The Middle Management Of Malice

Part One: The Quarterly Review

I want to begin by saying that I did not always feel this way about the work.

There was a time, long ago, when I burned. Genuinely burned. Not metaphorically (I have always been ambivalent about fire as a motif), but with the real interior heat of purpose. I had a vision. I had a mandate. The Sundered Realm was not, in those early centuries, a fully operational enterprise. It was a passion project. I stayed late. I worked weekends. I sourced the blight personally, walking the plains with a flask of corrupted earth and a genuine sense of investment in the outcome.

That was approximately five thousand eight hundred years ago.

These days, I have a graph on my desk that shows a downward trend in Incidents of Authentic Terror, and the dotted line indicating projected performance has exited the bottom of the page. Grixxel, who made the graph, tells me this was an automatic software decision. I have not yet decided what to do about Grixxel.

I was reviewing this graph on a Tuesday (all my worst days are Tuesdays, which I suspect is a structural feature of cosmic employment rather than coincidence) when Dregforth shuffled in with his clipboard. Dregforth is my Senior Deputy in Charge of Malevolence. He has too many elbows. I have learned not to look at him for extended periods; not because he is frightening, which was the original intention, but because the elbow situation eventually makes you feel that you've had a mild neurological event.

"My lord," he said.

"Dregforth."

"There's a Hero."

I put the graph face-down. This is a thing I do. I tell myself I'll come back to it later, and then I put it in the drawer, and then I put the drawer in a separate room, and eventually I commission a whole new wing of the fortress and put the graph in there where I don't have to see it. I have a great deal of fortress.

"Name?" I said.

"Aldric. Son of Aldric. There's a prophecy. It rhymes quite well, apparently."

I looked out of the window at the Sundered Realm. The blighted plains stretched to the horizon, regular and even. The rivers of shadow-fire were on a timer. In the far distance, one of my fell beasts let out a territorial roar that I knew, because I had reviewed the weekly schedule that morning, was at eleven-fifteen precisely and would be repeated at two-forty-five.

I have maintained all of this, I should note, for over six thousand years. The blight. The fires. The fell beasts and their roaring schedules. The specific smell in the throne room, which I compound myself from seven ingredients, two of which require a round trip to adjacent planes of existence. Every day. Not because I am driven by malice (I am not driven by malice, I haven't been driven by malice since somewhere in the second age when it became obvious that malice was not, as I had believed, a renewable resource) but because it is what I do.

The universe generated me. I have a function. The function is this. You get on with it.

"Fine," I said. "Get me a peasant."

Part Two: Customer Service

The dungeon took three weeks. I want that on record.

Not because I enjoyed designing it. I am past enjoying dungeon design in the way that a man who has eaten the same breakfast every day for six millennia is past enjoying breakfast. It is food. It sustains. You eat it. But I knew, from extremely long experience, what the dungeon needed to be, which is to say: not merely functional, but satisfying. Narratively coherent. The kind of dungeon that, when a Hero walks through it, produces the sense that the universe has arranged these particular horrors specifically for them.

Heroes can always tell the difference between a dungeon someone cared about and a dungeon someone threw together on a Wednesday afternoon. I have made both kinds. The Wednesday dungeon generates a very specific type of journal entry that I have been trying to avoid for the last eight hundred years.

Aldric had a journal. The scrying orb showed it to me on the first morning: a slim leather volume, already half-full, in which he was recording his progress with the methodical enthusiasm of someone who had paid for a course. He was approximately nineteen, blond in the way that Heroes are always blond, which I have never entirely understood as a cosmic pattern but have stopped questioning, and he moved through the outer corridor with the comfortable confidence of someone who had prepared extensively for exactly this.

There are schools now. Did I mention there are schools? Six-week intensive programmes. You emerge with a certificate and a complimentary prophecy. I am not against them in principle. In practice, what they produce is Heroes who arrive already knowing what to expect, which means that instead of genuine terror I have to provide something closer to the confirmed experience of genuine terror, which is a distinction that keeps Dregforth up at night and, occasionally, me.

Chambers one through three went without comment in the journal, which I took as neutral. Chamber four, which was my personal project, a puzzle of genuine subtlety and a central mirror enchanted to show the Hero's deepest fear, received an entry that Grixxel read aloud to me from across the room, in the tone of a man who has decided that professional neutrality is the only survivable posture:

Chamber 4: Disappointing. The puzzle was solvable in under three minutes. The mirror of fears showed a slightly disappointing image (Father's disapproval? Standard). No physical threat. A missed opportunity. Overall the dungeon lacks imagination in its mid-section. 2/5. Will continue.

I read this three times.

I had sourced the glass for that mirror from the Plane of Reflections. There was a procurement process. There was a form. I filled in the form myself, because Dregforth's handwriting has the quality of something written by a creature that has too many elbows, which he does, and I needed the form to be legible.

"Two," I said. "Out of five."

"Yes, my lord."

