Trudging through the rows of impeccably constructed tents, the sounds and smells of an awake legion camp washed over me. Shouts of command rang out from all around, competing with the clanking of steel, rustling of canvas, marching feet, and screams of animals. The scents were a mixture of sweaty bodies, cooking food, livestock, oils, and latrines if the wind blew in the wrong direction. Walking through the Fish Camp might have been somewhat nostalgic, maybe even pleasant, but a nearly noonday sun was beating down on me.

Thanks to the rivers and foggy morning, the air was still cool, so I had that going for me, but the sun's rays were hot and getting hotter by the hour despite the clouds, making me more and more uncomfortable in my armor. Then there was my ankle, which hurt from all the walking because everything in the Triad was a mess right now. It might have just been me, but it felt like people were going out of their way to annoy me and make life a hassle.

Before coming to the new Fish Camp, I returned to my room and then the supply tribune to fill out piles of paperwork to outfit myself with a complete set of scout gear as supplies. I had to make an impression on the trainees, and arriving with a tattered and burned cloak, no gladius, bow, and arrows was not the best impression. No way they would respect and follow me otherwise, I thought sardonically.

Then I returned to the fish camp outside the Northern Fort, only to find half the camp was gone. On the one hand, I was somewhat happy that the camp was being moved outside the Western Fort of the Triad. Apparently, someone was taking the beastkin threat a little seriously.

So, yay! Go, scouts! But it also made me walk for an hour as I passed through two forts and over a bridge with growing ankle pain. So, boo, fuck you scouts.

Shoving my irritation away, I basked in the walk. Occasionally, I could hear individual shouts and groans breaking through the camp's din, but they were the exceptions. Underlying every sound was the gentle roar of countless conversations and the subtle rustle of clothes. This was punctuated by the constant clinks of pots and roasting spikes over the cooking fires that the camp workers were preparing along with their other tasks.

It wasn't like the legionaries intentionally made noise, but once you get this many people together, the sounds of daily life became nearly deafening. Everywhere I looked, I could see the fish sharpening their blades and oiling and cleaning them before checking their armor and harnesses. Tents were being set up or remade repeatedly as drill instructors shouted at the fish for not correctly doing one of the former, even when they had.

Walking across the increasingly trampled grassy field in front of the fort's walls, I made it to a section of the tents in the camp that was unique. Not because of its differences, as there weren't any variations in the tents, but due to the lack of scrambling ordered disorder.

"Thank the Guardians…" I sighed in relief as my walk slowed. From one step to the next, the ambiance of borderline panic and frantic energy radiating from the fish was replaced by a calm surety. For the men and women gathered here, it was just another day on the job.

Which was the way that this part of the camp should have felt. Because this was where the instructors slept. It was also where the specialists gathered as they awaited the start of their training.

For all the grandeur that the Triad once held, it was now little more than a training center. The southern spike of the Triad was hardly even a fort and was more of a location for the academy students to have their social gatherings on breaks, as it became useless with the city that had popped up outside its walls beside a fallback position. The western spur was little more of a play fort for the fish to practice manning the walls. And the northern spur — where I was stationed — remained the only fully manned fort of the Triad, as we still saw the occasional Beastkin Hoard popping out of the Northern Forest.

While we did serve a legitimate purpose, we were usually just an extra pair of hands the fish instructors could call upon. The forts legion hadn't seen a real battle since my father was in the legions. So, the Triad's position as the official training ground for the northeastern half of The Republic was all that it had to remain relevant, which was turning out to be a blessing rather than the hassle it usually was.

As a matter of standard practice, the 15th Legion and the Triad were mainly ignored by the Senate and City Lords. Any calls for reinforcements and extra funding — or even personnel replacements — took weeks, if not months, to process. And that wasn't counting the travel time for the messengers, meaning the Triad was effectively alone.

The nearest cities with guaranteed legion presence were over four hundred miles away by air to the east and west, and they had the issue of also being critical positions on the Northern Line, meaning their legions would also be occupied by any Beast Tide. South of us were hundreds of small towns and villages containing citizens and legionaries, but none held more than a cohort, and most could only brag of a century or individual squads.

Sure, they could be gathered, but then that would mean those villages and towns were undefended by everything but their militia. A militia was not to be scoffed at, but they were hardly ever in optimal physical condition or well-equipped for battle.

So, relying solely on their strength for defense would be a tragedy waiting to happen. When the senators realized this, they miraculously came together to pass a law stating village guards couldn't be stripped from their station by other legions unless a province-wide emergency was called and mass evacuations were started. With no one willing to commit political suicide, the result was that the only real support we could call on was the Senatorial Guard, which would need to be ordered by the Senate, which wouldn't happen in a timely manner.

While the fish weren't trained, they were well-equipped, and that counted for something. A lot more than racks of empty armor in some warehouse, and if the beastkin hoard was as bad as I feared, at least the 15th wouldn't be fighting entirely alone.

