Fire. According to some, it is the most evil of all the elements. Some people think that just because a vast number of evil overlords use fire as their primary element and the infernal Abyss burns with dark flame, fire is somehow wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth! Why, I burn heretics and sinners and witches and schismatics and the undead and the damned and the Evil and demons and werewolves and wingéd men and blasphemers and children who disrespect their parents and individuals who work on sacred rest days and orcs and goblins and warlocks and water spirits and minotaurs and dragons and manticores and great cats and flying serpents from the Mystic East and the like to death – or sometimes to re-death – every day! And so fulfil the sacred work of Good! To speak out against the sacred element of Fire is no less than blasphemy!

Saint Pyrene of Pompeia


...


Fires burned in the night. The perfume warehouse was a bonfire which put lesser celebrations to shame, a pillar of flame which radiated raw heat. And on the street by it stood two figures. One of them; short, armoured in dark steel and robed in blood-red, held a ball of unnaturally pink fire in her left hand. And the other, wearing a cat-mask, had to throw himself out of the way with all possible haste to avoid the fireball, which instead sizzled on by and hit a completely different building.

"Ooops," Louise said. That was what Gnarl had said. Aim for their feet when throwing fireballs at people. That way they got caught in the blast radius, and – or so he had claimed – it was highly amusing to watch people dance around with their toes ablaze.

"Marine Arc!"

And then she had to duck under a horizontal slash of blue-green water which whistled at head height. If she had been taller... drat, drat, drat, that man was fast with how he got his spells out. She started to chant again, the fireball forming in her hand, but another barked word from the cat-faced man interrupted her flow, as a low-sweeping wave swept her legs out from under her.

All her breath was forced out of her with a whoosh as she hit the ground like an accident in a foundry, and it was only her hurried roll out of the way which avoided its follow up. Rolling over and over, she tried to pull herself up, and felt her stomach muscles scream at the effort.

Something blew up in the warehouse, spraying sweet-smelling burning oil over the street and the nearby houses. The blast knocked her down prone again, and the hot air left her choking. Louise felt the warm patter against her armour and covered the exposed part of her face with a hand. Founder, she was so thankful she wasn't half-naked. So very thankful, she thought as burning oil sloughed off her helmet and pauldrons. She shook herself like a dog, sending small patches of fire to join the ones which already littered the cobbles like grass.

It was uncomfortably hot, the perfumed smoke was horribly to breathe in, and if there was something else which was going to blow up in there, she wanted to be well clear of it. Hopefully the comte de Mott would have perished in the...

There was a hiss of steam, and a jet of water whooshed out through the fire, cutting through the smoke. Fortunately, it did not appear to be aimed at her, or – if it was – the man was not too good a shot. Or was feeling a mite distracted by the fire.

"Vile force of Evil!" the comte cried out. She could see him now; drenched – he'd soaked himself to ward off fire – and singed. "Do you have any idea how much this cost? And my warehouse! And my... Crushing Wave!"

Louise saw the oncoming wall of water. This was going to hurt.

And, serendipity! She was right.


...


"Ooooh! Pretty boom!" a brown said, staring across the town at the fire-rose blossoming down by the river.

"Get back to work!"

"My arms're tired!"

"Keep crankin', you idiots," Maggat growled, thumping the slacker at the crank, as laden down with gold and sacks of coinage Fettid appeared again, only to be sent down for more.. "If we get the gold out, we can go loot other stuff an' watch the overlady's fires."

Maxy cleared his throat. "Hey, Maggy, maybe it'd help 'em more if I do a song to motivate them."

He was cuffed around the head for his troubles. "You heard Maxy," Maggat said, "if you don't do it faster, he'll start playin' music and then we'll all be sufferin'."

With grumbling and a few slaps, Fettel was raised up on his rope, two bags of coins – each one the same size as his torso – in his hands. "That's 'em all!" he chirped up.

"You sure?" Maggat said suspiciously. "You pretty stupid, but I hope you not stupid enough that we get in trouble for leaving gold behind."

