Rise of the Omnimage

"Cadets! This is your examination brief. Each and every one of you with your teams will be inserted along strategic points that you will be required to defend by any means possible."

The academy senior announced.

"This exam comes in two parts. The first part is the individual team objective and your entire class objective of holding off creatures. There are a finite amount of creatures that must be stopped, killed, or redirected from the heart of the operation. Should the final defense fall, each team will lose a full 25% of their grade regardless of how exemplary you each performed."

Sorin and Linx watched from a distance as they shadowed Euryale and Cain. They had agreed to stay out of sight to give the image of a depleted team.

"Cadets, are there any questions?" The official asked. A few hands went up in the air and had minor questions about how or where they would be placed only to find out it was at random.

"Can we reinforce other points of defense?" Came a question. The official looked back and smiled.

"Yes. You absolutely can reinforce another's defense or even help with the final defense should it fall under attack. Bear in mind, forsaking your own objective and allowing it to fall to quickly will result in your failure."

The official answered a few more questions until a chime sounded.

"Cadets, take your teams and make your way to the hover skiffs for insertion.

Euryale turned and made her way in the indicated direction putting the final defense point danger signal she was given in her bag. Cain followed closely behind her on watch for any potential threats to her person.

"Where is the rest of your team Lady Aegis?" Came the expected annoying voice of Aeon Pallas.

Euryale turned and faced him. "It would seem your cowardly attack at the social wasn't the last of my misfortune. With my fox beastman down recovering another round of misfortune struck leading to the demise of another of my conscripts. Someone sent assassins after me. We killed them all, but at the cost of my human. "You would know anything about that would you?"

There was a twinkle in his eye, that didn't line up with his next words.

"Assassins?! Here in the academy?! The insanity and absurdity. Lady Aegis you must be seeing things from the stress. It was probably your own undisciplined conscripts fighting one another." Aeon said.

"That is is not what happened! I am not seeing things. What I said to you was the truth. I have the bodies and coins for the ferryman." She insisted.

"Oh yes, you lose a conscript, have another one attack a second then blame "assassins." Lady Aegis has your family's blood grown so thin over the years you must invent stories? What did the academy investigation turn up?" He asked.

Euryale balled up her fists in a look of outrage and made her face redden. This moron was eating it up and it was fine by her. Their plan was going better than she thought.

He laughed and began turning away before stopping and looking back. He did one obvious look at her up and down before licking his lips lightly.

"I look forward to our time together after the exam."

He laughed again then walked away.

Euryale shook her head and they made their way to her skiff marked with her family's colors and sat down. She looked around and saw dozens of other on their's waiting to take off. Including his....She kept an eye on his skiff continuing to look angry.

Then the command went out and they lifted off moving faster and fast over the terrain toward one of the many vast training areas maintained by the academy.

The other skiffs drifted down moving away bit by bit. Euryale noticed Aeon's skiff move south of her position closer to the final defense than her own position. She made a mental note the direction. Sorin's never ceasing mind might want that.

After a half hour the skiff came down next to a cobblestone bridge. "Lady Aegis, you are ordered to defend this bridge. No creatures must be permitted to make it across for the period of three days." The man on the skiff said.

As he spoke Euryale saw a buddle of canvas skiff covers move silently then two men hiding under it slunked away into the nearby trees. Carefully controlling her face, she nodded. The driver nodded turning to the pile of same covers. He pulled it back revealing a heavily loaded pack.

"This is your equipment for the exam." He said as Cain stepped forward to take it.

They disembarked and moved to the trees where they saw their othere two go. Once the skiff vanished from sight Linx and Sorin came out from their place of concealment.

Euryale couldn't help but smile.

- Sorin -

"That went well ma'am." He said from his concealed location. "

I am going to assume there will be passive measures of surveillance on you during this as it's what I would do if I were plotting against you." He continued.

Euryale nodded.

"The arrogant pig, knew exactly what had happened as was absolutely terrible at acting or just didn't care enough. He knew it wasn't going to be proven against him, which is fine."

Sorin went to the pack Cain was holding and helped him put it down to set it up in the trees hidden away, but still able to see the objective.

"Were either of you able to see how far away others were to our position?" Sorin asked.

Cain spoke up this time. "It seems everyone is surrounding us and are separated from us by three to five kilometers including Lord Aeon who is south of us by about three kilometers."

Sorin paused and looked up at him with the single most devilish grin that he or anyone had ever seen.

"Oh...this is great!" He said.

"I don't see how that's a good thing considering we can't use our entire team without giving up that information." Euryale said in an annoyed tone.

"Ma'am, if we think about it rigidly then it's bad, but now we go on the offense. We will be prepared to give up the information that Linx is back up. If I were him I'd suspect some sort of hidden information and trick, but I would hope at least one of my plans went through. Total failure at the lengths he went to would be suprising." He said.

She thought for a moment then smiled quite large. "You mean to attack him and sabotage him?"

"My skills are very well suited for this type of work and I can remain out of site. I need a little time to prepare leaving Linx and Cain here with you to build up the bridge. Cut down some of the trees and drag them over to the bridge to block it off forcing the creatures to go over where Cain and Linx can just post up on them and crush them with you ma'am running safety to clean up anything that gets passed them." Sorin said.

The team nodded.

"With your permission ma'am, I'd like to be autonomous for at most a day and a half?" Sorin asked.

She looked at him and smiled again.

"Granted and happy hunting."

Sorin took a couple steps then stopped. He reached into his pocket grabbed a collection of cores and walked back to Euryale.

"Oh ma'am, let it be known that an Ekart always pays up."

He gave the collection of beast cores to her then slinked off, leaving a very confused Euryale standing there.....then it hit her.

"Ooooh!" She exclaimed with an amused grin.