Olimpia

"Fall back! Fall back! Get your asses to the next corridor!" Rang Hold Leader Groth's voice through the tunnel. You would think that after days of what seemed like a constant battle and weeks of being besieged, his voice would have started to crack from shouting so many commands.

And you would be right. Matus had noticed a rough undercurrent to the Hold Leader's voice within the first week of all this. But instead of his voice continuing to crack until it gave out entirely, it froze right at the beginning, giving it a rough edge like he had breathed in too much smoke.

In many ways, it was like the Old Man and his orders had become a physical representation of the resolve and determination of their hold. There seemed to be an added weight within every one of his words, something more than what could be heard with an ear.

Matus saw that whenever the old man passed by. Groth would single out those resting or standing in reserve, doing something as simple as clapping them on the back or saying a few words. It wasn't much, but the raspy words of encouragement or a tired but determined gesture would perk up the younger holders with a burst of new energy, and the flickering fire of resolve would spark with new life in their eyes.

He saw similar scenes a couple of times in the legion when, in the midst of a conflict, those men who were truly worth following stepped forward to rally their comrades to stand firm. Those individuals propped themselves up as a lighthouse against despair and fear, and all those who could see them would gather around, protecting their last fleeting hope as darkness crept in all around them. However, the problem with a last ray of hope in the darkness was that if it should be put out, the men relying on it to guide them would have their morale shatter along with its disappearance.

During his fifty-odd years of service, Matus spent most of his time in the legion as a Knight. During that time and the hundreds of battles large and small all along the Republic's borders he fought in, he had only seen men like Groth a few times. That might have had more to do with him being a Knight, and as such, most of his interactions with common legionaries in a battle were when they were being overrun after any attempted rally had failed. Besides waiting in the back lines for the right time to act, he was either filling a hole or leading a charge.

Though Matus had met quite a few legati, and many of them were probably natural leaders, as he had seen most walking among their legionaries before and after a battle reassuring the men. It was just that if anyone ever saw a legatus outside of their command tent and all the maps and figurines showing the flow of the fight during a battle, they would assume the situation was fucked and they were about to have a last stand.

Maybe that was a little bit of an unfair assumption on Matus's part. Just because the leader of a legion wasn't in a position to make a split-second decision with all the available information didn't mean there was nothing else they could do besides join in as one final grain of sand on the scales or watch the fight play out… Yep, totally didn't mean that.

Matus was positive that for a large portion of a battle, the most productive thing a legatus could do was walk around and offer a few words of support to their men to lift their spirits rather than stare at an unchanging map. But they signed up for and pursued the burden of command, and someone had to be ready to give the orders that dictated the victory or defeat of a battle.

More to the point, Matus did see a legatus and his guards during a battle against an Imperial Legion one time. When he asked around later, he found out that they were within arms' reach of being destroyed. The 7th Legion had committed every reserve to the fight with no sign of relief arriving, and the legatus had to take his personal guards to reinforce a section of the walls.

At that point in the fight, the outcome that favored their enemy was looking extremely likely, even if most didn't realize it at the time. They either forced their enemies back, or the legion would be hacked down as they defended the fortress from its besiegers. So… the appearance of a legatus during a battle being a bad sign wasn't really an unfounded assumption on his part.

That was a bloody fight, with over a third of the legion dying during and after the battle, with nothing gained by either side. And quite the greeting as his first posting as a Knight. You would think that would have made me want to retire sooner… Matus mentally sighed. Not that being retired has done me any favors at this point.

When he left that life behind to return to his old home, Matus sure as hell didn't expect to see Groth walking among the holders like a grizzled old tribune reassuring their entirely well-founded fears. He didn't expect it, but most of all, he didn't want to see it.

It wasn't for some petty reason like he didn't want to see another get all the glory as they united the hold or anything like that. Matus didn't want to see it in his home for the simple reason that the circumstances around it demanded a bloody and brutal conflict as they were pushed to the brink of destruction. To wish that to befall one's home so a great leader would rise… well, the wisher probably didn't actually think of that place as their home.

And yet, his wish could not change the fact tragedy had come crashing down on them. To put it lightly, their hold and its inhabitance had taken a beating. But as long as their will held firm and they continued to stand against their attackers, no one could claim their hold wasn't still standing. Their walls might be crumbling as they were battered by the beasts and abominations outside, but they still held.

Stories told of holds being reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble and their underground tunnels packed with bodies. But down in the depths of the earth, the core of a hold still flickered with life. And when the storm finally passed, the holders clawed their way out and set about rebuilding their home.

As the relentless beating of flesh on stone pounded in their ears, it reassured everyone that no matter how much they were pressed or what happened, Groth would be there, reorganizing and encouraging everyone to keep holding back the flood.

He made them feel like this was no different than when he led them to dig a canal during a particularly rainy year to save their fields from being flooded. Or to keep the line of workers strong as they frantically rushed to clear the ground before the wave of fire engulfed the dry next to their home. Groth had been there in countless situations, leading them with steady confidence, and this would be no difference.

