BOOM! Fire rocked the stony landscape. Luke was standing around five miles away, but the firepower that shook the Stone Caldera was overwhelming. The wall of the caldera cracked but did not crumble. Warriors with earth kerns inside franticly cemented the wall back together with stone constructs. Areas not under current assault were being addressed by lower tier masons and stone workers.
Those with fire kerns quickly dried any mortar or concrete used to patch up the wall. It would be weaker than the original wall, but better than having no wall. City warfare was poorly developed in the caldera, but that did not mean that the elemental lords had not developed the skills while still alive. Trebuchets threw projectiles into the Stone Caldera with limited effect.
Turns out that building a home like a bunker made a city resistant to common siege equipment. The brick facade hid a much sturdier structure. People were able to shelter in their homes while every able bodied man returned the shattered boulders back to their attackers with slings. Luke was surprised at the power that could be achieved with a simple strip of leather and a rock. He watched an infantryman have his helmet dented so badly that he had to get help removing it.
Currently, Luke stood beside Siren. He was not sure how he had found himself in a lieutenant role, but evidently killing elemental lords had a great effect on morale. On the opposite side of Siren was Cole, he was an impressive man, a head taller than Siren. However, despite them being in a similar tier, and having similar kerns, Luke could only think of him as a discount Siren. The sign of an elite was the ability to punch a tier above one’s own.
Siren could fight tier fives, he had done it on multiple occasions, and even won some of the time, while they were excavating the tower. He was able to stall tier six elemental lords as well. Cole was average with his mass being his greatest strength. He was a nice enough fellow though.
The final member of their group was someone called Commander Blacklake. He was a tier three elite who was in charge of the Lake and River Caldera’s united forces. Fittingly, he had a water kern and several powerful artifacts, including the one that Siren had taken from the water elemental lord. Luke had thought it was stupid until the man laced his water constructs with poison and then froze them into bladed weapons. It was so vicious that Luke couldn’t help but respect the man.
“What are we waiting for?” Cole asked. He was getting fidgety watching his home being assaulted while he had an army of four hundred strong at his back.
“I want to understand,” Siren said.
“Understand what? People are dying, let’s save them,” Cole said.
“Where is the Lord of the Underworld? Why is a Caldera filled with ten thousand potential elemental thralls not worth his time? There are only four elemental lords too and they all look to be built out of low tier elementals,” Siren pointed at one that was pounding on the gates, “That one puts out less force than me, considering that it has a fire, dark, and light elementals composing it, it can’t have an effective tier above five.”
Cole did not seem to understand what that meant, so Luke took the opportunity to mock, uh educate the civil protector, “Do some basic math, that tier five means it is made up of tier two elementals. It's the closest thing to fodder that the Underlord can get, without it actually being trash.”
“So you think this is a trap?” Commander Blacklake asked.
“Or a distraction, we have most of the Caldera’s fighting power with us right now,” Siren said, “Though if it is a distraction, it's not one we can afford to ignore, ten thousand people are great bait in either case.”
“So what’s the plan?” Commander Blacklake asked, “Even if their army is almost a thousand strong, it is made mostly of civilians. Though with proper incentives, even civilians can put up enough of a fight to kill warriors.”
“You think the lords are holding family members hostage?” Siren asked.
Blacklake shook his head, “It’s not what I would do, though I must admit I don’t know how elementals think. I would offer a massive payout, but only if they survived. If their loved ones needed the payout then an elemental would be almost guaranteed. I would then break my own rules and give the payout to the families of deceased soldiers to curry the goodwill of the populace. In short, I would treat people like cattle, feed them, treat them nice, get their milk have them plow a few fields, then butcher them when they are good and fat.”
Luke nodded, definitely savage. If this man had been in charge instead of that fool Regis, Elder Forest would not have stood a chance. He liked Commander Blacklake, though the feeling was not reciprocated.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Siren nodded, “It's not a surprise that they turned their backs on a Caldera that would draft them to fight a mythical beast outbreak that their own Elders caused. We will kill all the elementals, but leave as many of the civilians alive as you can. It will make the Lord of the Underworld look incompetent without giving him more elementals to mash together into elemental lords.”
Luke skeptically looked out at the mass of people. He had never seen a siege before, though the concept was made to slowly starve a city out. This one seemed to be geared to bash down the gate and swarm the city with armed civilians. There were at least one hundred basic elementals scattered in the army, all of them were of the skeletal variety. Still, it would not help when one thousand armed civilians entered into urban warfare with five times their number of armed Stone Calderans. The walls were doing as much to protect the invaders as the city's occupants.
