Chapter 16 Some Deep Introspection about Being Evil
Some Deep Introspection about Being Evil
Day three hundred and seven
Dear Diary,
Have you ever thought to yourself, am I a bad person?
…I guess you wouldn’t have, being an inanimate object and all.
Morfran scratched his quill through his words and began again.
I am Morfran, Dark Lord, the Great Beheader and Vile Ruler of the Kingdom of Ruthven. Over the period of my rule, I have severed the heads of my enemies, of whom there have been plenty, and have conquered lands and brought them beneath the umbrella of my domain.
He paused, thought, and continued.
I have corrupted a naive girl into a wicked, merciless queen.
My men have ransacked villages and tormented civilians and set worlds afire for many across the kingdom.
My name is a household brand of terror. Villagers hear my name and dread my coming.
Indeed, at times even the dead have dreaded my existence during my time destroying the Necromancers of Necropolis.
He strained over his journal, his quill making sharp, violent indents into the paper.
In my days of evil, I have always believed it a great feat to cause misery and suffering for all who rebel against me.
So then why, dear diary, do I feel so bad now when I see this misery?
Why do I want to go bury my head in the sand?
Why do I have indigestion? Tonight the chef made bacon-wrapped meatloaf, which is my favorite type of meatloaf, you should know, and I couldn’t even swallow three bites without needing to run to the restroom.
Bronwen won’t talk to me. That big buffoon with all the beard hair wouldn’t take my words of wisdom and ditch his tower, even though he has all the tools in hand…
or hair in hand…to do so. I don’t know why their unhappiness is getting on my nerves, but it makes me want to lock them in my old torture chambers and force them to smile
Morfran’s quill tip shredded through the paper. He sat up, blowing air out of his cheeks, and gazed about his room in lost annoyance.
It’d been six days since the rebellion had taken Atlantis 2.
0 and three since he’d taken Bronwen to meet Rapunzo, and both were wearing heavily on his mind.
Atlantis 2.0 had fallen faster than he’d taken it years ago.
That’d put him in a bad mood, because he’d beaten his own record and none of these peasants knew it.
But it was also a good thing, too, because it meant one less city that Ravana had in her clutches.
But these peasants also thought they’d won a victory against him as well, which wasn’t at all true, and yet he couldn’t tell them that, now could he?
Then there was the fact that whenever Rapunzo and his fear of the world crossed his mind, he felt like he’d kicked a giant blond puppy with a beard.
He would never kick any type of puppy, even one with a beard, and so it made him feel unfathomably despicable, in a way that then made him want to self-flagellate and not triumphantly pump his fist in the air.
And then Bronwen, who after that night at the tower had gone to her father and told him the news that she was hexed forever and she was of no use to the rebellion, then proceeded to hide away in her rooms in Tritonia’s palace and wouldn’t answer whenever he tried to knock or leave her gingersnaps by sliding them beneath the door slit, yes, that Bronwen, was filling his thoughts in a way that irritated him and made him want to fall to his knees and demand she forgive him for killing her sweetheart.
Thing was, he remembered the lucky idiot.
Morfran had been plowing through the battlefield atop Skullthrasher when a young fellow stepped in front of him while all others were fleeing.
He’d had the look of an everyday hero—the tousled hair of a farm boy and generic-looking gear—yet he possessed a courageous, resolute expression.
To honor his bravery, Morfran had dismounted so they were on equal footing for the duel.
It wasn’t his fault the guy was absolutely horrendous in a fight.
Morfran had his head off his shoulders in five seconds flat.
In truth, the abruptness of it had surprised even him.
Then he’d shrugged, went on rampaging, and went home that night to a delicious chicken casserole.
But he couldn’t shrug off this guilt now.
All this time he’d blamed Ravana and his men for why he’d fled.
It was them who’d tormented the kingdom and made its citizens homeless.
It was them who went too far harming everyday people.
He was a Dark Lord, he argued, not an evil one, and he hurt anyone who said otherwise.
But it wasn’t his men who’d hurt Rapunzo.
It wasn’t Ravana who’d killed Bronwen’s lover.
He’d done that.
He’d been avoiding that for too long. He knew that he was the one truly responsible for kingdom-wide suffering.
When Ravana tortured people in her specifically designed chambers and their cries of pain arose, he was being tortured alongside them.
