It was as if the world had been ripped open. An unending crackling, tearing screech boomed its way through the sky. For a timeless period, the night had endless rivers of blinding light, bringing an azure day to the dark world. Such an event might have been the latest episode, but it was not the first occurrence on this night.

Even after the light vanished, Kathren and everyone around her were subjected to the booming thunder for long seconds. Working her jaw, she wished she could rub her ears with her hands, as there was still a distant ringing that refused to go away. It was a distraction she did not need at the moment. Despite the blinding light and deafening sound, Kathren's shield never wavered.

"Straighten out the line! Fill in those gaps!" Ordered a centurion somewhere from behind her. After a while, he sent a message again. "Prepare to advance! Forward, step!" When the order came, Kathren acted in unison with the rest of the shield wall. Those on the front line of their formation stepped forward while thrusting out their shields, throwing the beastkins attacking the legionaries into their compatriots.

Beastkins, on average, were taller and broader than Olimpians by around a foot, with all the extra mass that size entailed. But weight mattered for nothing against the collective will of the legion. Everyone on the front line had a psy tendril extended from their forearm strapped to their shield and spread the casting across the entire back of its surface.

The movement of the shields was powered by psy and will more than their physical bodies, and with that one united pump, the front line of the formation had two feet of space. The moment of peace was brief, but Kathren couldn't help but enjoy the fresh air. The putrid scent of rotting meat the beastkins called breath was almost as mentally wearing on her as blocking their attacks.

Like they had practiced the motion a thousand times, Kathren and her shield mates stepped forward while spears stabbed over their shoulders and arrows rained down from above into the off-balance and vulnerable beastkins. While hurting your enemy was necessary, the spear thrusts were more for guaranteeing the beastkin couldn't stop their advance.

Planting their shields along their new line, Kathren stabbed over her shield with a shout, sinking her sword's tip into the shoulder of a snarling beastkin getting up. The beastkin's arm had dropped as he covered the weeping wound in his gut, leaving his upper body unprotected by his weapon.

As she attacked one of the staggered foes, she got a flash of his appearance. The beastkin had no inherently animalistic features like a muzzle, but his teeth were fanged and coated in crimson. His chest was bare except for the intricately patterned tattoos that covered it.

Letting out a whine of pain at her blow, the beastkin stopped cold in mid-swing of his club at the woman to her right, as not many want to swing an arm with an inch of steel in it. At her distraction, her shield mate lashed out with a short, savage slash, tearing out a chunk of the beastkins throat with a spray of blood. As the new beastkin corpse collapsed, a perfect gap through the beastkin's chaotic formation revealed itself to Kathren.

The first thing she saw was the battle raging on the bottom quarter of the bridge. From the trail of bodies, it was clear the legionaries were being steadily pushed further down its length. If she had to guess, it was only due to how stubborn the bastards stationed on the bridge were that the beastkins hadn't already managed to burst into the courtyard and then the Western Fort.

Even the two centuries stationed in the square to charge up the bridge in case the legionaries there needed support only had a fraction of their number still on their feet and ready to act. Not that all hope was lost, as a continuous stream of legionaries and militia were rushing through the square towards the bridge to help push the beastkins back, but it might be too little too late to stop the situation from spiraling.

The plan, as Kathren knew it, had gone to shit within moments of the beastkin appearing on the river. They had underestimated the beastkin's spells and were now paying for it.

Before the beastkins ever extended their stupidly long ladders from their absurdly tall towers built on a barge, their arrows claimed the lives of legionaries on the Middle Fort's walls. And then the beastkin— I mean, the fucking tower is seventy feet at a minimum, and the five-foot wide ladders are over a hundred feet. I might be uneducated, but I ain't stupid. How in the forsaken Elemental's names is that even stable! Kathren grumbled to herself as her mind flashed back to half an hour ago.

Before anyone could react to the attacks, a fist, a literal fist made of water, lifted into the air as everyone watched the advance outside the walls. This wasn't an 'Ohh~ look! Little Yarha formed a hollow tendril and lifted it over her head before it broke and soaked her,' fist of water.

Nah, this was two fists of a hundred-foot giant hanging dozens of feet over the walls of the Middle Fort as they extended from the river. Then, like eels, the fists snaked forward, slamming into the closed western and northern gates of the fort.

Jets of water filled the courtyard as the spells compressed water shot through the spear slits built into the two-foot-thick blocks making up the outer doors. The unlucky few standing near the stone doors found that out firsthand as the water cut them in half before scoring the walls. No matter how strong the fort's walls might be, they were no match for the combined weight of hundreds of tons of compressed water battering them in the span of a second. From one moment to the next, the stone doors, the latticed steel portcullis, and the surrounding stone of both gates were ripped from their millennia-old homes.

At that moment, Kathren happened to be quickly marching down the staircase and froze to watch the torrent of water collect and guide the remnants of the western and northern gates, piling them at the southern entrance and blocking it. Then, the tons of water comprising the fists broke apart and splashed down onto the bridges and fort. The flood of sloshing water washed away most of the legionaries hiding on the bridges, with only a few able to hang onto the drains and not be flushed out into the courtyards far below.

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Kathren had to admit that she kind of wished that she and the other legionaries gathered at the base of the stairs hadn't managed to stand firm against the raging water filling the fort and ended up sliding down the bridge with the rest. For one, it would have been quite the ride…

But the main reason was that the reality of their situation was grim. In one fell swoop, the beastkin had broken through the defenses of the Middle Fort and shattered the legion's trap.

