I think the problem here, is that mind control is a power that corrupts super duper crazy fast, and the only people who can control adolescent mind-controllers are other corrupted mind controllers, so you get this awful feedback loop of pure narcissistic evil. I think if we’re gonna raise mind-controllers with any sense of moral integrity, we’d have to change the environment they find themselves in.

We can’t MAKE a good mind controller, but maybe, just maybe, if we delayed the onset of their powers until after their brain finishes growing through some kind of restraining bracelet or tattoo or some such, we could instill a solid foundation of a moral compass before they start dicking with people’s minds with impunity.

Plus it would give us plenty of time to identify and remove the bad eggs. Psycopaths and unempathetic people. The problem that I see here is you can’t really expect good, empathetic people to perform the cold actions necessary to cull sociopathic mind-controllers who might otherwise spoil the batch.

But, an external force doing the culling would be equally problematic, as it would be rightly seen as tyranny imposed upon the Morkel family by an outside force, and inevitably be rebelled against. leading us to the exact some situation.

These well-intentioned people fighting for their own freedom, would in turn provide freedom to less-noble mind controllers, who would use their powers without compunction and weed out the good ones in a single generation.

It’s a tricky problem. But not really a problem for right now. Right now, we engineer a slaughter.

Tom’s current army was 100% not up to the task of taking the capital. He just didn’t have the manpower.

That meant he needed to summon some powerful soldiers. Possibly Carol’s species.

That would cost me twenty five dead people per Wratz’got.

Tom poked his head out above the parapets, and scanned the army outside the fort, doing a lightning fast count of the length and depth of the army currently trying to climb the walls.

Tom ducked his head back down as a burst of white-hot flame slagged a bit of the parapet passing.

fifteen deep, approximately a thousand wide. There’s some easy maths.

Fifteen thousand divided by twenty-five….six hundred.

Of course we can’t assume we’ll get all of them. Even the worst battles only see losses of about one in three.

So a more realistic estimate would be two hundred Wratz’got or less.

Tom crouch-walked across the top of the smouldering wall, then popped his head out, confirming the location of the Morkel lines.

They were right in front of the door. it seemed like kidnapping a handful of their women had pissed them off somewhat.

I mean, I only killed one of them, and that was more of a fumble than anything else.

It took some advanced interrogation techniques, and Tom had to shell out for a P.A. system from the Outsiders in order to keep his distance from them, but eventually he got the information he needed.

Four women. He had to interrogate four women to get simple-ass instructions that all he needed to do to undo a cursemark was to undo whatever changes the Morkel had done.

It was a lot like Ku’leth spell phrases. To make a cursemark, a Morkel had to take an object with some sentimental value to someone and modify it. To undo the curse on Raze, undo the modification on the women’s handkerchief, or whatever it was.

Was that really so hard? It’s so easy to reverse that it makes sense they’d want to keep it under wraps, though.

Tom turned his attention back to the task at hand.

“Go for it,” Tom said, ducking back down under the parapet and giving the catapult women the thumbs up.

In accordance with his word given to Aisha Morkel, now that Tom had the information he needed, Tom was obligated to return her to her family.

The catapult bucked forward with a violent crack and launched the woman’s corpse over the wall and into the Morkel frontline, returning her to her family in a timely manner, and without more damage than the corpse had at the time he figured out what he needed. More or less.

That kicked the hornet’s nest.

The Morkel were awful to everyone, and cruel to each other, but when faced with a common enemy that had thoroughly smeared their fearful reputation, they were downright united, singing kumbaya and marching toward the front gate in lockstep. The steel arrows seemed to curve around them, and any living being that made eye contact with them toppled backwards in a frothing mess.

Any living being.

Tom pulled out his new wands, and began shuffling through them.

He’d recreated the explosion wand from earlier in two different flavors: one of which was a perfect copy of the previous one in case he needed a big boom. Tom was pretty confident that if he shot that one at them, they’d use a curse to send it back to him.

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The other incorporated the energy controlling phrases he’d learned from the jail cell. – Tom had looked them up in crypt vocabulary and spell synthesis - In essence, it had a little battery and capacitor included that broke a single soul pulse up into about a hundred smaller units.

If it worked the way Tom hoped it would, it would take a single soul pulse and allow him to fire an explosion roughly the intensity of a grenade, dozens, if not hundreds of times.

Smaller effect, but much more efficient. It was also inscribed in platinum and gold, rather than highly flammable, explosive materials, further reducing the effect in exchange for re-usability.

The third wand was made specifically for today.

Morkel could turn aside attacks through defensive curses, mail spells back to sender, royally fuck up the enemy if they caught sight of them, and generally make themselves a nightmare to deal with, as they could counter anything they saw coming.

Then, let’s give them something they can’t see coming.

The ‘wand’ was a small gold bar that only had three symbols in the spell-phrase.

Reserve, restrict-flow, Heavy-air.

It wasn’t an official spell in the book, but that was because the book had been written by people perpetually stuck in the middle ages because royalty had magical powers and technological advancement was stifled.

Tom waved for the people in the courtyard to seek higher ground. The Vith took shelter atop the walls and in the towers.

