Melody of Mana

I smiled at my Generals as they stood around me, "We've won men. Tonight we celebrate the end of this miserable uprising."

I was of course greeted with cheers. I could see from the hill we'd put our command camp atop where the enemy army had been driven. It had taken days for us to press and chase this lot of slaves down. They'd run like rats as we followed, eventually being maneuvered into the valley my regulars had chased them into.

I had to give it to them, for a collection of slaves they'd done marvelously. They'd harried caravans with impunity, razed a few small towns and industrial operations, even destroyed a couple of bridges. I had personally had to gather the full army to come deal with them. The first three generals I'd sent to clean the rabble up had failed to even locate their camp. Such failures were unacceptable.

But I'd done my duty as Emperor, gathered an enormous host of one hundred thousand men, and we'd scoured the countryside. When we found them they numbered only perhaps ten thousand, barely half of what my least cautious advisers had believed. A few had had the audacity to suggest that they'd managed to get nearly eighty thousand men, but that was impossible. They'd have been found, they'd have to supply themselves, we'd seen no way they could have. An army of any size left a footprint, had to have a supply train, they had almost none.

My own army was comprised of professional soldiers. Armed and armored properly. We had ten thousand cavalry, thirty thousand heavy infantry, twenty thousand light infantry, twenty thousand archers, and around ten thousand specialists. Most of the rest were support staff, they could wield a weapon in a pinch, but a host of this magnitude required great organization. I'd even pulled a fair number of my combat ready mages, as we'd had reports of casters in their army, nearly a hundred of them.

It was painful to deploy magic users. They were like siege weapons, each capable of great destruction, but needing special treatment. Few had training as soldiers and their magic was often quite varied, taking on special roles that they did amazingly well, but that whole units would have to be built around optimizing. Armies had tried to do without them before, but magic was too potent a weapon, they'd just run into someone who could hide from their arrows and rain death upon them. Killing a unit is not particularly difficult for an army, but without a mage to counter, chasing down one wizard who knew the area was a monstrous pain.

My own guard had nearly twenty mages in it. They had been trained as both casters and soldiers, and worked together like folded steel, stronger than any of those that could take the field against them. Most of them had gone down to the field to win glory for me today, my men would whoop and cheer as they saw such heroes among them.

I looked back to the rebels, coming out of my thoughts. They'd fled up to a small rock shelf, hardly big enough for them to even stand on, they didn't even have any cover from the sides or above. They would die on that rock. There was even a lake on one side, they had nowhere to go.

"We should give that valley a new name, or... maybe the little rock they've tried to hide themselves on, any suggestions."

There were snickers from some of my advisors, a few even handed out some ideas.

"Slave rock"

"Dead man's valley"

"Rebel's end"

Not bad ones, but not great. I looked to some of the guards standing around, indicating they could speak. Such men often had a good sense of humor.

"Fool's Folly"

"Oh, that one's good. Who are you?" I turned to the man in question, he seemed to be a unit leader, older, and grizzled.

"Verren, your Imperial Majesty."

"I like that Verren, very good indeed. Perhaps when this is all over I'll give you some lands nearby."

"My emperor, something's happening!" I turned toward the man who'd broken my conversation, few had that kind of audacity.

As I watched the lake began to move, not a bit of water, not a stream or the like. The. Entire. Lake. My eyes went wide as it circled behind slamming first into the flank, then the rear of the soldiers, smashing them like children's toys. It flowed and flowed, and then it moved through my whole army, picking them up and pulling them along. It smashed into the edge of the little rise the rebels had been standing on, then flowed back into the lakebed.

I felt numb as I watched so many of my men pulled into that bed along with the water, unable to find anything to even hold on to as it swept them to their dooms. As the rebels flew down to slaughter the survivors I realized it had been a trap.

"That's... that's not possible, the mana to... It would have taken months, years maybe of..." My head advisor on magic was just as flabbergasted as I was. The man couldn't do anything but stand there and spew nonsense.

I put my hand to my head. How many had just died? Seventy thousand? Eighty? Most of the army was in that valley, most of them were dead. I steeled myself as I took in a breath, preparing to call for a retreat.

It was so fast I hardly felt it. The spearhead bloomed from my chest like a silver flower bursting from the ground. The breath caught and I could hardly make a noise as the other guards moved against their companions, and my advisors. I turned to look at the man who'd gotten me, shocked as I saw the hate in his eyes.

"This is where a Fool's Folly ended his empire." I fell as he withdrew the blade, unable to move to aid my men as my lifeblood soaked into the ground, a Fool's Folly indeed.