The Elementals swarmed the waters.

Each was huge alone, but together they were a formidable force. They teemed like schools of sharks, hundreds of times bigger and just as hungry for blood. Gabby watched them as the enchanted waves slammed into the city walls. Corrupted Dwarves clung to their backs. There weren't many left, but there were enough to pose a threat. They raged, black tendrils writhing upon their wide backs, screaming obscenities that Gabby fortunately didn’t understand.

The waves rose higher, closing in on the city. They crashed in a spray of foam against the wards, flaring blue-purple as the Elementals riding the waves scrabbled ineffectually at the walls. If things kept going the way they were, the waves would soon overtop the walls, delivering the Elementals and Dwarves straight into the city.

Gabby gripped her outsized Brightblade. "Elowen! Wendel!"

“I know!” The Theron mage braced herself against the battlements, not thirty feet from Gabby. “Order Departs!”

A string of the Elementals were thrown back, the wave disrupted at its base as the mage's telekinetic Skill blasted it apart.

“Precision Mines!”

Wendell’s Skill exploded in the waters, disrupting the advancing Elementals and even destroying a few unfortunate Dwarves. The lizard swung his swords right after, their enchantments billowing down the length of the city walls. Ice Elementals shied back, fearful of the blaze.

Gabby twisted her hand, her Brightblade Crescendo extending down the wall into a halberd of golden light, held in a spectral fist. She swept it, crashing against the spider-like Earth Elementals that she noticed ascending the wall.

Legionnaires fired at them with Skills in ordered volleys, their power crashing against more rock spiders to little effect. That is, until Evie's chain lashed down at the legs of the creatures, shattering their grip. Not all were caught—more than a few scrabbled around her chains—only to be confronted by Harn and a team of Blades. Captain Loquis was there too, adding Adept Tier lightning to the silver fire flaring from behind the crenellations.

Above, Chimeras strafed the walls, Dragoons on their backs summoning Spears that danced amongst the encroaching Elementals. The creatures were forced to submerge—those that didn’t found themselves killed. Ice, stone, and the dark bits that must have been Water Elementals dove deep to avoid their violence. But they were not idle victims. There was a deadly ebb and flow to the battle. As the water crashed against the walls, Elementals rose atop the crests to launch their own dire attacks. Lances of ice and jets of water arced into the wards, pummeling them with eerie precision. Boulders the size of sedans rocketed from stony arms as powerful as trebuchets, forcing the city’s shields to squeal with stress.

“Ah!” Zara stepped back from the Belais crystal within the control tower as sparks flew. The wards flashed yellow and orange as power was diverted from the array, and she lifted a hand to protect herself from the surge of feedback. “The shields are going to overload if they keep this up!”

“Concentrate your fire!” General Dayne called, voice booming from the air where her wings held her aloft. Spears rotated around her like a lethal carousel, at least thirty of them, and with a gesture they combined. Thirty became fifteen, each Spear grown to twice its size before she sent them off. Each one hit the water, driving a vast explosion upward along with the remnant chunks of former Elementals.

Gabby bared her teeth, twisting her halberd to drive through the skull of an unfortunate Elemental that clung just below the crenellations. She aimed for its body, but the way it threw itself at the walls was so aggressive she couldn't help but put it down.

“Shit! Beef! How’re we doing?” Behind her, the Minotaur stood in the staging grounds just beyond the walls, along with Hallow and Tzfell and dozens of Inscriptionists. All of them had scratched out a wide series of sigils onto the stones with chalk, denoting a radiating pattern of complicated symbols. It was utterly incomprehensible to Gabby.

Beef stood back from it, his crystalline Companion off to the side. "We've hit a snag!"

"We cannot see a way to break it," Chanter Tzfell admitted. "All we know is shattering the array will greatly harm them, but it won’t free them this side of death."

Gabby snarled. "We don't want that. Figure it out!”

Beef threw up his hands. "Then give me a live one!"

The walls shook.

Gabby turned back. It wasn't the waves, but those slammed ever harder. Instead, a massive Earth Elemental rose from beyond the waters. In the dark of night, it was as if a mountain had detached itself from the landscape as a living clod of jungle, nearly fifty feet tall, strode forward. It split from the trees, tearing them up as pieces of their bark, root, and branch joined its gargantuan form. Water swirled around it, no higher than its thick shins, as rock spun across its limbs like small planets in orbit, and clouds sparked off of its shoulders.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Zara cursed. "A Greater Swamp Elemental. Grandmaster Tier at minimum!"

"Great," Gabby muttered.

The thing waded through the enchanted waters, unhindered by their raging waves and uncaring of the Elementals that crawled underfoot.

Captain Loquis barked out commands. “Redirect! Focus fire on the Swamp Elemental!”

His Legionnaires, thousands of them atop the walls, shifting their Skills from the Major Elementals to the approaching behemoth. Arrows, spikes, jaws, and bolts of arcane power seared the air between Hevaan and jungle—they landed with little effect. Fire was snuffed, ice was thawed, and wind blades cut through one or two trees before they were spent. Adept Tiers and lower couldn’t make a dent.

