Warped stone clogged the passages and bridges leading to the Crafts District. The material was Daimonic in nature and thus its structure was as ever changing and complex as the beings that brought it forth into the Tirran plane. Near impenetrable. It would take a lot of time and Focus to break through the material - resources Gallus could not afford to waste. Had they grasped a greater understanding of the structure, it would have been greatly useful to wield and bend to their uses. Alas, the Magisterium Scholars that were tasked with studying the few shards recovered from previous battles had yet to yield results.

  Smashing a path through was off the table for the squadron. Going through the darkened tunnel bridges was less ideal. But nothing was stopping them from building a bridge of their own. They found a gap across the other side between two tunnel bridges; a sweet spot closest to the fastest path back to the city gates. It took four of the soldiers and a half vial of Focus to make a sturdy bridge that reached the other side. One wide enough to carry the entire legion out of the city. That is, if they did manage to let them survive.

  Taking no chances, Gallus ordered two soldiers to guard one end of the bridge and another two to go ahead and guard the other end. When both ends were fully shielded, and the two at the front signaled that the path ahead was safe, the Duxus led the squadron across.

  Adonis briefly over the side of the bridge to the chasm below. Layers upon layers of buildings and structures stretched all the way down; once giants themselves, they eventually formed a foundation built up over many Blinks to support the towers above. If they had found survivors in the Residential District, there must have been more still residing down there. Stuck. It seemed like it went on forever, so deep that even if the sky hadn’t been dimmed by the thick Ichor and corruption in the air, the light of any star couldn’t reach the darkness below.

  “Do heights scare you?” came a familiar voice in his head, one he wasn’t keen on hearing. Saorise.

  Hardly, he thought to himself. He sensed her poking about in his mind.

  “Or, is it the dark?”

  “Your eyes should be looking for Daimons.”

  “Relax. A quick blink won’t hurt.”

  “Keep out of my-”

  His voice cut off once they crossed into the Craft’s District. Gallus’ group took quick and careful steps through. It was as quiet as the Residential District. None of the Draekslanni sensed any Daimons hiding anywhere. Gallus had expected the entire place to be overrun for the legion to have fallen so quickly.

  “Duxus, over there,” one soldier pointed out one of the many winding roads that rose upwards to the levels above.

  There was the sign Gallus needed; markings in the fleshy ground left by the boots of the legion. They wasted no time tracing the footsteps, finding corpses of Daimons in their wake until they came to another clot in the path leading to the Architect’s Sector. They took alternate paths, but as they got closer they realised that the entire sector had been walled off by warped stone and hardened flesh. It wasn't impossible to build a lift over the wall, it's just that the squadron couldn’t see what lay on the other side. Only the Draeklanni could feel a discomfort in their sealed Kaevan eyes but they couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. Even Gallus acknowledged the stupidity of proceeding in blindly.

  “We need to find higher ground,” Gallus said through Roya.

  The paths that would have given them a better vantage point were destroyed. The only other option was to look for a tall structure to peek from. Adonis’ gaze fell upon one of the crescent buildings. The blockage stuck to it at the same level. The roof was exactly what they needed. His gaze hung on the building, not feeling anything in his sealed Kaevan eyes.

  “Did you find it, half-serpent?”

  Adonis nodded, pointing Gallus toward the building.

  “Any Daimonic presence?”

  “No.”

  The other two Draekslanni took a long look at the building and gave a nod at Adonis’ assessment. Gallus almost praised them but he remembered who he was addressing. He led his soldiers towards the building. As there was no entrance from their side, they constructed a lift up towards one of the windows and pushed the carts of Focus potion on. Inside, they saw that one half of the building had been completely blocked off by the wall, but saving on Focus, they could quickly reach the roof by forming another lift.

  They walked in a crouch for the cover of the parapet. Gallus halted the legion. He was the first to look over.

