Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

As we walked out the broken outer gates of the Gauntlet, we were confronted by ash. Fields of unending ash, or so it seemed to us.

Positioned around the fort's walls at equal intervals were mounts of ash nearly as tall as the walls of the fort and hundreds of fee1t long.

We had moved a few dozen yards outside the gates, swords and shields hanging limply at our sides as we could not drop them, taking in the spectacle. There was nothing we wanted more than to move further away from the walls escaping their clawing shadows — to distance ourselves from the nightmare — but none of us could take another step.

The Gauntlet, no matter how much we hated it. How many hours and days we dreamt of escaping its chilling touch, we could not leave it. So long as we were close to its walls, we were sheltered. We could survive.

As we watched, tall figures appeared from around the piles of ash, and they sent it spreading over a portion of the ground before churning the soil to mix the ash into it.

Eventually, Areekail, High King of the Great Woods, rode up to us on her majestic white mount. His presence washed over us, filling us with awe and respect.

Then he pointed. That was all.

To the side of the gate was a stone obelisk on a small rise. Carved into the face of the pillar's surface were the words, 'Here lies of defenders of the Gauntlet. Those who held back the surge sheltered the innocent from the ones lost to instinct.'

In rings around the pillar, there was layer after layer of pearly white headstones.

Gathering around the pillar, we wept bitter tears. That we were alive.

When we were done, able to view the world in more than an indifferent haze, Areekail approached us. Asking us to follow.

Picking up our swords and shields, we marched.

**********

Eyes popping open, I reached for my sword and scrambled to get to my feet. I needed to defend myself.

"Argg!" I groaned, closing my eyes and rolling to my side.

"Instructor," whispered a soft voice, "Stay still. You have a bad head wound… And we don't want to draw attention."

I couldn't place the voice, but it sounded familiar and friendly. Using all of my will, I changed my moans of pain to whimpers.

My arms were curled over my chest to shelter and soothe the deep throbbing pain. It was doing nothing and might have actually been causing more pain as my chest stretched and constricted, but it made my mind feel better.

Besides, that pain wasn't what I was groaning at. I was long used to having a bruised and beaten body.

The whimpers solely belonged to my headache that was making the world spin. And holding back the bile bubbling at the back of my throat. Oh, and opening my eyes caused spikes of blinding, burning light to be driven through them into my skull.

I lay on the ground, and the only thing I could feel past the agony in my head was a gentle hand on my back, sending out mental waves of relaxation and comfort. For long minutes, I adjusted to the reality I awoke to, trying to accept the pain and work past it.

Eventually, I managed to push past the pain. It was still there, as strong as ever, but its sharpness had faded and wasn't as all-consuming as when I first opened my eyes.

With a breath, I fell into my mind. I sunk deeper and deeper, and ironically, the farther I went, the duller the pain became until my mental self stood before my core of mental energy.

Reaching out, I grabbed my mental energy, only for it to slip through my mental fingers as spikes of pain broke my focus and pulled me back to the forefront of my mind and all its aches.

In the next few attempts, I grabbed a strand of energy but couldn't force it to do anything. But I kept trying.

Trying, and kept being smashed in the face with the pain reborn with all its jagged edges as the momentary relief of retreating into my mind shattered over and over.

With every failed attempt, my haggard mind became duller, filled with a fog I could not push away. I was at the point where controlling my mental energy was like having one good eye that was blurry and a numb body. And then having to walk through a packed room without spilling a drop of water in the nearly filled cup with those handicaps. This isn't an empty room, either. It's a room filled with obstacles that, if you step on any of them, you die.

Or become crippled… It could happen! Pretty unlikely, though.

But most likely, you would get a mild headache added to the one you already have. Which was a big deal when you already have the agony of brain damage.

With every attempt, I fumbled with my energy a little more until I pulled the tiniest strands of mental energy out of my core and into my mind.

The mental energy washed through my mind like a cool wave flowing over a burning body.

With the newfound clarity, I pulled all of the energy from the pool in my head, draining it dry. Flexing my will, I pulsed the mental energy now seeping through my mind, pushing it to the edges as evenly as I could manage at the moment.

Mental energy suffusing my mind, I clenched it. Everyone else had other ways to describe the action, but the result was the same. Mental energy was compressed into my body.

When it involved the telekinetic school of mental disciplines, few could match me in pure force control. Not that it mattered how good I was on the first level, it was only at the second level that real power was found in the discipline.

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At the second level, you spread your mental energy through all or part of your body. It has to reach a certain level of density before anything happens, but once it does — even to the smallest degree — the results are superhuman. The only upper limit I have ever heard about is how much your willpower can hold at one time, though if one loses control, it could lead to serious injury.

I have read some studies that suggested that the better one understood the body and how it functioned, the better their efficiency and results would be. But with every aspect of mental energy, intent and raw power mattered most.

I couldn't spread enough energy threw my body to count as a full body reinforcement. Shit, I don't even have enough energy to spread it through my body and say I was continually touching every corner. I could, however — if just barely — enhance a single part of my body, which does more harm than good more often than not.

Enhance your leg and kick out? You get a super kick capable of shattering the trunk of a tree.

You would also get a ripped-off leg at the hip, a broken back, and/or internal organ damage. So, worse than useless, with one exception.

When you enhance your mind, you can think faster, react faster, and, most importantly, control your physical sensations. Aka, pain. And the head was the center of the body. If you control it, you control the body.

While enhancing my mind, I couldn't do any other castings, so it had very little usefulness up until this point. The only reason I was confident in doing it at all was that I wanted to prove to… certain people that I could, so I spent a few months practicing to show off.

