We are frail creatures, we humans. Born without armor or defense or fang or claw. Helpless at first, and utterly dependent upon others to keep us alive. For years.

Even after we mature, we’re basically just walking bags of meat. It’s something of a wonder that there are so many of us, when you think about it in those terms.

What separates us from the beasts of the field, what makes us the ones who hunt and kill for the most part, rather than being the ones on the menu for all the stronger predators of the world, is our ability to think. To plan. And by and large, we don’t think happy, pleasant thoughts or plan for joyous days. We’re nasty, cruel and clever, taken as a group, and on the whole that’s a very good thing for an Evil Overlord.

You’re not going to secure Utter Domination on your own, after all. The administrative burden would be impossible for one person to cope with, if nothing else. You will need others, and they will need to be amoral, unflinching and good at what they do.

Just not as good as you.

~ ~ ~

We went back to the Dead Dogs headquarters. It was a long walk in the sere, strengthening early fall wind. Much like the book had done with me on the way to the river, I tried to convince Chortle not to do whatever it was she intended. Much like I had, Chortle ignored my entreaties until she had had enough of my babbling.

Unlike me, she didn’t promise to consider my position in return for my silence. Instead, she threatened to cut out my tongue if I didn’t shut my trap.

It was effective.

Hrazz’k was also silent for the whole journey. I might have had its true name, but it wasn’t like I knew what to do with it, nor was the book in any hurry to enlighten me. And Chortle wasn’t going to give me the chance to have a discussion with the thing except under very… controlled circumstances, lest I use whatever power I gained for my own ends instead of hers.

When we arrived at the disintegrating building that was the home of the Dead Dogs, things were not in their usual state. Fang and Dink, two of the other three Dead Dogs, looked especially murderous that day. All the loot was gone. And most noticeably, the third of Chortle’s bloodletters, Crusher, was tied up and gagged, with his back against a cracked column and his ass on the grimy floor. He’d had the absolute shit kicked out of him, which I would have bet good money was impossible.

They’d spread his legs wide and locked his knees, securing them that way with iron bars and chains.

“Siddown, scribbler.” I sat on one of the faded, worm-eaten chairs that were strewn around the place, basket still in hand.

“Did he talk?” Chortle asked Dink, who shook his head.

“Did you at any point take the gag out of his mouth to give ‘im the opportunity?”

“Uh…” Dink looked at Fang, desperate for help. Fang turned his tattooed face to the ceiling, suddenly very interested in all the cracks in the plaster.

“And now you know why I’m the fuckin’ boss,” Chortle said to me. Not that, by that point, I was under any illusion as to who was the brains of the Dead Dogs. I nodded.

“I brung you here today because we’re about to have an official opening in our organization, scribbler. Crusher here” – and she gave Crusher a kick in the balls to (unnecessarily) indicate who she was referring to - “decided to have a thought, you see. He forgot that thinking is my job, because I’m the only one in this outfit who doesn’t suck ass at it.”

She stood in front of the doomed Crusher for a long time, just staring at his pulped face. Crusher was sitting on the floor and Chortle was standing, and their eyes were just about level with each other, which should give you a decent idea of how big the man was, and how not-big Chortle was.

Crusher’s swollen eyes were absolutely mad with fear.

“What, uh, what did Crusher do, exactly?” I ventured. I wanted to know so I could make sure I never, ever did anything similar.

“Oh. He told the Blackheart gang about this place. I imagine they promised him a cut of everything they took, which is fucking idiotic, since he already had a cut, the dumb fuck.” She started kicking him in the danglies again, over and over and over. And over.

I winced, and closed my legs. Dink winced and Fang winced, Fang unconsciously covering his crotch with both heavily tattooed hands. It’s an involuntary reaction in men, I suspect. When you see something like that, you can’t help but feel sympathy. Or at least pity.

I can still hear the sound of it. Still makes me shudder. There’s a reason I wear an iron codpiece, and it isn’t fashion.

“Now that’s just wrong,” Hrazz’k whispered to me as Chortle went about crushing Crusher, and I couldn’t disagree.

Chortle was panting by the time she was through. Panting and smiling. Her dimples were two cherubic pits of cruelty.

“Is that where all the valuables went?” I asked. “Stolen by the Blackheart Gang?” I was hoping to distract her from resuming her attentions on the pitiable lump that was left of the man. Not for his sake, of course, but my own. I didn’t think I could stomach watching another round of testicular annihilation.

