A moment passed, and I did nothing. The blade's edge kissed my skin, and I could feel another line of blood begin making its way down my neck to stain my clothes and armor. As I saw the long scar running from the middle knuckle down the wrist on the hand holding the blade, my mouth twitched into a mocking smile as I no longer cared about the weapon. Moving slowly, I lowered my hands and started fumbling at my belt as I ignored the bitch behind me.

"Don't think I won't kill you, elf." The husky voice said with a hint of anger in it now.

"You would have already if you could, Celeste." I indifferently responded hoarsely as I raised a piece of jerky to my mouth and took a bite. "Who's with you, by the way?"

She said nothing, and I continued to eat. With every chirp of a cricket, I could quite literally feel her growing anger and irritation. Celeste's hand had begun to shake, causing the blade to ever so slightly dig deeper into my throat before the pressure let up, only for the sequence to repeat several more times.

When her master's voice filled the night, the jiggling of the blade immediately stopped, and her increasingly ragged breathing calmed, "Put the knife down, Celeste. He is a scout, after all. We've lost too many over the past couple of days and can't afford to lose another. No matter the… quality of this particular specimen." Said a man wrapped in a cloak leaning against a tree fifteen feet away from us. I could virtually feel the disdain when he almost sneered at the word "quality." Quite a slip of the tongue for him. His emotions must be running high.

"Yes, milord." Said the once again cold, emotionless voice behind my right ear, the dagger at my neck disappearing as suddenly as it appeared. A moment later, a woman with thick, raven black hair down to her shoulders, also wrapped in a cloak with a three-layered-ash leaf clasp at her neck, stepped into my vision. I did not fail to notice that she could not resist taking the long way around the tree and accidentally hitting my left arm with her knee, causing me to let out a grunt of pain.

The vindictive woman took up a position a step behind the man, the tiniest smile curling her lush lips as two large men appeared from the shadows on each of my flanks, joining the group to intimidate me. "What do you have to report, scout?" Asked the man with dirty blond hair and a razor-sharp jawline lounging on the tree. If there was any doubt about who was in charge of this party, that statement snuffed it right out.

"Hmm, pretty sure I don't report to you," I said, smirking as Celeste's hand flinched under her cloak, causing its surface to waver. "Go out into the forest and scout before returning with your own report, Vlore. Or ask your bitch to do it."

Vlore stuck out his arm, stopping Celeste from charging forward like the rabid mutt she was. Her cheeks were covered in red splotches of anger as she clenched her jaw, causing the veins on her neck to stand out.

"Control your dog, Vlore, or we might lose this wonderful occasion to chat—," I said, raising up my waterskin in a mock toast as I tried to stifle the coughs wracking my body.

"Didn't you hear what I said before? Of the five squads sent out on the scouting mission to find the beastkin hoard, you are the only… person who has been seen alive, let alone heard from, in days. My team and the other eight were sent out to find you yesterday, and I personally have detected no less than five ambush pulse messages. As I see it now, seventy percent of the 15th's scouts can be considered missing, but given your appearance, I would guess they are dead. I have no way of knowing what is happening in the deeper parts of the Northern Woods, but it is evident that you do. Now, it is apparent anyone venturing into those depths is being targeted, so it is unlikely for my team to survive the attempt to enter the area. The Legion needs the information you have if it is going to confront the growing threat, so this is not a time for politics and games. You are not capable of completing the task; we are."

I studied Vlore as he stood there, my mind blanking so that his words flowed through me unacknowledged. It might have been the exhaustion or brain damage, but I could not get past how he currently looked as if he was the epitome of grace and nobility. His mask was perfect.

The seconds stretched after he finished, and I knew I needed to respond, so I focused on his last couple of sentences. "Easy thing for you to say. You don't even have to try to spin this to your advantage. Let me guess. Your squad is the only one without casualties as it trails in the back." Vlore didn't respond, but the twitch of a smile on his mouth was all I needed to know the answer.

"…Not much to say, really," I finally added after making them wait a few more long seconds as I chewed and swallowed more food. Vlore was right about one thing: I did have a duty to relay my information to the Legion by any means necessary. "but before that, got any food? I'm starving, and I've nearly run out. Maybe some water, too." But duty didn't mean I had to have over the information and the acknowledgment from our superiours for free.