  If it hadn’t been for the Soothing spell on him, he would have felt sick to his stomach by what he saw below. The entire legion lay in heaps across the Sculptor’s Sector. The dulled colours of sullied cloaks and ichor-stained Monoceros horns poked out from under the web of sickly, purplish nerves. On all sides, they were surrounded by the corpses of Daimons - some more large and terrifying than anything they had seen before. A battle had taken place here. Despite the victories, it seemed to come at a heavy price.

  They didn’t even make it to the Scholar’s district.

  Gallus’ eyes darted wildly, searching for the Magister Bellaxus. But with their positions and the pulsing flesh concealing their features, only a few faces could be made out. The longer the squadron looked, they soon realised that they were not all dead but instead, asleep. It relieved the group greatly to see that the soldiers below were breathing. Their chests rose and fell, some more erratically than others. But some weren’t so lucky; they began to fall apart in a mess of nerves, sloughing off from their mail and lamellar. The squadron could only watch from above as some very quickly degraded into an unmoving mess of flesh with their eyes rolling out of their sockets.

  Many questions ran through their heads. No Daimon had ever done something like this before. They preferred a messy, yet quick and efficient kill. And looking closely, it seemed that the legion was fleeing from something. But what?

  “What’s happening to them?” Rufinus said - only one of many questions.

  “The Daimons are trying to possess them. And with not much success, it seems.”

  The soldiers turned to Saorise.

  Gallus narrowed his eyes on her, “And just how do you know that?”

  “It’s just a theory,” Saorise said, “You ever wonder why there’s so much of this guck on the floor?”

  Everyone seemed to recoil a little - their emotions were dampened, no thanks to the Soothers. That stuff was all over their boots. All of those people. On their boots. On their clothes…

  It almost made the Minoridaimons below look up. The squadron had to stifle their disgust and fear. The Daimons had crossed over from a bridge of warped stone that reached all the way to the Scholar’s District. Thankfully none of them had noticed the soldiers from atop the crescent building.

  Still, the Draekslanni’s words made Gallus feel a twinge of fear as some of his anxieties pushed against the Soothing spell in his mind. It was something that made him wonder if she was right. What actually determined the success of a possession? But even more pressing was another uncomfortable question.

  What if he saved someone that had been possessed?

  “Fears. That’s all they are. Don’t abandon your brothers and sisters for a hunch,” the Soothing spell in his head told him.

  The voice was right. They were indeed just that: questions in his mind leading to frightful answers - irrational ones. No. He needed his mind clear - as contradictory as that was. Irrational hope brought him here after all.

  The squadron remained, observing the Minoridaimons. There were only a few targets to dispatch, all of them simple shambling Daimons that had arisen from bulky, equine Leucrocotta. Their eyes were stretched out from their sockets, probing at the sleeping bodies until they remained still over one of them. Tendrils from their bodies pulled the soldiers onto their backs. The possessed beasts picked up the eyes of the dead and some began carrying off a few bodies of the soldiers back over the bridge.

  “Where are they taking them?” one soldier whispered.

  “The Scholar’s District, it seems,” Adonis answered.

  Rufinus’ eyes were ablaze with urgency, “We have to stop them.”

  “Then enough talking, get yourselves ready,” Duxus Gallus said.

  The squadron took their positions, focused on the Minoridaimons below. Targets marked. Spells at the ready, the symbols glowing from their eyes.

  Gallus gave the signal.

  Quick, precise shots of light, fire and electricity struck their targets, burning out the possessed Leucrocotta’s eyes and rendering them messy heaps of nerves. The soldiers on their backs fell off but did not wake. After a quick scan for any other hiding Daimons, the small squadron formed a large lift that reached the bottom and hauled the carts of Focus potions down. Once they descended, they hurried over to the sleeping soldiers.

  Rufinus took one by the shoulders and shook them firmly. When that failed, he tried pouring some Focus potion into their mouth. A sip should have been enough to stir someone awake, but the vial quickly emptied to halfway.

  “Stop,” Adonis said. “You’re wasting it.”

  Rufinus stopped and shook his head as he set the soldier back down, “Why isn't it working…?”

