O’er The Hills

The army crawled over the hill in amazement. What was happening in front of everyone was shocking. Everybody, to a man and a woman, was climbing up this hill without the input of a commanding officer. Every single one. It was as if a zombie curse had afflicted them all as they lumbered and shuffled to the peak. The red-faced general shouted obscenity after obscenity but the command met not a single person. The general, realising that yelling was pointless, crawled up along with the swarm to see what the hell was going on.

The sight he saw was shocking. Beams of the faintest purple arcing light was extruding from a mage, dressed head to toe in sparkly purple, from him to all of the people shambling around. The general, had he had any more noise to shout, he would have. But his throat was sore, and there was no Lemsip nearby. He instead stoically stared at this mage. All of a sudden, as more soldiers tumbled over the hill that the general had spent so much time preparing and ensuring that they wouldn’t be spotted, one of these beams hit him. And yet, nothing. He felt that there was no feeling that he should be feeling. He did not feel any more compelled to do anything more or different than he did now. He shook the beam away, and after a delay it did.

“Gotta do everything myself. These soldiers…these privates never encountered a telepathic beam from a mage before?”

As he spoke, he yanked his 9mm pistol out of his chest holster and racked the slide. These days, he only used it to start races during the army’s fun races, but this was no fun race. He stumbled his way down the hill, decidedly more in control of himself than his fellow privates, and steadied himself so he didn’t drop his weapon on the ground and injure someone. There was only one person he wanted to injure.

He ran to the mage, the mage diverting all of his concentration to the people and not to the soldier. Actually I’ve just realised that if I make everyone a man and then once I’m done I just flip a coin for each of their genders, then I’ve solved my problems. Great.

He was nought but three feet away from the mage and the mage didn’t even respond to his presence. The general didn’t dare mess with the wizard at all, just stared for a moment. If he shot now, oh dear, now you don’t know why. If he breaks the concentration of the spell, then the mage can just focus all of his power on the general. And that wouldn’t be a good time for anybody. Weighing up the options…he capped the guy in the head. Sometimes, life is hard. And sometimes life presents not great choices and you have to find the least bad one.

And yet, there was nothing. There was no splattering of blood or and remains of a mage. The mage simply disappeared. And this was concerning.

“What the hell,” The general said, contemplating what had just happened. The mage vanished. He craned his head to the rest of his soldiers and they were still firmly under the mind control. And yet it still emanated from the same place. It looked as though the general himself was controlling them now, with how he was positioned. He stepped out and stared all around him. The city of LaRouge stood firmly in the distance. The enemy. And for all the world the general reasoned that that’s the only place they could be going…