Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—

I do not know how long we marched with the elves, seeing the remnants of their nation. Everything was a blur, as my mind was in a delirious fog.

After the first month, I didn't want to remember and stopped fighting off the mental manipulation. The reality of seeing a ruined city after an unending sea of graveyards was unnerving.

I only can guess how long we marched by the trip back and how long we were told we had been gone, but we had to have been marching through the Great Forest for around a year.

A year stolen from our lives.

After that time passed, we walked out from under the forest bows, and our minds immediately snapped into focus. We could not remember everything, but we knew the time we were forced to march was significant.

We were standing at the apex of a curve in the forest's border. On the left side, the forest looked to have stretched to the base of the distant mountains lining the horizon. The right stretched beyond my vision to see, but not nearly as far as the other side.

But the vastness of the forest only caught my attention for a moment. What clamped my attention into its iron grip was… even now, I struggle to describe it.

Calling it a fortress doesn't do it justice. It is to a fortress what a village is to a city. It was miles wide with layers of walls ringing it. Towers and walls stood hundreds of feet tall.

And all around it were the beastmen dead.

**********

Unending pain was washing over me. It pressed in on my mind, chipping away piece after piece before whisking them away.

The stolen portions of myself were not utterly stripped from me, as I could feel them. They were muffled but still somehow connected.

At first, I fought against the pain. I reached out through the tenuous connection with my will to pull back the stolen portions of myself. But once a strand of willpower left my core, a wave of that corrosive energy washed over the outstretched section.

It felt like my very soul was being eaten away by the energy, sending me into new peaks of writhing agony and breaking my concentration. I tried to pull back the section of my will that I had extended, but it was already so corroded by the energy that it ripped off when I pulled back on it, sending another wave of suffering over me.

It was overwhelming, too much for my mind to handle. I longed to pass out and fall into blissful darkness, but it would not come. So I started pulling my mind into my core, the center of my being.

But the pain never lessened, only increased. It infused every portion of my body but the center of my mind. As I retreated, more pieces of myself — that I didn't even know existed — were either behind or ripped off. Even my mental energy holding the enhancement in my mind was being ripped away.

I tried to harden my mental energy with my will, to let the waves of pain and foreign energy wash over me as I remained an unbroken rock. It worked for a time, but the attacking energy was periodically increasing in force and density. I could not judge how long it took, but it was an eternity of suffering for me.

Every moment, my mind was being beaten into submission by the oppressive unyielding force.

More and more of the will-infused mental energy shrouding my mind was ripped away, taunting me with how close it remained but still at an impassable distance. I gave up on ever retrieving it.

Holding onto myself — what scraps I still had — I futilely fought.

Then the energy scraped on my mind. The core of my being, and began to rip it apart.

I felt something more than the mental energy and willpower ripped from myself.

And the pain racking my body was nothing. A prick of a pin compared to jumping into a bonfire.

Except it wasn't pain. Not really. I knew now. Before, I thought my suffering was like it was soul deep.

The truth was I just didn't know what suffering really was.

It was like my bones were being broken continually, and every strand of muscle and organ was being pulled out of my body one section at a time. Now a fiery acid was eating at every portion of me, and suffering ache deeper than anything I had felt before wracked my mind as another piece was ripped away.

This was different, though.

It was something more profound, causing me to feel more fundamentally wrong than merely my flesh being harmed.

What little energy I had left pushed back against the waves of the foreign power, forcing it back from my core and giving me some space.

The pain was overwhelming. I had never felt anything like it in my entire life, and I was in no way prepared to resist it.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Left to myself, I would have retreated into myself and tried to resist the waves and pressure of the energy until it ground me into nothing.

But then the energy stole a part of me.

Sure, the energy had been steadily eating away at my mental energy and will, but that wasn't the same. It is like hair or fingernails, a part of the body that you can be really attached to at times, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that important as it will always come back.

What was just taken from me was… unequivocally sacred. It was always supposed to be a part of me, as we were one, but now I wasn't whole.

I instinctually knew that I would never fully get it back. And that I wouldn't be… me.

The pain did not matter. What I was fighting against did not matter. All that mattered was getting back what was mine and making myself whole. An all-consuming drive filled me.

My mad will flooded into the mental energy surrounding the core of my being. Though a meager about of mental energy, it threw back the waves of power pressing into me.

I could only extend the energy so far, as I still had to defend my soul from having more of it stolen.

When I could not reach my stolen fragment, I reached out with my willpower once more. It might have been muffled, like hearing the world through wool — and the invading energy ate away at its edges — but I could still feel my power. More so now than before, as a fragment of my soul had been stored within the mass.

Holding onto what ground I had taken, I pulled at what was stolen. Forcing it to come back to me.

