"Being evil is a hell chapter 2"

By;fernand jiro

Flames licked the village. There was no-one left. They had all fled when the orcs approached, and because there was nobody to fight the patrol had just stolen what they liked and then set the village on fire. Lord Felix watched with mixed feelings, which is also another thing with some kinds of Dark Lords. They regret what they do. Why only the lords do this of all the bad guys remains a mystery. It happens from now to then that the leader will look mournful and regret, but the common henchman seldom does. Why this is the case remains a mystery.
Well, this would certainly make the hero come here.
People had gathered outside the castle for some reason. He went to the door.
Dark Lords really should speak from a balcony, but the balcony of Lord Felix’ castle was too rickety for this, and therefore he spoke from the door.
-“How can I help you… Err, I mean… What is it, pitiful slaves?”
One man stepped out of the crowd, speaking.
-“Could you protect us from these orcs, sir?”
-“Don’t you realise they’re mine, you idiots?”
-“Yours, sir?”
-“Yes, mine. I am a Dark Lord. Dark Lords have orcs!”
Felix was angry. All this work and it shows up the citizens hadn’t even found out he was evil.
-“But, like… You’re our king, you ought to protect us…”
-“I’m not a bloody king, I am a Dark Lord for goodne… Er… Evilness sake!”
The townsfolk were confused. So, they had been paying taxes to this jerk for him to be evil?
People could do that for free. The taxes were for nothing at all?
Felix saw the people getting angry in time. In a very scared voice, he shouted.
-“Er… Orcs? Hello? OORCS! COME HERE NOW!”
The orcs were too far away to hear him. Fortunately for Felix, he had goblins too. And, he suddenly saw, these people were unarmed. Felix had got a sword somewhere in his metal cocoon.
He drew it.
It was black, shiny, and engraved with runes. Never used.
He waved it at the townsfolk.
-“Goblins! Arrest these people now and take them to the mine as slaves!”
One of the goblins whispered something in his ears.
-“Oh, right, we have no mines. Well, throw some in prison and use some as slaves in the fields then!”
“Dammit,” Felix thought, “Another of those double minds again. Like, I know these people. That’s the smith, a very nice man, and there’s children here too.”
The other part of Felix said “You are finally being a proper Dark Lord! You should be happy! And besides the hero will free them anyway, later. It’s only for a short period.”
You can’t always be nice to people, that is a fact. If you are always nice to people, you will go insane. Really. Try it.
Dark Lording is just an occupation where you have to be a bit more mean than usual, but often only for short periods, because of the heroes.
So Felix decided to follow his dark side. He was a Dark Lord, wasn’t he?
Still, something felt very bad about seeing the goblins take them away to work.
Felix then realised, that if the people hadn’t known he was evil, he hadn’t been a Dark Lord up until now. Only a king, with a taste for black. That made him angry.
“Oh crap”, he thought, “One of these days I’m going to get a split personality.”
He turned to one of the goblins.
-“Tell the orcs to go raid more villages and get the people as slaves. And specifically tell them to say they work for me. By the way, have you seen the sorcerer?”
-“Yes milord, and no, milord.”
-“That is…?”
-“I will tell them that and no, I haven’t seen the sorcerer.”
-“Milord.”
-“What?”
-“You’re supposed to say “milord.”
-“Oh, sorry milord.”
-“No problem.”
Felix hurried up the stairs to the sorcerer’s study.
Nobody there. The window was broken. He looked at the scrolls on the desktop.
One was rolled out. It said “Guarantee for Dark Sorcerer”
On the bottom of it somebody had scribbled a message.

“Mr. Felix,
My guarantee ended yesterday, as you can see, thus I am afraid you cannot ask Dark Necromancy Corp. for replacement. I have left your realm to begin working for a real Dark Lord.
With hate,
             Argyle the Sorcerer”

