Everyone has heard the story of the farm boy who grows up to save the kingdom and marry the princess, after a harsh road of trials. Names, faces, details change depending on where you hear the story and who is telling it, of course, but he is the prototypical hero, his story as familiar as it is exciting. Even I enjoyed them, in my youth.

They’re propaganda, those stories. Wish fulfilment at best. Also, you ever notice how it’s always a farm boy, and never a farm girl? I mean, you might hear about a spunky princess now and again, but you’d have to search long and hard to hear about a milkmaid who defeats the Big Bad Evil. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why that might be the case.

Anyway, back in reality, no farm boy every grew up to marry a princess. Well, not without forcing her to the altar, at any rate. Farm boys do regularly save kingdoms, it is true – because they are drafted into armies. By spilling their blood and guts into the mud of the battlefield en masse, they do indeed defend the very institutions which keep them down in the mud in the first place.

As for the harsh road of trials the hero faces… have you ever worked a farm? Harsh trials are what’s for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-night snack.

What I’m getting at here is simple: A farm boy who actually manages to escape his place in society and, through tests and trials and suffering, actually gains a measure of power isn’t going to be hailed as a hero. The powers that be will see him as a threat to the order of things, and want the little shit dead, soonest.

The hero’s story is, in fact, the story of the villain, suitably altered for public consumption.

~ ~ ~

I woke the next day in a thicket a few miles from where the capital used to be. Hrazz’k had advised me to stay in the city while it burned, until the excess energy had exhausted itself. My reflexive response at the time was to tell it to go fuck itself, but it had a point; if anyone did come hunting me, all they had to do was follow the charred landscape of my passage. So I went and found myself a spot with no visible corpses and just hunkered down, head in hands.

The few hours that it took for me to not be combustible were pretty awful. I mean, you can close your eyes to a city dying, but closing your ears to all the screaming isn’t so easy.

Eventually the power did ebb. Some time in the night I stopped throwing off flame and smoke. I considered going back to the river and finishing what I’d attempted earlier, but by then I’d accepted the truth of what the demon had said.

The entire kingdom would be looking for whoever was responsible for this disaster. The powers that be - king and church - would have all sorts of resources to further that quest; gold, manpower and magic. And worst of all, there were bound to be survivors who had actually seen my face. And the rest of me, for that matter. They’d know what I looked like when they started their search, down to the fact that the village of Thrudd didn’t hold with the custom of circumcision.

The book was not just my only possession, it was also my only ally. That a demon was the only being in the world who had any interest in me not dying horribly was just the black sort of irony that I have come to believe underpins all of existence.

It wasn’t that Hrazz’k liked me. It was that whoever came for me would also get it, and they would be professionals, and they wouldn’t make deals. They would just end its existence along with mine. Self-interest is the only interest you can count on, folks. Another thing you should probably jot down.

Anyway, once I wasn’t on fire, I set out. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I had to go before any survivor saw me and said ‘Hey, didn’t you just burn down the city? I thought I recognized you!’ and then bashed my head in with a brick.

I walked westward, pretty much at random, and eventually found myself walking on roads that were not covered in ash and debris. Some time after that, I realized I was walking on dirt instead of cobbles, and that the landscape around me was mostly fields. The sky was just beginning to pinken behind me.

“You should probably get some rest, kid,” the book said. “You’ve had a long day.”

“Fuck you, you fucking fucker.”

“You’re still sore. I get it. But if you don’t get off this road, you’re gonna get noticed eventually. Naked humans usually do, for whatever weird reason.”

It wasn’t wrong. Also I was exhausted; physically, mentally and emotionally. I’d add spiritually to the list, but again, religion is fake, and I don’t want to encourage it, even obliquely.

There was a ditch next to the road, and a thicket growing out of the ditch. I crawled into it, enduring scratches on sensitive places. Honestly, I barely noticed them. Not until later, anyway. I think I was asleep before I stopped moving.

When I woke, it was still day, but just barely. I waited for the sun to set, enduring creepy crawlies and the damp of the ditch. I was hungry and thirsty and cold. The autumn winds were still blowing, and I had no clothes, or outfit of flames to keep me toasty.

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“You’re awake,” Hrazz’k observed.

“Eat shit and die.”

“That’s the spirit. There’s a farm house not far down the road. Maybe you can steal some clothes from there. Food, too.”

“How the fuck would you know? You don’t even have eyes.”

“I have a sort of general awareness of my surroundings. And now that you’re my ‘master’, I can see what you see.”

“Good. Then you can see this.” I gave it the finger. “Anyway I didn’t see any farmhouse.”

“You did, last night. You were just too out of it to notice.”

I popped my head out of the bushes and saw, in the fading light, the farm house it was talking about. It looked a lot more prosperous than the one I’d started out life in. It had two stories and a decent roof, for a start. There was also a barn near it that was made of something more than sticks and indifference.

The inhabitants would probably have more than one set of clothes, sure enough. Which was good, because I didn’t relish the idea of stealing something to wear from someone who was already wearing it – I didn’t actually see how it would be possible without doing something violent and possibly permanent to get them to hold still for it.

