. His chest heaves as tears roll down his face. He doesn’t want to be alone any more.
Bark.
He looks up, blinking tears from his eyes. There is a dog in front of him.
A dog?
Definitely a dog, a soft looking, little yellow and brown dog.
“What are you doing here?” Milo asks, his voice cracking. “Don’t you know the stories?”
The dog barks again, trotting closer. Milo pulls himself away, his heart in his throat, his face still damp. He must look like an absolute mess. “I’m the evil villain in the Stormy Castle.”
He knows that people talk about him now. The small, pale boy who lives in a dark, crumbling ruin of a castle. A boy who summons lightning and destruction. Who wears a black cloak, who has a scar over his eye.
“Villains like… kick dogs, don’t they?” Milo asks quietly. “They hurt people. They hurt innocent animals.”
The dog yaps, moving closer. Milo feels funny, feels strangely drawn to this dog. This dog who isn’t scared of him. “What, do you wanna be my evil minion? You look too cute for that.”
The dog barks again. Now he is practically sitting on Milo’s lap. He licks his face. “Hey! Ok, ok. You can be my evil minion.” He says, petting the dog’s head. Touching the dog feels strange, like his skin is tingling. The warm feeling is almost overwhelming. But he doesn’t want to let go. He wants to stay with this dog forever, he wants to hug him forever.
“Do you have a name?” Milo asks. The dog gently paws at his face. “You want me to name you? Uhh… how about Diogee? Like… D, O, G. Diogee.”
The dog barks. “Look, if you have any better ideas I’m all ears!” Milo says. Then he starts to giggle. The dog barks happily and licks his face again, then rolls over onto his back. “You want me to rub your belly? Ok, ok!”
Milo bends down to rub the dog’s soft belly. The dog yaps, and Milo smiles.
The castle is still cold, and Milo is still terrified, and he still misses his parents. But Diogee makes the castle feel a lot less empty.
He makes Milo feel a lot less alone.