Excerpt From The Legion's Scholarly Manual On Casting—

Scholars have studied the phenomenon for generations, and as best we can tell, a Knight's abilities invites a backlash.

When shifting their psy into their elemental aspect — and they can control more than one aspect — there is a brief moment where the aspected psy is within their bodies.

It is not long, and those with a lot of practice or high levels of skill can decrease the time significantly, but the transition is impossible to avoid entirely.

In the moment that aspected psy is within a body, a tiny portion of the aspected psy will rip itself from the caster's control, spreading as far as it can while ravaging the flesh. Even under the worst of situations, though, the damage never spreads that far all at once. But this is where healers are unique, as their psy will seek to heal their bodies rather than harm.

For everyone else, no one would notice the minor damage at first. Maybe there is a twinge or itch on your arm or an ache you can not explain for a little while after casting. But those discomforts are quickly forgotten under the euphoria of controlling nature.

But the aspected psy never really goes away, only building up upon itself within a body. And eventually, that ache will become a bone-deep pain.

If one chooses to keep going at that point, their psy can become corrupted as the aspect seeps into it, making a living an unending agony as every usage of psy spreads the taint along with searing pain.

Only when a Knight enhances their bodies with psy can they reflect the aspected psy backlash outside of their bodies. Or mitigate it to the point that a healer can flush the aspected psy from their bodies if a Knight is unskilled. But such a procedure can only be done on small scales and is draining for a healer.

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"Focus!" Shouted a voice within Kathren's mind, snapping her attention away from the battle miles away back to the one right in front of her.

Shifting her shield, she deflected the thrust aimed at her side from a beastkin woman before slashing out with her short sword forcing the beastkin to react.

Quickly sinking deep into the union once more after her momentary lapse, Kathren waited a moment before slashing at the woman again. The attack forced the beastkin to move her round shield away from the center of her body. It was only for a moment, but the opening was enough for the spear thrust already in motion to snake over the shield.

The beastkin didn't even see the tip of the spear that sank deep into the base of her throat. Only catching sight of it once it was ripped out of her body, covered in her lifeblood and a chunk of flesh.

Before her body even had the time to fall to the ground, another beastkin was stepping over her, swinging a club at Kathrens face.

The fleeting moment she had to take in the beastkin caused a spike of alarm to go off in Kathren's head. Something was different.

It wasn't the size, as the beastkin was the same as those who surrounded him, standing over seven and a half feet tall. But there was an arrogant air around him, like the worst of the nobles Kathren had seen.

Lifting her shield, Kathren followed her instincts, flooding a quarter of her psy and all the willpower she could manage into the tendril supporting her shield.

As the club impacted her shield, Kathren was left to feel let down after her burst of panic. There was nothing… Just another hit that slightly burned up a slight amount of psy.

But the force of the attack never stopped increasing. And then, the sound of a chest-sized rock falling twenty feet and slamming into a wooden wall sounded, and a wave of air exploded outwards from the front of her shield.

Driven to one knee from the impact, Kathren screamed as her tendril was cracked and the bottom portion ripped away.

On instinct, more than conscious choice, Kathren used a tendril hooking her through her harness, pulling her up to her feet.

"Ahh!" Kathren screamed again, but this time more from anger and effort, planting her feet and twisting her body, pushing the club still resting on her shield to the side.

A cracking sound followed the movement, and Kathren found the bottom half of her shield fell away with the club.

Feet planted, the top half of her shield that didn't disintegrate raised, and still clutching her sword, Kathren found herself… alone.

It wasn't so much physical, as while the torrent of wind and force had struck those around her, it had only made them take a step or two back, but a mental isolation.

In close-quarters combat, a step could very well be the difference between life and death, but that was the last thing on her mind.

The union was… muffled. It was like placing two pieces of rough cloth next to her ear and vigorously rubbing them together.

Whatever the cause was, the instinctual knowledge of where enemies were, if she was going to be attacked, and what she would cover with her shield was gone.

The beastkin was looking at the club, now resting on the ground, its handle in his limp hand. Turning to look at her, he raised a single eyebrow in a surprised question.

Watching the bloodthirsty smile spread across his face lighting up the beastkin's dead eyes, Kathren felt a shiver run down her spine. She knew that smile.

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It was the smile she watched appear on the face of a street thug or noble when they discovered someone actually putting up a fight to their kawrashit. A fight they were absolutely sure they would win, but the brutes would enjoy watching the other party struggle before crushing them.

The sadistic prick is gonna toy with me… Kathren thought, her mind only half focused after the backlash of blocking the attack.

"Haha!" The beastkin laughed, the first sound any of them had made other than screams, snarls, and whimpers of pain. "This should be fun!" Said the beastkin before his chest expanded as he sucked in a large breath of air.

It was like dust or streams of water vapor were sucked into the beastkin through his nose. At the end of the long, exaggerated breath, Kathren felt the mental network snap into focus, helping her mind clear.

The beastkin lifted his club onto his shoulder. As the wood settled onto his pale skin, a pale blue started seeping from his skin, encasing his body, then seeping up his club.

From the moment the beastkin struck her shield to now, the fight on the upper portion of the Western Bridge of the Triad had come to a screeching halt.

Astonishment and shock filled the mental network of the Olimpians, some at the fact a beastkin spoke a coherent sentence and others at the fact he was glowing with some kind of power.

