Lord Arville Malisami III, Dark Lord of the Western Marches, Tyrant of the Shadow Cliffs, Corrupter of the Black Woods, Master of the Darkling Hordes, was really sort of looking forward to this morning. The guards had brought in a brother and sister pair earlier today, while the Dark Lord was breaking his fast. According to his loyal, if none-too-bright minions, the pair hadn't paid their taxes. The brother and sister, of course, claimed that they couldn't pay their taxes, that they didn't have the cash on hand. But that was, as all the peasants in his realms knew, a poor excuse. When your taxes came due, according to Lord Arville's rules, you bloody well had better find the cash to pay them...or else.
So...all in all, it looked to be a good, solid, productive morning.
Right up until he walked into the guard-room in front of the dungeon.
It's a simple task, really. Preparing prisoners to be tortured is supposed to be nothing more than taking a pair of by now thoroughly cowed individuals, stripping them naked to add humiliation to the agony they're about to go through, and then using rope or chains to secure them to the torture device in question. Like I said, simple. This is one of those things that you just can't screw up. Heck, it's so simple, even guards can do it. And considering the IQ of your average evil henchman guard, that's pretty darned simple.
Usually, anyway.
So when Lord Arville opened the door to the guard-room that led to the dungeon and the torture chambers, he was expecting to find nothing more than two or three guards, who would be respectful, and quite fearful, and would show him throw, and make sure he had anything he needed.
He was not expecting to see that one of the prisoners had one guard in a headlock, another guard naked and unconscious, and the second prisoner attempting to the third guard unconscious with a chair.
So...okay. Yeah, it's time to put the guards through combat training again.
Still, you don't get to be a major warlord of darkness and evil without being able to take care of yourself in a fight. And...well...let's just say that this wasn't Arville's first rodeo, okay? This wasn't something that was outside of his experience, as it were.
So securing the two for their...session wasn't really a problem. And, heck, the brazier was already lit, the branding iron was ready...things were good to go.
""Very well," Lord Arville said, standing back, and gazing approvingly at the setup. "Somewhat conventional, I'm afraid, but it still works quite well. Vlatya...if you would do the honors?"
"Yes, my lord. Shall I start with her, or with him?"
"Oh, start with her. Men are always more fun when they're witnessing their family being tormented in front of them."
"Very well, my lord," the torturer said. His real name was Philip, but he'd learned to live with his lord's little naming foibles, mainly because the choices were pretty limited. And, hell, Vlatya was better than some of the others. Yesterday, his name had been Ayumu Dungbotttom. He withdrew one of the two hot irons from the fire, nodded to his employer, who was thankfully not in the mood to add the torturer to the demonstration, and moved to approach the lithe figure of the girl. "Do you have any preferences as to where we should begin, my lord?" he asked, turning his face away from the girl, and holding the iron still for just a fraction of a second.
That was long enough.
Apparently, the girl had a high-capacity water tank containing half the river Arleuse in place of a bladder, because as soon as the branding iron stilled, she let fly with a stream of urine that would have left a hill giant feeling proud. Worse, her aim was both pre-meditated, and precise, and Lord Arville watched in some annoyance as the hot iron rapidly cooled from white-hot to cherry red to black to gray. Finally, the hissing ceased, and there no sound in the room but a tiny trickling sound. Both Dark Lord and torturer stared at the iron in astonishment. Finally, Arville roused himself, and looked at the girl.
"Do you feel better?" he asked sarcastically.
"Yes," she replied immediately. "I've been needing to do that all day."
"So I see. Very well. I suppose...Vlatya! Vlatya!"
Startled, the torturer shook himself, and stared at his master.
"If you're ready?"
"Of course, Lord. Er...what do I do with this?" he asked, gesturing weakly at the now-cool
branding iron in his hand. Arville just rolled his eyes.
"Put it back in the fire, you idiot," he said, rolling his eyes. "And get the other one ready. We'll just have to reverse the order of branding, and stretch this out for a little longer than we expected."
The torturer nodded, and turned back to the brazier. Arville sighed quietly to himself. So much for my good morning, he thought to himself. I really need to start looking at hiring some smarter minions. This is just ridiculous.
Of course, he reflected, that had its own risks. Stupid minions were easily cowed, intimidated, and outmaneuvered. Their betrayals tended to be poorly thought out, if they'd been thought about at all, and they were thus easy enough to foil. Smart minions...smart minions might succeed.