Or, that was what he was trying to project to those of the Long-ear Hold, whether he was consciously aware or not.

Matus had been mostly immune to the encouragement. He knew that a good leader could and often did be the sole difference between defeat and victory.

If someone believed, or at least made their troops believe, that there was a real chance for success in the face of overwhelming odds, then they would fight harder. Hope breeds hope, and resolve creates conviction.

He knew how bad the situation was. He had heard stories during his time in the region. Stories about legions defending burned-out fortresses and cities, who died to the last man.

No, not even legions. It was the stories around the hearths of the remote villages at the edges of the Republic — the homes of the hardy, who would rather scrape a living out in the dirt with their own two hands than live under the eyes of those who think they are better than everyone else.

And in those isolated communities, more than one had been found with hills of dead beastkins piled around their walls. Matus had personally seen the aftermath more times than he cared to count.

Everyone spoke of the heroism of the fights and how they kept struggling to the end. But Matus knew better. He could imagine the desperation permeating every person. How it would become so thick that it could seep into the very stones beneath their feet and linger for years.

Matus could feel the despair hanging at the end of his awareness. Pooling in the corners of the room with the shadows. But every time Groth passed by, calling out people by name and telling them how all they had to do was hold out for a few more hours, everything would be okay, it lifted the mood of the passage.

It was always a few more hours. No one ever asked who was coming or how the Hold Leader knew because they feared the answer. They feared the pause before he spoke, confirming that he was lying to give them false hope.

So they kept on fighting. Not for themselves but for those below. The ones who couldn't fight and depended on them to keep the monsters at bay.

That was the thing about life. It will always struggle, even when the situation is helpless.

And the situation had moved past that point days ago. Fighting intelligent and organized beastkins capable of tactics was bad enough, but fighting against congealed and animated flesh was another thing entirely.

It wasn't that they couldn't kill the things or hold them back, but the cost for doing so was an enormous amount of psy. Psy they didn't have. And there always seemed to be another of the quivering red masses slurping its way down the tunnels.

"Matus, close the passage," Groth said from where he stood beside him.

"Understood," he grunted back before slowly extending a tendril from his hand into the stone wall he was leaning against. Typically, a psy telekinetic tendril stops when it comes into contact with anything solid. Even liquids and air can slow it down to a stop, as the drag consumes more willpower and power than you would want to exert.

But when it comes to a Knight controlling their chosen element, that law no longer becomes the case.

Becoming a Knight isn't exactly hard; it just takes an absurd amount of practice and dedication while having the luck to have a large enough psy pool. The first requirement is usually the main gateway.

While it is sad to admit, people are generally lazy and with skirt work if they can get away with it. If you want to be a Knight, there is no getting around the hard work. That is one of the main reasons Knights, all Knights, regardless of birth, are generally respected. They earned their positions.

The first step in a Knight interacting with their chosen element is learning how to shift their psy. How this is done is different for everyone because everyone views the world from a slightly different angle. For Matus, he thinks about all the different scents and tastes of the earth and then makes his psy match them.

It might sound weird, but it works for him. As soon as they are the same, his psy can slide into soil or stone as easily as pushing a tendril out of his body and into the air.

Matus never cared enough about the subject to ask a scholar why or how this was the case; he just knew that what he did worked. It had crossed his mind a few times to go to them over the years, but then Matus realized he would have to spend hours listening to them bluster as they said everything but the one sentence they could open and close the matter with, "We aren't sure, but we have a lot of theories on the matter." Or that was what he assumed was the case.

The thing was, shifting one’s psy, while it was the first roadblock for those who set out on the path of becoming a knight, it was not the last. There were quite a few people out there who could shift their psy to match an element.

The messengers of a legion were one of the best examples of shifting psy. The telepaths alter their psy to pass through forests, air, or walls, depending on their environment, and even project their pulses in unique patterns to better bounce off surfaces and expand to relay their message. But that was beside the point.

After Matus first learned to shift his psy to slide into one particular patch of dirt, he had to learn how to shift his psy to enter another patch of dirt. And then a stone. And a different rock. Over and over and over.

Just because you could push a tendril into a stone or patch of soil, that didn't mean he could reshape the earth. Even two patches of earth that are close together can have completely different aspects. A dry, sharp metallic tang for a barren patch of sandy earth next to a rich, heady depth for fertile cropland.

Even people of mediocre skill in casting and a small psy reserve can extend a tendril half a dozen feet. Take a six-foot square area of the ground, and from one side to the other, you can have a radical shift in the composition of the soil. Sure, that's an extreme case, but not preparing for the unexpected happening in a fight ends with your death.

It was theoretically possible to shift different sections of a tendril to manipulate multiple connected relatively small patches of ground simultaneously… but that just wasn't practical, and Matus couldn't even think of a person at that level. And that wasn't even considering that once you started shifting the earth around, all of its different parts started combining, thus changing the "flavor" of the sections of the soil until it eventually all mixed.

