Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—
As we marched, we slept on the ground, wrapped in our cloaks like the elves. When we woke, they gave us fruit, nuts, and jerky.
Days passed, and we never once questioned why we followed or where we were going.
As the distance increased, we trekked through the Great Forest. A place humans were never able to visit before. The stories of its wonders and cities echoed across Olimpia daily based solely on speculation.
What we found was ruin. Hardly a mile would be passed without the signs of the forest being torn apart in a fierce battle. The villages whose homes were grown from the trees themselves, with stone walls and a few buildings on the ground, were all deserted.
And then we passed the remnants of a city. We could only tell it was a city by the broken walls containing a void the forest had yet to close.
Day after day, we marched, and one scene of destruction after another passed by. And we felt nothing. We never questioned nor objected. There was no horror filling our hearts.
In a forest — thousands of miles wide — destruction was all we ever found.
And then, groups of elves numbering between a dozen and a couple hundred started walking from the destruction and joining our group.
Our numbers swelled as we walked through the forest of death.
And though I did not see it then, I remember now they all had looks of despair and exhaustion. At least those who didn't have blank masks as faces and empty, dull eyes.
The Elves were a ravaged, dying people.
**********
I had a headache. And it wasn't because I was knocked out a couple times and had brain damage. It was from annoyance.
After Kanieta left, there was a brief, rushed conversation where the two who weren't already up were woken up.
Most wanted to bust out of the cage right now. It was still before dawn, and they didn't want to waste any time if we could break out and make a run for it in the dark. No one trusted the shadow, but if a fraction of what it said was true, they would have a fate worse than death if we stayed.
Our discussion was brought to a crashing halt when one of the guards we had been ignoring because they never noticed suddenly came over and disrupted our mental energy.
After that, any discussion was moot, as the guards hung around our cage until morning, and if we so much as glared at each other, the fucking guards would knock us out again, smiling and laughing the whole time.
More accurately, it knocked me out. Everyone else was made uncomfortable for a few moments.
Ten minutes after the sun rose, someone sent a mental tendril to touch my mind, and the beastkin somehow detected it and knocked me out… Again!
I was done with this whole thing and was lying on the ground, trying to ignore everyone and wait for our chance.
Not that the scouts stopped communicating. They were filling the cage with mouthed words, whispers, and hand signs. Even some of the other cages got involved, though we couldn't hear anything from their cages. Not all of which was going unnoticed.
The fucking scouts just could not accept that no matter what we would have preferred, we had to wait!
As the morning passed, we finally all settled down, and the roaring noise of thousands of people moving outside the walls was eerily quiet. Like they were no longer there… The battle will start today. I glumly thought to myself. And we are out of the fight…
The noise never came back, and the hair on the back of my neck rose in nervous energy. We were in danger.
When the noonday sun hung in the sky, I could feel the others bracing themselves. Quick hang signs flashed to those in the other cages, signaling them to ready themselves for action, causing them to tense in anticipation.
Our eyes flicked to each other, then the fortress's gates crashed open. A group was walking through the center of the gates. Their bodies were covered in necklaces, bracelets, and strips of colored cloth bands. Cloaks hugged open, exposing their chests where strips of leather crossed and were clasped around their necks with a hood that covered their faces in shadow.
As I watched them walk into the courtyard, their cloaks and long strips of cloth wrapped around and covering them were fluttering and hanging in the air far more than could be explained by their slow, measured walk. A low murmur of words hung in the air while others lashed out in a harsh striking undercurrent.
I did not understand their words, but I could make out a pattern and cadence as they took one step after another, marching forward.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Shaking my head, I struggled to pull my eyes away from the group. Even with my head turned to the side, I had to resist a constant pull to look back at the group and watch. This ain't normal. I thought for the first time since the procession first entered the walls.
Those near me were also struggling to resist the mental attraction to different degrees of success. Most of those in the cage had their eyes wholly locked on the beastkin, but some could turn their heads slightly to the side. And a few more were like me and able to look completely away. I saw Celeste and Sathera among those.
Stabilizing the ripples filling my mind due to the procession influence, I carefully turned my head back. I wanted to inspect the edges of the group to see if I could discover anything. I knew that I would not be able to fully look upon them without losing myself again, but I should be able to look around them.
The first thing I noticed was a haze hanging in the air around the group. It looked like steam radiating from the ground, and like steam, the farther I looked from the group, the less distinct the haze became.
Once I looked more than seven feet to the side of them, I could no longer see any sign of whatever it was… it has to be a spell, right? Their mana? Can't think of anything else it could be.
As I looked around the group, I tried to spot anything that could help us. Knowing they were manipulating us was all good and fine, but we can't run or even use our powers, so what good is that information?