On the other hand, smart minions did not need to be instructed to switch branding irons when the first one got cold. Which could get old, fast. That kind of initiative, alone, would do a great deal more to let him enjoy the fruits of his victories.
Decisions, decisions.
He was brought out of his ruminations by a hissing sound.
It appeared that the brother of the pair had just as big a bladder as his sister. And, like his sister, was just as good at aiming said bladder's output.
Of course, this time around, he was aiming for the brazier, not the iron, which was a lot harder to miss...but it had a lot more heat, so things sort of balanced out.
They appeared to balance out rather well, actually, because the fire was almost out, and the torturer was standing there with a befuddled and rather indignant expression on his face. Apparently, putting out the torture fire by peeing on it was one of those things that just...wasn't done. One must assume that it was some kind of gross violation of etiquette, or something, because this was probably the first time in his rather long life that Arville had seen this particular approach to torture avoidance.
He had to give it points for originality. Effectiveness...not so much. But it was original.
"What...but...why...how—you can't do that!!!!" the torturer finally got out. The brother just shrugged.
"It's been a while for me too," he said. "I really had to go!"
"But...but...bwha!"
"Oh, shut up!" Arville snapped. "And get that brazier re-lit!"
"It's wet, my lord!" the torturer wailed.
Arville's eyes narrowed, and he snarled a three-word incantation--one does not hold on to the title of "Dark Lord" without knowing at least a little magic--and flicking a small fireball from his fingers into the brazier, which instantly re-ignited with a hissing sound as the fire flash-dried the coals, and heated them back up to the appropriate temperature, releasing a very fragrant cloud of steam in the process.
"Imbecile!" Arville snarled at the torturer. "Must I do everything myself?!"
"My Lor--" the torturer began, but before he could continue the door to the dungeon slammed open, and a guard came rushing through.
"Boss! Boss!" the guard yelled. "You gotta come quick, boss, there's a spider in the guard's restroom, and we need you to kill it!"
Time...stopped.
Well, not really stopped, per se. It just seemed to stop. You know. For the moment. Until things could get back together, until the day could proceed...until Lord Arville could master himself enough not to accidentally kill everything in the vicinity. Not that he'd really mind killing all the people, mind you, and he probably wouldn't shed to many tears over the rats, the mice, the fungi, the plants, and so forth and so on. But killing buildings is expensive, and they're often kind of hard to replace.
Besides, it had started out as a good day. And that was just enough good to hold him—just barely—at the precipice.
"I'm sorry, boss, but it's eight feet tall, and the crossbow bolts are just bouncing," the guard said quietly. "We've tried spears, we've tried axes, we even had the duty wizard try throwing a fireball in there, and it's just...not working. I think this one's on you, milord."
Arville Malisami III, Dark Lord of the Western Marches, etc, etc, etc, took a deep breath, and held until the count of ten. Then he let it out, and tried again.
No dice. He was still seized with the powerful urge to kill something. Preferably messily.
"Right," he finally said. "Spiders. I can deal with this."
He pointed at the torturer.
"You," he said. "Stay here until I come back. If you don't want to take their place, find something creative and entertaining to do to them."
"You," he continued, pointing at his captives. "Don't go anywhere. I'll deal with you later. You," and now he was pointing at the guard, "come with me."
And with that, he stalked from the room, the hapless guardsman scurrying behind him.
The torture chamber was silent for several minutes, as the torturer stared out at the now-closed door, his face a mask of dread, and the two siblings, still secured to the wall, did...prisoner-ish things. You know. The sorts of things prisoners do to pass the time. Stuff like cowering in fear...contemplating the kinds of tortures that are going to be used on them...working their way loose from the restraints...meditating on the now-exposed truth of their navels...maybe even praying to their powerless deities, for once one has been secured in the dungeons of Lord Arville Melisami III, there is no escape, even for those blessed with the grace and the favor of the gods. There have been many who have tried, but the only ones to have ever departed under their own power have done so with the knowledge and the approval of those dungeons' dark master.
