Lifting my left foot to take my next measured step, I faintly heard something moving, and I froze in place, tilting my head to the side to listen. Straining my ears for long seconds, I ignored my heartbeat with practiced ease, turning my attention to the familiar sounds of the forest.

Within the blink of an eye, every chirp and rustle of trees echoed in my ears like someone shouting in a library. A smile touched my lips a moment later as I was rewarded for my diligence.

Faintly — so faintly that I questioned my years of experience for an instant, but then it happened again — I heard dried leaves crackling as they were smashed under someone's foot and twigs breaking against the ground. I didn't move my head, but my eyes snapped to the right, trying to look past a clump of bushes to see the figure I knew should be on the other side.

Given the freshness of the tracks I was following, I was unsurprised that we were so close to our prey. Close enough for them to become sloppy as they realized they were being hunted. Desperation can do that to a person.

Well, in this case, it was a beastkin, not a human or elf. So, many didn't consider them more than intelligent animals that happened to look like us, but to me, it was all the same.

No matter what the higher-ups claimed before the populace, I knew better. All the scouts did if they lived long enough. Most of the legion grunts suspected the truth, too, which made me wonder how the nobles got away with the kawrashit they were spewing on the subject, as practically everyone served in a legion for their compulsory term.

Oh, the beastkin were bestial, both in their appearance and actions. No one on Olimpia would deny that, and few tried. My point was that they weren't purely savage beasts driven by their instincts, which everyone said they were.

Years ago, I decided to try and test myself by sneaking up close enough to a beastkin to stick my blade into his kidney, and then I attempted to probe his mind with a tendril as he died. It wasn't my brightest idea by any measure, and it isn't an experience I want to repeat anytime soon. Sharing the emotions of another creature dying was… mentally scarring.

It wasn't like I was unfeeling or anything as I watched its death, but You didn't get to be a scout without experiencing a battle or twelve, and in combat, someone always died. Eventually, you learn to accept death after enough exposure. You might be in a union with a hundred other people to share the burden, but you still feel the death to some extent, and that was the death of a shield mate, not a random enemy who would willingly rip your throat out.

In that moment of death, as the life bled from the beastkin, I was able to push past the blank shroud protecting the creature. In that instant, I felt such a depth of regret and fear that it instilled a certain level of respect for the beastkins as more than an intelligent animal.

Sure, their emotions were sharper and more straightforward than those of humans, but I know it is there. Nobody can convince me otherwise, as I felt it calling out to something far away that it longed to see and regretted that it never would. It was a theory I only became more convinced about as I studied beastkins over the years, honing my skills to stalk and kill them.

My eyes flicked to the side, catching Optio Verakol's eyes as I tilted my head toward the noise and thought to him through our union, "I heard something moving over there, Optio."

"Understood; I'm letting the others know we might have a contact. And how many times do I have to remind you to call me Markus?" Markus Veriskol responded with a sharp nod before closing his eyes for a moment in concentration. A second later, I felt the rapid pattering of mental energy impacting the mental shield around my mind.

From the impression of the power — at least that was how I thought of it — I knew it was from Markus, while the intervals and strength of the pulses relayed the simple message, "Potential enemy contact, wait for further orders." I didn't know where the other scouts in our squad were, but I knew they would be close enough to feel the message and respond, so I wasn't paying that much attention.

And I was right. The whole process of sending the message and receiving confirmation pulses from the other teams took less than a second, not even allowing me to finish a step. As I rolled my foot over the least cluttered patch of nearby ground, Optio Veriskol started moving away from me to the area the noise came from.

Like specters gliding through the darkest nights, we passed behind trees and bushes circling around our target, slipping along the shadows cast by the sun overhead. While we moved, it was like the forest was watching and knew of the violence about to occur as the wildlife began to quiet.

From the corner of my eye, I picked out flashes of the forest green cloth cloak, leather bracers, and boiled leather cuirass with vague outlines of the squares of steel sown into the armor that the other scout was wearing. It was all standard scout gear, the same as mine except for the telltale signs of combat and general wear.

