The Story of Dormammu

Zarathos heard the other man admit it.

He stopped pressing him and instead looked Dormammu up and down—this was, of course, the real Dormammu, the former Lord of the Dark Dimension.

That worn-out work uniform. Those hands covered in calluses.

That gaunt, exhausted face. That hunched back.

This guy had once been so vast, so terrifying, so utterly arrogant. His body had been enough to blot out the stars, his voice enough to shatter dimensions.

His very existence had been synonymous with fear.

And yet.

Now he was here, shoveling shit.

"How did you also—" Zarathos did not know what to say.

Dormammu gave a bitter smile.

It was bitter to the extreme, as if he had swallowed a mouthful of goldthread.

"Got dragged in by that madman," he said, his voice hoarse. "He devoured my Dark Dimension and absorbed my entire existence. By the time I woke up, I was already here."

He pointed around them—at the septic tanks, the manure buckets, and the E-Class Citizens wearing the same tattered work uniforms as them.

"Shoveling shit. Fifty points a day. Been doing it for three months."

Zarathos fell silent.

Three months.

He had thought his own one month had already been miserable enough. But Dormammu had been doing this here for three months.

"And you just accepted it?" he asked.

Dormammu looked at him, his gaze complicated.

There was helplessness in that gaze, exhaustion, resignation, and something Zarathos could not understand—that thing seemed like hope, yet also like despair, like a kind of calm that only came after experiencing tremendous rises and falls.

"What else?" he said. "Do you have a way out?"

Zarathos opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Dormammu continued, "I tried. At first, every day, I thought of ways to escape, ways to resist,