"Not lootin' everything you can is against the Minion Code," Maxy agreed.

"Unless orders is orders," Igni said, tongue sticking up as he practiced juggling fireworks.

Maggat shrugged. "Well, yeah. Orders is orders and... Igni, where you get those fireworks? I thought you launch our message ones?"

"Found 'em lying around," the red said with a shrug. "When you was doin' stuff, I sneaky-like went lookin'. I was thinkin' we could set this buildin' on fire afterwards."

"How comes he gets to be a slacker?" one of the browns at the crank asked.

"'Cause he a red, so he puny and not good at liftin'," Maggat growled, "an' also because we lot are older an' more 'perienced than you gobos so we is smarter and better at usin' our in-it-at-ive. And Igni very good at findin' boomy stuff."

Igni grinned. "An' I set to a buildin', so we have distraction when gettin' away. Overlady is best mistress or master in years, 'cause she gets how fire is best thing ever for everything."

Maxy pursed his lips. "Well, I think we getting distracted. So we just need to get the stuff out, right? So I guess we gotta go take our dirty luck-re out by coach, and then we can go helpsie the Overlady."

Scyl stirred himself from where he was gazing out over the city. As one of the blue-skinned variety of his kin, his intellect – such as such a thing might be said to apply to a non-Gnarl minion – was even less focussed than the other varieties, and as a result, often wandered. "Maggat," he said slowly, "I thinks they took our coach and our horsies. They tied their leggsies together with iron bars and then dragged them away because it was," and he focussed, "parked ill eagle lie."

Maggat glowered, stomping over to check. "But we didn'ts park it on any sick birds," he muttered. "You was meant to be watching the coach, Scyl!"

"I did," the blue objected. "I watch it all the time, until they take it where I can't see it no more. And I no see any sick birds neither."

"Maybe they wasn't very bright," Maxy suggested, drifting over. "What now? If we don't has a coach, the plan's not goin' to work."

The two brown minions' gaze was drawn inevitably towards the nearby moored windship, to be joined a few seconds later by Scyl when he got his mind in gear and into the same frame of reference as the others.


...


Wet, mildly singed, and aching from the wave which had slammed her into a wall, Louise de la Vallière pulled herself to her feet, groaning. She had water up her nose. Through clenched teeth, she grated out the words for her fireball spell, igniting a ball above one hand. After a moment's thought, she repeated it, and was gratified to see that she could create a fireball for the other hand too. Why hadn't she bought her staff with her?

Oh yes. Because it was heavy, and she hadn't planned to be fighting anyone. Well, that was a mistake she wasn't going to make again.

Ha. Ha. Ha. And oh Founder that was another wall of water coming and... she exhaled onto one of the fireballs, sending a jet of pink fire out which collided with the wave. She flinched as a hot mist washed over her and condensed against her armour – which was getting uncomfortably hot – but the fire had blunted the main attack.

And her body, which had decided that her mind was being stupid and thinking when it should have been fighting breathed onto the fireball again. The flame rushed out through the mist, adding a pink cast to the firelit vapours, before they were countered by another water spell.

"I'm going to get every last ecu of costs out of your hide!" Mott snarled, in between spells. "You God-damned flirt! Leading a man on like that!"

"I never asked you to pay attention to me!" Louise screamed back as she hurled a fireball overarm at him, smashing a shield of ice and hastily caught by a last-ditch wall of water.

"What did you expect, dressing like that? A man can't control himself when confronted by someone in such interesting armour which promised so much! Evil! Evil!"

So began a duel of fire against water through flames and mist and smoke, tossed by gales and the waves of force when the two of them clashed. Louise didn't know why no one else was intervening, but considering the conditions it was likely that the lesser mages were probably trying to control the warehouse fire – which was spreading rapidly – and commoners simply couldn't fight in these conditions.

