If I Were an Evil Overlord

In the distance, a siren was growing louder. Help was on the way.

Then he saw the list on his bulletin board, the list of things he would do if he became an Evil Overlord. The list that he promised himself he would follow carefully.

With the pain in his gut causing him to stumble, he went to the board, pulled off the list, and slumped to the kitchen floor, his back against the wall. Outside his apartment, the sound of the siren stopped. He could see the flashing lights through the window.

Help would be here in a moment. He forced himself to take a deep breath to hold back the pain and flip the list to the right place.

Rule 85. Once I have securely established myself, all time travel devices in my realm shall be utterly destroyed.

“No!” Steven shouted as the pain shot through his body. “I didn’t get to become an evil overlord! I didn’t get to be Fortune Cookie Tyrant!”

There was a banging on the door and his name was called out.

He tried to get up, but instead fell facedown onto the tile floor.

The last words the great Fortune Cookie Tyrant muttered were, “Not fair.”

DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL by Jim C. Hines

At first, I didn’t recognize the land around me. Blackened ash and burned stumps covered the earth as far as I could see. Saplings and weeds proved at least a year or two had passed since the devastation, but it was a far cry from the thick wilderness I remembered.

“I think he’s waking up.”

I started to turn around, then froze when I spotted the ruins. Crumbled bricks lay scattered to one side of a broken, six-sided foundation. In the remains of the doorway, I could see huge iron hinges bolted to the floor. The trick entrance was only one of the traps I had designed for Tarzog the Black while he tormented me with false promises to free my wife and son. I had barely eaten or slept for almost seven years as I worked to perfect his temple to Rhynoth, the Serpent God. This was my masterpiece, broken and scattered.

I rubbed grit from my eyes, then stared at my hands. The skin was pale, pulled tight around the bones like dried leather. My nails were cracked and yellow. When I poked my palm with one finger, the indentation remained for almost a minute.

I was bare-chested, dressed in rough-spun trousers and my old sandals, though the straps had been replaced with thin ropes. I pressed a sickly yellow hand against my chest. My heart was still as stone.

I had always wondered why Tarzog’s dead slaves took their resurrections so calmly. Now I understood. Whether it was a side effect of the magic or my mind’s way of rebelling against what had been done to me, I felt nothing but a strange sense of detachment. Looking at my dead body, I felt like a puppeteer staring down at a particularly gruesome marionette.

“I told you I could do it.”

The speaker was a young girl, no more than seven or eight years old. She wore a dirty blue gown and a purple half-cape with a bronze clasp in the shape of a snake. Behind her stood a slender, dark-haired woman, the sight of whom made my dead balls want to squirm up inside me and hide until she went away.

“Zariel,” I said. Tarzog’s necromancer looked far more ragged than I remembered. Gone were the night-black cloak of velvet, the silver claw rings decorating her left hand, and the low-cut leather vest. Her skin was rougher, her hair grayer, and she wore a simple traveling cloak lined with dirty rabbit fur. To tell the truth, she smelled rather ripe, and that was coming from a corpse.

“What happened?” I asked. My memories were blurred, full of gaps. Another side effect of being dead.

To my surprise, it was the little girl who answered. “This wasn’t the real temple. Daddy built the real temple about half a day’s walk from here, in the jungle.”

I stared, trying to understand. “Why would he…?”

“Prince Armand knew about Daddy’s plans to summon Rhynoth. So Daddy built this place as a trap. When Armand and his men finally got to the heart of the temple, Daddy was going to collapse the whole thing on their heads. But Armand and his men showed up early. They burned Daddy in his own temple, along with anyone they found wearing his crest.” She touched the bronze snake at her throat.

Was that how I had died? No, I would have remembered fire. Death had been quick, but quiet. I clutched my stomach, recalling the pain of my insides twisting into knots. I had a vague memory of stale raisin pudding, even worse than our usual fare. I remembered dropping my spoon… “He poisoned me!”

“Of course he did. Daddy poisoned everyone who worked on his temple. That way only he knew all the secrets.”

If he had killed me… Tarzog was too smart to let my wife or son go after that. He wouldn’t risk them coming back to avenge me. I closed my eyes and fought despair. Gradually, the rest of the girl’s words penetrated my grief.

Daddy. I stared. “You’re Tarzog’s daughter. Genevieve.”

“Je

“We should go,” said Zariel. “This place isn’t safe.”

Je

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the other temple,” Je

I stood, barely hearing her words. I kept seeing my family, dead and forgotten beneath the rubble. No doubt by Tarzog’s own hand. He was never one to delegate that sort of chore. Without thinking, I lunged forward and wrapped my withered gray fingers around Je

The next thing I knew, I was flat on the ground, a good fifteen feet from Je

“I should kill you for that, but I worked hard to resurrect you. Zariel’s been teaching me.” She flashed a gap-toothed smile. “Do it again, and I’ll make you rip out your own i

I wiped ash and dirt from my palms. Je

One thing was clear: Je

We had walked more than an hour before I worked up the nerve to speak to Zariel. This was a woman who had eviscerated children and sacrificed whole families to maintain her power. But I had to understand what was happening if I was to have any chance of stopping them.

“Why did she resurrect me?” I asked.

“You designed the first temple,” Zariel said. “Tarzog followed the same plans for the real one, including all of your traps. If you get us in, Je

Je

“I’m still a begi