I was assigned to a training Century. Unlike the standard combat centuries we would be in for our enlistment, the training century was a mixed force containing both spearmen and archers. In the Legions, a cohort was made of several centuries of spearmen, a few centuries of archers, a few centuries (but they were called ala for some reason) of mounted scout/archers, and one Knight Company composed of sorcerer knights. There were no knights in the recruits, as we had yet to be taught the true reason for the power of the Dread Empire, its cultivation.

I was having problems adjusting to the reality of the Legions. I had been taught the theory, a century means one hundred men. Except in the Legion that meant eighty, but they seldom actually had all eighty as generally some were posted to temporary duties, some were pulling down staff positions, some were injured, or some centurions would resist taking recruit replacements for their combat casualties to dilute the quality of their century until they were threatened with crucifixion. So the word meant one hundred, but in the army that meant eighty, and when the army said eighty they meant you would have a greater chance of receiving a blowjob from the Empress than finding any century in the Legion with eighty present, even once.

Since the century was wrong, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out that the numbers for cohort were equally wrong. A cohort was six centuries or 480 men, commanded by a tribune and six centurions. Our training cohort had a little over 1600 human sized recruits, and another 400 trolls and ogres. I was told that most of us were wastes of food and space, and that with any luck most would desert or die before we wasted too many resources, but on the off chance one of us (it depended on which centurion was giving the speech, but they all seemed to think we were way closer with farm and draft animals than we were. Any way, they tended to call us something ranging from donkey molesters down towards the truly improbable and physiologically implausible) survived to become a legionnaire, it was their job to make sure we learned to cultivate the darkness within, and become more than the cheap cannon fodder of other armies.

Cultivation was the key. The Holy Knights, like the Sherriff that I had killed, cultivated the holy power to raise their combat abilities and allow them to cast powerful spells of holy or light magic. They were the only real threat to the Dread Empire because they were the only other organization to systematically train even a portion of their troops to master battle magic. There were mages and even sword-mages in every kingdom, but outside the Dread Empire they were vanishingly rare, and answered to no one.

The Dread Empire of Yn’Tereth served the god of darkness, Yn’Tereth the Defiler. The entire rest of the world was united in two things, their hatred for Yn’Tereth and all his works, and their fear of the Dread Empire that worshipped his name and practiced his arts. They tried to wipe the Empire out every few centuries, and the borders of the Dread Empire would march outward a few hundred miles, to include the last city or province stupid enough to host the army that died proving the Dread Empire could not be beaten in war. Yn’Tereth was evil, but he was not stupid. His brothers and sisters didn’t need him after the war to cast down the Titans, and they had planned on betraying and murdering him, but he betrayed them first, killing Aria , Goddess of Magic, leaving the gods of light without the ability to bind Yn’Tereth, and without a guide to teach mortals how to master the magic needed to stop Yn’Tereth’s own followers.

It turns out Yn’Tereth is a pretty good teacher. Who knew?

He taught his followers the arts of spiritual cultivation. To cultivate meant to nourish the seed of immortality, the bit of divinity left in humanity from its birth from the fallen blood of the slaughtered Titans. While it was the gods who uplifted humanity and gave us the gifts of civilization, it was the blood of the Titans, the race that birthed the gods themselves, that mixed with the mud and flesh of the earth to make us. By learning to cultivate, to remove the impurities of mortality, to perfect the soul essence of the divinity that humanity shared with the gods, a follower of Yn’Tereth could become immortal.

Maybe one in a million rose that high, but along the path to immortality they passed through stages where they learned to forge mana pathways in their body similar to those that born mages had. They could use these pathways to turn their own life energy, their own mana into either physical enhancements, or to channel spells, or carefully crafted energy forms that channelled that mana into pre programmed effects to do things like raise walls of earth, call down lightning from the heavens, create fear in the minds of whole armies, or cast balls of fire that exploded with enough fury to shatter city walls or kill the mightiest giant or war elephant.

