My eyes were locked on the saddle lying beside the fire. Someone tried saying something to me, but I wasn't paying attention as I studied the camp through my headache. It looked like one of the beastkins was using the saddle as a backrest, though they didn't bother wiping off the seat, as it still had dried blood running down the side and onto the stirrups. Whether it was an accident or not, the blood ran through the branded 'XV' below an eagle with outstretched wings representing the 15th Legion on the saddles, almost like it was crossing it out.

There were very few reasons for beastkin to be lugging a legion saddle around, and I doubted it was simply because they found it lying on the ground. A belief reinforced by the 'I' branded below the 'XV' signifying the saddle as belonging to the First Turma of the Fifteenth, a calvary detachment I remembered seeing the night before. It was taken from the dead as a prize. I hope someone escaped the ambush… Wha?

Looking to the side, I saw Kathren, her hand gently lying on my upper arm. She looked like she was ready to jump back at my slightest motion. When she saw me looking at her, her shoulders slumped in relief, and she let out a sigh.

Raising my eyebrow, I looked from her face to her hand, then back to her face. Cheeks turning slightly red, Kathren's hand snapped back to her chest like it was burned, and she looked away. "Umm, sorry, Instructor. It looked like you were spacing out again… And after what happened in the fight… we thought we should check on you."

"Ahem—you thought—ahem," Sounded a fake cough with the word 'you' obviously embedded. Eyes flicking over to the noise, I saw Lutious with his back turned to us, his head down, kicking at the ground by a tent, as if he had never done anything more than stair idly into space.

Looking back to Kathren, I saw her shooting him a cold glare before closing her eyes like she was resigning herself to her fate as she said, "Umm, yeah… I thought I should check on you to make sure everything was fine. Ya know, after you froze up with the beastkins."

"What?" I asked in puzzlement, making her face drain of blood and causing her to stutter.

"Umm, w-well. I didn't mea—"

Cutting her off with a raised hand, I said, "I'm not trying to trap you in an accusation or anything. I really just don't know what you are talking about."

Cautiously, she motioned to the side at the beastkin with the arrow she shot into his chest and said, "When you charged him, suddenly you and the beastkins stopped moving. It gave us a chance to kill them without their shields or resistance, but… what happened, Instructor? …If I can ask."

"How long was I standing still for."

"Less than a minute… more than half?"

"Really?" I said in a mixture of shock and disbelief. "…It didn't feel like more than a second to me. Maybe two."

Turning, I walked over to the warrior's body, kneeling beside him as I spoke. "I was sending out tendrils to pull his shield to the side to allow a clean hit on his body. Then I felt another energy come into contact with my tendril, and they… connected? Or intermingled before annihilating each other. It was weird. It was like when you try to interact with a person's body, but…" I trailed off as I wasn't sure what to say or how to convey my thoughts, ultimately finishing flat as I said. "Worse."

"Is that what the flash was," Jim asked, interrupting me. I threw him a questioning look, and he continued, "When you attacked the beastman, I thought I saw a flash of a misty line connecting all of them appear for a moment."

Looking to Kathren for confirmation, she said, "I didn't see it," with a shrug.

I turned to Lutious, who replied, "I might have. But I was distracted fighting him." He was gesturing to the only warrior I hadn't attacked off to the side.

Poking around on the body near my feet, I started looking for something out of place. Besides his clothing made from hides skillfully sewn together, the only other thing he was wearing was a leather thong neckless with a broken piece of interwoven wood and braided strands of fibers holding a white stone in the center of the item. It was very intricate, and it stood out… Similar, but not identical, to the other knicknack I pulled from the wanderer.

I briefly patted down the beastman, checking for anything a visual inspection might have missed. Finding nothing, I got up and headed for the other beastkins to do the same. As I checked the beastkins, I found all of the ones with the axes and shields were kitted out similar to the first, but they all wore the same exact neckless, all of which were also broken. I wasn't a professional in terms of Beastkin — or Republic, for that matter — culture and fashion, but men wearing the same item was strange.

Moving to the cloaked one, I began to inspect his body. Professional investigator and tracker that I was, the first thing I noticed about the beastkin's body was that he was, in fact, a female. I came to this conclusion as I felt small but definite soft lumps under my hand as I planted it against her chest while I leaned down to pull back her hood and clothing.