A sack hit my chest hard enough to make me flinch in pain, not that it needed to be going that fast to hurt. The entire front side of my body was one giant bruise, after all. Celeste couldn't know that, though. So she went for power to make sure it hurt. I swear the sack would have knocked me over if I wasn't leaning against a tree.

Gingerly I rubbed my chest before I started poking around in the bag picking out a choice piece of jerky, and then grabbed the water skin tossed next to me, pulling it closer. "We found the vanguard of a beastkin hoard at least a valley northwest of here. I can't really say how far away it is for certain. The vanguard numbered at least two thousand wolves. I also spotted what should have been a thousand flying beastkin off in the distance. The main problem, and the one directly affecting us, is that the beastkin wanderers somehow made themselves invisible and concealed their presence. They snuck up on every member of my squad undetected before launching a nearly simultaneous attack… The result of which was only me and Markus surviving to flee." As I finished talking, I drank water to help soothe my throat before taking in the dead silence that greeted my words.

Then the man to my right spoke up, murmuring, "I'll cut off my left nut if that's true. Are you really going to listen to these lies, domine?"

"Yeah, are you going to listen to my lies, Vlore?" I mocked, shifting my gaze to Vlore after I glanced at his subordinate. "Or will you get to hacking? Maybe you should wait, as I'm sure it'll be loud. At the very least, you can tell him to shut the fuck up so I can finish, as we both know I'm telling the truth."

I heard someone snort in disbelief, but I didn't look away from Vlore's piercing gaze. I even let his probe further skim my surface thoughts to prove my words. It didn't matter how powerful he was or how tired I was. I could still block him from feeling anything from me if I wished. It gave me a little jolt of pride and superiority as I recognized the flicker of acknowledgment in his eyes before the emotion was smothered by his typical derision and pride, not that he ever let those emotions rule him.

"You think you can—"

"Shut up, Lukah. Let him finish," Vlore said, cutting off his subordinate.

Giving a slow nod to Vlore, I paused a second, pretending to gather my thoughts as I made them wait. "…Hmm, where was I… Ahh, yes! I remember now. So, we spotted the vanguard and birds moments before being ambushed. Then we decided to split up. Markus enhanced his body and made a break for it, and I had to try to sneak away through the valley…"

Suddenly, I found myself studying the enveloping night, as my mind went blank, and I forgot what I was going to say. Frowning, I shook my head and shoved away the feeling of forgetting something as I continued to talk, "Umm, yeah… Anyway, I barely made it halfway across the valley before getting trapped in a natural bowl containing an ancient ruin. I had to fight some wolves and injure some birdkins following me to create some distance — oh, and before I forget, all the birds had arms. I found an ancient escape tunnel at the back of the ruined fortress, but before I could crawl into it, some golden eagle blew up the forest, engulfing it in his fire."

We sat in silence when I finished, but uncertainty permeated the stillness this time, tinged with more than a hint of fear. "Domine," said one of Vlore's men who hadn't already spoken. They were all looking at Vlore, and while the single word didn't sound like a question, it was. And everyone else in the small clearing was silently begging Vlore to tell them if what I was saying was the truth.

"He does not think he's lying," Vlore stated, and I closed my mind as he spoke. I really didn't like someone skinning my thoughts. "That does not mean the eagle beastkin has attributed his psy. We have never seen any signs of mental powers from the beasts. To leap to such a level of skill so fast would be preposter—"

"I never said it was mental energy. I didn't feel any. One second, the bird shone like a second sun in the sky. The next, a blast of heated air threw me to the ground, and the forest was burning down. I can't tell you what happened, only that it did. Which is my job."

"He's right," Vlore said, making his subordinates and me look at him in shock. Today is one for miracles! I thought in wonder, as I was sure such words had never left his mouth before.

"Not about his claims about the beastkin's potential psy powers, but our jobs." He waved his hand, dismissing the issue, "The tribunes need to know this information, and we are wasting time." Ah, the world makes sense now. He wants to be the one who reports the information to the tribunes and get the credit.

I watched Vlore turn his head, and his eyes must have scanned the surrounding area, but whatever he was looking for, I couldn't tell. The night had already progressed to the point that I could only tell where they were by the slightly darker splotches in the shadows.

When I wasn't injured, my vision was better than any human at night or day, but I still needed light to see. This was where the problem lay, as it was a rather cloudy night, and the moon was only a crescent, so there wouldn't be much to illuminate the world. In short, it was a perfect time to skulk through the forest.

