Olimpia

Kathren let her head thump against the waist-high railing a moment after her ass hit the roof, the slight pains of the impacts nothing to her. If she was too tired to bother gently lowering her head a few inches, what was a discomfort muffled by the beckoning of sleep? It was her turn to catch what little shuteye she could, and Kathren wouldn't lose a moment of it by such minor concerns.

The scent of smoke hung in the air, tainting everything with the harsh notes of rampant destruction. Anyone looking up could tell you smoke was everywhere as it blotted out the sky and caused a constant burn in the eyes, though Kathren doubted anyone in the city could still smell its biting edge.

She knew that she had become numb to the smell of smoke… A day ago? Two? How long have we been here? She hazily thought.

A day at least, but more than that, Kathren didn't know. Honestly, she lost track of the passing hours back at the beginning of all this. And she had long passed the point where she had enough energy to care, and it was the same with the rest of the legionaries.

It wasn't entirely their fault. Their lack of noticing the passing of time was a combination of constant fighting and the ruby glow of the fire burning all around them. The firelight reflected off the smoke haze covering the sky, and with the walls and buildings around them, day and night looked practically the same. There had to be a difference, but Kathren was damn if she was going to spend a moment to figure it out.

The one thing Kathren could still detect was when the air thickened with a particularly strong gust of smoke. It wasn't that she could smell or see it, but that the scratching burn in the back of her throat and nose flared from mild irritation to a hacking cough.

Well, she also noticed the strong gusts of smoke when her vision was blocked by the ash swirling around her to the point that if she stuck out an arm, she could watch it collect on her arm hairs like a misting of water and form a new coat in seconds. Kathren couldn't say which one was the one she was supposed to notice first, but she damn well knew which one she felt first.

And that was when she had to resist curling over while trying to stop herself from hacking up her last working lung. It was the golden frame through which she was viewing this shit-show of a battle.

The whole operation was fucked right from the start.

Their three centuries were meant to raid the dark elves' compound, while the rest of the legion was supposed to secure the rest of the city. Or that was what Kathren roughly thought the plan was.

And then the fecken puppets popped out of the woodwork, filling the slums. There must have been whole cohorts of the bastards.

That wasn't a joke. Based on their malnourished bodies and threadbare clothing, they were the vagrants filling the slums. Young and old alike, it did not seem to matter to the dark elves. They all marched against the legionaries with their dead eyes.

The only saving grace was there weren't any children in their ranks. But were they spared because they were children or because they hadn't grown to a useful size yet? Kathren didn't honestly want to know.

After the poor bastards popped up, things went downhill fast.

Kathren, the three centuries, and Redgenald, along with his handful of men, were cut off from the legion.

At first, it didn't look like that big of a deal. Sure, there were thousands of enemies marching down the street to them, but they had the compound's outer walls and the sturdy walls of the manor. And that wasn't anything to scoff at, as the building's stone-casted walls, both inner and outer, were reinforced beyond what was practical. They were basically sitting in a small fortress.

The only part they could ask to be better was that the walls, while twelve feet tall and three feet thick, did not have ramparts on them. They were more for privacy from the surrounding roads and buildings than for actual defensive purposes.

That was their original purpose, at least. If there was one thing a legion prided itself on, no matter the legion or where it was posted, it was how fast they could construct earthworks.

Even while the puppets pressed against the gates and pounded on the walls to break them, the centurions and their men had already moved into action. One century was holding the gates while one was moving tonnes of dirt from the courtyard against the walls, and the last was ensuring nothing climbed over the walls.

At the time, everyone thought we only had to hold on for a few hours. Maybe a day. That any minute now, a team of knights would fall from the sky or rise out of the ground and reinforce our position.

The hope had its first crack when, an hour after the assault started, pillars of fire bloomed within the second ring of Southtown. The crack sent out fissures as the fires within the second ring spread, and the pulse communications the messengers detected became filled with more and more reports of street fighting.

When night fell, what looked like the entire second ring of Southtown was engulfed in flames, raining down ash and embers onto everything. As the sun's light faded and was replaced by the light of the burning city, the final hope of timely reinforcements shattered to lay with the rubble of the manor's outer walls, and everyone had the same thought, "no one was coming to get them."

