The little wizard was making a lot of noise behind him.
It did nothing to dull the cloaked skeleton's fighting spirit.
The silver sword tilted in its hand, the tip aimed at the sky, at the woman seated on the dragon's back, like a formal declaration of war.
"Not bad," the woman said with a click of her tongue. "You've got style."
Her brows lifted again, higher this time.
The tip of her wand shifted by the smallest angle, as though adjusting her aim, or perhaps simply waiting for her opponent to make the first move.
The dragon beneath her let out a shriek, its wings spread wide, rust-gray scales gleaming coldly in the morning sun, doing its best to make its master look even more imposing.
"I want one," Iain muttered.
Envy nearly dripped from the corner of his mouth.
Then, in the next instant,
Boom!
The cloaked skeleton sprang upward without warning, its leg bones bursting with force. It shot into the air like an arrow loosed from a bow.
The silver sword carved a bright arc through the sky, blade angled downward. Its target was not the witch, but the dragon's head.
The woman on the dragon's back did not move.
"You're trying to kill my big black sweetheart?"
She only tipped her head slightly, and the skeleton's sword stopped dead in the air roughly six feet from the dragon's face.
As if some invisible barrier had caught it. Or as if unseen hands were holding it in place.
The cloaked skeleton hung there in midair, blade thrust forward, like a statue frozen in time.
The witch raised her wand and pointed it at him.
The wand tip did not glow, but she still spoke one word.
"Expelliarmus."
A red flash burst out.
With a sound like a cannon blast, the silver sword flew from the skeleton's grip, spinning wildly as it shot off into the distance, vanishing into the horizon.
The skeleton itself was hurled from the sky like it had been hit by a truck, smashing down into the soaked ground hard enough to leave a crater hundreds of feet wide.
Dust and dirt billowed up.
"Clack clack clack…"
From the bottom of a pit dozens of feet deep, the cloaked skeleton struggled to prop its shattered body back up.
"Tell me that was not the Disarming Charm."
Iain, hiding behind a rock some distance away, was staring so hard his eyes were almost sparkling.
That was the kind of Disarming Charm he wanted to learn. A ballistic one.
"Crash!"
The stubborn cloaked skeleton did not fall apart. It actually managed to vault back out of the crater with those frog-like leg bones of his. Then he raised one arm toward the forest.
The silver sword came flying back from far away, slicing through branches and air before dropping neatly back into his finger bones.
"Hold on!"
Iain was sprawled on a nearby boulder, staring at the skeleton in disbelief.
"You're a wizard, aren't you? Not a swordsman. Could you maybe fight like a wizard?"
His mouth hung open. This was apparently his attempt at tactical advice.
The cloaked skeleton did listen, in a way. He nodded once.
Then he gripped the sword tighter and launched himself right back at the witch.
"…"
Iain could understand why.
The guy had no brain inside that skull. That part was fair enough.
What he could not understand was how a skeleton wizard could fight like a berserker knight.
And understanding was one thing. Respect was another.
Left with no choice, the little wizard cursed under his breath and looked wildly around for some way to help.
He had not learned many spells. That meant he could only rely on his brain.
"You brainless bonehead!"
Iain gave the cloaked skeleton a new nickname.
The next second, his thoughts moved, and invisible Wizard's Hands appeared in the air.
He found a heap of boulders nearby. Sixteen Wizard's Hands strained at once, lifting the rocks from the ground before hurling them toward the dragon.
Iain's throwing game was no joke.
The boulders carved arcs through the air at frightening speed, shrieking from the friction.
But.
His aim was good. The ammunition just was not.
Maybe it would have worked better if they were Tsar Bomba warheads.
The rocks hit the dragon.
And that was the end of that.
The boulders cracked apart on impact and shattered into rubble that slid harmlessly off the dragon's scales.
The dragon turned its head and cast Iain a single look with those golden slit pupils.
It was the sort of look that said, with total sincerity, Was that supposed to matter?
It seemed genuinely offended by how little respect that attack showed.
Even the woman on its back could not help covering her face for a second.
By the time she lowered her hand, the cloaked skeleton had landed on the dragon's back.
His feet slammed into the rust-gray scales. Leaning forward, he swept his sword from the hip in a sideways slash, aiming to cut the witch clean in half.
Faced with such a vicious strike, the witch did not dodge or retreat.
She simply raised her left arm and blocked the blade with her forearm.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Metal rang through the air.
Sparks spat from the point of impact, scattering across the dragon's scales.
The witch's body was an alchemical construct. She possessed the sort of physical durability no normal wizard ever could. She had met the cloaked skeleton's slash with the weakest part of any wizard, the flesh, and come through without a scratch.
"That's all the strength you've got?"
Her brows knitted slightly, disappointed.
"You really are down to a fraction of your old power in this ruined body. Though, I suppose it may also be because the little one is too weak to support you properly."
Her assessment was calm, almost casual.
Then her right hand released her wand.
The wand did not fall. It hovered in the air beside her, held aloft by something unseen.
A moment later, the witch raised that same right hand and slapped the cloaked skeleton across the face.
A proper open-palmed smack.
Smack!
It landed clean.
The sound rang out like a gunshot.
The power behind it was even worse.
The cloaked skeleton's skull spun twice on his neck. His cervical bones clicked and rattled, and then his whole body was sent flying off the dragon's back.
He shot off like a swatted fly, disappearing into the depths of the forest, landing somewhere far out of sight.
"I do still respect you, for what it's worth. Sorry about that."
The witch withdrew her hand and took her floating wand back, then looked down toward the ground.
She was searching for the junior she considered worth her trouble.
Only when her gaze swept over every corner of the earth below, she found no trace of the little wizard at all.
"Where did he go?"
Her confusion did not last long.
"He's right here!"
Iain exploded into view from behind her on the dragon's back like a madman.
He barreled straight into the witch from behind, knocking her over before she could predict what he was doing.
"When—?"
She sounded startled for the first time.
"I used the Wizard's Hands to throw myself up here while you were busy beating up my guy!"
So that earlier barrage of boulders had just been a test.
A trial run to measure how much force the Wizard's Hands could exert.
That was right.
The little wizard had basically invented a way to fly by throwing himself.
It was insane. It was brilliant. And at that moment, he absolutely had the right to be smug.
"…"
The witch had never imagined someone would use the most basic application of ancient magic like that.
She was so stunned she did not even order the dragon to roll.
The shock passed, and she stopped trying to understand it.
Instead, she simply looked at Iain, who now had one hand pressed to her head.
"Do you know what happens if your spell works on a construct like this?" the witch asked softly.
The little wizard did not answer.
"Senior, did you want to experience it for yourself?" he asked instead. "That miracle that smothers magic and extinguishes power?"
At some point, he had figured it out.
The next second, a soft glow spread outward.
"So you did realize…"
The witch never finished the sentence.
In an instant, every trace of expression froze on the construct's face.
Its vitality vanished. Its magic vanished. Every trace of the uncanny vanished with it.
It was as though a wizard had been stripped of the very fact of being a wizard.
"ROAR!"
Beneath both Iain and the witch's construct, the dragon was affected as well.
Its roar turned desperate.
It dropped from the sky, wings beating furiously to no effect, before the beast and its rider plunged through the treetops and were swallowed by the forest below.
Caught just in time by the cloaked skeleton, Iain looked down at the ground beneath them.
Then he quietly spoke the title that only he and Miss Succubus knew.
"The Nullifier…"