Felix turned to one of the goblins.
-“His name was Argyle?”
-“Obviously, milord.”
-“Oh. Shame that he left, but we’re pretty rich at the moment, right?”
-“Yes, milord.”
-“Fine. Go hire some more goblins then, please.”
-“Yes, milord.”
-“What are you waiting for?”
-“Take a second look at the date of that guarantee, milord.”
-“Guarantee for Dark Sorcerer, blablabla, very good student, blablabla, blablabla, guarantee ends… Hey! Is that a 5 or a 2?”
-“I believe it’s a 5, milord.”
-“That means there’s three days left on the guarantee!”
-“Yes, milord.”
-“What does it say about the sorcerer deliberately breaking the guarantee… Blablabla, great many spells, blablabla… Here. If the sorcerer breaks the guarantee deliberately, he cannot be replaced by our company. However, you do have a right to reclaim the sorcerer if you find him again before the guarantee period ends. This means the sorcerer must return to you and, as a punishment of this horrible crime against our rules, work for you for another year after the guarantee period ends.”
-“What are your orders, milord?”
-“Find him.”
-“Why not just hire a new one? He’s not a very good one, you know.”
-“Have you got any idea of tge price of a sorcerer, goblin?”
-“No.”
-“Then find him. A free sorcerer for one year… That sure is good.”
-“Yes, milord.”
Felix sat down. Work, work, work.
He’d had no idea Dark Lording was so much decisions.
And all this money and business. He was no salesman, he was a Dark Lord.
The emporium strikes back.

Grashnik had chosen to split the troops, since none of the townsfolk ever fought back. They just screamed and ran around when the orcs came, no matter how many. Grashnik had found that one orc or a hundred didn’t make any difference – people were scared anyway.
So it was not a large troop of orcs that was sneaking through the Dribble Forest.
About fifty orcs, armed and camouflaged, stalking forwards. They could see the village from where they were now.
When they reached the very end of the forest, with just a couple of trees left, they halted.
It wasn’t very good camouflage, and anyone looking in their direction would discover them at once.
They looked exactly like orcs wearing silly disguises. One thing prevented them from being discovered. Namely the fact that most people do not see things if they do not think they exist. Many people saw the orcs, but nobody wanted to be the fool who suddenly shouted “Hey, there’s orcs there!” just to prove it was all in his imagination.
Jurglarr didn’t see the orcs, since he was in one of the houses at the moment, but he smelled them. You don’t have to be a goblin to sense the smell of an orc.
The smell is quite hard to describe, but those who had managed best said it was “Like a badly wounded fox, which had fought a skunk and lost, and then tried to roll in a compost heap to get rid of the smell”.
You could have thought that the water of Dribble Forest would have washed some of the smell away, but it hadn’t. These orcs smelled like described above, only that the fox was now wet as well.
Jurglarr stepped outside. He signalled for the orcs to wait, then ran away into the village.
The orcs looked at each other, trying to calculate what to do next.
Since there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, they waited.
Jurglarr ran at the top of his speed, shouting.
-“Thor, Thor! Orcs! O Thor, orcs!”
Thor was eating when Jurglarr found him.
-“Thor, there’s orcs here! I don’t think I can keep them waiting much longer!”
-“What?”
-“Er, I mean, they’re coming to rob these people!”
-“What’s I supposed to do?”
-“Fight them!”
-“Oh. Right, I’ll be right there.”
Thor took a last bite of the pork chop he’d been eating, then threw it away.
He slowly raised, and drew his sword.
-“Where are they?”
-“I’ll show you.”
They ran towards the orcs, Thor waving his sword and Jurglarr weaving through the crowd that was staring at the orcs. One man cleared his throat and said:
-“Isn’t that an interesting pattern in the woods? “
Mumbling, the crowd agreed.
-“Em, it looks just like a horde of orcs.”
The man was obviously embarrassed.
-“Not that it is a horde of orcs, of course, anyone thinking that would have to have quite an imagination.”
Agreements from the crowd.
-“Funny how your eyes can fool you. I just thought that one moved, heh, but it can’t, it’s just a… a tree.”
-“Yes, that one looks like he just drew a sword, and…”
Thor and Jurglarr finally got through the crowd.
-“Look, now more of them are drawing swords!”
-“Don’t be ridiculous! That’s only a figment of your imagination, you know.”
-“Yes, of course, but…”
The orcs charged.
Thor quickly chopped at one with his sword, then ducked, rolled over, and kicked another one.
-“They’re not for real, you know, just a mass hallucination. No need to be afraid, they can’t harm any…”
The man was quickly interrupted by a sword. On the other end of it was an orc. A real orc.
Finally, the crowd came to think of other things to do than to stand here watching mass hallucinations. They ran, leaving Thor and Jurglarr alone with the orcs.