“What? No. Pfft. We moved our war chest as soon as it was clear this shit-stain was bent. The Blackhearts’ll come tonight, thinking we’re off on a job, and the only thing they’ll find is this traitor, with his balls in his mouth. Well, what’s left of ‘em, anyway Men are so awfully built. Your weakest spot is just, right there, dangling on the outside, for anybody lay a boot on. Pathetic, really.”

She bent down and removed the gag from Crusher’s mouth.

“Alright, I got one question,” she told him, patting his bloody, torn cheek. “Answer it and I’ll kill you before I cut off your balls. Sound good?”

Crusher nodded, utterly ruined and defeated.

“Why’d you do it, you stupid git?”

He coughed, spat out some bloody phlegm. Wheezed. “I did it…” cough “…for Lissa,” he finally groaned.

“Fucking hell,” Chortle grated out, rolling her eyes. “You did it for a woman? Light blind me, but I never want to see the other side of puberty if it makes you that fucking dumb.”

“She’s not wrong,” Hrazz’k whispered to me. “Humans get silly once they start growing pubic hair.”

I wanted to tell it to shut up, but I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I now controlled a demon-bound book. I mean, of course she knew, but I held on to the faint hope that Chortle would just forget about it, that it would get lost in the shuffle, what with all the torture and such.

Hope is what you have when you don’t have anything else, after all.

Chortle sighed. “Alright, Crusher. You were a good Dog. Until you weren’t.” And with that, she whipped out her knife and stabbed him in the gut.

He screamed and writhed around as much as he could, which wasn’t much. Chortle stood up and turned away from him, and caught me looking at her.

“What?”

“You, uh, you said you were going to kill him.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t say I’d do it quick.” She turned to Dink and Fang. “Get a blade in, boys. Nothing vital, now.”

The remaining Dead Dogs went and did their master’s bidding. Their master sauntered up to me and presented me with a fresh knife, hilt-first.

I looked at the knife. Then I looked at Chortle. The moment stretched.

“You want me to, uh-”

“Yes I want you to stab him, dumbass. I told you we had a spot opening up in the Dogs. Now’s your chance to take it.”

“Is there, say, an alternative?”

“You could join him instead of us, if that’s what you really wanted.”

I took the knife.

“But why do you want me?” I asked as I got up to physically, grievously harm another human for the first time in my life.

“I realized that this organization lacks diversity, scribbler. Dink and Fang are right good at what they do, but what they do is what you might call limited in scope. Crusher didn’t offer anything different. You do. Now get to stabbing, chop chop. We ain’t got all fuckin’ day.”

I approached the man whose position I was about to involuntarily fill. He was still breathing; Dink and Fang had confined themselves to putting holes in his limbs, in fear of ending his life prematurely and upsetting Chortle, no doubt. I squatted down next to Crusher and tried to decide where I should poke him.

“Kill me,” he whispered.

I glanced back at Chortle, and shook my head. “We just aren’t that close, you and I. sorry.”

“Gut’s a good choice,” Chortle called. “Or just pick a limb. Whatever.”

Tentatively I poked at his thigh. The blade was sharp and pointy, but it’s surprisingly hard to make yourself stab a person with enough force to make a difference, when you have no real grudge against said person.

The first time, anyway.

I managed to scratch his leather pants, though, which up to that point in my life was about as violent a thing as I’d ever done to another living thing, if chickens don’t count.

“Do it, scribbler. I want to see blood. If I don’t see his in about five seconds, it’ll be yours.”

I sighed and grimaced and said ‘sorry’ and plunged the knife into the meat of his thigh with all the force I could muster. It was enough to bury the blade a good inch, at least.

Dink and Fang started clapping. Chortle patted me on the shoulder. Crusher groaned.

“Welcome to the Dead Dogs, scribbler. From this moment forward, you will be known as Scribbler.”

“That’s what you already called me.”

“Yeah, but now when I call you it, I’ll imagine a capital letter at the front.”

* * *

Chortle made Dink and Fang finish off Crusher, which they seemed relieved to do. Then she made them transfer his testicles from their accustomed place to his mouth, just as she’d told me would happen (Chortle was surprisingly honest, most of the time, and very big on keeping promises. You always knew where you stood with her, which is really quite a good leadership skill, generally speaking. The fact that most of her promises were also threats is no negative thing, for an Overlord).

Dink and Fang weren’t exactly enthusiastic about their second task, but something told me it also wasn’t their first time doing it. Something about the efficiency with which they went about it; you can tell a professional if you pay attention.

