I awoke the next morning about an hour before we had to leave. I had some time to do some thinking. I sat by the burnt out fire pit, and remembered how I felt before I had my new powers. When I was working as the entry boss, it was my job to give heroes a hard time and then let them defeat me. A way to inflate their ego. But I had control. Despite my instructions, I killed almost every hero that came through me, and call me evil but I enjoyed it. Most of them wouldn’t have amounted to much anyway.

But this past week, I felt like a boy again. Sure I got awesome powers, I was a mage with a great sword! But I wasn’t using that power to its potential, for good or for evil. I was a boy following my master around. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be anymore. Villain, hero, peasant or noble. I wanted to be myself, and the last time I felt that was when I was killing heroes. I guess I did sound like a villain, but I didn’t want to do the other stuff that came along with it.

The sun started to rise, and so did Professor Springston. “You’re up early,” he said. I grunted. We packed our torrents and began our journey to Hero’s Pride.

“We need to follow the road, it’s the fastest way there. But we’ll stay in the woods so no one sees us.” Springston explained. Our torrents were moving fast, and surprisingly quiet. I scratched Richy under his ear as we moved forward. We made it to our scouting spot before the morning mist even cleared. It was a spot on a ridge just behind a tree line and bushes. We had a clear view of Hero’s Pride from above. It was perfect. Springston pulled his notebook out of his inventory, once again it seemed to appear from thin air, and began to draw the town and make notes.

“I need you to watch the roads leading out of the town, make sure no one is coming in our direction. Also, observe who enters the town. We need to know what kind of trading they do.”

The truth is I hoped someone would spot us. Not from the town of course, I valued my life. But I wanted a fight. The day seemed to go on forever, the few nuggets of intel were few and far between and we mostly sat in silence.

“Frederick.” Springston said suddenly.

“Yes, Professor?” I asked him in a whisper.

“Look at the river. What do you notice?”

“It flows through the town?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“No shit. Look closer. What do you notice about the river?”

I truly didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You’re going to make a terrible villain. Look at the way it flows dumbass.” He was starting to get irritated with me.

“Oh! It flows through the town. The way it goes, we have access to it. But how does that help us?”

“Well it doesn’t right now, but it’s a weakness. We could potentially poison the river up-stream, and then their main source of water is cut.”

I had to admit, his plan was genius. We continued to watch Hero’s Pride for the rest of the day, and I noticed that there were few peasants in the town. Most people seemed to either be heroes, or other members of the Hero’s Society. They all had powers from what I could tell, I knew this because they used their powers in everyday life, whether it was strength or speed or some other power that helped them accomplish their tasks. Even the merchants were heroes of sorts, so I wouldn’t feel bad about poisoning their water.

Finally, night fell and the town went to sleep.

“We need to get out of here as fast as we can. The roads are dangerous, but they’re quick. We need to book it straight to the border. As soon as we’re on our side we can camp, and start our journey home.” Springston told me the plan while we began to prepare our torrents.

“Deathville is days from here, and it’ll take hours to get to the border. What if someone sees us on the road, they’ll track us down before we can get to safety.”

“We’re villains, Frederick! We’ll kill them.”

* * *

We arrived at our camp just beyond the border a few hours before morning. I was exhausted, so as soon as we determined it was safe I went to sleep. I awoke when I heard sounds outside of my tent.

“We know they’re here Sigrid. Just set their tents on fire or something.”

“No. They might have valuable items on them. We don’t want to burn those too.”

The voices were whispers, but they were still loud and I could hear everything. Fucking heroes, can’t even whisper correctly.

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“I say we just rip the tents open and kill them in their sleep,” a third voice broke in.

“I say we do nothing, and see where they go. Perhaps they will lead us to a more interesting find.” Another voice mixed into the group.

“And then what? If we lose them, we just let two villains into Heroes Country. Who knows what they’ve done.” The second voice I heard said. I presumed Sigrid.

“Enough arguing. I agree with Billy, we’ll rip their tents open and-”

Time to assume control. I jumped up, grabbed my great sword, and stabbed at the closest shadow outside of my tent. My sword went through my tent and hit my target.

“Stephen!” one of the heroes screamed.

“You dare oppose me?” I said trying to sound as evil as possible. I pulled my sword out of the hero, and he fell to the ground. I casted Empower and began to show the heroes who was boss. With my Empower active, I was a foot taller than all of them.