  Adonis approached the soldier and placed a cold hand on his face. The soldier shifted in discomfort but his eyes did not open. He pried one lid open - the soldier’s eyes were darting in a state of wild dreaming.

  “This must be the work of a spell.”

  Like the others, they opened their eyes to Roya. He and Rufinus weren’t as well studied as Valerian in Royan magic but like all humans, they just needed to know what they were dealing with. Both were met with the same sight. When they tried entering the Mindscapes of their brothers and sisters in arms, they felt themselves being thrown out, as if their minds were completely shielded off. Something really didn’t want them in there.

  To Rufinus, he couldn’t make sense of the mess that made up the shielding spell. With a few basic Royan spells, conjuring simple memories of his boredom, he tried to punch through. But his desperation bled into his spells, barely leaving a dent on the shield and instead making it stronger. Rufinus stopped. He was lacking in knowledge and he cursed himself for it.

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  Meanwhile, Adonis focused deeply into the mess. Looking closely, there were faded shapes. Symbols. They were blurry, but he could make out some of their vague forms. It seemed that Daimonic spells followed similar principles to the spells of this world. But what they meant eluded him. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how they were structured, nor what the symbols were meant to represent. It didn't help that he couldn't clearly see them. Not with these eyes.

  Still, that didn't mean he couldn't at least try.

  Like the others, he made an attempt at breaching the shield with spells conjured from the most mind-numbingly boring memories to sap the energy from the spell. Barely a dent - at least he hadn’t fed the shield with any stray emotions. Then he tried something different. From the stray shapes he could make out, he tried repurposing them into a crude counterspell. Again, nothing happened. If he couldn’t study the spell properly then finding the counterspell would be difficult and he didn’t have the luxury of time on his side. He hissed through his teeth as he opened his eyes.

  “Any luck?” Rufinus asked.

  Adonis shook his head and began rubbing his chin as he thought over what he had seen.

  Rufinus went on, “This is no good. If only I'd paid more attention in Royan classes. O animus meus, I wish Val were here…”

  He turned to see his friend still ruminating on his thoughts.

  “What’s on your mind, Ado?”

  “Lack of knowledge isn’t the problem,” he began drawing out what he had seen in lights, “‘We can't study what we can't properly perceive.’ I could barely make out the symbols myself.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that class in form fundamentals… Wait, you saw symbols? Is that it? All I saw was a haze.”

  “Only faintly. And before you ask, I do not know what it means. Yet.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  Adonis tensed. The backdrop of the silvery shield put even more pressure on them.

  “We should look for Val. There isn’t much time.”

  Rufinus nodded back but still bothered by his inability to help. They began looking around for their friend, searching through all of the black-robed soldiers that were oddly scattered across the battlefield, mixed with the others. Close to them were wagons, toppled over with more bodies spilling out - some alive but others long passed away. Not one of them had their friend’s face.

  They overheard the Duxus in passing, shouting at the Soothers around him.

  “What's taking so long?” Gallus barked at his Soothers. “Do you have any idea how little time we have left?!”

  “We’re trying, Duxus. There’s a Daimonic spell on their minds. We can’t-”

  “Don't you dare give me that, Maleficari!”

  It frustrated them all that none could figure out a counterspell. They cursed their lack of knowledge but one could hardly blame them. They were young and had hardly finished their Collegium studies. What they needed was a High Scholar or a Magister. Their Duxus was no specialist of Roya either - Gallus was even more frustrated, especially with the lack of time they had given. 30 Chronocycles had passed and they hardly had any time to waste. As much as they wanted to carry them all out, there was no knowing if they’d be carrying dead weight; the soldiers could unravel into nerves if left like this. Or worse…

  “Even our own Soothers can’t wake them…” Rufinus muttered, occasionally kneeling down to rip off the grimy flesh covering the soldiers to get a good look at their faces.

  “This is beyond them.” Adonis had his eyes to the ground, spotting any other soldiers from the 13th that were missed.

  “A little harsh, don’t you think?”

