Olimpia

Excerpt From Musings on Olimpian Society by Lurell Flenk—

There is one question I believe must be asked about our society, regardless of whether you take the position of an insider looking out or an outsider looking in. This question must be asked if you are to have any credibility in your writings on our society.

The question is simple.

Why do the elves exist as a faction?

If faction can even be considered the right word.

We could massacre them, enacting a complete genocide, and there are many who advocate for this. It would take decades, and the losses would be high, but we could do it.

Or we can go the way of the Imperium and enslave all elves for the Great Betrayal of their ancestors. This course of action is in the minority, but you will still hear it occasionally. Not that it will ever catch on.

Too many people desire the moral high ground when talking about the Imperium. Or they simply have a distaste for doing anything the Imperium has done, not wanting anyone to say they copied their opinions. At no point will the objections concern the elves and what they wish.

Yet, the elves are little more than slaves, regardless of their supposed legal standing. But they never run into their Great Forest, where we would never find them.

The only real freedom an elf has is in the Legion, where more often than not, they are marched off to the border legions to die on the front lines.

Not once in our history have they, as a community, shown a sign of rebelling. And the few cases of an individual elf rebelling can be traced back to a family making a power play.

And most of all, no matter how outspoken crowds become as they shout for the blood of elves and all the wrongs they supposedly wrought, how often has anyone ever seen an elf beaten to death? Or even physically abused?

**********

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

Holding the strain for as long as she could, she relaxed her body, and nearly instantly started shivering from the cold again. Only the constant tension of her jaw kept it clamped shut, stopping her teeth from chattering.

There was a real concern in the back of her mind about her focus slipping and biting down on her tongue and taking off a piece when she closed it again, but the noise could get them killed.

Centurion Markus was right. The beastkin might have night vision, but with the cloud cover, their vision wasn't good enough to see across the river. But they could pick up the clacking of teeth on this eerily quiet night.

A fact Sathera and the others quickly figured out.

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

Void, take that fish, Sathera groaned in her mind.

A little way upstream, Sathera heard the um mistakable splash of a fish jumping out of the water. Or to the beastkin, one of them hitting the water…

Closing her eyes, she waited, not surprised, when a mental message entered her mind. "Flatten out, don't make any noise," Celeste said. Tired acknowledgments filled the mental network, and the slight noise of objects slipping into the water could be heard.

Three seconds later, the plops and plunks of rocks falling into the river sounded. Except they were deeper than the pebbles children throw into a puddle, as these rocks had more in common with boulders.

A fire sparked to life on the bank of the Northern side of the river, streaking over the water while casting its flickering light on the rippling surface.

"Down!" Came Celeste's command, ripping through their minds.

Everyone on the raft was already lying partially submerged, but they tried to will themselves to sink deeper into the lapping water and slip between the logs. Chests were sucked in, and ears were filled with cold water as they were lowered below the river's surface.

It was not the first time everyone on the raft had done this, and they doubted it would be the last.

Adrenalin filled Sathera's body, and she pulled Instructor Green closer, pressing down on his body with her wrinkled hands and arm.

All she could do was wait with her heart caught in her chest. Waiting, hoping… Fearing.

As the light of the fireball arched over the approximate location of the splash, it stopped and hung in the air. This is why people hate fish… It's a worthless food!

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

"Get up and shield us." Ordered a weary Celeste, not even bothering to send a mental message to Sathera and Bellous. Everyone knew who she was talking to, and there was no more point in trying to hide.

Everyone had a spark of hope that they wouldn't be spotted, but they had been through this enough by now to know they would be.

If the ball of fire hanging over the center of the river was farther away, they could have stayed hidden in the flickering shadows playing across the river.

Probably. Shadows were tricky things.

As the night first settled over them, they quickly learned not to pull the raft forward. The extra speed made their wake too obvious.

A ball of fire thrown into the air a hundred yards away could be traced back to them. Not to mention the sound of water beating against the raft’s… prow.

It might not sound like much, and neither did teeth clicking together, but the ears of the beastkin had proven sharp enough to pick out the noises.

Or close enough that they could throw a fireball and reveal them.

Celeste and Gruth were mentally exhausted and bearly had enough psy together to keep the Union going. And the only reason they were still awake was that the mage on Celeste's side of the river disappeared right after Tirre was injured, letting her assist Gruth. The only other one who could do something was Centurion Markus, who was still unconscious, so it fell to Sathera and Bellous to act as a defense.

The fish and delirious Tirre tried to help, but it was a minor miracle that they stayed coherent enough to not be constantly screaming into the night air from uncontrolled fear.