He was the root of the reason behind the hurt, and the guilt was eating him alive.
Running away and pretending to be a goat farmer was just a silly excuse to escape the shame. Someone like him couldn’t be a simple, unfashionable peasant. Someone like him couldn’t be what he’d long scoffed at: good.
But couldn’t he at least not be evil? Couldn’t he at least try his hand at that? Maybe then he wouldn’t always feel so terrible.
He stashed his journal beneath his mattress and ran a hand through his hair as he decided it.
He wouldn’t run away—yet. He’d make amends with Bronwen by helping her and her people take back a few cities and towns, enough that he’d stop feeling such withering guilt over killing her sweetheart, and then he’d flee.
It was a plan. Feeling only slightly better, he wandered the fortress until he found the war room Brim and his men had also converted into a break room, complete with a billiards table and an employed barkeep.
“Bernard.” Brim glanced up from a table as he walked in.
He was the only one there. “You’re up rather late.
What brings you in?” He was hovering over a strategy table where dozens of tiny tin soldiers were stationed on a map.
Someone had apparently brought in fake blood, because the map was splattered scarlet in strategic locations, likely by way of wishful thinking of how future battles would go.
Morfran tried to ignore the pointedly large splatter right where Castle Atrago sat.
“What’s all this?” Morfran asked, gesturing to the map.
“Just my thoughts on where to go from here,” Brim replied, staring down at it with a little less enthusiasm than Morfran was used to seeing from him.
As of three days ago, when Bronwen had told everyone Ravana’s hex would remain, plans had been halted since no one knew the best course of action going forward.
“I know the men were hoping to set Bronwen on Ravana again, but that plan’s been scrapped, so I need to come up with a better strategy on which townships to hit next. ”
Morfran looked down at the map, but Brim was staring at the wall.
“Are you…all right?” Morfran knew it was a loaded question, but even still, Brim heaving a sigh and slumping over the map surprised him.
He wasn’t used to seeing the man glum. “It’s Bronwen.
And by extension it’s Hugh.” He tugged at his beard.
“I served that bastard for just a few years, but in those few years, he took half the kingdom. I helped him come into power, and so I helped his queen come into power, and with Ravana cursing my daughter…if you do the math right, I helped curse her.”
Great. Even Bumbling Brim was in a self-blaming mood. Morfran internally sighed.
“She’s a skilled assassin, Bronwen is. I hate seeing her like this. And Hugh…he tries. He tries his hardest to be liked, to contribute. He wants to be of use, just like she does. But he’s as dumb as a left wet sock left out on a Tuesday night.”
Morfran wanted to know if a right wet sock was any smarter or dumber than a left, and why a Tuesday night mattered as opposed to a Wednesday, but wisely knew this was not the time or place to ask.
He also knew that Brim wasn’t seeking answers but merely ranting.
Staring at a strategy map at one in the morning tended to do that to you.
It’d happened to him on numerous occasions before.
“Scratch Dirtstrap, Yondere, and Rudrock,” Morfran said.
Brim looked at him, confused.
“You’ve got tin soldiers surrounding those towns. I wouldn’t bother,” he went on. “They look like good targets geographically, but they’re smaller in population than they seem and don’t offer much to gain in terms of anything else.”
Brim straightened, his gaze following Morfran’s finger as he pointed at certain places on the map.
“If you want to use the momentum we currently have, I suggest we go farther west and hit the townships of New Elksmoore, Hameline, and überstrat, and then march on the city of Redmoth. News will have reached Castle Atrago by now about Ferndock and Atlantis 2.0, as well as the other towns your other rebel friends are taking back around the kingdom. I expect a counterattack soon, so it’d be best to take what we can while we have the time. ”
A steady silence welled up as Brim scanned the map and took in his suggestion.
Then, with a small sniff of a laugh and a smile tugging on his mouth, Brim said, “I see what you mean.” He gently tapped the map, as if lost in thought.
Then he murmured, almost to himself, “Grandfather Tortoise was right about you.”
“What did he say?”
But Brim was already moving on, thoughts back on the coming battles. He pushed the toy soldiers around the map and drizzled fake blood around on it, and then, when he was satisfied with the plans, he looked to Morfran with a hint of a sparkle returning to his eyes. “Let’s go take back our towns.”