There’s an elvish saying that boils down to ‘beginnings are fragile’ when you strip out all the extra bullshit they always dump into anything they say. Honestly, Glamridangridar, we can all understand you better when you don’t go on about ‘the first buds of spring shivering in the receding shadow of a winter that hesitates and halts.’

There’s also an orcish saying – I know, I was surprised as well – that gets at the same thing, but from the opposite direction: ‘If you eat the wyvern in its shell, it can’t eat you.’ Orcs are practical. Also not picky eaters.

What I’d like for the reader to take away from both of these sayings is that, when you do embark upon your quest for Utter Domination, don’t make the beginner’s mistake of overestimating yourself or your capabilities. Don’t expect that you’ll be the greatest thing since meat on a stick first thing, because that’s a really good way to end up being actual meat on a stick.

~ ~ ~

I’d essentially pulled the Debatable Lands out of my ass in response to Hod’s question, but the more I thought about it as I fled, slowly, from the scene of my crime, the more it seemed to make sense as a destination.

The lands of men (and yes women, that’s a given, so get off my tits already – I’m a bigger proponent of equality than any ruler you’ll ever meet*) are vast, but if you look on a map, you’ll see that not more than a quarter of the continent can reasonably be claimed to be controlled by humanity.

Some of the rest of it belongs to this or that race, either in an explicit or a de facto way. Nobody would argue the fact that the eastern end of the continent is orc territory, for example, though you’d be hard-pressed to find any recognizable governing body amongst the green-skins. To the north you’ve got those pricks the elves, and scattered here and there you’ll find a dwarven hold.

But quite a bit of territory can’t rightly be said to belong to anybody in particular, at any given point in time. To the west of the kingdom was such a place: the Debatable Lands.

It’s not that nobody lived there. A fair number of people did, in fact, of every race - including those most folks wouldn’t strictly think of as people.

What I’m getting at here is the Debatable Lands were chock-full of monsters and other assorted riff-raff, and the land itself wasn’t worth the blood and treasure it would’ve taken to clear them out. Which makes it sound horrible and dangerous. Which it absolutely was and is. But when you’re a fugitive hiding from ‘justice’ in the form of a messy, agonizing death preceded by torture, you go where your pursuers will be reluctant to follow. A place you can get good and lost in. A place where inquisitors and thief-takers are more likely to get a knife in the eye than the time of day.

Or at least I did.

My flight from the kingdom to the dubious safety of the Debatable Lands was more of a plod, really. I’d grown up in the eastern ass-end of the kingdom. Now, I was trudging towards its western ass-end. (I know that’s too many asses, but honestly I don’t care. It’s metaphorically if not anatomically accurate.) The main thing I noticed on my journey was that the west was somehow even poorer than the east, which I wouldn’t have believed possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. At least in the east the land was generally flat, had a sufficiency of rivers and streams, and was decent enough for farming.

In the west, the further I got from the capital, the more I saw trees, rocks and ever-steepening hills, and not much more. Even the trees were fairly useless in terms of industry – we aren’t talking towering pines or stately oaks. No, these were twisted, spindly flinchberries and thorny pin-sere for the most part, good only for burning if you could be bothered. Or had no choice.

I’d like to tell you that I spent the days that followed in hatching my grand scheme for Utter Domination, polishing every facet of said plan until it was flawless and inevitable. That would be a lie. Mostly what I did was feel sorry for myself and my dog-savaged ass cheeks, and refuse to speak to Hrazz’k in anything other than foul language. Petulant? Maybe. Petty? Of course. Satisfying? Yes, for a day or so. Even the younger, callow me got tired of it pretty quickly, however.

I may not have pondered Utter Domination then, but I did think on my situation, the hazards I faced, and how best to survive them.

Hrazz’k, for example, was like a two-edged sword. On one side, it contained lots of knowledge about many things, being centuries old and such. Knowledge that might keep me alive despite my absolutely awful situation. On the other hand, Hrazz’k was a freaking demon, and demons aren’t nurturing or trustworthy. There was nothing to stop it from leading me into some sort of deadly trap if it saw a benefit to itself.