Our armor didn't provide nearly as much protection as the steel armor regular legionaries had to wear, but it provided the freedom of movement a scout required while offering protection. Besides the armor, each of us held a bow with a nocked arrow in our hands, had a quiver of arrows on our backs, and our belts held short swords, knives, pouches, and any other item we could easily carry and thought might be useful.

Dropping into a crouch and freezing at a flash of movement, my eyes slowly moved over the surrounding foliage. I tensed my arms, pulling back on the string slightly, preparing to smoothly draw and release the arrow shaft at the first sign of the beastkin wanderer.

Seconds passed, only marked by the rapid beating of my heart, and I saw nothing, but that meant little. Often, it felt like a beastkin could hide behind a foot-sized tuft of grass or a thumb-thick sapling and remain hidden. The one thing they all seemed to share was being sneaky bastards.

Quickly gathering a small portion of my mental energy, I released it in a pulse into the forest, searching for the void that would signify the presence of a beastkin. A trait specific to beastkins that threw people off the first time they encountered it.

Mental energy pulses were… finicky in many ways. How they acted when released depended entirely on the intentions of the caster. Release two pulses that are the same in every way, except the first one, you want to know everything, and the second, you only want to know about the living animals it encounters, and you will get two drastically different results.

In the former, your mind will be flooded with every detail of the world the pulse passes over. While it will be devoid of color, images of every tree, leaf, rock, puddle, and creature will pop into your mind until the pulse fizzles out or you pass out from mental overload. It is a lesson all children learn after a few migraines. For the latter, you will get vague impressions of everything but animals.

However, the animals won't appear the way you see them with your eyes. Most describe something along the lines of a mass of multi-colored fire with the specific feel of the individual. The central clump of the fire was located in the head, with smaller strands radiating out into the rest of the body. There were many oddities on the topic, but the only one that matters right now is that the conscious mind of a human is like a bonfire, animals are like candles, and beastkins appear as empty voids.

That little fact was one of the leading reasons why nobody saw the beastkin as intelligent, as according to a pulse, they are completely mindless. And it also happened to be the main reason no one believed that I infused enough willpower into a tendril to push past the barrier and into the mind of a beastkin.

Most of these arguments started and ended when someone with an arrogant tone told me something along the lines of, "How is it possible that an elf could do what dozens of respected scholars with far larger psy reservoirs have tried and failed to do in the past."…But I didn't want to go down that mental rabbit hole again, so I pushed the frustration from my mind and focused on doing my job.

As my pulse focusing on animals rolled outwards, I twitched my bow to the left as it pinged off a rabbit sitting behind a tree. Forcing myself to relax, I processed the rest of the information my casting had picked up. A few lizards bathing in the sun, some birds in a tree off to my right chirping to the sky, and countless insects.

Then I felt… something. It wasn't a void in the world like I expected, but it was… a distortion? It was almost like a patch of fog blocking my sight, but less noticeable, if that made any sense. Nearly like I didn't want to pay attention to it.

It was an oddity that I had never felt anything quite like before. The only experience I had that was close was when someone was intentionally suppressing their mind, which would be like putting a blanket over a fire. But even that was a bit of a stretch as it was more akin to dimming the firelight rather than actually concealing it.

My pulse ran out of energy soon after I felt the distortion, and it was the only thing of note I detected. However, I still wasn't convinced that something hostile wasn't nearby. I felt a gaze on me, even if I couldn't find them. Remaining in my half-crouch, I stalked forward a few more steps, keeping the location where I picked up the distortion in the corner of my eye.

I gathered more mental energy, stopped again, and released another pulse, feeling the distortion at the same place again. Shifting my focus, I was about to speak into the union when I felt an expectant warning from Optio Veriskal. Mentally sighing, I telepathically sent him, "Markus, I think I feel what might be the beastkin, but I can't be certain." While I also sent him a mental picture of the location.