Bumping something hard under her clothes as I shifted around, I started squeezing her outer layer of clothes as I searched for an outline of the stiff object. Finally, locating its edges, I got a mental picture of its shape, determining it was significantly larger than the others, probably the size of my palm rather than a few fingers. Pulling back her collar and sticking my arm inside, I fished around inside the robes for a few seconds before I found and pulled out another necklace.

Even at a quick look, I knew I was right that this one was different and more important. The neckless was far more intricate and twice as large as the others, but it was also cracked. Though I had no idea what the design meant, it gave me a feeling similar — but not quite the same — to the other necklaces I found.

"Ahem!" A loud, incredibly fake cough interrupted my thoughts, sending a shiver of dread down my spine before a neutral voice asked. "What are you doing over there, Instructor?" I also noticed some stifled snickering off to the side. The kind of snickering a man does behind a woman's back as another man does something stupid that will get him in trouble.

A moment passed as I wondered what was going on, and then my mind flashed with what I was doing to the dead beastkin and what I must look like with my back to them. I quickly pulled back from where I was kneeling, in a hunched-over posture over the body. "Whoa!" I said, spinning on my toes and holding my hands up, "I was looking at her neckless."

"Sure… Instructor." Kathren flatly said, looking at me with disgust before she turned and started for the small camp where Jim and Lutious were huddled together, snickering like children. "Sure."

As Kathren turned to them, they quickly separated, looking like they were working as they dug through the camp, somehow managing to avoid looking at either me or her. I opened my mouth to justify myself but decided to close it and turn back to the body to get this over with. Yep, I'm not winning that argument, and fighting means losing.

There were still two death rays digging into the side of my head, so I decided to focus on a visual inspection of the body, as patting her down anymore wouldn't be necessary. I scanned the body and could tell the cause of death from the arrows sticking out of her chest. Which explained the blood on her chin and spray over her clothes. However, it did not explain why blood dripped from her eyes and wolf ears.

What was also strange were the objects hanging from her belt. They were a latticework of woven together wood branches, stones, and braided fibers, like the necklaces. Some were more complex, while others looked little more than a few twigs twisted around each other. Altogether, there were a half dozen such objects, each appearing different to me. Four of the things had multi-colored rocks in their design, and all of those stones had inconsistent shapes and sizes.

Turning my focus to the staff, I saw that the crystal on top was no longer glowing, and it looked like the staff had grown roots around the crystal to hold it in place. Intricate patterns were carved into the wood along the staff's length, and another woven object with feathers was tied onto its top quarter.

Reaching out slowly, I poked the staff with a finger… and felt nothing. Deciding it was safe, I grasped the shaft with my hand, pausing a moment to see if anything would happen now. When nothing did, I lifted it up to look closer at the patterns and then the crystal, unable to make heads or tails of what it was all supposed to mean.

None of it made sense to me. So I extended a tendril to poke the staff. "Ahh!" I Screamed in pain as I threw the staff away from me, shaking out my hand.

The tendril I had extended was sucked into the staff with such force that I couldn't resist. The stick then turned so hot that I was sure my hand was burned. Now, the item was splintering into small pieces of wood that were bursting into intense white flames as the pieces vanished into a cloud of sparks rising into the air and vanishing in moments.

"Wow." Stated Jim, "What did you just do?"

I didn't take my eyes off what was left of the staff, now a thin ash trail leading to a now-cracked crystal lying on the ground. "I extended a tendril to poke the staff."

"Hmmm," Jim grunted in approval at my investigation methods.

"What did you learn?" Asked Lutious at the same time, not questioning my response.

"Not much," I said, slowly reaching out to poke the broken crystal with my hand. I could feel the force of the gaze boring into me increase, and I had no intention of dealing with that, so focusing on my investigation seemed like a better plan. "Mayb—

"Are you guys fucking serious!" Shouted Kathren incredulously, causing me to look up and twist my head to face her in bewilderment. "After you find a beastwoman throwing around ice spears like a knight — and you apparently black out for most of a minute after your mental energy comes into contact with something and rips it away from you — you think it's a good idea to poke the staff with your finger and then mental energy? Did I get that right, Instructor?"