I had seen how my body had been reshaped by the use of the pure light of Ajax dream memory instructions, learning to put my will upon the universe as the Titans had put their will upon primordial chaos to create the universe itself. I had seen how my tentacle friends, born from the consciousness torn from that primordial chaos by the Titans daring to take unknowing unity and tear it into discrete pieces that had to then learn that someone went and made the universe out of bits of it that they stole and converted. The primordial darkness did not take it well, and tried really hard to tear the universe into happy dark primordial soup where everything was possible but nothing was actual. Sadly, coherent tactics were not something my tentacle friends did naturally, so the Titans won. What my tentacle friends could do was take anything that existed, and tear away at its certainty. Once it had been weakened, I could then use the power of my will and the light that carved that primordial darkness to impose a new order upon it. That is how I healed. I didn’t restore the order that was, the darkness inside me tore away at the certainty of the parts that failed, and then with my will I created a new order from the primordial soup my tentacle friends made of the wound, and imposed a new, stronger order on it. One that built from what went before, but which would now overcome whatever had injured it before.

I thought I would be good at cultivation. I mean, didn’t I already do it?

Captain Tanya Xiang was sitting cross legged before us. She used her command over the darkness make her metal leg bend like her flesh one, and inside the empty socket of her missing eye a knot of black lightning pulsed out with every breath. She lead us in the meditation. All of those gathered were bound by the soft compulsion of her words, the force of it layering her will over our own as she guided us to bring the darkness into us, and let the malice of the defiler tear at the weak mortal flesh of our bodies to make us more perfect channels for the lust, the rage, the anger, the ambition that were his gifts to us. At least, it was supposed to.

I watched the hungry shadows flowing from the corners of the room approach the cultivating soldiers and begin to feed on them.

“Focus on the memories of love and joy, of innocence and trust. Feel them within you. This is a pool of weakness, these are the ties that bind you to this world. The love you felt for your family, for your friends. These are born of flesh. These are the feelings of animals. This is what we use to train dogs, this is how we lead cattle to the slaughterhouse. This is what the gods of light use to bind you to this world, and to their service after death. Now, remember the first time those that you loved hurt you, those that you trusted to protect you failed, the first time you looked upon one that you loved and felt jealous, felt anger. This is the Will To Power trying to wake, but you are not strong enough.

Take that light you feel within you, take the chains to your flesh, the ties to life and this world, and fill your lungs with it. Take all of this into your center, and know that it is a lie. That it is a dream, and it is time to wake. Breathe out and reject this light, reject this weakness. Reject the dream. Feel the cold hunger outside, the shadows of Yn’Tereth, the spirits of darkness that could be demons in a thousand years, they are everywhere. Breathe in, and draw them into yourself. Draw them into your core. Feel that darkness wrap around you.

Feel its hunger. Know that it needs to feed on the light within you. Know that the light that poisons you with weakness will poison them with that same weakness. Let the spirit inside you, but guide it. Breathe in, drawing it to your core, now breathe out, letting the darkness flow outward from your core to your left arm, to your left hand. Breathe in, and draw it back to your core to circle widdershins around your core, but do not let it touch you. Now breathe out, forcing it down your left leg, feel the connection to the earth below and life beyond. Now breathe in, draw it back to your core, circle again on the path of darkness, against the sun way, burn the channel deep, teach it to flow always and forever in this spiral. Now breathe out and force it down your right leg, down to the earth, where the dead rot, where no light exists, were the weak will fall, now breathe in, and bring it back to your core. Breathe out, and force the darkness down your right arm. Feel the hunger of the shadow, the endless hunger for light and life, and feel it fill your sword arm. Close your fist, and teach it that only you can release it, only you can feed it. Teach it you are master, and all the world is prey only so long as it listens to you. Now breathe in and cycle it back.

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Breathe out, and push the darkness into your eyes, and open them. See the world as it is. All the world is a predator to be feared, or prey to be taken. Look at the soldiers to your sides, they are either strong enough to hunt beside you, or weak enough to be prey to feed the strong, for the darkness loves only the strong.”

