Olimpia

Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

We had thought ourselves stronger than ever. Invincible from all this land could throw at us other than the elves.

It was proven that the pressure that the 1st Legion released on the city with more than worth our losses. So the 2nd and 3rd Legions marched out of Olimpia's gates.

Life in Olimpia and its surroundings had gotten to the point that the waves of beastmen crashing against the walls of The Gauntlet were hardly noticed.

And the beastmen that were a problem came from the west and north, far to the sides of where we could attract them.

The solution was easy: place two more forts far to the sides of The Gauntlet. They should be able to attract the beasts slipping around our edges, making a barrier to protect the city.

We thought we could nearly close off the city. Attract every beast, so the 4th Legion would hardly need to act for the few stray beasts that got by us.

And for a whole week after we constructed the supporting forts, it worked perfectly.

Then the beasts stopped.

From one day to the next, the nearly hourly attacks stopped.

At first, we were relieved about the break, and we reinforced our fort more than ever.

As days passed, we became increasingly anxious, as nothing came. Our scouts went out farther and farther as they found nothing. Then one day, they came back with a story of a beastmen hoard that stretched to the horizon and blotted out the sun's light.

**********

In. Then out.

One slow, steady breath after another.

In. Out.

Smooth the ripples threatening to destabilize the mental network, then breathe again.

In. Out.

Images would occasionally flash through my mind. A snapshot of perspective from one of the legionaries in the mental network or a pulse of mental energy.

I felt the bright minds of the beastkin standing around the pit and the outlines of bodies carpeting the floor of the hole and around its edges.

Breathe, and check the ripples. Send my confidence and relaxed state to the troops.

They were anxious. They were angry and wanted to rush out and fight. It was to be expected.

No one likes feeling trapped and out of control. And we were.

The scout trainees knew all they could do was wait for the end. One way or another, this situation would end, and we were not the ones who would decide how.

If the beastkin wanted to kill us, they would. Everyone knew it.

I tried to send the trainees the relaxed, calm state of my meditation. The results were mixed.

Even as I tried to release my mental state into the network, the group's emotions bled into me. My heartbeat began picking up its pace as my sympathetic anxiety and agitation grew. In and out. Breathe… nice and slow. Calm and in control. I thought to myself.

I saw through Traig's eyes as he sat with his back against the wall and looked at the three still figures laid out on the ground against the far wall. They had died from their wounds, and a feeling of guilty relief tour through Traig before settling down as he closed his eyes for a moment of rest.

I breathed, trying to calm my once again racing heart, and time passed.

Then I felt the frantic energy surge through the mental links again, swamping my efforts to spread a calm, soothing atmosphere.

The legionaries stood, hands clutching the hilt of their swords as those in the front of the tunnel frantically fought.

A pulse revealed a group of twenty or more beastkin attacking our little cave.

Not that the weight of numbers mattered much because only one or two beastkin could attack our passage at a time. And with the combined efforts of the veterans, one beastman could hardly even be called a fight, but that did not stop the frustrated emotions of those standing at the back watching.

I tried to send out waves of calmness and patients to those waiting, but they were quickly drowned out and ignored by their raging emotions. As the mental network of The Union became more chaotic, flashes of people's vision flickered through my mind.

I stabbed out low, drawing the beastman's guard while a stone slammed into their shoulder, and my shield mate slashed the beastmans neck open.

The legionary in front of me was breathing hard from fighting. She was too tired. In silent coordination, she turned, sliding back while a sword arm thrust out, covering her retreat.

I held a rock in my hand. Lifting it up, I extended a mental strand wrapping it around the rock before shooting it forward, causing a beastwoman to block it with her wing, covering her face, and causing an opening for an attack.

The death toll of the beastkin mounted, and now the bodies in the pit were stacked up to the knee of those at the front. It was good that the beastkin would have to spend time clearing out the dead or have treacherous footing, but we had our own problems. Our tunnel acted as a drain for the blood, making our footing slippery as the mud thickened.

With no way to bring their advantages to bear, the beastkin could hardly make an attack before falling to our blades and stones.

Hardly was the keyword, though. Even with their guts spilling onto the ground and a sword through the chest, the beastkin would still jab their spears forward, wounding my legionaries.

And as the legionaries were forced to step out of the tunnel to finish off our attackers, they would have to deflect spears and stones thrown at them by those around the pit, not all of which were blocked.

Wounds were building up. And as minutes passed, the mass of beastkin above us never left or seemed to lessen, matter how many we killed.

We could even feel a short attempt to dig down to us before they gave up.

Emotions were high, and exhaustion and constant anxiety were taking a toll.

I tried to suppress and smooth out the emotions, but I was only a single person, and my reservoir of mental power was less than any of the others. As I used up my energy, their weight on the network affected it more than I could counteract, and I was beginning to lose control.

Then, The beasts looked up, and the assault on our little cave stopped.

For a brief moment, everyone was elated.

We were no longer being attacked and could leave the bunker.

But as the sounds of our grunts of effort and our blades ringing against wood died, the sounds of a distant battle found their way to us. We could clearly make out the screams, shouts, and explosions of a raging battle.

And more than that, there was a tension in the air. Building upon itself.

Something big was happening, and we were doing nothing. Our situation was gnawing on our emotions and strangling the air out of our chests.

Ripples from different people's emotions spread through the mental network, amplifying each other as they came into contact. As the legionaries' fears and jagged emotions fed upon each other, peaks of emotion exploded out of my control.

