Olimpia

Excerpt from The Mad Scholar's Wall—

The display of power was like standing before a god.

Many among us fell to their knees and started worshiping on the spot. No one — not even those on the ground — could say whether it was out of fear or awe.

While their power imprinted our own mortality upon our souls, it was their appearances that enraptured us. The elves' beauty put every human to shame. If I ever look upon a god, they would be the baseline of what I expect.

And the king — for there was no way he could be perceived as anything other than their king — carried a weight of authority around him like a shroud.

If one were to step out of his presence and compare his painting to any other elf, one would be pressed to say which was more beautiful. Because no painting, no matter the painter's skill, could capture what was beyond the physical. Everything about the king while in his company was more.

His presence was overwhelming.

Looking upon Areekail, we all felt dirty and inferior.

Because we were.

Nothing can deny that fact.

You may not believe me. I can only imagine what we have become, but we came from a land where our only strengths came from our bodies and cleverness. And we — the first generation — are still limited in such ways.

Whatever abilities you — our descendants — have developed, that fact has not changed. Our potential is limited to what we can conceive. Imagine.

It is a fact I have seen increasingly suppressed, ignored, and forgotten as I grow older.

Try as I might, those so-called scholars and nobles ignore the facts I shove right in their faces, blinded by their power.

They cannot believe that we are not the strongest creatures. That we were not the strongest and were given power.

That the elves are not as weak as they might appear.

We did not choose our fate, and you — our descendants — will have to pay the price for our survival. And your stolen — or is it given? — power.

**********

Yes, you can call it a splinter. If someone ends up with a spear in their arm, they have the right to call it whatever they damn well want. I think it's a splinter, and if anyone else wants to challenge me on the subject, let's see them get a spear in the arm and say something then.

Stumbling to the side, I turned my body sideways so that my left arm and the spear sticking through it acted like a legion shield as I turned my head in the direction the short spear was thrown from.

I knew it wasn't actually any protection, but I was a smaller target. And I might be able to make the splinter do something useful. Some pain was better than death, after all.

Quickly scanning the ground to ensure no one was charging me, I was unsurprised to find anything but dirt…What?

Taking another moment, I scanned the ground again, just to make sure I was not seeing things. Or, more accurately, seeing nothing where there should be tens of thousands of leaves.

Where the fuck are the leaves? And the grass? Ahh! Bastard! Can't I have a moment to myself? I was drawn out of my thoughts by a second spear flying at me, and I easily hopped to the side, dodging it. These spears really weren't meant to be thrown, and it was probably more luck than skill that I was hit by the first one at all.

Looking up with a cocky smile, I twisted to the side, presenting a smaller profile. My smile became a grimace as the spear shaft bobbed, tugging on my flesh. I didn't have time to check, but I would guess the spear stabbed through the outer layer of my arm. And if I kept bouncing around, the torquing of the spear would rip off the top of my skin flap. But that was a problem for future Green to worry about.

When I looked up, I wasn't surprised to see three brown and white beastkins hovering in the air twenty or so feet away. Quickly flicking my eyes to the side at some motion, I saw two others gliding to a stop, where the eagle finally finished his landing in a cloud of dust.

My eyes slipped past the birdkin, and I took in the Dawn Tree. It was still dying, growing grayer and grayer as it shriveled into a husk.

It still towered hundreds of feet in the air, but it was more like a dead stick thrust into the ground rather than a bastion of life reigning over the forest. Its limbs were spears sticking out to the sides, looking like nothing had ever grown on them.

The tears I was barely holding back moistened my eyes before dripping down my cheeks as I saw what was happening a hundred feet past the Dawn Tree. The Guardians were dying.

Like the Dawn Tree, they were shrinking, becoming brittle and slow. It was like spending weeks and months salting the ground and watching the trees and plants shrivel as the water was sucked from their bodies. Their once graceful movements were becoming sluggish and halting.

As I watched, different sections of armor that made up the Guardians' knight-like appearances broke and fell away, revealing softer areas of wood underneath that were already flaking into the air before they were ever struck.

Not that the beastkins being blocked by the Guardians needed to brake the armor anymore. Blows that they should have shrugged off with little more than a chip in their bark-armor sent cracks over and through their bodies. Crevices that would not heal and only grew more prominent as more and more blows rained down on them.

Already, I could make out Guardians on the ground that had cracked in half from some blow.

Rage boiled inside me, and my skin tingled as adrenaline flooded my body. My heart beat faster and louder in my ears until it was all I could hear.