Her tone was heavily loaded with the insinuation that I was a dumbass, and totally gone was any respect she might have had as her Instructor. But for some reason, I could not find the indignant righteous irritation that should be inside of myself as her superior.

"Yes?" I hesitantly stated, looking at the men for support only to find them with their backs turned to me again. Fucking cowards.

"Ahh!" She shouted, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. "I'm still surrounded by fucking idiots. Wait! I mean men."

I opened my mouth to defend my completely reasonable actions.

Only to be cut off as a voice shouted, "Preach, Sister!"

Spinning to my left, my right hand snapped to and drew my sword as I rose from my crouch and looked up, seeing a woman lying on a nearby branch in a tree. One of her hands cupped her head and long red hair, fingers splayed around her pointed animal ears, while her other hand lazily spun a leather strap at her side. Behind her, in the shadows of the tree, multiple tails flicked back and forth like writhing snakes.

Without so much as twitching at the show of hostility, she looked me in the eyes, giving a smug, condescending smile as she said, "Hey, there, Pretty Boy. I didn't expect to see you up and about so soon."

Interlude 2

Excerpt from The Mad Scholar's Wall—

The first days were a scramble as we struggled to learn how to withstand the endless hoards. There were no days or nights, just a seemingly endless nightmare of smoke, screams, and blood. If you were part of The Gauntlet's founding, you would understand. If not, nothing I could say could encapsulate the events.

I was there. I watched every step of the way as that maze of death and rotting flesh was built upon bone and stone. Though my presence was hardly apparent to the average legionary, I always helped as best I could. The simple fact of the matter was that I could not fight in the line. I would only hinder the legionaries beside me as I couldn't join the unity, meaning no one could anticipate or support my actions.

Worse yet, I did not have the strength to pull back the heavy bows required to pierce the skin of the beastmen. I could not justify joining the cavalry, as I had no training, and it would all but be a waste of a horse. I had no mental powers, and there were entire streets lined with volunteers who could do everything I could and more.

That held true for everything but one category. No one could match my mind. My memory.

I ran the supply department. I kept the food coming in and the arrows, spears, swords, shields, armor, and leather straps going out to the legionaries. I ensured we had the food and sent out requests for what I anticipated we would need.

Despite my efforts, all I could do was watch as one young man after young woman died fighting as I stood behind them. And then, I buried and burned what was left of their bodies. I did what I could. We all did.

Except there were always more beastmen. We had breaks for an hour or two, but another hoard of a thousand or more was perpetually approaching and throwing themselves at the Gauntlet's walls. They never seemed to learn or adapt to our stagnant strategy.

And if you looked into their dead, murderous eyes as they charged at you and then looked back after they lay chopped in half on the ground a moment later, there would be no difference. There was nothing in those eyes, only mindless savagery. But there were differences in the beasts.

Though they all appeared to have some aspects of a human, the animal parts changed. While the sub-species varied, the different types of beasts generally stayed together. The rams stayed with the rams and the bison with the bison, except when a couple rams and bisons happened to be intermingled with a hoard of deer, but that was rare.

The same pattered held true for the carnivore beastmen like wolves, bears, cats, and wolverines. However, the bird beastmen wanted to be the exception to the rule, as every kind of bird seemed to stick together in large flocks or fly around as individuals.

The lack of mixing made it easy to know what to expect from any single battle with the beasts. Not that it was any less of a slog or made the losses any easier to bear. But we could send out scouts for the nearest hoard and devise a plan for dealing with it. It was simple. Easy.

We thought we had figured everything out and that we knew what we were doing. Which was when the universe showed us how wrong we were.

It had been proven that the 1st Legion could take onto itself a large portion of the pressure placed onto Olimpia recently, allowing the citizens to reconstruct what was lost. By any metric, our minor losses were more than worth the cost, and the experiment was a major success. So the 2nd and 3rd Legions marched out of Olimpia's gates to act as bait and further lessen the pressure on the city.

Life in Olimpia and its surroundings had gotten to the point that the waves of beastmen crashing against the walls of the Gauntlet were hardly noticed. The only problem was that there were beastmen coming from the west and north, far to the sides of where we could attract them.

The solution was easy: place two more sister forts far to the sides of the Gauntlet. They should be able to attract the beasts slipping around our edges, making a barrier to protect the city.

