I hesitate to even mention this, because it really should go without saying – but I also know that what is blindingly obvious to me might well be revelatory to another having to make do with more limited mental faculties, or one burdened by an unfortunately moral upbringing: Evil Overlords do not ‘fight fair.’

Again, for the avoidance of doubt and the especially slow of thought: Evil Overlords Do Not Fight Fair.

If you’ve ever even been tempted to engage in a fair fight, I suggest you have this sobriquet carved into a wooden club, and then place said club where you can see it immediately upon waking. And then smack yourself about the head with it daily until it sinks in.

Evil Overlords Do Not Fight Fair.

There is no such thing as fairness. There is no such thing as cheating. There is no such thing as honor. Not for an Overlord. There is only win, or lose. And Overlords do not lose.

Some burly hero challenges you to a duel. Single combat. Whatever. Even if you believe that you could defeat him or her on their terms, why in the world would you? Give ‘em the old death spell or crossbow bolt in the neck. Never cede any advantage, especially when your life is on the line. Never take unnecessary risks. Never Fight Fair.

The world is not tilted in your favor. Those in power always keep their thumbs on the scale in order to remain there, and to keep everyone else in their place. If a Dark Lord can be said to have any sort of responsibility, it is to incessantly shit on convention and the status quo.

Once more, with feeling: Never Fight Fair. If you do, then you are not doing your job. Even if you win. It’s as simple as that. And what is your job? Utter Domination, that’s what, not giving Sir Testicle of Goodplace the chance to stick three feet of sharpened steel in your guts, which he has trained for years to do.

~ * ~

I may have intimated once or twice that I’m not in favor of elves existing. My reasons are as varied as they are irrefutable, but my dislike for the pointy-eared pricks started that day, on a dirt street two blocks from Mudhelm’s sole brewery.

The elf was pointing a long and very sharp sword at my chest. It was a really nice sword, as well; I’d never seen one as shiny. The elf himself seemed like he knew how to use it.

“Are you threatening me?” Obviously he was, but I wanted to see what he'd say. I wasn’t unduly worried. I didn’t have my ax, but I did have my fire.

“I am giving you a choice, mortal man. Dispel the demon and flee this blighted land, or die here and now.”

I threw fire at him. I wasn’t going to waste any more time or words; I knew what he wanted now and I had shit to do. So I flung a head-sized fireball at his face.

His blade came up and split my fireball. Just cleaved it in two. Both halves flickered out an instant after, before they could do more than make him feel toasty.

“Well f—”

He leapt at me, covering the twenty feet before I could finish my sentence. The little prick was fast. I flung myself to the side, and the tip of his sword gouged my shoulder instead of piercing my heart.

I didn’t feel pain. And part of me would always be the goblin killer, savage and fearless. But I will admit to a modicum of worry at that moment in time. He was fast, and his sword could counter my fire attacks. I fell to the muddy street and rolled away, coming up in a crouch with my hand in a squishy pile of mud. Or I thought it was mud for an instant, until the smell hit me. Wonderful.

I decided to bombard the bastard with fire and see if he could block everything. I really only needed to hit him once.

I shot five fist-sized firebolts at him all at once, and then five more almost instantly. He instantly brought his blade up and cut each of the bolts out of the air, jumping back and spinning his sword in a blur. I gritted my teeth and sent ten finger-sized fire darts flying toward him. The smaller the fire, the less energy I had to expend, and I really only had to hit once – but I had to concentrate on each individual attack, or it would simply gutter out due to inattention. I would have liked to just conjure a ball of fire inside his elf-prick skull, but in order to do that he’d’ve had to hold still for a few seconds, and he wasn’t obliging me.

Anyway, he cut about half the darts out of the air and dodged the rest, leaping at me once more where I was crouched on the street. Which is when I had him. Or so I thought.

Four darts he’d dodged rather than try to destroy, thinking they were like arrows, no longer a threat once they flew past. But they weren’t arrows. They were little bits of fire from the elemental plane of fire, and they were mine to command, even if I was still learning fine control. Anyway, I called them back, and aimed them at his back.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

He raised his sword to strike me down, and then the four darts of fire slammed into him. He grunted, and his eyes widened – and then he smiled.

“Mithril is proof against your magic, cur.”

His pretty silk shirt had half-burnt away on his back and one side, and I could just see the glint of chainmail underneath from my vantage point. Super-shiny chainmail, like his sword.

“Prick. Gonna get me that chainmail.”

He brought his sword back for a strike and I flung a handful of runny shit right into his face.

I’ll give him credit, the blade came into a guard position and sliced the shit-patty in two. But enchanted blades, it turned out, did not have the power to dispel excrement. It hit him in the face and I lunged, taking advantage of the instant’s distraction, grabbing his unarmored wrists and kneeing him in the nuts all in one desperate motion.

Even still, he was stronger than me. He didn’t collapse. He was bringing the blade down towards my shoulder despite my best and very strenuous efforts, and something told me his sword wouldn’t really have to have much force behind it to start slicing pieces off of me.

