Nowhere King

* Nowhere King
* Elk
* Centaur

“*Now, more suffering. It's all that's left for us.*”
―Nowhere King, from The Last Lullaby
The **Nowhere King** was the main antagonist of the Netflix series, *Centaurworld*. Formerly an elk, he became an evil being who intended to destroy both the human world and Centaurworld. He first appears towards the end of The Rift: Part 1, where he is seen taking form to the lullaby of The Nowhere King.

**Spoiler warning:** This page contains many spoilers for the series finale. If you want to avoid spoilers, be wary of this.

## History

The Nowhere King had rather humble beginnings as an Elktaur who worked to repair Centaurworld's Rift. Despite Centaurworld and the human world being connected, the centaurs were treated as lesser than humans, which bothered him greatly. After fixing the Rift one day, he met the human world's princess and immediately caught feelings for her. She thanked him thoroughly for fixing the Rift and assured him she would tell her father about it. A royal party was thrown for him for fixing the Rift and assuring the princess' safe arrival home.

Over time, Elktaur and Woman flirt and become very close. However, the Elktaur always feels as if he could never be good enough for her because he was a centaur and she, a human. He was haunted by feelings of inferiority because of the way humans treated him and became set on turning himself into one of them. First he sawed off his antlers to appear more human-like, despite her saying that she liked his antlers. His self-hatred grew until he devised a plan to use the Key while inside the Rift to separate himself into a human and elk, hoping to become the human half while abandoning his elk half. Unfortunately, this fails miserably; he becomes the Elk, and the human half of him (the future General) turns against him and marries the Woman. The human then later attempts to drown the Elk, after the latter demanded they fuse back together, but fails, because killing one half of him would kill the other too. Because of this, the human locks the Elk in the dungeons for 10 years, until the Woman discovers the Elk and frees him.

After escaping from the dungeons, lonely and desperate to have a "family", the Elk used the Key to create the Minotaurs by merging humans and animals together. But doing this corrupted him, turning him into a monster physically and mentally, becoming the Nowhere King. As the Nowhere King, he created a war with the two worlds, causing nothing but chaos and death.

In the midst of the war, the Nowhere King battled the General in the Nowhere Place, but was stopped by the Woman, who used the key to destroy the machine after learning the truth. But during the confrontation, the Key backfired and exploded, causing the Woman and several fragments of the Key to be transported to Centaurworld and the General and a single fragment of the key to be transported to the human world. The Nowhere King, however, was trapped in the Rift.

### The Rift: Part 1

After Horse and Rider realize they are trapped within the Nowhere Place, a sludgy black substance drips down from above in globs and forms a pool from which the Nowhere King awakens amidst the tune of his lullaby. He coughs up his own black substance before looking at Rider and Horse, proclaiming, “...you.”

### The Rift: Part 2

Nowhere King questions Horse and Rider as to where the doorways out and Key to the Rift is, all the while his sludge-like body drips and holds them in place. Rider and Horse only tell him that the doors are closed and they don’t have the key. By the time “Nowhere King Battle'' begins, he has Horse and Rider completely surrounded. Angry to not only not have a way out but also have ‘houseguests’ in the void with him Nowhere King begins to drown/suffocate them both in his blackness - but is stopped when a centaurworld rutabaga hits his skull. The door to centaurworld reappears and the Herd and Waterbaby arrive ready to fight him and free Horse.

Nowhere King is actually pleased by this as they’ve given him a means of escape and plans to strand them, Horse, and Rider in the void. He restrains the herd temporarily but Wammawink is able to free all her friends (and Horse and Rider) using her magic who then attack the Nowhere King all at once: Durpleton shoots tiny versions of himself directly into his skull; Wammawink bubbles his limbs; Zulius uses his Hot Goss spell and Ched tries to keep him distracted. Fed up, Nowhere King body slams his weight into her herd which projects them back and says he’s waited too long to leave the void before making a break for the door to centaurworld. Wammawink is just barely able to make a bubble around the door and her friends, which the Nowhere King vigorously slams his head into and demands to be let out. Waterbaby strikes him with her magic and eggs him to come after her instead, this time he projectile vomits his sludge at her bubble, blinding her, before ramming it. The Herd and Rider refuse to leave without Waterbaby and so break the forcefield and charge before he can crush her, Wammawink declaring “either all of us are getting out of here or none of us are”. He retaliates, “so be it”.

At some point during the battle, Wammawink is thrown through the portal and back into Centaurworld's Rift structure. When she returns to the void in-between, Nowhere King has covered everything in his essence and is slowly strangling her herd, draining them of life. He captures Wammawink before she can assist them and taunts them with how if they had let him go he would have spared their lives, “at least, for a little while”. At that moment, the portal to Centaurworld reopens and the Woman steps forward, holding the key in her hands. Amazed to see her there, Nowhere King drops the herd before they can be killed and fixes his attention on her instead.