I wasn’t immediately fearful of treachery. Alone with me in the wilds and subject to the elements if I should abandon it or perish, the book’s best interest lay in keeping me alive and moving towards some place with people, where it might strike a deal with someone doltish enough to set it free. In other words, it was on my side for the time being. But once I reached some semblance of civilization, all bets would be off.

Cheerful thoughts such as that, and whether the king (or whoever had succeeded him, assuming he’d also died in the fire) had already sent killers after me occupied my mind as I walked during the day. Nightmares of wizards and inquisitors hunting me down and then proceeding to do awful, painful things to me kept me company at night.

Well, sometimes Petal also made a naughty nocturnal visit, in between dreams of me being drawn and quartered and such. but even those dreams turned into nightmares as often as not, with her tying me up in bed and then taking off her Petal disguise to reveal she was actually the Primate of the Light, who was absolutely ancient. The primate still kept Petal’s bosoms, though, which I found disturbing in the extreme. She (he?) would proceed to whip my immobile frame while reciting the seven penances, boobs bouncing with every lash.

Anyway, I woke up screaming in the dark more than once. The unconscious mind is a truly mysterious, unsettling, and often terrifying place.

* * *

The charcoal burner’s village where I almost died a few days later was, to put it kindly, a shithole. Not that there’s any other kind of charcoal burner’s village. When your living is the dirty, dangerous and poverty-wage job turning trees into charcoal, the visual aesthetics of what’s only a temporary home are bound to rate pretty low on the list of things you’re bothered about.

I call it a village, but really it was just four pathetic structures that were barely more than lean-tos. I was attracted to it by the smell of cooking meat. I had some food, thanks to Myrna and Hod, but it wasn’t going to last me all the way to the Debatable Lands. At most I had four more days of provender if I rationed it, and I think it goes without saying that I had no idea how to hunt or trap, and no tools to do so even if I hadn’t been clueless about survival in the wilds.

Not a single manuscript I’d copied over the years had seen fit to mention anything vaguely useful, like how to find or catch food. Monks and priests get into the religion business so that they don’t have to worry about such things. Food comes from the suckers – excuse me, the faithful, after all, in grateful acknowledgment of the church’s standing between them and the powers of darkness and the disapproval of a very judgy supreme being.

Anyway, I smelled cooking meat and saw smoke rising from the woods up ahead, and thought I might try my luck at a little begging. Couldn’t hurt, right?

Right.

I walked into the clearing where the hovels were located. I didn’t see anybody about, but the pit in the middle of the place where they turned wood into charcoal was smoking, so I figured they couldn’t be far off. But I hadn’t heard any axes at work, and the bite of the blade against wood was a sound that carried far in a quiet landscape.

I figured maybe they were in their shanties. Maybe they were drunk and sleeping it off. And most importantly, maybe they would share their alcohol.

I peeked into one hut. It was empty. Well, not empty – there was a ragged blanket and a cooking pot. But no people.

At that point I started to get a feeling that maybe things weren’t so right. I think it was the cookpot that did it. I still smelled meat, but there wasn’t a cook fire; just the charcoal pit. And nobody cooks on a charcoal pit.

Now you’d think that, having intimate experience with the fiery destruction of an entire city, I’d know what burnt human flesh smelled like, and you’d be right. It smells like pork. You honestly can’t tell the difference. And the last thing I expected in the middle of nowhere was to smell roasting people, so I didn’t make the connection until I went and looked in the pit.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

There were five or six of them, it was hard to say exactly because of how they were all jumbled together. There was no way of telling by that point what had killed the charcoal burners, just that they were very dead.

“You should probably be moving on, kid,” Hrazz’k said. I’d forgotten it was even there in the makeshift haversack on my back. For once I didn’t tell it to fuck off. I just grunted and turned to leave.

There were four men standing at the far side of the clearing now, between me and the trail. They were staring at me. Each of them had a weapon of some sort, and bits of armor on their filthy frames. They made the Dead Dogs look like absolute gentlemen.

“Too late,” Hrazz’k said unnecessarily.

