Sathera strained her body, curling in slightly as she clenched every muscle on her body. Seconds passed before she felt the burn of flexing and longer still before the twinges of cramping muscles made themselves known. Or at least, it took that long until she was confident she could feel the pain.

Holding the strain for as long as she could, Sathera relaxed and nearly instantly started shivering from the cold again. Only the constant tension of her jaw kept it clamped shut, preventing her teeth from chattering. A task she would not fail in as there was a genuine concern in the back of her mind about her focus slipping and biting down on her tongue hard enough to take off a piece. Also, and this reason was probably more important, the noise could get them killed.

Centurion Markus was right. The beastkins might have night vision as good or better than any elf, but with the thick cloud cover, their sight wasn't good enough to see across the river. But they could pick up the clacking of teeth on this eerily quiet night with their perceptive ears. A fact Sathera and the others quickly figured out on their river journey.

The river had no outcroppings of rocks to make the rushing sound of water the Rush was known for, not in this part of the river. There was a faint rasping lapping as small waves ran over the distant beaches, but it was hardly noticeable from their position.

Void, take that fish, Sathera groaned in her mind. A little way upstream, Sathera heard the unmistakable splash of a fish jumping out of the water. Or, to the beastkins' minds, one of the legionaries slapping the water…

Closing her eyes, she waited, unsurprised, when a mental message entered her mind. "Flatten out, don't make any noise," Celeste ordered. Tired acknowledgments filled the mental network, and the slight noise of bodies slipping into the water could be heard all over the raft.

Three seconds later, the plops and plunks of rocks falling into the river sounded. Except the noises were deeper than what could be caused by the pebbles that children would typically throw into a pond, as these rocks had more in common with chest-sized boulders than finger-sized stones.

Adding to their fear, a fire sparked to life on the bank of the Northern side of the river, streaking over the water while casting its flickering light over its rippling surface. "Keep down!" Celeste's commanded, her voice ripping through their minds with her intensity.

Everyone on the raft was already lying flat, partially submerged in the frigid water, but they tried to will themselves to slip deeper into the lapping liquid and slide between the logs. Chests were sucked in, and ears were filled with water as they were lowered below the river's surface. It was not the first time everyone on the raft had done this, and they doubted it would be the last.

Adrenalin filled Sathera's body, and she pulled Instructor Green closer, pressing down on his body with her wrinkled hands and arm. All she could do was wait with her heart caught in her chest. Waiting, hoping… Fearing.

As the light of the fireball arched over the approximate location of the splash, it stopped and hung in the air for long seconds. This is why people hate fish… It's a worthless food no one should eat!

"Their!" Shouted a distant voice, causing the mental network to be filled with despair.

"Get up and shield us." Ordered a weary Celeste, not even bothering to send a mental message to Sathera and Bellous. Everyone knew who she was talking to, and there was no more point in trying to hide anymore. Everyone had a spark of hope that they wouldn't be spotted, but they had been through this enough by now to know they would be. If the ball of fire hanging over the center of the river was farther away, they could have perhaps stayed hidden in the flickering shadows playing over the river. Probably. Shadows were tricky things.

When the night first settled over them hours ago, they quickly learned not to pull the raft forward. The extra speed made their wake too obvious to fire light. A ball of fire thrown into the air a hundred yards away could trace the reflecting ripples back to them. Not to mention the sound of water beating against what counted as the raft's… prow.

The lapping of water on logs might not sound like much, and neither did teeth clicking together, but the ears of the beastkin had proven sharp enough to pick out the noises. At the very least, they could determine their location close enough to throw a fireball and actually reveal the raft. The distinction of how they decided where to throw the fireball didn't really matter.

Celeste and Gruth were mentally exhausted and barely had enough psy between them to keep the union going. The only reason they were still awake was that the mage on Celeste's side of the river disappeared right after Tirre was injured, letting her assist Gruth. The only other one who would have some psy to help at this point was Centurion Markus, who was unconscious, so it fell to Sathera and Bellous to act as the sole defense.

This last day and night pushed Sathera to her limits, and she had spent the last decade of her life serving in the legion. It hadn't prepared her in the slightest for what she was experiencing. Honestly, she doubted that even the full intensive training to become a scout would have prepared her, but it would have at least been a step or two in the right direction.

A belief that Sathera had some reservations about, as the other scouts were in worse shape than her. Whether from their guilt over what Instructor Green had experienced, a need to show they were better than Sathera and Bellious, or simply because they didn't trust the trainees, the other scouts took most of the burden onto themselves.

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But no matter how they feigned confidence, Sathera could feel their fear of getting caught and killed. It radiated off them in waves when cold exhaustion wasn't slowly pulling them toward their deaths. But they didn't let the emotions and exhaustion control them. Even now, the scouts' eyes searched the night, looking for the slightly darker thrown objects on the black backdrop of rumbling storm clouds. The help was needed.

Whatever the reasons behind the events that led to their situation, Sathera was one of the few who still had a reasonable amount of psy. A groan of discomfort, Sathera got up to one knee, water running down her back in streams she barely felt.

Before Sathera made it to a crouch, she saw the bank of the river light up with another red-orange fire, and she saw the person she currently disliked the most in the world. Between the outstretched hands of the beastkin, a ball of fire grew brighter over several long seconds. Then, with the flick of his wrist, the ball sailed into the air, hanging above the raft, lighting it up like a bonfire was sitting in the raft's center, just without the warmth. His personality is quite… disagreeable, Sathera mentally grumbled to herself.

