After all the artillery and rifle fire there came a brief terrifying moment of everything getting quiet. It was the most terrifying period of time. Like I can understand a bunch of explosions and rifles, but when they stop? What do you do then? Surrender? Run? Keep waiting? I chose keep waiting/playing dead, because unlike creatures humans entirely are easy to fool into think you're dead, just slap some blood on your body and lay still. The honest truth is most people don't like touching the dead, or even looking at them too long (outside of necrophiliacs, but thankfully that is a gross habit mostly eliminated in modern times).
As I was sitting there hoping my enemies would leave me alone the enemy advanced as I expected them too. They didn't have cool uniforms like the imperial army, but they were a lot better at the murder. It was enough to make me think I joined the wrong side (in a conflict in which I didn't have to join either side, let me tell you I felt pretty stupid, and I was already feeling dumb to begin with!) They were also better than most forces at checking the dead. I mean the clearly destroyed bodies they didn't do anything to, but the more solid people like say me and the group of dead I was laying near? Yeah they were shooting those people just to make sure (I guess someone had pulled my play dead trick earlier?). I could hear the squad of men moving forward shooting the dead as I waited. Which again brought up a new question, do I put my hands up and surrender or fight back? I hadn't seen Hanlon bring over anti magical items, but this was close to the area Oshujon had caused his stupid war, so I had to be careful if my magic would actually work (I mean it had earlier in the refugee camp with necromancy, but necromancy has a low cost to entry for magical ability) or if it worked there could always be one of those magical reflector things. Fleeing was right out because a man to my right was apparently also playing dead, decided on flight over fight and got gunned down for his trouble.
The troops were getting closer to me and so my moment was coming. They were using Hanlon weapons which meant the bullets were anti magic capped, but they did have what appeared to be home made explosive devices (there were four of them in the make sure people were dead squad). With a slight bit of effort I exploded the devices of one of the young men, it took out his friend, which then lead to a hilarious if not horrifying example of explosive dominoes as one device blew up another blew up another, what started out as a means of blowing up a couple guys from killing me ended up wiping out half the enemy force (due to their being explosives on the bodies of some of the young soldiers, in fact it was so bad I feared the bodies of the dead I was standing next to, this incident would later lead to a reform in how explosives were used in combat, so I changed the world! Probably for the better... maybe).
In fact they were so confused by what had happened they fled the battle altogether. I stood up in disbelief at what I had done. I mean I know I'm awesome, but even in my awesomeness doing one thing has never caused so much death and destruction. Though it did lead me to getting promoted to leader of the imperial army.
Yeah I thought it was kind of a big step up at the time as well.
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