Chương 22: Victory

Jack's vision was completely dark for a long moment. The pain in his head was killing him. The magical thread connecting his soul to Dusty was gone, violently snapped by the bandit's heavy iron axe in the Great Hall. He wanted to close his eyes and simply let the darkness take him. The weakness in his body was overwhelming. But a shrieking noise was in the air. It was the Wind Mage's localized blizzard. The magical wind was still raging down in the courtyard.

A violent vortex of white snow, dirt, and flying wooden splinters was in the center of the castle grounds. A loud, frantic rattling was on the wooden roof tiles of the nearby armory and the stables. If the older mage was allowed to keep channeling his magic, the wind would tear the roofs right off the outbuildings and freeze the militia to death.

"I am not done," Jack whispered. He forced his eyes open. His arms were shaking violently as he pushed himself up from the stone. He grabbed the railing of the balcony, pulling his frail body up until he was on his knees. He looked down into the courtyard. Visibility was still almost zero. A thick, impenetrable wall of swirling white snow was over the breached gates. Jack closed his eyes, ignoring the throbbing agony in his skull, and reached inward. Two magical threads were still anchored in his chest.

They belonged to Bones and Rusty. The threads were vibrating wildly, caught in the severe wind magic. Every vibration was a pulse of pain in Jack's mind. But he tightened his mental grip on them anyway. He poured every ounce of his remaining willpower into those two connections.

"Walk," Jack commanded mentally.

"Walk straight through the wind." Down in the courtyard, inside the blinding whiteout of the storm, the two armored skeletons received the order. The wind was like a howling beast. It was strong enough to lift a full-grown man completely off his feet and toss him through the air. A living human warrior, even in heavy armor, would have to bend low, brace their legs, and fight desperately against the swirling wind just to remain standing.

A human had flesh, wide shoulders, and loose clothing that acted like a sail, catching the violent wind and pushing them backward. But skeletons were different. Rusty and Bones did not have flesh. They did not have lungs that could be suffocated by the flying debris. The tabards over their armor were already torn and burned away from the earlier fire blast. All that remained was their bones and incredibly heavy iron. The chainmail hauberks and the iron bucket-helms weighed nearly eighty pounds.

The skeletons themselves have quite some weight. When the magical wind slammed into them, it simply passed right through the empty spaces in their iron-ringed chainmail and hollow ribcages. There was no resistance. The wind could not find purchase on their frames. The iron boots of the skeletons struck the frozen earth. They did not brace. They did not slow down. They simply marched forward like unyielding iron statues, their steps perfectly steady in the middle of the raging storm.

Near the broken timber barricades at the main gates, the Wind Mage was standing with his wooden staff. The older man was sweating profusely despite the freezing weather. His Grey Core was almost entirely empty. He was pouring a continuous stream of his remaining mana into the staff to keep the blizzard alive. He stared into the swirling white wall of snow in front of him. His plan was simple. The blizzard was meant to blind the defenders, disrupt the battlefield, and buy his men time to slaughter the peasants.

He expected the two terrifying golems to be blown backward by the wind, or at least stalled long enough for the bandits to secure the castle. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. But as he watched the whiteout, a deep knot of dread formed in his stomach. A dark shadow was in the swirling snow. Then, a second shadow. The Wind Mage squinted, his hands trembling around his staff.

"No... that is impossible. The wind is strong enough to snap even a tree!" The shadows grew larger and larger in his vision. Rusty and Bones stepped out of the whiteout, completely unfazed. Their helms were fixed directly on the older mage. They were not leaning forward against the wind. They were simply walking, their strides eating up the distance between them and the gates.

"They aren't stopping!" the Wind Mage shrieked in panic. He slammed the bottom of his staff against the frozen earth again, pushing the very last drops of his life-force into the spell. The wind shrieked louder, a desperate, final burst of elemental fury. Sharp shards of ice and dirt pelted against the chainmail of the two giants, sparking harmlessly against the iron. The magic did absolutely nothing to slow them down.

