Otromah felt bone-deep exhaustion that had seeped into every fiber of his being. The quick mouthfuls of food he was able to gulp down and the thick tea he had the opportunity to chug during the fighting didn't do much to hold it back. Even the stimulants within Legion Brew can only do so much to stave off the weariness one feels after a long night of fighting placed on top of long days of patrols and firefighting.
Tired as he might be, Otromah would die before he slumped onto some wall and fell asleep. Mainly because he was one of the unlucky bastards placed on watch, but that was neither here nor there.
It was standard practice to proclaim the resolute, unbreakable spirit of one's century, cohort, or legion — which you just so happened to embody — when performing tasks your centurion informed you that you had volunteered for. After all, he was a legionary within the Prime Cohort of the 15th. That meant something.
It meant Otromah was one of the best legionaries within the legion. A fact he would have to prove until there was no more room left for doubt. The 15th might be looked down upon by all other legions these days, but its past was filled with glory and service to the Republic, and it was his duty to help uphold that history.
They have stood on the Northern Line since it was first established, holding back the unending monsters rushing south. Within these walls, the legion withstood more sieges than most people would bother to count to. During all that time, the thousands of battles and the numberless dead, the Triad had never fallen.
Individual spikes of the fortress had been overrun, but there was never a moment where there wasn't a legionary defending some section of the walls or fighting in the streets. As far as Otromah knew, the Kin had come the closest to ever capturing the Triad, or at the very least, they got the farthest the fastest. Their attack might have decimated large parts of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd cohorts, but even they were stopped at the Middle Fort.
The price to hold the Triad might have been high, but it was also the reason why Otromah was in the First Cohort at all. Which complicated his feelings on the matter. While it looked like an honor at the time, and he accepted the new assignment without hesitation, he was starting to believe it might have been more of a punishment than a reward. That for the great sin of his years of service and dedication to bettering his control of psy, he was being shoved right to the front of a bloody conflict.
Well, at least I'm standing next to the best. Knowing you can trust those beside you means a lot, Otromah thought idly. But… being with the best also means you're going to get the shit assignments like holding back unending wav— Wait. I am too exhausted to mentally bitch about this pigsty of a battle.
After Otromah and his century held back the first brunt of the attack, the next couple of hours became a scramble as they attempted to withdraw without being overrun. Which was not at all what was supposed to happen, or so some lowly legion grunt would guess.
From the reports that Otromah had overheard and his own experiences, he created what seemed like a decent picture of what had happened throughout the night. The first kick in the nuts was the outer wall coming down.
Otromah didn't know about anyone else, but he wasn't expecting multiple wall sections — each closer to a mile than not — to come down simultaneously. Defending that long of a breach without a whole legion being deployed in the holes wasn't possible if the foe had the numbers on their side.
Needless to say, the dark elves had the numbers. And so far, this battle has been almost purely decided on those lopsided digits. In minutes, the flood of goblins rushing into the Third Ring overwhelmed the outer defenders.
The situation was only worsened by the goblins popping up from their tunnels and ripping into the legionaries from their backs. Once the fifth and sixth cohorts were put onto the back foot, the pressure didn't relent, and they were never able to recover.
While the end result of the fuck-up was seen nearly instantly, the events still needed hours to play out. Thousands of legionaries and militia were scattered throughout the Third Ring. While the ring was dilapidated, a single square could still halt the goblin's entire advance until it was taken. The goblins could go around, but all the buildings in the city were constructed to be mini fortresses and walls enclosing a warren of isolated buildings and streets, meaning no matter where they went, they would be having nearly the same fight.
During the first hours, the defenders in the slums were hacked through one after another, to the point that the goblins were keeping pace with the Prime Cohorts' controlled withdrawal. Not that the legionaries were moving fast, as they were holding back ten times their number while moving north along the main boulevard.
Yet, when Otromah looked back, that entire section of the fight was just a warm-up. It wasn't until the prime reached the point where the road turned west toward the Second Ring gate that the real struggles of the night began.
That was when word began to spread, mainly by the wounded staggering onto the main boulevard, of the true extent of the beating the 5th Cohort and assigned militia had received. The cohort's defenses weren't all gone, but there were far fewer defenders standing between the southern side of the main road and the goblins than anyone was comfortable with, and they were disappearing fast. Everyone could feel the urgency bordering on fear in the air, and no one complained as they were pushed hard.
Within the frantic hours they were creeping west, there were many times when it seemed like the last barricade between them and the goblins would break before the prime passed. Worse than that issue, though, the chance of the cohort simply being overwhelmed spiked when the bolt throwers appeared. If not stopped, those devastating weapons could blow through multiple men and their gear.
