I pushed against the tree branches and looked down the forest, the mages ran still. Lowell shot an arrow in an arc towards them, it rose high into the air and got near - but a gust of wind blew it away, shooting it past my face into the tree next to me. I turned and grabbed the body, inspect it. The steel was interred into the trunk. I snapped the arrow, threw it into the floor. Vincent was coming up from the other angle, Sylas with him. Both of them pushed back by giant gusts of wind.

“Know what the fuck that is?” I asked. “Sylas talked about windwalking once. That it?”

“No.” Kal said. “This is a talent of pure mages. More so a manipulation.”

I raised my hand in the air.

“I don’t feel a gust or anything.” I said. “It was pretty windy before.”

“The wind goes where they choose. You won’t feel it for a while.”

“Right. Of course.” I said. “How do you think we’re going to get close? We’ve got maybe a third left of the carts.”

“Well. We can wait for them to get tired and cut them down. That would be the easy way.” Obrick said.

“We don’t have time. We’ll be stranded at this rate.”

“Then you tell me, genius. How are we going to get past the ones at the front? Vicentius can barely get close.” Obrick said. “Look at Sylas, poor old man can barely stand.”

I rubbed my chin and looked at my cape. Firm stuff it was made out of. I yanked at it. Pulled. It held it’s shape. Firm still, retracting only slightly.

“Do you trust me to break the line again?” I asked.

Kal turned his head.

“If I can make an opening, can you come in?” I asked. “Fast though. As fast as you can.”

Every soldier looked about themselves, nodding their heads.

“Okay.” I started pulling the knots and buttons around my neck. “Okay…”

The cape was wrapped around my arms. Around my waist.

A glider suit. I’d fashioned out of the strong cloth. If it could hold my weight, then it’d work. If it couldn’t, I might just have died. But it was worth the try. The secret now was hope and timing. Mostly timing.

I ran up, past trees. Gaining speed, the wind below my feet clipping…almost breaking. Close to it though. I jumped over logs. I skipped over roots. My whole body rushing towards the mages, so close I could see the flaming sword, Sylas, on the other side. And also the mages. Black cloaked figures with giant staffs, little cattle skulls around the ends of their sticks, that they rose up to the sky and brought down. The wind shot out from beneath their staffs and rushed out. So thick, almost visible with a yellow tint. A giant wave of sand, branches, sticks flew towards me. I breathed heavy, waiting.

The wind hit. I raised my arms, my whole cape blew out. I shot into the air. High above the tree line and narrowed my body, until I moved forwards. The mages stared, in shock almost, as I approached. I was close by the time they had their wits. They tried again. Another swirl of the staff, another hit at the floor and the giant surge of wind that proceeded. Dragging. Chipping at the earth, reducing it to sand and shrapnel my way. And me there, flying straight through. Narrow bodied. My cape got a shard of stone through it, a hole that made me turn. I narrowed my body and went straight though. Even as the branches took bits of my cheek, bits of my chin and forehead. Stones and spears the size of knives rushing past me. The wind blinding me, my eyes dry and pained as I kept them open the whole time.

Nearing them, I saw the raised bed of dust up to their faces. I went through it, my own outline within the dust. I rolled on the floor and jumped, landing upright. My whole body ached. The blood came down my arms. My legs. My face. There I was, within the circle though, the mages all around me. Their eyes wide. They looked to each other, then back to me.

“You don’t look so tough.” I grit my teeth.

They lifted their arms, rushing at me with their staffs. When it’s all been reduced, when all options exhausted. When the tools of destruction gone, man reduces himself to that which he knows best. The primal thing imbued in all of us; survival.

They rushed at me. I grabbed one by the throat and ran my knife into his belly, a red sneer across. He dropped his staff, tripping over it, and looked down. He rushed, grabbing handfuls of hits guts as they slipped out of the wound.

Not enough for the Crows.

Another one. I stabbed him straight through the throat, down to his esophagus. There was no aim anymore. No real purpose to it. It was just blood lust, my eyes almost covered in a screen of red as I mowed them down. I bashed another with the heel of my foot, screaming out the top of lungs. His jaw broke. Then his eye slipped out of its socket.

Most of them had started to run. I threw a butcher knife into the back of the skull of one of them, chainmail barely stopping it from going through his skull. He fell though, crawling some bit. I came up to him, removed the knife from the steel and tried again. Hitting and hitting, sparks flying as the knife interred deeper into the back of his head.

“How many did you kill, you stupid fuck?” I asked the corpse. No answer. I kicked him to the side. His body shook, seizuring as his tongue rolled into the back of his throat.

Someone behind me, I raised my knife.

It was Sylas. Vincent behind him.

“Settle down, youngblood.” He said.

I breathed hard. Vincent looked at the body, grinned, then looked to the other running hunt marks.

“I’ll chase them down.” He said.

I left it at that. Standing over the corpse, looking at the red lightning himself. A flash in the pale trees.