"We have to get moving. You can make it back to the Triad alone, right Green?" I looked at Vlore, slowly raising my good hand and flipping him off.

"Ughh! The disrespect!" Snarled Celeste as she leaped forward, flashing her knife in the moonlight as she raised it. "I'm gonna skin you alive, elf!"

"Stop," Vlore quietly said, but it was in a commanding tone and had enough will behind it to stop Celeste cold. "We'll be questioned hard by the tribunes and maybe the Prefect just because we left him behind. We can get away with it by saying helping him will slow us down, and with the threat of the wandering beastkins he just informed us of, helping a dying man wasn't worth the risk. But if we actually kill him, even I won't get off without consequences… After all, the tribunes must at least make it appear like we are all equal."

"As you say, milord," Celeste snapped, begging for forgiveness with a bow, her knife disappearing into her cloak again. Vlore said nothing as he watched me, then turned in and disappeared into the night. Taking the silence as tacit acceptance, the crazy woman raised her body, longingly looking at the man's back. "You're lucky, elf." She hissed at me before chasing after her master.

Within a breath, the two visible men also vanished, and I could hear the other scouts making up the squad follow behind them. None of them so much as turned their head to acknowledge my bleeding, bruised body lying against the tree. Reaching the bottom of the jerky pouch, I felt around until I found the piece I wanted, popped it into my mouth, and started gnawing.

Closing and tying the pouch to my belt and slinging the skin over my shoulder, I got up with a grunt of pain and started walking up the hill, far less concerned about the beastkins than I was minutes ago. If there was one good thing about the kawrashit that Vlore is, it's that he is always at the back edge of the scout line. You know you're practically within arm's reach of safety when you spot him.

The only time you saw him on the front edge of anything was when a superior was around or when there was nothing dangerous to be found for days in any direction. He really did seem to have an extra sense of where the safest place was. Of all the things Vlore was, and there are many, he is a survivor… just like all the other cockroaches.

I still tried to leave as little of a trail as possible, but I was more interested in moving fast. Besides, my ragged breathing was enough to give away my position to anything nearby, so a slightly larger trail wasn't a concern.

As I topped the hill, I momentarily looked back into the valley and then up and past the other tree-strewn hillside. A breeze swept over the hilltop, and briefly, I thought it brought a hint of fire and ash to my nose. My eyes snapped to the distant hill's ridge, and I swore I momentarily saw the red tint of a fire a couple valleys away, with a tailed figure outlined against its glow, shadows twisting around its form.

I couldn't be sure, as my vision was still shit, and it had been more than a day… Well, maybe two days — can't be three — since the fire. I think I remember Vlore saying we were out of contact longer than we should have been, but that would mean I was unconscious that whole time, which didn't make sense… Not that any of it mattered at this point, as the fire should have already burned itself out. An assumption I was confident of as I wasn't currently surrounded by flames.

Still, if what I had seen was any sign, the 15th Legion was in for some hard times. Turning away from the beastkins I knew were out there somewhere, I limped down the slope. I had a long way to go before returning to the Triad.

Interlude 1

Excerpt from The Mad Scholar's Wall—

When some mysterious magic carried us to these shores, we were not ready for what we would find. How could we be? Despite what the priests spout, few, if any, within the 9th Legion of Rome have seen anything supernatural in their lives.

And those who claim to have seen something otherworldly are usually considered insane. So, how could we be prepared for a world that defied all the logic our lives taught us to expect? We couldn't be. It was as simple as that, and because of that fact, we should not have survived.

Regardless of what others spout now, it was the elves. They were the ones that saved us. They were the ones who gave us the tools and knowledge we needed. And despite all they have given us, no one will acknowledge the debt that will come due. The price that will be demanded by that fickle mistress called Fate.

However, that will be our end. The price our descendants must pay. A burden I beseech the gods that they will be ready to bear. This is not about the end, as I will not live to see it. This is about our beginning, so those who come after may understand their origin. That they may understand and have some comfort in why the world turned out the way it did.

I remember the stormy night the 9th Legion marched through its last forest on Terra, as I remember everything. A storm a couple days before had washed out some unnamed bridge over a river we had to cross before night fell, and it took longer than expected to repair.