"Hmm, I don't feel anything, but…" Markus sent back after he released his own pulse, sounding unsure, before mentally shrugging, "Fire on the spot in three, two, one."

Spinning on the balls of my feet, I rotated, pulled the string back to my ear, and released the arrow. My shot streaked through the air and disappeared into the bush, with Markus's shot a moment behind. I felt justification an instant later as the thunk of the arrow hitting flesh was followed by a soft whimper of pain filling the air.

Drawing another arrow and placing it onto my string, I remained tense and continued to scan the area with my eyes while sending out a few pulses just to be sure. I found nothing, but that only eased a slight amount of the tension within my body. Assuming one was out of danger in the field was the quickest way to get yourself killed, and I intended to die of old age in a couple centuries.

Long seconds passed as I searched our surroundings, unmoving except for my eyes and occasionally tilting my head slowly. I could feel Markus doing the same through the union and felt some of the pulses he released. He found the same things as me, a big whopping nothing, but neither one of us rushed the other. After we were both sure nothing else was around, I crept toward our target close to a minute later as Markus circled around the position, his eyes never leaving our surroundings.

Every step weighed on my mind and body as I forced it to move in the smooth and unhurried movements it took to move silently through a forest. With most of my attention focused on searching for the beastkin wanderer that I still couldn't quite find, it was only thanks to long practice and training that I could maintain my stealth.

And I still needed to be stealthy, as this wouldn't have been the first time I walked up on a beastkin pretending to have died, only to be waiting to land a fatal blow on me and take me with them. Remaining silent while approaching the potential ambusher was an excellent way to make it harder for them. Which wasn't as easy as most would think.

Anyone who has walked through an old forest knows it can be challenging. Deciding to take the wrong turn leads to constantly fighting against brush and tree limbs while getting scratched. At best, it was an annoying hassle. At worst, you were blazing a path that anyone could follow and that everyone nearby could hear the creation of. One needed to read the forest and move with its flow to make good time.

Regardless of the type of forest — though some types make it more challenging than others — moving through woodlands without making any sound is tricky. It takes practice, carefully controlled movements of one's body, and time.

Though, to be honest, it's mostly time.

"Why does a slug not make any noise? Because it never moves fast enough to rustle something." My father's voice said inside my head. "Be. A. Slug. Rushing equals sound. Sound equals death."

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It was a simple equation by which I lived my life as a scout. I was moving through the forest at what could be considered an almost average walk down any city street while making the barest noise. A testament to my training, if there ever was one.

Though it wasn't all due to my practiced movements, as much as I would like to brag and say that it was. I was controlling three to four telepathic strands of mental energy at any given time. One was testing the ground for my next step, two more gently moved anything that might brush against my body to the side, and another formed a dome around my foot as it touched the ground to muffle sound to a nearly non-existent level. I didn't have the raw power to do anything serious for long, but no one I knew could match my control, and only a few could match my willpower.

Stopping at a bush, I brushed the branches to the side, revealing what could be mistaken as an overly hairy man at a quick glance. The person was lying on the ground with two arrows sticking out of it, one in its back and one in its throat. My eyes locked onto the wolf ears on the top of his head, and then the clawed hand clutching the throat arrow flopped to the side of the body.

Definitely a beastkin, I thought, quieting the small concern I had killed an Olimpian in the back of my mind. Pausing momentarily, I glanced around the forest once more before throwing a curious look at Markus.

A second later, his voice entered my mind, "I got you covered, Green. Retrieve the arrows, search the body, then we're moving."

"Understood," I responded before reaching down and grabbing the shaft of my arrow. It only took me a moment to extend a tendril from my hand and reshape it to wrap around and down the shaft to the arrowhead, fully encasing the tip. Enlarging the tendril, I pushed back the flesh and cartilage before pulling the arrow out of the body without resistance. If the tips can't catch on anything, how is retrieving an arrow hard?

