Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

As we fell back and what was left of the legion continued to be killed, our fight against the hoard couldn't even be called a battle. Though it remained what it had always been: a slaughter slowly playing out.

We did not have the men to properly man the seven walls leading to the final fortress, let alone the walls surrounding the innermost ring of the Gauntlet. It made any lines impossible to form, as a beastman flyer would crash into its center moments after its formation. Our only choice was a scrambling retreat to reach the fortress’s gates.

With the predictable end drawing near, many legionaries threw away their lives for a single kill. All so they didn't have to see the end of the legion. So they didn't have to be the ones living out the last moments, knowing we failed.

Though hundreds gave up in that final retreat, most of us held on to our desire to fight. Because we had nowhere else to go. The beasts would accept no surrender, and the ships on the river had long since been swarmed by flyers and swamped by what was now a churning river of blood.

All we had left to cling to was lashing out at those who would destroy us and keeping the last two cohorts fighting in good order until the end. For we would not dishonor ourselves or our legion.

A glaring reality was facing us as we stumbled into our final fortress, bloody and nearly broken. We could not hold all of the fortresses' floors, not for any length of time. So we went down.

We went into the tunnels hollowed out to feed our insatiable need for stone projectiles. Tunnels that the few remaining knights spent the last few hours in, digging air vents up to the surface.

It was a black, lightless maze of corridors and chambers with one way in and no way out. And we, the last two cohorts composed of the remnants of our once grand legion, descended into them.

We descended into our tomb, chased by monsters sporting the features of humans.

**********

"What?' I asked, feeling somewhat confused, but I kind of understood at the same time. An unfortunate reality of the world was many military decisions were decided by senators and nobles driven by political motivations and not military realities, but this was something else.

It was worse than treason because she was betraying more than whatever nation the beastkin had formed. She was betraying her very race.

She shook her head, giving a meaningful look at our surroundings, then motioned to the side, signaling me to follow.

We went down the rise back towards the barrier, where we settled down in a small thicket of trees.

I turned to her, opening my mouth to whisper when her hand clamped down, covering my mouth. She was looking to the side, and her ears were shifting and twitching.

I couldn't see anything within the shadows and silvery light of the forest lit by the moon, and all I could hear was the distant sounds of a camp, but something was obviously wrong. And I was missing it.

Without warning, she spun in my direction, pushing me to the ground, then leaping over me, letting a growl bubble out of her throat.

I moved to get up and draw my blade, but her tails fell over my body, causing me to stop in surprise and covering my upper body, though I could not feel their softness through my shield.

A pity… I was surprised by the thought. And that one of my hands was reaching to stroke a tail, but then again, her tails was really soft.

"Show yourself!" Kanieta shouted into the darkness, "I know you're out there." At the same time she spoke, she turned her body as if looking around, but she stomped her foot down onto my wrist, pushing it to the ground before stepping off.

Finally, getting her unstated point, I stopped trying to move and completely sealed my body shield.

Even with a full body shield like I had when moving through enemy territory, the ears and nose were left uncovered. Have to have some way to breathe and hear, after all.

However, it is possible to cover those openings for a short time. The problem was that you won't be able to hear, and it'll take most of the caster's attention to get barely enough air to stay conscious.

I closed my eyes and tried to slow my heartbeat with deep, slow breathing. There is nothing I can do to change the situation. It is what it is, and she would deal with it or not. My help will only get us killed. I thought to myself like it was a mantra.

One of the techniques taught to scouts was air pumping. It required forming a box from mental energy to trap the air and then creating a small hole and shrinking the box to funnel the air into my mouth and nose as I inhaled. And then, funneling the air, I exhaled into another chamber before repeating the process.

Air pumping is not something that can be done long-term. The only way to ensure you get a full breath is to form multiple chambers and combine them, pressurizing the air you are collecting, which almost always leads to injury. Someone could make a large box to collect air, but that would be far more likely to be noticed, not to mention the power requirements of making it. And if they had that much mental power, why would they be in the scout cohort?