(Again: at this point in my career, I was inarguably amoral, but it would be some time before I gained the title of ‘Pitiless’. I could embellish this account to make myself look better – or rather worse, I suppose – but there are already plenty of stories circulating about my cruelty and cleverness. A memoir should hew as close to the truth as possible, or what use is it? I’m secure enough in my achievements to forgo any varnish.)

Food was also a possibility, on a prosperous farm. If it had been my father’s lot, he would have just laughed at a thief and told them they could take whatever they managed to scrounge up. Actually, he probably would have broken their skulls with his bare fist, and then my siblings would’ve stripped the corpse, but I’m sure you’ll allow me a little artistic license, truth notwithstanding.

Anyway, I shivered through the sunset and when full dark descended, began to make my way towards the farm.

“You’re just gonna leave me here?” Hrazz’k asked.

“Well I’m not going to lug you along while I break into a house, that’s for sure.”

“What if it rains?”

“I should be so lucky.”

I snuck across the stubbled field that separated me from the house. It had just been harvested, and let me tell you, you don’t want to go traipsing across a freshly harvested wheat field barefoot in the dark. Not if you want to be sneaky afterwards, anyway. By the time I got to the darling little white picket fence that separated farmyard from field, I’d practically hobbled myself.

There was one light still burning in the house, in an upper window. I resolved to wait until it went out before making my entrance. I also decided I could risk drawing water from the yard’s well, as long as I went about it quietly.

Guarding against unnecessary noise, I let the bucket down to the water on its rope, and then began to pull it back up by hand rather than risk the crank being squeaky when weighted down with a full load.

The thing about prosperous farms that I’d forgotten from my long-ago sojourn to the capital was that they quite often have dogs. Our farm never had any, because let’s face it, at the Gar steading the word ‘dog’ would have been synonymous with ‘dinner’.

This particular farm did indeed have a dog. Not the chained-up kind, as it turned out, and not the kind that barked at intruders. It was the kind that silently stalked and then bit intruders on the ass while they were focused on pulling water from the well.

I screamed. I dropped the bucket. The dog went for the other cheek. I climbed up on the lip of the well and the dog took a chunk out of my calf. I kicked it in the face and scrambled up onto the crank’s crossmember. No longer able to get at me, the dog finally started barking. Very quickly a farmer and his wife, the farmer holding a cudgel and the wife a lantern, were staring at me in my distress. The dog barked on.

“The fuck are you doing?” the farmer finally said.

“I was just trying to get a little water.”

“The fuck are your clothes?”

“I was robbed.” The lie came easily. I certainly wasn’t tempted to explain the truth.

“You from the city?”

“Yes.”

“Anything left of it?”

“Not much. Look, if you could call off your dog, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.”

The wife looked agreeable. The farmer did not.

“I think I’m bleeding into your well water.”

That pushed him onto my side, at least.

“Wife, put that mutt in the barn. You there, come down and don’t try anything funny, or I’ll thump ya.” He shook his cudgel at me.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.

* * *

The farmer’s name was Hod, and his wife was called Myrna. They were decent enough sorts when they weren’t in the mindset of repelling intruders.

I told them an edited version of the capital burning, casting myself in the role of a nobody refugee from the flames, who’d had the misfortune of running into bandits during my escape.

“Hard times turn men to beasts, sure enough,” Hod said with a shake of his head as we sat at his kitchen table. Myrna had given me clean rags to bind my wounds and a set of Hod’s old cast-offs. They were far too big for me, but I wasn’t about to complain.

“We seen the flames even from here,” Hod continued, “or at least sign of ‘em in the sky. Didn’t rightly know what it was at first. Then Myrna said she thunk the city was burnin’. I told her I thunk she was crazy, but honestly I didn’t rightly know what else it could be.”

“Do you think they’ll be more folks coming this way?” Myrna asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” I told her. “There were survivors. But not many, I think.”

“Poor souls,” she said.

“Poor us,” replied Hod. “Who’re we gonna sell our crops to next year?”

“Button your mouth, old man. At least we have food and roof above us.”

“Speaking of food,” I ventured. “If you have any to spare…”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I bet you haven’t eaten in an age. What was I thinking?” She jumped up from the table and went to the larder, then started bustling around.

“And what’s your plan, then… what was your name, son?”

“G-Gallin,” I replied, pretty certain I didn’t want to be handing out my real name. “I’ve got family to the west. Distant relations.”

“Wherabouts west?”

“Oh, a village near the Debatable Lands. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“Well, it’s good to have family, but that’s a right journey, and no doubt. You’re gonna need a pair of boots at the least. Some food wouldn’t go amiss, either. And you’ll need something to protect yourself with, not that you need tellin’ on that score, being robbed once already.”

“I really wouldn’t want to trouble you fine folks,” I said, meaning not a single word if it.

To make a long story short, Hod and Myrna equipped me with everything I needed to survive the next week and beyond. They were kind souls, the salt of the earth that you hear so much about. The kind of people that, just by being who they were, helped to restore your faith in humanity, if only just a little. So of course it came as no surprise when I later learned that the Light’s Inquisitors put them to the question and then burned them at the stake for aiding me.

There’s a saying, spoken mostly in jest: No good deed goes unpunished. If you hope to become an Evil Overlord, I advise you to take it literally.