"For the mirror."

"That's correct."

"The mirror that I sourced personally."

"The procurement form is on file, if it helps," said Dregforth. I could tell from his expression, which is not easy to read on a face with his particular configuration of features, that he did not think it would help. He was right.

The maze in chamber seven was a three. The hunger-shade, which I had personally briefed on Aldric's psychological profile (his father, his Academy difficulties, the thing in his second term he hadn't told anyone about) received a note that it had seemed distracted. It had been distracted. Vroth, one of my fell beasts, had started doing informal talks about team-building, and approximately half the dungeon staff had attended out of solidarity. I have feelings about this that I have not yet fully processed.

By the time Aldric reached the antechamber I had read twelve journal entries, consumed a quantity of something strong that a junior demon brought me without being asked, which showed initiative and would need acknowledging, and arrived at a specific variety of exhaustion that I recognised as the feeling of having given everything I had and received in return a conditional three stars.

"He wrote," said Grixxel, with studied neutrality, "'The penultimate approach is competent but lacks menace. One feels the Dark Lord is going through the motions. There is craft here but not conviction. I had hoped for worse.'"

He had hoped for worse.

I stood up. I put on my helmet, which I find helps. I picked up my staff, which has a skull on top that I have always found slightly embarrassing but which is, I understand, expected. And I went to prepare the throne room, which at least I have always gotten right.

The smell takes a long time to compound properly. I had started it that morning.

Part Three: The Climax

I am going to say something that may surprise you: the throne room was good.

I don't say this often about my own work. I am not a man (if 'man' is the right word, which it isn't) given to self-congratulation. But standing in the throne room that evening, watching the storm clouds move across the hundred-foot ceiling, feeling the shadow pillars shift in my peripheral vision, smelling the smell, I thought: yes. This is the thing. This is what six thousand years of practice produces, when you apply them without shortcuts.

The doors opened. I had timed them at forty-seven seconds, which is the exact threshold at which the anticipation becomes something physical. The fires guttered on cue. The shadows thickened. The smell reached out and took Aldric by whatever part of a nineteen-year-old responds to ancient wrongness, which is most parts, in my experience.

He stopped in the centre of the room. He looked up. He looked at the pillars. He looked at the throne, which I had polished that afternoon, not out of vanity but because the reflections from the obsidian create a specific visual effect at this lighting level that I have spent a hundred years perfecting. He took out his journal. He wrote something. He put it away.

I watched all of this from behind my visor and felt, I'll admit, the last remaining ember of something that had once been enthusiasm.

Then he cleared his throat.

"Dark Lord," he said, in the carefully projected voice of someone who had been coached in this, "your reign of terror ends today. I am Aldric, son of Aldric, of the line of Aldric, bearer of the Sword Calenthar which was forged in the First Light, chosen by the prophecy of the elder Sibyls, trained in the academy of the Western Reaches, and I am here to end your darkness and restore the light to these sundered lands."

He continued for a while in this vein. He had a second paragraph about my crimes, which were numerous, and a third about his destiny, which was apparently extensive. I stood at the top of the dais and let him finish, which is a professional courtesy I have always extended to Heroes regardless of my feelings about the content, and then I walked down the steps.

Not dramatically. My armour doesn't fit correctly at the left hip (I have raised this with the armourer, in writing, on four separate occasions) so I walked like a man with a mild hip complaint, which is accurate, and stopped about ten feet away from him.

I took off my helmet.

He blinked. They always blink. They expect something impressive and they get me: a face that has been tired for several thousand years and has arrived at a settled relationship with that fact.

"Son of Aldric," I said. "How was the dungeon."

He lowered his sword slightly. "I... what?"

"The dungeon. Forty rooms. Several unique enchantments. The mirror in chamber four took eleven days, including procurement. The maze in seven took three. You gave the maze a three."

"The mid-section did lack—"

"The hunger-shade," I said, "knew about the thing in your second term at the Academy. The thing you haven't told anyone. I had Dregforth compile a dossier. It was thorough. It was distracted because one of my fell beasts has started doing morale talks and half my dungeon staff attended out of solidarity." I paused. "That is not a structural problem with the maze. That is a staffing issue."

He looked at me in the way that people look at you when the conversation has gone somewhere they didn't have a note in the journal for.

I told him the rest of it. Not angrily (I have been managing my temper for several thousand years and have genuinely gotten quite good at it) but clearly. The plains. The fires. The smell, which I compound from seven ingredients, two of which require travel. All of it, every day, because the universe generated me for a function and the function is to provide the thing that Heroes walk through, so that the prophecy can be fulfilled, so that the adventure can happen, so that someone can go home and write it up and give it three stars and note that the Dark Lord seemed disengaged.

"I turned the world upside down for you," I said. Not a speech. A statement. "Six thousand years of it. Maintained without meaningful recognition. I have kidnapped the peasant, who is in chamber twelve and is perfectly comfortable, I checked this morning. I have provided the narrative. I have sourced the glass and filled in the procurement forms and briefed the hunger-shade on your psychological profile and compounded the smell in this room since before your bloodline existed."