The reason we had to cross was simple. Our Legatus ordered that we make it to the nearby village, so we would make it to the village before erecting our camp. As we marched through an ever-darkening, increasingly storm-torn night, a massive clap of thunder tore across the sky, shaking the ground while blinding everyone with its brilliance and searing our skin with heat.

When we opened our eyes after the flash, a clear blue sky and a noonday sun had replaced the stormy night. It was easy to conclude that we were no longer in Britannia and no longer within the borders of the Roman Empire with a single clear moment of thought.

But no one had the time to think of anything of consequence as we found ourselves standing in a large, idyllic glade. After the moment of silence greeting our arrival, thousands of voices simultaneously sounded in screams, demands, and shouts of shock.

Everyone look to another to explain what nobody understood, and as a child, I was no exception. Placed in the meadow's center on a slight rise, I stood with the other gathered camp followers and bore witness to the legion standing in formation around the hill.

No one could explain why the 9th Legion's cohorts circled around the camp followers. No one could explain how legionaries still wet from the rain found themselves in a field at noon on a midsummer's day rearranged. Not that anyone complained in the end.

Why were the cohorts positioned around us? Why were their swords drawn and shields raised, ready for combat? Most, if any, will never know how we got there. How could we? For who but the gods can answer our questions.

And I have long accepted their decision to send us here without an explanation. But I am grateful they sent us prepared. As there is no way we would have survived without that single advantage. For the beastmen, in all their mindless savagery, made their appearance within our first minutes of entering this strange land.

They came with teeth and claws. Monsters that are more likely to be attributed to the legends of gods and heroes than found in life. Or they would be where I was born.

The beasts had aspects of humans — and, at times, such hauntingly similar features and mannerisms as us — but you could never mistake them for rational humans. Their appearance was simply too foreign. Too bestial.

Their forelimbs reached past their knees and were covered in a fur pelt that concealed nearly all of their bodies. Their heads were variations and mixtures of wolves, cats, and bears, with fangs dripping with saliva and dull eyes brimming with hunger so profound that it drove them to vicious madness.

The beastmen bounded from the trees on all fours before racing across the clearing, silently scything through the tall grass. I was among the few to spot them, though my response at first was one of curiosity more than anything else.

A handful noticed and called out to the others about the beasts. Fewer still heard or heeded the calls of alarm as they were simply one more voice shouting within the throng, searching for answers.

Who cared about wild animals? We were a mass of nearly ten thousand, and what animals would willingly rush toward such a group in the open?

When the frontrunners of the beastmen leaped onto the first ranks of legionaries, the monsters dug their claws into the backs and shoulders of the men while burying their fangs into the base of their necks. The unlucky legionaries' blood-chilling screams of pain lanced into the air, demanding everyone's attention.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The desperate, fear-filled voices fell to gurgles before anyone could act as the beasts reared back, ripping off and swallowing large chunks of flesh with a snap of their jaws. Then howls filled every corner of the clearing as the beasts poured out from the surrounding ring of trees by the thousands.

In that instant, a single truth was pressed into our minds with absolute conviction. We would kill these monsters, or we would be killed.

In a matter of minutes, the bodies of beasts and legionaries were mounting high. A ring of the dead and dying surrounded our position, and yet the beastmen continually threw themselves forward with mindless savagery.

It only took the first moments of the fight for everyone to realize what was happening. The legionaries were fighting for our survival. That these creatures would not stop until one of us ceased to exist.

For how could anyone expect mercy from the merging of beasts and man? They were — and remain to this day — mindless beasts of instinct and aggression.

It was why everyone continued to fight, even as their brothers were ripped to shreds next to them. Why they didn't need the iron wills and commanding shouts of the centurions and tribunes to drive them forward to their deaths.

All it took was one glance into the dead, soulless eyes of the beasts, and they knew there would be no surrender or retreat. If a man instinctively knows there is no possibility of fleeing, they will become more beast than man as they fight to survive. So, the men of the legion fought.

However, in everyone's hearts, as they took a moment to look around and notice the unfamiliar plants in the surrounding forest and the beasts before them, they knew they would never see Rome again. That they Would never return to their childhood homes. Most of all, they would wonder, if these creatures lurked in the forest, what else was out there? What monstrosities could challenge them?

As our minds traveled down those dark paths, our hope dwindled, and our deaths drew one step nearer. Hundreds — perhaps a thousand, if I am being generous and delusional — of the creatures lay dead, intermingled with the bodies of more than two thousand dead and dying legionaries. Bodies the 9th Legion had to leave behind as the cohorts shrunk inward as their numbers decreased.

