Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

As we struggled and learned how to withstand the hoards, it was a time of smoke, screams, and blood.

If you were part of The Gauntlet's founding, you would understand. If not, nothing I could say would mean more.

I was there. I watched every step of the way as that maze of death, and rotting flesh was built. And I helped as best I could.

I could not fight in the line. I would hinder the legionaries as I couldn't join The Unity. As such, no one could anticipate and support my actions.

I did not have the strength to pull back the heavy bows required to pierce the skin of the beastmen.

I could not justify joining the cavalry, as it would be a waste of a horse. I had no mental powers, and there were lines of volunteers that could do everything I could and more.

But no one could match my mind. My memory.

I ran the supply department. I kept the food coming in and the arrows, spears, swords, shields, and leather goods going out to the legionaries.

I ensured we had the food and sent out requests for what I anticipated we would need.

Despite my efforts, all I could do was watch as young man after young woman died fighting as I stood behind them.

And then, I buried and burned what was left of their bodies.

I did what I could.

We all did.

**********

"Keep running!" I shouted. "If a single one of you drops your sphere, all of you will do ten more laps! If you are hit, you do two more laps!"

I stood at the railing of a tower standing in the center of an exercise course.

The course consisted of stretches they were supposed to sprint through interspersed by walls of wood, tracks of mud they had to crawl through, and a balance course of upright poles and laid-out logs. There was also a section where lines of nearly invisible wire were strung across the course that was changed periodically by an attendant. And another where they had to dodge nets being thrown at them while avoiding falling into the five-by-six-foot pitfalls.

They had to traverse all that while the archers standing next to me let out flights of blunt arrows and a steady rate at them.

By this point, the trainees were exhausted mentally and physically. They had been doing this for the hours since my little speech while wearing their armor and swords, after all.

This course would be demanding for me to run for that long, and I was expected to be in better shape than them. While the basic level of exercise for legion grunts was good, it was not so good that they could run this course for hours without rest. Throw in the requirements for mental abilities, and the course was downright grueling.

"Traig, that arrow was not meant for you! You owe me two more laps!" I shouted while trying to keep track of everyone else on the course.

There were plenty of other mistakes happening that I could call out. Anooha's shield blocked a net thrown at her and threw it into the path of an arrow aimed at someone else. Joxin's perception sphere was definitely shrinking every few minutes, but I was pretty sure that was from exhaustion. And Prick was not running nearly as fast as he could, even if his maybe-pretend twisted ankle was holding him back.

So long as there were no more major mistakes that would force me to call them out, I was content with where they all were.

And that was utterly exhausted, both mentally and physically.

The scout cohort was unique for several reasons.

One of the major reasons the scouts were special was we let men and women serve together on the same squads and centuries.

Thanks to mental abilities, physical differences mattered very little. Sure, men, in general, were bigger, stronger, and faster physically. But what did a little more arm strength mean when a woman could reinforce her shield to the point that moving it was like moving a five-hundred-pound rock. And then slash out with her sword doing the same.

If the man cannot match the woman's mental abilities, his slight physical advantage means nothing.

No men and women cannot serve together because of Unity.

When legionaries are joined in Unity, they are still individuals and can pull out at any time, but the overall instincts of the collective are exaggerated within each individual.

In a situation like a shield wall — where survival comes down to instinct and split-second reactions — extra impulses are not needed.

While it does not always happen, there are plenty of stories of women joining a men's cohort and being placed within the shield wall. And then, in the heat of battle, the men would throw themselves to their deaths as they tried to save the woman.

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Entire battle formations were broken because a single person was dying or about to be killed, and the men were filled with an overwhelming need to protect.

It was an unnecessary factor in an already chaotic battle that could easily be solved by splitting the genders into separate cohorts and centuries.

The scouts had no such separations, though. Mainly because entering Unity was counter to everything we did. We were a loose collection of individuals that, if one of us was caught, the others needed to live and report back.

While we could and did work together at times, we were hardly ever physically close enough that a Union was feasible. It was not uncommon for a squad of scouts to leave together and come back alone.

Another significant difference of the scouts was endurance. Scouts had to perform a mental casting for hours on end without the crutch of leaning on the collective will of The Union.

While I'm sure many of these recruits had personal trainers in their youth to train their minds, years as legion grunts probably dulled their mental blades.

I needed to resharpen their minds and then hone them a bit further if they would make it as scouts.

And this training should do just that.

Requiring them to keep up their perception sphere and occasionally block an arrow. It would require them to develop their efficiency.

Either they could consciously do it, or I would harass them until they dropped unconscious and then make them get up and do it again, making them go a little longer the second time.