She side-stepped an ice-shard, sweating, and retreated again. Step by step she was being forced back down the street, and her lack of magical skill was costing her dear. All she had was this one spell, and the constant salvos of fast-cast dot-ranked spells from the water mage were more than she could handle.

"Pissed!" something hissed at her from a nearby alleyway, which revealed itself to be a small group of minions. "Gnarl say, what taking you so... oh wait, you in fight against boss-man of town, yes?"

"Yes!" Louise snapped, darting into the alleyway.

The brown minion – it wasn't one she thought she recognised – pouted. "No fair! Why you no invite us? If you tell us, we have fun fighty fight!"

Louise screamed in frustration. "Gnarl," she yelled into her gauntlet, "help me out! The comte de Mott is here! Right now!"

"... no, Licket, put that oar down... oh, your ladyship! Well done! You have found one of your targets!"

"He's too hard!" Louise hissed, in-between gasping for breath. She could feel the mental fatigue, feel her tiredness which was telling her that she had little willpower for this battle remaining, and the comte de Mott – curse him – was a triangle mage. He could outlast her.

"Oh, don't worry your Evil little head," Gnarl advised. "He is a dramatic, fated adversary! And that means, like all such beings, he has a critical weak spot. You just need to look for it, and once you have found it… why, defeating him will be triviality itself. Like with fire dragons; when they open their mouth to breath fire, they're vulnerable! As well as their underbelly, of course. Some people might question why a flying lizard which spends a lot of time attacking people on the ground has such an armour-less belly… but then again, dragons are very badly designed creatures. Why else would they be so prone to blowing up when you feed them reds?"

"That's completely useless advice," Louise screamed, poking her head out only to have to duck a hail of knife-ice shards. "He's a human! Humans don't have convenient weak spots!"

"Just set fire to his head then," her advisor said calmly. "That should do it."

"I'm trying to do that! It's not working! He keeps on blocking!"

"An interesting fact about most creatures smaller than a dragon," Gnarl noted, "is that they tend to have problems concentrating when they're being swarmed by minions. And dragons only really are too stupid to notice that something is beating them in the head with a sharp object. Brain the size of a pea."

Right. Right. Right. Think, think... yes. If he was shooting at minions, he wouldn't be shooting at her. She glanced over the six minions in the alley... four brown-skinned, and two horned reds. And they were the even-less-competent type, because they hadn't acquired the festoonery of weaponry and random junk which the more experienced ones seemed to have.

... it was pretty strange that sticking a pumpkin on its head seemed to make a minion brighter, but Louise wasn't going to argue with results. Even if they were stupid results.

"Right!" she ordered the minions. "Reds, stay here in cover, and hurl fireballs at the comte de Mott when he's not looking at you! When he's looking at you, hide. Annoy him and distract him... and yes, set his head on fire! Browns, follow me!" She paused. "I mean, browns, go out ahead of me!"

No point in sticking her head out first. And in case they needed any extra motivation, she added, "If you kill him, you'll get to keep his clothes as loot! And wear them, or do whatever else you want to do with them!"

One of the minions shuffled its feet. "Even his maskie?" it asked.

"Yes! Just go!"


...


The guard's body hit the ground, followed a second later by his head – which did not roll very far, because the human head is not particularly good at rolling. Fettid did not pause, however, and sprang up the mast, vaulting off it to drop blade-first onto the skull of the watchman who had come to investigate the wet noise.

The goblinoid creature grinned aimlessly, as its eyes scanned the deck. The runes on the back of its left hand were a dull, eye-aching glow which onlookers seemed to skip over, and their presence filled the mind of the creature. Mostly with ways of killing, maiming, and otherwise inflicting damage with any of the several weapons he had acquired.

Okay, pretty much exclusively with that knowledge. It wasn't as if there was competition for space.

And to reinforce that point, Fettid drew a pair of daggers from underneath his stinking armpits – considerably raising the chance of infection for those injured by them – and hurled them overarm at the last man on deck, who had been using the chance to empty his bladder over the side. 'Emptying his veins' off the starboard bow was probably not what he had intended, but it was what fate had decreed should happen. Or at least something which passed for fate in a poor light.