  “That’s not a slight to them. They lack knowledge.”

  “All of us do,” Rufinus let out a sigh. He felt frustrated by how powerless they all felt. “So you’re saying we need a Magister of Roya to wake them?”

  “No. A prodigy.”

  Rufinus smiled uneasily. There was only one person that they knew by that description - even if that person didn’t believe it themselves. They hoped to find him soon.

  They passed by Saorise, eyes closed and kneeling before some of the soldiers.

  Or perhaps someone who can see what we can't…

  Adonis’ attention was taken by the sight of a cloak some yards away. It had been mired by dirt, but he could see that undoubtedly, that it was once a shimmering white. He broke away from Rufinus, to search through the 1st Cohort. It looked as if they were trying to hold something back with a few other cohorts before they all succumbed to cursed sleep. There were strange patches here, gaps and impressions that suggested that someone once lay there but had been taken by the possessed Leucrocottas that came to carry them away to the Scholar’s District. He had seen patches like this about the battlefield but not nearly as many as what he had seen anywhere else - it seemed the 1st Cohort was favoured.

  He froze. Beyond the heaps of soldiers and Monoceri, he saw a small flap of dark cloth; the tip of a hat with raven feathers hanging from its pointy end.

  His hands pulled apart the nerves hurriedly. He dug out the hat but its owner was missing. He searched further and deeper but he couldn’t find the person. It was only then when he had tore out most of the nerves that he saw it. There was an impression on the ground where he had found the hat. There were two other impressions. There were dragging marks on the ground. The owner seemed to have crawled to the other two.

  “Rufus,” Adonis called out.

  Rufinus rushed over to him. In his hands, Adonis held Valerian’s hat and passed it to him in his trembling hands - the emblem of House Corvus and his name engraved on the metal band of his hat. His amber eyes stared down at the imprint left by his body.

  “No… Val, this can’t be…”

  “He’s not dead. They’ve taken him.”

  Rufinus should have felt relieved but he felt the slight twinge of dread pushing through the Soothing spell.

  “It looks like he crawled here,” Adonis said, looking at the surrounding soldiers of the 1st Cohort.

  “What?”

  Adonis gestured outwards and Rufinus followed his hand back and forth around the area.

  “Did you notice how strange how the 13th were spread across all of the Cohorts? All of them have wagons with the wounded on them.”

  Rufinus’ eyes widened, “They were rescuing people.”

  Adonis nodded, “But, why would Val be all the way here? He’s too far from the rest.”

  “Then… There was someone that needed rescuing in the 1st Cohort.”

  “Perhaps.”

  They looked at the space by their feet. The other impressions suggested that there were once two other people there who had fallen close by. They uncovered the nerves close to them and found two Monoceri. There was a silver one, the red and white colouration of the cloth hanging from its lamellar suggested that this was Magister Bellaxus’ Monoceros. Straight away, they recognised the blue-hair from underneath the lamellar armour of the second steed and the patterns that adorned its cloth. This was Cyrene, the Tribunus’ Monoceros. It was all coming together for them. Valerian had crawled all the way to help the Tribunus and the Magister Bellaxus.

  They heard footsteps approaching and turned to see their Duxus, searching grimly amongst the 1st Cohort.

  Gallus pushed past them, “Move aside.”

  They watched his reaction as he saw what they had seen; the Duxus had let his face go pale. After a long pause, Gallus turned and saw Valerian’s hat in Rufinus’ hands.

  “Whose hat is that? Did you find that here?!”

  Rufinus nodded, “Valerian Corvus.”

  “Corvus? Why was he here?”

  His question sounded accusatory. The two told him what their investigation had led them to believe. The Duxus didn't know what to say; it surprised him that the ‘coward’ would do something so brave. Surprise turned to a blank stare. The Magister Bellaxus and the Tribunus had been taken along with nearly a quarter of the legion. As to why, he didn't know. He needed to go to the Scholar’s District to find out.