As for the beastkin, they were looking at the warrior, their eyes literally glowing with looks of pride and expectation. With every beat of Kathren's thundering heart, the shimmering around the breastkin only grew in color.

Then two spears flashed from the back ranks of the Olimpians, nothing more than a blur to the eyes of those watching.

Flinching and turning to the side, Kathren felt stinging lines covering her face and neck, then several hot lines running down her face.

Turning back to the beastkin, she saw splinters of wood scattered over the ground at his feet. And the end of the spear shaft clutched in the beastkin's grip was slightly quivering a couple feet to the side of Kathren's face.

He was holding onto the wood a few inches back from the steel tip of the spear.

With a look of amusement, he casually clenched his hand, smashing the wood into dust and dropping the spear's two parts onto the ground.

"Shall we get started?" Asked the beastkin in a low voice, his words grinding through his fangs as he shook the dust off his hand.

Kathren saw the muscles of the beastkin bulge. She knew he was going to attack.

With her legion shield useless as half of it was gone, she instinctually put up a pure psy shield between her and him, not wanting to be hit by more splinters. With an attack coming, she tried to pump all of her psy into the shield.

Her mind was too slow, as she hardly got a drop of psy out of her body. An attack she never saw hit her shield. Kathren felt her psy shield resist for a moment, then it shattered, and her mind was struck by the backlash as the front of her body felt like it was bashed in.

The next thing Kathren knew, her vision was blurry until she blinked, then it snapped into focus. She was looking at the beastkin from inside the walls of the middle fort, the beastkin more than a dozen yards away.

She heard the groans and curses from below her, and from the corner of her eye, she saw bodies moving, trying to untangle themselves without stabbing each other with their swords and spears.

"Fucking again?!" Shouted a female from within the pile. "Look, I like being wet and in a pile of men as much as the next girl, but I need some warning!"

Amusement ran through the group at her words, but it was the amusement of the damned.

Kathren and most of the front line in the shield wall were already clambering to their feet and gathering together. It was easy for them as they landed on top of the rest. Not that any of them were happy to be getting to their feet so easily. It was their duty, and grim resignation radiated off them all.

The beastkin already charging into the center of the fort and leaping onto the walls to attack the archers. To the side was another century guarding the northern gate, but they had their own problems to deal with. What was left of the third century coming off the walls and was smashed by the rubble had already joined with the other two, so no more help was coming from them.

Stopping this charge was their job. No one else could do it.

Six against, well, that one beastkin was overwhelming, so the rest of the beastkin just made the charge demoralizing. Counting their numbers would just me her feel worst.

And that bastard was leading the charge, his face twisted with malicious glee. He wanted to see their blood spilled over the fort. Have it run in a river into the water below until it is stained red.

The front of Kathren's body was numb. Not the numbness of a limb falling asleep, but the numbness right after one is punched in the face. Or hit in the body, as there wasn't a single part of her that didn't feel like a wooden beam was taken to town on.

Snorting to clear her nose, a spray of blood splattered the ground cobbled ground.

As one, she and the six others stepped together, forming a wall between their commands and the on-rushing hoard. Some had porters of their shields broken off like her, others only had a spear, and one had no weapon at all.

Clutching the steel spike in her fist, she and the other made their choice. "Ahh!" Kathren and the legionaries screamed as they charged with a shout of defiance.

Feet pounding against the ground, the yards rapidly disappeared until the legionaries were only feet from the beastkin.

And the beastkin leading the charge, glowing at strongly as ever, had his arm stretched out behind his back, ready to sweep them all away with a single swing.

Eyes facing forw—

The ground erupted under Kathren's feet, throwing her back. She found herself hanging in the air, looking up into the cloud-covered sky.

She had plenty of time to process it all, as time seemed to be slowly dragging on without moving as two-foot-long and one-foot-wide stones hovered in the air above.

"Huung!" Gasped out Kathren as her back hit something, the wind knocked out of her.

They fucking tricked me! Kathren thought in outrage as she still looked at the blocks of stone hanging in the air.

"Ohh, hey." Wheezed out the same female voice as before, "Glad you could drop back in. It just wasn't the same down here without you."

Gasping in reply, she started choking as her amusement caused something to go down the wrong pipe.

Kathren lifted her head after she got control over herself, looking at what had knocked her back this time.

Most of the area in front of what had once been the gate was now open air. Or so Kathren assumed. She could see a massive thirty-foot-wide hole torn into the stone ground. However deep it was, she had no idea.

But Kathren would guess that the hole was most, if not all, of the way through to the bottom of the fort if the number of stones hanging in the air was any way to judge. Slowly but surely, the stones hanging in the air were drifting to the bridge's surface, already fixing the damage.

That was the amazing thing about these old structures. They all seemed to be able to repair themselves.

But that only distracted Kathren for a moment, as her eyes were locked onto the blur of motion that was the beastkin and the Knight fighting.

Fighting down the bridge on the other side of the gate as the beastkin was being pushed back.

Eyes moving to a movement off to the sides, Kathren sighed in resignation. Even with the leader being pushed back, dozens more beastkin crept along the edges, making their way into the fort.

"Get off your lazy asses, and get to work, Legionaries!" Shouted a centurion.

"I'm in the back this time…" Kathren muttered, looking at her ruined shield and groaning from bruised ribs as she got up again.