As the first day passed, the puppets finally pulled back after hours of trying to force the gates and set about throwing rocks at the manor walls. Apparently, the death count was too high even for them, so the commander wanted more openings from which to attack.

Without proper engineers to repair the walls, a half dozen gaps had formed over the last hours of the day. Not that the time the puppets spent breaking the walls was wasted by the defenders.

By the time they were marching in from all sides, Kathren and the legionaries had the advantage as they had formed the fifty yards around the manor into a death trap. Every ten feet of the grounds was alternating between a ditch or a mound of dirt placed in rings. Any length of wood they could find was sharpened into a stake and driven into the ground.

In the relatively short time they were at the manor, the entire landscape of the grounds had changed. It was amazing what can be done when desperation and need are the driving forces behind a unified people. And as it all happened, Kathren had a perfect view of everything from the manor's roof.

While the manor was supposed to be a command center of the dark elves, like Redgenald said, it wasn't. If anything, Kathren would call it a supply depot. Arrows, bows, spears, swords, shields, and crates of dried food and water filled nearly every room. But most of all, from the basement to the attic, Kathren hadn't found a single sign of dark elves.

Which she wasn't irked at all about… Yep, totally wasn't.

On the one hand, it was a lucky break that they could survive a siege until the legion finally regained control of the city and came for them. But it also meant that whoever was controlling the puppets wanted the building back to arm more of her men.

As Kathren stood on the roof of the manor, a pile of arrows so large that she would collapse from exhaustion long before she finished shooting them on one side and Redgenald on the other, she stood witness to the onslaught of the puppets.

The attacks never stopped once they began again, and bodies began filling the grounds as the legionaries were pushed back, reaping a bloody tithe every step of the way.

Given what they were fighting, the tribune changed the tactics of the centuries. The spears in the manor were passed out, and pike walls were formed to keep the puppets at bay.

With how poorly armored they were and the general lack of adaptability and reaction time, multiple spearmen could stab then hold a puppet in place while they bled out.

When the legionaries were falling back from the third earthen berm in the middle of the grounds, the guiding hand behind the puppets' movements tried to rush her forces forward to overwhelm us. The lines were intermingled, and it looked like the legionaries were about to be cut down, breaking the line.

But as soon as the danger appeared, it vanished. The puppets' carefully constructed and choreographed formations fell apart in an all-out attack, allowing the legionaries to hack into their enemies with abandon. They fought as unskilled individuals without regard for anything beyond what lay directly before them.

The puppets didn't have the ferocity in their movements to push into the face of death and smash through it. And while their attacks had power to them, they made nothing but a perfunctory effort to guard themselves.

When the legionary in front of the puppet weathered its blow, one of the legionaries around them would land a fatal attack to the neck or chop off an arm. After all, just because their line was scattered didn't mean they still weren't united in the Union.

With the number of puppets pressing forward, they would have eventually overrun the defenses. But the bodies were mounting several times faster than a moment before, and the slope they were climbing became a bloody slurry, further impeding their assault.

After a desperate handful of minutes, the puppet's commander must have deemed the losses too significant for the meager gains they were getting. After all, even if the legionary's line broke in a few places, enough would be able to make it back to the manor to mount a proper defense, making the result the same.

Getting to that point faster but with more losses could actually be said to help the legionaries, at least in terms of the legion as a whole, if not the three centuries. If the dark elves wanted to take this manor back and stomp Kathren and the others out, they would have to do it over a mountain of bodies.

So began the grind.

The legionaries would fight to the last breath and try to take their killers with them if possible, but they were only human. Their willpower will eventually flag, making casting impossible. Their bodies will ultimately give out from exhaustion, leaving them unable to move as they watch in impotent rage when a sword is driven into their chests.

The dirty vagrants making up the puppets had no such mortal limitations after what had been done to them, or at least none that had been reached yet.

They hit the shields of the legionaries and pushed until the legionaries were forced to take a step back.

Kathren's fingers were long past raw by the time the second ring's inferno lit up the city. Her back felt like one giant knot as every motion threatened to spark a cramp. Sweat made streaks in the ash covering her body while her chest heaved for fresh air to quench the embers smoldering in her chest.