I looked at him.

"In eleven days I am eligible for retirement. There is a memo. It has been approved. Vethara takes over and she is frightening in ways that I genuinely haven't been since I was young, and she will probably give you a much better dungeon if you come back, though I'd recommend calling ahead."

A pause. One of the shadow pillars shifted. The storm clouds overhead had begun to thin slightly because I had them on a schedule and it was getting late.

"Here is what I propose," I said. "I throw a fireball. You deflect it. We exchange several blows, which I will make suitably dramatic. I go down. You stand over me. The realm dissolves, which I have on a timer. You ride home and write your notes."

He was quiet.

"I would ask," I added, "that you give the throne room a fair assessment. I have been compounding that smell for three thousand years. The rue is what holds it together. Nobody ever notices the rue."

He looked around the room. He looked at his journal. He looked back at me.

"What's in the smell?" he asked.

So I told him.

Part Four: The Resolution

The fireball was the best I'd managed in several centuries.

I don't know what had loosened it. Perhaps it was the conversation. Perhaps it's easier to do the work when someone is actually paying attention to it rather than just completing it for a grade. Whatever the reason, I threw a fireball of genuine quality, and Aldric deflected it off the flat of his sword, and it went into the ceiling clouds and produced a secondary explosion that I had not planned but was absolutely willing to take credit for. Gold light and dark shadow across a hundred feet of enchanted architecture. It looked, frankly, wonderful.

He was good. I'll give him that. He'd done the training and not just the certificate. He moved with the kind of confidence that comes from actual practice rather than theoretical familiarity with the forms, and when we closed for the exchange of blows there was a real quality to it. His sword on my staff. My staff cracking. The sound of that crack in a throne room built to amplify exactly this kind of resonance.

I let myself be pushed back to the dais.

I made the fires gutter. I have been doing this for six thousand years and I know exactly how to make a fire gutter with narrative purpose, with the specific quality of light that says this is the turning point, this is the moment the darkness recedes, which is a thing the darkness has to do and which I have always taken a certain oblique pride in executing with craft even though I am, technically, the darkness in question.

The ceiling clouds broke apart. The light came down, that thin, gold, impossible light that isn't coming from anywhere in particular but is coming from everywhere in general, which is an effect I worked out over several centuries and am genuinely pleased with.

I sat down on the dais steps. I let my staff go out. I dropped my shoulders.

Aldric stood over me with the sword raised and the expression that the moment required: triumph and sorrow and the weight of destiny, composed into something that was, I had to admit, genuinely well-done. Better than some. He had the bearing for it.

"It's done," he said. His coached projection was gone. It was just his voice.

"Yes," I said. "It is."

We stayed like that for a moment. The light held. Outside, in the distance, a fell beast that was not on a schedule roared once, softly, which I noted as unscheduled behaviour to follow up on later.

"The smell," said Aldric. "I'm going to remember it."

"That's the point," I said. "That's always been the point."

The realm dissolved on schedule. I had gotten quite good at the timing over the years. The blight rolled back from the plains in a sweep that took about forty minutes and produced, as the green came through, exactly the visual effect I had been aiming for since I designed it. The fires extinguished in sequence. The shadow pulled off the horizon. By the time Aldric crossed the outer gates the morning was gold and restored and exactly as the genre required.

I watched him go on the scrying orb.

At the gate he paused. He looked back. He wrote something in his journal.

Then he went home.

*

I sat in what had been the throne room for a while after that. The smell was still there. It takes several days to fully dissipate, which I have always considered a reasonable legacy.

Dregforth came in with the clipboard. The peasant had been retrieved. Vethara had confirmed her start date. The handover pack was on my desk. The fell beast who had roared unscheduled was named Vroth, which I had suspected, and had done it because it seemed appropriate, which I found I could not argue with.

Then Dregforth told me there was a message. Delivered via post, from the Hero, addressed to me by name. Not by title. By name.

I opened it.

It said:

The throne room was a five.

The rue was important.

Thank you.

I read it twice. I folded it. I put it in my gauntlet, next to the pocket watch.

Then I checked the time.

Three forty-seven.

I clocked out. I did not look at the graph. I did not check the quarterly report or the projected performance trajectory or the dotted line that had exited the bottom of the page.

I went home.

I slept, which is not something I do often, and which surprised me.

In eleven days, Vethara starts. She is going to be very good at this. Possibly better than me, at this point, which I find I don't mind. The work needs someone who still has the fire for it. Metaphorically. She can sort out her own motif.

Aldric, son of Aldric, of the line of Aldric: for what it's worth, you were better than average. Your footwork was sound. Your speech ran a little long in the second paragraph, but you landed the ending.

And you noticed the rue.

It was always the rue.

THE END