The Wind Mage realized, with sudden and terrifying clarity, that his decades of survival and experience were entirely useless. He was not fighting living men. He was not even fighting traditional golems, which usually possessed a core that could be disrupted by opposing elements. He was fighting something entirely outside the natural laws of magic. He dropped his crooked staff. The wooden stick fell to the snow. The Wind Mage turned to run, his old legs scrambling to find traction on the slick ice near the gates.

But Rusty was already there. The average-sized skeleton reached out with incredible speed. A iron-gloved hand clamped down onto the back of the Wind Mage's thick coat. Rusty yanked the man backward with unbreakable strength. The Wind Mage stumbled, falling hard onto his knees in the snow. He opened his mouth to scream, raising his hands in a desperate plea for mercy. Rusty did not hesitate. The skeleton did not understand mercy, and Jack had given a very clear command to end the threat.

Rusty pulled his right arm back and delivered a swift strike directly to the side of the Wind Mage's head. The iron glove hit with the force of a swinging blacksmith's hammer. The impact was instant and decisive. The older mage collapsed sideways into the snow, his neck broken, his life extinguished before he could even process the blow. The exact moment the Wind Mage died, the magic died with him. The localized blizzard vanished. The violent, howling vortex of white snow and dirt instantly lost its momentum.

The sharp shards of ice dropped harmlessly to the ground. The deafening shriek of the gale was replaced by the sudden, eerie silence of the natural winter night. Visibility returned. Near the doors of the Great Hall, Giles was the first to move. The carpenter stepped out of the splintered doorway, groaning as he brushed a thick layer of snow from his beard. He gripped his axe, looking frantically across the clearing courtyard.

Near the breached main gates, the rest of the militia slowly began to pick themselves up from the snow, their faces pale and bruised from being tossed around by the wind. They looked toward the main gates. A scene of absolute devastation was there. The timber barricades were completely shattered. The bodies of the bandits were scattered across the bloody snow. And standing directly in the center of the breach were the two armored mages. Bones and Rusty were perfectly still.

The bodies of the Fire Mage and the Wind Mage were at their feet. The iron giants looked completely untouched by the chaos. They were silent, unyielding, and utterly terrifying. Just beyond the broken gates, the remaining bandits were gathered on the mountain path. They had been waiting for the blizzard to clear, expecting to see a slaughtered village and a clear path to the grain cellars. Instead, they saw the exact opposite. They saw their young, powerful Fire Mage crushed in the snow.

They saw their experienced, cunning Wind Mage lying dead with a broken neck. And they saw the two iron demons standing watch over the castle, waiting for the next challenger. The psychological breaking point was finally reached.

"They killed the mages!" a bandit in the front row screamed. A iron sword was dropped to the ground. Then a spiked club. Then a crossbow. The sound of weapons hitting the snow was a chain reaction. The bandits didn't wait for orders from Kael. They didn't care about the imperial wheat in the cellars anymore. The survival instinct that had driven them to attack the castle was entirely replaced by the instinct to flee.

"Run! Run!" the voices yelled in the dark. The bandit army completely shattered. It was not a tactical retreat. It was a blind, frantic scramble. The men shoved each other out of the way, slipping and sliding down the icy path in their desperation to escape the valley. They scattered into the dark, freezing wilderness of the woods, choosing the slow death of the winter over the immediate death waiting at the castle gates.

Up on the stone balcony, Jack watched the dark shapes of the bandits disappear into the tree line. The threat was gone and the castle was safe. As the realization washed over him, the massive surge of adrenaline that had been keeping him conscious suddenly vanished. The overwhelming exhaustion of managing multiple undead through a magical storm took its final toll. The pain in his head returned with a vengeance. The cold winter air felt extremely suffocating at that moment. Jack let go of the iron railing.

His legs finally gave out entirely. His vision went completely black. He collapsed backward, his frail body hitting the floor of the balcony. The sounds of the cheering militia in the courtyard below faded, and then to nothing at all.