Diary Fragment in the Flenk Family’s Private Library—
—through our ancestral family library. Scouring it from top to bottom. That is not all I have done. I went a step further and have gone to other families and clans.
They might not have as long of a lineage as us, but few besides the Dozen do. It is understandable, as all the other families that existed at the Founding have overstepped the unspoken line at some point and vanished to time.
Even if the families I went to are not as old as the Flenk, they have existed for centuries, and their perspectives have significantly added to my studies. There are clues hidden in their archives they do not understand the importance of.
But how could they? They are not looking at the past for answers, as I am.
Within every family, and especially within my own, there are those who go digging into the past. They search for relics and forgotten fortresses of the elves. Or they look into the first few decades of Olimpia, and the Elven War, where our legions marched into the heart of their kingdom and destroyed them utterly after The Betrayal.
In every investigation, they discover something. It could be small and considered insignificant to many. But the largest of trees starts from a single seed.
Whatever the results of their research might have been, no one ever finds out. Because they always stop.
The investigation stops, never to start again. It is not because they are killed. There are no hints they were threatened into silence. All on their own, they just stop looking and move on to another research topic or none at all.
Something larger than I can imagine is going on, and I'm no longer sure I want to find out the answer to why that is.
But then again, maybe I already have it…
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Sathera rushed forward along with those linked to her, exiting the cage, her feet dancing between the fallen cage bars in case they still had an effect. Turning, she ran down the line of cages, using her mental strands to rip the metal bars apart of the two closest cages.
Every cage she destroyed ate away at the psy energy she had control over, but it was quickly replenished as more and more people joined the Mental Union.
Sathera felt those with more significant reserves join the network, destabilizing it as she struggled to properly guide the large amounts of psy. She had never controlled such amounts of psy before and did not have the level of control needed to adapt quickly.
The Union was going to collapse soon, that was a fact, but it did not matter. Even as Sathera lost control of the psy, others prepared to form new groups and attack the beastkin.
She knew those plans were being made, could feel them in the back of her mind, but she paid little attention. Her focus was on freeing the prisoners from the last four cages.
Feet beating against the ground, she slid to a stop in the intersection between the last four cages. Gathering her will, she reinforced the fraying edges of the two mental strands she could manage with this amount of psy.
Being as careful as she could while not taking her time, she weaved her two strands between the bars of one of the cages, then spread them in opposite directions like a pair of shears opening.
As she was weaving her strands through the bars, they grazed the energy sappers a couple of times, causing portions of the condensed psy to vanish. But that was nothing compared to when the length of the strands hit the cage walls.
It was only for a moment as the strands smashed into the cage's roof and floor forcing them apart, but the sections touching the cage had a third of the energy ripped from them. And more psy was lost as Sathera struggled to reform the leaking strands quickly.
She had plenty of psy — more than she could properly use — but with every chunk taken out of the strand, a piece of her willpower was taken along with it, which was in a far shorter supply. The effects were adding up.
Not that Sathera would resort to smashing the cages open like she did not the first four. While smashing was fast, and she lost less willpower, it took a lot more psy. Psy that would be needed soon enough to fight. So efficiency over brute force was the name of the day.
Taking a few seconds to focus, she reformed the strands before repeating the process on another cage. As the shriek of metal tour through the day once more, she knew she had pushed herself too far.
Pulling what psy was left from the twisted cage bars and curled roof, she compacted it as much as she could before throwing it at one of the last two cages.
The psy she threw at the cage was more of a loose comet than a proper force wall or spear, but it got the job done. A trench lined with stone fragments was formed in the casting's wake as it dug into the courtyard, revealing the dark soil beneath.
Like a battering ram, the psy casting struck the cage, throwing it to the side as the casting plowed through it without any sign of stopping. The cage was left at a forty-five-degree angle from the rest of the cages, and the occupants looked shaken up, but the cage was broken open, and they were relatively unharmed.
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Sathera aimed the blast to hit the last two cages in their opposing corners, but the comet broke up a few feet after hitting the first cage. The second cage did little more than shake slightly from the minor impacts that made it all the way.
Collapsing to her knees, her arms hung loosely at her sides as it took all of her focus just to stop herself from falling to the ground.
She could see those in the last cage gather up on the side closest to her. They looked at her, pleading for help with their eyes, but all she could do was give the tiniest shake of her head, she was spent, and the mental network had already collapsed. It was all she could do to stay conscious, with the added weight of the backlash from Union collapsing adding itself to her mental exhaustion.
Their shoulders slumped for a moment, then they jerked slightly and turned as a man stepped forward while the others took a step back. He waved his hand, and the cage bars exploded outward as the top curled back on itself.
His face had a large bruise on the right side of his face, and the left side of his clothes was singed like he fell into a fire and rolled around. He was in his late fifties or early sixties as he looked in the prime of his life, placing him solidly in the first third of his life for humans. His face was blocky and weathered like he had spent most of his life outdoors.