What it came down to was that we scouts had to focus past the feeling of suffocating while keeping multiple castings going simultaneously. It was the most challenging thing we scouts had to learn, and it was far more difficult than it sounded. And it sounded like torture. To graduate, all we had to do was hold the workings for a minute. A single nightmare-inducing… minute.

Stay calm. Collect the air and breathe in.

Calm, just be patient. Breathe out and collect the air.

It will be over soon. One breath after another. I continued to process the air.

Lay here, paiten— shit! "Haa!"

Trying to keep my body still, I coughed, hacking out the small thing I had breathed in. I hardly even made it ten seconds.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I only coughed a couple times and moved a slight bit, but it completely destroyed the balance I was trying to keep. My heart started pounding out of my chest and pumping in my ears as I struggled to fight against the all-consuming need to suck in all the air I could get.

Once my coughing died down, I cracked open my shell for my nose and ears and sucked in a breath of air as slowly as I could. It wasn't that slow. Or quiet. But it apparently went unnoticed.

“—here, Fox." Said a guttural male voice that had the same drawn-out accent as Kanieta, "This is our operation and the Crescent Moon faction's territory. You belong on the other side of the river, and your very presence can be taken as a challenge…" his voice dropped into a snarl at the end, and two more snarls joined him.

"Get off your high perch, Helgu," Sighed Kanieta, "We both know that we have found plenty of… 'lost' members of your faction wandering around our territory. I was tracking the trail of the most recent to see where they came from. You know, just to ensure they weren't from the Olimpians or Deep Dwellers. When I came across this camp, I just had to—

"Lies! We didn't send any—" the guttural speaker cut off his words, and there was an awkward silence hanging in the air.

"So~," Kanieta said, in a satisfied tone, "You admit that you sent the others?"

“…I admit nothing, Fox! And for all anyone kn—" This time, he cut off his words, and loud sniffing noise could be heard. “What… Is… That… It almost smells… li—

I was staring up at the star-speckled night sky, and the voices were to my right, on the other side of the bush I was lying next to. Kanieta was nowhere in sight, not that it would have mattered at this point.

Once the beastkin started sniffing, I knew that he had smelled me.

Lifting my legs to my chest and rolling towards my head, I threw my body the other way and kicked out with my feet. My body was thrown off the ground with the force of my kick, and I started to rotate.

I landed on the balls of my feet in a crouch, hand on my sword's hilt. I twisted my body as I drew my sword, then extended my right arm in a thrust, lunging toward the sniffing as I plunged through the bush between us.

With my speed and the obstacles in my way, I only had a fraction of a second to correct my aim when I saw my mistake. My blade was far too low. I tried to angle my blade higher when I saw the hulking figure I was moving towards, but it only changed by a few inches.

At the end of my sudden attack, my blade was pushing into the sternum of a massive wolven beastkin, my body was half supported by the bush, and I was looking up at him in his enraged glowing eyes.

My eyes flicked down to my blade, which had been stopped cold a hand's span from his robes before going back to his face. “Well… shit." I said, then flashed the beastkin a smile, "How would yo— Ahh~!"

I closed my eyes as I let out a scream and flinched back.

After a moment, I opened my eyes when I didn't feel a spear of ice through my chest.

The spear was hanging in the air a foot from my eye. Tied around the middle of the shaft was… darkness.

It was an impassable shadow in the moonlight. Its edges were blurry with many twisting peaks, bleeding away to nothing as if it was all smoke. Following the rope of shadow, I saw it tied to one of Kanieta's tails.

Her other three tails each had another strand of shadow stabbing out from the tips. While the shadow strand holding onto the shard of ice looked vague and soft, the others were… condensed.

I wanted to avoid going right ahead and classifying what I could only describe as shadow tendrils in one category or another. After all, who am I to judge such things?

My whole experience with physical shadows was seeing one gaseous stream of shadow and three shimmering bars. Not much to draw on.