Well, at least until the caster had to pull more soil from their surroundings, changing the composition of their casting again. Which was another point proving how impractical such a style was.

The trick was to burrow down and find an overarching theme that linked the element together. For Matus, he found that all types of dirt had a gritty metallic twang to them. Once he realized that, he could shift his tendril and enter any kind of earth and stone.

Not that discovering this didn't have its own problems, as nothing in the world was perfect. The downside of using such a general aspect of the earth to manipulate it was that it wasn't as efficient or responsive as when he matched the specific flavor of the soil.

But if you wanted to make a fifteen-foot earthen man or make the surrounding twenty feet of the earth around you roil like waves in a pond, you needed decent control over a large area rather than perfect control over a fistful.

Once you have spent a couple of years getting to this point through diligent practice, all you have to do is infuse an area of your element with your psy, which is a lot harder than one would think. The problem came down to willpower.

The best example was a training tool for prospective Knights who made it to this point, which was swimming down to the bottom of a lake and trying to make an empty pocket using their psy. You had to form a shield and keep it rigid while it expanded against the increasing weight pressing against your shield. Just do that inside a section of the element you want to control.

Once you have the area defined, you have to fill it in with your psy, like pouring wine into a cup. The psy would reinforce the structure of the framework of the shell as every corner was strengthened, and then you had to push a little bit more psy until it almost felt like you had to stop before the shell started ballooning outward. It might not sound like the best instructions, as it left a lot of wiggle room, but it is one of the things that you know when you feel it.

The thing was, until you reach that critical mass of infused psy, nothing will happen. Exert all the willpower you want to reshape the stone; it won't matter.

But once you do reach that point, it will feel like the material is a third arm, and controlling it is just as simple as flexing a tendril. More than that, the psy usage is dropped to a fraction of what a tendril of the same size exposed in the air would be, and pure willpower can be used for all but the most drastic changes in shape.

Should the elemental construct be damaged, however, and parts be knocked off, then the psy infused within the material will be lost, along with a bit more as it leaked out, which would vary depending on the Knight.

The thing was, while a Knight could control a construct for a surprisingly long time and reshape it at will, they were not particularly good at moving from one elemental construct to another. If Matus's casting was damaged beyond his ability to maintain, pulling out all of his psy and refocusing on another patch of dirt to create another construct would be nearly impossible.

First off, pulling all of his psy out of a construct would be challenging as the psy would be locked into place like a stone in a wall. And even if it was pulled free, exposing it to air would cause it to break down several times faster than normal psy, and it took more willpower to keep stable. Typically, it was better to write off the psy when an elemental construct broke down, which frequently happened in a battle.

This is basically a long way to say that Knights were like an eruption. All explosive energy that peters out fast. Great for battle when you need to stabilize a line or punch a hole in a formation, but not so much in a siege where there is only one old, tired Knight available.

But it wouldn't matter for much longer because this was the last time Matus could slow the relentless advance of their foe.

As soon as those flesh creatures appeared in large numbers, the holders were forced into a steady retreat. They couldn't keep them back. All because those cursed abominations were able to crawl down the air vents into the lower levels while more pressed the front.

Without being able to focus their strength on a single spot, everyone was worn down quickly as they scampered through their sprawling underground tunnels. Only a few of their air vents were found, but that almost made it worse as people frantically checked every corner.

In the past, their spiraling complex worked to their advantage against the beastkin. Long hallways, large doors, and multi-tiered steps with fortifications leading up and down into the earth. It was the cumulation of generations upon generations working to fortify their home.

But with them being attacked from every direction meant, it all became worthless. No, it worked against them as they didn't have the manpower to cover every area, and more than a few times, they were unpleasantly surprised. The only blessing they still had was that their high segmented ceiling, which was made up of thousands of tons of stone per section, could still collapse on their invaders.

Matus had been able to trigger less than a quarter of the traps in their frantic rush to set up a stable position, as he lacked the psy reserves. And now, they were being pushed back to their last line of defense.

This final block was larger than most, leaving little space between the old roof and its upper edge, forcing the beastkin to crawl between the two-foot gap, leaving them open to attack, but that mattered little.

The beastkins weren't the problem.

Without any more room to retreat from the relentless advance of the flesh constructs, they would be overrun soon. But that wasn't Matus's concern.

It was his job to buy a little more time.

Reaching his shifted tendril along the stone pillar implanted in the wall, he found its end before claiming it as his own. With what little psy and willpower he had left, he shifted the middle section of the stone beam to its outer edges until more than half of it was gone. With a sharp exhale, like he was physically lifting a boulder over his head, he focused his will on the smaller section of stone, shattering the beam and causing the roof of the tunnel to collapse with a sudden grinding of stone.

"We hold here, Long-ears!” Groth roared over the noise, his voice filled with grim resolve, "Nothing gets past us!"