Olimpia

"What?" I asked, feeling somewhat confused by the common motivation, but I kind of understood at the same time. An unfortunate reality of the world was that many military decisions were made by senators and nobles driven by political incentives and not military realities, but this was something else. It was worse than treason because she was betraying more than whatever nation the beastkin had formed. She was betraying her very race.

Kanieta shook her head, giving a meaningful look at our surroundings, then motioned to the side, signaling me to follow. We went down the rise back towards the barrier, where we settled down in a small thicket of trees.

I turned to her, opening my mouth to whisper, when Kanieta's arm snapped out, her hand clamping down over my lips. Following the arm, I found that she was looking to the side, and her ears were shifting and twitching as if tracking something. I couldn't see anything within the shadows and silvery light of the forest lit by the moon, and all I could hear was the distant sounds of a camp, but something was obviously wrong. And I was missing it.

Without warning, she spun in my direction, where she pushed me to the ground with surprising strength before leaping over me, a growl bubbling out of her throat. I moved to get up and draw my blade, but her tails fell over my body, causing me to stop in surprise as they covered my upper torso, though I could not feel their softness through my shield.

A pity… I was surprised by the sudden thought. Though I was more surprised by the fact one of my hands was reaching up to stroke a tail, then again, Kanieta's tails were really soft.

"Show yourself." Kanieta called into the darkness, "I know you're out there." At the same time she spoke, she turned her body as if she was looking around. However, it was all an act, as the movement allowed her to stomp her foot down onto my wrist, which I was moving into position to lever myself up.

With her weight locking my arm in place, I finally got her unstated point and stopped trying to move. Instead, I shifted my casting to completely sealing off my body shield. Even with a full body shield like I had when moving through enemy territory, the ears and nose were left partially uncovered. Have to have some way to breathe and hear, after all.

However, it is possible to cover those openings for a short time. The problem was that you wouldn't be able to hear, and it would take most of my attention to get barely enough air to stay conscious.

I closed my eyes and tried calming my heartbeat with slow, deep breathing and positive thoughts. There is nothing I can do to change the situation. It is what it is, and Kanieta would deal with it or not. My help will only get us killed. I continually reminded myself to stay motionless like it was my mantra, as I really didn't like what I was doing.

One of the techniques taught to scouts was air bleeding in a total body shield. The first step required the forming of a box to trap the air with a tendril. With it sealed off, you create a small hole and shrink the box to funnel the air into your mouth and nose as you inhale. After getting whatever meager relief you can from the partial breath, you funnel the exhaled air into another two-part chamber you keep next to your body before repeating the process.

Air bleeding is the most advanced technique required of a scout and not something that can be done over the long term. The only way to ensure you get a full breath is to form multiple air chambers and combine them, pressurizing the air as you collect it. Breathing in such air will almost always lead to injury to the one doing it, not to mention the requirements of will and mental energy you would need to create multiple small or one large box. Putting aside the fact that doing either would increase the chances of being noticed, the real question was why someone with that level of mental energy was in the scout cohort?

What it came down to was that we scouts had to focus past the feeling of suffocating while keeping multiple castings going simultaneously. It was the most challenging thing we scouts had to learn, and it was far more complicated than it sounded. And it sounded like torture.

To graduate, we only had to hold the workings for a minute during training. A single nightmare-inducing… minute. However, many found out that they were capable of doing it longer than a minute when they were being hunted like I currently was.

Stay calm. Collect the air and breathe it in.

Calm, just be patient. Breathe out and collect the air.

It will be over soon. Take one breath after another. I continued to process the air. Slowly and methodically, focusing on the process.

Lay here, paiten— shit! "Haa!" Trying to keep my body still, I coughed, hacking out the hair I had sucked in. I hardly even made it ten seconds.

I only coughed a few times and moved slightly, but it completely destroyed the balance I was trying to keep. My heart started pounding out of my chest and pumping in my ears as I struggled to fight against the all-consuming need to suck in all the air I could get. Air that I knew was only a thought away.

Once my coughing died down to the point I could control it, I cracked open my shell for my nose and ears and sucked in a breath of air as slowly as I could… Which turned out to be not particularly slow. Or quiet. But it went unnoticed, and that was all that mattered.

"—here, Fox." Said a guttural male voice that had the same drawn-out accent as Kanieta, "This is our operation and the Crescent Moon Faction's territory. You belong on the other side of the river, and your very presence can be taken as a challenge…" his voice dropped into a snarl at the end, and two more snarls joined him.

"Get off your high perch, Helgu," Sighed Kanieta, "We both know that we have found plenty of… 'lost' members of your faction wandering around our claimed territory. I simply arrive here by tracking the trail of the most recent one who got lost to see where he came from. You know, just to ensure they weren't from the Olimpians or Letairry. When I came across this camp, I just had to—

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"Lies! We didn't send any tonigh—" the guttural speaker cut off his words, and there was an awkward silence hanging in the air.

"So~," Kanieta said, in a satisfied tone, "You admit that you sent the others?"

"…I admit nothing, Fox! And for all anyone kn—" This time, he cut off his words, and a loud sniffing noise could be heard. "What… Is… That… It almost smells… li—

I was staring up at the star-speckled night sky, and the voices were to my right, on the other side of the bush I was lying next to. Kanieta was nowhere in sight, not that it would have mattered at this point. Once the beastkin started sniffing, I knew that he had scented me.

Lifting my legs to my chest and rolling towards my head, I rapidly extended my body and kicked out with my feet. My body was thrown off the ground with the force of my kick, and I started to rotate in the air. Landing on the balls of my feet in a crouch, hand on my sword's hilt, I twisted my body as I drew my sword. I then extended my right arm in a thrust toward the sniffing as I plunged through the bush between us, a tendril assisting my movements.