We thought we could shelter the city by attracting every nearby beast, so the 4th Legion would hardly need to act to hunt down the few strays that got by us. And for a whole week after the construction of the supporting forts, it worked perfectly.

Then, the hoards stopped.

From one day to the next, the nearly hourly attacks ended. At first, we were relieved about the break, and we reinforced our fort more than ever before. As days passed, we became increasingly anxious as nothing appeared. Our scouts went out farther and farther as they couldn't find any signs of our foe at all. Then, one day, they returned with a story of a beastmen hoard that stretched to the horizon and blotted out the sun.

No one believed the report. We couldn't conceive of the numbers needed to create such a hoard, and that was ignoring how it didn't starve to death. But most of all, we didn't want to face such a reality.

In desperation, the Legatus sent out more scouts, but the facts never changed. Only the estimates on the numbers we were facing, and those were only increasing. We had days until they arrived, and even if there was an air of resignation permeating the fort at the news, we would not die without a fight.

Supplies for everything were called for and received. Food, clothing, leather, steel armor, water, salt, swords, spears, arrows, shields, and lumber poured through the gates in an endless stream of wagons. And even though the Gauntlet had wall after wall of interlocking passageways designed to break up and confuse the beasts, nearly the entire legion was either making earthworks and traps outside the walls or expanding and reinforcing the walls inside.

No one thought what we had was enough. We even started excavating a network of tunnels underground, a last fallback in case we were pushed to the center of the Gauntlet. Or, more accurately, when, if the numbers of beasts that were being thrown around were the slightest bit accurate.

After days of frantic work, I remember standing on the walls and looking out onto the barren land around the fort. Churned earth filled the immediate area around the Gauntlet as the 1st Legion's cohorts stood on the newly constructed earthworks, planning to hold out for as long as possible.

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At that moment, I felt proud to be standing among such noble and resolute company. Then the emotion vanished as my stomach dropped out of my gut as the wave of beastmen continuously poured over the distant ridge in a never ending flood. It really was a hoard of beastmen numbering in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Far too soon after they were first spotted, beastmen corpses carpeted the ground around the fort, land our legionaries were forced to steadily give up. And it was a retreat. If the legionaries had not stepped back, they would have been overwhelmed and killed in short order. The weight of numbers was simply too strong, and injuries continued to mount as time passed.

The outermost ring of earthworks fell within half an hour, and the knights stepped forward in response, blasting the front ranks of the flood with their elemental powers and pushing the beasts back for the moments the cohorts needed to withdraw in good order.

Less than an hour later, the legionaries were forced off the second ring of earthworks, and the knights had to step forward again. Though the second withdrawal was not as organized as the first, the knight's efforts were enough for the legionaries to reach the third and last line. And that was the moment the birdmen descended, and it was all the knights and archers could do to keep them from tearing apart the legionaries.

It simply came down to the fact there were too few knights and too many foes. The knights' support wasn't and couldn't be a constant presence on the battlefield as they were limited by their reservoir size and regeneration speed of mental energy. Their explosive powers were most effective when used to reinforce areas where breaches occurred to give the legionaries time to reform in sudden and short onslaughts. However, at the third ring, that was impossible.

With the lackluster defenses that should have never been manned, not even the knight's intervention could stem the death toll as it began to mount. The muddy field, already soaked with the blood of the beastmen, had its first real taste of human blood as everyone scrambled to get behind the walls of the Gauntlet.

But what did the desperation of the legionaries matter to the hoard? It didn't. Like always, they simply rushed forward, clawing their way up the now undefended earthen berm and throwing themselves from its top into the legionaries' ranks below. Although disruptive, one or even ten beastmen could be handled.

They would cause a momentary break of a line; perhaps they would flail around, sending out a few slashes, but within seconds, the legionaries would bring them down. When dozens and then hundreds of beastmen fell into the ranks while thousands more pushed against the ranks, there was no chance of regaining cohesion.

The legion formations began to fracture.

Even though the legionaries remained within the unity, they could not gather enough focused strength to reform their ranks. As the lines disintegrated, a scrambling retreat started. They tried to help each other as they raced to the lift-off points at first, but with legionaries dying all around them every second, it quickly became a chaotic free-for-all.