I didn't want to hear. It was bad enough that I had to see mythical figures be destroyed as I stood helpless to stop it. Why would I want to add sound to the horror?

But running at the beastkins in a mindless rage would only get me killed, so I pushed down my emotions. It was a surprisingly easy task, all of my feelings quickly vanishing to the back of my mind.

Taking a few stumbling steps back, I used my good hand to wipe my eyes clear as I turned my head up to the hovering figures.

A small shiver of shock ran through me as I inspected the trio. They had arms.

Kind of.

It was weird enough to see the eagle with arms, but all of them? That just wasn't normal, but that much was already obvious.

Stories of seeing a bird beastkin with wings and stubby little child's arms would have gotten around. Those types of sightings weren't just ignored. Who could stop themselves from talking of the grotesquely small arms on an adult's body? And the arms looked like they were little more than skin and bone. It was like they were still growing or something.

Despite the size of their arms, they must have a surprising amount of strength. I knew that for the simple reason that I felt a jolt of pain every time I moved my left arm. It wasn't like the beastkins were holding the short spears with their feet.

The two holding one spear tilted their wings, causing them to fall forward out of their hover and into a dive. The two circled around to the sides as they dropped down to five feet above the ground, the spears clenched in their midget's arms, leading their path.

Quickly gathering my mental energy, I released a pulse as my eyes darted around, searching for something that would spark a plan to survive this. As the information flooded my mind, I knew what to do.

Taking a breath to calm my heart, I lowered myself into a crouch and turned my body to the right so my chest was facing a beastkin. At the same time, I kept looking at the birdkin that was slowly drifting higher into the air while keeping the one swooping at my back in the corner of my eye. I wanted to keep all of them within my vision for as long as possible.

When the two beastkin approaching me from the front and back were twenty feet out, the one still hovering in the air gave one large flap shooting it five feet farther up. Then, it raised both arms over its shoulders and whipped them forward, releasing the two spears at me.

The spears might not have been the best for throwing, but they were still good enough to kill me if they hit. I waited one moment, and then another as the spears shot for my chest. The two birdkins on the side increased their speed by flapping harder and faster.

My breathing picked up as the fear and anticipation of pain built inside me. Come on, come on… I thought before I felt a spark of relief followed by a flood of anxiety. Blood and ashes, this is gonna hurt, I mentally sighed.

The moment I formed my plan, I created three telekinetic mental strands, one of which I stretched out behind me, sweeping it back and forth just above the ground. I knew the shaft of the second-thrown spear was poking into the air behind me, but it was one thing to know it and another to find it with a tendril. Wrapping the strand around and down the spear, I wiggled the spear stuck in the ground, making sure it was only loosely lodged in the soil.

When I felt the time to counterattack was right, I ripped the short spear from the ground and whipped it at the beastkin, swooping at me from my back.

My second tendril was carefully wrapped around the base of the spear tip and down the shaft sticking out of my arm. My body tensed in anticipation before I dragged the spear through the wound, driving the blood-stained spear toward the birdkin at my front.

"Aargh!" I screamed in pain, and my vision flashed white and began to tunnel as I struggled to stay conscious and focus on my enemies.

With a grunt of effort, I leaped into the air — adding to my momentum by pulling up on my harness with the third mental strand — while my free hand scrambled at my waist. Pulling up on a leather strap, I reached inside the hard leather container and pulled out a clump of cloth by a knot, slapping it on the wound on my upper arm.

I saw the thrown spears pass below my feet and heard the thunk as they buried themselves into the ground.

The two birds coming in at me from the sides tried to swerve around the spears, but the one to my chest reacted too late to dodge, and the spear buried itself between his neck and shoulder. The other beastkin swerved in front of me, avoiding my attack, but I used my mental strand to continue the curve of the spear's trajectory, and as it came into my sight, I propelled the spear into the beastkin's side. With a twist of the spear's shaft from my tendril, I threw the beastkin into the ground.

As I fell, I reshaped one of my tendrils from the diameter of two fingers to little more than a thread. I shoved the end of the tendril into the hole at the base of the knot before worming the tendril to the end of the bandage, splitting the tendril at the last portion.

By the time my feet hit the ground, I had tightly wrapped the bandage around the new skin loop on my arm and tied it off. Half turning around, I saw one spear lodged into the soil a few feet from me and the other lying on the ground a couple yards past it.