So I burned his hands off.

They say that when elves sing, they can conjure emotion in the listener that lasts for days. When they speak, if they so choose, they can stir an audience to battle or to tears.

I don’t know about either of those. But I can tell you that when they scream, they sound just like any other poor bastard who’s in agony.

I burned the flesh of his hands to ash and his fingerbones to charcoal, and took his shiny blade away from him. Then I lopped his head off. I could pretend it was mercy, but really just then I was more than a little Goblin Killer rather than Gar, and Goblin Killer knew for a fact that it was easier, if bloodier, to strip bodies if they didn’t have heads. I really did want that chainmail. And the sword. And his coin pouch.

His boots were better than mine; in fact, they looked like they were made out of some magical beast’s hide. But they were teal, which, no. And they were a half-size too small.

Not that I tried them on.

#

Grim and a handful of armsmen came pounding down the street just as I was… liberating the mithril chainmail from the elf’s corpse. I was only two blocks from the brewery.

“Somebody said they saw spellfire—” She stopped. Saw the corpse. Saw the corpse’s head a few feet away, staring up at the sky, looking all elvish and dead. Nuk, her dim but ever-present shadow, turned green and retched.

“By the light! You killed an elf!”

“Yup. You want the sword? Actually, we should sell it, coin being in short supply.” Actually, I realized I didn’t want Grim to be in possession of a sword that could negate my fire. And we did need money.

“Gar. You killed an elf.”

“We just established that, yes. He started it.”

“They won’t like it.”

“Who likes getting killed? I certainly wouldn’t, which is why I killed him first. You think this will fit me?” I held up the slightly gore-spattered chainmail.

“Gar. The elves are rat bastards. Nobody fucks with them. Last year one of them got pickpocketed. The fucking boiled out of their embassy and started chopping the hands off of anybody who fit the description of the thief until they got their property back. And anyone who fought back, they slaughtered.” Grim shook her head. “Titus wouldn’t say boo to them, and – well, you know what he was like.”

And there it was. The first challenge to my rule. It had come sooner than I would’ve liked, and it was from a group that was, frankly, ridiculously more powerful than I was. I blew out a breath.

“It is what it is. Have someone fetch a wagon, would you? And I’ll need ink and parchment.”

“What are you going to do?” Grim looked more than slightly alarmed.

“I’m going to start as I mean to continue. Wait here a little while. I’ll be back soon, maybe half an hour.”

#

The bastion, or what was left of it, was a ten-minute walk from the brewery. When I got there, Hrazz’k was exactly where I’d left him, floating over rubble, tentacles waving langorously in some unseen current.

“You really are hard to look at,” I muttered. It didn’t reply.

“Oi! You awake?”

Hrazz’k twitched.

“OI! Do I really need to shout your true name to get your attention?”

The demon jerked spastically. “Hm- wazz- oh, hey buddy! Just having a snooze. Did you know that without my body I couldn’t even nap? Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. What’s up?” It yawned, and with all the beaks and maws, it was a shudder-inducing sight.

“There’s a situation. It has to do with you. And elves.”

I wasn’t an expert on demonic body language by any stretch, but it seemed to me that Hrazz’k flinched.

“…huh.”

“In fact, just now an elf told me to send you back to wherever you came from. I told him to bugger off, and he tried to chop me up into little bits.”

“Gosh, that’s, uh, so are you alright? I see some blood there.”

“Most of it’s not mine. You want to tell me what the deal is with you and the elves?”

“…no?”

“Let me rephrase. Why do the elves have a hard-on for you?”

It mumbled something, too low for me to make out.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“I said I might have destroyed their homeland.”

I sighed. “That might do it. Elaborate.”

“Right, so about ten thousand years ago I got summoned to this plane. Usually that sort of thing is easy to avoid, but my mate and I were in the middle of uh, an argument about our spawn, and it seemed like a great excuse to, you know—”

“Duck out of a quarrel with your mate about your offspring?”

“Exactly! But the summoner was this crazy human. I mean just bonkers, but crazy powerful, too. He summoned me right in the middle of the Elfhame. He was just rampaging, killing elves left and right, summoning all kinds of nasty things. He really had some kind of grudge, let me tell you. Anyway, he was good. Good enough that I couldn’t just leave, even though I wanted to. And then the elves started trying to kill me, and they were really good, and things got out of hand, you know?”

“No. No, I don’t know.” But I had a suspicion.

“Well, it got nasty, let’s put it that way. They finally killed the human who’d summoned me, and they sort of pinned me to this plane. I was upset. I did some things that weren’t very nice. They couldn’t kill me, but they’re a sly bunch those elves. Eventually they bound my body down below where you got tortured, remember?”

“I could hardly forget. Hrazz’k, did you turn the elven homeland into the Debatable Lands?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“That explains a lot, actually. And it works in my favor. How did your mind get into a book? Never mind, tell me later. There’s a pressing situation and I need your help.”

“Sure buddy. What’s going on?”

“I’m going to declare war on the elves. Here’s what I need you to do….”