I retrieved the other arrow from the beastkin's back a second later, tossing it over my shoulder to Markus. I might not be able to see him, but I knew from the union that Markus had moved close enough to catch the arrow with a tendril of his own and pull it toward him.

Grabbing the creature's fur, I pulled on it to roll him over, only to almost fall when the skin lifted and slipped to the side. What the fuck? Did I ju— Wait… This is… a fur vest?

Blinking in surprise, I looked at the corpse. I didn't even need to continue to pat down the body to know something was different about this beastkin. Now that I was looking, I could see he was wearing gear I would expect on a legion scout. Well, not the items themselves, but the categories the gear fell into, as nothing looked like something scavenged from a dead legionary or some random hunter.

Pushing the oddities to the back of my mind, I began to search the body like I would an Imperium scout. A vest, pants, a knife, a few pouches on the creature's belt containing food and flint, and a couple weird trinkets.

Snapping the leather strap holding what looked like primitive art off the beastkin's belt, I hefted them in my hand. "What in the Ancestor's honored names is this?" I muttered, no longer looking at the body but the items made of leather, twine, bones, and rocks in my hand.

"You think it's an outcast?" Asked Markus, his mental voice already telling me he knew how I would answer. "Or is it a wanderer, and we have a nearby hoard? And what kind of beasts are we dealing with."

"…He doesn't look like an outcast," I responded hesitantly. "Too well fed…"

"So, what kind of beastkin is it?"

"A canine, but that isn't what concerns me." I replied, "It's wearing clothes and has gear that doesn't look to be stolen from the legion. And how was it able to hide from you? Something isn't right here."

"Canines… means he definitely wasn't alone. Things are about to get interesting then." He sighed before shrugging indifferently. "And we have seen beastkins using tools before, probably some dead hunter's gear. As for the hiding… could be any number of reasons."

I nodded in agreement at the first part, "Yeah, but this feels… different," I said, my voice uncertain. "The gear doesn't have any serious damage other than where our arrows hit, and it looks fitted. And this beastkin seems different from the others I have seen. Almost like it is—

"Enough Green." My Optio sent, cutting me off with his stern thoughts. "We have to get moving, and the mysteries about this beastkin will have to remain as such." Then I felt him turn and begin moving away.

Shrugging, I turned, shoving the items I took into a pouch, and started after Markus. We needed to get away from the body, and he was right that we had better things to do than have a pointless conversation about hypotheticals. I probably shouldn't have pushed it as far as I did.

At the moment, our reality was far more pressing. And the facts were that beastkins hardly ever traveled alone, especially the canine types. You could bet your last copper that where there was one of these bastards, there would be more soon enough. And we had already spent far too much time in the area.

The spilled blood and whatever bond the beastkin seemed to have to one another would attract them to the corpse, like moths to a flame. You could never kill one and not have the rest of the hoard staying unaware for long.

I had seen the bastards separated by miles across a valley, and when one of the beastkin on the masses edge was killed, within minutes, they had all turned and headed directly toward the body. True, their howling played a role in drawing attention and alarm, but I swear they were moving before the first one even rang out.

As of right now, we needed to get away from the body but could not return to camp, let alone the Triad. We just confirmed that there were beastkins in the area. Which really meant nothing.

Given that my squad and several others were sent out here to find what was stirring up the forest, it was already assumed there were beastkin in the area. So our mission was to figure out how many of them there were and where they were headed.

Though we already had a good idea of that.

Wolves, bears, and cats have been wandering out of the southern and eastern borders of the Northern Woods, causing havoc with the livestock and farming villages that call that part of the Cradle home for the last few weeks. There were only a few reasons why there could be such a migration. And well… they all involved the beastkins in some way.

So, it was not a surprise we found a beastkin. What we needed to know was how big of a hoard we were talking about and if the beastkins were really moving southeast.

