The pale moon glowed through thin sheets of cloud above the deathly quiet city. A bat silently glided between the rooftops and empty streets, releasing a piercing screech into the chilled night and then hit a chimney.
Meanwhile, the Resistance, or what was left of it and its leaders, sat dejected in their tavern cellar headquarters. A small crowd of roughly two dozen men and women stood before them.
‘There are truly no words!’ proclaimed Delorian the leader of the resistance solemnly. ‘We have suffered a terrible loss. We must gather ourselves and build again. This tyrant must fall.’
‘But how?’ lamented Bernard the farmhand.
‘Those are all words!’ yelled a voice from the back and the rest of the group concurred.
Delorian called for calm. ‘Stay strong my comrades! We need to summon a new strength within ourselves, we-‘
‘We need to hire a whole new bloody army!’ spat Mikael, the swordsman.
‘Better yet a whole new set of tactics,’ said Horton the scribe aloud, to which the leader raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I’m referring to you Delorian!’
Delorian raised his arms theatrically ‘And I suppose you have one Horton?’
‘I do.’
‘Which is what?’
‘We’ve established he’s mortal however think about it,’ Horton started to mansplain. ‘He’s also vain.’
‘Thank you for stating the obvious, get to the point!’ Delorian barked.
‘We bring him down.’
‘We already tried that!’ roared Mikael.
‘Down with his vanity, attack his mind, his ego!’
Murmurs, as you’d expect, rung amongst the crowd.
‘His ego?’ Delorian quizzed.
‘Yes, we undermine his confidence, and subtly, silently cloud his mind.’
‘In hope of what?’ scoffed Mikael. ‘That he stops being a dick?’
‘That he loses his footing,’ said Horton. ‘We can use it to our advantage!’
‘Sounds interesting,’ said the tavern owner.
‘Sounds rubbish,’ said Mikael.
‘How do we go about this?’ Bernard asked.
‘I have a few suggestions,’ said Horton.
‘As do I,’ Cigar the artist piped up. ‘In fact, I think I’ve got just the thing…’
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