"Pissed," the minion hissed down the anchor chain. "I kills them all."

"You mean 'psst'. Don't think there are drinkies up there," Maxy whispered back up, before there was a yelp as Maggat hit him. "'Least not any good oneses," he muttered.

By minion-chain, the loot was passed down from the roof and up the chain onto the windship, bypassing all guards not currently dead and stripped of all worldly possessions. There was a moment of controversy as the ship's cat protested at the presence of minions on board, but it was bought down and hat-ised with only one minion fatality. And the luckless new brown-skinned minion was bought back, so it didn't really matter.

"So," Maggat said. "We got the sky-boatie. Now, how we fly it?"

"Bog used to know, but he got eaten by bloody vampire," Maxy contributed. "Poor Bog. So I guess we have to make this up as we go along."

"I can fly this," Scyl declared, taking hold of the wheel. The runes on his left hand began to pulse, slowly, as he dramatically furled his long black cape around himself. "I have the knowingness-ness-itude. It's like a water boatie. Only of the sky."

Igni shrugged. "You a blue, so if you say all boaties are alike, I believe you," he said. "Now, blunderbuss on the front cannon!"

"No there isn't," Maxy objected.

"Not yet," the horned minion said with a grin. "I got good ideas for this boatie."

"Wait just..." Maggat paused, and began to count, moving onto the skeletal hands on his belt, "wait just six-ten moments! You a blue! You spacey and not good at thinkin' 'bout stuff in front of you and..."

"I needs minions on the right and left... no, the runey is telling me that they are called starboard and port... cannons," Scyl said, dreamily. "It has a friendly voice, and is my friend. And so I need my other friends on the cannons."

"Me!" Maggat and Maxy said at the same time.

"Rest of you, go do what I say. We start by pulling up the anchor..."


...


"Go go g-urk!" yelled the first minion to leave the cover. The "urk" was the noise produced when a water-blade took its head off, and left its spasming corpse on the floor. Louise followed closely behind, trying not to look at the twitching body, and instead occupied her time with something more productive.

Like lobbing a fireball at the comte de Mott, which... well, admittedly, it missed because she was trying to aim while also trying to cross the street as fast as she could, but at least it landed in front of him. Which had the dual effects of throwing up thick white snow-like spoke, and also aborting the spell he was trying to cast from the lung-burning heat.

"You two, left!" Louise ordered as she ran as the red minions began to hurl an inaccurate but enthusiastic barrage of fireballs in the general direction of the comte. They were not noticeably adding to the amount of things which were on fire in the area, but every little helped. And the zip and whoosh of the red minion's fireballs had to be distracting when you were trying to cast.

The heat of the burning street was like a blow against her face as she ran as fast as she could, jinking to try to avoid whatever might be aimed at her through the steam and smoke. Her armoured feet clattered and splashed through burning perfume which was pooling in the gutters. Ice came out of no-where; she hurdled the frozen wall which appeared in front of her even as the minion following her hit it head-first.

"Woo hoo!" A small, brown projectile sprung onto the comte de Mott's back from behind. Screaming, the man flailed wildly, trying to protect his head from the club blows that the minion was raining on him. Stumbling back into a wall momentarily stunned the creature on his back; enough for him to get his wand facing it. A jet of water sent it flying off into the air, and the comte turned, looking for his opponent, only to receive a desperate steel-gauntleted punch in the chest.

It was somewhat less effective than Louise might have hoped, because the man did not in fact go down like a stunned pig. Instead, he gasped in pain. And then lowered his shoulder and threw himself at her.

This was somewhat of a problem, because she was petite, delicate, slender, and all kinds of other female-complimentary terms and thus barely over a metre and a half, and he was a fully grown man breaking two metres. So unsurprisingly, she was knocked down. And then pinned.

