Rise of the Omnimage

Morning came extremely quick with Sorin getting little sleep due to the previous day's events. All the conscripts were herded out of the sleeping area and formed up.

"Today! we will be instilling into you a primary objective. Protection of your commander." Came the instruction of Sergeant Agron. "When these few months of training are over, each and every one of you who make it through will be assigned to one of our cadets in the academy that is in operation far above us. The Serpent Empire is a warrior empire that does suffer the weak so every single citizen we have does mandatory period of service. The ruling class from nobles to royalty from each planet and region of the Empire is sent to this academy and given conscripts in their final exam where death is a real possibility. Now....you might be thinking of being spiteful or turning traitor to your commander.... I would not let a single hair or scale or whatever they have going on get touched for their life is linked to your life once assigned. In other words, If they die...so do you and any other conscripts with you."

Though the conscripts did not move there was a change in the atmosphere from the tension, fear, and pressure now being felt by all in the formation.

"Set up through this arena are different dummies that you will be responsible for protecting from other teams. There are 49 conscripts in front of me which gives me seven teams of seven. Before training ends for the day, there will be only a single dummy still standing otherwise it is mission failure for all and we will conduct a worse death run than we did on day one complete with additional work outs to make sure you do not fail your objective the next time. Those of you who fail to protect your charge will be penalized through a miserable round of what we will call "incentive training by the soldiers here until the training day ends. Do your best to refrain from killing blows. Surrender, knockout, or my assistant instructor's opinion will be conscript death criteria. Soldiers! break them up and put them to work!"

"Yes Sergeant!" came the reply and al the conscripts were moved in groups of seven to each dummy and given no further instructions.

Sorin began to look around at his team. To his surprise, Ardwyn was on his team. Ardywn, Sorin had found uses a short spear and kite shield with a water path. Before he could say anything the vampire from his group yesterday spoke up in a silky voice.

"Put your hand up if your path is primarily defense?" he said and quickly four hands went up. The vampire looked at each of them and pointed. "You two and I will be the defense for your dummy." Ardwyn was one of the ones chosen for the defense with a scaled looking dragonkin? Sorin wasn't sure but the scales had to offer some defense he supposed. "The offense will be the rest of you led by Serene here and your entire job is to make sure we do not suffer today." The vampire said with an almost tired expression on his face.

"Why should we listen to you undead?" came a deep voice from the side as a large ogre from the currently dubbed offense team stepped in front of the vampire.

"Two reasons. one.... both her and I are over two hundred years old, and I doubt any of you have that level of experience and two because I doubt you could come up with a better plan." Sorin was now glad that he did not step up quickly. He had worked incidents for years and knew you were to always give way for someone more experienced and they had him by nearly 170 years' worth of life experience...or unlife experience? Sorin tilted his head in a sort of shrug and spoke up. "He kind of has a point. I don't know your name, but it was the idea I was going to propose if nobody spoke up."

Sorin spoke up because if the vampire was to take lead, then someone had to be the first follower. Many times, people assume the leader makes the calls and does everything, but always misses the fact there is a first follower who is willing to give the would-be leader a shot and the plan was sound with a leader of offense who was older than them by quite a bit.

"My name is Hagrasha and I come from a might warrior clan. I am larger and fiercer than this puny vampire wench." the ogre turned and spat and Sorin.

"I don't doubt it but let's give a little respect to her. She has lived over 200 years where many people can barely last 100 before they get killed. Your clan probably has leaders who are not the youngest of you but older and blooded in battle. Let's follow their plan and if it doesn't work, we adapt and we go with your plan. It's a win-win situation." Sorin explained laying on the placative words to manipulate the Ogre to being a willing participant and de-escalate any points of friction because quite frankly Sorin didn't care who they followed as long as they had one objective, and everyone pulled their weight with a sound offensive strategy.

With a grunt the Ogre nodded and trudged off as the other teams began to move and even one team was beginning to eye them. "Serene, do not overextend yourselves and fall back when needed. We have a full day." Said the male vampire who nodded. "Worry not Ambriel. This is no different than the house wars from my region. I will ensure victory." The offense group faced the group eyeing them down and the defense group settled into a triangle around the dummy in a defensive posture. Each dummy was spread out evenly around the arena giving equal footing to each team.

With the soldiers who oversaw their training watching Serene moved to the front of the offense team and began moving forward. Seeing the action by the offense team the opposing force began moving in with their three personnel. They were favoring defense where we favored offense. Sorin flared his blades as the two teams met. Hagrasha swung his massive battle axe as the elf in front of him bent backwards to avoid it and rolling to the side away as a follow up kick was thrown out but that was all Sorin could watch of that fight because he had his hands full with a quick elf of his own moving toward him with twin curved blades glowing with a purple black aura.

They read each other's strikes and met both with strikes of their own testing the strength of their aether. Purple and white sparks erupted as they collided temporarily blinding the two combatants. This did not bother Sorin as much as it did his opponent as Sorin was using his standard fire sense and could see through it all. Out of worry from temporary blindness the elf did a back swing with his right arm trying to force Sorin back, but Sorin stepped into the arm next to elbow in the elf's guard and hooked that arm against his body and twisted to his left cutting with his sword to the hand of the elf.

There was a hiss of burning flesh and small yelp from the elf as he dropped the sword from his hand in order to get away and then he jumped back directly where Sorin was hoping because it put him directly in the path of the other human on his team who merely clubbed him in the head knocking him out. Sorin looked at the human with a smirk and moved to help their other two teammates.

As Sorin and the other human moved into position Serene and Hagrasha finished off their opponents with a brutal knockout from the ogre and a surrender from the dwarf fighting Serene. With momentum other side Hagrasha charged the dummy of the other team who panicked a moment losing them any defensive advantage. Sorin and Serene flanked to the sides while the team became hyper focused on the massive ogre charging that they didn't even defend themselves and were declared dead by the soldier around with Hagrasha and the human following up sorting out the final two and crushing the dummy for the victory.