Olimpia

"Charge!" The mental order tore through Kathren's and everyone else's minds in the union.

Like the gates of a horse race being flung open, the legionaries lined up at the entrance of the alleys burst into action. With all the trash taking up the sides and the generally small nature of alleys, only three legionaries could stand side by side within them.

Kathren watched the three lines pouring into the alleys from the opposite side of the street to avoid getting in the way. There was hardly a gap between one figure and the next as they went from a dead stop to a sprint.

No one said a word, and the only sounds were the clanking of steel, pounding of feet, and heavy breathing. Within a minute, the three hundred legionaries had moved through the alley and were in the process of crossing the next street street over.

Kathren and the squad of legionaries, along with the half-elf and his cronies, quickly moved down the middle alley a dozen feet from the last line of legionaries.

Breath steady as she moved, Kathren kept her head on the swivel as she tried to keep track of everything around her. She was a scout, after all. Kathren might not have anything else to do now, but she would be damned if she allowed someone to easily sneak up on the rear of the formation.

Not that all of her attention was on searching the shadows. Part of her mind was keeping track of the legionaries' positions. So she knew that as she was exiting the alley, the front of the line was leaving the end of the next alley and laying eyes on the outer walls of the mansion compound.

The new road was empty except for them, but it did nothing to soothe Kathren's worries. It was too still, like when the animals in a forest were hiding from a passing predator.

She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as it felt like something was watching her, prompting her to search every shadow a second time. And release a pulse that flashed down the street… revealing nothing but stone and trash.

Kathren's fingers played over the hilts of her knives and spikes, reassuring herself that whatever happened, she would not go down without a fight.

Before she could take more than a few steps to cross the street, she saw the mental snapshots the leading legionaries sent through the union. Armed figures were running through the merchant compound, converging on the front gates of the merchant's estate to meet the legionaries in battle.

Mere moments from the two waves of flesh colliding, the mental network started filling with frantic flashes of battle. The torrent of sendings jumbled her clear picture of the centuries' positions.

With the two sides meeting, the press of bodies soon locked tight, and the legionaries stopped, blocking any progress down the alleys.

"Get to a roof," Rumbled a slow but firm voice beside her.

Kathren looked over to see the half-elf pointing to a building between the leftmost and center centuries. His Jaw was set, and his eyes were hard while they never stopped moving.

He felt the danger pursuing them, and he wanted a place where he could see it coming. It was an idea that Kathren could get behind.

"Let's go," Kathren said as she shot forward. She passed the back ranks of the centuries, still sticking out of the alleys. As she approached the scarred and rotting door of the building, she released a blast of psy, shattering the door into splinters.

Ducking her head from the tiny needles of wood blowing back at her, she entered the building. Though the light of the morning lit up the area just inside the door, it did little else when all the shutters were closed, though there were beams of light stabbing through the holes in the shutters.

Releasing a pulse, Kathren got a mental picture of the room she was entering. It was some kind of old shop, and the counter and a few shelves were still in place among the piles scattered around this front room. She ignored them, as none were large enough to hide anyone. There was a hallway leading to rooms further back in the building, but she didn't pay attention to it as there was a flight of stairs to her right.

At a careful walk, she moved across the dark room. There was no need to hurt herself by rushing into an old building.

Reaching the stairwell, she kept one hand on a wall as she stepped up, picking up the pace as she ascended. The farther she went, the more the light bleeding in from the window at the landing outlined the borders of the steps.

Kathren glanced at the window, noticing the light was from a broken shutter hanging at a sharp angle from its bottom anchor. Turning on her heel, she started up the next flight, this one with only darkness welcoming her at the top.

It took longer than Kathren would have liked to move up the stairs of the three-story building, as the battle was always in the back of her mind, pushing her to act. Not that she didn't have an excuse, as even within inhabited buildings, the stairwells were notoriously dark.

It was also a good excuse to explain why she tripped more than once.

Even wasting her psy in a pulse didn't help that much, as her memory wasn't so great that she could remember the exact number of stairs on one flight.

"Void, take you!" Kathren hissed as she ignored the stifled chuckles from behind at the loud thump of her hitting her head on the trap door. Her hands fumbled around for a moment before she released a small pulse to find the latch.

With a jerk of her arm and a small grunt of effort, she pulled the latch to the side and threw the trap door to the side.

Gratefully, Kathren sucked in a breath of the gust of fresh air diving to welcome her. She left the dusty cobweb-infested pit behind with a quick hope, trying to ignore the phantom feeling of spiderwebs sticking to her skin as she rubbed her hands against her vambraces.

A few quick strides later, Kathren was at the edge of the roof, looking down on the battle raging in the street. She could not tell exactly what was going on through the mental network, as the flood of impressions and images was coming so fast that if she opened up to them, it would take all of her concentration to sort through them without being overwhelmed.

What she could pick up was that things weren't going great.

As she reached the waist-high railing and got a look at the weird battle below, she didn't understand why.

Instead of forming their line just inside the gates to negate some of the advantages of the legionaries' numbers, the manor defenders had formed a defensive ring around the outside of the gate. Any competent commander would know they were just asking for their force to be smashed against the walls. And that when their lines broke, most would be cut down before they could retreat back into the walls, lessening the effectiveness of any future defense.

