The world had narrowed down to the sound of Kael's own labored breathing inside his visor and the rhythmic, heavy crunch of his boots pulverizing the frozen earth.
He was a juggernaut in motion, a singular force of obsidian and gold carving a path through the whiteout toward the three-eyed Alpha, he crushed any wolf that came in his way with his hammer.
His Knight Force swirled around him, acting as a kinetic shield that shunted aside the lesser wolves, but even Kael had blind spots.
From the periphery of his vision—distorted by the flickering fire bolts and the spray of snow, a streak of white and grey launched itself.
This wasn't a standard terror wolf, it was one of the Alpha's larger pack members, a heavy-set brute that had been waiting in a drift.
It struck with the force of a falling boulder.
Kael felt the massive weight slam into his side, the impact rattling his teeth. Before he could swing his warhammer into a defensive arc, the wolf's jaws snapped shut over his right shoulder.
The sound was sickening—the screech of teeth grinding against obsidian plate, followed by the wet, muffled crunch of metal giving way to flesh.
The wolf's fangs dug deep, bypassing the reinforced gorget and sinking into the muscle of Kael's shoulder.
The pain was immediate and white-hot, a jagged lightning bolt that surged through his nervous system.
With a violent jar, the chin strap of his antlered helmet snapped. The iconic headpiece, weighted by its massive stag antlers, spun away into the crimson-stained snow. For the first time in years, Kael's face was exposed to bone chilling temperatures of the surface, his features were contorted in a mask of agonizing fury, sweat and blood matting his hair.
He let out a scream filled with pain, a sound that wasn't human or antman, but something ancient and wounded.
"KAEL!"
High above, Velas's voice pierced the roar of the blizzard. The mage had just finished a devastating maneuver, his staff vibrating as he used a "Wind Slice" to decapitate a leaping wolf mid-air.
He saw his friend stumble, the massive warrior dropping to one knee as the wolf on his shoulder worried at the wound, trying to tear the arm clean off the socket.
Kael was drowning in the scent of his own blood, but the blacksmith's spirit was forged in fire. He didn't try to use his hammer but he couldn't and instead, he dropped the handle of Earth-Breaker, letting it hang by its leather wrist-strap, and reached up with his gauntleted left hand.
He didn't grab the wolf's throat. He went for the source of its malice.
Kael's fingers, thick and reinforced by iron-hard muscle, plunged into the single, glowing orb of the wolf's eye. The creature let out a high-pitched yelp, but Kael didn't stop. He shoved his fist deep into the socket, his knuckles grinding against the skull, and then he pulled.
He tore the eye out by the root. A long, pulsing purple nerve trailed behind the orb like a gruesome ribbon, dripping with blood.
The wolf's body went into a violent convulsion, its jaws locking one last time before the light died in its remaining sensory nerves.
Kael stood up, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He shoved the dead weight of the wolf off his shoulder, the carcass thudding into the snow. He immediately clutched his shoulder, his hand coming away soaked in a dark, viscous red.
He tried to steady his vision, to look at the status of the other warriors holding the gate. He saw the Ashfang and other warriors line buckling under the sheer numbers, the Arcanis mages pale from mana-exhaustion. But he had no time to process the tactical layout.
The air hissed. Another wolf, sensing his weakness, lunged from his left, its claws extended like daggers.
Kael was too slow to react. His injured shoulder had numbed his right arm, and his balance was tilted. But the wind responded where his muscles could not.
A horizontal tornado, no wider than a man's waist but spinning with the velocity of a hurricane, roared across the clearing.
It hit the leaping wolf square in the ribs. The sound of snapping bone was like a flurry of dry twigs breaking. The beast was snatched out of the air and hurled fifty feet into a stone outcropping, its body folding in ways that made survival an impossibility.
Velas descended in a blur of green silk, landing between Kael and the encroaching pack. His sapphire staff was glowing so brightly it was painful to look at.
"You're bleeding out, you stubborn mule!" Velas snapped, his youthful face etched with genuine concern. He didn't look at Kael; his eyes were fixed on the ring of wolves closing in. "Retreat to the center. The Arcanis have a healing circle near the gate. If that wound gets infected, you'll lose the arm."
Kael let out a wet, guttural grunt. He reached down, retrieving his antlered helmet from the snow. He wiped a smear of blood from the visor with a trembling hand.
