Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

The hoard pressed forward in a wave, breaking against our next half circle of fortifications.

This layer of defense was set up so two of the outermost courtyards would feed into a single courtyard, which was about a hundred feet in length and fifty wide.

Though the gates leading to the second layer were fully opened, meaning they were peeled back from ground level to battlements, they were not the primary avenue beastmen were using to move forward, as those passages were already clogged with bodies.

The hoard was using the bodies of their dead, filling the first courtyards to run up and over the wall, falling into the next.

Most were, at least.

Clumps of the beastmen could be seen attempting to smash the gates of the towers positioned at the intersections of the walls connecting the first and second rings.

Towers that still had legionaries desperately fighting from within, half of which already knew they were cut off from the rest of the fortress, destined to die.

The air swirled with the building of a storm while the beastmen beat on our walls, in time with the whistling and howling wind ripping over and through the fortress. As the wind pushed the knights and flying beastmen forward in a wild dance in the air as they fought for dominance.

And still, the legionaries fought. They fought, as one while many, to stop this hoard here and protect Olimpia. They fought in the air and ground. Close and far.

They fought, and I watched. I remembered.

**********

My eyes were locked on the saddle lying on the ground beside the fire. Someone tried saying something to me, but I wasn't paying attention.

It looked like one of the beastkin was using the saddle as a backrest or seat. On the saddle's seat, it looked like some dried blood was running down the sides of it to the stirrups. Branded into the side of the saddle was the 'XV' of the Fifteenth Legion.

There would be very few reasons for beastkin to be lugging a saddle around. And the 'I' branded below the 'XV' signified the saddle as belonging to the First Turma of the Fifteenth. This could only mean one thing.

It was taken from battle as a prize. They were the turma that left after the attack, right? Shit, I don't remember which turma they were, but it makes sense the first wound be sent to Cross… I hope someone got through… Wha?

Looking to the side, I saw Kathren, her hand gently lying on my upper arm. She looked like she was ready to jump back at my slightest motion.

When she saw me looking at her, her shoulders slumped in relief, and she let out a sigh.

Raising my eyebrow, I looked from her face to her hand, then back to her face. Cheeks turning slightly red, Kathren's hand snapped back to her chest, and she looked away.

"Umm, sorry, Instructor. It looked like you were spacing out for a long time again… And after what happened in the fight… we thought we should check on you."

“Ehem— You!" Came a cough and an almost cough that sounded an awful lot like the word 'you.' Eyes flicking over, I saw Lutious with his back turned and head down, kicking at the ground by a tent.

Looking back to Kathren, I saw her shooting him a cold glare before closing her eyes and saying, "Umm, yeah… I thought I should check on you to make sure everything was fine. Ya know, after you froze up with the beastkin."

"What?" I asked in puzzlement, making her face drain of blood and causing her to stutter.

"Umm, w-well. I didn't."

Cutting her off with a raised hand, I said, "I'm not trying to trap you in an accusation or anything. I really just don't know what you are talking about."

Cautiously she motioned to the side as she said, "When you charged him, suddenly you and the beastkin stopped moving. It gave us the time to kill them without their shields, but… what happened, Instructor? …If I can ask…"

"How long was I standing still for."

"Less than a minute. More than half."

"Really?" I said in half shock and half disbelief. "It didn't feel like more than a second to me. Maybe two."

Turning, I walked over to the warrior's body, kneeling next to it as I looked at him as spoke. "I was sending out tendrils to pull his shield to the side so I could get an angle on his body. Then I felt another energy come into contact with my tendril, and they… connected or intermingled before dissolving? It was weird. It was like when you try to interact with a person's body, but…" I trailed off as I wasn't sure what to say and wanted to think about it more.

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"Is that what the flash was," Jim asked, interrupting me. I threw him a questioning look, and he continued, "When you ran at the beastman, I thought I saw a flash of a misty line connecting all of them appear for a moment."

I looked at Kathren, "I didn't see it." she said with a shrug. Then I looked at Lutious, who responded, "I might have. But I was distracted fighting him." He was gesturing to the only warrior I didn't fight off to the side.

Poking around on the body near my feet, I started looking for something out of place. Besides his clothing made from hides of different animals sone together, the only other thing he was wearing was a leather thong neckless with a broken piece of interwoven wood and braided strands of fibers holding a white stone in the center of the woven wood. It was very intricate.

I briefly patted down the beastman, checking for anything a visual inspection might have missed, then I got up, heading for the other beastkin to do the same.

The beastkin with the sword and shield was kitted out similar to the first, with the same exact neckless. I wasn't a professional regarding beastkin culture and fashion, but I was guessing men wearing the same neckless were kind of strange.

Moving to the shrouded one, I began to inspect their body.

