Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

There were always more beastmen.

We had breaks for an hour or two, but another hoard of a thousand or more was perpetually approaching. Throwing themselves at The Gauntlet.

They never seemed to learn or adapt to our strategy.

And if you looked into their dead murderous eyes, there was no difference as they lay chopped in half on the ground or charging at you on all fours.

There was nothing in those eyes, only mindless savagery.

But there were differences in the beasts.

Though they all appeared to have some aspect of a human, the animal parts changed.

The different types of beasts generally stayed together. The rams stayed with the rams and the bison with the bison, except when a couple rams and bisons happened to be intermingled with a hoard of deer.

The same pattered held true for the carnivore beastmen like wolves, bears, cats, and wolverines.

Though the bird species of beastmen all seemed to stick together in flocks of the same species or fly as individuals.

The lack of mixing made it easy to know what to expect from any battle with the beasts. Not that it was any less of a slog.

Or made the losses any easier to bear.

But we could send out scouts for the nearest hoard and devise a plan for how to deal with it. It was simple. Easy.

We thought we were fine, that we knew what we were doing.

Which was when the universe showed us how wrong we were.

**********

We had seconds, maybe as much as a minute, until the bird beastkin arrived.

My eyes scanned the grasslands around us, and besides my trainees, no one else was on the training grounds. It only made sense. I pushed them into the edge of the night, and there was no way my helpers would stick around longer than necessary. Not with the smell of cooking fires hanging in the air.

We were all alone. Thirty-two exhausted legionaries and one scout standing next to a series of pits dug into a grass plane half a mile from a camp of thousands of fish while thousands of beastkin approach.

"Move it, people!" I shouted, causing everyone to look at me, "If you want to live, dig a damn hole!"

Finally, ten people stepped forward and gathered together.

"Grab the fucking nets!" I shouted at everyone else standing around, "Double up when we run out! Anything that gets close bring it down!"

Looking to the side, I checked on those that were supposed to be digging, and they were, in fact, digging. They had gathered five feet to my left and were starting to rip chunks of dirt out of the ground before compressing it.

"Hey!" I shouted at the diggers. I stomped my foot down on the pit's edge, causing a chunk of dirt to fall off. "Start down there!" I said while pointing at the hole. Realization and chagrin appeared on their faces as they began shuffling into the pit.

I couldn't blame them too much. They were so tired they were little more than zombies.

As they climbed into the hole, I shouted one more command, "Save the fist-sized rocks and use them!"

I didn't know if their clouded minds understood, but I had other things to do.

Closing my eyes, I reached out and started creating mental links with everyone around me. When I began probing their minds, they immediately latched on to it.

I did not have the raw power to make the thirty-two necessary links on my own, but as more people joined The Unity, I was able to draw on a small amount of their mental power and will to expand the network. It made what would have been an impossible task by myself in a matter of a few seconds.

"Circle up!" I shouted as I opened my eyes after completing the links. At my words, the twenty-two trainees outside the pit took up positions around it, standing with a foot and a half between each of us.

With every passing second, I could feel the trainees partially recover from their mental and physical exhaustion. If they broke the link, their exhaustion would instantly crash down on them again, but while in Unity, everything was easier to ignore.

From where I stood, I could see the approaching flock of beastkin and the desperate faces of Prick and his lackeys as they ran for us.

They would not make it. They were only halfway to us, and the beastkin would be on us in seconds.

"One minute," I mentally sent through the link, "We last for one minute, and we go into the hole." I felt the wave of acknowledgment from my shield-mates and the feeling of determination radiating from the diggers. They were hard at work as they bore diagonally down from inside the hole.

Whatever the diggers make in a minute should be enough for whoever survives this mess. I thought to myself in resignation.

I blinked, and the last rays of the setting sun burned high across the sky. Then the monstrous beast released a collective cry as they surged higher into the sky, casting the land in shadows as they obscured the visibly dimming light.

"Scattered pulse!" I cried out as I watched shadows fall from the sky onto Prick and the others.

I could not see the shapes winged men hit the legionaries with my eyes, but thanks to my weak pulse, I could get a mental picture of a hundred feet in every direction.

It was like a flash of lightning, burning through the night and revealing everything around.