I felt Markus send out another pulse message, informing the nearby scouts of the beastkin confirmation and telling them to be on the lookout for more. After that, we slipped back into our measured advance through the forest, finding ourselves moving uphill and keeping a lookout for further threats.

Once we had traveled up most of the northern slope of the latest hill, and we could see the hilltop through the trees, Markus paused, and his eyes clouded in concentration. My skin prickled as the large pulse of mental energy he was charging up was released.

What he had just done would have nearly emptied me out, sending me to the ground with a pounding headache, but he looked none the worse for wear after releasing the pulse. I felt a faint pang of jealousy pass through me at the level of power Markus possessed.

If I really pushed myself, I could lift up a decent-sized tree with a tendril and throw it about the same distance as Markus could throw a fist-sized rock unenhanced. I would most likely pass out a moment afterward, but I could do it. I knew that for a fact.

Markus could do the same for half an hour or more and walk away like he had just completed a light warm-up.

My level of skill and finesse was unparalleled, but I haven't yet found someone who didn't surpass me in raw power, not that I had spent much time looking. It would be like midgets fighting over who was the tallest while surrounded by average-sized adults; no way not to come off looking ridiculous and petty. I had long ago accepted that my strength didn't overcome their weaknesses.

Anything that would take all of my skill and willpower to perform would take anyone with real power half a thought as they flicked their wrist, or so I would guess, never having met one. However, I knew those with Average Reservoirs could duplicate much of what I do with little more than a frown and a moment of concentration. It seemed reasonable to say that those at the highest levels could flick their wrist and snap a large tree in half.

Markus caught up with me within a few seconds as I kept moving up the hill while he cast and processed the information from his pulse. Glancing over, I saw his eyes flick to different spots, but he said nothing.

Stopping, Markus turned to look at me with sober eyes, "We need an earth pulse, Green."

Though he was my superior, I knew it wasn't a command, no matter how it was phrased. What he was asking would be the same as asking for the death of anyone else in the squad, including himself. Even for me, it was only likely that I would live.

But he was right. Many lives were on the line. We needed to know where the beastkins were, and every day we wandered out here meant another day the beastkins were getting closer, and it was another chance for us to get caught and killed by the predators we sought. We needed to find the beastkin quickly, and an earth pulse was the best way to do it…

It's the least I can do… I thought in resignation.

"Understood," I sent back, "Give me a few moments." I stifled the sigh rising in my chest and focused on my surroundings as I mentally prepared myself. Seconds passed, then, before I could think about it anymore, I quickly gathered the energy to form a small tendril.

It didn't take much mental energy to perform an earth pulse. In fact, it was better to use less than more, but the willpower and control requirements to perform the casting without your mind melting were excessively high.

Extending a single strand of mental energy from my ankle, I forced the blunt end an inch into the ground between my feet. Then, I gathered mental energy at the tip of the strand and progressively lessened the willpower surrounding the casting until I was at the threshold of losing control of the tendril and having it dissipate. Mentally reaching out to the little bulb at the end of the tendril, I began to shift the frequency of the energy to match that of the ground. The moment it felt right, I pushed the gathered energy out in a pulse.

The result was immediate and overwhelming.

I felt every bug crawling along and just below the ground like it was my own skin. I could see the roots and trunks of trees and scrubs rising up all around me like they were the hair on my body. But, instead of sight, everything was replaced by vibrations. Pictures formed in my mind as thousands of vibrations combined in overlapping and colliding waves to create images of the creatures walking along the ground.

Then, the pulse extended beyond the ten immediate yards around my body.

It was too much information, more than any mortal mind could ever hope to handle. Even with the information only staying in the forefront of my mind for the briefest instant before I forgot it, I was throwing my power across tens of square miles of forest. And the pressure only increased with the expanding area of the earth-pulse.

The information barged its way into my mind in an unrelenting torrent. Images scraped away at the edges of my psyche, each competing with the others for which one would be seen first. I was forced to confront everything, but with my mind on the unfortunate end of the bottleneck, I felt it begin to crack and expand to fulfill what was demanded of it.