The legionaries could not hold back the savage ferocity and supernatural strength of the beastmen. Mere men, no matter their training or experience, could hope to win such a fight. The odds were stacked so far against us that we would have already been destroyed, but after the initial rush of the monsters, most of the beasts began holding themselves back to circle around our small hill. Whatever was happening, most took it as them taunting us with their constant howls and yawning, showing off their fangs.

However, their half-hearted toying with us was still too much for the legion. The beast's swipes would knock multiple men back or to the side, shattering the shield wall and leaving others open to attacks. Before the men could recover, the beasts would lunge forward, ripping out throats or slashing a man's chest open to the spine with their long claws. Slowly, inevitably, the lines collapsed. Legionary after legionary was ripped from the line before being killed and eaten.

I remember the women and other camp followers grabbing spears and extra equipment from the supply wagons. Anyone and everyone was holding a weapon or the next best thing, as we could all see what was coming. We knew what was about to happen to us when they failed. Because we saw it happening to our legion.

But we would not go down without a fight. Even I, a child of five at the time, had a long knife thrust into my hands by a wounded soldier rushing to rejoin the line.

And then, at our lowest moment, the elves road out of the forests on horses of the purest white. They were tall, elegant, majestic creatures that all bore the air of royalty around their shoulders like it was their birthright.

With a wave of the leader's hand, the very air seemed to ripple out in a wave, ripping up the ground and anything on it in an ever-expanding arching explosion. The result was more horrendous and shocking than the last ten minutes combined.

In the span of three seconds, two thousand creatures poised to rip us to shreds were killed in a massive explosion. During it all, the legion and its followers were left untouched as we stared in shock at the scene.

The display of power was like standing before a god. Many among us fell to their knees and started worshiping the being on the spot, thanking them for their mercy in intervening. No one — not even those on the ground — could say whether it was out of fear or awe.

While their power imprinted the full extent of our feeble mortality upon our souls, few processed it as their appearances enraptured us. The elves' beauty put every human to shame. From that moment on, should I ever have the chance to look upon a god, the elves would be the baseline of what I expect.

And the king — for there was no way he could be perceived as anything other than their king — carried a weight of authority and dignity around him like a shroud. If those around him were bonfires in the middle of the night, the king was the sun.

However, if one were to step out of his presence and compare his painting to any other elf, one would be hard-pressed to say which was more beautiful. No painting, no matter how skilled the painter was, could capture what was beyond the physical, and everything about the king while in his company was… more. His presence was overwhelming.

Looking upon High King Areekail, we all felt dirty and inferior. Because we were. Nothing can deny that fact, and to do so would be the height of hubris and arrogance. It would be like denying the existence of trees because you hate the idea of something taller than you. Irrational at best, but most likely delusional.

You may not believe me. And I can accept that, as I can only imagine what we have become, but we — humans — came from a land where our only strengths came from our bodies and minds. We, the first generation, are limited to forever being unable to use mental powers.

Whatever abilities you — our descendants — have developed, that fact has not changed. And yet, our potential, and even yours, is still limited to what we can conceive and imagine.

It is a fact I have seen increasingly suppressed, ignored, and forgotten as I grow older. Try as I might, those so-called scholars and nobles disregard the facts I shove right in their faces, blinded by their powers.

They cannot believe that we have not become the strongest creatures alive. They can not conceive that we were the weakest in every way imaginable and were given power by their grace. Then we forget that the elves are not as weak as they might appear, and they have reached heights we can only dream of.

We did not choose our fate, and you will have to pay the price for our survival and the power that was bestowed upon us. But I am getting ahead of myself again.

On that first day in this new world, the elves quickly made it clear in concise and accurate words that we would never be returning to our home world, and we would have to survive as best we could in this one. They also explained that while they had powers we could not comprehend, they were not — and never would be — gods. Few among the legion and its followers believed the second topic, assuming the radiant creatures were trying to be modest, though we came to accept the first.

Throughout that time, many could be found whispering that the elves wanted us to convert and follow them of our own accord. That for the High King Areekail to ask for our worship would demean his station. While the blatant worship was stopped, and the smart ones stopped preaching it, the seed had been planted.