I took a closer look at what they were carrying, weapons-wise: a cleaver, two rusty swords and a mace. The mace still had gore and strands of hair on its spiked head.

No bow.

I ran like hell in the opposite direction, into the woods.

I heard them starting after me. One of them howled like a wolf. Another shouted “Get back ‘ere and take it like a man!” as if I was somehow going to agree to prove my manhood by standing still while getting murdered. Honestly.

Anyway, they chased me into the trees, shouting and such, and then just panting and cursing after a time. I may not have been particularly in shape, but I was very motivated. Unfortunately, they seemed just as determined to catch me as I was to escape, and there were four of them.

“I don’t think you’re going to lose them, kid,” Hrazz’k informed me. “Better you just go ahead and kill ‘em.”

That seemed unlikely. The ‘weapon’ that Hod had given me was actually just an iron-capped walking stick. I mean, it was definitely better than nothing. I don’ t want to sound ungrateful. But it wasn’t what you could call effective against actual implements of injury, and men who know how to use them.

And besides, I’d already lost it. You try running for your life through the woods, see if you don’t misplace a thing or two.

“What am I supposed to kill them with?” I panted. “My superior grammar?”

“Kid, you’re a pyromancer now. Did you actually forget that?”

I hadn’t forgotten, exactly. I’d blocked it out, more like. The one and only time I’d ‘used’ the power wasn’t exactly a happy memory.

“What? No, of course not.”

“I wondered why you never started a campfire at night,” Hrazz’k said.

“Fine. I don’t know how to use it,” I panted, narrowly avoiding slamming into a tree for about the hundredth time. They weren’t exactly widely spaced. Also the undergrowth kept threatening to trip me up. I was not enjoying myself.

“You just sort of mentally call it to you, like a pet dog or something. And then you mentally tell it what to do. Just, like, visualize, kid.”

“You don’t actually know how to use it either, do you.”

“Hey, I just pass the power along. Demons don’t burn stuff and revel in flames any more than anyone else. That’s just a stupid church rumor. You should really hurry up, they’re gaining on you.”

“Fuck. Fucking fuck.”

Visualize. I imagined a flame floating in front of me, keeping pace with me, which is not as easy as you might think when you’re crashing through the woods.

To my considerable surprise, one appeared. It was about the size of a candle’s flame, but it was there. It was real.

“Attaboy! Burn ‘em, kid!”

I turned to attempt fiery mayhem on my pursuers. The one with the mace was in the lead. Rather unnecessarily I brought my arm back and imagined throwing fire right into his scarred sweaty face. Unfortunately, he threw his mace first and it got me a good one on the forehead.

I fell backwards, visualizations of fire and just about everything else knocked out of me. Then the back of my head smacked into a jagged stone when I hit the ground, and I knew fuck all for a while.

* * *

If you ever lose consciousness after being attacked by enemies and have the good fortune to later awake because they were stupid enough not to end you then and there, you should immediately do two things: First, thank the uncaring universe for your enemy’s idiotic mistake. Second, don’t let on that you’ve regained consciousness.

I didn’t know why the killers had bothered to bring me back to the charcoal burner’s camp, but the first thing my senses told me – specifically my sense of smell – was that they had. (I will eat whatever I have to when the situation warrants, but to this day I am not fond of anything pork-related.) The second thing my senses reported to me was that I was in a lot of pain, mostly from my head, but also from being very tightly bound.

The third thing was that my captors were having a conversation – both with each other and with Hrazz’k, the fucker.

“But you’re a book,” One of them was saying.

“Yeah, but I’m also a demon.”

“You’ve got pages and everything. And you’ve got no tail.”

“Not even any claws,” another one observed.

“Yes, I know. I’m a book now, but I used to be a demon. And if you free me I’ll be a demon again. Get it?”

The general silence seemed to indicate that they didn’t.

“Look, it’s really simple,” Hrazz’k told them, and by its tone I could tell that this wasn’t the first round of explaining it had done. “You free me from the book and I’ll give you power.”

“What kinda power?” asked the first voice.

“Can you give me a giant cock?” asked the second.