No, there was no more fighting for the third earthen line, only surviving to fight again within the Gauntlet. The legionaries ran, and when they reached the base of the fort's outer walls, they finally collected and stood together again. Not that there was another choice but to stand and fight at that point, as there was nowhere else to go.

So, while standing upon massive granite slabs, the defenders frantically labored to hold out against the onrush of legionaries and beastkin, both attempting to pile onto the platforms. Eventually, the decision was made that it was more costly in lives for the legionaries to maintain their position than they would gain by those still retreating, so the platforms lifted into the air.

But even as the platforms moved, the fighting did not slow down for a second. An intermingled charge of legionaries and beastmen threw themselves at the platforms as they rose into the air, each desperately clawing for purchase.

Humans and beastmen alike latched onto them, nails digging at the stone to pull themselves up, but the numbers were not equal. For every human hanging off the edge, two more were beastmen, but that was not the fact that lodged itself into our minds and haunted us.

The regret of the legionaries lay solely on the fact that before they could bend over and reach down to pull up their brothers, beastmen would leap onto their backs. From pain or the weight, their hands were ripped from the stone ledges to fall back into the tangled mass below.

By the time the horrified legionaries who witnessed the events processed what occurred, another beastman would have already taken the empty spot, snarling up at the bent-over legionary with their slobbering maws. As for legionaries on the platforms, who tried to save just one more of their brethren, all they could do was take out their fury and guilt on the hanging beastmen, but it was little comfort to anyone.

When the platforms leveled off at the battlements and the legionaries filed onto the walls, tens of thousands of beasts howled, roared, or bellowed below at their escape. Crys that turned into screams of pain by the few survivors of the stone platforms falling onto their heads.

With most of the legionaries escaping, the few still fighting on the ground were quickly overwhelmed and cut down. After that, the battle entered a momentary lull as the hoard as a whole seemed to pause.

Sure, the bird beastmen in the air still threw themselves down at the battlements in waves. And those at the base of the walls clawed at the smooth stone as they futilely struggled to climb it. But the implacable motion of the hoard when they overran the earthworks was gone.

Out in the distance, the churning sea of creatures stopped as if they were hesitant to throw away their lives at the base of our walls. This was not an unfounded hope, even if it was the height of delusion, as it was possible that if we remained hidden, most of the hoard would leave. But that would never be allowed to happen, as that wasn't why we were here, so the slaughter was allowed to continue.

A lone howl ringing out was the signal that started the next phase of the battle as a beastman noticed a gate leading into our fortress. Those pitiable creatures standing before the passages as they opened didn't so much as hesitate before restarting the unrelenting surge once more.

Beastmen swarmed through the tunnels, and their bodies pressed into a fifty-foot square courtyard, packing it to bursting before explosions threw back and ripped apart those at the entrance. As the hoard was momentarily pushed back, a foot-wide patch of stone rippled out from the sides of the gates, closing off the passage for the rest of the hoard.

With the doors closing, archers appeared on the top of the courtyards' walls, releasing one flight of arrows after another into them. It was impossible to miss, and every arrow shot into the square slammed into the creatures so packed together that even in death, their bodies remained standing.

But it was nothing before the numbers of the hoard. So the knights' terra got to work, opening the many floors of the courtyards, causing the bodies to fall into the pits below. Once the corpses were gone, the knights covered the holes, and the dozen courtyards, filled with death seconds before, were ready for their next usage.

Over and over, the doors leading to the courtyards of death opened, letting hundreds and thousands die at one time. But it was only drops in a bucket for the beastmen hoard. Every time the doors rippled shut, the beasts would claw at the stone walls, chipping off small pieces. No one swipe did much, but the damage they collectively caused needed to be constantly mended by the knights' terra, sapping their strength.

Being the beasts they were, they would go berserk when the passage closed in front of their faces, blocking their access to prey. The hoard would leap onto and off of their brethren in futile attempts to reach the edge of the battlements above. At least, that was the case at first.

As they rampaged, many of their brethren were killed in their wild flailing, and more were killed as the archers released volley after volley of arrows into their ranks outside the walls and within, but it did not matter to the beasts. No, the smell of blood and death permeating the air only fueled their rage. Drove them to press harder against the walls of the Gauntlet.