A big brute of a man came barreling at me with his fists. He tried hitting me, but I grabbed his fists and forced him on the ground. I started to hit him with his own fists. “Who’s your daddy?” I asked repeatedly. An arrow went through my cloak and into my shoulder. “Shit!” I jumped up, perhaps I got a bit distracted. I shot a fireball out of my hand at the group's healer, she was an elf they really didn’t like fire. She was trying to heal the rogue I killed before, but I don’t think she realized he was already dead. Heroes really are worthless, most of them anyway. Then I went for the ranger, the prick shot me again! On the other shoulder this time.

Before I could swing my heavy great sword at him, a strong hand grabbed my arm from behind and put me on the ground. A woman with a sword stabbed down at me. I froze her in place for a split second, but that was all I needed and I rolled out of the way. She stabbed the ground, and as she was trying to pull it out I swung my great sword at her head. She ducked. She was a good fighter by hero standards.

“Sigrid, get down!” Behind her was the ranger who loosed an arrow straight at me. “Not again!” I said, twice was enough for one fight. I leapt to the side and landed on the healer's corpse, my face in her charred face. It was smoking, and it smelled terrible. Had one fireball really put her down? Elves really didn’t like fire. I got up resisting the urge to vomit, and held up my sword. I had three heroes on me. The big brute guy was on my left, Sigrid with her sword on my right, and the ranger directly in front of me, but I wouldn’t be able to reach him with the other two right there.

“Three on one,” I said. “This really isn’t fair guys, you might need to add a few more people.”

Sigrid swung her sword at my head. I blocked the strike with my great sword, and punched her in the face. She fell to the ground with a flattened nose, but got up quickly. Normally I couldn’t throw a punch quite that hard, but Empower really increased my strength. While she was down I froze the ranger so he couldn’t shoot me while I was turned to the side, and swung my sword down at the brute. He tried to catch the blade between his hands, but of course failed and I literally sliced him in half. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I sliced him in half! The dumbass tried to catch the blade, what the fuck were they teaching heroes these days?

“You are a mighty villain,” Sigrid said. “But not mighty enough.” Sigrid began to glow red, and the leaves under her feet began to burn. Then her sword caught fire, and she began to swing at me with a flaming sword.

“That’s a cool weapon, I bet I can get a lot of money for it after I kill you.” I said.

“Ha! You are no match for me!” She replied.

I didn’t really know how to defend against a flaming sword, so I just ignored her for the moment and ran towards the ranger. He pulled a dagger out and rolled out of the way of my sword. Now both heroes were in front of me, so I swept my sword in a large motion to create some space, and threw another fireball at the ranger. I stabbed at Sigrid with my great sword. She parried my blow, and stabbed at me with her flaming sword. She missed, narrowly, but one of the flames caught on to my cloak. “Pathetic hero,” I said mustering the most villain-like voice I had. “Is fire all you have? I will leave you here to rot.” I raised my great sword and feinted a strike at her, then swept the side and cut the ranger's head off. He didn’t have a chance to duck, and his head flew several feet. His body fell to its knees, and blood spurted out of its neck.

“Four heroes down, one to go.” I said, staring down Sigrid.

“What is your name villain? I need to be able to tell my superiors who I killed. Your legacy will end as a name on my long list of slayed opponents.”

“That is fine, but your heroes' legacies will end as heroes who were slayed to a failed villain. I am Frederick Villainous, and you are my torrent's next meal.”

This angered her and she screamed as she ran towards me. I rolled to the side and threw an ice ball at her. I didn’t expect it to freeze her, fire powers and all, but maybe it would weaken them. I was wrong, my ice just melted away, and she didn’t notice it. I had to take my cloak off because it was starting to burn me, and we engaged in a sword fight. She was difficult to kill, and I’m not sure I would’ve been able to do it without Empower. Finally her fire powers ran out, and I froze her, and stabbed her through the heart.

The fight was over, and I was bloody and tired. My cloak was ruined, I was really starting to love that thing. I looked up and there was Springston standing in front of me. He had a smirk on his face, and was leaning up against a tree with his arms crossed.

“Well fought, villain.”

“Where the hell were you?” I asked him.

“I wanted to see if you could take them. You really surprised me. You took full control of the situation. Perhaps you will end up like your father.”

“My father killed many innocent lives, all I did was kill incompetent heroes.” I had to admit, it did feel great to take control again.