The Nowhere King says he never stopped thinking of her and of “what we could have had together”, though she only repeats her mantra while the Key glows in her aura and then turns into a spear. Nowhere King kneels before her and says he forgives her for making him what he is now, then bows his head seemingly so she can strike him. When she doesn’t, his eyes open and his sludge holds her and everyone else in place, but Horse and Rider are able to break free from it this time. The two of them charge ahead and steal the Key from the Woman’s hands then circle back around where Horse flings Rider at the Nowhere King and stabs him in the neck/chest. Nowhere King ‘bleeds’ out and evaporates into his skull along with the Key. His skull then bursts apart, freeing the centaurs, Horse, and Rider from the void and opening the rift permanently.

The Mysterious Woman explains to the celebrating herd and Rider that they did not actually kill the Nowhere King - rather destroying him in the void will only allow him to come back stronger and with “even more hate in his heart”. As she explains this, we see the Nowhere King reform in the human world (with the key still lodged in his body). He arrives at a dilapidated, minotaur-guarded castle whose guards bow to him.

The Nowhere King makes his way to the throne room of the castle, where just above the lone throne is a mural showing centaurs and humans living in harmony with a human woman and deer centaur holding hands in the center. Using his tendrils, he painfully pulls the Key out of his body then stabs the mural just between where the woman and deertaur meet.

### The Ballad of Becky Apples

Now in possession of the key, the Nowhere King begins making new minotaurs for the first time in years. Bayden, turned into a minotaur and fused to a crocodile, is brought before him as one such example before he tells his troops to "make more". However he closes the doors before the last minotaur in the room can leave and proceeds to eat his own man alive, unhinging his jaw and swallowing him whole. This meal replenishes some of Nowhere King's energy that he lost after years with no food in the Rift.

At the end of the episode, Nowhere King personally oversees the creation of more minotaurs and tells his men to begin assembling their army.

### The Hootenanny

The minotaur army and the Nowhere King himself showed up unexpectedly while Horse, Rider, and the herd were planning their battle strategy, unprepared. Seeing her forces and loved ones gravely outnumbered, Horse decided to use her backstory magic to stall the Nowhere King and take him down from the inside. She charged the Nowhere King at full force and jumped into his psych, freezing him and the minotaur army in place.

### The Last Lullaby

While inside the Nowhere King’s mind, Horse met his subconscious, represented as the elk he used to be, who gradually revealed to her his and the General’s history. Only after the Nowhere King was in full control of his body did the Nowhere King become aware of Horse’s being there and attempted to trap her inside his mind, saying “you belong nowhere, like me”. Horse only got out when the elk side of the Nowhere King briefly reappeared and showed her the door out, asking her to ‘finish what he couldn’t’. Amidst this battle in his mind, Nowhere King was also staring down his oldest enemy and half-self again, the General, who had arrived with his human forces to save the centaurworld army.

When Rider attempted to shoot the Nowhere King alone, the General intercepted and stabbed her through the chest. Again he and the Nowhere King had a standoff, the Nowhere King reminding the General how all that was in store for them was “more suffering”. The Mysterious Woman appeared on the battlefield with the Key, riding Becky Apples. As the Nowhere King stood idly by, the General tried to explain his reason for not killing the Nowhere King and hurting so many people to the Woman whom he had not seen in years. Mysterious Woman had enough of his excuses and chased the General to the edge of a cliff where Becky Apples kicked him off to his death. The Nowhere King, also gravely wounded, screamed in pain before falling off the same cliff.

When Mysterious Woman found them the General was dead while the Nowhere King was barely alive and trying to reach his human self. She knelt before them and used the Key to, at last, return them to the elktaur he once was. She told the elktaur what a pity it was that he suffered and caused others to suffer when she would have loved him just as he was. Before she struck him dead with the Key, the elktaur did not seem to object to his fate. His last words being addressed to the Woman: “my love, you’re finally free…” before he died.

## Physical Description

The Nowhere King is mainly composed of a black viscous liquid, with the only solid part of his form appearing to be his skull and antlers. His full form is that of a large, insect-like creature with six legs attached to a tendril-covered thorax, which ends in an enlarged abdomen that has several spines running along it. This ends in a globulous tail that makes up the majority of his length, and has the least consistent structure of his full body.

He has a deer-like skull with large yellow antlers that form fungal shapes. His eye sockets are usually vacant but occasionally burns with a glowing light. This light is usually green, and can change to a triangular shape as well as changes its color to either blue or yellow depending on which portal he sets his sights on; Centaurworld's or the human world's respectively. It is unclear how much control he has over the shape and color of his eyes.