All of our options might be boiling down to waiting, but we could still send messengers to Basetown and Cross. We had a duty to inform them we might have a major incursion of beastkins on our hands. After all, they'll be at the forefront of the defense right along with us. And if The Triad did need help, Basetown and Cross were honor-bound by long tradition to come to our aid if possible.

Those messages, however, would be barebones. As far as I had heard, I was still the only scout to encounter the beastkin hoard and return. Others had reported more beastkins in the area, but that meant little by itself. And… well, it didn't really matter to me anymore.

Regardless of what happened, the legion needed information, and to get that information, the legion required more scouts. My task should accomplish both, though I might have to shorten the curriculum to get them out in the field sooner than was optimal. Not that I wanted to send them out before they were ready, but if I had to… I would. It was better the trainees died than the legion was destroyed, as tens of thousands more would soon follow.

With those dark thoughts flowing through my mind, I walked through the small, mostly calm section of the camp, looking for a group of board legionaries. They would all be veterans with years of experience, but that meant little now that they were becoming scouts.

While they were in scout training, they would technically be trainees, but there was no reason to treat them like fish. They were here to expand their skill sets, not learn the basics as they were broken down and remolded. Though there would still be some braking, it would not be in the same way as the fish.

Seeing A few heads that didn't look like they were doing anything and weren't trying to pretend to do something as they poked up over the tents, I headed for them. Turning the corner, I saw what must be my trainees. There was no other reason for them to be lounging around outside their tents in the middle of the fish camp.

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There had to be twenty legionaries sitting around a couple of cooking fires or sprawled partially inside tents. From what I could see, they were gambling, taking care of equipment, or any of the other daily necessities legion life demanded.

Stopping next to the first lounging legionary I encountered, I kicked her in the leg. She started to stir and grumble, waving her hand in a shooing motion, so I kicked the leg harder. One of her hands snapped up, ripping off the cloth draped over her eyes, while the other went down to a knife on her belt.

Her arm with the fabric drove into the ground, lifting her torso while her legs curled under her for a leap. Knife half unsheathed in a crouch, she stopped, her face going pale as she looked up at me. Her eyes were darting around to different sections of my equipment, finally settling on the pin holding my cloak together under my neck. It was a clump of three layered ash leaves splayed out at ninety degrees, symbolizing the wearer was a legion scout.

At least she stopped before getting her knife all the way out, I thought to myself as I watched her mouth open. As she started to stutter out her frightened thoughts, I cut her off. "Are these the scout trainees?" I waited for her nod before speaking again, "Good. Get everyone into their full gear and tell them to find me out on the Grounds." I said, nodding to the section of grassland beyond the camp's edges the fish were practicing in.

Not waiting for her to answer, I continued walking, intending to stroll down and out of the tent alley. I took six steps before I heard the woman scrambling to get up and start shouting at her fellow trainees. Some looked at her in annoyance and tried to shout her down, but once they bothered to take a second to look around their surroundings, they quickly took note of me walking through their area.

The more perceptive people dropped what they were doing and rushed to prepare at the woman's first shout. Once the more easygoing legionaries saw the urgency of the others, even the densest trainees took a moment to notice me, or so I assumed since they shut up and rushed to their own tents.

Making a mental note to watch the perceptive ones, I continued walking through the increasingly chaotic section of tents. Their movements weren't like the frantic motions of the fish, as they were controlled and practiced, but urgency was in every one of their movements. Anyone without a significant amount of time in legion camps might mistake their controlled chaos for actual disorder, but they would be wrong.

Clearing the earthworks and getting an unobstructed view of the grassland stretching to the horizon, I turned and took in the training ground filled with fish and their instructors. Taking in the familiar sight for a moment, I took in a breath filled with the smell of grass, dust, and sweat, then walked forward.

I kept up a quick walk but never broke into an actual jog as I blended into the mayhem of a couple thousand fish and their taskmasters. I wanted to be in position, but it wouldn't do for the fish to see anyone but themselves rushing about. Not that I went unnoticed, because as I moved, I made sure to bump into one of those taskmasters while flashing my scout pin at him, to which I received a knowing smile.

Walking through the mass of people, I kept an eye out for my recruits as I idly inspected the Fish Camp still under construction. The last remnants of the migration from the northeastern side of the Triad were trickling out of the gates and into the camp, and already, most of the tents were surrounded by earthworks.

It wasn't a bad result for the fishs' morning work. They might not have the right skills yet, but no one could deny their effort. Picking up my pace as I noticed a mass of new arrivals, I kept a century of fish between me and the forty-eight scouts trainees I could see at the edge of the training grounds.

They were searching for me. I knew that. I could see the growing desperation on their faces as they tried and failed to. Because if they couldn't find me, well, legion logic said that was on them, and there would be consequences. Given they were trying to become scouts, I would bet a lot of them thought this would mean the end of their training as they were kicked out.