"I was a wrestler at school, donchaknow?" the comte grated. "Muscular men, oiled up, grappling and hugging and fighting for dominance... oh, I learned all kinds of things in those days." He shifted his weight, so his forearm lay over Louise's throat, at the gap where only mail protected her. "This isn't how I wanted to get in this position with you," he said, almost casually, "but I suppose it'll have to do." It was a sign of how much stronger he was that he could manage to reach up and pick up his wand while also keeping her pinned with just one arm.

Her mind had gone blank. She honestly, really, certainly, really didn't know what to do. He was stronger than her and had her arms pinned and every thought had left her head and...

Louise de la Vallière did what came naturally to her. Her steel-armoured knee rose up into the groin of the comte de Mott.

The metal hit the meat.

The man made a noise best represented in text as 'ghneee'.

His eyes crossed to such an extent that he appeared to be inspecting the tip of his own nose in great detail, insofar as he could do such a thing through the tears of pain. He sagged and went limp, collapsing onto her. The weight was not a casual concern, and she squirmed out from under him, rolling away.

Despite the pain, he was in enough control to do the same. Louise and the comte began to chant at the same time. He was faster. Before her thrown fireball could intercept his crouched-over form, it was up and away, being born away on a tendril of water which lifted him up onto the roof of a building which was hardly on fire at all.

"So!" he snapped. "You may have a temporary advantage! But hear this! I am not defeated. And the forces of Good will see you cast down! Yes, indeed! And I will recover the cost of every least insult and damage you have inflicted on me from your body, woman, indeed I..."

What he was about to say was interrupted by a roar like a cannon. And the top half of the body of Alexander Nicholas de Mott, the comte de Mott, was suddenly missing in action. Perhaps it had an acrimonious split with his legs. Maybe his feet decided that they were sick of being trodden on by the higher aristocracy, and convinced everything else below the waist to cast off their oppressors. After all, with his head gone, they had nothing to lose but their chins.

Louise could merely stare at the sight. She was... fairly sure that she hadn't done that. Probably. When she miscast magic, things exploded, but they didn't get torn in half!

"I tell you that ball-and-chain is right thing to use!" a minion said both smugly and loudly. "Next time listen to Igni when I tell you best way to killy thing with cannon!"

"Mistress!" something yelled from above her, which was followed rapidly by a rope. Which nearly hit her. "Grab the ropeses and then we can go!"

"Unless you still has thing to do here, because we can go whenever..." began another minionly voice, before there was a yelp.

Louise looked up, and saw the windship overhead. Even at this distance, she could see Maggat's head and skull pauldrons.

"Where did you get that!" she yelled up at the ship.

"Looted it! Guardsies stole our coach, so we take ship so you not be angry with us! Now, got to go! We set fire to a few things on way, and Igni toss fireworks down onto guardhouses, so they have problems getting us and we can watch pretty fire on way out!"

The other minions down here on the ground who were... well, still alive were already squirming up the rope. Considering the state of the street around her and the sound of another explosion from the perfume warehouse, Louise de la Vallière felt it might be a very good idea to join them. And as the windship sailed away from the town – showing remarkable skill for something being piloted by minions – she slumped down in pain and exhaustion and watched the red-painted night behind her.


...


Charcoal held firmly in hand, Louise stared at the drawn face of the Comte de Mott hung up in the white-washed room she referred to as her 'drawing room'. Slowly and deliberately, she crossed it out.

"So," she said, trying to sound cheerful, "one down. Three to go, yes?"

"Indeed, your evilness," Gnarl said, obsequiously. "In addition, your treasury is in a considerably more healthy state – which is to say, you have a treasury made up of more than small change – the minions on the barges have recovered the construction equipment and work can begin on the repairs, and, of course, you now have a windship."

That had been a wonderful stroke of luck, the girl had to agree. She would need to see the minions who had done that rewarded. Positive reinforcement, that was the way her father said you did it! Reward a man who saved your life, because that way he'll be encouraged to do it again. And while they hadn't exactly saved her life, they had stopped Mott getting away, and gotten her the ship and the gold – and it wasn't like buying some novelty hats for them or whatever minions liked should be that expensive.