## Personality

As the Elktaur, he was somewhat awkward and self deprecating. He was resentful of how silly his fellow centaurs behaved, while also resenting how poorly humans treated him and his kind. These resentments would form the basis of his outlook on himself and the two worlds.

After his Elk half became corrupted by him abusing the Key's powers and became the Nowhere King, he grew hateful, sadistic, cruel, and ruthless, as attributed in the lullaby sung about him. As referenced in the song, nothing brings him more joy than seeing the light in someone's eyes fade as they die. The Nowhere King also shows a hunger for conquest and war. However, despite this, he still expresses some concern and yearning for the Woman, even requesting that she be the one to kill him.

## Abilities

* **Shapeshifting**: While the Nowhere King slumbers, his form is a viscous liquid and it takes him some time to shift into a more solid form as he wakes. He is shown to have the ability to manipulate and separate from the black liquid that forms most of his body, which he uses to trap many of the main characters, and attempt to suffocate Horse and Rider. He is also able to expel a torrent of this same liquid from his mouth, as a way of attacking and trapping his victims.
* **Levitation:** He is capable of hovering and even flying through the air at great speeds.

## Relationships

### Woman

The Elktaur had been in love with the Woman, a human princess, since the moment he first saw her. Thinking she couldn't love him because he was a centaur, he undertook an experimental procedure to separate his animal being from his body and turn himself human but this instead split him into two beings: the Elk and the human General. Years later, the Woman found the Elk in the royal dungeons and set him free. Assuming the Elktaur had transformed himself and without knowing the truth about the Elk and the General, she told him to leave and not to wait for her any longer, before returning to her life as the deceitful General's wife. The Elk continued to pine over the Woman even as the Nowhere King. When she steps through the Rift to kill him, he immediately stops attacking the herd and is elated to see her again, repeating her and the General's wedding vows back to her and even bowing so she can personally strike him down. In his consciousness witnessed by Horse, the Nowhere King says his 'love for her runs eternal' and vows never to leave her side.

Nowhere King was fine with her killing him if it means ending his pain. After he was restored as the Elktaur in The Last Lullaby, the Elktaur makes no attempt to fight back as the Woman prepares to kill him. He adds that she is finally 'free' of him and the suffering he caused before he dies at her hands.

### General

The General reaped the benefits of the Elktaur's separation and eventually married the Princess while the Elk was left out of this relationship. While the Elk argued that the Woman could have loved him as the Elktaur, the General despised and resented his former self. When the Elktaur threatened to tell the Woman who they really were, the General attempted to drown him. However, this proved unsuccessful due to their life bond: if one of them were to die, the other would also perish. The General ordered the royal guards to capture the Elk and throw him into the castle dungeon, where he was kept for ten years until the Woman found the Elk and set him free.

***This section is a stub. You can help expand this section by adding some information.***

## Trivia

* Brian Stokes Mitchell, Nowhere King's voice actor, is a prominent Broadway star known for his performance as Don Quixote in *Man of La Mancha* and Coalhouse Walker Jr. in *Ragtime*. In film, he provided the singing voice for Jethro in *The Prince of Egypt* and Legend in *Tick, Tick...Boom!*
* Series creator Megan Nicole Dong revealed in an interview a few details about the Nowhere King/Elktaur that were unable to be portrayed in the show due to production constraints:
	+ The General and the Nowhere King share a consciousness, memories, and soul as they are two halves of the same person.
	+ A scene that was cut for time would have shown the General having dreams about what his Elk half was experiencing.
	+ Another scene that was cut for time would have shown the Elk trying to connect with the wildlife of the human world.
* The reason the Elktaur looks more 'realistic' than his fellow centaurs in Centaurworld is because what little time he has spent in the human realm has affected his appearance - he is more serious than most centaurs and appreciates the world of humans more than his more magical one.
* According to the series creator in an interview, the General has a different voice actor from the Nowhere King to symbolize how much he had changed from being the Elktaur, his original self, after he became separated in the Rift.

## Gallery

### Production art

Early concepts by Megan Nicole Dong, series creatorRough concepts by Evan Palmer, lead designerNowhere King tendrils reference by Evan Palmer, Lead Character DesignerNowhere King emerging poses by Evan Palmer, Lead Character DesignerNowhere King stabbed poses by Evan Palmer, Lead Character DesignerNowhere King's ink reformation, color design by Kimberly Knoll, art directorNowhere King taking the throne, color design by Kimberly Knoll, art director
### Screenshots

"She's...she's here""I never stopped thinking of you"Minotaur guards bow as the Nowhere King returns to his throne.

1. ↑ https://youtu.be/7fiesC\_ey2Y