Orcs alive smell bad enough. Nobody should have to experience the smell of dead ones.
Jurglarr was being sick. It had been quite a short fight, but they had won.
He glared at the remains of the orcs.
-“We will have to bury these”, Thor said.
-“Let the villagers do that. You must defeat Lord Felix.”
-“Why?”
-“He sent these orcs!”
-“How do you know it was him?”
-“He’s a Dark Lord!”
-“I thought you said he only had goblins.”
-“Only goblins and orcs, I meant.”
-“Oh. But these orcs are dead now, they’re not dangerous anymore.”
-“There’ll be more.”
-“Wouldn’t the best thing to do to stay here and defend the village, then?”
-“Um, no…”
-“Why?”
Jurglarr was about to panic. No hero had ever said so before, but sure, it was true. If people keep attacking you, the wisest thing to do is defend yourself until they give up.
-“Because… It’s magic. Yes. He summons more orcs with his magical spells, so there’ll just be more of them if you don’t smite him.”
-“You didn’t tell me he could do magic!”
-“Oh but he can, trust me.”
-“All right then.”
Jurglarr sighed in relief. That was close.
-“I’ll just pack my stuff.”
-“No time for that, you have everything you need, come now.”
Jurglarr grabbed Thor’s arm and pulled it, strongly resembling a child trying to make his father follow him to the toy shop. Thor ignored him, and instead began walking back to his house.
-“We’re in a hurry, Thor!”
-“Are we?”
-“Yes we are!”
-“Why?”
-“Can you please stop saying “Why” every time I tell you to do something? It’s annoying!”
-“Why?”
-“Just knock it off, will you?”
-“So be it, but let me pack my stuff first.”
-“All right, all right.”
The hero and the goblin entered Thor’s house. It was just like most other houses in the town, built of timber with a thatched roof. The difference from the other houses were that Thor had made it all by himself. He’d chopped down some trees and then piled them on each other.
This fact gave Jurglarr an uneasy feeling about it, since he’d discovered the logs started to glide if you only so much as touched the walls. The entire building simply was a collapse that had not yet happened.
Thor didn’t seem to care much about the danger of living in such a house which was because, Jurglarr thought, that if the house collapsed with Thor in it the logs would simply break when they hit him.
Thor’s “stuff” that he had to pack proved to be nothing else than a big, brown book which seemed familiar to Jurglarr in a curious way. He peered at it. It was titled “Heroism for dummies”.
Lord Felix had an identical book, except that his was named “Dark Lording for dummies.”
Both books were written by the same guy.
Jurglarr started to see how it all worked. It’s not a question of good vs. evil, it’s money vs. no money.
-“How long have you been reading that?” he asked.
-“I can’t read. I just look at the pictures.”
Thor opened the book revealing a picture of a stick figure beating up another stick figure with something that looked like a third stick figure. The chapter was named “Weapons and other things that can be used to effectively kill someone”.
They began their journey.

