The world, as I might have mentioned, is shit. The masses are born into shit, have shit shoveled onto them their whole lives, and then die and return to the shit. Adversity is just another word for shit, really. It just takes longer to say.

The struggle for power, for greatness, for Utter Domination is, when you pare it down to its essence, the struggle to climb out of the shit onto some relatively shit-free surface.

Those few, precious, cleanish heights which exist are definitely already occupied, which means you need to either construct your own or toss some non-shit-spackled bastard off of his or her perch. But the job’s not done after that. Then you need to keep some other fucker from doing the same to you.

The hallmark of a great leader, evil or otherwise, is simple: how do they handle the shit that cascades down on us all from fortune’s prolapsed asshole? Weaklings snivel about it. Better, but still pathetic and shit-smeared folks get on with their lives, clearing away the excrement from their eyes and mouths, as it were. The clever find some way to shelter from fate’s diarrheic downpour.

But the great, the truly great, climb up to the highest metaphorical peaks, spear in hand, and stab that fucker right in the round and brown.

~ ~ ~

It was fairly easy to tell when I’d reached the end of the kingdom and the beginning of the Debatable Lands, because it was really difficult to miss the Divide - an absolutely huge drop-off between the two. The escarpment ran for miles and miles to the north and south, with the kingdom on the side that had the high ground. The Debatable Lands were spread out before and below me like a giant map the exact same size of what it represented. I stood at the edge of the divide for a time, looking out and down on my soon-to-be new home.

It looked like a massive, wrinkled, soggy, gray-green-brown blanket. Sort of. Very little of it was even close to being flat, from my vantage point at least. It was as if some deeply bored giant had taken perfectly good hills and stretched them out somehow, and then just sort of stomped around for a while to muck things up good and proper. I’m not explaining it well, I know, but the Debatable Lands are something you just have to see.

If you happen to have some knowledge of geography and the natural formations the earth tends to bunch itself into, one look at the Debatable Lands from a decent vantage point will leave you deeply disturbed, with lots of questions that you’re just going to have to live with, because I’ve never found anyone who can explain what the hell happened to make it look the way it does. The most probable explanation, if you ask me, is ‘big-ass, very nasty curse.’ My second guess would be some extraordinarily vicious magical warfare in the far distant past.

Whatever the reason, that’s the reason nobody wanted to bother with conquering the Debatable Lands. It would be like fighting to claim the hand of the ugliest, smelliest girl in the village. The one with three teeth, eleven fingers and a penchant for strangling cats. I mean, there won’t be other suitors trying to stop you, but you’re not going to find a lot of support in your endeavor. I didn’t, anyway. Not at first.

But Utter Domination was still far from my mind at that point. Mostly I was just staring down at the fuckery of the topography and dreading the hike ahead – all the times I would have to climb up only to immediately scramble back down. Which brought to mind a question.

“Do you know which way Mudhelm is?” I asked Hrazz’k. There weren’t any signs of civilization that I could see.

“Pretty much due west from here. If it’s still standing.”

I grunted and started down the very substandard trail that had been hacked out of the cliff face of the Divide. I’d taken about four tentative steps when an arrow smacked into the stones by my knee. I heard somebody below curse.

“Dammit Nuk, I toldja to wait!” came a distant, echoey voice.

“Fuck!” came another voice, much closer because it was mine. I scrambled back up and away from the edge. I started to run – and then I stopped.

I stopped because I suddenly realized two things: first, it’s really hard to outrun an arrow, and I didn’t know how far behind me the archer was. Second, I had the ability to defend myself now. I needed to stop thinking like a gambling, drinking, pay-for-sexing monk, and I needed to start thinking like someone who could turn their enemies into charcoal with a thought.

If I was forced to point out the moment I took my first conscious, willful step on the road to becoming Gar the Pitiless, that would have to be it. It was a baby step in the grand scheme of things, but it was a step.

I stopped. I turned around. I summoned the flame into my sweaty palm. And I waited.

