The Dark Lord's Vessel

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

'Tis an hour since I saw thee,

And it seems a whole long year;

If I loathe my own existence,

How can I live on, my dear?

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—Nicolas Gogol

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MIKHAIL

The milk bucket rattles against my thigh as I fly over the rubble to the decimated back yard where, by some act of fate, Little Nemesis' milking shed was left untouched. She's an ordinary looking brown goat, with a white blaze and underside. To mark her as mine, she wears a discarded chunk of my ship tied around her neck as a goat-bell, held in place by a collar made of colorfully braided electrical wires.

'Eh-heh-heh?' she greets me eagerly at the gate. I frown when I see she has already chewed partway through the rawhide I use to tie it shut, but she hasn't bothered to escape this morning. Yet…

"Come on." I pull the smal