Dren was standing beside the troll lord’s conspiracy board with a broad smile. The board was no longer an alluring sight; it now looked so dull and factual that it might have come straight out of a geography classroom. Nanoc’s eyes grew tired just looking at it.

“I re-arranged it,” Dren explained. “Look, now the theory of the round world is linked to the ancient religious idea that the universe is a tree and the worlds are fruit growing from its branches, which is all rather quaint.”

“Quaint! My board is not quaint! It is edgy and dangerous and—”

“Do you know, I’ve changed the puppy-eating conspiracies to puppies eating conspiracies, which makes much more sense because puppies eat everything.”

“Very cute,” Nanoc said in approval. “Look at that little guy, eating a tin foil hat. Adorable!”

“No! No! The ideas on my board are dark and filled with bitter anger, they have no place for—wait, what have you done with my maps of the secret underground lizardling kingdom?”

“Do you know, I changed ‘lizardling’ to ‘mole people’,” Dren said cheerfully, pointing to where he had scribbled a picture of a fat moleman over a wooden print of a lizardling. “The molemen really do have an underground empire, after all. I’ve been there. I took my mom, too.”

“No! Undo this!” the troll demanded angrily. “How can it be a secret if even your mom has been there!”

“Do you know, it can’t,” Dren said smugly. “The molemen’s tunnels are so well known that it’s downright boring. They grow beats and potatoes.”

“How dare you!” the troll king shouted, his voice so loud that the walls themselves shuddered. Something was changing in the troll king, something was moving inside him. “How dare you!”

“They grow beats?” Rotcel ‘Loc said at the same time, crinkling her nose in disgust. “Yuck.”

“Why?” Nanoc asked. “Beats are great.”

“Will you shut up, gnome!” the troll king screamed, “I do not care about your beats! This elf… this elf… this elf… has destroyed my precious board! I—argh!”

The troll king was shrinking, his levels dropping as his muscles evaporated. He had been drawing a lot of power from his conspiracy board before Dren destroyed it by making it a board of boring facts. Knowledge had struck back; the troll was screaming as he lashed out in blind rage. He was still very strong, however, and one of the blows hit Nanoc, sending him sliding across the ground.

“Ouch!” he complained. “Well, good work, Dren, but he’s still too powerful! That blow nearly killed me! What about the other items he’s drawing power from? Can you break them, too?”

“Do you know, I can detect a lot of power coming from that big book, the one with his face on it!”

Nanoc and Rotcel ‘Loc dived towards the book. Rotcel ‘Loc got there first, stabbing it with a knife and trying to cut it up. She couldn’t. Nanoc reached for it, trying to tear it in two, but the troll had bound a good portion of his soul to the book of secrets and it was far tougher than paper had any right to be.

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“Step away from that book, idiots,” the troll said. “Little creatures like you can’t handle the danger it contains.

“My middle name is danger,” Nanoc boasted.

“Do you know, your parents had a weird sense of humor—"

“No, you dolt, you aren’t dangerous, you are just one of the sheeple—” the troll shouted accusingly, trying to intimidate them, but Nanoc wasn’t having that.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a sheep person,” Nanoc said stoutly. “My brother’s best friend was a sheep person. He was loyal, and kind, and once a year we used to sheer him and use the wool to make scarves. Sheeple are the best!”

“But the wolves of society—”

“Can get bent! And so can you!”

Nanoc’s fire elemental leaped off his fingers and onto the page. It sniffed the book for a moment – it was a health-conscious elemental and didn’t like to eat junk food – but then Nanoc pointed at the book.

“Get it!” he ordered.

The flame flickered indecisively, then burnt through the book at great speed.

“No!” the troll shrieked. “No! My precious words! I’ll kill you all!”

Nanoc dived to the side as the troll charged them. The beast was shrinking again, its muscle turning to fat, its talons becoming fingertips. It slapped the flames out, dispersing the fire, but it was too late. The book was gone.

“Do you know, I think this troll has taken a lot of shortcuts to get to such a high level,” Dren said, a little smugly. “He’s been using artifacts to boost his power. That was not wise.”

The troll king was smaller now, but still terribly strong. He caught Nanoc by the head and threw him against the wall, hard, then spun towards Dren.

“Not wise?” the troll screamed. “We’ll, I’ll be much wiser once I eat your brains!”

“Eating brain doesn’t make you smart,” Rotcel ‘Loc protested, before quickly adding, “Or so I’ve heard.”

“He’s still too high in level! What other artifacts is he relying on that we can destroy?” Nanoc shouted.

“Do you know, I would assume the seven rings? If I had one, I could reverse engineer a spell to damage him,” Dren replied.

“Ah,” Rotcel said. “That won’t work, they’ve vanished. I think you need to try something else.”

The troll had cornered Dren; the elf was protecting himself under a shield of book-shaped mana, but each time the troll hit it the shield cracked a little. It wouldn’t last.

“Do you know, my only regret is that I will not be able to document this death for future generations of scholars to learn from,” the elf said bravely.

“That’s your only regret?” Nanoc muttered, clutching his head. The gnome glanced past the troll to the table where the seven golden rings had been. They were not there anymore. A thought occurred to him.

“Rotcel?” Nanoc shouted out.

“Yes, gnome?”

“Did you steal the nasty troll’s magical rings?”

“What rings?”

“You know the ones! They were gold. Did you steal them?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you!”

“The rings?”

“Yes, lizard, the rings!”

“The golden rings?”

“Yes!”

“No.”

“I know you did!”

“No, gnome.”

“Give them to Dren!”

“No.”

“Dren’s about to die!”

“Yeah, but he seems fine with it.”

“We’ll be next. You can’t take gold to the afterlife!”

“I can try!”

“Come on, Rotcel!”

“No… ah, fine. Here, Dren!”

The lizardling rolled between the troll’s legs, cartwheeled through the air, and landed beside the elf. She handed him a small bag that held the seven golden rings.

“Do you know, that’s really helpful,” Dren said. “I am grateful to you, my friend that—”

“Dren!”

“Oh, right. Loc’s Great typo!”

Dren’s choice of spell was quick, dirty, and desperate. It was also very strange: it could change a single letter of a person’s soul script, but only for a while. Most considered it a prank spell, good for a bit of fun before it wore off.

Dren, however, was struck by a moment of divine inspiration: the troll king shrank and screamed, cursing the elf. He had been a Dark Lord, terrible in his power, but Dren had temporarily reduced him to a Dork Lord. Not only had he lost levels, he’d lost a lot of abilities, too.

He was no longer invulnerable. He was now hugely embarrassed.

He was still very, very large.

But everyone was larger than Nanoc, and he never let that stop him.

“Right!” Nanoc shouted. “Leave him to me!”