The only way to block the shots was with a psy shield, but they were typically only deployed on the inside of the legion shields, which meant every blocked shot was a destroyed shield. It was better than losing one's life, but it came with its own host of problems. The only saving grace was that the bolt-throwing contractions were few and far between.
It was true that all of these problems had a simple solution. All the 1st Cohort had to do was sacrifice a century to hold a barricade until they died to the last man as the rest of the cohort booked it as fast as they could up the street… but that wasn't possible.
More specifically, it was entirely possible. However, as many legionaries were told by their centurion when they were overheard complaining, they had been ordered to keep their enemy's attention while remaining in contact and wearing them down, and that was what they would do.
So, a game of leapfrog began. The rear century would hold the goblins back as they withdrew from their barricade until they arrived at the next one. They would then slip through the ranks of the century, defending the new barricade, and quickly march up the street to the next free position.
As simple as it sounded, it was far more complex. Every fight would cost lives. Lives that could only be replaced by militia and the occasional legionary, which weren't the most useful. As time dragged on, some of the centuries had to be consolidated to remain functional, which decreased the time intervals between fighting for the centuries.
None of which was made easy by what seemed to be an ever-thickening fog or the appearance of goblins with devices designed to fling a small arrow absurdly fast and hard. The increasing number of weights added onto their shoulders should— No, it was too much for them.
The Prime Cohort of the 15th was only mortal, meaning they had their limits, and those limitations were exceeded multiple times. It was only thanks to the bands of militia and the occasional squad of the 5th Cohort, who responded to their pulse messages for support that the legionaries didn't break. The tragic thing was — but typical in a battle like this — those who saved them ended up surrounded before being cut down most of the time.
No matter how tenacious the legionnaires and citizens were or how much endurance they possessed, it all would have mattered for nothing in the end if not for the city's design. Even the goblins couldn't collapse every building and were forced to traverse the maze of streets.
When walking down the main boulevard, seeing two connecting streets separated by a few hundred yards gave one a false impression. Going down one of the side roads with the intention of popping out one street down on the main road was far from the apparently simple task. It means walking three or four times as far and probably getting lost if you don't know the area well.
Along the way would be any number of side avenues that lead you to enclosed squares designed for inhabitants to mount a defense in the event of the beastkin breaching the walls. Most streets would fall into the categories of looping back on themselves or only running east and west, with only three routes at most out of any warren.
Going anywhere in the old cities was a pain in the ass that everyone complained about — as they practically had to go on an hour-long trek to go one street over — while also being a point of pride for the locals, as they knew the passages like the back of their hand. And the design proved itself that night, as the goblins were continually forced to backtrack in disorganized mobs.
No doubt, many of the goblins became frustrated and tried to climb the buildings, but Otromah doubted it ended well for the creatures. While the streets were all but lost to the human defenders, the roofs were teeming with them, and they didn't like the goblins using them.
If they chose to force their way up and over, the Prime Cohort would be long gone by the time they arrived. After all, the creatures would try to clear a building designed to be held by a few people so it would be faster for them to become lost until they got lucky… If you could call finding the front lines of a battle lucky.
Through tenacity and sacrificing hundreds of lives, they reached the point where the road turned north again around midnight. Finally, after achieving what seemed like an impossible task, they were slapped in the face by reality.
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The Second Ring's outer wall was blocking their way.
The silver lining of the realization as they massed along the road leading to the gate was that the goblins stopped attacking the rearguard for the first time since they entered the city. Which left everyone feeling more uneasy than anything else. However, the reprieve also provided Otromah and the others plenty of time to gaze at the massive obstacle blocking their path… An attack in its own right, really.
A wall that was, without a doubt, rigged to collapse the moment the dark elves' wished for it. Leaving the cohort in the uncomfortable position of rolling the dice on who would be under the collapsing gate.
It was decided that men would start jogging across in squads one after another. There was some plan for the rearguard to remain in the Third Ring so they didn't have to cross in large numbers, but it turned out to be pointless.
It could have been that the dark elves and their forces had massed troops at another section of the wall, and they decided to trigger their trap to move forward. Or they realized they wouldn't kill many legionaries, as the wall collapsed before the first group made it across, with only two men being lost. The rest walked away with their psy bottomed out as they had to slow their fall with psy strands.