Shoving her way through the huddled together legionaries, Kathren sloshed through the five inches of water covering the stone ground. In a matter of seconds, she arrived at where the western gate of the Middle Fort was firmly placed moments before, only slightly impeded by the receding water.

She arrived in time for what looked more like the trunk of large trees to slam into the bridge railing, bars of hooked metal falling forward and over the stone ledge. Moments after the 'ladder' appeared, pictures appeared in her mind of the barges below and the hundreds of beastkin swarming up the ladder.

In the ruins of the gate, Kathren drew her sword, planted her feet, and covered all but her armored shins with her shield. She watched the first clawed, shockingly human hands grab into the stone ledge, pulling their bodies onto the wet stone bridge.

Without any hesitation, the beastkin's head snapped toward Kathren. Before the beastkin could take more than two leaping strides toward her, three more of the creatures jumped onto the bridge behind him, running to catch up.

Kathren didn't waver, her steely eyes showing no hint of fear, only resolve. "On me!" she shouted, sending out her impatience and an image of the charging beastkin into the union.

Even with the shock of the situation, it was only seconds after the events transpired that centurions, optios, and the few tribunes around were shouting for their legionaries to form up and move to the gaps in the walls. Kathren's mental message only added a new level of urgency to their commands.

But urgency mattered little when people were packed into piles in the fort's corners. Some of who she could feel were in shock and unable to process the situation. Figuring out that mess took time.

Time they didn't have.

Kathren knew others were quickly approaching, those like her, who had managed to remain standing at the edges of the fort as the torrent of water smashed into them.

But they wouldn't make it to her before the first wave hit. While everyone in the fort with Kathren was a veteran, that was all. The limited number of knights in the 15th were being held in reserve in one of the other forts or some other more strategic location. Or so she assumed, as Kathren hadn't seen one around the Middle Fort all damn night. And without the physical capabilities of a knight to arrive nearly instantly, she was on her own.

When the beastkin took one more bounding leap, a leap that would cause him to slam his oversized club into her shield, she stepped forward. It was more than a step, though, as she pulled on her harness with a tendril, causing her movement to take her farther than any step should be able to do on slick ground.

Crouching down as she moved, Kathren slid forward four feet while lifting her shield over her head, blocking the beastkins hastily redirected swing. His own shield was hopelessly out of the way as he held it over his head, deflecting the arrows starting to rain down on him.

The opportunity right before her, Kathren thrust upward with her gladius in what looked almost like a lazy and half-hearted attack, but most of her attention was moving her strand from her harness to her sword. With the casting in place around the hilt, her cold steel became an implacable pillar of death.

With only a slight feeling of resistance, the top six inches of the raised blade sank into the lower abdomen of the beastkin. As the momentum of the beastkin's leap carried him forward, he gutted himself against her sword's edge, but that was not the end.

In the next moment, the blade collided with his hip, and the beastkin's body contorted as he spun around the unmovable blade, causing it to be torn out of his flesh in a rent. Repositioning her shield, Kathren caught the body and spilled intestines, dumping them to the side.

Ignoring the screams of the soon-to-be corpse, she raised her stance to a more comfortable position while bringing her shield in front of her body once more. The three beastkin charging after the first stutter-stepped at her brutal display, but that was all. Their faces twisted with rage an instant after their hesitation, their eyes filled with the conviction and righteousness of their cause.

Still, Kathren stood unwavering. She was positive a line would form in the gap in the wall, as everyone had gotten their acts together. But their line would be feet behind her current position, just out of reach of the first beastkin to shed streams of blood into the grooves of the bridge on this fateful night.

A stream that Kathren expected to add to soon enough. She was not some legendary warrior able to fight alone against unending numbers. These three would kill her, but she would take… two, maybe even all three if she was lucky, with her.

Pulling the strand from her sword, she looped the tendril through a spike to throw it at the leading beastkin when a command to fall back blasted into her mind. Following the order on impulse, she stepped back as a man encased in armor fell from the sky in the middle of the charging beastkins. Before Kathren could even blink in surprise, the figure blurred, and the three beastkins rushing toward her were bisected.

Then the knight, for that was all he could be, stomped on the ground, and a wave of light blue crackling lighting danced down the bridge and curled up the legs of the beastkins next to the ladder like a loving caress. Freezing mid-motion, the beastkins' bodies convulsed as they started to burn and steam under the electricity's heat. The crackling pop of the casting stopped seconds later, and two dozen of the bastards had died.

Without warning, the knight flung themself into the sky in a leap to the west, disappearing as fast as he had appeared. All Kathren could do was blink, slowly taking in the fact that she was no longer going to die. In her shocked state, the rest of the legionaries arrived next to her, forming a shield wall for the once again oncoming beastkins, who ran over the bodies of their comrades without seeming to care.

As the two sides met, the real grind of the battle started.

The channels in the bridge collected the crimson streams as they trickled around the increasingly numerous bodies covering its surface before gathering in the gutters, creating the long-missing third river to this junction point. Both sides knew there would be no retreat from this fight, and only the victors and corpses of the defeated would remain. So they fought, vying for supremacy on the bridge.

And then, Kathren was nearly blinded and deafened by five massive bolts of lightning. When she saw past the mass of bodies, shields, and weapons pressing against her shield, she saw what the lightning was aimed at. Of the two dozen siege towers, five had small fires burning on them that went out before her eyes.

Only one had its top half shattered and was ablaze. Worse than that, it was apparent that the towers, less than half the height of the walls, now stood above the ramparts thanks to the earth ramp.

"By the holy Elementals," Her voice was filled with horrified awe as she took in the battle that was only growing in intensity. "How is this possible?"

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