Hours slipped by, and the bodies quickly mounted. More and more of the beastmen were clambering up — before adding to — one of the many ramps of the dead that were thirty feet or taller outside the walls. A height more than tall enough for the strongest beastmen to leap the last twenty feet and latch onto the battlement's edge.

Whether the tribunes wanted to admit it or not, the battle had progressed to the point where sustaining the legion's position on the outer walls was untenable, and they had to fall back. If there was one saving grace, it was that the pits beneath the first ring of courtyards were already so full of bodies that the beasts were able to clamber over their own dead to reach the next passage of the Gauntlet.

Thousands of beastmen lay dead on both sides of the walls, tens of thousands even. But everyone could tell that it would not be enough. We all came to the same conclusion. A conclusion that we had no way to correct by that point, we needed a bigger fort.

Though it was never truly tested, the Gauntlet was built with the core idea that it would have layers upon layers of defenses. When one position could no longer be held, the legionaries would fall back to the next. Or, if they were trapped as multiple spots broke simultaneously, they would fall back to keeps and towers positioned throughout the fortress while they could continue to fight until relieved.

Even though the Gauntlet had been fighting continuously for the past few months, it had yet to be pushed to its limits. Different sections were always being repaired or having the bodies filling them cleared out and burned as hoards were always present, but there was no real danger.

Other than when we first started creating the core of the fortress, we were never under threat of being overwhelmed. There just weren't enough beastmen attacking. Because we built for what the elves warned us was coming, or we thought we were. The fact was that no one ever truly believed, so we underestimated the threat.

But finally, under the pressure of the endless hoard's assault, the outer walls fell. The press of bodies were piled up so high outside and within the courtyards that it was like a road was built up to the top of the wall and down the other side.

It took more than a day of constant fighting to lead to such a situation, tens of thousands of arrows, and a continuous stream of compressed stone spikes and balls being mined as we dug deep into the ground for more ammunition and fortifications. Ultimately, their numbers were too great, and those manning the outer walls were swamped.

And still, I stood in the center of the fort, watching the fighters. Scouring the reports for the latest news. In short, I remembered everything I could as the fight ground on.

Really, nothing much changed as the outer walls fell. The hoard pressed forward in a wave and began breaking itself against our next half circle of fortifications. This layer of defense was set up so two of the outermost courtyards would feed into a single courtyard, which was about a hundred feet in length and fifty wide.

Though the gates leading to the second layer were fully opened, meaning they were peeled back from ground level to battlements, they were not the primary avenue beastmen were using to move forward, as those passages were already clogged with bodies. With such a convenient path, how could the hoard not use the bodies of their dead to run up to and over the courtyard walls, falling into the next chamber?

However, there were the odd clumps of the beastmen who could be seen attempting to smash the gates of the towers positioned at the intersections of the walls connecting the first and second rings. Towers that still had legionaries desperately fighting from within, most of which had to immediately realize they were cut off from the rest of the fortress and were destined to die alone, but still, the legionaries fought.

They fought day and night. They fought as the air swirled with the building of a storm and while the beastmen beat against our walls, their howls mingling and mixing with the whistling winds ripping over and through the fortress. They fought, as one while many, to stop this hoard here and protect Olimpia for one day, then one hour, and finally one second more. They fought in the air and ground, close and far, and I didn't.

Day after day passed, and the fortifications and walls fell one after another as their defenders died or became too injured and tired to fight. The second layer fell and fed into the third, the only difference being that it was slightly larger. Then, the third layer's gates were breached by bodies, letting the hoard assault the diamond-shaped walls of the inner passage.

Of all the walls, the inner passage was by far the tallest and strongest, as they were never meant to be held. The general consensus was that should the legion be pushed back to them, they would be out of ranged ammunition, so they would have to rely on swords and shields.

With such thoughts in mind, the inner passage was a single road that led to a large keep with its back to the Lalook River. Along the way were many walls turning back on themselves, making a traveler walk back and forth, and every gate leading onto it was the farthest point possible from the end. But the most important part was that the passage was just wide enough that a century of legionaries could stand shoulder-to-shoulder five ranks deep, blocking it as they slowly ground the momentum of the hoard against their steel edges. It still wasn't enough.

Relentlessly, the legionaries were forced back through the passages over days. The tide never stopped, and though the beasts would trample their own into a paste that smeared across the stone ground as it ran into the drainage system, not all of the gore could be washed away by the growing rain.