Though a pulse was useful in checking one's surroundings, it was not that great when tracking thousands of fast-moving objects. A single person putting out enough pulses to track a moving object is mentally draining and burns up a lot of mental energy, but not so a group in Unity.

For a group our size, it was typical for different members to release mental pulses half to a quarter of a second while not in combat.

It wasn't as good as seeing it with my eyes, but I did get a clear picture of how the eight legionaries were killed. Not that I wanted it.

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The beastkin first came in from the west side, thrusting their spears at the three running on that side. They slammed their spears halfway into the legionaries before driving them to the ground. With a jerk ripping their spears free and a flap of their wings, the three beastkin shot over and to the sides of the remaining legionaries.

Panicked in the darkness and certainty of danger, the legionaries whirled towards the cries of pain. It was just in time for them to stand still and be distracted as more beastkin dropped from the night sky. The beastkin drove the men to the ground as they buried their spears into the legionaries' chests.

I tracked the darker shadows in the night as they rose from their kills, their yellow and green eyes shining in the night. With a flap of their wings, the beastkin vanished into the night skies once more.

As I tried to track the glowing eyes, I turned my head towards the sky.

It was like I looked at a river of tens of thousands of fireflies migrating through the darkness overhead.

But they weren't fireflies. And any beauty I might have felt from the sight was overshadowed by the cold claws of fear squeezing my heart.

A fear fed by the nearly deafening sound of a rushing wind stirred up by five thousand flapping wings passing overhead.

And the trainees knew what I felt. I could feel the same despair trying to lodge itself inside of me, bubbling up inside of them. But I would not be overwhelmed by fear.

"Increase the pulses." I calmly sent down my mental network, "All we have to do is last until the bunker is built. They won't waste their time on us when they have far easier and more important targets at camp." I was confident of what I sent them, which the trainees could feel through the mental contact.

After they spent a moment thinking, the legionaries started hoping they might actually survive this as they came to similar conclusions. There is something to be said for being unimportant grunts.

Besides, how many beastkin will die just to kill us? They have to see we're somewhat prepared. No way that's wor—

I stepped to my right and slightly turned my body left while forming a small shield over my chest. A moment later, I grunted in effort and was forced to plant a foot behind me as a spear deflected off my shield.

Taking a step diagonally forward and to the left, I dodged the downward thrust of the beastman, trying to spear me through the back.

Lunging to the left, I made an upward diagonal slash from right to left, reinforcing my blade's momentum with a mental strand. My blade gutted the beastwoman before I kept the slash going, splintering one of her spears and knocking the other wide as it thrust aimed at my shield-mate.

The same moment I lunged to the left, the shield-mate I was covering slammed his sword through the back of the beastman attacking me, then ripped it out, slicing through the beastman's spine.

From one moment to the next, we had fluidly traded spots and killed our first attackers. And all around the pit, we were not the only ones who performed such maneuvers from the sudden attack.

Unfortunately, despite how similar the scenes were, they all didn't end with a beastkin bleeding out on the dusty ground.

In the back of my mind, I noted every death. But there was no time to acknowledge the casualties, let alone mourn what could have been. What I should have changed…

Every legionary sent out pulses of mental energy as fast as they could gather it. Flashes of my surroundings appeared in my mind so often that it was nearly like I was seeing in the darkness of dusk.

Crouching down, I sent a mental strand over and behind my head. I held the stand hovering in place for a beat, waiting.

As I felt the mental strand connect and wrap around the center of a net flying toward me, I guided it slightly higher so its edge wouldn't catch on my head and spun it.

Feeling the wind of the net's passage, I started to stand. When it was three feet in front of me, the net caught on the two spears of a beastkin driving for my chest.

The net caught on the spear tips and then started twisting around the shafts, throwing the trajectory of the spears and the one holding them off course due to the net's weight. Within a moment of the net connecting with the spears, it spiraled forward, wrapping around the arms and then the torso of the beastman.

With its wings no longer able to extend, the beastkin crashed into the ground and started tumbling forward.

The newest mental pulse caught my attention, and I stopped my step forward to drive my sword through the tumbling beastkin and into the ground.

Stepping to my left again, I fainted with my sword at a beastkin rushing forward, making her pull back. It allowed my shield-mate to recover from covering her left-side shield-mate.