I tried to be a boulder in a river, letting the waters wash over and around me… and I suppose I was. You never see it, but even the strongest rocks were worn down by the lapping water. And this water wasn't lapping. In the endless agony that was taking less than a second of real-time, I was suffering a thousand mental cuts, each one becoming exponentially worse than the last, as the injuries mounted, giving me a splitting headache.

The vice of knowledge squeezed ever tighter, crushing anything unnecessary in perceiving the world as it truly was. My body fell away, and all I knew was trees, animals, and insects endlessly being replaced by one another. Some part deep inside of me was screaming that I was pushing myself well past my limits, that this wasn't worth my death. But I had an obliga—

I felt it. I knew… something. It was too fast and too much for me to grasp it in its entirety, but I held onto the edge of understanding, the part I knew was right. Gathering together the dregs of my will, I broke the link connecting to my agony.

With my connection to the tendril severed, I snapped back into my rigid body and slumped to the side. But it wasn't a blessing, as the sudden looseness after the body-wide cramping became its own source of misery. Despite my wracking head and body, I desperately held onto one fact. The world swam, and random fuzzy memories, smells, and sounds popped into my head at random… but at least it was proof that my ravaged mind was trying to put itself back together.

After some amount of time, I opened my eyes and wiped away the blood running across my lips and into my mouth. Then I got up from where I lay on the leaf-covered ground and started shuffling forward. Markus did not say a word as he silently followed along behind me.

I was no longer using my powers to stifle the sound of my movement. I wasn't even using my standard hunting skills. Doing anything more than sliding one foot in front of the other felt like it would break my mind.

Probably literally from how I felt at the moment.

People who performed a casting too far beyond their skill had their minds turned to mush, and they died from constantly bleeding from their ears, eyes, nose, and mouth if they were lucky. The unlucky ones survived forever, trapped within their own minds. The stories of those who pushed too far did not paint a pretty picture.

Every child is told very clearly to stop any casting when they feel a spike driven behind their eyes and a throbbing at their temples. When people keep pushing too far past that point… bad things happen.

I was well beyond that. I might have had serious problems if I had held onto my casting for another moment, but now I should be fine, given some time to rest… most likely. I should still visit the healers soon, though. But I really wanted to avoid that, if possible, as the medical ward wasn't exactly a safe and restful place for me.

Even with my feet barely rising above the leaves, I moved up the hill with the grace of long repetition. As if I had traveled up the slope a thousand times before.

At the rim of the hill, I went prone and crawled under some bushes, looking down into the valley. After a feeling of rightness passed through me, I motioned to Markus to lie beside me.

I looked at Markus as he settled down, whispering to not hurt my head, "We wait here." He nodded in acknowledgment as he sent out a pulse to the rest of the squad to inform them to find cover in the area.

Hours passed as the sun traveled through the sky, and my headache gradually lessened, allowing me to perform simple tasks like opening my eyes without the pain of the sun whiting out my vision.

A few turns of an hourglass past mid-day, we saw the front edge of a beastkin hoard numbering in the hundreds entering through the valley's northwestern end. If the vanguard was already this large, and we still didn't have an accurate count as more kept appearing, we were looking at a hoard numbering in the thousands, at the very least.

My eyes widened as I felt a prickling at the back of my mind, causing a shiver to run down my spine. I didn't question my instincts as I hissed, "Shit!" Pushing off with my right leg and arm, I added to the momentum, ignoring the twinge in my head as I formed a tendril to pull on the harness of leather straps under my armor, making the movement strong enough to throw myself up and to the side.

Reaching down as I flew through the air, I grabbed Markus, hauling him after me in a tumbling roll. As we came to a stop a second later, I was looking past his confused face to where we just were. From the corner of my eye, I could see the question on his lips die as two arrows thunked into the ground at our old positions.

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