Selection (Book 2 of P.O.E. chronicles)

Chapter 12 Stupid

“Do something.” Emily shouted next to me in a hush tone as I tried to concentrate. Didn’t this girl know that telekinesis do not work directly on living things?

“Sssh.” I signaled for Emily to be quiet and she glared at me. This girl really was insufferable. We were deeper into the mountains now, and to train us better they began to rotate each group for hunt duty. It was our turn today and we were trying to round up a herd of deer. They appeared to be non-mutated so far but we weren’t a hundred percent sure.

Unmutated animals were not exactly rare these days, but deer was one of the animals that had mostly mutated into Legres (others include wolfs, which was dominated by Lupas and hawks, which was dominated by Griffins with

I somehow ended up with Emily when we decided to close in on them from different directions. Jeremy and Kailey had set up a net with ropes to capture them as soon as we had them under control. Easier said than done.

I contemplated about how to stop them from getting past me; I could potentially lift off a few trees horizontally as barriers, but that would draw too much attention.

“Gwen, they are coming!” Emily started shaking me. I tried to get her hands off me but to no avail.

“Can’t you like, grow a tree net or something?” I whispered to her in a panic tone, since about two third of the herd somehow decided to head towards us. Emily’s eyes were large as saucer and started shaking me even more ferociously, ignoring my question.

Fearful of being tramped over by a herd of angry deer, I whacked my brain to think of something. Anything. Suddenly a memory of Mr. Andrewson’s notebook popped up in my head. If this worked, I wouldn’t have to worry about exposing myself too much.

Squeezing my eyes shut I tried to visualize a POE army in place of Emily and me. Then I projected it from my mind, wrapping it around us like what the illusionist did that day in Yunan Citybase. I tred to make it as pronounced as possible and hoped that no one glance in our way.

To be honest, I didn’t know if I was keeping it strong, I really was just trying to will it that way while squeezing my eyes shut which made my brain hurt. I wrapped this illusion around a ten meter radius of us and prayed that it worked.

I read in Mr. Andrewson’s notebook that there was another way to implant illusion straight into a specific person’s, if not more’s mind. However I couldn’t remember the exact instructions and dared not try something as complicated as inserting a different image into a herd of animal’s mind.

“They are running away.” Emily stopped shaking me and I squeezed one eye open, breathing out a sigh of relieve as the deer reared in panic and started to gallop back. They then managed to tangle around each other and fell as a bundle of intertwined limbs.

“Wooohooo.” I could hear the scream of victory from John’s side, where he held the deer off by increasing the gravity. Jeremy and Kailey quickly swept in and tied each one separately, no need to use the big net at all.

“Wow, how did you guys make them turn around?” Jeremy asked as we string the animals together and led them back to camp. I shrugged whilst Emily looked pensive.

“They just sort of ran back.” I said and Emily didn’t contradict me for once. We managed to get a total of twenty deer, which was pretty impressive considering we usually only end up with two chickens every day; a whole deer for dinner… my mouth watered thinking about it. It’s a little sad to kill cute animals, but hey, we got to eat.

“If we can keep them alive, they will fetch such a good price.” John said, licking his lip as he led his line of deer back towards camp. We chuckled at his expression; he looked like such a pervert instead.