The blizzard howled, tearing at the Dwarven lines. Only two Stone Golems remained, but their rocky hides were stubbornly shrugging off every blow.
The Dwarven Captain spat a dark glob into the snow. "Takes too damn long."
He dropped his iron shield and war-hammer. Without warning, he seized the nearest armored infantryman by the belt and collar, hoisting the sputtering soldier off the ground. The Captain pivoted, spinning in a massive circle to build momentum, his voice booming over the wind. "Mana to your hammer, boy!"
The spinning Dwarf surged with dense, brown earth magic. With a mighty grunt, the Captain hurled him.
The soldier tore through the freezing air like a cannonball. The sheer force of the impact, backed by the heavy mana, shattered the golem's stone chest into dust. Catching on to their Captain's brilliant insanity, the rest of the Dwarven Hammers tossed aside their shields. They grabbed the nearest man and started throwing each other through the air.
The final Stone Golem's last sight was a swarm of glowing, screaming Dwarves hurtling directly at its face.
When the dust settled, the golems were nothing but rubble.
"Captain!" A soldier sprinted up from the rear of the convoy, chest heaving. "The gunpowder wagons... they're empty! Stripped clean!"
"What?!" The Captain whirled around. "When?"
"During the chaos with the Golems," the soldier panted, gesturing to the bare carts. "The main cannons are dead weight now. We only have enough powder up front for a few shots."
The Captain gritted his teeth, tracking the faint grooves of wagon wheels disappearing into the snowy timberline. "Gather the wounded. We rest here. Whoever planned this ambush has terrifying patience."
High in the canopy of a snow-draped pine, Kelvin closed his leather notebook. He had just finished documenting the boy's tactics—Elara's trap had been nothing short of brilliant. He tore the pages out, tied them to the leg of a spectral mana-bird, and whispered a quick spell of haste. The bird launched northward toward the Iron Horn.
Then, Kelvin cast his voice through the frozen woods. He ordered his eight thousand hidden infantrymen to march the stolen Dwarven powder back to the stronghold and regroup with Lieutenant Graves. Cargo secured, Kelvin stepped off the branch, floating gracefully through the falling snow toward Elara's ridge.
Miles away, General Ulric Stone unrolled Kelvin's letter. A slow, jagged smile crept across his scarred face. The boy had actually listened. Elara had used bandit tactics to spring a flawless trap.
But Kelvin's note also mentioned three hundred captured mercenaries, suggesting they be executed to save the manpower of marching them back.
Ulric uncapped his pen. If you're going to kill them, he wrote, you might as well make their deaths useful. He scrawled out a brutal, brilliant strategy to break both the hired swords and the Dwarves in a single stroke, tied it to the bird, and sent it back into the cold.
Further south, Lord Kent was pushing his warhorse to the brink. Sweating dense, golden mana, he rode at breakneck speed toward Oakhaven, desperate to intercept the monstrous horde's secondary invasion.
In the Capital, the atmosphere couldn't have been more different.
William Wins and Kars had arrived four days early for the royal summons, settling into the lavish Wins Manor. Per his usual paranoia, Kars immediately walked the perimeter, laying down invisible, gravity-laced security tripwires.
Fresh from a hot shower, William strolled into the dining room in loose civilian clothes. Kars was already at the table, still wearing his road-dusty leather coat.
"Come on, Kars," William sighed, sitting down at the feast. "Change into something else."
"No," Kars said flatly, pouring black coffee. "We aren't attending a ceremony. This works."
"Suit yourself!" William grinned. He immediately began shoveling roasted chicken and dry bread into his mouth at an alarming rate.
Suddenly, William froze. His eyes bulged. He pounded his chest, face turning violently purple as he choked on a crust of bread.
Kars didn't look up from his coffee. He simply raised an index finger and flicked it down. The Anvil. A highly concentrated thread of gravity slammed into the center of William's back like a mallet. The pressure forced the air from William's lungs, rocketing the bread out of his throat and across the room.
William gasped, inhaling a massive breath of air. "Whew! Thanks, Kars."
"Chew," Kars muttered.
Down in the southern territories, Lady Maltida Armstrong rode into her castle's grand courtyard. She was met by her Vice Commander, Faye Watson. A dozen deadly arrows hovered in mid-air over Faye's shoulders, eliminating the need for a quiver.
"Welcome back, My Lady!" Faye bowed, then immediately crossed her arms. "That Kent fellow is out of his mind, asking for help out of nowhere. You had to abandon your own army to fight the horde just to bail him out. I swear he's a dead man!"
Maltida's laugh was bright and elegant. "Easy, Faye. Let him be."
"But My Lady—"
"Leave it," Maltida waved her off. "Have the maids draw my bath and compile the territory reports. I'll be in the conference room shortly."
An hour later, Maltida sank into the steaming, perfumed water of her massive marble tub. She let out a long sigh, closing her eyes.
Then, she frowned. "Kent's bath is still better than mine," she whispered to the empty room.
Back in the northern gorge, High Mage Kelvin touched down softly beside Elara. He praised the young Vice Commander's flawless victory, marveling at how Elara had manipulated the air pressure to drop the mercenary captain. "Brains and brawn," Kelvin smiled.
A flutter of spectral wings interrupted them. The mana-bird landed on Kelvin's staff.
Kelvin untied Ulric's reply. As the High Mage read the General's orders, his serene smile vanished. "By the gods," he breathed. "How can a man be so terrifying?"
"What is it?" Elara asked.
Kelvin didn't answer. He turned to face the three hundred bound mercenaries kneeling in the snow. Raising his staff, his voice dropped into a resonant, rhythmic chant. A wave of purple light washed over the prisoners. Their eyes instantly clouded over, wiped clean of free will.
Moving in eerie synchronization, the mind-controlled mercenaries mounted their horses. In total silence, they turned and rode back up the pass straight toward the resting Dwarven army.
"High Mage!" Elara stepped forward, alarmed. "What's the plan?!"
Kelvin smiled faintly. He raised his fingers, projecting the visual feed from his spectral bird into a glowing blue, three-dimensional hologram. "Watch."