I didn’t get a good look at the first brigand whose head rose above the edge of the escarpment, because as soon as that head became visible, I turned it into a cinder. The rest of him toppled back the way he’d come, and judging by the sounds, he took at least one other with him on the way down. It certainly wasn’t him that screamed as he fell, anyway.

“Niiice,” said Hrazz’k.

I stalked up to the edge and looked down, another flame at the ready. I wasn’t worried about a bow, now – I’d seen enough of the trail to know anyone on it would need their hands as well as their feet to traverse it.

There were three more figures on the cliff face. They wore better armor than the bandits at the charcoal burner’s camp, which was all that kept me from cooking them right then and there. I really wanted me some armor, and whatever coin they happened to have.

“Come up slowly and lay on your bellies when you get to the top,” I shouted down to them. “Otherwise I’ll freaking kill you.”

The one closest to me snarled and spat. Most of the spittle didn’t make it past his beard. He pulled a knife and looked like he knew how to throw it, so I set his beard on fire. Also the rest of his face. He screamed, dropped the knife, and then just dropped, beating ineffectually at his face on the way down. The impact didn’t put the fire out, but it did stop him trying to.

“You two dumbfucks that are left want to follow him?” I screamed. It was a little shrill, but it was also my first time threatening anybody, so I’d still give myself passing marks.

There was a moment of silence.

“Not me,” said the lower one, a little muffled.

“Honestly I never liked that guy anyway,” said the one that was next in line for a charring.

“Then throw all your fucking weapons down and get to stepping, shitbrains.”

They did as they were told. Lots of sharp pointy things got thrown down to the ground below, and then they continued up the escarpment. I stepped back out of grabbing distance, flame at the ready as the first one made it to the top. He had red, curly hair, but was already going bald, though his face said he wasn’t that much older than me. I had him lie flat on his belly, with his hands on the back of his head.

The second one wore a hood with a cloth mask.

“He’s in the way,” the figure said in a harsh voice.

“Then crawl the fuck over him and then do like he’s doing.”

The masked figure did as it was told, and I stepped back a few more paces. I wanted them next to each other in case they tried to rush me. A fireball would take care of two just as easily as one if they were close enough.

“Right. Now, ginger dickhead, get naked. No-face, don’t move a fucking muscle.”

Ginger Dickhead didn’t move. “You want me to what now?” he asked.

“Did I fucking stutter? Strip or I’ll broil you.”

I’d like to pause here for a second to explain how I suddenly was able to issue effective verbal threats. It was quite simple, really. I just imagined what Chortle might have said if she were in my position, and the script practically wrote itself. Good old Chortle. By which I mean deeply evil Chortle.

Ginger Dickhead sighed. “Can I stand up to do it?” he asked.

“Fuck no.”

He sighed again and started squirming around, pulling off his boots first and then undoing buckles on his leather armor.

“This is really hard to do lying down,” he complained.

“It’ll be a lot fucking harder if you’re on fire.”

“That’s a point.”

After a long time spent squirming around in the dirt, he got all his armor off, and then his shirt and pants, leaving his pasty flesh exposed to the chill air. All except for his smallclothes.

“You’re not done yet, freckle boy,” I told him. “Get it all off.”

“Hey, you’re not some kinda pervert, are you?” he asked, face reddening.

“You’re not my type, and even if you were there’s fuck-all you could do about it. Strip or I’ll cook you. Starting with your sausage.”

He stripped. He didn’t like it. I didn’t either, for that matter, but there’s a time for modesty and a time to make sure your adversary is as disadvantaged as humanly possible. Ginger Dickhead threw his stained drawers towards me and muttered “I hope you’re happy.”

“Nobody who’s seen that could ever be happy about it. Your turn, No-face.”

“No.”

“I’m going to count to three, and then ‘no’ is going to become ‘oh gods it burns!’ One. Two. Th-”

No-face pulled of the mask, revealing the face of a woman. It was a hard face, all angles and planes and a couple of nasty scars, but it wasn’t what you could call an ugly face. It was framed by shortish, badly cut, mousy-brown hair.