At the same time, I formed a small angled shield placing it where I just was, deflecting the thrown spear aimed for my back down into the tumbling beastman.

Stepping back into place after the tumbling beastman passed, I deflected a charging beastwoman's spear. But without a shield or another sword, I could not block the second spear driving for my gut. Not without stepping out of line, which I would rather die than do. Wonder if I can take it in the forear—

Smile twitching at my lips, I twisted my blade around the spear shaft as I slightly twisted my body and thrust forward, leaving myself open to a spear in the side by his other hand.

As I shifted, a fist-sized rock brushed past my cloak and under my arm from below, smashing into the beastkin's shoulder, halting his thrust.

The look of pained surprise only lasted a moment, then my short sword was sheathed into the beastkin's neck, sending blood fountaining into my eyes and obscuring my vision.

As I began rubbing at my face, I took a step back, taking a defensive crouch with my sword still up and ready.

Even as I rubbed at the eye splattered with more of the almost hot beastkin's blood, I tried to keep the other open, looking out at the darkness. Not that I needed vision, but not being able to see and having blood in the eyes was a distraction I didn't want.

I could see streaks of yellow flashing past ten feet above the plains off in the distance. There were so, so many beastkin out there, and we were decreasing by the second.

Letting out a pulse, I twisted and jumped to my right side as I pulled it from my face and stuck it straight out.

Stiff arming my shield-mate on my right side, I made him stumble forward as I thrust upward.

I felt my blade meet a slight resistance before the resistance seemed to pop, and my blade easily slid upward as I fished my thrust.

"Ahhh!" I screamed as I felt something slam through my left forearm, and more unnaturally hot blood rained down over my head.

As I stepped back, unfurling a mental tendril to push aside the falling body so I could keep my blade, it only took me a single pulse to take in the situation and decide.

"Fallback!" I sent and shouted at the same time. "To the bunker!"

Taking two quick steps back, I fell into the pit, absorbing the fall with a slight bend of the knees.

As I hit the ground, I sent out tendrils snatching up the fist-size rocks lining the walls of the pit. While two of the diggers were trying their best in the center of the hole, they were too tired to propel more than one of the rocks with lethal force.

Snatching up six rocks, I propelled them out of the pit at the three beastkin diving down, trying to land inside with us. The rocks whistled into the air, forcing the beastkin to swoop to the side or be hit.

"Go!" I shouted and motioned to the passage behind me, signaling the legionaries dropping into the pit to rush forward and enter it, "Get inside!"

Grabbing another six stones, I started razing them up the side of the pit while I spun them in a spiral. Picking up the rotational speed, I rotated the stones faster and faster, stopping their upward movement five feet above the lip of the hole.

Holding them at the same height, second after second passed, and the whistling noise marking the rocks' passage built up as I used up most of my mental energy, rotating them.

Someone released a larger-than-normal pulse of mental energy, revealing the surrounding area, which let me rapidly release the stones one after another. Nearly instantly after I released the stones, I heard a series of meaty, wet thwacks followed by screams of agony.

Stumbling back, I tried to walk to the cave mouth as my mind swirled at the mental effort of speeding up the stones.

Throwing a glance to the night sky, I saw the first signs of dim silver moonlike breaking through the darkness. It wouldn't get that much brighter as it was little more than a crescent moon, but at least it was something.

I could already feel myself regaining strength, but I was already falling, only to be caught in someone's arms.

Within a second, I was pulling myself free of the arms and standing on my own feet.

I looked at the blood-smeared face of Kathren, the woman I kicked to wake up in camp, giving her a tired nod of thanks as I said, "Got something on your face, might want to clean it up a bit before you try to sweep men off their feet again."

She gave a snort of a laugh before snapping back, "Ha! Like you're one to talk Instructor. At least now you finally have some color on your face."

A thin smile twitched at my lips as I shuffled forward through the three duos of legionaries guarding the tunnel to a small cave.

Well, it wasn't that small. It was ten feet in diameter, but that was still pretty cramped for twelve people.

I moved to the center of the stone room before I sat down with a grunt of relief before crossing my legs.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, it was harder to hold Unity together without the heat of battle. There were too many stray thoughts. And as the core of the network, it was my job to keep it together until we no longer needed it.

I mentally readied myself for a long night of meditation and focus.