That would be in typical situations — like friends showing off something new in front of each other. With the three hard rods sticking through the chests of the other beastkin, I was confident in judging that it was hard as steel. My blade didn't do shit, so it has to be stronger than that, right? I thought to myself.

On the other hand, I was pretty sure darkness was, you know, where light isn't. Not a scholar or anything, but I'm sure there was no substance there. I was sure, at least.

"That's interesting," I said with wide eyes looking at the bodies surrounding Kanieta held up with her power. Her raw power.

"For you, maybe," She replied in a superior tone, turning her head to look at me, something dancing in her eyes. "Let's go."

Her tails flicked to the sides, and the bodies flew through the air thumping into the ground with loud thumps. The shard of ice went in another direction, vanishing into the dark forest.

Without another word, she took off at a run.

I looked at the bodies and the casual display of power she just showed in killing them. My attack wasn't that great, okay, it was pretty shit, but I couldn't even touch his armor… Don't make her mad. Yep. Got it. I thought to myself before turning to race after her.

Within a minute of moving at a run, we arrived a the fuzzy 'illusion' wall. Kaneita was already crouched down next to it, twitching her fingers and shifting her hands around.

Instead of the dozens of minutes it took to get in here, she was barely crouched down for thirty seconds before reaching forward with one hand and dropping a rock onto the plate.

The next moment she was through the opening, her tails trailing straight out behind her as she ran. Not waiting for an invitation, I jumped through the whole after her.

It was a good thing that I did because the sides were closing even as I was passing through the passageway.

From the falls of our feet, I could tell her silence spell was already up, so I retracted my shield as I followed in her footsteps. Pumping my arms and legs, I sped forward, trying to catch up to the beastkin.

My efforts could not have done less, as I never closed those last two steps. Though, any time I sped up, she would keep that running pace, forcing me to keep it up if I wanted to be covered by her power. That was what I assumed as I continued to run, at least, not that she so much as looked over her shoulders to check on me.

Settling into the pace, I used my harness to lighten my weight as I focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

I was mildly annoyed at the situation. I got that we had to get away and all that, but her fluffy tails were blocking the view of her backside, so I didn't even get a good view as we ran through the forest.

We ran like that for what must have been more than an hour before she veered off to the side, entering a clump of trees.

Following her, I stumbled to a stop and slumped against a tree as I breathed heavily, whipping off some sweat on my forehead.

Kanieta was sitting on the ground, drinking from a waterskin she got from somewhere, her tails splayed out to her sides, curling towards her back. I would have guessed that she had been doing anything other than running for the last hour based on her appearance.

“So…" I gasped, elegantly starting the conversation, “…politics?"

Sighing, she said, "It's simple, really, the Crescent Moon faction is in power… for reasons. They want to kill all Olimpians. If they succeed here, they will have the credibility to pursue their goals with the clans and factions. My Red Tail faction wishes to prevent that.”

"Why? Our people have been enemies for over a thousand years. Killing each other is… expected. Normal even. By the Ancestor! Why are you even telling me this?"

"Does it matter if I tell you these small… morsels of information? It will change nothing. And they might begin to let your people understand what you're dealing with… Besides, you're not our only enemy… or even our worst." The last bit was added in a whisper, and I wasn't sure I was supposed to hear it.

"You mean the Imperium? I know they enslave beastkin… shit, they enslave elves and humans. But unless you wanna form an alliance, we're not getting rid of them any time soon." I threw it out there as an offhanded comment, but I watched to see her reaction.

All she did was shake her head and look away like it was too much of a bother as her ears started twitching.

Her demeanor changed suddenly as she turned and pointed, "Edge of the forest is that way, report to your people."

“…Okay," I said with a nod of the head. "How am I—

Before my eyes, the shadows around her reached out for her, enveloping her in a sphere. The shadows then dropped to the ground rolling out along it like a wave.

“…Huh. Guess we won't be in touch then."