A smile twitched on my lips as they continued to fail and panic, and I enjoyed watching the scene play out from the other side. If there was one thing an army with thousands of years of history had in spades, it was traditions. What better tradition for the scout trainees than finding their instructor? …And having their instructor hunt them without their knowing.

We might soon be fighting for our lives, and there might be a hoard of tens of thousands — could be hundreds of thousands — of beastkins on the horizon, but that was no reason to deprive these recruits of this wonderful tradition.

More importantly, it was a chance for them to come to a realization that no amount of orders could force them to have. I was a scout. They were not, and they would have to listen to me to learn the skills they needed to become one.

While most of them had faint memories of their fish days, I doubted many remembered one day when full legionaries wandered and ran about the training grounds searching for something in those exhaust-filled recollections. But there were always those few scout trainees who put two and two together after hearing a few stories.

Usually, it started exactly as it was now, with the scout trainees standing around with eyes wide due to the panic setting in with their thumbs up their collective asses. As the instructor, it was my job to walk back and forth across the field without being spotted until I got close enough to act, which I did.

On my second pass, I noticed the group had begun to split up. The most perceptive trainee I saw was the young woman I kicked in the leg, who slipped away from the main group first and began looking for me in other places in the mass of humanity. The rest stayed in their group as they wandered around the training field, searching for me together.

While I applauded the initiative of the handful who followed the woman's example to act alone, as scouts often had to, they stuck out like a sore thumb and were marked as my first targets. Having wild cards wandering around was a good way for one to end up behind me unnoticed, so they had to go.

Picking up my pace, I used the different groups of marching fish to cover me as I slipped over to and plopped down on the ground next to a clump of exhausted recruits, where I waited, trying not to let their sweat drip on me. I did stand out compared to the steel-clad and some leather-clad fish with my cloak, but that didn't matter much.

No one expected me to be here, so they wouldn't notice me hiding among the three-hundred-odd people. It might have been an issue if the fish to my sides glanced at me and made an issue of my presence, but their dull eyes couldn't muster up more than a glance before they moved on with indifference. If their optio didn't care about my presence, then they didn't care.

Popping up my head to look around occasionally, I waited for the scout trainees to move past me, and then I realized I had to linger in place for another ten or so seconds as I had to wait for those trailing behind. Unable to let the opportunity pass, I rose and quickly fell into step behind the group.

Forming four mental strands from my waist, I slipped them into pouches on my hips, pulled out four stones, and then flung them at my targets before turning and cutting through two groups of fish marching along the lane. A second later, I heard, "What the hell!" and "Oww!" At the screams of pain, a smile twisted my lips, but I didn't linger on it much as I started down a line of recruits who were practicing the basic legion slashes and stabs against practice dummies.

At this point, they must be looking at their hands, wondering why they were covered in red chalk and who hit them. Coming around the end of the row of practicing fish, I could see an instructor approaching and gathering the four marked individuals, ushering them to the side of the training grounds.

Refocusing, I saw the other perceptive trainees clumping together as they pointed out their downed compatriots, and they had to be suspecting something was up by this point. A few steps to the side and a habitual flick of my wrist marked the five other trainees — which included the young female — and whatever plan they were hatching about their situation ended as they were struck with stones.

Creating five strands to accurately throw rocks was a bit of a strain, but hitting them as they stood in place was far from the hardest thing I have ever done. With the perceptive trainees out of the way, I slowly began sneaking up on the backs of the other thirty-nine candidates.

As one or two of the group became distracted and stepped away momentarily, I struck with my rocks, picking them off. Even though it looked like the drill instructors weren't paying attention to the scout trainees, hardly three seconds would pass after I marked a trainee before an instructor would grab the marked individual and pull them away.

In that way, it wasn't long until only eight scout trainees left. They were far past suspicious at this point as people around them shouted or grunted in pain before being pulled away by an instructor. But who really questions a superior pulling someone away? Pretty much everyone when no one came back, and their numbers just kept decreasing. Not that it mattered what they noticed at this point.

Getting within ten feet of the last eight, I sent out two quick volleys of rocks, hitting each in the neck or head. The chorus of screams was music to my ears as they all turned around, eyes widening as I held two chalk-covered red stones spinning above my hand with tendrils.

Nodding to the side for them to join me, I turned and walked away, moving the stones back to my pouch. With the trainee scouts following, we walked through the field, ending a few feet from where they started.

The rest of the trainees were waiting, standing or squatting on the ground with sullen expressions. I gave a nod to the instructor watching over them, receiving a smile in return as he saw the rest of the trainees with red splotches on them. "Got five silver because of you," he said with a smile and nod as he passed. "Thanks a lot."

Waving to those following me to join their comrades, I waited a few seconds for them to stand at attention, which all of them did. Even if some did it begrudgingly. Giving them a shit-eating grin, I declared, "Welcome to the scouts."

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