My advice to any Overlord regarding getting involved in physical altercations, generally speaking, is don’t. Once you’ve clawed your way to the top, you should really be above such things- I mean, you’re at the top. You’ve presumably got lots of fodder to take care of workaday rebellions, peasant uprisings and monstrous incursions. That’s their job. Let them earn their pay. It can be disheartening when the boss comes along and does your job better than you, and an Evil Overlord wants his or her people motivated.

That’s not to say you should never get your hands dirty. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, and sometimes you want to send a message – be it to whoever sent that invisible assassin, or to underlings who might be beginning to think their ass would fill your throne of skulls better than yours, or to some newly annexed bit of territory that still has a smoldering bit of spunk.

What I’m saying is, an Evil Overlord should be judicious in the use of their powers, whatever they might be. Rending the flesh from an enemy using dark magic, say, has a real and undeniable wow factor, but if you do it every day, folks are gonna get used to it.

You don’t want them to get used to it. You want them to shit their pants when they see it, not shrug and make plans for lunch.

~ ~ ~

The rock worm began to slither its way toward us. It was difficult to see even when it was in motion, but I estimated it was as big around as my thigh and was more than twice as long as I was tall. And I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to have a face per se, just a slit for a mouth.

“Dickhead. Seriously. Untie us.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. Or wise.” I threw a flame at the worm, expecting to quickly have an exotic dinner prepared. The flame hit the thing and dissipated, doing absolutely no damage. Honestly, it looked like the worm didn’t even notice. It just kept squirming ever closer.

“Rocks aren’t known for their flammable qualities, dipshit. Untie us!”

Damn.

“Fine,” I said, pulling out my ax because it was the sharpest thing I had. “But if you try to kill me I will burn you to the ground, boobs or not.” I started sawing at her bonds, and as soon as she was free she ripped the ax from my hands and threw herself at the rock worm, which was now quite uncomfortably close.

“Free Nuk and watch for others!” she shouted as she began hacking at the thing. It screamed. I don’t speak rock worm, but it sounded more angry than hurt. I rushed over to Nuck and cut him free as well with a dagger I’d claimed, then climbed on top of the boulder he’d been leaning against while he scrambled to the weapons pile. I scanned for more threats, dropping the dagger and pulling out my short sword. The light was starting to fade, but I was pretty sure I saw movement coming from the north side of the Divide. I couldn’t tell how many more might be approaching.

I spared a glance for Catapult. She was really going to town, just chopping into the rock worm with all her considerable strength, and dodging its strikes with pure athletic grace. She looked good, I’m not going to lie. Also frightening. I was equal parts aroused and terrified.

(A quick aside: It’s really very difficult to fight effectively when you’re naked and not used to it. I’m not talking about barbarians and kobolds and such, who do it as a matter of course. I mean people like Catapult, professionals who are used to armor, or at least not having their asses hanging out. Beyond the distracting embarrassment factor, there’s a whole host of physical training that no longer applies. What would mean nothing more than a scratch in even shitty leather armor could earn you a disemboweling when you’re in your birthday suit. It matters.)

Nuk screamed, distracting me from the Naked Lady Fights Phallic Symbol show, for which I was both relieved and annoyed. I tore my eyes away and glanced at him. He’d gone for his bow, for some reason – I was no expert, but I doubted arrows would do much good against these things – and a second rock worm had him by the ankle, and was slithering around and around up his leg. They were constrictors, apparently. I saw the mouth open, and there were no fangs, just what looked disturbingly like human molar teeth. My guess was they squeezed their prey to a tender consistency and then chewed up the remains.

In that moment I was faced with a choice: go and help Nuk, or stay where I was. I weighed the pros and cons, which did not take long because there were hardly any pros and the cons were like a page from an illuminated manuscript written in big bold letters picked out with lots of bright colors.

Anyway, a third rock worm suddenly appeared at the base of my boulder and put paid to my already incredibly feeble impulse to help him. It reared up in front of me like a cobra, mouth wide, hissing. I screamed and stabbed at it with my short sword. It dodged and I missed completely, throwing myself off balance. I would have stumbled off the boulder if it hadn’t wrapped itself around my waist. I tried to scream again, but only a high squeak came out of me because it was squeezing the hell out of my diaphragm. Then it picked me up off my boulder and started whipping me back and forth, slamming me into the rock-littered ground, left and right, left and right.

