[color=#6ecff6][center][sub][h1][b]Siegfried Aschwin[/b][/h1][/sub][img]https://i.imgur.com/bYbIH9t.png[/img]
Location: The Wilds
Mentions: [@Andreyich][@Haha][@13org][@Theyra][/center][/color][hr]Siegfried felt them before he truly saw them. His heart gave a sudden, eager kick in his chest, a rhythm he knew too well. His vision tightened, the world narrowing down to the men in the wolf tabards and the wrongness curling around them. The pale blue of his eyes constricted to hard little pinpricks, the pupils thinning to something just a touch too sharp, too vertical, catching the light like chips of ice.

[i]Mages.[/i]

The hairs at the back of his neck prickled, like lightning about to crash. For a heartbeat he stood very still, measuring them. The leader’s aura condensed into that spinning, silver mass, metal humming as if it wanted to leap from every sheath and joint. The blond whelp with the dagger snapped his fingers, yellow flame licking to life at his fingertips. The other two locked into position around the sphere, shields and blades angled without a word.

“Cowards,” Siegfried muttered under his breath, feeling the pull of the sphere tug at the rings of his own hauberk. “Hiding behind tricks.”

He shifted his grip on the axe.

The trick was simple: you never fight a mage on their terms. You make their magic work for you.

He stepped forward just enough to draw eyes, boots crunching into the snow, then twisted his torso and let the axe fly. It left his hand in a brutal, low arc, not aimed straight at the blond boy with the fire, but off to the side, as if he had misjudged the throw. He had not.

The tug of the magnetic sphere caught the steel almost immediately. The axe’s flight shuddered, then bent, curving unnaturally as the invisible force dragged at it. For a breath it seemed like it might be pulled off into the swirling metal mass entirely, but Siegfried had thrown wide and high, knowing the field would bend its path inward. The weapon curved like a hunting hawk banking, scything around the outer edge of the sphere’s pull, straight towards the blond kid.

At that same instant, the bolt came shrieking in from the treeline.

Siegfried saw only the flicker of motion, and heard the taut snap of heavy strings. The crossbow bolt slammed into the blond knight’s helm, not punching through, but with enough force to smash the bucket sideways off his head. The boy staggered with a shout, yellow fire flaring as his concentration shattered.

The flame in his hand surged out of control.

It became a fat, pulsing globe of sickly yellow light in an instant, then tore itself free and hurtled outward in a clumsy arc, more a dropped lantern than a crafted spell. Siegfried was already moving, boots digging in as he launched himself forward. The fireball bloomed directly in his path, swelling, then bursting apart in a blossom of roaring light and heat.

He did not slow.

He squinted hard, lids narrowing against the glare. The wash of heat slammed into him, crawled over his skin, tugged at the edges of his cloak. The flames threaded through his hair, licked at his skin, wrapped around his outstretched arms and armor, then broke apart and guttered away, unable to find purchase on him. The aura boiled, then slid off as if repelled, leaving only a faint smell of scorched leather and a halo of dying sparks.

Inside the explosion, Siegfried was a dark shape cutting straight through the heart of it.

To the blond mage, it must have been like watching a nightmare step out of his own spell. One moment there was blinding light and the satisfying rush of ignited aura, the next a hand was clamping around the front of his cuirass, fingers biting into leather and steel. He barely had time to see the eyes, those pale, inhuman points of blue burning inches from his, before he was yanked bodily forward off his feet.

Siegfried’s other hand snapped up.

The axe, dragged by the magnetic pull, had whipped in toward the sphere, but its path intersected with the man now hurtling toward its unseen well. Siegfried reached out into the chaos and caught the haft as it passed, the impact reverberating through his arm like a bell strike. Momentum did the rest.

He turned his hips, using the jerk of the mage’s body as leverage. For an instant they were locked together, the boy choking on his own surprise and fear. Then Siegfried’s grip shifted, his thumb rolling along the haft to set the blade just so.

[color=#6ecff6]“Should have stayed in your tower, whelp,”[/color] he growled, voice low enough that only the blond could hear over the roar and clatter. The axe came down in a brutally efficient arc.

There was no flourish to it, no wasted motion. Just a clean, practiced swing that took the mage’s head just above the collar. Steel parted the neck and spine in a single, heavy stroke. For a heartbeat, Goldilocks’ eyes remained locked on Siegfried’s, wide and uncomprehending, then his head tumbled away into the churned snow, spraying a hot arc of red across the white ground.

The body collapsed limply in Siegfried’s grip. He let it drop without ceremony, the severed neck pumping steam into the freezing air.

The great metal sphere still whirled behind him.

Siegfried straightened, rolling his shoulders as if shrugging off a cloak, and flicked his axe of the excess blood, as if he hadn’t just decapitated the mage. The blade dripped, bright crimson hissing as it hit the cold, half frozen earth at his feet. He turned then, setting himself between the remaining mage knights and the others, his outline still haloed by the fading ghost of the fireball.

His pupils were still pinpricks. His lips peeled back in something that might have been a smile, but had no humor in it at all.

[color=#6ecff6]“One,”[/color] he said, voice flat. [color=#6ecff6]“Three to go.”[/color]