Personally, Otromah thought they triggered the wall's destruction as a show of contempt and power to demoralize the gathered legionaries. And it did work, as watching your home collapse without being able to do anything was quite the mental hit. A hit that was hammered home as they did attack right after the collapse, though it wasn't a concerted assault intended to kill them, but more like a reminder that they were still there.
The only good thing was that the massive opening allowed the slightly over fourteen hundred force to move into the Second Ring in a formation. And with the increasingly thick fog, they were able to slip to the other side of the new trench without any trouble.
A quick and efficient withdrawal to reposition for the coming fight.
That was one way to describe what happened. Another way would be they fled to the second ring, leaving nearly two thousand legionaries in the 5th and 6th cohorts and thousands more militia cut off from all support within the slums after all their aid. It was a bitter pill to swallow for many, Otromah included.
Not that they had much time to dwell on their actions, as while they were still moving across the square constructed around the second gate, the dark elves had gathered their goblins to attack again. By that point, the creatures were old hat, and without the threat of them coming from the sides, they were only a little threat.
While the city rumbled with the sound of other breaches in the wall, the defenders in the Second Ring had more than enough time to prepare and gather reports on what to expect. The prime was still in a constant state of retreat, but the dynamic of the fight was entirely changed.
Instead of a constant scramble, the battle became retribution. Everyone was more than willing to take out their feelings built up over the last hours on the goblins, and they paid for it by the score.
Thinking back, Otromah thought that the lives lost might have been calculated. A plan to lull the legionaries into a false sense of security before striking the weakness. Because right after the Prime Cohort turned east on the main road, the dark elves finally stepped out of the shadows to lead their troops. Their effect on the battle was immediate, if not apparent at the time.
The first thing the dark elves did was start battering a person's mind with mental attacks until they were knocked unconscious. But that hardly happened after the first minute, once they proved they could. It was conceivable they stopped because isolating a legionary inside a shield wall was nearly impossible, so it was taking too much psy to be efficient…
But anyone who said that was spewing the worst-smelling Kawrashit in existence, and that was saying something.
The sinister creatures — that were far more beastial than the goblins no matter their features — didn't batter people down with brute force because they didn't get much pleasure from it.
What they did instead was to amplify and twist people's emotions. No one noticed the attacks for what it was at first because all they were doing was causing a few scattered deaths that looked unconnected and coincidental.
Sure, stepping out of a shield wall and attacking alone didn't happen often, but that didn't mean it never occurred. If there was a place where it would occur a lot, then it would be within a wild and disorganized battle where they were nearly constantly retreating. Emotions built up, and sometimes, men just had to act no matter the consequences.
A sudden spike of rage, grief, or resolve to defend one's brothers could be chalked up to the death of a close friend, what looked like a moment where the sacrifice of individuals for the majority was needed, or any number of other things. And with every death, the formation weakened, and they needed to retreat faster.
It was the consistency that gave it away. Sure, watching the bodies of battle brothers desecrated was beyond infuriating, but not to the point where veterans should lose all reason.
Vengeance would come. That was a certainty. Preferably, it would come without one's death.
When those stepping forward were stopped by their brothers before they could all but walk into the dark elves' long blades, the legionaries described how their emotions flared up out of nowhere. What should have been a flash of emotion all but flooded and consumed their minds, and they had to act, or they felt like the emotion would devour them.
With everyone saying the same thing, it didn't take long for someone to suggest that the people able to create and control human puppets were manipulating their emotions.
Pretty obvious, really.
Once it was noticed, word quickly spread, and in a matter of minutes, a pulse message had rippled out over the city, warning its defenders of the threat. Not that it changed the death rate much. Instead of being subtle about their actions, the dark elves set about building greater emotions before they fanned them into an inferno.
It worked.
Desecrating the bodies of the dead was one thing. Torturing the captured wounded dozens of feet from their comrades was a step up. And then there was the unforgettable event of a compensating shit-bathing bastard spilling the guts of a woman onto the ground and forcing her to crawl as a massive rock slowed and rolled after her until it inevitably squished her into paste.
And it didn't stop there. The dark elves inflicted depraved act after act with fiendish glee, relishing in every moment. It quickly became clear that the entire event was a competition for them, even if it was in the midst of a battle.
However, the battle could not really be called a fight by that point. With the mental attacks, goblins, and a surge in the number of bolt throwers… Staying alive was all they could do. Even if it was only by the edges of their fingernails, they did what legionaries do best, step after step. They survived.
They survived at the cost of their psy pouring out of them like they were buckets with holes in the bottom. And they endured having to stand witness.