Every now and then, when the void-spawned wind blowing along the river died down, she thought she could feel a faint heat in the air. It might have been her imagination, or it could be she was so cold that a heat source a hundred feet above was actually warming her.

Throughout their flight through the day, they must have been harassed by half a dozen mages, most of whom threw oversized or fast-moving rocks. Sathera was reasonably — but could not be entirely — confident that this bastard was the only one throwing fire around. Even if he wasn't the only one initially, he had to be now.

Because every time he attacked them, he looked the same, though it was a relatively far distance. And, well, he also wasn't really attacking but letting the other beastkins attack. Sathera had no idea how hard it was to use their powers, but running to keep up with them while throwing those powers around for hours was impressive. Not that she would say that out loud in case he heard it.

It was taking a toll on the mage, however. Everyone could see the decrease in the power of the spells over the hours of the night, and even looking at the fire, she could tell it was at a tenth of the intensity of before. But that tenth was plenty bright enough to give the hundreds of beastkins stretched up and down the river the ability to throw semi-accurate rocks at them again.

Gathering the little amount of psy that was offered up to her, Sathera scraped the few specs of psy in her own core and formed a shield with her willpower. It was pathetic, really. Nine inches in diameter and half an inch thick of loosely packed psy. Hardly enough willpower was injected into the casting to maintain its form. The work of a child… she thought with scorn.

While the size of a psy casting does not accurately indicate how strong the casting is, the density and cohesion of a casting are. Pack a bunch of psy into a casting with little willpower, and the casting will have to wastefully burn through the psy to achieve its purpose. Fill a casting with your willpower, unifying and organizing every drop of psy, and a small amount of psy becomes far more efficient and capable than most would think.

Currently, Sathera lacked the willpower to properly compress and shape her psy. If she was fresh, she could use the same amount of energy and block ten stones. As it was, she could deflect two, maybe even three, before her casting would shatter. If she had more psy to burn, she would feel safer, but she already knew that no one had anything else to give and it would only prolong the inevitable.

"It's up to luck," Sathera said in a tired voice to know one in particular. "and how good their aim is."

"…I know," Celeste said, sighing in resignation. "We're all tapped out." Taking a moment to look over, Sathera saw Celeste leaning back on her elbows, looking up at the burning sky with an almost peaceful, tired expression.

Celeste wasn't even doing her typical petty actions of kicking or splashing Green's unconscious form. She always said she was trying to wake him up, but they were in a mental network. Sathera could feel the petty pleasure she got every time she hit him. But there was also something deeper. Whatever it was, Sathera had neither the time nor the will to dig around for it.

"There." Scout Joplom said while sending a mental picture and direction. Acting without looking, Sathera moved her shield a foot behind and over her head to the left. A moment later, she felt and heard the impact of the stone against the shield.

"Move," Sathera gasped, her shoulders hunching like she was holding up the world's weight. She heard frantic splashing in the water as people moved behind her before she let out a quiet shout of effort, "Argh!"

Sathera tried to throw the rock off the back of the raft, but all she could do was tilt her shield slightly after holding the hundred-pound stone in place for several long seconds. The rock thunked onto the logs of the raft, causing it to shake slightly and send out ripples.

"Incoming!" Shouted another mental voice.

Sweeping her shield forward and to the side, Sathera infused it with a sudden burst of willpower she didn't know she had. The shield slammed into the rock and threw it to the side of its previous flight path, causing it to plop into the river in front of the raft.

She felt a sprinkling of water from the splash of the rock but did not care to look or wipe it off. What was a little more water at this point? After changing the direction of the rock, she felt her casting shatter into nothing, as it could not take the strain of the impact. At the same time, she realized the mental network was collapsing, Celeste and Gruth finally running out of psy.

"Fucking bastard…" Sathera thought she heard right before she felt a minor backlash of a hair pulled out of her head as the union collapsed. As she was not the center of the union, the minor backlash did little more than knock her breath out… Which was a devastating attack in her current condition, causing her to hunch forward.

Sucking in a ragged breath, Sathera forced her body to move, looking up past the crushing exhaustion plaguing her mind. She did not know how long she gazed across the water, her eyes unfocused, but she was distantly aware of movement around her.

Eyes snapping into sudden focus, she watched a head-sized rock sailing across the water. The longer she watched it, the more confident she became the rock would hit her. But she did nothing, not even blinking as death approached. She could not even muster the emotion to care.

Then, a slender, slightly wrinkled, and calloused hand reached past her and flicked its fingers, and the rock shattered into fragments ten feet away. Turning, she saw Green, his bloodshot eyes open and too pale face covered in blood, looking at her with concern. He gave her a strained smile, his face bloodless, as it looked like all of the blood in his head was coming out of his nose.

He nodded at her, then his eyes shifted past her, and he said a single word that slowly worked its way into her mind. Looking back at the shore, she saw figures clad in armor striding from the waters of the Rush.

Finally, the word spoken by Green coalesced in her mind, causing Sathera's lips to crack with a heartfelt smile. When she gathered the energy, she whispered the hope-filled word herself, half in prayer, half in disbelief, "Knights…"

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