But this was a marathon, not a sprint. I needed the changes to be beaten into their bones, not seared into their flesh.

So I needed to be careful about what I called out. I could not call out too much so that there was no possible way they could complete the workout, but I had to work them hard enough to push them to a point they couldn't imagine before.

"Keep up the pace!" I shouted, voice ringing over the course, "Whoever finishes the base hundred laps first doesn't have to do their penalty laps! Whoever's last takes on those extra laps!"

I smiled as Prick picked up his pace to nearly what he was running at when we first started. Guess he did hurt himself.

"Pick up the pace of your firing for the next circuit," I said to the archers. "Aim for the leader."

Someone gave a grunt, and I stood at the railing watching my recruits and occasionally calling out their mistakes and, more often, threats about keeping up the pace.

About twenty minutes later, I climbed down from the tower and started making my way over to the recruits, collapsed on the ground at the side of the course. As I walked, I waved at the archers and the few other attendants gathering by the tower, signaling they could leave.

When I arrived, I stood at the edge of the group, looking down at the sweaty mud-covered trainees.

It took a few moments, but they all turned their heads toward me. Most of the eyes I looked at were glazed over with exhaustion and more than a hint of anger.

"What you just experienced will be your life as a scout. You will always be maintaining one or more castings. You will have to move through the forests without rest, sometimes pursued but always weary of what's around. Because that is the job." My voice was casual, but I was trying to make it carry as I filled it with conviction.

As I talked, I began walking among the trainees, stepping between their splayed-out arms and legs. "You will walk into where we think the enemy is located, and we will expect you to walk out with the information to deny or confirm the belief. Whether you can make it back with your squad or alone, you will make it back because the legion depends on it. You might save a century, a cohort, or even the whole legion with a single—

My head snapped up from eyeing the trainees, tilting to the side as my ears twitched while I focused on a distant sound. I did not care about my speech, the back of my mind was screaming danger at the faint noise, and I was only alive because I listened to my instincts.

Focused on my hearing, I started squinting my eyes, only for them to snap open in alarm.

I saw motion.

A lot of motion. In the sky…

As I searched the growing dusk. There was nothing. The sky was clear. But…

Slightly turning my head, I looked into the sun and saw the motion I had noticed before.

For brief moments, I could make out outlines against the setting sun. It looked like a massive flock of birds was rapidly approaching close to the ground, using the sun as cover.

…But they weren't birds.

It only took a second of indecision before I acted.

I gathered half of my mental power, then released it towards the fish camp in a specific pattern of mental pulses.

"Get up!" I shouted at the same moment I released the pulses. Those in the path of my arc of mental energy sat up immediately in alarm and started looking around as they struggled to their feet.

The rest were slower, but they also started getting up. It was some combination of my voice conveying something was wrong and me commanding them for the last hours.

It was only when the trainees in the path of my message started echoing it that some energy entered their movements.

Which was to be expected.

I used the standard legion relay language. It was a series of staggered pulses that could relay information to the legion as a whole or across miles of rough terrain by a trapped scout.

It was information like enemy, friendly, retreat, and charge. The pattered contained many simple words that could be relayed, giving critical information to a legion, like what I sent, "Ambush air west."

The others were struggling to look for the threat in the sun, but I was already turning and starting to run.

"Follow me!" I shouted, "They'll be on us in moments!"

The command in my tone must have been enough because I heard footsteps following me.

We ran across the course, and I stopped at the edge of the pitfall traps as I bent over, grabbed one of the nets, and turned around.

"Those with the strongest will and who still have reserves of mental energy gather up and make a bunker! Everyone else, grab a net and check your blade!" Half of the trainees were clumped up behind me, with another quarter trickling in. But a few trainees were still lying on the ground where they had fallen after the workout, with others gathered around them.

"What training is this, you fucking Twig!" Prick called out. "Didn't get enough pleasure from making us run around! Had to go send out a false alarm? Haha, I'm gonna enjoy watching you hang, Leaf!"

I ignored the petty man and looked into the distance again, judging the time we had.

Prick was right. Not about me hanging, but that anyone would hang if they sent out a false pulse message. The punishments were harsh for those who intentionally did that.

But I wasn't wrong.

The sun had fallen over the horizon, and I could see the flock of beastkin skimming the ground.

"Ancestor, protect us…" I whispered to myself dropping the net as I looked at the thousands upon thousands of bird beastkin.

I could see the wide fear-filled eyes of the trainees around me as they spotted what I had. Their eyes were the same as mine.

We could not fight that. And there was nowhere to run.

Nowhere but down.

"Get that fucking bunker built!" I shouted into the air, causing people to jump forward.