This last day and night were pushing Sathera to her limits, and she had a decade of life serving in the legion. For fish that hadn't even completed basic training… these are ones to keep an eye on. Might make good scouts. She mused to herself, taking a moment to look at the… Legionaries.

She could feel their fear. It radiated off them in waves when cold exhaustion wasn't pulling them to their deaths. But they didn't let it control them.

Even now, their eyes were searching the night, looking for the slightly darker objects on the black backdrop of rumbling storm clouds. The help was needed.

With a groan of discomfort, Sathera got up to one knee, water running down her back in streams.

Before she made it up, she saw the bank of the river light up with a red-orange light, and she saw the person she currently hated the most in the world.

Between the outstretched hands of the beastkin, a ball of fire sparked into life over the course of several long seconds. Then, with the flick of a wrist, the ball sailed into the air, hanging above the raft, lighting it up like a bonfire was sitting in the raft's center, just without the warmth. Asshole…

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

Stopping when the ball of fire reached over her head, it stopped moving and hung in the air.

Over the course of their run through the day, they must have been attacked by half a dozen mages. Most of them threw oversized or fast-moving rocks. Sathera was pretty sure — but could not be entirely sure — that this bastard was the only one throwing fire around.

But out of all the mages, this one was the only one still attacking them. Well, not really attacking, but letting the other beastkin attack.

Sathera had no idea how hard it was to use their powers, but running to keep up with them while throwing those powers around for hours on end was impressive. Not that she would say that out loud.

They all could see the decrease in power of the spells over the course of the pursuit, and even looking at the fire, she could tell it was at a tenth of the intensity of before.

But that tenth was plenty bright enough to give the hundreds of beastkin stretched up and down the river the ability to throw semi-accurate rocks at them again.

Gathering the little amount of psy that was offered up to her, she scraped the few specs of psy in her own core and formed a shield. It was pathetic, really.

Nine inches in diameter and half an inch thick of loosely packed psy. Hardly enough willpower was injected into the casting to keep its form. The work of a child… she thought with scorn at her own work.

While the size of a psy casting is no real indication of how strong a casting is, the density and cohesion of a casting does.

Pack a bunch of psy into a casting; it can burn through the psy quickly to achieve its purpose. Fill a casting with your willpower, unifying and organizing every drop of psy, and a small amount of psy becomes far more efficient and capable than most would think.

Sathera lacked the willpower to compress and shape her psy properly.

If she was fresh, she could use the same amount of psy and block ten stones. Right now, she could block two or maybe three before her casting started falling apart.

She already knew that no one had anything else to give.

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

“…I know," Celeste said, sighing in resignation. "We're all tapped out."

Taking a moment to look over, Sathera saw Celeste leaving back on her elbows, looking up at the burning sky with an almost peaceful, tired look on her face.

She wasn't even doing her normal petty actions of kicking or splashing Green's unconscious body. She always said she was trying to wake him up, but they were in a mental link. Sathera could feel the petty pleasure she got every time she hit him.

But there was also something deeper. Whatever it was, Sathera had neither the time nor will to look for it.

"There." One of the fish said while sending a mental picture.

Acting without looking, Sathera moved her shield a foot behind and over her head to the left. A moment later, she felt the impact of the stone.

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

Sathera tried to throw the rock off the back of the raft, but all she could do was tilt her shield slightly after holding the large stone in place for long seconds.

The rock thunked onto the logs of the raft, causing it to shake slightly.

"Incoming!" Shouted another mental voice.

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

She felt a sprinkling of water from the splash of the rock but did not care to look or even wipe it off. What was a little more water at this point?

After changing the direction of the rock, she felt her casting shatter into nothing, as it could not take the impact. At the same time, she realized the mental network was collapsing, Celeste and Gruth finally running out of psy.

"Fucking bastard…" Sathera thought she heard as the backlash fully slammed into her mind knocking the breath out of her as she hunched forward.

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

Eyes snapping into focus, she watched a head-sized rock sailing across the water.

The longer she watched, the more confident she became the rock would hit her. But she did nothing, not even blinking as death approached. She could not even muster the emotion to care.

Then a delicate, blood stained hand reached past her and flicked its fingers, and the rock shattered into fragments.

Turning, she saw Green, eyes open and blood spots in his face, looking at her. He gave her a strained smile, his face bloodless, as it looked like all of the blood in his head was coming out of his nose.

He nodded at her, then his eyes shifted past her, and he said a single word that slowly worked its way into her mind.

Looking back at the shore, she saw figures clad in armor striding from the waters of the Rush.

Finally, the word spoken by Green coalesced in her mind, causing her lips to crack with a heartfelt smile. Finally, she whispered the hope-filled word half in prayer, “knights…"