Looking back at the last flying beastkin targeting me, my eyes widened as I saw two more quickly approaching shadows from past the line of trees. I doubted they would be the last.

It was time to run.

Turning, I started sprinting as fast as I could, groaning with every step as it felt like a knife was being driven into my arm. I had a pounding headache as my willpower and mental energy were being stretched far past my normal limits. Ignoring the twinge of pain, I scooped up the spear that wasn't stuck in the ground as I passed it.

Head on a swivel, I tracked the two armed flying beastkins. The other would be a problem soon, but right now, he was still without a weapon, so I put him out of my mind.

Turning my head forward, I focused on the tree line before glancing over my shoulder at the beastkin again.

With every step, I drew closer to the tree line, but I was still dozens of feet from safety. And the stupid flying assholes were approaching me far faster than I was moving. I would never make it if things stayed the same. All the assholes had to do was slow me down enough for their kin to catch up.

Pulling all but the last few drops of mental energy from my core, which wasn't much, I immediately felt a hollowness inside my head, like the gnawing hunger a starving person has in their gut.

My control only slightly wavered as a spike of pain was driven into my head as I reshaped my tendrils with my mental energy and willpower. However, because of my lack of mental energy, my tendrils were reshaped solely by my willpower. A resource I was running dangerously low on if the numbness spreading over my body was any indication.

A feat that would typically take a second and be done with as little concentration as taking a step caused a cold sweat to break out on my brow and my head to throb with my heart. I didn't even extend the tendrils out to ten feet, stopping at what was more like seven.

But I had done it. The three strands were evenly spaced around me in thirds, stretched out along the ground. I had shaped and angled them to look like windmill blades before gently pushing them into the bare soil.

Grunting of effort, I started rotating the tendrils around me.

Within a second, dust was flying up into the air as I scraped off the top layer of the earth, obscuring my vision and everyone else's.

As soon as I thought the dust was thick enough, I slightly changed the angle I was running. I needed to get off the last line the beastkin saw me on and hope I was lucky enough they wouldn't find me.

I had no doubt that the beastkin would dive through the cloud of dust or throw a spear. It was up to fate now.

Either they would happen to dive into my personal dust storm and hit me, or they wouldn't.

There was also the possibility that I would look like a total asshole and get turned around as I ran and end up circling back to the dying Dawn Tree. But I trusted my ability to run in a straight line even through a dust storm.

At least, I believed I could do it for a little while. Hoped really.

Not that I had much choice in the matter. I was being stretched to the limit and couldn't do any more than I was.

The dust swirled as a dark shape dove through the storm, following on the heels of the first, a second shape I could not make out passed through the dust.

My feet thumped into the ground with every step, punctuated by a jab of pain, spreading the burning claws reaching into my chest and down my arm, causing my breathing to hitch.

“Pffft— Arghh!" I spluttered, trying to spit out the dirt I had licked up from my lips. I had tried to moisten my lips and instantly regretted it. I wasn't surprised or anything, as I could feel dirt gathering on every droplet of sweat covering my face and arms. It was gross and annoying.

I might have lived most of my life in a forest, but that didn't mean I liked being covered in dirt.

I hated every step I struggled to take, but I kept going.

The Dawn Tree died because of me, and I would not die so easily to make light of its sacrifice. And dying, in general, was not appealing.

The shadows of darkness flickering through the cloud of dust came several more times as I ran. But I kept running.

I would pick up and slow down the speed of my dust maker, trying to alter its shape to hide the center, but that was it.

“Ahh—!" I screamed as I stumbled to a stop before I began taking staggering steps to keep moving. I had to enter the forest. I was so close.

I put so much will into keeping the mental casting spinning and digging into the ground that I didn't prepare to theoretically hit a hard object. Like, say — only for example — one of the trees I was running towards.

I only knew two things in that moment. First, the mental casting shattered, causing a backlash to hit my mind like a club making the world spin. Second, anyone who thought I was a dumbass because I didn't prepare for hitting the trees I was running toward would be a dumbass.

I didn't hit a tree.

I hit a rock.

Totally different.

It was leaning against a tree, and it was the same result, but anyone who might have thought I would hit a tree was wrong, and they know it.

The dust began to settle even as I walked past the first slightly blurry tree and let out a sigh that mostly held relief. Mostly because I wasn't entirely sure it was only the dust making the tree blurry.

I made it to the forest.

"Caaaaw!" screamed an angry bird off in the distance.

"Aww~, come on… Give me a fucking break…" I groaned.