I tried to stamp down on the peaks. To send out emotions counter to what everyone was feeling, but my efforts were fruitless.

"Ahh!" I gasped as I lost control of the Union, slumping to the side and then to the ground.

I lay still for long moments as my mind reordered itself. The backlash from losing control hurt, but I had suffered worse before. And though my mental energy was little more than a few specks floating in my mind, I really wasn't that tired. Not physically, at least.

After a bit, I got up and looked around.

Everyone was facing the passageway of the bunker, and those whose turn it was to stand in the tunnel, had retreated back into the chamber.

I could feel and see why they retreated. There was something in the air. An energy prickled at our skin like a static charge of a thunderstorm. Except there was no thunderstorm. And a pale yellow light flickered at the front of the passage.

It was… not natural.

None of the trainees knew what it was, but we could instinctually tell it wasn't friendly.

I could taste the fear radiating from their minds.

But the energy was… familiar to me. I had felt it before. And I wanted to know what it was.

I had to know. I had a duty to find out.

Getting up, I looked towards the passage calling out, "Move."

I didn't shout or even talk loud. But in the strained silence of the cavern, half the trainees jumped while the others dropped to a crouch as they spun around, raising their swords towards me in a challenge.

Ignoring them, I pushed through the mass of people, my eyes fixed on the exit.

Some might have said something and pulled on my cloak, but I brushed them off. I could feel something. It was calling to me.

I walked up and out of the tunnel, stepping over and on the bodies of beastkin filling the pitfall, not even giving them a second look.

At the edge of the blood-soaked pit, I grabbed it and pulled myself up onto the level ground of the plains.

A ring of bodies circled the pit from where we first fought, most of them beastkin, but there were legionaries intermingled. Besides the bodies, though, there was nothing else around nearby.

Looking up, my arms fell to my sides, and shock filled my mind.

The night sky was burning.

A half a mile away, above the smoke-filled air of the fish camp, a vortex of boiling yellow fire churned, and at its core was a ball of liquid spinning gold.

All around the massive ball of fire, thousands upon thousands of beastkin flew in a circle. From the light of the fire, I could see columns of twisting wind spiraling into the flame that started at the edges of the beastkin flock.

At the center of the flock of beastkin, floating in the air between the flock and the ball of fire, was seven figures. Their arms were stretched out to the ball, and I could see bars of liquid golden fire stretching between them and the ball.

As I watched, the ball of flame grew larger. Brighter.

I could hear the shuffling and murmuring of the trainees behind me, but I paid them no mind. To tear my eyes away from this terrible beauty would be impossible.

The sphere-shaped ball of fire was slowly expanding, forcing the figures feeding it to slowly drift back along with the flock circling around it.

Occasionally, arches of liquid fire would explode from the ball. When the fire went up, the arch could curl into the air until it snapped, and fire exploded outward like a fountain, spraying specks and clumps of fire across the night to rain down.

When the fire sprayed into the camp, I could see sections of the fire blocked and thrown back into the air, but in most spots, the fire would slam into the ground.

Even from our distance, I could see and hear the fire hit with such force and intensity that stones and chunks of the earth were thrown into the air.

Jumping to the side, I looked at the watermelon-sized piece of half-melted and deformed stone that landed ten feet away in shock.

Looking back to the battle could see streams of arrows fired and thrown spears streaking up into the sky at the beastkin, but it was a waste of effort.

My eyes caught on the firelight reflecting off the tips of the arrows and spears as they turned toward the ground. A small number of the projectiles had the strength to reach where the beastkin hovered, but most of those were torn out of their path by the savage winds that raged below the beastkin.

If any of the projectiles had the strength to hurt or kill a beastkin, no one could tell because nothing fell from the sky.

The ball of flame grew, becoming larger than a mid-sized house, and lit up the grasslands for as far as the eye could see, then it fell.

From one second to the next, the ball of fire flew down like someone stood over a cliff and threw a rock toward its base.

In a way, that was exactly what happened. Though it was seven beastkin that threw the fireball downward instead of an individual.

With a horrified fascination, I watched the ball of fire fall. My breathing hitched in my throat as the catastrophic weapon of war fell on my comrades.

There was no denying that. If this was not a weapon of war to destroy forts and legions, I would never see one.

And the fish could do nothing. They were untrained and hel—

A hundred feet to the ground, a clumped mass of dirt containing the charred scraps of white tents on its surface lifted into the air before shooting toward the descending ball of fire.

The dirt appeared to be about half the ball of fire's size, and when the two connected, the outside of the ball of fire rolled over the edge of the dirt ball.

When the fire had consumed slightly more than the dirt ball's mass, the fire exploded to the sides and rained down.

At that moment, the waves of fire began collecting into streams that led to the edges of the fish camps. And figures riding spears of rocks and blades of compressed wind rose into the sky.

There might have been only three dozen of the steel-clad individuals, but they began throwing stone spears and air blades into the ranks of the beastkin, killing them by the score.

And if the beastkin swooped lower to attack, flights of arrows and spears would intercept them before they got close.

I looked at the knights hovering in the air, and a smile spread over my face.

It wasn't long before the beastkin turned and flew away into the night towards the northern forest.

As they streamed away, partially lit up by the burning camp, they left below and behind them, I snapped out of my shocked state.

Turning, I looked at the gathered trainees behind me.

"Last chance to leave. If you stay till morning, I will make you into scouts whether you like it or not." With my little speech given, I turned and started walking toward camp. They would need all the help they could get.