“What? You’re already a giant cock.” said the first.

“Well you’re a giant cunt!” replied the second.

“I want women and gold,” said a third.

“You’ll give us all power? Or just one?” asked the fourth, who must have been the brains of the bunch.

“Just one, sorry. You’ll have to choose amongst yourselves.”

“You’ll give it to us all, or we’ll burn ya!”

Hrazz’k actually sighed. “You can try.”

“You give me the power, book, and I’ll set ya free.”

“Fuck you, Mungo! You ain’t getting shit I don’t get!”

This sort of thing went on for a while. At first I was too stunned and dizzy to do anything but lie there and passively listen, head pounding so badly that I wouldn’t have minded dying just to end the pain. But slowly my shattered thoughts began to reknit themselves.

The first thing I consciously thought was Hrazz’k, you traitorous, backstabbing piece of shit. The second actual thought was How the hell do I get myself out of this?

The four bandits were now actively punching, kicking and each other, by the sounds of it. I decided to risk opening an eye to get a better understanding of my exact situation.

I was laying on my belly, head uncomfortably close to the corpse pit. I was bound at wrist and ankle, arms behind my back. The bonds were connected and the rope wasn’t all that long. I couldn’t stretch my legs straight, so I wouldn’t be hopping my way to freedom.

At first I thought about finding some sharp rock or something with which to saw at my bonds, but then I remembered, duh, that I actually did have fire at my command, and that ropes are, in fact, flammable. I visualized the rope burning. I wasn’t actually worried about burning myself, because if I’d survived the inferno of the capital, why would I?

It worked.

It should say something about both my luck and my mental state at the time that this, the smallest of successes, actually surprised me. Confidence is a quality that’s absolutely necessary for an Evil Overlord – but it is also a flame that needs to be carefully tended and sheltered from the harsh winds of a hostile world. You are what you think just as much as you are what you do.

Once the rope was no more, I quickly if unsteadily stood and turned to face my captors.

They were really going at each other now. One of them was either unconscious or outright dead, and a second was crawling away from the affray with an obviously broken leg. The remaining two were standing. One of them, the fellow with the mace from before, had the book in one hand and a dagger in the other. That dagger was stuck in the guts of the other, who was in turn choking the ever-loving shit out of Mister Mace.

I put a stop to their quarrel by burning both to a crisp. Then I went and did the same to the other two. Then I puked up my meager breakfast.

It wasn’t squeamishness; it was just the concussion. I honestly didn’t feel a thing for the murderers I’d just turned to ash. It wasn’t at all like when I’d been forced to stab Crusher. I felt… nothing much, really. It was like killing chickens back on the farm. Just a distasteful, unpleasant job that needed to be done.

“Good job, kid,” said Hrazz’k.

“You,” I growled, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Me what?”

“I heard you, you leather bound traitor. You were ready and willing to let me get killed.” I picked the book up out of the pile of bone and ash that had been Mace Guy. “Next stream I come across, you’re getting a bath.”

“Kid, I don’t know how much you heard, but I saved your life.”

“Oh, spare me your bullshit.”

“How do you think you ended up back here instead of getting your throat slit out in the forest? I convinced them to drag your ungrateful, unconscious meat-sack all the way here instead.”

I mean, I had been wondering about that. But it didn’t mean I trusted Hrazz’k.

“Well what about the whole ‘free me and I’ll give you lots of power?’ thing? I definitely heard that part.”

“Do I want out of this book? Of course I do. I’ve been in here a long, long, long time, kid. If they’d been dumb enough to free me, well then it would’ve been my lucky day. But that’s got nothing to do with you. You’ve got what power I have to offer, and you’ve got it for as long as you’re alive. Did you hear me telling them to off you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Exactly. I really don’t have any ill will towards you. I mean, I think you’re kind of pitiful and stubborn and whiny, but I’m also having more fun than I’ve had in centuries. If I have to be a book, I’d just as soon tag along with you while you bumble around.”

“…Thanks?”

*Everyone who isn’t me is absolutely equal to everyone else who isn’t me, in my eyes. You’ll not see me showing any favoritism, I promise you that.