Then, abruptly, the second door to the torture chamber burst open—indeed, burst out of its door frame completely—to admit the armored form of Lord Arville, who promptly flew through the door, and slammed into the wall on the far side of the room, where he rolled to his feet. If being hurled over forty feet through the air into a solid stone wall had affected him in any way, this was not apparent. Following him came a nightmare of chitinous legs, mandibles, glittering eyes, and black, gleaming spikes. The monster spider paused, its eyes clearly taking in every aspect of the room around it, before in seemed to come to a decision, and it lunged for the armored figure before it. But Arville was apparently expecting this, because he rolled to the side, before righting himself, and hurtling through the original door, headed out to the guard room once more. Where he was going was, of course, impossible to guess...but it probably made sense to Lord Arville.
Probably.
The spider followed immediately.
"Boss! Boss! You gotta...dammit, boss, that's the wrong spider!" came the voice of the guard, as the same man who'd dared to interrupt Arville's torture session came barreling out of the newly-formed hole in the wall. He seemed to deflate a little upon realizing the room was empty, looking around, and then sighing. Then he turned, and looked at the three occupants of the room.
"All right," he said. "Which way did the boss go?"
The male prisoner lifted one arm, which he had painstakingly worked his way loose from its restraint, and pointed.
"Right," the guard said. "Thanks."
And with that, he sprinted out of the room in pursuit of his absent liege lord.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Philip the torturer finally muttered, the barest beginnings of an idea starting to emerge in his brain. Something about...spiders. Spider bites? Spider--
"I'm thinking tickets," the male prisoner said, and the torturer's idea was lost in a haze of prisoner-induced confusion.
"Say what?!" he asked blankly.
"I say we set up a ring, and sell tickets," the male prisoner said. "How about it? We cut you in on a piece of the action, and you help us get audience members lined up."
"Uh..." Philip began, his mind scrambling to catch up, but that was as far as he got.
"Great!" the prisoner said, leaping to his feet, seizing Philip's hand, and shaking it vigorously. "Name's Bobbie, Bobbie Taggert, and that's my sister, Lisa. Nice doing business with you, can't wait to see how it works out. What's your name, by the way?"
"Ah...Philip. But I haven't agreed--" Philip began.
"Nonsense, of course you have. You must have," Bobbie stated, his voice leaving absolutely no room for doubt of any kind. "If you hadn't, why would you have let us out of our restraints?"
Philip shook his head, and stared. Sure enough, the prisoners appeared to be no longer bound to the wall.
"Uh...I guess I did agree? But--"
"Great! You go get the minions, and Lisa and I will get everything set up!"
Six minutes later, S'yang Tifal, Lector to the Dark Warlord, made his way to the head of the line, and found himself confronting a zombie.
This was nothing strange in and of itself. The Dark Lord had quite a few undead of all persuasions in his service. Very equal-opportunity employer, the Dark Lord Arville was. Very...very open-minded, shall we say? No trace of the pro-vitalistist sentiments that are so sadly evident in so many employers today, certainly. But...somehow, the zombie wasn't what S'yang was expecting.
"Tiiiickeeet" the zombie groaned, holding out a hand. S'yang stopped, his shock at being asked to buy a ticket waring with shock at this change to one of the universal staples of zombie-related post-vitalist arcane endeavors.
"But...how?" he finally managed staring at the young—but at this point, they were all young, or so it seemed—necromancer, who sat grinning in the impromptu ticket booth's rear.
"It wasn't easy," the youngster said smugly. "But...I think I got it, in the end."
"Huh," the aged advisor said. He stared at the zombie for a moment more, and then shrugged, and put four coppers into the zombie's outstretched hand.
"Ticket," the zombie groaned, and held out its other hand, which contained...a ticket.
Impressive, S'yang thought to himself.
When Lord Arville re-entered the torture chamber—for the third time that morning—he found the room so changed so as to barely be recognizable.
For a start, the room was a lot bigger, and he was pretty sure that it was now several stories tall. Of the torture equipment, there was no evidence—instead, the rack, the iron maiden, and all the other tools of the torturer's trade had been replaced by a large rectangular ring, with posts at each corner, and ropes strung between the posts.
And it seemed that every single minion, mercenary, henchman, undead servant, summoned creature, bound being from beyond the barriers separating the dimensions, and any other type of entity that was currently in his service was crowded into the room, staring avidly at the roped-off ring.
This was...new.
His distraction cost him, and a massive chitinous leg slammed into his back, hurling him through the air into the center of the ring.
Bobbie had been waiting for this. Talking the necromancers into setting up the spells required had been tricky, but there was nothing like a little motivation to really convince people to work to their fullest potential, and right now, Bobbie Taggert had all the motivation he would ever need.
