Saturday, on the train, on my way to get the cats, I did another Reddit Writing Prompt for fun, on my phone. I love doing these! It's addictive! I could do it all day! (Which is precisely the reason why I had to delete the Reddit app! :D)
Here it is:
Okay. Okay. Okay. Don‘t panic. Don‘t you dare panic. Okay.
So, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do?
Complete silence all around us. Gramszek, that sneering, ever-grinning bastard with his revolting lump on the left cheek isn‘t grinning now. I‘m not either, but seeing that self-satisfied smirk wiped from his sniveling, ass-kissing face makes me happy, somewhere deep down. No one protects you now, idiot. Let me just swiftly deal with this unfortunate situation, then I‘ll deal with you, as I should have been allowed to do months ago. Hot realization when he looks back at me. He thinks exactly the same thing. I need to be quick. Quicker than Gramszek. Quicker than all of them. Those shocked faces will turn to anger next, demanding ... What? What could they want from us now?
Three years of campaigning for the Mighty Wizard. I‘ve been there in the early days. Often it seemed like he wouldn‘t even need an army to take over the world. HRugh‘al was a name that sent shivers down everybody‘s spine quite on its own. He had come from the mountainous wastelands in the South of Kardìa. No one had expected magic to be at home in that devastated hide-out for Viking barbarians, but there he was. He had tapped something ancient, something strong, and it was within him - Always. When I first met him, his incredible power had had me convinced of his cause before he even opened his mouth and his sweet voice came to my ears for the first time, telling me of secret knowledge, of a paradise to come - if only we would get to the heart of the Color-Desert. On our way, we swept up all the able men from every village, every town we came to. We had been an army before I had quite understood that we were raising one.
Of course, you can‘t raise an army without people noticing and feeling threatened and soon the idiot King of the East had sent troops to stop us. But HRugh‘al would not be stopped. He would whisper increasingly unscrupulous orders to me in confident hours, wrapped in the linen sheets of his bed. And I would obey lovingly.
For him, I and all the men assembled became reckless butchers of everything and everyone in our way. I don‘t even remember when I stopped caring. If I ever cared. I just remember killing.
We were willing aides to a man who couldn‘t have been stopped anyway. He never needed us. This was his destiny. He would have reached the heart of this mesmerizing desert, claimed the grain of power and taken over the world all on his own, if it hadn’t been for us.
Except, he didn‘t. His blood and splattered flesh makes stains on my white uniform.
We became murderers for a failed tyrant‘s dream of power.
Except, we didn‘t.
We brought him here. To his demise. We brought him to the grain of power, he reached for it, and exploded!
WE killed him!
I look at Gramszek. He sees the idea in my excited eyes. But he can‘t save himself. He still doesn‘t have a clue. Because he doesn‘t feel the taint. He likes being a murderer. He likes serving the forces of evil. Most of us don‘t. We‘re just used to it.
„THE TYRANT IS SLAIN!“ I yell at the top of my powerful voice.
I wait. A stunned second passes. Have I made the right choice? I look into unreadable faces. I need to stay strong. I can not show any sign of doubt.
In the utter silence of this moment, I make my peace and say farewell to life. I had to make a move. It was a risky one. I failed. It is alright.
Then, I am met with roaring cheers.
The whole camp is swept up in emotion. We did it! We are the heroes who rid the world of this terrible menace!
Gramszek dies tonight.