And then the storm our knights had been gathering fully broke. Buckets of water fell from the sky, forcing the birds to land and freeing the legionaries who were constantly fending them off a chance to change targets, but that was only a side benefit. With the rain came lightning falling from the heavens, setting the Gauntlet ablaze.

It was not a single brilliant flash of lightning. One could not even describe it as a rapid series of bolts falling to the earth. Bars of raw power fell from the storm-covered heavens, rending the ground with its fury. A fury that the knights harnessed for our defense.

The bodies and stones in the lightning's path were vaporized or melted into slag. A blessing, really, as anything not in the immediate path of the lighting burst into flames, filling the fort with screams of agony as beastkins by the hundreds burst into flames, though few heard them over the thunder. For one long second after another, the world was dominated by the popping, cracking, burning roar of lighting.

And the air. The air that was damp and cool from the rain one moment became humid the next and filled with a sharp tang you felt in your mouth. Faster than the quickest arrows, four bars of lightning raced through the passages and chambers of the Gauntlet, guided by the knights floating in the air.

Tens of thousands of beastmen were burned to ash in seconds. Thousands more were consumed by the flames lighting up the smoldering fortress in the rain-soaked night. Even as the lightning boomed in our ears, the legionaries charged through the smoldering remains of the attack's aftermath. They knew they needed the room. The room to retreat as the hoard pushed us back once more.

Because we still had not done nearly enough.

More than half of our over-strength legion — numbering 9350 before the hoard came — lay within the hundred thousand bodies of the beasts and our broken fort. 5000 brave men and women. There should be no way to view that as anything other than the greatest of victories. When else had so few butchered so many? Had held out so long?

Yet it was common to hear the whispers — among those who had the energy to talk — "Have we done anything to the hoard?" or "Can we really stop them?" I knew the answer. All those on the battlements and towers did as well. The fires burning in our fortress revealed only the nearest borders of the hoard. Seeing those shadowy figures in the night beyond and within the walls was bad enough.

When the lightning fell, lighting up the world, anyone who whispered the question would have known the answers if they were on the walls. I still could not see the hoard's edge. And yet, I was not surprised. I had yet to see the edges of the hoard once in all the days and nights we had fought.

But at that moment, we unleashed an attack that was the culmination of days of effort and weeks of planning. Time bought with our legion's blood. An attack that might have been the single most devastating attack we humans had ever unleashed, and it was utterly insignificant and worthless in the grand scheme of things. All it did was buy us time to watch our deaths approach. A slower death.

The centurions and tribunes tried to stop the spreading of the reality of our situation. They kept those manning the few walls we still held separated from those slogging through the trenches. All they did was slow down the spread of the news. Everyone needed the few supplies we still had, and those delivering them would talk as much as anyone else. Word of the still endless hoard stretching outside our feeble defenses gradually spread through that long night.

By the time morning broke, everyone already heard the news. Hearing the mutters of those nearby, numb from shock as they repeated the news, was all too common that day. But in the end, it did not matter. The news changed nothing.

In the back of our minds, from the first moment we saw what we were facing, we knew what our end would be. No one could so much as whisper the words we all were thinking, but we knew. The Gauntlet would be our graves.

The lightning bolt was simply the final nail in the coffin. So, while we no longer fought with the hope of seeing the world outside of those blood-stained walls, we still fought. Even those of us who were of the first generation picked up weapons because we would not let those beasts kill us without a hefty price.

A savage vengeance overtook our minds on the thirteenth day of the siege. Actions that no one would take for the risk of death became more and more common as we were forced out of the scorched and charred passage for the second time. All too soon, we were at the core of the Gauntlet, a final series of seven walls with gates on opposite sides leading to the final fortress. A defense we did not have the legionaries to properly defend.

What was left of the legion continued to be killed in a fight that could no longer be called a battle. However, it remained what it had always been: a slaughter slowly unfolding.

In truth, we never had the personnel to hold the fortress. Our creation was too grand for us to use properly, and the innermost walls of the Gauntlet remained undefended. With a predictable end drawing near, many legionaries threw away their lives for a single kill as others ran for the heart of the fortress.

Who was to say what the right choice was. After all they had endured, many didn't want to see the end of the legion. They didn't want to be the ones living out the last moments, knowing we failed.