He cleared his throat. "However, my lady, I do not believe that any of us wish to repeat that scenario again. That nearly went wrong on several levels."

"It was a good plan," Louise protested. "It's just that dratted Mott showed up."

"And the guards taking the coach which was to move the gold out of the way?" Gnarl asked.

"I had a plan for that!" Louise protested. "They were going to throw the money into the river, and then we could have come back later and recovered it. It wasn't a bad back-up!"

"Still, your evilness, the bit where you tried to attack the comte de Mott on your own was not well done. You are an overlady, not some bruiser in a steel suit! And we are your loyal minions; we are your second arms and your second legs. You need to stop going off on your own, and rely on us."

"Yes, yes, of course," the girl said. Louise took a breath, and said what had been on her mind. "Should I... really have killed him like that? Well, let him be killed. Shouldn't he have... have got to go back with a message of warning or something? It feels... a bit empty. I didn't... get to kill him, and... and it was quick, and..." she trailed off, not wanting to mention any personal feelings of squeamishness or guilt about burning down a fair chunk of a town.

"Oh no, of course not, my lady," Gnarl said, with a hint of irritation in his voice. "Some overlords are under the mistaken belief that they should let Heroes escape, to stew in their bitterness and frustration. It is a fine theory, I must admit, but hard experience has taught me that this just results in them going out and killing a dragon or an orc warlord or something like that, getting their hands on some new magic sword, training up their skills, and then coming back and murdering the overlord. Usually with 'magic sword to the face'."

"Ah," Louise said. No, she wouldn't want that. And the comte de Mott had been quite a pig, in an obnoxiously handsome way.

"It is very annoying," the elderly minion said. "You would think that they would have the decency to get themselves killed by the dragon or be crippled when you cut off their arm, but no! No, they always manage to kill the dragon and get the treasure which allows them to defeat the overlord, or find a magical arm which just happens to replace their old one! What is the point of crippling injuries if they are not actually crippled, that's what I have to ask you? Magical replacement arms are so very annoying, and yet they clearly hand them out like toffee to defeated heroes! Where do they even get them?"

Louise shrugged, wincing from the pain in her muscles. "I think they can make them in Amstelredamme. It's a very advanced place, because of the university, which means there are lots and lots of mages there. Like Eleanore. And that means that they have more than their fair share of bad-tempered geniuses specialising in odd fields. Like Eleanore."

"Oh well, then remember to kill foes," Gnarl said, with an exasperated sigh. "Places like that usually only last a hundred years or so before they get destroyed by either Good or Evil, but they're so very annoying while they last. Nothing is quite as obnoxious as some little philosopher playing with lightning bringing back a long-dead Hero who you thought was out of the way. Evil has much more reliable ways to ensure that you come back from the dead, and it's really not fair play for Good to steal them."

"I see," Louise said, and sighed. "Well, Gnarl, I'm sure you will want to go and count all the money personally and start to plan for how I can start the repair work..."

"As a matter of fact," the elderly minion began smugly, "I happen to have come up with..."

"... but," Louise continued, "that can wait until the morning. Or possibly tomorrow morning. Whatever. I expect you will have plans drawn up by then. I haven't slept at all and I think it's sunrise. So I'm going to the kitchens to get some cheese, and when I get to my quarters I expect a hot bath to have been run, because I smell of rust and smoke and burning perfume which is far too strong. If that is not done, I will be very dissatisfied. And after my bath, I will go to bed."

She yawned.

"Just so you know, anything which disturbs me for a lesser reason than the tower being under attack will be flogged until they are half-dead. And if they can be brought back to life, they will be flogged to death, and then brought back, and then flogged almost to the point of death. Do I make myself clear?"

"Maliciously so, your evilness," Gnarl said, bowing. His eyes tracked her out of the room. "I do believe she is blossoming," he said to himself. "Like a spiky, malevolent, thorny, poisonous rose."


...