Episode 1: In Which We Meet the Supreme Dictator of Tarelia
*Evil Overlords are people too*
The slave shook uncontrollably as he was roughly pushed through the heavy doors that opened into the throne room. The man was so frightened that he was barely able to stand on his own. It hardly mattered though, since he was escorted by two stony-faced guards who half-dragged half-carried him across the room toward the most feared man in all of Tarelia. The slave began to whimper as his eyes flashed around the room, looking for some way out-for something or someone to save him. There was no one. The guards stared straight ahead, as cold and unfeeling as their intimidating metal armor that was dented and tarnished from many battles. A long scar ran across the cheek of the guard on his left and the guard on his right wore an eye patch. These were hard, cruel men who served an even crueler master (whom the slave was soon going to see). The unfortunate soul looked desperately at the tapestries covering the walls, the rug that ran the length of the room, the clanking boots of the men to either side of him, anywhere besides the throne at the end of the long hall. He found no comfort in any of these sights. They simply reminded him of what lay before him. The tapestries showed scenes of war and devastation. The rug was dark red, the color of blood, and the boots carried him ever closer to his doom. Stone walls pressed in on him, seeming eager to hear his fate. A vaulted ceiling stretched far above the helpless man, bouncing back echoes of what the slave imagined to be the screams of the tortured and anguished humans that had walked this hall before him.
The sound of clanking armor and jingling chain-mail was silenced as the guards stopped before the raised throne. The slave was shoved forward and he fell in a heap among his heavy iron shackles. His knees banged painfully upon the stone floor, but he didn’t dare cry out. He kept his head bowed, too afraid to look up into the terrible face of his ruler.
“This slave was caught trying to escape this morning, O Great and Terrible Master,” came the harsh, booming voice of the guard to his left.
“Why?”
The guard hesitated. “Because…I guess he didn’t much like changing out chamber pots and the like….um…I reckon he got beaten pretty regular too.” The man sounded unsure of himself. Slaves tried to escape all the time, he never really thought about the why of it. His job was to catch them and bring them back, and that’s what he’d done.
“I see,” came the voice at the top of the steps. “I suppose that’s a good reason to run away.”
The guard shuffled his feet in distress and said nothing. This was not going the way he had planned at all. The silence stretched on….and on…and on. The guard to the slave’s right cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Do you need a lozenge?” asked the voice, considerately.
“Um, no thanks,” said the guard with the eye patch. “Um, you see, we…ah, brought this guy to you to see what we should do with him. Uh…I guess we figured you’d want to do something about it…so more slaves don’t take it in their head they can just up and leave.” The last comment was phrased as a question. The guard knew there was a certain structure to these sorts of things and this was definitely a deviation from time-honored traditions.
“Oh! Right! Just a moment.” This time the voice sounded slightly embarrassed and was shortly followed by the rustling of pages. “…secret, shower, silver…” the voice muttered to itself. “Ah ha! Here it is: slave!” There was a silence. “Says here he should be made an example of. You know-to scare the others a bit. Um, I guess you could torture him a little, then stick his head on a pike in town. Is that doable?”
The guards exchanged glances over the slave’s crumpled form. They were getting back into familiar territory and gaining confidence by the second. Torture they knew. Pikes they knew even better. “Yes, Overlord," one of the guards bellowed. "His head shall be skewered by the main entrance to the city and left there for the birds to pick clean!”
“Excellent! Well done men. I know I can always count on you.”
The guards saluted smartly, picked up the limp slave who was now sobbing in terror, and turned to go.
“Oh, Richard, I almost forgot to ask you something.”
The guard with the eye patch stopped and turned back around. “Yes my lord?”
“How’s your pinkeye doing? Awful stuff, that-itches like the dickens. Did you know you get pinkeye from fecal matter coming into contact with your eyes? You should really wash your hands and try not to rub your eyes so much. But I must say the eye patch they gave you looks great on you!”
The guard’s visible eye twitched and his face flushed an unattractive shade of red. “It’s doing fine. Thank you for the compliment, O Terrible One.”
“Great! See you Monday!” The cheerful voice echoed in the doomed slave’s brain over and over as he was dragged, screaming, from the throne room.
The Evil Overlord of Tarelia, supreme dictator of a vast and terrible empire, knew what he had to do next. Finally, after three hours of judging all those who were brought before him, he was alone. The time had come. Clarence hopped up from his throne and pulled out the wedgie that had been bothering him all morning. He sank back down on his chair of power and sighed with relief. It was an extraordinarily uncomfortable seat. With all the treasure he got from tribute money and plundered villages, someone could have at least installed a cushion on his throne. He would have to ask someone about that. All this business with dark mahogany and carvings of demons was well and good for looks, but did nothing for comfort.
