Olimpia

The night had been entirely upon us for hours now as we silently passed under the boughs of the Northern Forest. The thing was, the forest was still eerily quiet. Part of it was me running beside Kanieta and her… silence spell. She didn't tell me its name, but, really… what else could it be called?

The spell blocked not only the sound we make but also anything around us from reaching our ears. So, being next to her would inherently mean the forest was eerily quiet. But! And this was an important but. I have gone to the edge of the spell several times as I spotted an open patch of ground I could pass on without making a racket, and the forest sounded dead except for the ominous swaying of the trees.

Something was happening, and the entire forest could feel it, so the animals had taken the prudent actions of either running away or staying in their homes, hoping it would pass them by. And I'm the idiot running towards it. I mentally grumped to myself.

When… Kanta? No… Kanieta, yeah, that was it. When Kanieta came to a stop after hours of running, I silently dropped low and scanned the area around us, waiting for her to do something. Which wasn't the easiest thing. She stopped abruptly, and I was ready for action, with adrenalin pumping through me.

Nothing happened for the long seconds I scanned the forest, my senses screaming at me that something was out there and I had to search for it. Eventually, I realized the beastkin wasn't preparing for an attack but looking at something on the ground near her feet.

Heart pounding in my chest, I took some deep breaths, trying to calm down my twitching nerves as I shuffled over to crouch next to her and see what she was looking at. When I could look over her shoulder, all I saw was a patch of dirt with a few stones on it. Gathering my will, I sent out a weak pulse to see what I was missing.

Whirling around, Kanieta grabbed my wrist and looked up at me with intense eyes, "Don't do that!" She harshly hissed, her eyes darting to the side. "The barrier will react to your pulses and alert those inside if it's too strong." I nodded and raised my other hand, signaling I was stepping back and just watching. Even though I had no idea what she was talking about, as she needed to learn some better communication skills. This was, after all, her show, and I was just supposed to be a good silent observer.

She gave a huff of unjustified annoyance as she turned and started poking at the ground again. Minutes passed as I waited, trying to stay calm and relaxed as I shifted on my feet, watching the surrounding bushes and trees for anything approaching with the moon's light.

Then I saw Kanieta pull back sharply with her arms, throwing them wide from the corner of my eye. Looking over to see what she was doing, I furrowed my brow in confused surprise. A three-foot-long and one-foot-wide granite plate was lying on the ground before the woman. It wasn't there before, right? Yeah… Umm, ok. It wasn't there before, but now it is… Yep. That makes sense…

"The fuck that come from?" I asked.

"It was there the whole time. It was just covered by an illusion I shifted to avoid it." Kanieta responded, pride filling her voice. What surprised me more than hearing they had real illusions was that she decided to answer me, as I just expected her to ignore me like usual. However, she did seem to be looking for someone to show off to, so I might as well be that person.

"Illusion?" I asked, hoping that she would explain further.

"It's a warping and rearranging of light to show what we want to be seen, though most do little more than blur an object. Usually, an illusion is supported with other spells to make you subconsciously avoid studying the illusion." She explained.

I frowned, looking at the slab of rock and then at the encircling forest. Slowly, I turned in place, focusing my mind inward while searching for the slightest ripple in the air. Eventually, I stopped as I spotted and felt something.

I was looking at the part of the forest past Kanieta and the stone plate. When I faced that way, there was an ever so slight urging to stop looking in that direction as if it were an irritating itch on my eyes. Also, I felt slightly uneasy, like something would attack me from behind, and I needed to search for it. It explained why I was feeling so anxious, waiting behind the beastkin as she did whatever she was doing.

I was just marking it up to being out here surrounded by enemies. But I had been in enemy territory dozens of times before and hadn't felt this anxious since I first became a scout. Now that I was aware of and noticed the mental influence, I could block the intrusive feelings with a simple thought and flex of my willpower.

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Taking up a position behind Kanieta, I calmly watched her hands hover above the intricately carved stone plate with gems inlaid in it. Sometimes, her fingers would twitch, or her hands would occasionally move to the side, up or down.

I had no idea what she was doing, and even if I used all of my powers to try and sense what she was doing, I doubted I would get anything more than something was happening. Within a minute of me settling in to wait, Kanieta gave a grunt of satisfaction as she dropped a rock onto the plate, and the forest in front of us was pulled apart.