Because of that, over our first decade in this world, it was not uncommon to enter a house's back room and find a shrine built to High King Areekail or some of the other Elvan Lords. Some even tried erecting temples around our new city, though the elves would not let them stand for long, always proclaiming to be unworthy of such honors.

It should be understood that the legion was gifted the city and its land. The elves built the central buildings and walls of Olimpia within a single day, pulling the stone from the very heart of the earth. Many said that the structures that were little more than an afterthought for the elven craftsmen far surpassed the supposed grandeur of Rome, the greatest city of our old world. Proving once again how great the elves were compared to us.

Magnificent and mighty as our walls and homes were, the camp followers and legionaries combined were barely enough to fill a small town. It was a problem with few solutions. Even with over two thousand five hundred legionaries dying in the short battle, there were still far from enough women in the camp followers for the close to four thousand men still alive to find a spouse. The ratio of men to women at the time was about two to one, which wasn't considering many camp followers were male or children.

As such, it was to be expected that some of the two races would begin to pair off. The result was to be expected, if surprising, at least for the elves.

The noble elves explained to us at length and repeatedly that while we appeared similar, it was unlikely we could produce mixed offspring. Despite that, within our first year on the new world, the first mixed-bloods were born.

The differences between pure-blooded humans and half-elves were apparent from birth. Their ears were four inches long and tapered upwards and back to a point. Their features were sharper and more refined than humans. But the biggest surprise happened a couple years later when the mixed-blooded children could destroy a room and everything in it with their minds as they screamed for attention.

Leading to the second major surprise our budding society encountered. The human parents of the half-bloods could not take care of their own children, and even the elven parents struggled, as they said the children were too strong for their mediocre mental talents to deal with. It was a fact many screamed and raged at, but in the end, none could deny it. In fact, many a parent could be found looking at their child with fear and shame.

It was to be expected.

The elves told us that they, and by extension, their children, could feel emotions when they chose to or lost control. And the strongest could even read minds. In the early days, the cries of children never stopped. How could they? The infants could feel their parent's annoyance, fear, and self-loathing mutating into hatred.

We mundanes can do very little to prevent our emotions from being felt. The mental focus and force of will it takes to learn and practice the technique to shield one's mind is not common, as it requires constant dedication and practice that few can muster the discipline for.

In that regard, I have reached some degree of achievement, as I can now block even an active attempt to read my mind, but I am the exception. An exception at the end of decades of effort. Most could not — or did not want to — take even the first step on that path, and I find myself alone in more ways than one.

More than the reading of minds — and the ruined relationships as the children grew in age — the real tragedy was the children who killed their parents. Adults who were tossed into a corner where they broke their necks from the impact or had random nicknacks and furniture smashed into their chests or heads, cracking skulls and puncturing organs.

We of the first generation had no way to deal with such things.

So again, we relied on the elves. Those who could control and teach our children in our stead.

The elves taught the children well. More than we could have believed or hoped for. However, the cost was that the children were taken until they gained partial control of their powers. The elves said it was just too dangerous to do otherwise.

When the children came back years later at the age of ten, they had finally been judged competent enough to reintegrate with us. And they were quickly filled with contempt.

It was not new, and I am not discussing youths' prerogative to rebel against their elders. We all heard of the stories from the few parents who still visited their children regularly. Those who tried to accept their children despite their near insurmountable differences because of parental love.

No amount of love could change the young's pity, at best, or their disdain, at worst, for us. A disdain that was justified because they were better than us, even if few adults wanted to hear that about children. They were stronger, faster, smarter, and had abilities we could only dream of. Truthfully, there was much to be scorned in their eyes as they looked upon us.

From the moment the children returned, the difference between the families of those with the gifted and those without was as stark as light and day. Because of that, the political dynamics of Olimpia changed overnight.

Power ruled. That is an incontrovertible law. It has always been, and always will be, the way of the world.

Acrillious Trogan, who elevated himself Emperor of this lone city-state with double deals, sweet talk, and bribes, suddenly found that the children of hundreds of nothing families suddenly threatened his power. For one of them could, and have, kill hundreds of the ungifted.

Families with no more claim to fame than the number of children they popped out suddenly found themselves with military and political capital. The kind of capital that kings and emperors originate from as cities burn in their wake. With this realization, the so-called ruler was pushed from power, and a Senate of the most prominent families of the moment took his place as no one person could hold onto authority for long.

