Olimpia

"Do not conserve your strength." Redgenald sent into the Union, "Now is not the time for half measures."

Psy churning through her body, Kathren lowered herself into a crouch as she pulled her good arm back, preparing to thrust her gladius. At the same time, she slid her right leg back, rotating her body ninety degrees until her bad arm faced the oncoming goblins. She had no shield to protect her body and stop the on-rushing hoard, but she felt no fear.

Kathren's mind was merging with Redgenald's and all the others, and she knew — did not think or believe, but knew — that for the first few moments of the battle, she would not be in danger. After the first second and the initial clash took place, well, that would be an entirely different matter, but it was also too far into the future for her to waste the effort in imagining all the conceivable possibilities.

A battle was a time of action. Taking a moment to think was taking a moment for someone to land a killing blow on you. One of the most significant benefits of the Union was that it allowed those within it to enter a flow state naturally, where actions were instinctual and instant.

More than that, everyone's accumulated fighting experiences were pervading the front of their minds, and everyone was about to act on instinct. Whether those instincts were born from your own experiences or another's, it didn't matter.

When you combine the experiences of everyone in the mental network, you get something far greater than its parts. Given such an ability, it was no wonder the legions could carve out a nation within such hostile lands.

Kathren's eyes were locked on her section of the advancing mass of goblins. Given that they looked more like churning waves rolling onto the beach than living beings, the individuals she was watching changed, but her eyes never strayed from her part of the hoard.

At the back of her mind, she was dimly aware of the center of the goblins' line surging forward and the sides falling back. It was almost like they wanted to stab the points of their two formations together and see who came out on top.

The mental image amused her, but the reality killed the amusement in its infancy. Their fourteen legionaries were gathered in only the loosest sense, and for them to have the time to brace themselves before the goblins hit their line, Redgenald had them form up in a spearhead formation. A hollow one that the goblins no doubt thought they could smash through in a second.

In the cave's dim light, the goblins' dark eyes shimmered as if the green light of the mushrooms was lapping over pools of water. Their fangs glistened as they dripped saliva, moistening their lips as they twisted back with malicious glee. In their eyes, the legionaries were ripe for the slaughter, and they would willingly claim them.

Kathren watched the monsters, their lower bodies compressed before bursting forward, their blocky black arms stretched out, clawed hands grasping for their next purchase. Their too-long arms would clamp onto the ground, acting as stilts to roll their bodies forward, allowing them to pull up and compress their legs before they smacked into the ground on the descent, ready to thrust them forward again.

The longer Kathren watched, the slower her heart beat and the longer each second took. Chaotic as it might look, there was a rhythm to the goblins' movements, and she found a form of peace in the slapping of their feet and hands.

With her head slightly bobbing to the pattern, she waited, poised for action, as they came closer and closer, covering the last ten feet. It was only a matter of a second, yet it felt like she was watching sap flow down a tree, the passing of time only marked by the beating of her heart.

Thump.

Seven feet. Three are mine.

Thump.

Five feet. One is mine.

Thump.

Now.

Like she was doing nothing more than standing in a practice yard in front of a training dummy, she uncoiled her body, driving her sword forward into the gap between the two goblins before her. She noticed the scorn on the creature's faces. The anticipation of spilling her blood, and somewhere deep inside, she felt a slight flicker of contempt, but she was already moving on to the next opponents in her mind.

Pushing her psy out of her gut in two tendrils, she grabbed the two spikes hanging at her waist and moved them forward. The one on her right hip shot along a line at nearly a forty-five-degree angle down from her waist and buried itself into the stone, but not before it drove through the goblin's hand closest to her, anchoring it to the ground.

The second spike on her left hip dipped down, nearly clipping the stone floor before swooping back up at a rightward diagonal angle. Before the goblin preparing to leap at her face could react, the spike impacted the creature on the side of its chest with the flat of the blade, knocking it out of its stance. But, more importantly, the impact pushed the goblin's upper chest into position to connect with Kathren's thrust.

As she felt the tip of her blade sink into flesh and begin to scrape along its rib cage, she pulled the second spike back toward her and down, burying its tip and most of its length into the back of the goblin's head rooted to the ground.

Even though the goblin with the punctured skull was already dead, she continued to drive the spike down, as it was still flipping forward at a significant speed. Instead of letting it continue and knock her off her feet, she changed the momentum, causing the corpse to skid across the ground and land at her and Redgenald's feet.

Drawing her short sword back and to the right, she guided the trajectory of the goblin, which was still impaling itself on her sword, to land on the other side of her body. However, the maneuver left her gladius pointed toward the ground, leaving her open to attacks for the moment it would take to pull the weapon free and raise it again.

It was an opportunity that the goblin behind the first two would not miss, regardless of how surprised it was about the deaths of the ones in the rank in front of it. The creature decided not to try to leap at her in an attempt to knock her over, instead choosing to charge across the stone ground. At the last moment, the goblin lurched back and swiped at her spikes that were driving toward its chest to knock them out of the air.