With my speed and the obstacles in my way, I only had a fraction of a second to correct my aim when I saw my mistake. My blade was far too low. I tried to angle my gladius higher when I saw the hulking figure I was moving towards, but it only changed by a few inches before my short sword stopped. At the end of my sudden attack, my blade was pushing into the sternum of a massive wolven beastkin, my body was half supported by the bush, and I was looking up at him in his enraged glowing eyes.

My eyes flicked down to my sword, which had been stopped cold a hand's width from his robes before returning to his face. "Well… shit." I sighed, then flashed the beastkin a smile, "How would you like to resta— Ahh~!"

I closed my eyes as I let out a scream and flinched back, expecting a sudden death. After a moment, I opened my eyes when I didn't feel a spear of ice through my body. The spear — that had formed above the beastkin's shoulder and shot at me in a fraction of a second — was hanging in the air inches from my eye, a leash of… darkness… tied around its middle.

Not questioning its appearance or existence, I studied the patch of blackness that had more to it than a simple lack of light. It was an impassable shadow that the dim moonlight could do nothing against. Its edges were blurry with many twisting, irregular peaks that were bleeding away to nothing as if they were simply smoke. Following the rope of shadow, I saw it tied to one of Kanieta's tails.

Her other three tails each had another strand of shadow stabbing out from the tips. While the shadow strand holding onto the shard of ice looked vague and soft, almost sticky to me, the others were… condensed. I wanted to avoid going right ahead and classifying what I could only describe as shadow tendrils in one category or another. After all, who am I to judge such things?

My whole experience with physical shadows was seeing one gaseous stream of shadow and three shimmering bars. Not much to draw on. That would be in typical situations like friends showing off something new in front of each other. With the three hard rods sticking through the chests of the other beastkin, I was confident in judging that it was hard as steel. After all, my blade didn't do shit, so it has to be stronger than that, right?

As a counterpoint, I was pretty sure darkness was, you know, where light isn't. I'm not a scholar or anything, but I'm sure there was no substance there. I was sure, at least.

"That's interesting," I said with wide eyes, looking at the bodies surrounding Kanieta held up with her power. Her raw power.

"For you, maybe," She replied in a superior tone, turning her head to look at me, something dancing in her eyes. "Let's go."

Her tails flicked to the sides, and the bodies flew through the air, hitting the ground with loud thumps. The shard of ice went in another direction, vanishing into the dark forest. Without another word, she took off at a run.

I looked at the bodies and the casual display of power she just showed in killing them. My attack wasn't that great. Okay, it was pretty shit, but I still couldn't even touch his armor with my whole weight assisted by a tendril… Don't make her mad. Yep. Got it. I thought to myself before turning to race after her.

We arrived at the fuzzy 'illusion' wall within a minute of moving at a run. Kanieta was already crouched beside it, twitching her fingers and shifting her hands around. Instead of the dozen minutes that it took to get in here, she was barely crouched down for thirty seconds before reaching forward with one hand and dropping a rock onto the plate.

The next moment, she was through the opening, her tails trailing straight out behind her as she ran. Not waiting for an invitation, I jumped through the hole after her. It was a good thing that I did because the sides were closing even as I was passing through the passageway.

From the falls of our feet, I could tell her silence spell was already up, so I retracted my shield as I followed in her footsteps. Pumping my arms and legs, I sped forward, assisted by a tendril making me lighter, as I tried to catch up to the beastkin.

My efforts could not have mattered less in surpassing Kanieta, as I never closed those last two steps. However, any time I sped up, she would keep that new pace, forcing me to keep it up if I wanted to be covered by her power. That was what I assumed as I continued to run, not that she so much as looked over her shoulders to check on me, let alone speak.

We ran like that for over an hour before she veered off to the side, entering a clump of trees. Following her, I stumbled to a stop and slumped against a tree as I breathed heavily, wiping off some sweat on my forehead.

Kanieta was sitting on the ground, drinking from a waterskin she got from somewhere, her tails splayed out to her sides before curling towards her back. Based on her appearance, I would have guessed that she had been doing anything other than running for the last hour.

"So…" I gasped, elegantly starting the conversation, "…politics?"

Sighing, she shrugged and said, "The Crescent Moon faction is currently in command of this battle… for reasons. They want to kill all Olimpians. If they succeed here, they will have the credibility to continue to pursue their goals of conquest with the backing of the other clans and factions. My Redtail faction wishes to prevent that."

"Why? Our people have been enemies for thousands of years. Longer than we have recorded history. Killing each other is… expected. Normal even. By the Ancestor! Why are you even telling me this?"

"Does it matter if I tell you these small… morsels of information? It will change nothing. And they might begin to let your people understand what you're dealing with… Besides, you're not our only enemy… or even our worst. And I would prefer you not be our enemy at all." The last bit was added in a whisper, and I wasn't sure I was supposed to hear it.

"You mean the Imperium? I know they enslave beastkin… shit. They enslave elves and humans. But unless you wanna form an alliance, we're not getting rid of them any time soon." I threw it out there as an offhanded comment, but I watched to see her reaction.

All I got was a shake of her head as she looked away as if all of this was suddenly too much of a bother as her ears started twitching. Her demeanor changed suddenly as she turned and pointed, "The edge of the forest is that way. Report what you saw to your people."

"…Okay," I said with a nod of the head. "How am I—

Before I could react or finish my sentence, the shadows around Kanieta reached out for her, enveloping her in a sphere. The writhing shadow dome then dropped to the ground, rolling out along it like a wave, revealing an empty space. "…Huh. Guess we won't be in touch then."