"We have to kill him," Kael said, his voice a low rasp. He pointed the head of his warhammer toward the rocky outcropping where the three-eyed Alpha stood. The beast hadn't moved; it watched them with a detached, regal cruelty, surrounded by a dozen of its largest, most battle-hardened "goons."
Velas looked at the Alpha, then at the wall of fur and fangs between them. "I agree. But I doubt his honor guard is going to invite us in for tea. We're deep in the thick of it, Kael. If we push now, we push into the heart of their pack."
Kael didn't argue. He simply jammed his helmet back onto his head. The snap of the broken strap didn't matter; he wedged it into place, the jagged antlers silhouetted against the grey sky. He gripped the leather-wrapped handle of Earth-Breaker with both hands, ignoring the scream of protest from his mangled shoulder.
He let out a roar—a defiant, earth-shaking sound that signaled he wasn't backing down. He was the Blacksmith of the tribe, and he would either hammer this threat into the dirt or break trying.
Velas looked at his friend and let out a short, dry laugh. He spun his staff, the sapphire tip whistling.
"Fine but if you're going to be an idiot, I might as well go down that road with. Let's get them."
They moved as one, a dual engine of destruction.
Before they could reach the Alpha, they had to clear the "small fries" the dozens of wolves that acted as a living buffer. Kael took the lead, acting as the anvil.
A wolf tried to intercept him, snapping at his knees. Kael didn't even use the hammer; he delivered a punch with his gauntleted left hand so powerful that it shattered the wolf's jaw and sent it skidding across the battlefield. When it tried to rise, Kael's heavy boot came down on its neck with a sickening thud, crushing the life out of it instantly.
Meanwhile Velas provided the fire. Literally.
He held his staff horizontally, the sapphire glowing white-hot. With a sharp mental command, he reshaped the ambient mana into a translucent, shimmering bow of flame that overlaid his staff.
He began to "fire." Each pull of the invisible string sent a streak of concentrated fire-mana into the pack. These weren't just arrows; they were piercing bolts that cauterized as they hit. One wolf was struck in the chest, the heat so intense it cooked the beast from the inside out before it hit the ground.
Those that resisted the fire were met by Kael, who followed up with brutal, short-range hammer strikes that turned heads into meat paste.
They were a whirlwind. Kael's hammer work was no longer elegant; it was survivalist. He used the hammerhead to crush ribcages, and the rear beak to drag wolves into the path of Velas's fire.
The Alpha's "goons" began to stir, realizing their wall of fodder was being decimated. The three-eyed beast stood up, its fur bristling.
It saw the two figures making their way towards him, one bleeding and battered, the other radiating a terrifying magical pressure closing the distance.
The tide was turning. The antmen at the gates, heartened by the sight of their leaders carving through the center of the pack, redoubled their efforts. The ground was no longer white; it was a swamp of wolf-blood and black and white fur.
The Alpha let out a long, haunting howl. It wasn't a call for more reinforcements but a call for a tactical withdrawal.
The wolves, with a coordination that spoke of a hive-mind intelligence, immediately broke contact.
They didn't scatter; they retreated in an orderly fashion, leaping over the carcasses of their kin and heading straight for the Stagfall Forest.
But the Alpha did not leave immediately.
It stood atop its rock, silhouetted by the dying late evening light.
It turned its massive, scarred head and locked all three of its glowing eyes onto Kael and Velas.
There was no animalistic rage in that look. There was recognition. It was documenting their faces, their fighting styles, and their scents.
A cold shiver raced down Kael's spine, not from the wind, but from the raw, calculating malice in that gaze. The beast wasn't running because it was defeated; it was leaving because it had learned enough.
With one final, toothy snarl, the Alpha leaped from the rock and ran away with increadable speed already catching up with it's pack members that were ahead.
Silence fell over the battlefield, broken only by the crackle of Velas's dying fire-spells and the distant moans of the injured.
Kael's knees finally gave out. He collapsed into the slush, the weight of his armor and the blood loss finally catching up to him. Beside him, Velas dropped as well, his staff clattering to the ground.
The mage's face was pale, his "youthful" appearance flickering as his mana-reserves hit rock bottom.
They sat there in the mud and the blood, two old veterans who had barely held the line.
"It's going to come back," Kael wheezed, his visor fogging up.
"I know," Velas replied, looking at the dark forest. "And next time, it will finish what it started."
They looked at each other, the weight of the coming war settling on their shoulders.
The King was still in the mountains, and the South was far away. For now, they were the only thing standing between the tribe and this threat.