He had to change his opinion when the elemental lord who appeared to be in charge blasted the wall again. It was a combination of elementals that Luke had thought impossible. Air kern, Fire anima, and fire mind. Luke could feel the air construct being formed almost like a putty, pressed into the wall, and finally detonated. Any crack or gap was brutally exploited as the detonation rocked the walls.
The most genius part of it was how cheap it was. The small spaces in the wall lacked room for expansion, so the wall started crumbling. Warriors then had the very essence heavy task of sealing the wall back up. Luke made a mental note, he needed to kill that one, it was at least tier six, maybe seven. If he could break his kern that would be even better, as there weren’t any other real threats.
“I’m taking the big guy throwing the fireballs,” Luke said.
No one argued. If the crazy young man wanted a death match with the crazy undead pyromancer, then let him fight.
Siren nodded, “Start with the canons. Blacklake, do you have enough toxin to incapacitate the enemy?”
Blacklake shook his head, “No, but I can give most of them a bad rash by diluting some of my more dangerous stuff.”
“Alright then, let's lower the population of elementals by a hundred,” Siren said.
<>
Elder Stone ducked behind the parapet as another wave of fire scorched the wall. As soon as it passed he started spinning his sling. Most people underestimated the power of slings. After a few rotations, he stepped out from cover and loosed the stone with a crack.
The rib cage of an elemental exploded. Unfortunately, he missed the heart, but the spine and sternum were shattered leading to the shoulders and head sliding off. That would have been lethal on anything else.
“Sir,” a young man barely old enough to be called one ran up and slid to a stop on his knees. This was not out of respect, but out of a desire to keep his head. Several arrows coated in a viscous black liquid flew overhead before splattering into the city. They had learned the hard way not to touch the highly invasive neurotoxin.
“Speak,” Elder Stone said as he grabbed another piece of rubble. The wall was basically made of rubble by this point, glued together by layer after layer of stone construct.
“The last warrior fainted from essence exhaustion. One even went so far as to break his kern and died,” The messenger said.
“Is everyone evacuated into the limestone quarry?” Elder Stone launched another stone. This one hit true, killing the tier one elemental it connected with.
“All those who are unable or unwilling to fight, sir,” The young man flinched as the gate below them started shuddering.
“Damn elemental lords,” Elder Stone grumbled, “How many stayed to fight?”
“All able bodied men and most of the women without children,”
Elder Stone felt pride at that. His caldera had been hurt the worst by the ghost crabs, after the two that had been annihilated. His tier twos had been sent out, and the rush to harvest had paid enough to lure out most of the tier ones. When the metal crabs arrived, barely anyone made it out. Only a quarter of his Caldera was male now due to the losses. His warriors were mostly in the plains right now fighting for their lives against their fellow man.
Despite all that his people fought on. They were like the stone they quarried, Stone could be broken, stone could be sculpted, but stone would always be stone. Hard, dependable, and even when ground to dust it was still an aggregate one could use to rebuild.
A final BOOM, the gate crashed and he heard the weird mental laughter of the elemental lord as he stepped through the broken gate. Elder Stone grinned. If he was going to fall, he would do it before his people. After all, stone also has nothing to fear.
“Sir, what are you doing?” The messenger said.
“Time to fight in the city!” Elder Stone yelled.
Everyone on the walls hurled their last volley before retreating. Taking the city would be expensive for the Forest traitors. Elder Stone had never liked Elder Forest, the man could make good seem like evil and evil seem righteous with all his fancy words. He should have known that was the trait of an evil man.
Elder Stone pulled out his tower steel mace. He avoided the stares, opting to simply jump over the wall. The surprised elemental lord looked up, just in time to take a mace to the face. None of its elements specialized in durability, so Elder Stone’s gravity empowered strike smashed it into the ground.
A beam of light lanced through his shoulder, but Elder Stone was here to take as many with him into the afterlife as possible. He ignored the pain and brought the mace down over and over. He had driven spikes for the cart tracks in the quarry, he simply treated the elemental lord as a nail.
Something broke his shin and he fell to his knees. He did not stop swinging. Another explosion sounded out, these ones more distant. He looked out through the gate. He had wondered why the attackers had left him alone, someone was approaching from their rear. Then hundreds of jagged pieces of ice rained down on the landscape.
It was like some kind of snowfall Elder Stone would expect to see in Hell. He grinned, help had arrived, and his city was saved. Elder Stone just needed to do his job. At the moment his job was to beat an elemental lord to death.