I lost my sword really quickly. I started to see stars.

“Hey kid?” Hrazz’k said. “I don’t want to seem unsupportive, but it seems like you’re kinda getting your ass kicked.”

Even in my breathless, increasingly pummeled state I managed raise a middle finger in salute.

“I’m gonna make a suggestion, if that’s alright,” Hrazz’k continued. “I mean, I don’t want to step on your toes or anything.”

“Spit” slam “it” slam “out,” I squeaked.

“Right, sure buddy. I was just thinking that, you know, just because the outsides of these things are fireproof, that doesn’t mean the insides are, you know? Just a thought.”

I was dazed enough from my battering that, at first, I tried to work out how I could get the flame down the creature’s throat. It seemed like an incredibly difficult thing to do, considering I was no longer sure which way was up, much less where the thing’s mouth happened to be. Hell. I wasn’t even confident where my mouth was by that point. Then I realized I could just put the fire wherever I wanted. It didn’t have to start out on the outside of the fucking thing, that was just me thinking like magic was a normal weapon. It wasn’t. Hrazz’k had already shared with me a couple of examples of how previous wielders had started fires in places they couldn’t physically see into.

I put my hand on the coil of the rock worm that was squeezing the life from me and imagined the flame igniting just a couple of inches beneath my palms.

The beast paused mid-slam.

Encouraged, I imagined the fire growing in either direction, burning its way towards both ends of the monster.

It freaked the fuck out.

The beating it had been administering to me until then proved to be in the nature of foreplay. Now it proceeded to give me a right good pounding. It loosened teeth and cracked ribs. The world began to darken – and then, finally, the thing collapsed, twitching, to the ground. I lay there panting for a while. I’d never appreciated just how magical breathing was, before that. We just take them for granted, don’t we, all the little things in life.

Somewhere off to my right Nuk was still screaming. It was interfering with my appreciation. I sat up, pushing the thing off me as best I could, and looked in his direction. His rock worm had him in its coils, from toes to shoulders, and was about to start chomping on his balding, ginger head. I sighed and put fire in its gizzard – not because I wanted to save Nuk especially, mind you, but because I had decided I really didn’t like rock worms, and I also really didn’t like Nuk’s high-pitched screaming. Killing the thing that was trying to eat him was just killing two birds with one stone.

I put enough oomph in that one that it actually split down its side a bit, just behind the head. Flame leaked out of the fissure.

“Hey, you’re getting the hang of it, kid!” Hrazz’k cheered as the thing collapsed. I got to my knees, and then worked my way to an unsteady standing position. Then I went to check on Catapult.

She’d done a hell of a lot more damage to her opponent than Nuk or I had with conventional weapons. The dark red flesh of its insides was visible in three or four places, and it was weeping blood. But it in turn had given her a hard time as well. It had all of her except her right arm in its coils. She still held the ax in her right hand, and had managed to shove the ax head into the thing’s mouth. She was trying to stir it around in there, but her leverage wasn’t good. They were at something of a stalemate, but if I had to bet, I’d’ve bet on the worm just because of its squeezing power.

Once again, I was faced with a choice. I could let nature run its course, or I could intervene.

There were only two appreciable differences between her and Nuk, when I weighed the pros and cons of saving Catapult. Both of those differences were roughly the size of a large-ish orange.

“Ah, what the hell,” I muttered, and cooked the innards of the worm that was slowly killing her.

The thing collapsed. She struggled out of its coils, and proceeded to hack off its head with my now badly blunted ax, grunting in fury the whole time. When it was decapitated, she hawked up blood-flecked phlegem and spat on the head, then threw the ax to the ground. She looked up at the now dark sky, swaying a bit, and let out a huge, exhausted sigh.

“Yes, you’re welcome, no need for effusive praise,” I said.

She stumbled toward me, obviously worn out from her life or death struggle. She put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a couple of friendly pats. Then, faster and harder than I would have given her credit for, considering what she’d just been through, she punched me dead in the jaw.

I was unconscious before my body hit the ground.

I mentioned earlier in this work, you may remember, that where women are concerned I have made mistakes. This was one of them.

It wasn’t the first, and sadly it wasn’t the last.