Somewhere, he'd managed to scrounge up a suit, a white shirt, and a tie. Nobody could have possibly guessed where these had come from, since nobody had ever seen anybody in the castle wearing anything like any of the garments he was wearing, but that was beside the point. The point was that he'd found them, and now he was ready.
Oh boy, was he ready.
So when the local Dark Lord came flying through the air, coming down in the ring in a picture-perfect three-point landing, he was more than prepared.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, his magically amplified voice booming through the room, drowning out the chatter of hundreds of different beings, from dozens of different species classifications, or conditions struggling to find seats, buy souvenirs, and in the traditional past-time of bad-mouthing the opposing team. "It's time for the is the main event, the one you've all been waiting for: the first annual Arville Melisama Memorial Inter-Evil Open Wrestling Tournament!
Lord Arville blinked, twice. First, because of the bright lights that suddenly lit up the roped off square, casting everything else into shadow. And secondly, because of how loud that blasted freaking music was! Gah!! BLOODY MINIONS NEED TO TURN THEIR MUSIC DOWN!!!
I SAID, THOSE IDIOT MINIONS NEED TO TURN THEIR FREAKING—wait a minute. This wasn't the kind of music that his minions usually played.
They knew better than to claim they ruled anything, ruins or no.
And...huh. The Arville Melisama Memorial? But memorials were only given to somebody who was...oh, those ungrateful bastards.
He was going to kill somebody so hard....
Lisa had acquired...well...call it a sparkling bathing suit, and you probably wouldn't be too far off. Unlike her brother's outfit, everybody knew where she'd gotten it. After all, if a girl needs something flashy and eye-catching, there is no better expert in the world than a succubus.
And Wylinesh, the castle's resident succubus, was looking so excited that she was probably about ready to start feeding off of herself, which would probably have all kinds of unfortunate implications for everybody in her vicinity.
Yep. No questions about where that garment had come from.
"Alright, ladies and gentle--," she began, only to be met with a chorus of boos. "Oh, my apologies. I forgot to whom I was speaking."
She took a deep breath, and began again.
"Scumbuckets and criminals!" she boomed out, this time to the accompaniment of cheers. "Let's hear it for our first contestants! On the right, weighing in at three-hundred and seventy pounds, and standing seven feet, eight inches tall, we have the three-time defending title holder from the Evil World Wrestling Association, the reigning champion of the super-ultra-heavyweight class: Lord Arville Melisama!"
The cheers that interrupted the girl's spiel at this point were nigh-deafening, and both brother and sister had to stop as Lord Arville drew himself up, and gave a distinctly satisfied look out into the audience.
"And in the other corner, we have a pair of rising stars in the Arachnid League, who are participating in a tag-team match against our very own Dark Lord. Weighing in at 331 pounds, and standing eight feet tall is Black Widow, who has teamed up with T. M. Spider! Let's hear it for the Spidering Slayers!"
A chorus of boos emerged, this time, and one of the spiders—Bobbie thought that it was T.M.--actually put all eight legs on what were presumably its hips, and looked indignant. Astonishingly, it managed to hover in mid-air for almost half a second, before gravity realized that it was knocking about, and got on with doing its job. The spider in question collapsed to the ground with a thud.
"Right," Bobbie said, hiding his sigh. "All right, ladies, gentlemen, and squids of all ages...let's get ready to ruuummmbbbllleeee!!!!"
"What do you mean, you didn't bring them in?!" Lord Arville bellowed the next morning. "You couldn't even find one lousy pair of peasant farmers?! You morons! You blithering idiots! You--"
"They paid their taxes, milord," S'yang, his chief adviser, pointed out.
"They...how the hell could they pay their taxes, when they were flat broke yesterday?!"
"They charged admission to your fight with the spiders."
"They...they what?!"
"They charged admission to any of your minions who wanted to view the fight. Then they appear to have used that money to pay off their taxes that day, and went home."
"You mean to tell me that my minions let them go?!"
"Why not? They paid their taxes on time, and they didn't do anything wrong."
"Buh...buh...gah!"
"Milord?"
"Just...just shut up. I need a drink, dammit. Get me that fermented virgins' blood you were talking about earlier."
"Of course, Milord."
"And, S'yang? Get out of here."
Note: I would have liked to include scenes from the actual match, but I couldn't think of more than one or two--any suggestions would be appreciated.