But no matter how many arrows she and the others shot into the mass of flesh, the centuries were pushed back.

Initially, the losses were minimal, but exhaustion quickly built in those on the front lines, as the reserves were limited. There wasn't enough time for a proper rest away from the fighting before they were rotated in again. By the third rotation, which was hours ago, spots of red and black could be seen splattered amongst the dead. And things only got worse.

As the death toll mounted, the perimeter of their lines shrunk. Until they reached now, where all they held was the manor itself.

Bodies blanketed every inch of the earth inside the broken walls.

There were no cries of the wounded begging anything for help as the puppets executed any wounded legionary that twitched. And the puppets themselves didn't stop fighting until the mercy of death was brought to them.

From the three hundred legionaries they started out with that day, only a hundred-forty-seven lived to find refuge in the manor, and thirty of those were sent back during the earlier fighting as they were too wounded to continue fighting. Every one of them was near to complete exhaustion, sporting at least one gash on their body.

Since then, things have slowed down, but it has been causing more fatigue as people need at least some time to rest. Attacks were launched against the barricaded windows and doors, but they were easily beaten back within the chokepoints.

But the attacks weren't the issue.

With a consistency that could match that of an hourglass, the puppets would form up for an attack every half an hour. Sometimes, they would stand in place for minutes before dispersing. Most of the time, they marched halfway to the manor before turning back. And on rare occasions, they would probe the defenses again.

The stress of an impending attack was ever present, and rest could only be gotten in what felt like quick blinks of the eye before the next attack or taunt happened. There were just enough actual assaults that everyone was forced to awaken, just on the off chance that this would be an all-out attack to breach their defenses instead of another probe.

If there was any bright side, it was that they had yet to see any more archers. However, their lack of a presence did raise its own concerns, not that anyone bothered to ask where they were lest they suddenly pop up.

Time bled together, and everyone was near the breaking point.

The only thing keeping them going was the signs of battle around them. All they had to do was hold out.

Most of the fires in the second ring had gone out, and new ones in the third ring were flaring with life to take their place.

"Time to get… up, darling," said a halting, slightly scratchy voice, trying to be soothing next to her ear.

Kathren's eyes cracked open, uncertain of when they closed, and her head slightly turned to meet Redgenal's wry grin. "You didn't slash… at me this… time."

"Too much effort," Kathryn groaned, turning her head away like she was trying to soothe the knots in her back and sheathing her knife but really to hide any slight blush making it to her cheeks. She couldn't remember the last time someone had woken her up without her lashing out. "Another attack?"

The irritating man chuckled with a knowing amusement in his voice, but he let the subject drop. Which was lucky for him because Kathren wouldn't be surprised if an arrow accidentally found its tip sliding over the skin of his arm in all this confusion if he kept it up. It could also be his cheek, but… It would be too much of a shame if it was marred with a blemish. Though it could also give him a certain air of— What am I thinking? Who would care about that!

Grabbing her bow and an arrow to be ready, Kathren watched the man from the corner of her half-lidded eyes.

"They are… forming up again," he said, but there was a hesitation in his voice, "but something… feels different… this time. I can't sa—

He cut off as his head snapped to the stairs leading to the roof, his jaw clenching as his face fell into a hard mask.

The sweet whispers of sleep were driven from Kathren's mind as she saw the sudden shift in his emotion, and adrenaline prickled across her body. Before she could blink, she found herself in a half crouch, her head positioned to watch Redgenald and the direction he was looking while also keeping an eye over the rim of the roof's railing.

Kathren didn't press him, as she had learned to trust his instincts over the course of this battle. He would tell her what he felt when he was confident about it. Until then, saying anything would only serve to distract him.

After a few seconds that felt like hours as Kathren's eyes darted to every shadow, her ears strained to hear the drop of a pin, Redgenald turned to her, saying in a hushed whisper so only she could hear, "I felt… a subtle pulse message… coming from below."

Kathren opened her mouth to say that something was distorting and blocking all pulse messages for what must be over a day, so no one should be sending out pulses, only for it to snap shut as her stomach dropped to her feet when she realized what he meant.

"Ahh~, fuck me.”