I looked around, and I could see people doing as Captain Xiang ordered, I could see the shadows flitting in to claw at the bodies of the meditating soldiers whose natural life force kept the weak shadow things at bay. At last I saw a few succeed in dropping their defenses and letting the weak things inside. I could see them beginning to tunnel inside, making the channels that the Captain talked about. There was energy being freed, but it wasn’t being added. It was just bits of the soldier’s eaten away and left in a more useable form. Cycling away in a way that corrupted the natural life force of their bodies, and made it resonate more strongly with this darkness of Yn’Tereth.

I tried to do the same, but when the shadows got close, my tentacle friends lashed out and grabbed the pale and weak things and tore them to pieces. My squad around me all meditated, but my tentacle friends would allow none of the little shadows close to them. They were not darkness. My tentacle friends were darkness. Darkness was not evil, darkness was potential. Darkness was formless, darkness was chaos. Without the primordial act of will, without the light of will to sever from that darkness, from that infinite potential a single choice, the universe could not exist. The darkness was not good, nor was it evil. The will was not good, nor was it evil. This shadow of Yn’Tereth, it was evil. It created nothing, it corrupted. It consumed. It fed on life using others as its mouth and stomach, and left them scraps of what it consumed to keep its promises of power.

I looked inside and saw the memories of Mom. I remembered love and joy, I remembered trust. I reached out to my tentacle friends, and they moved within me. They danced, they wove around and through my memories of Mom, of feeling loved and protected, and they wove them deeper into me. I breathed in and remembered being betrayed, being attacked, being helpless, afraid, and hurt. I reached out for the rage that I was supposed to feel, but felt only my tentacle friends weaving memory deeper into me. Memories of being impaled on the rib of a Titan, of learning to shape my will into a weapon and a tool. Memories of offering my blood to the primordial darkness, of offering a place inside myself, inside my soul for my tentacle friends.

My tentacle friends wove inside me, tearing at me as the shadows tore at the other soldiers, and lit by the memory of Mom teaching me to dance in the storm, I remembered the dance of war that Ajax taught me. The dance of war, the dance of power, the dance of strife. The lust for life, the ambition, the will to power, not over others, but over myself. The desire to put my will upon the world. Inside me mortal flesh was not consumed, it was transformed. Darkness and light wove together, where once flesh alone lived, now the tiniest fibers of light and of darkness began to weave and I felt THE SONG rising in me.

The Dread Empire Legions teach you one thing, you are not a soldier. You are nothing. You are as much a part of your squad as your finger is a part of your hand. You do not exist alone, you do not act alone, you do not fight, do not sweat, do not hunger or bleed alone. If one fails, all are punished. If one excels, all are rewarded. You are not a person, you are a spear of your squad. I looked at them around me. Janice, serving for her brother that was maimed, that her family’s unbroken tradition not end. Vong, the slave brand on his face marking him as a debt slave of the Holy Land, sold into slavery by his family in lieu of taxes. He ran away to the one nation that did not care he was a slave, as long as he would fight. Giorgi who was in the Legions because he wanted to be feared by men, and desired by women, and had no ambitions beyond making friends and having adventures. Lvov whose family had lived and died in the mines for generations but dared to find a path to a different fate. Reinhart who laughed easily and often, but whose back was laced with scars of rod and whip he would never speak of. Liao who came from the distant east with his trading family, only to find financial ruin, and run to the Legions where even a foreigner could rise to citizenship and status. And Brencis, whose stated goal was to die of drink the day before the army retired him. They were his squad. They were part of him.

Reaching out, I had seen my tentacle friends chase away the lesser shadows of Yn’Tereth, chased away the corrupting spirits of the Defiler. They could not walk the path of cultivation without that sprit to build their mana channels, to eat away at the connection between mortal flesh and spiritual power. They could not walk the path of immortals and seize the power over darkness because I chased their shadows away. I could not rob from them. If they could not have the shadows of Yn’Tereth, they would have mine.

I threw out my right hand, and tentacles of hungry darkness shot towards my squad. Writhing before them like so many cobra’s formed of darkness so deep it remembered a time before night, in seven hissing voices as one, they whispered.