Dribble forest!
As dark as a Dark Lord’s castle, as cold as a grave and as pleasant as a wet sock.
Jurglarr knew it as he knew his home. In fact, Dribble Forest was his home.
Or at least it had been, before he started working for Lord Felix. The muddy track going through it was the only sign of civilisation, the rest was just dense, dark, wet forest.
Jurglarr remembered the days when the goblin tribe had lived here. It had been wonderful. It had been happy days.
Oh, who the heck am I trying to fool? If anyone really thinks Jurglarr was happier in a wet, cold forest than in the warm castle of Lord Felix, that person might as well stop reading now, because any such person probably won’t like the rest of this anyway.
No sane being could love Dribble Forest. Perhaps some fitness freak who believed in the saying “What does not kill you makes you stronger”.
Which is, I may point out, completely wrong. You do not die nor do you get any stronger if you, for example, put a paper hat on your head and shout “I am a piece of toast” while playing a toy piano (Though people will think you’re a weirdo if you try).
Jurglarr and Thor were riding. They had forgot to get a horse when they first left, which was quite embarrassing, especially when they came back five minutes after their departure asking for a horse.
It had been quite a good horse. But carrying Thor had made it kind of tired, and now it looked more like a sack with legs than a horse.
Thor was still reading, or rather, looking at the pictures.
Jurglarr listened. He thought he could hear some sort of moaning sound, but he couldn’t figure out from where it came.
It was probably something the sorcerer had made up.
They had been riding in silence. The only sound heard was the splashing sound of the horse walking in the mud and the occasional swishing sound of Thor practicing a difficult swing with the sword.
-“Thor?”
-“Yes?”
-“Would you mind not swinging your sword so awfully close to me?”
-“Sorry.”
And then silence.
There it was again, that moaning sound. Jurglarr couldn’t remember any of Lord Felix’ servants sounding like that. Except perhaps the troll, but this sounded more whining, as if the moaner was experiencing pain.
Thor appeared to hear it as well. He ceased reading and looked around.
-“What was that?”
-“I don’t know.”
They were silent again.
This was beginning to feel creepy. Just to break the silence, Jurglarr spoke again.
-“Where did you get that sword?”
-“I bought it from my cousin.”
-“Where did he get it from?”
-“I don’t know.”
Suddenly the moaning sound was there again, much louder this time. Jurglarr thought he could hear it saying something like “Don’t know…”
-“Do you think it’s a good sword?”
-“Oh yes. Very good. My cousin said it was magical, but I don’t know…”
This time the moaning sounded as if it was only a few yards away, but it was still very hard to determine from which way it came.
They halted.
-“You said you knew this forest, Jurglarr.”
-“Yes I do.”
-“What is that moaning?”
-“I’m afraid I don’t…”
-“KNOOOW!”
They both heard the moaning finishing Jurglarr’s sentence. At the same time, they watched with horror as something they thought was a rock started to move. It stood up.
It was taller than Thor, but with the same proportions. It was all covered in mud and looked like it had recently consumed a tree. On its head was some kind of large, feathery hat. It carried an axe, and it seemed to be angry.
Both Jurglarr and Thor were almost paralysed with fear as they watched it raise a hand.
It scratched its head, then mumbled something. Then it looked around, and Thor and Jurglarr found out they had only looked at its back. As it turned towards them, they saw and eagle’s head attached to the feathers but not much more, since it was all covered in mud.
Jurglarr cleared his throat.
-“Who, or what, are you?”
It mumbled something again, a movement hardly visible somewhere in the mud.
-“So, Mr. Mplh-hb-Ouh, what were you doing on the road?”
The thing brought its hand to the place were the face probably was, and wiped some of the mud away.
Jurglarr recognised the face.
-“I asked where I was, silly, um, goblin…”, it said.
Thor, having seen that this was nothing else than a large and very muddy man, finally moved.
He tried to draw his sword, then remembered he was already holding it and prepared to attack.
This made the mud-man upset. He prepared to attack.
Jurglarr stopped them in time.
-“There there, it is completely unnecessary to waste your powers on each other, gentlemen.”
They both looked as though they were definitely no gentlemen but indeed very hostile.
Jurglarr slowly backed away from them.
-“Be nice to each other now.”
Jurglarr sounded desperate.
-“I don’t want to see you raise your weapons again, understood?”
-“This is a monster! I should kill those of Lord Felix, you said so!”
-“Don’t speak bad of Lord Felix!”
Thor raised his sword and attacked, just to find out he didn’t have any sword.
The mud-man smiled, and raised his axe.
The only problem was that he didn’t have an axe.
They looked sheepishly at each other.
-“Thief!”
-“Liar!”
Thor made a very nice looking jump and landed on the mud-man. They both fell over and started wrestling and fighting in the mud.
Meanwhile, Jurglarr examined the sword.
It looked as though it was made out of silver, but that would be impossible. You can’t make swords out of silver. The hilt was blue or green, it was quite hard to see, and there appeared to be something written on it.
It was a delicate weapon, much more beautiful than the crude axe he was sitting on.
As everyone knows, goblins make quite good thieves.
“I wonder how he got that feathery thing”, Jurglarr thought.
“He certainly didn’t have it back at the castle.”
It was certainly not anything trolls used to wear.
He watched it. It was about goblin-sized, and looked like an eagle trying to be a human, or possibly the other way around. The troll had dropped it, so he got closer and watched it.
As he touched it, he could feel it was still warm.
He held his ear to the place where he assumed the heart was. It was still beating, but faintly.
The troll’s hat was alive?
Jurglarr decided they all needed to talk.
He took the sword, resolutely walked to the wrestlers and hit Thor over the head with the hilt.