Clarence had barely sat down when the ancient, towering double doors of the throne room creaked open to admit a rather short, chubby fellow dressed ridiculously in purple velvet that made him look very much like a plum. “Sire,” the man said in a lofty tone. “The war council is about to begin and they require your superior insight.” He bowed low, almost losing his balance while performing a complicated flourish with his right hand.
The Destroyer of Hope sighed wearily. “Will there at least be some decent finger foods this time?”
Clarence is no name for an Evil Overlord, thought Clarence as he waited for the food and wine tasters to sample his dinner for poison. No one called him that, of course. No one even knew that was his real name except for his mother. Everyone else just called him one or another of the sinister-sounding titles available to an evil dictator. He would rather they just call him something like Jason or Steven. Those were good, solid names. (The slave who had just taken a sip from Clarence's goblet crumpled to the ground, twitching, while yellow foam frothed at the corners of his mouth.)
Freckles were out of place for an evil ruler as well, but Clarence was plagued with them. He’d tried to use powder to cover them up, but there were just too many of them. (A team of kitchen servants hurried forward to remove the now-still man from the dining hall and carried him off toward one of the many passages known only to servants, slaves, and rats.)
The Evil Overlord had thick, unruly orange hair that his mother had tried many times to dye black, but for some reason the dye never took. It was hopeless. He was hopeless. Everyone expected him to be scary, fearless, and cruel but Clarence just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. He didn’t mean to let everyone down, but even after eight months of being Supreme Evil Overlord of Tarelia he still had to refer to his handbook. He pulled the worn book out of his richly adorned robes-standard black-and stared bleakly at its cover: The Evil Overlord’s Ultimate Guide: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Being Bad. He sighed. It had been a present from his father, the last Evil Overlord, that he had given Clarence when he retired and passed the throne down to him.
Clarence put the book down and wearily picked at his food. Tonight his plates were piled high with seasoned pheasant, rolls glistening with butter, mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, steamed vegetables flavored with twenty different spices, and a plethora of exotic foods from far off countries he had never visited but that his father had conquered and added to his empire during his reign. A new wine taster stepped forward nervously and sipped cautiously from a new goblet. He paused for a moment, head cocked to the side, then sighed in relief and placed the drink back on the table.
All around the vast dinner table, ambitious men and their conniving wives talked amongst each other in code, always plotting on how to one-up the people sitting near them. False laughter and cutting remarks delivered with a smile were the common language of the upper class and it was in full swing tonight. Astrid, the wife of a duke, was particularly in her element this evening and had just called the woman to her right a tacky barnyard animal with a pension for necrophilia in such a way that it was taken as a compliment. All of them pretended to like Clarence, but they were all so mean and they kept hinting things at him that he didn’t understand. For some reason, he always felt nervous and a little sick around them. None of them could really be called his friends. In fact, Clarence didn’t have any friends. He had combed through the Evil Overlord handbook several times but could find nothing about friends. He’d looked for “friend,” “companion,” “partner,” and every other synonym he could think of but came up empty. The only word that was even in the guidebook was “partner” but all it had said was: “can be potentially useful, but will eventually betray you. Kill after they are no longer useful.”
Clarence was lonely. His parents were far away and he didn’t want to confide in them anyway because then they would discover what a failure he was. He couldn’t let that happen. No matter what, Clarence had to become the best evil dictator Tarelia had ever known. Then his family would be proud of him. No matter how hard it was, Clarence would work diligently and eventually surpass his father. He would strike fear into the hearts of the masses. He would wipe out whole civilizations with a wave of his hand. He would…
Mashed potatoes slid off Clarence’s spoon and plopped down onto his lap. He sighed and looked up to see if anyone had noticed. No one seemed to be snickering or paying him any attention at all. He wiped off his robes as best he could with his cloth napkin and pushed back his chair to leave. Everyone at the table fell silent and looked down the unending table at him. Clarence stared back. Silence. Someone near the far end of the table coughed nervously. Clarence felt like he should probably say something. They seemed to expect it.
“Uh…I hope your food isn’t poisoned. G’night.”
Clarence exited the cavernous dining hall as everyone looked apprehensively down at their plates. A couple of noble ladies delicately spit out the contents of their mouths into dainty hand-sewn napkins.
No comments:
Post a Comment