“Speak your offer.” They hissed.

“Blood and souls for your aid!” Screamed Janice who remembered the pact her father and grandfather whispered of when they had been drinking the mana enhanced blood wine required to actually get a demonic cultivator drunk.

“Close enough. Say ah!” The tentacle friend in front of Jasmine slit the skin of her throat and lapped at the blood that flowed. When she opened her mouth to scream, it struck, wriggling down her throat like some sort of sex act, yet her eyes flew wide as it began to circulate inside her in rhythm with my own, in rhythm with the song that Ajax taught me.

One by one my squad offered blood to the tentacle friends, and made them their own. Soon we were all cultivating beside the rest of the squad. Captain Xiang had risen and now squatted in front of us, her one eyeless socket bleeding darkness that seemed to scan us as we swayed together, the squad now hearing the faintest echoes of the song Mom found in the storm, and Ajax taught me to find in war.

While the others who had invited the darkness of the Defiler inside collapsed and passed out, their own life energy consumed by the binding they had undergone, I could no longer remain still. I rose and laughed, shouting at my squad to follow.

I ran outside, and from the racks I took up my training spear and training shield. My squad took up their spear and shield, or in Jania and Vong’s case, their bow and quiver, and we began to dance. The power ran from me to them, from them to me. Inside them a different power was growing. Not my power, but power born from their flesh and their will as mine was born from my flesh and my will. The tentacle friend they had invited inside was weaving into their blood as mine were woven into mine, and with each passage, more of the golden light of the pure will of creation was freed. Common flesh was shot through with the faintest fibers of primordial darkness, of the chaos before time where all things were possible but none existed, and golden threads of the primordial will that first looked upon endless potential and willed one thing to be.

We danced, and the earth shook at the stomp of our feet. As one we raised our weapons to the sky and screamed our challenge, and the clouds began to circle to match our dance. The Captain watched us with a smile that pulled at her scarred face in strange ways, almost making her look wistful.

As our dance grew more wild, yet each of us moving as one, squad deep, our connection grew deeper than thought, deeper than instinct, becoming a living thing, we raised our weapons to the sky again and shouted in joy, and the clouds answered back with a rain of lighting that hammered into our weapons and wreathed out bodies in traceries of light that somehow cast our shadows on the ground in darkness deeper than midnight.

“Alright kiddies. Enough with the scary dancing. You are supposed to be unconscious inside unable to rise until sometime tomorrow as your first steps to cultivation leave your body needing to purge the impurities of your mortal essence through every hole you have, and some you are about to discover. How are you not all collapsing? Did you fail?”

Captain Xiang looked at Janice and ordered her. “Draw your bow, as far as you can.” Janices bow was a training bow, strong enough for one of the Ogers to draw. Twice the strength a serving archer below knight class would ever pull. She drew it to the cheek, and the heavy wood and horn cracked and exploded in her hand.

“Huh.” Captain Xiang muttered, picking the bits of horn out of her own skin, and turning Janice’s head back and forth, seeing not a scratch on her, and none on the bare hands holding the shattered bow.

“How did you get that strong, recruit?” Captain Xiang asked softly.

“Cultivating, like you taught us!” Janice answered cheerfully, a light blazing in her eyes that caused the darkness peaking from the Captain’s own to flinch back.

“No. That is not how any of this works.” Captain Xiang said softly. Then remembering how her current Legate, the Butcher, had decided to leave her crippled after her legion’s defeat and subsumption by the XVII. He had left her crippled, unable to continue her cultivation, unable to reach the stage that would give her the ability to heal herself, and the centuries of life that the next stage would have given her. The Butcher chose to leave her broken. All she was good for was training the next batch of sword fodder for HIS legion. She smiled. Fuck him. This could be fun to watch.

“You know what, close enough. Keep doing what you are doing kiddo. Grow nice and strong, and maybe one day the Butcher himself will want to meet you.” The captain beamed beatifically at her recruits.

I have never felt so close to my squad. We were cultivating the darkness together. We were going to be the finest soldiers in the Dread Empire! Through tentacles, all things are possible.