However, while everyone was jockeying for position under the sky, a far more barbaric practice was going on behind closed doors. How could we be given the ability to enhance our children, and thus our own authority, in ways beyond imagination and not seize it with both hands?

As such, we began breeding for strong children.

We sought out which percentage of mixed blood would produce the best results. To produce the most effective and talented children in the mental branches of Control, Telekinesis, and Telepathy. Every family of note was frantically searching for a reliable path to power.

Decades passed, and the breeding of our children only grew in scope. Our population nearly doubled overnight as every man — and most women — of age tried to find an elf willing, and in many cases not so willing, to bear them children. It was only natural. What parents want to intentionally handicap their child from birth? To face the growing discrimination against those who were, without a doubt, lesser.

The parents of the mundane, ungifted children might as well chop off their children's arms for how the other kids will see and treat them. It was a sentiment that only grew as the years passed, and the portion of the population in Olimpia without mental powers continued to fall.

It was quickly discovered that the difference between half-humans and full elves was stark. The mixed-bloods came out on top when flinging around raw telekinetic and telepathic powers. If too much elven blood was mixed in, the children would drift towards the elves' specialty, that of control and willpower.

But control took decades to learn for most, and developing willpower took a lifetime full of struggle to build. Years upon decades would need to be spent studying, practicing, and honing skills. A timeline few were happy with.

Having the natural raw power to overwhelm everything in your path is inherent, and it takes little more skill than learning how to use it. It was a given that those with outstanding control of their mental powers could fight back against those with stronger raw power than them, but it required a baseline of strength. Once a sufficient gap in strength existed, no amount of skill could close it.

A falling tree will not be stopped by a bush less than a tenth its size. So, the leading families made the easy choice. Logical even in their eyes. Why compete with people with a millennium of experience honing and developing their skills? The families bred for raw power.

And the elves helped every step of the way.

Willing young elves were practically offered up to us humans — though by that point, most of us weren't really the humans that first arrived in this world — on gold platters. Those in the leading families had harems of females — elves and humans alike — in the hundreds, all pregnant, as they searched for the strongest child. Little competitions and events began happening regularly, showing off the talent of future generations as our city's political leaders struggled to show off the strength they would soon have.

And yet, for all our strides for greatness, our supposed advancements, we forgot our origins. We ignored what this world had demanded from us in order to walk upon its hollowed ground.

During those years and decades of breeding, the legion that all of the first generation were a part of in some way and why we were here in the first place had been left behind and forgotten. Retired to rot in stagnation and uselessness.

When we first arrived, there was no use for a legion and no way to support it, not with the elves so nearby and willing to support us. What supplies would we have to support a campaign when we were struggling to feed ourselves without the elves' continued support?

Where would we even go in a campaign? To fight beings closer to gods than anything anyone had ever witnessed? Or confront mindlessly savage beasts that would fight until their last breath? How could we afford the cost of life when a campaign failed and we lost the legion? There were so many reasons to simply ignore the outer world and live quietly within our walls.

The elves gave us everything we could ever want. They told us where to find metal ore. Gave us seeds and better farming methods than we dared to believe. Livestock for slaughter and rearing were driven into our arms. But most of all, they gave us time.

Time to build the foundation of a future civilization.

I always wondered — and it was not until my twilight years that I understood, or should I say remembered — why we turned on the elves. Why they let us defame and persecute them. Like all of my life, I remember the day the whispers started.

From one day to the next, people started muttering in the shadows about conquering the elves. Yet they never explained — or even mentioned — how a city of barely eighty thousand, mostly made up of half-elf children and young adults accompanied by the many elven women required to have said population, could do such a thing.

How could we dream of conquering a nation of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of elves? Elves that were capable of ripping the world apart.

As the voices calling for conquest cumulated, becoming the loudest they had ever been, they vanished under the screams of the dying and desperate. Suddenly, no one cared about the mutters of human supremacy when we were fighting for survival.

On that night, we enjoyed a typical evening with our friends and families, only to wake up to the Red Dawn. It was a bloody morning that redefined our city and set us on the path the elves had laid out before us, but how could we know at the time?

A beastman hoard tore through the streets of Olimpia, staining the streets crimson with the blood of innocence that seeped into our souls and set us aflame with rage. We wanted vengeance. We needed blood.

The monsters from our past had returned, and the legion, so long neglected, became the center of our society once more. From one morning to the next, our city's priorities shifted from a growing internal power struggle to unity. Everyone called for war.