And it worked. It was slow, but it was making steady progress as I will the energy to return.

More waves of corrosive power beat against my shell, trying to suppress me. But they were nothing against my will. Then the resisting energy attempted to impede the progress of my returning power by rapidly flowing in its path like a gale wind, but I was still advancing.

Then the swirling energy around me swelled with more power, and I couldn't pull my energy any closer. The ones controlling the energy couldn't force my power further away again, but they didn't need to. They were doing enough by putting us into a stalemate.

Because I was on the losing side of a stalemate. I threw my will against the collective I felt fighting me, but I couldn't make any progress.

As time passed, it became apparent I wouldn't win. But I didn't give up.

Gradually, my will faltered, and I couldn't keep the shell protecting my soul up any longer, not as it was.

I raged against the impending destruction. But with my will being sapped away as I fought, it was a feeble thing.

Every moment that passed, my shell of protection shrunk. I knew all hope was lost, but I could not stop fighting. Not so long as I was incomplete.

Then a portion of the collective energy I was fighting stilled. The energy was still there, but the will behind it vanished.

Without the will, the energy blocking me was no more of an impediment than a strong breeze. I could feel the others in the collective try to control the unguided section, but they failed.

Gathering my will for one last push, I was surprised to find the minds guiding the other portions of energy begin vanishing one after another. And with their minds gone, the hostile energy was quickly following suit.

I could feel it dissipating, seeping into the surroundings. As it vanished, it was releasing its grip on my mental energy and soul fragment.

Reaching out with my will, I pulled my mental energy closer while keeping the surrounding energy from quickly dissipating. I could not stop the mana from entirely dissipating, as it was not mental energy, but they were similar enough I could slow it down.

Shifting the mana around the lump of mental energy, I brought it closer.

Already long into this fight, I began to falter when the energy was nearly on top of me. It was only the tiniest bit of distance, but I couldn't close it.

But I didn't need to.

With the constant pain of the spell the beastkin were casting on me gone and having run myself ragged fighting back, I was rapidly falling into unconscious exhaustion.

I felt it, though. There was a resonance between the fragment of my soul and my body. They wanted to be together.

Were drawn together.

The attraction between the pieces of my soul handled the last bit of distance between them on their own. Pulling a portion of my mental energy along with it, the fragment drifted to the edge of my mental energy before slipping into my body.

When my soul merged with me again, a portion of the gathered mental energy flowed into me, relieving the hollow sensation I could hardly notice through the aftershocks of pain.

My soul settled into my body, and I felt nearly complete. As I passed into darkness, I knew something was missing, though. Or was something new added? I couldn't tell which, but I felt… different.

**********

Kathren's eyes felt sore. And dry. And She wanted to lie on the ground and fall asleep. Where didn't matter, so long as she was sleeping and left alone for a few hours.

There was also her body aching from being trapped in the ground, awake for half a day where she was unable to sleep — cause being trapped in the ground with an arrow for breathing takes concentration to live through — and then running to the Triad before the sun came up so the beastkin wouldn't spot them the other half of the day.

The sweat and dust had combined into a grime that she knew ran in streaks down her body and under her clothing. She could feel it every time she moved, adding to her overall level of discomfort and the pounding headache of sleep deprivation.

Out of everything that was bothering her, the eyes were the most annoying. Every time she blinked, it felt like she was collecting a ball of dirt in the corner of her eyes.

Sadly, it was too soon to lie down and fall asleep. And there was no way she would take a bath first. But she would dream of taking one. A long hot bath that she could soak in for hours. And hope that she will be allowed to rest soon. If I can stop telling my superiors, the same report would also be great… Lucky bastards already got away.

"So," said the Prefect, "Your patrol made contact with a beastkin who led your Instructor to a camp where thousands of beastkin were crossing the river on a bridge they built. But the real issue is that he also discovered they have the ability to create illusions that have nothing to do with the mind — only the eye — and have built large barges with structures able to reach the bridges of the Triad. He fears that they will use the bridges covered in illusion to approach during an assault, attacking us from the flank. And the only reason you are here is that he used the rest of the trainees as a distraction while you hid buried in the ground. Before popping up at night to run back. Am I correct?"

"Yes, Prefect," Kathren replied, arms straight at her side, eyes looking forward.

"Well, it's a damn shame he was an elf. He would have made a damn fine Centurion." The Prefect said, shaking her head in regret. "Tribune, make a note of his and the scout trainees' valor in the Legion Records. I must see the Legat. We have a battle plan to revise. Scout Kathren, go find a cot." With that, the Prefect turned and walked out of the room.

Kathren left her body slumped as she looked at the ground, wondering if she would be allowed to sleep there.