You’re walking through the woods in a fantasy novel when you are suddenly confronted by a Count, a Baron, a Marquis, and a Chancellor. They demand that you choose which of them is most likely to be the Evilest One of All.
To whom do you offer the Golden Apple of Villainy?
Funny, isn’t it? All you need to reliably bait the most qualified and evil people in the land is a shining, golden prize and a title of the ‘very best’. All you have to do is wait a couple of decades, enough for the tale to fade into obscurity for a while and then start up the towns rumor mill again and hope that no Aspiring Heroes try to apply.
The Baron blusters with ruddy cheeks about how he executes townsfolk for his own entertainment, the Marquis counters with the heinous taxes he imposes on his lands and laughs as the poor get poorer and his coffers grow. The Count argues that his research into the Dark Arts and his sacrifices to further his endeavours speak for themselves. The chancellor laughs at all of them, for he doesn’t have the time nor the care to list his crimes. Its far too easy to rack them up in government, after all.
The smile you grant them perhaps has too many teeth, too sharp to belong to one of the peasants they work to the bone on their lands for pittance, eyes too cunning and sly. They do not notice, fixated only on the golden apple you have taken out of your humble satchel their attention arrested on the one rumored objects of their desires.
There is stillness in the forest for only a second before each of them tumble forward, pushing each each other aside in their frenzy to claim the Apple.
The Marquis pulls out a dagger and thrusts it into the heart of the Baron. The Chancellor’s sword finds the calves of the Count, though not before he looses a bolt of necrotic energy at the Marquis.
All the whole you stand there, apple in hand, smiling.
Bloody minutes pass, and the Chancellor approaches. His robes are tattered, one eye closed from the blood that flows from a head wound and a limp from a freshly broken leg. His ability to mislead and wait things out was his winning strategy, the other three taking care of themselves with a little help from his spelled sword.
He looks at his prize still held in your cold, cold hand, and he laughs. Slowly at first, then maniacally as he continues.
“I knew it would be me!” He cackles gleefully, “I know the rest of those buggers didn’t hold a candle against me,” he reaches for the Apple, avarice gleaming in his eyes as he seems to forget there’s a whole ‘nother being holding it.
His fingertips only have to brush across the surface of the fruit when a shudder wracks the very earth beneath them, jogging trees out of place and shifting their roots.
A splitting screech rends the air around you, though you are unburdened by this sound. You’ve learned to acclimated to it, when the sounds of the souls of the damned are the music to which you work most days. The Chancellor stands stock still, his long face drawn out into an agonising scream that simply blends in with the chorus. It is mere seconds before his lifeless body slumps to the quiet forest ground and you sigh, hefting the apple, slightly heavier now with another soul, back into your bag.
“Perhaps the next generation will yield someone truly terrible,” you muse to yourself, leathery wings unfurling as you open the portal back home. “I really do need to fill the Deputy General Manager position sometime this century, but applications these days are all so lack-lustre.” After all, Hell is getting very oversubscribed these days.