Gender, social rank, or age did not matter. Every person who was able to fight or contribute to the legion did so. It was not a matter of want. Though many called for immediate action, they were not the reason the families dove headlong into war.

After the Red Dawn, our city and the surrounding area were under a near-constant assault. There was no street without one or two manned barricades blocking them. And it became common to wake up to the sounds of distant — or not-so-distant — fighting and the smell of fire and blood as we rushed to reinforce and build walls around the expanded city outskirts that we had neglected the defense of for so long.

And for the first time anyone could remember, we begged the elves for help, and they refused. They said they were busy dealing with hoards of beastmen in the hundreds of thousands far to the north and west. They informed us we were dealing with the remnants and needed to handle them on our own.

We could only accept and acknowledge that we had to rely on ourselves to survive. For many, it was a bitter pill to swallow. A seed that planted resentment deep inside their hearts as they instantly forgot the last decades.

The problem was we were not prepared to stand on our own. Only a few of the first generation that commanded troops in battle were still alive. And of those still puttering about, most were in no condition to go anywhere beyond their living room.

Regardless of how old and infirm those of the First Generation were, they were incomparably better than the filth that saturated the rotting corpse of the 9th turned 1st Legion.

The 1st had become a civic legion that was greatly diminished shortly after we founded the city, as they were needed to do little more than patrol and keep public order. Given such power and no purpose, they became a cesspit of drunken bullies steeped in corruption and incompetence.

When the monsters invaded, and it was their time to step up, the supposed legion fled, hiding from their duty. Average citizens were left to defend themselves with whatever they had at hand as they struggled to build fortifications under the command of whoever decided to step up.

All of which needed to be done under the pressure of the relentless beasts throwing themselves at the barricades and trenches as they were killed by the scores. Until ramps of the dead took them up to and over our defenses, and we were forced to make a fighting retreat.

But we still struggled. We fought, for we would not easily accept our deaths. Old legionaries, once-thought relics of the past left to be forgotten in dark rooms, could be seen in squares and auditoriums teaching the young how to fight as legionaries in formation.

Even as the young learned from the old, they adapted the teachings to themselves. Because the descendants were not limited to the same constraints as the First Generation.

The young created harnesses to lighten their weight and allowed them to pull themselves out of danger. They practiced reinforcing their shield and weapons with their powers, making them heavier and lighter as the situation demanded. And with the help of the city's elves, they created the Unity of Mind for our legions.

Simply put, the Unity of Mind was a mass telepathic linking. It was a melding of every mind and thought within a legion. It allowed a legionary with their back turned to a foe to dodge the slash of a beastman's claws, as another legionary could see the attack for them. The Union installed a level of coordination unmatched by any legion ever formed and provided the edge we required to beat back our foes.

Thanks to all of our efforts, we quickly solidified our defensive position within Olimpia. The walls surrounding our city became higher and higher with the aid of mental castings performing most of the labor. Once it was agreed the wall was high enough, we built a few more rings of walls around the city just in case.

Then, we expanded.

For the first time in over three decades, a legion marched across this land. We didn't go far, mainly because we couldn't go far, though that did not diminish the achievement or the moment. However, we had to do something as we were a city with mouths to feed. And every week, our connection and supplies the elves sent us increasingly became more tenuous as the beasts poured into the area.

No, we barely marched a mile from Olimpia. Then, we set about building walls and earthworks around our fields of wheat and orchards. The prevailing thought was that we needed to protect our food supply. It was a mistake for which the new 1st Legion was almost destroyed for making.

Like the tide was coming in, waves of beastmen were drawn to the legion's position like moths to a flame. They were too tempted by the smell of our flesh to avoid a prepared force, or they just didn't care.

Countless times, the 1st Legion beat the beastmen back at the cost of their lives. Those who survived became better at fighting with every blood-stained and corpse-strewn step, but the fields and orchards became increasingly destroyed every day as the battles grew in intensity.

Within a week, there was little left to protect, but with the failure, an idea was birthed. The Senate decided to play into the beast's instincts. The legion marched miles northwest of Olimpia, camping on the banks of the Lolouk River.

With the ample supply of stone in the area, we rushed to construct a fort. At the same time, a massive fire was erected at the fort's heart, where the bodies of the dead were constantly burned as we acted as bait for the beastmen's hoards.

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