"Focus!" Shouted a voice within Kathren's mind, yanking her attention away from the claps of lighting and thunder miles away back to the battle occurring right before her. Shifting her shield to the left, she deflected a one-handed axe aimed at her side, throwing the woman off balance.

Before the beastkin could regain her stance, Kathren slashed out with her short sword at the woman's chest, forcing the beastkin to jerk back and block with her shield. Even while Kathren's concentration wavered and she was no longer fully absorbed in the union, the others around her had maintained their focus.

A perfect example was the spearwoman behind Kathren, who had felt Kathren's attack and predicted the beastkin's response, so she had already begun her thrust. By the time the beastwoman was moving her round shield back to properly cover her torso, the spear thrust was already scraping against its steel-reinforced edge. From the look on her face, Kathren knew the wolfkin didn't even see the tip of the spear that sank deep into the base of her throat before it pulled back, covered in her lifeblood and a chunk of flesh.

Before her body even had the time to fall to the ground, a male beastkin was shoving the corpse aside, moving through the fight while casually resting his large club on his shoulder. The fleeting moment she had to take in the beastkin caused a spike of alarm to go off in the scout trainee's head. Something was different about this one, and mysteries in a battle weren't welcome or wanted.

It wasn't the size of the male, as the beastkin wasn't the largest specimen of his species around, even while standing over seven feet tall, that set off warning bells in Kathren. It was the arrogant air around him, like the worst nobles Kathren had seen. An arrogance that had to be justified as those around him were deferring to him in the middle of the battle.

Lifting her shield, Kathren followed her instincts, flooding a quarter of her psy and all the willpower she could manage into the tendril that was reinforcing the back of her shield. As the club swung up in a seemingly lethargic overhead swing to impact her raised defense, Kathren was left to feel let down after her burst of panic. There was nothing special here; it was just another hit that consumed some psy…

The next moment, her face drained of blood as the force of the attack drastically increased in a fraction of a second. Before she or anyone else had time to react, a sound similar to the trunk of a tree giving way cracked over the bridge, and a wave of air exploded outwards from the front of her shield as Kathren was driven back. Forced to one knee from the impact, Kathren couldn't stop the scream from escaping her throat as it felt like a portion of her mind was ripped off as the bottom half of her shield casting vanished.

From instinct more than conscious choice, Kathren created another tendril and hooked it through her harness, pulling herself back to a standing position. Feet planted, the young woman glanced down at the club partially buried in the stone a foot before her. Taking in what should have been impossible, she couldn't help but notice that the bottom half of her shield was missing. But more terrifying than everything else, Kathren found herself… alone.

It wasn't so much physical loneliness, as while the torrent of wind and force the beastkin had created struck Kathren and those around her, it had only made them take a step or two back. No, what assaulted Kathren was mental isolation.

In close-quarters combat, a step could be the difference between life and death, but that was the last thing on her mind at the moment. Her connection to the union was… muffled. It was like placing two pieces of rough cloth next to her ear and vigorously rubbing them together while expecting her to follow a conversation. Whatever the cause was, the instinctual knowledge of where enemies and allies were in relation to each other and their actions was gone.

As for her attacker, the beastkin was looking at the club, now resting on the ground, its handle in his limp hand. Turning to look at her, he raised a single eyebrow in a surprised, silent question. Watching the bloodthirsty smile spread across his face, which also lit up the beastkin's dead eyes, Kathren felt a shiver run down her spine. She knew that smile.

It was the smile she watched appear on the face of a street thug or noble when they discovered someone actually putting up a fight to their kawrashit. A fight they were absolutely sure they would win, but the brutes would enjoy watching the other party struggle before slowly crushing them to death. The sadistic prick is gonna toy with me… Kathren thought, her mind only half focused after the backlash of blocking the attack and losing a psy strand.

"Haha!" The beastkin laughed, the first sound either of them had made other than screams, snarls, and whimpers of pain. "This should be fun!" Said the beastkin before his chest expanded as if he was inhaling a large breath of air. It was like dust or streams of water vapor were sucked into the beastkin through his nose and mouth. At the end of the long, exaggerated breath, Kathren felt the mental network snap back into focus, helping her mind clear.

The beastkin lifted his club, thunking it into his shoulder. As the wood settled onto his light skin, a pale blue glow started seeping from his body, encasing him before spreading up his club. From the moment the beastkin struck her shield to now, the fight on the upper portion of the Western Bridge of the Triad came to a screeching halt.