Then my eyes locked on a group of three trailing behind the procession.
The leading figure was already watching me, and as our eyes locked, I saw Kanieta's eyes light up in amusement and mouth the word 'wait' to me before breaking off to the side.
I gave no sign of reacting to her and kept my eyes gliding around the procession as they slowly walked to the center of the square. Their slow pace gave me plenty of time to adapt to the constant pull of their spell, and I was able to inspect them closer.
It didn't accomplish anything, as there was nothing else I noticed about the group, but learning to resist the mental pull was probably good to learn.
Kanieta and her group stopped at the edge of the courtyard with their backs to the stone wall while the procession marched to the center of the stone disk with all its intricate patterned lines. When they finally reached the center, their chant reached a crescendo before cutting off all at once.
The small pulling I felt at this point vanished. The thirteen beastkin stood in place for long seconds, and the constant fluttering of the clothes finally stopped.
Then the gathered beastkin turned and started walking towards different parts of the diagram.
An old conniving voice broke the silence choking the square. "So, Chieftain Kanieta, before our army finishes their march to an easy victory, are you ready to join us in our cause. Will you make our people stronger, or only watch us suffer and die."
"What gives you the right, Jolten?" Rang out Kanieta's voice from my side of the square. I looked over in surprise to see her standing at the side of the bride's mouth thirty feet from me. She was just at the other corner, right? "There has been no Conclave. No vote has been cast, and none of the clans have agreed to this escalation with the Olimpians. You are planning to rip out their souls to enhance our power! They will never let that slide!"
At the last bit, she was shouting, and everyone in the other cages snapped their heads around to look at her, faces filled with dread. Everyone in mine already knew, but I saw their faces set in resolve and fists clenched.
"Look!" Kanieta shouted, sweeping her arm at us, "They don't even understand what is happening or if my words are true, but they already look ready to fight. What you propose goes over the line, Jolten!" When she said the old beastkin's name, it was filled with disgust and hatred.
As she spoke, the look of arrogant confidence never shifted from the old beastkin's face. Then he spoke in a condescending tone, "You are young, Kanieta. You dream of the idealistic world the foolish elders of your youth dreamt of. The Olimpians are weak and divided. We will take advantage of their weakness to strike them down as any predator should."
My back stiffened in alarm as I felt something slip up my back and wrap around my throat, squeezing. I choked, gasping for air and clawing at the spongy surface. "I ask one more time, Elder, step back from your plan. Let me kill all of these prisoners, and we can walk away like none of this has happened."
"No," was all the Elder said, a mocking smile spreading over his face. "I think we will draw out all the power we can from these weaklings and show the People the power we can have if we just acted."
At his words, a half dozen more beastkin walked into the courtyard from the gate and began walking around the diagram, eyeing those of us in the cages. Their teeth were pulled back, showing off their sharp, yellowing teeth. Their smiles were filled with malicious pleasure. With every step they took, we stepped or shuffled back, bracing ourselves as close to the far walls of the cages as possible.
Kanieta let out a sigh of resignation, then said, "So be it."
Without any warning, I was thrown off my feet and started tumbling head over feet before falling on my side and scraping over the ground. At some point during my tumbling, I heard a loud clang of metal. But with the blur of motion, I could not tell what was happening.
When I came to a stop, I was lying on my stomach, looking down at the gray stone. Over the beating of my heart, I heard a whisper, almost too faint for me to make out, "Distract them as long as you can. Fight for our peoples!"
"If you are going to go against the Conclave's will — throwing us into a genocidal war — use the elf first. The Olimpians hate their kind for their weakness. He should be easy to overcome." Said a voice. I couldn't really focus at the moment as my energy was disrupted again, breaking my enhancement.
A smug voice said, "I'm glad you have come around. You will be begging to join the formation once you see the power of a Soul Stone. Now, let’s… begin!"
With my constant usage of mental energy in my head and the practice I was getting, I had just reestablished my casting. I was getting pretty good at it, and I was almost sure my skull had healed slightly from my concussion.
As the rasping voice finished, the stone under me flashed a bright blue. The light speared into my eyes and then seeped into my body.
The farther the energy pressed into me, the more I felt the invasion. I was being defiled on a fundamental level.
I tried to fight against the invading energy, pushing my will against its progression, but as I confronted one area, another advanced. And with my energy occupied in my mind, I could not send it out to face the power. Which left me to fight the energy invading my body with pure willpower.
When it finally reached my mind, the blue energy latched onto my mental energy and started pulling it out of my grasp.
I knew I was screaming but could not hear it as my world devolved into pain so intense and profound I had never felt it's like. A pain that had nothing to do with the body, as my mind's enhancement was still in place.