Hundreds gave up in that final retreat, and if nothing else, they bought time for the thousands more who managed to persevere. I couldn't say if it was from the need to stand with their comrades till the end or stubborn unwillingness to give up, and I will never find out. The reasons for continuing to fight that night belonged to the individuals who made it.

For myself, it was because my efforts meant little to nothing. I was efficient, but anyone could do my job. If I had to be there at the bitter end for a chance to make a difference, that was what I had to do.

And yet, a glaring reality faced us as we stumbled into our final fortress, a building bloody and nearly broken from the flyers who swamped our supply boats. We could not hold all of the fortresses' floors, so we went down into the labyrinth. We went into the tunnels hollowed out to feed our insatiable need for stone projectiles. Tunnels that the few remaining knights spent the last few hours in, digging air vents up to the surface.

It was a black, lightless maze of corridors and chambers with one way in and no way out. And we, the last three nearly broken cohorts and camp followers, numbering 1,683 Olimpians, all that was left of our once grand 1st Legion, descended into them. We descended into our tomb, chased by monsters sporting the features of humans.

Even as we packed into the chambers, the hoard of beasts bayed at our heels, cramming into the tunnels and pushing us forward faster. But, within the confines of our passage, the hoard's numbers meant nothing. The rear guards stood shoulder to shoulder, their blades flashing in the single flickering flame a knight summoned to hang over our heads.

It wasn't much, as the fire cast more shadows than light, but with the mental powers of the under generations, it was enough. The legionaries filled the passage with the beastman dead. Soon enough, the dead were piled so high they were blocking the air and light along the tunnel, but the creatures still clawed their way through the corpses to throw themselves at us.

In those dark, echoing passageways, time passed. Knights pulled water from the earth for us to drink, and we waited for death, surviving off our stores of food. But the beasts never stopped coming. Hours turned to days and then weeks, and still, the beastmen boiled out of the piles of their rotting dead.

We dug deeper and deeper, using the stones we mined as projectiles while we struggled to have room to fall back from the hoard. Because even though the legionaries killed the beasts as soon as their heads popped out of the pile of rotting flesh, their bodies remained. Remained and extended the dam of bodies by another head or torso. Our retreat was beyond slow, but it was steady.

So we dug, and we fought.

As the weeks passed, our food stores ran out, and we started cooking and eating the beastmen we killed. And still, they came for us, so we fought. We beat our wills against the crushing weight of stone and the dead. And in the end, we survived.

I have no idea how long we were down in that darkness, hearing the constant echoes of a neverending battle. I have no desire to linger on the haunting memories for more than a moment longer than needed to figure it out, either. I've seen them more than enough in my sleep.

Eventually, after all our struggles — and for the second time in my life — the elves arrived to save us in our darkest moment. Saved us within an instant.

There was no fanfare for the elves' appearance. And at first, we didn't even know it was them, thinking it was all a dream. A nightmare, really, as it was only teasing us with what we could never have.

Yet, from one second to the next, there was a rush of air, and then the tunnels became quiet for the first time since we entered. It was a blissful silence. Something that hadn't occurred in so long that it took us several seconds to understand what we were hearing. Or what we weren't.

We trickled out of the alcoves we were huddling in an attempt to rest and into the main tunnel. Exiting the chambers, I saw the backs of a line of dumfounded legionaries standing shoulder to shoulder, weapons still raised mid-strike. And beyond them, nothing.

The tunnel, packed with dead bodies moments ago, was empty. There weren't even the constant streams of partially congealed blood leading to the basins we built into the walls to collect it. We asked each other what happened, but those on duty would only say they were sucked away.

Hesitantly, we walked forward. We thought we were in a dream. We feared that we would wake up the step before exiting our hell. With every stride where we found nothing and got closer to the exit, our fragile hope grew. When we were a step from moving into the light of the noonday sun and saw our crumbling fortress, that hope almost broke.

It didn't help that we still saw no bodies.

Finally, a knight mustered the courage to step out into the half-standing walls and walk over the broken spears and arrow shafts littering the ground like leaves in an autumn forest. But no matter where we went, there were no bodies, and the only blood was that which had dried itself onto the shafts of the weapons. For all intents and purposes, we were finally at peace, and yet it felt undeserved and hollow.

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