Literally. What looked like the forest was pulled to the sides as if it were a curtain to form a ragged triangle with multi-colored shimmering edges seven feet tall on the sides and four wide on the ground. Head shifting towards me slightly, she spoke, "Hurry up and move through. Don't touch the sides or the plate."

Immediately moving forward after her words, I stepped around her right side and then took two quick hops forward before diving through the hole. It seemed like the easiest and fastest way to get through.

Turning my dive into a roll, I popped to my feet with my bow raised and half-drawn, looking for enemies. All there was to be seen or heard was a quiet giggling behind me, no enemies in sight. "That was… dramatic." The mocking words caused my ears to redden, and I lowered my weapon and put my arrow back as I turned around.

She was crouched down, ensuring she was clear of the edges, then stepped forward calmly before turning around and grabbing the rock. The shimmering wall didn't snap shut like I expected. Instead, it slowly closed, leaving Kanieta plenty of time to pull back her arm.

With the gap shut, I was left looking at… I really couldn't say. I would guess a forest, but that was because I came from the other side and knew it was there. All I could say for sure from looking at this side of the veil was that there were fuzzy blobs on the other side that could be anything.

"Hey!" looking to the side, I saw an annoyed Kanieta twenty feet away, waving for me to join her. I entered the clump of bushes she was crouched in, crawling up next to her.

She leaned close to me, putting her lips right next to my ears and whispering, "From here on out, don't use any bursts of energy. They will detect anything but the most controlled usages of psy." If I hadn't already been there, her words would have brought me to my highest level of alertness and readiness, but as it was, I only nodded as my eyes constantly roved the nearby area.

"Can I use tendrils and a body shield?" I asked, moving my head to her ear to whisper into it, though speaking into her hair was somewhat weird.

"It should be fine," she replied, and I immediately covered my whole body except for small spots in my ears and nose instead of just my legs, as I was doing when we traveled.

After a few seconds of the shield covering me, she suddenly leaned forward and sniffed at the air around me. Then gave me a nod of approval. Kanieta looked at me for a moment, and I felt something brush against my shield as she mouthed the word, 'Ready?'

I gave her a thumbs up, and she silently turned and started moving through the forest. This wasn't the absolute silence of her spell. No, this was pure skill. Her body glided around the obstacles of the forest, sliding past the reaching branches and snaring roots. Her feet rolled her weight across the leaves, and twigs scattered over the ground, leaving them undisturbed in her wake.

I followed behind her, using all my skills to keep up the quick walking pace Kanieta set for long minutes. I was mainly focused on moving, but a part of my mind never stopped sweeping the forest with my eyes. Looking for anything of potential danger or what I was supposed to see. And hopefully, something I wasn't supposed to.

At first, I saw nothing but more forest. Finally, the scenery started to change as the bottom of the valley we were moving along started to widen, and we turned to climb a nearby slope. With the elevation, I began catching flashes of firelight through the trees off to the northwest. More of those flashes appeared until we topped the rise, and I looked down at a valley filled with campfires.

Campfires that lit the walls of a stone fort. A fort securing this side of a bridge that arched over the Rush. A bridge that, even now, had troops marching over it using the moonlight to see, as I saw no other light source. At that moment, I felt my stomach fall to my feet. On the other side of the river, I could see so many campfires that they dwarfed those on this side several times over. We're going to be overwh—

Looking down, I saw Kanieta tugging on my arm and shaking her head. Leaning down, I heard the slightest of whispers, "Not that." She turned me to the side, and I followed her along the outside edge of the slight rise from the fort until we were a couple hundred yards from the river.

When we stopped, we got a clear view of the Rush, where Kanieta turned and pointed at a large natural cove. Staying in a crouch, I moved over to her and looked down. At first, I didn't know what I was looking at.

The cove was lit up with a few fires burning on the beach, with beastkin moving around the sand carrying wood planks to large rafts I would almost call barges beached on the shore. Most of the wood was being gathered on the decks, and they were constructing something in the centers of the decks. But I just didn—

"Oh, shit…" I whispered in horror. It was fucking genius. Taking advantage of a flaw that, until now, had no reason to even be considered to be a weakness. The beastkin had built barges with towers on them. Towers, I suspected, that were tall enough to connect to the bridges spanning the river between the forts of the Triad. If we were drawn to the battlements and they showed up with those, cutting us in half, we wouldn't stand a chance…

Turning to Kanieta, I said one word, "Why." She was undermining a battle plan that was as close to a guaranteed victory for her people as a battle plan could be.

She replied in turn with a single word that was more of a sigh of resentment than anything else, "Politics."