Astonishment and shock suffused the mental network of the Olimpians. Some were stuck on the fact a beastkin spoke a coherent sentence, and others were stuck on the fact that he was glowing with unmistakable signs of some form of power. As for the beastkins, they were looking at the warrior, their eyes literally shining with pride and expectation.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

With every pattering beat of Kathren's heart, the shimmering around the beastkin only grew darker in color. Then, two spears flashed from the back ranks of the Olimpians, nothing more than a blur to the eyes of those watching.

Flinching and turning to the side, Kathren felt stinging lines covering her face and neck, then several hot streaks running down her face. Turning back to the beastkin, she saw splinters of wood scattered over the ground at his feet. What made it all the more terrifying was his raised free hand.

He was holding onto the wooden shaft of a spear a few inches back from the steel tip. With a look of amusement, he casually clenched his hand, smashing the wood into dust and dropping the spear's two parts onto the ground.

"Shall we finally get started with the battle?" Asked the beastkin in a low voice, his words grinding through his fangs as he shook the splinters off his hand. Kathren saw the muscles of the beastkin bulge, and she knew he was going to attack.

Even with Kathren's legion shield nearly useless as half of it was gone, she instinctually reformed her shield tendril. The bottom half might have been nothing more than a pure psy shield between her and the beastkin, but it was better than nothing when an attack was coming.

Kathren tried to pump all of her psy into the shield; however, her will-infused psy was too slow. The young woman hardly got a fifth of her psy out of her body before the beastkin was moving, landing an attack she couldn't see the start of. Kathren felt her psy shield resist for a moment, then it shattered, and her mind was struck by the backlash as the front of her body felt like it was battered by the full might of a hurricane.

The next thing Kathren knew, her vision was blurry and spinning, requiring her to blink a few times to snap it into focus. When it finally cleared, Kathren found herself looking at the beastkin from inside the walls of the middle fort, the beastkin more than a couple dozen yards away.

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

"Fucking again?!" Shouted a female from within the pile. "Look, I like being wet and in a pile of men as much as the next girl, but I need some warning!" Amusement ran through the group at her words, but it was the amusement of the damned.

Kathren and most of the front line in the shield wall were already clambering to their feet and gathering together. It was easy for them as they landed on top of the rest. Not that any of them were happy to be the first ones getting to their feet.

The beastkin had already rushed through the fort's gate, some even going so far as to leap onto the walls to attack the archers from the back. To the side was another century defending the northern gate, but they had their own problems to deal with. What was left of the third century coming off the walls and was smashed by the rubble had already joined with the other two, so no more help was coming from them.

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

Six against, well, that one beastkin was overwhelming, so the rest of the beastkin just made the charge demoralizing. Counting the total number would just make Kathren feel worse. And that bastard was leading the charge, his face twisted with malicious glee. He wanted to see their blood spilled over the fort. Have it run in a river into the water below until it was stained crimson.

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

Snorting to clear her nose, a spray of blood splattered the patterned and grooved ground. As one, she and the six others standing stepped together, forming a wall between their comrades and the on-rushing hoard. Some had portions of their shields broken off like her, others only had a spear, and one had no weapon at all.

Clutching the steel spike in her fist, she and the others made their choice. "Argh!" Kathren and the legionaries screamed as they charged with a shout of defiance. Feet pounding against the ground, the yards between them rapidly disappeared until the legionaries were only feet from the beastkin.

The beastkin leading the charge, glowing as strongly as ever, had his arm stretched out behind his back, ready to sweep them all away with a single swing of his club. Eyes facing forward, Kathren—

The ground erupted under Kathren's feet, throwing her back. She found herself hanging in the air, looking up into the cloud-covered sky. She had plenty of time to process it all, as time seemed to be slowly dragging on without moving as two-foot-long and one-foot-wide stones hovered in the air above.

"Huung!" Gasping out Kathren as her back hit something, the wind knocked out of her. They fucking tricked me! Kathren thought in outrage as she still looked at the blocks of stone hanging in the air.

"Ohh, hey." Wheezed out the same female voice as before, "Glad you could drop back in for a visit. It just wasn't the same down here without you." Kathren started choking as her amusement caused something to go down the wrong pipe. Lifting her head after she got control over herself, Kathren looked at what had knocked her onto her ass this time.

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

But Kathren would guess that the hole was most, if not all, of the way through to the bottom of the bridge making up the middle fort if the number of stone blocks hanging in the air was any way to judge. Slowly but surely, the stones in the air drifted down to land around the square. If you bothered to watch the now loose blocks long enough, you would see them sink into the ground and the hole slowly close.

That was the amazing thing about these old structures. They all seemed to be able to repair themselves to some degree. But this seemed a little extreme to Kathren. The distraction Kathren for a moment, as her eyes were locked onto the blur of motion that was the beastkin and the knight fighting.

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

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

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

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

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