Professional inspector that I was, the first thing I noticed about the beastkin body was that it was, in fact, a female. I came to this conclusion as I felt small but definite soft lumps under my hand as I planted it against her chest while I leaned down to pull back her hood.

Feeling something under my hand, I began shifting it around and squeezing it on her outer layer of clothes as I searched for the outline of the stiff object.

Finally locating its edges, I got a mental picture of its shape, determining it was significantly larger than the others. Pulling back her collar and sticking my arm inside, I fished around inside the robes for a few seconds before I found and pulled out the neckless.

Even at a quick look, I knew I was right. The neckless was far more intricate and bigger than the others, but it was also cracked. Though I had no idea what the design meant, I got a similar vibe from it as the others.

"Ahem!" Came a loud, incredibly fake cough which sent a shiver running down my spine. "What are you doing over there, Instructor."

I also noticed some stifled snickering off to the side. The kind of snickering a man does behind a woman's back as another man does something stupid that will get him in trouble.

A moment passed as I wondered what was going on, then my mind flashed with what I was doing and what I must look like with my back to them. I quickly pulled back from kneeling, hunched over position of looming over the body. "Whoa!" I said, spinning around and holding my hands up, "I was looking at her neckless."

"Sure. Instructor." Kathren flatly said, looking at me with disgust before she turned and started for the small camp where Jim and Lutious were huddled together, snickering like schoolchildren.

As Kathren turned to them, they quickly separated, looking like they were working as they dug through the camp, somehow managing to avoid looking at either me or her.

I opened my mouth to justify myself but decided to close it and turn back to the body to get this over with. Yep, I'm not winning that.

There were still two rays of death digging into the side of my head, so I decided to focus on a visual inspection of the body. Patting her down wouldn't be necessary.

I scanned the body and could tell the cause of death from the two arrows sticking out of her chest. Which explained the blood on her chin and spray over her clothes. However, it did not explain why blood dripped from her eyes, ears, and nose.

What was also strange were the objects hanging from her belt. They were a latticework of woven together wood branches, stones, and braided fibers, like the necklaces. Some were more complex, while others looked little more than a few twigs twisted around each other.

There were a half dozen of the objects, and all of them were different. Four of the things had rocks in their design, and all of those had stones of various colors and shapes.

Turning to the staff, the crystal on top was no longer glowing, and it looked like the staff had grown roots around the crystal to hold it into place. Intricate patterns were carved into the wood along the staff's length, and another woven object was tied onto its top quarter.

Reaching out slowly, I poked the staff with a finger. I felt nothing.

Grasping the shaft with my hand, I paused to see if anything would happen now. When nothing did, I lifted it up to look closer at the patterns, then the crystal.

None of it made sense to me. So I extended a tendril to poke the staff.

"Ahh!" I Screamed in pain as I threw the staff away from me, shaking out my hand.

The tendril I had extended was sucked into the staff with such force that I couldn't stop it. The stick then turned so hot that I was sure my hand was burned.

And now the staff was splintering into small pieces of wood, which were bursting into intense white flames as the pieces vanished into a cloud of sparks rising into the air and vanishing in moments.

"Wow." Stated Jim, "What did you just do?"

I didn't take my eyes off what was left of the staff, which was now a thin trail of ash that led to a now-cracked crystal lying on the ground. "I extended a tendril and poked the staff."

"Hmmm," Jim grunted in approval at my investigation methods.

"What did you learn?" Asked Lutious at the same time, not questioning my response.

"Not much," I said, slowly reaching out to poke the broken crystal with my hand. I could feel the force of the gaze boring into me increase, and I had no intention of dealing with that, so an investigation was better. “Mayb—

"Are you guys fucking serious!" Shouted Kathren incredulously, causing me to look up and twist my head to face her in bewilderment. "After you find a beastwoman throwing around ice spears like a knight. And you apparently black out for most of a minute after your mental energy comes into contact with something and rips it away from you. You think it's a good idea to poke the staff with your finger and mental energy? Did I get that right, Instructor?"

Her tone was heavily loaded with the insinuation that I'm a dumbass. And completely gone was any respect for her Instructor. But for some reason, I could not find the righteous superiority inside of myself that should be there as her superior, as she yelled.

"Yes?" I hesitantly asked, looking at the men for support only to find them with their backs turned to me again. Traitors.

"Ahh!" She shouted, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. "I'm still surrounded by fucking idiots. I mean men."

I opened my mouth to defend my completely reasonable actions.

"Preach, Sister," said a female voice cutting me off…

Spinning to my left, my right hand drew my sword as I crouched and looked up.

A woman was lying on a branch up on a tree. One of her hands cupped her head, fingers splayed around her long pointed animal ears on the top of her head, while her other hand lazily spun a strap of leather. Behind her, in the shadows, multiple tails flicked back and forth.

She gave me a smug, superior smile saying, "Hey, there, Pretty Boy, didn't expect to see you up and about so soon."