  But they couldn't just leave the sleeping soldiers behind. More of them were falling apart from failed possessions the longer they remained. But the worst of their worries was the possibility of a successful possession. All the Soothers could do was ward away the Daimons that hovered around the vulnerable minds, but even they were stretched so thin that they couldn't protect everyone.

  In the worst case, he would order his soldiers to create a chain of large carriages to transport the survivors far from Daimon infested territory, but that would leave him with few men and women to take with him to the Scholar’s District. He still held onto hope that Laevinus and the Tribunus would be alive there. His hope had brought him this far. He wasn't about to give up on anyone now.

  “Duxus! I managed to wake one of them!”

  With his attention taken, he ordered Adonis and Rufinus to keep gathering more information and to take on the grim task of gathering eyes along the way. One of the soldiers had woken up near the Soothers. And then more began to stir.

  “How did you do that?”

  The Soother shook her head, “I don’t know. I just cast another spell to break the shield and then it broke!”

  She showed everyone the spell. With that, Gallus and the others quickly learned it, too desperate to notice the strange shapes found within; it seemed like a typical Royan spell but harsh gashes formed the symbols of the script. Immediately everyone began using the spell - to varying success - on the sleeping soldiers, waking them from their accursed sleep.

  But Adonis noticed Saorise resting her eyes. They slowly opened with the faint violet trace of an unknown spell on her deep marine eyes. She must have felt his suspicious gaze on her as she immediately glanced at him for a moment. She gave him a casual wave before helping the others rejuvenate the awakened soldiers with Focus potions.

  The waking soldiers were tended to by Gallus’ men. The few Duxii that had awoken thanked Gallus for coming back to them and showed him all they had seen.

  “A Princidaimon…” Gallus went pale again.

  “Yes. We couldn't do anything to stop it.”

  It disheartened Gallus to hear such things but he didn't want to let it discourage him. There was a mad fear that was being suppressed deep inside him.

  “I'm leading the 13th again,” Gallus began, “And we shall go to the Scholar’s District to save those who were kidnapped by the Daimons.”

  The other Duxii paused in horror.

  “That's suicide!”

  “Aquilina told me the same thing. Yet I did not abandon you.”

  The other Duxus looked ashamed and quieted down.

  “Then do you at least have a plan to kill the Daimon?”

  Gallus paused, “No.”

  “You expect us to join you to fight that thing without a plan?!”

  “I don't plan on killing the Princidaimon, Galanis. I intend to retrieve the rest of the legion. The Magister Bellaxus included.”

  “That’s preposterous. For all we know, they could all be dead! Or possessed!”

  “But we don’t know that,” Gallus said, “I intend on finding out.”

  “I'll go with you,” said one newly appointed Duxus of the 1st Cohort, Aegeus Columbidos. “I won't fault you all for wanting to leave, but remember that Magister Bellaxus Laevinus and Tribunus Virgilius were willing to give their lives so that most of you and your troops could escape. And should we fail to save them, at least the ones that survive will have something to tell the Magisterium.”

  After that, the Duxus of the 2nd, 5th, 6th and 10th agreed to join Gallus. The rest wanted to return with the 12th at the edge of the forest. When Gallus told those that wanted to leave about the potential survivors in the Residential District, many were willing to take the time to search and rescue survivors on their way back.

  The Cohorts had reassembled on their own. They had used up nearly half of the supply of Focus potion and the other half had been distributed amongst most of the soldiers who were going to the Scholar's District. Adonis had returned back to the outer layer of the legion with Rufinus by his side. Rufinus had Valerian’s hat band attached to his belt like many others who had done the same for their missing friends and loved ones. But Adonis and Rufinus were determined to find their friend. They knew in their hearts that he was alive. Saorise lined up a few in behind Adonis. He could feel her gaze on him. She was holding onto her pendant tightly as she looked at the Scholar’s District with the same determination as the others.

  Then, the representative Duxus of the 1st Cohort led the march. The legion finally split and parted ways.

  Gallus checked his Chronograph. They had less than 4 major Chronocycles left.