After the first arrow, the drama beneath me started to ramp up quickly. Forced into cover by the sudden arrows, the rest of their pursuers managed to catch up before the fleeing group had time to rally and realise they needed to break through the encirclement. The ambush had caught them by surprise and they apparently lacked the discipline, or madness, to run head-first into the ambush’s kill zone or they would only be slowly ground to death. And that lack of madness was what doomed them in this case, the thought bringing a small measure of amusement to my mind, as I watched their foes slowly refine the positions in their encirclement.

In a fit of curiosity, I channelled a bit of magic and overlaid Concealment with the Observe skill, stealthily checking just what levels this group of fleeing humans had. The blue box popping up in my field of view told me the one in the lead was level sixty-two and a quick glance at the other three made it clear that he was the highest level in their party. The others were a little below him in level, the two females at fifty-nine and sixty-one, the other male at a mere fifty-five, though I could feel a faint stirring of magic from him, making me think he was some sort of spell-caster. Nothing special in the grand scheme of things, but it warranted a bit of additional interest.

Glancing at the figures who had ambushed them, and were shooting the occasional arrow in their general direction, I realised that the pursuers were, at least, ten levels below the fleeing people, mostly in the level thirty to forty range, at least the five I could see in the shrubs beneath my perch.

The whispers I could hear from the runners somehow managed to bring a smile to my face, the drama I was watching slowly gaining a plot and characters. The leader and the two females were trying to convince the spellcaster of their group that they would break through the encirclement and buy him time, so he could escape. The urgency in their voices made it obvious that they knew their time was limited, that their foes were convinced the four of them were trapped and could be weakened with repeated arrows until wounds, exhaustion and a broken moral made the task of overwhelming them simple.

On the other hand, in a direct confrontation, the best the four runners could hope for was to sell their lives as dearly as possible, taking as many of their foes with them as they could. But as the joke went, no war was ever won by dying gloriously for your country, but by making sure the other bastard died gloriously for his. They didn’t need a path to die gloriously, they needed a way to survive.

Through our connection, I could feel Sigmir’s emotions faintly reaching me, a curious mix of disdain and compassion. Intrigued, I closed my eyes, ignoring the drama beneath for the much more important exploration of my beloved emotions and delved into our connection.

There were no words coming across, but images and memories. It took me a moment to place them, the framing of Sigmir’s mind a little different from what I was used to, her mental architecture different from mine, or Lenore’s for that matter, but I knew her well enough to make the connection.

The images I was seeing were shortly before our first meeting, as Sigmir had been chased through the forest by her tribe and their hounds. She emphasised with the fleeing group, the feeling of being chased and hunted vivid in her memory but at the same time, she disdained them, and her past self, for being weak enough to be brought down by their hunters.

Opening my eyes, I realised that the smile on my face was wide and excitement bubbled up within me. If Sigmir projected her past self on these people, watching them get slowly exhausted and ultimately murdered might make my beloved sad and while I could comfort her later, not having her be sad in the first place was much preferred.

On the other hand, simply murdering a group of uniformed fighters, possibly guards or soldiers, could cause serious repercussions down the line, especially if there was some sort of divination involved that allowed them to mark their killers.

Obfuscation, confusion and subtlety would have to be the name of the game. And while I wasn’t always the most subtle of spellcasters, confusion and obfuscation were things I was quite good at by now.

Mentally explaining Lenore my plan took mere seconds and while she had some ideas and suggestions, we could quickly incorporate them into my plan. While mental communication and discussion was incredibly fast, in this case, enough time passed for one of the arrows to find its mark, wounding the weaker woman below, adding urgency to their situation.

Slowly, as the situation below got more and more desperate, Mist started to form in the forest around us, the temperature dropped and even the trained soldiers started to be unable to make out their surroundings. It was as if the stars above and the moon no longer gave light and even the abilities the soldiers had learned to operate in darkness started to lose their effect.

I could hear their complaints and curses, they made me smile even more, as I increased the amount of Astral Power I was channelling into the spell-formation I had created. It wasn’t terribly complicated, a variation of a formation I had used to great effect in the past. Mist, combined with Concealment and Confusion, but the real test was whether or not I’d be able to actively control the whole magical construct, to hold it together while I used the confusion-effect to slowly separate the different groups, guiding them into different directions.

By the time I truly took active action, my magic had caused the entire situation to devolve into chaos. Everybody’s sight was limited, the darkness and cold made them feel isolated, helped along by a generous dose of the Dark Moon’s Madness and their mind was utterly unable to tell in which direction they should be moving and shooting. Some of them had even succumbed to the point of wounding their allies and only interference from me had prevented casualties.

Stronger enemies might have been able to shake off the effects, or maybe dispel it to the point that they could escape, but these people lacked such power.

With the help of Lenore, who had left my Hallow as the mist had started to completely obscure the stars, I started to form the mist into individual clusters, each surrounding one or more of the people below. A bit of manipulation, letting them get the impression that the mist was less dense in one direction, gave them direction, the desire to escape the cold, creepy sensation I had conjured overwriting their common sense and caution.

Luckily for them, I had no desire to do something truly nasty to them, like letting them walk off a cliff, I merely wanted them to walk in different directions of my choosing.

From Lenore’s perspective, overlapping in a corner of my mind, it looked completely hilarious. She could see the Astral Power that made up the dense mist with her sight, and to her, it looked like a dozen clusters of glowing clouds, slowly drifting through the forest, at times moving within mere metres from each other, as I lured, cajoled and confused hunted and hunters alike.

“What are you doing?” Olivia asked, once the mist around us had drifted away and they didn’t have to guard their mind any longer. I hadn’t focused the magic on them, but they had been slightly affected.

“Keeping more blood from being shed,” I replied, dropping into Sigmir’s waiting arms. Climbing down from my perch would have been quite difficult with the amount of focus I needed to maintain my spell.

“An admirable aim,” she allowed, though I could see the frown on her face. “But what are we going to do next? Unless you want to keep them wandering for hours longer?”

“No, I don’t.” I shook my head, glimpsing through Lenore’s eyes, observing a clearing similar to the one we had been on, just beyond a pair of hills to our south. “Though I’ll admit that I’m curious what’s going on there.”

“You’re planning something,” Adra accused me, the grin on my face likely giving me away.

“Maybe,” I allowed, looking in the direction of that clearing, the direction in which the four hunted just happened to be wandering, all in their own clouds, slowly getting desperate in their isolation.

“Why don’t we go and meet those people?” I suggested, drawing a groan from Adra and making Olivia’s frown a little deeper.