With my mental energy enhancing my mind, I was not surprised to feel the damage in there. Whatever had knocked me out was not gentle, and there were the multiple severe backlashes recently. They could not have done me much of a favor.

I set about numbing the damaged portions in my mind until my sense of pain was at the point I could hardly feel a thing.

Now that I could focus better, I sent my energy to the damaged areas of my brain so my mental energy could take on the load of those sections, clearing up most of the fog, clouding my mind, and letting me function normally.

How I did it, I couldn't say. But the intent with a working was the most important thing about it. I wanted it to work, so it did.

Opening my eyes, I felt them contract and send out signals of pain, but it did not matter. The signs never reached their destinations.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light, and when they finally did, I found that I was looking at a stone floor with a leg at the edge of my vision.

Following the body part, I found that it led to… I could not remember her name. And I wasn't sure if that was because I never knew it or if my concussion was worse than I thought. I knew, however, that she was part of my trainees.

“Whe—" My throat was so dry that was all I could get out until I licked my lips and worked it getting some moisture back into my mouth.

The woman turned to glance down at me with concern when I gurgled, only for her eyes to widen and lean down when she saw my eyes were open and focused on her.

She leaned down, and I rasped out, "Where are we?" I rasped out.

I saw her eyes look over me in concern, as she didn't say a word. Grunting, I tried to roll over, but the woman's arm snapped out with surprising speed, clamping onto my shoulder and locking me in place as she furtively looked around.

"Easy, there, Instructor," She said once she was done, "I was just making sure no beastkin were watching. I believe we are in the fort you were shown. Can't think of anywhere else we are…" She finished trailing off in uncertainty.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I don't know why, but that was the last place I expected us to be.

"Why?" I asked, not really expecting an answer.

"We think it has to do with their powers." The trainee said, surprising me. "A scout in here overheard them talking about it making them stronger and by using a forbidden spell."

I let that sink in for a moment before asking, "We?"

"Oh, yeah, dozens of us here are trapped in cages. Nearly a hundred all combined. Most of us are scouts, but I think I saw some cavalry in the farther cages, though we can't ask each other because they don't let us talk. They will even stop us from using our hand signs if they see." She said.

The whole time she talked, I was moving and testing out my body in small ways. When she was done, I pushed myself up in one motion, sitting with my legs crossed.

I faced the attractive woman, who had reached out to me before stopping halfway. There was a look of shock on her face, then my eyes flicked past her. Behind the woman were steel bars, with the stone ground stretching for ten feet before I saw another cage with slumped-over figures in it. Behind that cage was a stone wall with lit braziers hanging on it. "How are you…"

"I'm enhancing my mind and suppressing the pain." I replied, “…I'm sorry, I can't remember your name."

She nodded in understanding, saying, "Ahh, I see. And don't worry, Instructor, I'm not insulted. You have quite the head wound. It's understandable. I'm Sathera. Sathera Flenk."

I was surprised that she had a last name. Ahhh, she must be a noble… guess that they all weren't killed.

Shuffling around, I moved to sit at her side while taking a good look at my surroundings.

Besides the cage I was in, I could see them extend in a line. I lost count after the third set of cages — including mine — but there weren't that many more after. Probably one, but hopefully two.

As far as I could tell, ten or more captives were in each cage. They were positioned in a rectangle two deep, so I was having trouble looking in all of them, but I was pretty sure there were eight. If there was, it was kawrashit, and they should capture some more people to justify building another two. Inconsiderate bastards.

Studying the walls more, I realized what I took for braziers on the bare walls were actually lanterns. It was a reasonable mistake, considering they glowed a steady red-orange light, a light that was still stabbing into my mind with their brightness. I didn't feel the pain, but I expected to and instinctually shied away from looking at them. They weren't that many of the things, but they gave out a surprising amount of light.

Besides that, there were only a few pairs of guards standing around the square or walking the walls. The center of the square was taken up by a massive stone plate a foot thick that looked to have intricate carvings on top. The thing had to be at least sixty feet in diameter.

For some reason, it made his hackles rise to look at it.

Moving to those in the cage with him, he looked at one familiar face after another, as they all belonged to scouts he had known for months. Most of them were sleeping, lying flat or curled into balls, but one was looking at him. As his eyes settled on her, she smiled at him.

A shiver ran up my spine as she spoke, "Well, would you look at this. Sleepy Head finally woke up. I was starting to hope that you never would. It would be one bright spot to this mess." Celeste's words were filled with a bloodthirsty disappointment.

“Fuck…" I hissed as my body went stiff, my eyes darting around the cage for anything I could use as a weapon.

Hearing my words and feeling my tension, Sathera leaned close and whispered, "Instructor? What's wrong?"

"She wants to kill me. Or at least see me in pain." I said, nodding to Celeste before shuffling back to ensure nothing could get between me and the bars. "How long have we been here? And why are we still trapped in this cage?" I asked.

"Ahh," Sathera said, understanding entering her eyes, her eyes flicking between Celeste and me before she hesitantly said, “…almost a day, I would guess. We were carried here after the fight. And wh—

"Grab the bars and pull on them, Knife-Ear-That-Resembles-A-Leaf!" Celeste shouted goading me. I squinted at her in suspicion as Sathera gasped in shock at what she called me.

Eh, might as well, I thought, reaching one hand out for the bars. What's the worst that can happen? And it will shut that bi—

"Instructor! Wai—" I heard and saw Sathera reach for me out of the corner of my eye, but it was too late.

My middle finger touched the bar, and the mental energy inside of my body exploded in movement as I passed out.