Anyway, once that chore was done, Chortle led us all out of the now-former Dead Dogs headquarters and through a long, seemingly random tour of the city. (You’ll notice that I haven’t gone into much detail regarding the physical environs of the Capital. The reason is because there isn’t much point, to my mind, in talking about a place that no longer exists. Oh, they rebuilt after the fire, of course. More or less. But it just isn’t the same.)

By the time we finally arrived at our destination, it was well after lunch. I was hungry, my feet hurt, I was sick of hauling a basket full of heavy tomes and I was tired of being out in the early autumn west wind. But that first sight of Chortle’s new lair drove all those grumbles from my mind.

The new headquarters of the Dead Dogs turned out to be a palace.

A very small palace, mind you, situated at the very ass-end of what you might call the rich neighborhood on the west side of the capital, the place where people with lots of money but decidedly commoner blood put up sticks. But it was a palace, and it wasn’t even crumbling. Chortle strolled through the gate, past a little topiary garden and through the ironwood double doors into the foyer. To the left I could just see a library. Ahead was a grand marble staircase.

I wanted to ask Chortle how she’d come by such a hideously expensive property, but I already knew the answer would boil down to ‘crime’. And anyway, by that point I was thoroughly convinced that Chortle was capable of anything.

“Pick your bedrooms, Dogs. There’s a dozen of ‘em. Meet back here in ten minutes.”

Dink and Fang stalked up the marble staircase, evil grins plastered on their faces. Or maybe they were just regular grins, for them.

“What’re you waiting for Scribbler?” Chortle asked me.

“I have a bedroom. At the Scriptorium. It’s awful but it’s mine, and I need to be in it every night. They do checks, when they can remember or be bothered. Also they’ll definitely notice when I don’t show up with food for tomorrow.”

“Scribbler, Scribbler, Scribbler,” Chortle said, shaking her head. “You’re a Dead Dog now. You ain’t going back to the Scriptorium.”

“I’m not?”

“Of course you’re not. You’re gonna stay right where I can keep an eye on you, day and night. ‘Specially now you got that book.”

I said something servants of the Light aren’t supposed to say or even know about, really, and Chortle did as her name would suggest.

“C’mon, Scribbler, let’s you and me go and have a seat in the library and talk a little before the boys come back down.”

“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” she continued once she’d parked herself behind a big writing desk. She’d had to put a book on the chair seat to sit at the desk comfortably. I’d just thrown the basket down and myself into another chair, overcome by the sudden, permanent, life-altering event she’d just laid on me.

An accomplished Evil Overlord will take such momentous and surprising events in stride, never hinting at any disquiet they might feel. I was not yet and accomplished Evil Overlord. Or even an unaccomplished one. I was a wastrel who’d had a good and comfortable scam going, and an eight-year-old girl had just laid it all to waste.

I’m pretty sure I was technically in shock.

“Think of it this way,” Chortle continued. “Could you ever have brung a girl back to your room at the Scriptorium?”

“No,” I grudgingly admitted.

“Drunk as much wine as you wanted with your dinner?”

I shook my head.

“Stabbed somebody just for looking at you funny?”

“No. Well, maybe, if nobody was looking. But practically speaking, no.”

“So really, you should be thanking me for giving you a whole new level of freedom you couldn’t even of imagined before.”

I glanced over at her. She was smiling. The dimples were showing.

“As long as I do what you tell me to.”

“As long as you do what I say,” she replied, nodding.

Dink and Fang came back down then. She sent Dink out to get us all lunch, and set Fang to glowering in the corner.

I might have been an official Dead Dog, but that didn’t mean she trusted me yet. Actually, I doubt Chortle had ever trusted anybody besides herself in the entirety of her short life, but there were definitely… levels of distrust. And I was still near the top.

“It’s time to talk about that book,” she said. “Tell me what you know.”

“I know fuck-all besides its name. I wasn’t planning on any of this. I just wanted to sell off some books to raise my stake at the Golden Coins.”

“What kinda power does it hold?”

“I don’t know, Chortle. It hasn’t said. Just that it can give me ‘lots and lots’ of it.”

“Well why don’t you ask it, then?”

“Why don’t you ask it? You’re the one who thinks messing around with demonic magic is a good idea.”

“Maybe I will, when we’ve got it all figured out. Until then, that’s your job.” She pulled out her knife again and laid it on the desk, to let me know she’d taken just about as much lip from me as she was going to.