Maybe I’d been in the wilderness for too long, just me and a book demon, but No-face was in some sense attractive. Not attractive-attractive. Not take-all-my-money attractive like Petal. But she was not ugly.

“Keep going, asshole,” I said after a second. She stared at me in a way that said she would tear out my entrails with her bare hands if I gave her the least opportunity. I took a step back and made the flame flare in my palm.

She growled and started stripping out of her armor.

“You’re a woman, Grim?” Dickhead said with a note of surprise and betrayal in his voice.

“No, Nuk, I’m a catapult. Why the fuck do you think I always go off by myself to take a piss?”

“Shit I don’t know. How should I know? You never take your mask off.”

“What, never?” I asked. “How does she eat?”

“She just kinda lifts the lower part, like a flap.” Ginger Dickhead – or Nuk, I guess – shrugged from his spot on the ground. “You think you know somebody….”

No-Face the Catapult was considerably more adept at getting out of her armor and clothes than Nuk had been. I had begun to suspect that Nuk… how should I say it? Nuk likely brought up the rear in terms of skills and abilities in his band of cutthroats. He certainly wasn’t the sharpest blade in anyone’s scabbard.

Anyway, the catapult got to a naked state a lot quicker than Nuk.

She was fit. I mean, really fit. Not giant bulging muscles fit, but I had no doubt she could break me in half if I gave her the opportunity. Also she had breasts.

Of course I looked, and I’m not even sorry. Was there something in this account that made you believe I was some sort of gentleman when it came to boobs? Anyway, I could hardly help looking, given the situation. And given my personal, ah, enthusiasms. They were not huge, but they were… sturdy. Perky, even. I can say without equivocation they were the best pair of breasts I’ve ever seen on a brigand.

Once Catapult had stripped bare, she gave me another glare and said “What now, you piece of shit?”

“Oh, I’m the piece of shit, am I? Remind me who the fuck attacked who first?”

“We weren’t gonna off you, you diseased pecker. We were just going to rob you. But Nuk shot off his fucking arrow early. Which is something of an issue with him, I’ve been told.”

“I told you that in confidence,” Nuk hissed, “when I thought you was a man.”

“The fuck does that have to do with anything?” she replied.

“It just does. You wouldn’t understand because you’re not a man, you’re just a lying liar.”

I cleared my throat. “As much as I sympathize with your issue, Nuk, though I personally have never suffered anything like it, just to make that clear, I don’t have all fucking day. Start climbing back down, both of you. Gin- uh, Nuk goes first. When you get to the bottom, lay the fuck down on your bellies again. And don’t even think about trying anything, because I don’t need a free hand to light you up like a bonfire.” To illustrate, I made the flame whizz around their heads a couple of times.

I knew even back then that it was probably best for me to just kill them. I already had all their belongings safely out of harm’s way, which was the whole point of making them strip. But Catapult Woman had breasts, which I had a deep, natural affection for. Could you force yourself to, say, turn an adorable brace of puppies into ash? That’s how I felt about boobs.

And Nuk, well. He was just at the level of pathetic that made the idea of cooking him seem somehow wrong, and at the level of bumbling that made it seem not worth the effort.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with them, but if I wasn’t going to kill them, then I didn’t want to leave them above me while I climbed down the Divide. Rocks are free and gravity’s a bitch, after all.

While they started back down the cliff, I quickly gathered up all their possessions and tied them up in a bundle using my scavenged blanket. All except Nuk’s nasty drawers. Then I tossed the bundle over the edge, because no way was I going to try to carry it down the cliff. Then I took a look at my would-be robbers to make sure they were far enough down not to try for an ankle-grab or something, and started to follow them down.

Catapult glared up at me. If looks could kill and so on. Well, looks can kill depending on who’s doing the looking. But since Catapult wasn’t a gorgon, I didn’t feel immediately threatened.