With strides filled with confidence, he walked out of the cage stopping next to Sathera, looking down at her, and giving her a nod of approval before he swept a look around the courtyard.
As he looked around, she felt a probe at her mind. She was far from recovered, but she had centered herself enough that she could join the Union.
"I'm Centurion Markus of the scouts. Who are you?" Asked the man mentally in a brusk tone.
"Scout trainee Sathera, I was captured with Instructor Green as we were scouting the western side of the Rush," Sathera replied. Mental communication was not limited by the body and could happen as fast as thought if one was willing to spend the psy. Markus apparently was since he wanted to catch up on the situation.
"Report." Was all the centurion sent to her.
Deciding to start from the beginning, she briefly covered their traveling from the Triad to search for beastkin activity. How Instructor Green found an outpost and destroyed it before coming into contact with a female beastkin, who Sathera believed was the leader of the small group on the far side of the courtyard. How she took him to infiltrate a fort covered in illusions and discovered the barges with towers. And then how he came back to them to tell them about it all before splitting up into two groups, one being the distraction before they were captured.
Markus took in the information before asking, "Can the barges be covered by the illusions as they move?"
“…We don't know. But, umm, Instructor Green feared they could."
Centurion Markus sent her a feeling of agreement, "It would be a mistake to think they can’t… But, hmm. If she helped him, why did she throw him into that… abomination…"
They all could feel it, and they knew the others could as well through the mental links. What was happening to Instructor Green was going against the laws of the world. It was fundamentally wrong.
“Umm… She sent me a message saying she thought Instructor was the only one that could pull them all into the spell — that's what they call their castings. They can't stop once they start, and if we interrupt them, he might live." Sathera wasn't wholly comfortable relaying the information, as an enemy sent it to her, but the centurion needed to know everything.
"Might?"
"She said that even if they stopped halfway though, he might never regain his mind…"
“…Understood." Sent Centurion Markus to her, a feeling of regret and grief coming through for a moment. The whole time that they talked to each other, she felt the other groups falling into place under Markus's network.
At the end of their mental conversation, brief as it was, Sathera would have sworn everyone in the cages was in the Union. "Squads two through five secure the far side of the bridge. Squads six through nine clear the square. Trainees gather at the bridge entrance. Squad one on me." Markus scent through the mental network along with pictures.
While everyone was gathering together and facing off with the guards shouting and rushing toward us, there was no organization. Each group was doing its own thing.
Markus's words caused everyone to jump into action.
Sathera took a moment after the words to gather her strength as everyone ran off. With a grunt of effort, she picked herself up and started shuffling down the line of cages.
She was halfway through the cages when Bellous — a fellow trainee — appeared beside her and slid under her arm, supporting her weight. She gave him a look of surprise, as she thought she was the only one left alive. Bellous only gave her a nod at her look before looking forward, not saying a work.
As they shuffled, Sathera saw the teams pick up or rip off the bars from the cages that no long sucked away our psy with it came into contact with it and use them as spears and clubs to kill the two dozen or so beastkin guards that came rushing at them.
The scouts rushed forward and slaughtered the beastkin. There were some casualties, but none of the fighters cared. All they wanted was to take out their fury of being captured and the visceral disgust of what was happening to Instructor Green out on the beastkin.
Sathera searched for the Beastkin woman but couldn't find her or her people in the square. It was like she was never there, to begin with. But she did see Markus and four others standing at the edge of the circle, the robed beastkin inside giving them looks of fear as their movements and murmurs became frantic.
He stood for a moment before thrusting his hand at one of the beastkin, causing a cobblestone to rip from the ground and smash the back of the beastkin's head in.
The blue glow of the formation flickered for an instant before settling at the beastkin's death. The spell was still going, but Markus wasn't discouraged and quickly set about killing the rest after the first success. None of them were able to lift a finger to stop him. Though the old arrogant beastkin's face twisted in rage and turned purple as he watched his impending death approach.
When the last beastkin fell to the ground, the blue glow at the edges of the spell was the first to fade as it slowly shrank inwards, like trickling water. Once the shrinking glow reached the inner ring, the blue ground lasted for a few seconds longer before fading to nothing.
Though the blue energy was no longer lighting the ground, there was still a blue layer of energy coating his body and the darker purple energy hanging over Instructor Green's form, bobbing like a leaf floating on a lake.
What could only be Instructor Green's psy — and might be more — jerked down before bobbing up slightly. It happened multiple times over a minute, each time inching closer to his body before a portion of it touched his head and was sucked into him.
It was not all of the purple energy, hardly even half, but when the rest of the energy was dispersed into the air, it no longer felt like a travesty.
Green's body arched upwards, balancing on his head and tips of his toes as the psy entered him before he finally stopped screaming as he collapsed to the stone.
"Remember," Hissed an ambient voice filling the square, "The Red Tail Faction had nothing to do with this."
No one said anything for a moment before Markus barked, "Grab Green and destroy the stone plate! Let's go, people!" He added when we didn't immediately react.