“Smother them,” Tom whispered to the gold bar before he took a deep breath and juiced up the gold with everything he had.

A blast of invisible, odorless wind caught Tom in the face, emanating out of the bar in every direction.

Tom threw the bar down into the courtyard, where Tom’s handful of undead minions stood, completely unaffected as the dead air filled up the inside of the castle.

Tom waited a moment before he breathed in again, waiting for the invisible heavy air to fall away from the wall.

“Open the front door, let’s show the Morkels a good time.”

“And by that, you mean murder them, right?” Carol said with a grin.

Tom nodded. “Yeah. I mean murder them.” It wasn’t quite as bad as kidnapping someone and blowing their head off because you made a mistake. These people were here to kill him. he didn’t force them to charge through that door.

He just heavily encouraged it by kidnapping their relatives and defiling the corpse of one of their more prominent members.

Tom was the good guy here.

Or if not the good guy, Tom thought, I’ll settle for being the winner.

“You’re growing on me, Sperm Donor,” Carol said, before she jumped off the wall, falling the thirty feet to the invisibly poisoned arena and landing with barely a buckle of her knees.

***Mari Morkel***

Mari honestly expected her cousins to start taunting her the moment her grandmother’s corpse was identified, but strangely, something entirely different happened.

Aisha Morkel was one of theirs. She was universally hated, but it was that unique familial hate that the Morkels were known for. Seeing her flung over the wall like a rag doll, her face ruined by some hideously strong projectile…it had made them incensed. There were no words of comfort, but a sensation traveled across the family, a unified bond of purpose.

If Aisha was treated this way, what would happen to the other four women that had been stolen in the night by a powerful demon?

The insult wouldn’t stand.

It was personal.

The emaciated Morkel men spread their curses to every other member of the family, reinforcing their bodies, warping the path of attacks, and crippling any enemies who came into contact with them. Any Alia who tried to attack them with their magic would die within minutes as the curse would traces the faint lines of energy back to their owners.

The women formed a mental net, blending together the outrage and magnifying it, until every single Morkel was gripped by a cold rage that burned just under the surface.

They, to a man, no longer cared if any individual died, so long as they addressed this slight against their family. In that moment they had transformed from a loose collection of cowardly backstabbers into fanatic zealots unified by a single purpose:

Kill them.

Creak!

The front door of the garrison rattled up, allowing a gust of wind to billow out from inside.

“It’s a trap,” Mari heard one of the leading powers of house Morkel mutter behind her, squinting into the billowing dust.

“Obviously,” An elderly woman said from where she rode a massive mind-slaved gardor.

“A trap, eh? FEED IT TO THEM!” A voice bellowed, and the Morkel family shot forward like an arrow, ready for any number of missiles raining down upon them, confident that they could deflect their assault long enough to disable their enemies and turn the tables.

They charged into the courtyard ready for anything.

All they saw was a single slender woman flanked by a dozen rotting corpses, carrying a steel-mill hammer over her shoulder.

They flooded into the castle with no resistance whatsoever. The trap didn’t spring. There was nothing inside other than the slender woman.

Then she opened her mouth, and a terrifyingly deep voice rumbled out of her delicate mouth.

“Welcome to my nightmare.”

“Kill her!” The lead Morkel shouted, pointing, his voice having grown so deep it was nearly intelligible.

“Why is your voice – why is my voice so deep!?”

“I feel faint.”

“Poison!”

“It’s not poison! We’re warded against poison!”

Then what is it!?”

Confusion spread through the ranks as their voices grew deep and terrified, lending an unearthly air to their confusion.

That was when the one woman and the twelve undead charged forward, approaching the three hundred-strong Morkel line.

“Disease doesn’t work – She’s not alive!”

“Bring your fighters to the front!” One of the elders shouted, a veteran of the Ku’leth purge. “Focus on damage reflection curses! It works even if they’re undead!”

The Morkel’s mind-slaved fighters rushed to the front at the urging of their handlers, thinning the flanks and rear to present the undead creature with three-fold shields

All the while, Mari gradually grew more and more lightheaded.

The demon flew through the air, far outstripping the undead with her as her massive hammer impacted against the shieldwall.

The demon flew back in a spray of blood as the three ranks of hardened warriors staggered. The demon wiped the blood from her face with a vicious smile as the undead caught up to her position, advancing with long spears.

Suddenly twelve against three hundred didn’t seem like such a sure thing. Not when they couldn’t breathe.

“We’ve got her, advance!”

“Are you insane? Retreat! We have to get out of – whatever this is!”

As their leadership began to fragment, the fury sustaining them snapped like a brittle twig and her cousin collapsed without warning.

The world seemed to spin around her as it gradually became dimmer and dimmer. It felt like she just couldn’t catch her breath, no matter how desperately she gasped.

Mari looked over her shoulder at the gate. The gate they had passed through, just a short trot behind them, now felt like it was miles away. An insurmountable distance.

In her darkening peripheries, she saw some of her family members staggering toward the gate, collapsing before they’d taken a dozen steps.

Her eyes rolled back in her head.