All things considered, it wasn't a horrible plan. After all, the spike was controlled by psy, and if his body came into contact with the tendrils, it would either break them or gouge out a chunk of her psy. Either possibility was one she couldn't afford. Then again, the goblin hit nothing but air.

It wasn't so much luck as a faint on Kathren's part, as the spikes were only meant to buy her the moment she needed to recover her sword. As the spikes sharply rose from the body of the goblins, they traveled two-thirds of the way to her next target in front of her before turning on a copper, almost making a one-eighty and shooting along the new angle.

The spikes traveled out of Kathrens line of sight, striking the arm and chest of one of the goblins pressuring Redgenald's man and crippling the creature before she yanked the spikes out, having one hover around her head and the other rotating around her waist. Before her weapons had returned, the injured foe was hacked down, adding its own blood to the growing pool at her feet.

As she helped Gregory to her right, her sword lashed out at the goblin before her, who flinched, causing him to step to the side to dodge the attack. Writing the goblin off, she moved her eyes to the next, who seemed to gain some level of fear by the sudden deaths of his comrades. Regaining a balanced stance, Kathren felt, though she didn't see, Redgenald strike the flinching goblin with a kind of spike of his own — that were more like large hollow needles than her long diamonds with a handle and loop on its end — puncturing the creature's spine and causing it to crumple to the ground.

In the same seconds that Kathren had handled… well, if you counted the two that she bated and wounded into being killed as half-kills, then three goblins, he had cut down six and a half. Say what you will about the man — and there was a lot Kathren would say, like how he was an inconsiderate, arrogant bastard who had a tree shoved so far up his ass that he had to enter a room bent in half — he was a good fighter.

From what she could feel from the Union, his control over his legion sword and shield could be placed into textbooks as examples. And those skills were only magnified by the five spikes spinning and lashing out around his body. Any person who had the dedication to control six tendrils was one to be admired, though Green still had him beat when it came to skill.

As the goblins rushed forward, his large form parted their formation like a bolder placed into the center of a river. As the little monsters broke apart, the toll he reaped at their passing was strewn about his feet. If the goblins could turn and run instead of facing them, Kathren was sure they would, as their once confident faces were twisted with fear at the growing pile of bodies.

But that was not how battle worked, and those at the front either killed or were killed as those behind — unwitting of the horror they were rushing toward — pushed forward. Those of the goblins that could leap to his sides to fight Kathren or those covering Redgenald's other flank did, but that was impossible for all of them, as there simply wasn't enough space, so he continued to cut them down.

The dedication of the spineless goblins to avoiding conflict with Redgenald only played into his hands, as it gave him more openings to stab his spikes into. As more of them died, their attempts to avoid conflict with him only grew, the beasts even going so far as to claw at those of their number around themselves to escape. None of it helped.

Bodies mounted as everyone in the legionaries' formation claimed multiple ranks of their enemies, yet it wasn't enough. There were simply too few against too many. The outermost edges of the wings of their formation had over a dozen feet between them and the trench walls, making it impossible for them to prevent the goblins from simply going around.

Their foes were unarmored, disorganized cowards only worthy of running down already wounded prey, but their numbers would eventually be enough. Every second, the legionaries were taking multiple steps backward, not from the pressure of the attack, but to prevent the goblins from sweeping around and enveloping them.

Determined and steadfast as the legionaries were, they were still only human. Days of combat added up, and this latest trial was proving to be too much for them to surmount. Within the first minute, the first legionary lost his balance before being yanked into the ranks of the goblins and ripped apart. As his skin was shredded and rent by his attacker's claws, his blood-curdling screams overcame the sounds of battle for a single ringing moment.

With his loss, the mental network shuddered, nearly destabilizing and requiring large influxes of psy from everyone to keep it stable in the cave's hostel environment. Redgenald could have reduced the cost of psy if he had concentrated on the problem and focused his willpower, but that was impossible. It was already impressive that he could maintain the Union to the extent he was as he took on the brunt of the goblins' charge.

Which was a tragedy because the cost of psy was too much for one of the legionaries. He staggered from a backlash as he gave the last of his psy before dropping out of the Union. It was an opening that the opportunistic goblins would not let pass as they lunged at the man, claws splayed.

The legionaries on either side of him tried to deflect the attacks, but they only partially succeeded. The man's sword arm was shredded like it was placed into a meat grinder, and his left leg was cut to the bone, all but severing the calf muscle. His brothers were able to cut down the goblins and throw the wounded man into the center of the formation, but they took wounds of their own doing so.

And with the latest to drop out of the mental network in a matter of seconds, not to mention the gaps in the line, the pressure only mounted on the rest of them.

"Curl it in!" Redgenald ordered, his mind projecting resolve and confidence to the rest of them, "Close the rear ranks and form a circle! The others will have to cut us free!"