There should have been only one response that would be an acceptable reply to witnessing such depraved actions, and that would be inflicting a slow and painful death on the dark elves. But that was impossible. The veteran legionaries were doing everything they could to fall back without falling apart. There was no room to enact vengeance.
In the retreat that had become a living nightmare through the second ring, a smoldering loathing for the dark elves was born within the Prime Cohort of the 15th legion. A rage that would not — could not — burn hot and quick.
Should the anger flare even the slightest amount, the dark elves would use it to cause their deaths. Those who could not control their emotions were culled during the dark elf push. An attack that nearly resulted in the Prime Cohort and those that had joined them being enveloped and wiped out as other forces swept in from the south.
Even though they avoided the first thrust that was trying to surround them with the sacrifice of more legionaries, that didn't mean the prime could continue as they were. Dozens of pulse messages were flying around about goblin groups pushing onto the main boulevard in front of them.
If they stayed on the road, they would be trapped. The only option was to get off the street.
As a general rule, the farther you move into a city, the fewer roads there will be leading into the deeper warrens. It had something to do with how the affluent didn't want many ways to access their areas. Or maybe fewer ways in meant it was easier to defend, but Otromah thought the first reason was more likely.
Whatever the reason for the design, it was a serious problem when the cohort needed to move north into the warrens to avoid being enveloped by the goblins overflowing onto the main boulevard. Especially when they just passed a street leading north.
Instead of making a valiant, if meaningless, last stand in the street, the Prime Centurion had Otromah's century break a hole in the over-a-foot-thick walls of the northern buildings. It was the only way to move through the building other than climbing the roof and jumping down.
Every building along the main road had no back doors or rear-facing windows. It wasn't until you got blocks from the main boulevard that the alleys appeared, and homes gained yards if they were wealthy. But even then, the alleys only stayed within the same warren, and no building on the outer perimeter of a warren had back doors or windows either.
The design is excellent for fighting mindless creatures with little intelligence. And it's a death trap when a foe knows how to flank an enemy and prepares multiple avenues of approach to achieve just that.
Breaking the impossibly durable stone took time and more than a few broken swords and curses, but they got it done before their brothers were pressed too hard. For this shitty battle, that meant that while legionaries died by the dozens, they weren't overrun and massacred by the time the cohort began contracting to slip through the building.
By that point, the Prime Cohort consisted of six-hundred-twenty-one legionnaires, putting them around a third of their normal strength. It was true that the prime had twice the numbers of the other cohorts, so they were still far better off comparatively, but the losses after a single night were staggering.
Though even with their numbers reduced to a third, their casualties were partially made up for by the one-hundred-two legionaries from other cohorts and the three-hundred-forty-nine militia they had gathered. But the fact of the matter was they weren't the same quality as those who were lost, no matter their enthusiasm.
Once off the main road, the dark elves and goblins mostly ignored them and continued to the heart of the city, leaving the makeshift cohort to move through the northern residential district of the Second Ring until they found a place to rest. Goblins were still around, but they lacked the numbers and organization they had while on the main boulevard.
Now, they were waiting near the First Ring wall, resting. They could faintly hear the fighting to the east and south, but those who weren't on watch were told to sit and rest by their centurions whenever they started to stir.
Apparently, the tribunes had received orders by a pulse message from one of the nearby towers, and they were told to sit tight for now. No one was pleased about the order — except the goblins, as they were delighted to leave them alone — as they all knew the eighth was tasked with holding the first ring breath. But they were exhausted and needed to rest, and the orders had been given.
The reality was that women were more emotional than men. If the dark elves could draw out emotions from seasoned veterans soaked in blood and numb from a mixture of exhaustion and combat, what could they do to the women? They might know what was coming, but there was a canyon between experiencing and knowing what to expect.
"Shouldn't you have traded off the watch by now, Otromah?" Centurion Atticious gruffly asked, breaking Otromah out of his dark memories. "Don't you know how to follow orders?"
"This drink and meal was just so good that I had to savor it." Otromah fished out his half-finished hardtack and jerky out of his tea, which refused to soften even floating in the liquid, earning a chuckle from those around them who woke up at the sound of a voice. "Besides, I'll sleep plenty when I'm dead." Looking around and taking in the silver moon-lit fog around them, he continued, "Shouldn't be that far away."
"I'll make a note to tell the cook that you prefer rations to his meals." A look of horror snapped onto Otromah's face, earning a smirk from the centurion and further tired laughs. "But you might be right on the second part. We're moving out to attack in five. Get on your feet, boys."
"Yes, centurion!" Otromah barked while flashing his teeth. It was time to get some payback.