I blew out a breath and looked down at the basket. I realized I still didn’t know which of the four actually held an imprisoned demon. I shrugged. It would all come to light eventually, whether I liked it or not, which I did not.

“Book. What sort of power, specifically, can you grant to your owner?”

Hrazz’k mumbled something just on the edge of audibility.

“What? Speak up.”

“I said power over fire. Pyromancy, if you want to be technical and fancy.” Its tone was positively truculent.

“It says it grants power over fire,” I informed the new master of my fate. Which was kind of boring and pedestrian, to my mind. I mean, I wasn’t expecting unlimited wishes or anything, but immortality would’ve been nice. Or even invulnerability. If I could have that, then Chortle could go suck an egg.

I could practically see Chortle’s thoughts racing. Her mind was like a well-oiled, intricate machine. A machine that took in virtually any random fact, and from said fact produced a plan to exploit it that would be as viable as it was criminal.

“Do you have to read from the book to use the power? Is it like a spell?” she asked.

“You heard her,” I told the book. “Answer the question.”

“No. I just transfer the power on command. It stays with you for life. No need to be putting your sweaty, grimy, oily mortal hands on me all the time, thank the Archfiend.”

“Yeah,” I told Chortle. “It’s essentially a spell book.”

Let me pause here and go into a little detail as to why I chose to lie to the murderous, evil genius who held my very life in her small hands, despite the fact that she took an incredibly dim view of anything that might be considered disloyalty.

First off, because fuck her. She’d ripped me out of my comfortable, self-serving existence the same way you might pluck a weed from a crack in a paving stone. Said weed wasn’t useful in any imaginable way, but it also wasn’t bothering anybody. Also, I’d been eight years in what amounted to an elite academy teaching the art of pettiness. If lying to Chortle was the only revenge I could take, then by the Light I didn’t actually believe in, I was going to take it.

Second, and much more practically speaking, I had to lie so that Chortle didn’t know she’d have to murder me at some point.

When Chortle eventually decided to take the book’s power for herself – and she would, as sure as night follows day and harlots charge extra for that nasty thing you like – it appeared she’d have to kill me to get it. Assuming that was correct (and I couldn’t think of another way to interpret ‘the power stays with you for life’) Chortle would unhesitatingly slit my throat to get the book’s power. She’d have to.

I wanted to keep that fact to myself for as long as possible.

“Well,” she said, frowning a little, “Looks like you and I might be having some lessons in the future. It’s about time I learned to read better anyway. For now, let’s have a little demonstration.”

“You want me to use the book now?”

“No time like the present, Scribbler. You busy or somethin’?”

“I really don’t want to.”

“I really don’t care.”

Blowing out a breath, I started pulling the books out of the basket. Hrazz’k was the one on the bottom, which I discovered as soon as I touched it. Now that I possessed its true name, there was a… connection between us, I suppose. Mystical, and kind of soul-soiling in a way that’s hard to describe. A bit like putting your hand down where someone has just hocked up a glob of phlegm, except your hand is actually your soul and the phlegm is a demon’s essence.

“You might not want to look directly at the book,” I told Chortle.

“Why?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“In case the demon has been lying this whole time and it turns you to stone or ash or whatever. And me as well, come to think of it, thanks to you. Actually you should definitely keep your eyes on the book.” Actually I was desperately afraid the pages would be blank, in which case I’d have some explaining to do.

“Oh, I think that first bit of advice sounds reasonable.” She kept her eyes on me instead of the book, which wasn’t all that much more comfortable, but whatever. I’d actually managed to trick her into doing what I wanted, small victory though it was.

“Do you want me to transfer the power to you now, master?” Hrazz’k didn’t bother to keep the bitterness from his voice.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I muttered, opening the book to the first page.

At first nothing happened that I could tell. Then I started to feel a tingling sensation all over, a rather pleasant one, actually.

“You gonna start reading or what, Scribbler?” Chortle was only patient when she had to be, and considering the power dynamic in her relationship with me, she didn’t have to be.

“Hold your horses. Something’s happening.”

“What, exactly?”

I didn’t bother to answer her. I don’t think I could have by that point, honestly.

Hrazz’k, it turned out, hadn’t been lying when it said it could grant lots and lots of power. In truth, it was way-too-fucking-much power. I was rapidly starting to feel like a sausage casing being stuffed with mystery meat, more than I could possibly hope to hold. I felt like the power that was being crammed into me would either very quickly start spill out, or I would explode. Or both. Probably both.

“Eh, I was kinda afraid of that,” Hrazz’k said.