That didn’t stop them from trying.

Chimeras flew by, Dragoons upon their backs calling out precision attacks against the thing’s craggy face. Elementals didn’t always have obvious eyes, but this one’s face smoldered with swamp lights that burned a sodium yellow in its tangled features. The Swamp Elemental bellowed, the sound enough to shake several Chimera from the sky entirely, and floating rocks zipped from its convoluted flesh. They chased after the skyborne predators, hunting their feathered wings and drawing out pained squawks and screeches.

“Cataclysm Array!”

The general's manifested Spears, larger even than before, shot outward faster than cannons. They hit the Swamp Elemental, center mass, and exploded into a concentrated storm of electricity and concussive force. Deep chasms opened up across the Elemental’s chest, revealing a blackened-green light welling up like blood. In almost the same breath, however, that same light reached out crackling tendrils to seize floating chunks of earth and root before pulling them inward. The chasms filled near-instantly.

Still, the Swamp Elemental groaned and leaned forward, slamming a single hand into the churning waters. For a heady moment, Gabby thought the thing was injured—at least until it hauled its fist back up. In its grip was a boulder the size of an apartment building, streaming with dark water and floating debris.

“Get down!” Gabby cried.

The Elemental hurled it forward like a shotput.

“Brightblade Crescendo! Luminous Raiment!”

Her halberd flashed into a tower shield of gold as her body was encased in her giant armor and she leaned into it. The boulder hit dead center, buckling her entire Body as the light was sheared through and her armor broken across her shoulder and chest. Gabby cried out.

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 40%!

The boulder didn’t stop there. It continued through, hitting the city wards and forcing them to keen with a Dissonance that dug sharp nails into Gabby wounds. The wards flared cherry red, then white, before shattering. Spinning from the force of its entry, the boulder careened into the city beyond.

The Swamp Elemental bellowed—a sound of triumph—and its lesser kin swarmed. They rushed across waves, clingingto the walls as they climbed frantically toward the wound in Hevaan’s shields.

Chanter Laur scrambled, his calls coming fast and sharp. “Reinforce the crumbling edge! Bolster the tertiary sigils first! Integrity matters there!” The Elf flung his long-fingered hand at the breach. “Prismastic Protection!”

The Elf’s power filled the gap, plastering over the city’s wards like an oversized bandaid. It flexed, blocking another series of shots from creatures in the waves, but in doing so it flared a deep cherry red.

It wouldn’t be enough for long.

Groaning, Gabby got back to her feet. Her Raiment had dissipated, the Skill coiling within her core as if gun shy, but Gabby didn’t need it for this.

Major Elementals leapt through the gap, slaughtering the Legionnaires caught in their path. Earth, Water, and Ice, each bestial as the next, tore into the soldiers even as their Bodies split open, releasing a slew of smaller Elementals. Minor and Lesser, these creatures were shaped like insects and small animals—all of them covered in dense sigaldry.

Gabby spun about, crushing the ones that came too close to her, but they were smart. They fled away, heading towards the weaker Legionnaires or leaping straight from the battlements themselves. Toward the townsfolks that huddled deeper within.

"Take them down! Starsteel’s Descent!" Harn cried, his axes shearing through the back of two Lesser Elementals. “Keep them from the city!”

A company of Bones and Blades was at his back, dicing through the swam, their Temper far more effective at negating the power of such creatures. Those that made it down the wall were the fastest, if not the strongest, but they had other things to contend with—the city was not undefended.

“Risen! Kill them all!” Hallow cried. Eidolon Exults, filled with blackened-green radiance, charged across the city streets. Their fists swung like sledgehammers, crushing skulls and abdomens with casual ease. Nearly two hundred of the Risen were there, spread like a net across the entrance to the outer districts. All Elementals caught were reduced to smeared rubble.

Evie slung past them, skirting slantwise across the battlements and catching stray monsters with her spiked chains. A whirling dervish of icy death, she slashed through anything within reach, her dual chains wrapping up foes before lifting them wholesale to smash into others, forcing the lot of them back into the waters beyond. Ice claws formed across her hands, punching through stone flesh and icy hide, even freezing the few Water Elementals that dared face her down.

“Heliacal Blaze!”

In direct counterpoint to Evie, golden light seared outward from Gabby. The radiant heat scoured the battlements, forcing the Elementals to flee back over the wall into the water beyond. Those that didn’t, that tried to attack her, were burst asunder—the wall was clear for at least thirty feet in either direction. Emptied of threats, Laur and his team rushed forward once more, moving quickly as their boots cooked against the sizzling stone.

The Elf gave her a nod of respect before he started barking new orders. The patchwork began, and Gabby stalked down the wall.

Beef wasn’t done. They needed more time.

The Swamp Elemental roared, and Gabby fixed her grip.

“Vess! I need a ride!”

She had a plan.