Why are they having so muc… Kathren thought with bewilderment before trailing as a cold shiver of fear ran down her spine. She understood the problem now.

What the defenders were doing was viciously effective, though no force should be able to do it like this.

No matter how deep into a union one fell, there remained a sense of self-preservation within every individual. Some might be willing to throw their lives away for the sake of others, but most were less than willing.

But this wasn't throwing their lives away to save another. This was dying to kill just one more person.

Sure, there were records of it happening in a legion, but it was when they were surrounded with no hope of survival, and the only reason a history of their fight existed was that a single knight messenger escaped or a scroll was preserved in the center of all the destruction, documenting their struggle. It wasn't anything like this.

The defenders of the mansion had archers on its roof. When they released a volley, their front lines would throw themselves into an attack.

Kathren watched them lash out with swords and spears at the smallest of gaps in the formation. Sometimes, they weren't even attacking an opening but to force the shield to remain in place, preventing them from blocking the arrows. A few of the defenders were throwing their bodies onto swords and shields, breaking the legionaries' defenses long enough to allow the arrows to sink into their flesh.

It was not a one-sided slaughter, as when the defenders lashed out, they would leave themselves open for a counterattack. But what did that matter when the only ones that seemed to care about life were the legionaries?

The defenders were willing to take what would be a fatal wound a minute from now to create an opening for the archers. Or be struct in the back by the very arrows they were trying to make land a glancing blow.

"They are mindless," said a cold voice next to Kathren. "Puppets piloted from afar."

Kathren turned to look at the half-elf, incredulity burning in her eyes. To break a mind like that was… beyond illegal. Besides just how hard it was to do it, whenever a person was found with their mind broken, a mob always formed to hunt for the perpetrator.

…But what other explanation could there be? What survivor living in the slums would ever sacrifice themselves for anyone, not their child? And even then, it wasn't a hard rule, more of a borderline exception.

This kind of fighting was… unnatural. And would take a leader who doesn't care in the slightest about those they were commanding. And the fighters would know what their leaders thought of them as soon as they entered the mental network. Which would lead them to rebel or surrender as soon as fighting started unless… they had no mind of their own. Feck me.

Motion to her left caused Kathren to turn her head, and her eyes widened in shock. "Ambush!" She shouted mentally and physically as she dove to the side, assisted with a tendril of psy.

She heard a series of thrums from the bowstring, and then the whistling of the arrows they propelled passed over her head a moment later as she rolled over her shoulder. Popping to her feet, she briefly worried about more arrows being loosed at her but quickly threw the thought aside. They would hit her, or they wouldn't. She needed to focus on what to do next lest the opportunity fall from her grasp.

Kathren's hands were already on the hilts of her knives, and she drew them as she ran toward the trapdoor and the hooded figures crawling out of it.

The six figures on the roof had just released their arrows and were reaching for another one, but they didn't have the time.

It would still take Kathren three more strides to reach them, but they were within range of her spikes. She drove two of her nine-inch metal spikes at the closest figure who was aiming their bow at her.

There was plenty of time for the archer to react, as her spikes weren't nearly as fast as a thrown spear or a bow, but they didn't respond at all, only continuing to pull the arrow from the quiver and move to place it on their string.

Even when each of the spikes had four inches of steel embedded within his chest, probably puncturing his heart and liver, he didn't so much as release a grunt of pain, let alone have his movements impeded.

Eyes widening with shock and more than a bit of fear, Kathren saw the archer drawing back the string, preparing to shoot her point blank, even if he was already a member of the walking dead.

Pulling back her tendrils, Kathren tried to quickly form a concentrated blast of psy to deflect the arrow, but her desperation proved pointless, as she felt a figure loom behind her, releasing a burst of psy past her head.

Kathren might have heard the twang of the bow, but it was hard to tell over the growing din of battle. Though she thought she heard the crack of wood as the bastard's bow snapped.

What she did know was that she didn't have an arrow in her chest, and the bow was now clattering on the ground, broken in half.

Closing the distance with the hooded figure, who was casually reaching for another arrow, she drove her knife into the side of his neck, severing his spine.

As the figure fell, his hood fell from his face. His eyes were blank and lifeless, even as he lay on the ground, blinking slowly up at her. It was like he didn't care that he could no longer move or blood was bubbling past his lips.

Ripping her eyes from the man, Kathren moved into the ranks of the archers, lashing out with quick strikes to the head with her knives and bloody spikes she tore from the body at her feet.

They were helpless, hardly reacting to her as she and the looming presence behind her rushed forward, scything through their numbers.

When she reached the door, and those still coming out, they started to react differently by pulling out swords, but it was already too late. Her spikes were already pulling back and punching down. The three on the stairs quickly had gaping holes in their necks, bleeding out on the steps.

With a heaving chest, Kathren turned to face the figure who had covered her back nearly from the beginning, surprised to see the half-elf standing there.

She blinked in surprise for a second, then gave him a short nod of recognition. Casually, she cleaned her knives and sheath them to suppress the instinct to brush at her hair as she asked, "Soo~, what's your name anyway?"

His lips twitched in amusement as he answered, “Redgenald."