Watching the giant snake made of mud barreling towards the clan, Samba didn't have any other choice. "Fine, but if you betray us again, there will be no mercy."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I have never betrayed the job."
Samba wanted to rebuke that, but... she wasn't incorrect - just wrong. Leading an attack against a former partner would never be the right action. Were these the kinds of decisions that Gi had to make? Would Samba continue making concessions on his morals until he was just like Gi towards the end?
Without a response from him, Elizabeth and her clan sped forward, not even slowing as they hit the ocean. Streams of ice spread out from Elizabeth's feet, forming platforms that her entire clan darted across as they moved to intercept the mud snake. A couple Cleaner Slugs were still waiting on the shore to be ferried across so Samba scooped them up and held them above his head as he kicked towards the largest ship in the waters.
As he managed to awkwardly pass the Cleaner Slugs off to a few Templar still on the boat, he pulled himself up the side, looking out across the water.
Elizabeth had both feet planted as she focused on providing a firm platform for their group to fight from. Her second, the sea dwarf, and the rest of her clan were already firing a flurry of dancing butterflies made of ice towards the mud snake. As each of them struck, tiny bits of water and mud would freeze and fall off, but they were immediately renewed by the mud mage's power.
The snake wasn't idle either. It struck like lightning, eclipsing the speed of the charging swordsman and proving that the mud mage and her conjured snake were in a realm far above. Once it started fighting back, Elizabeth's clan's attacks ceased and they all had to focus on not dying over any type of offense.
The snake must be semi-autonomous because it paused for a brief moment as though it was taking orders and then changed the focus of its attacks to the Elizabeth.
But she was ready.
****
Giant teeth made from mud rocketed towards her. Her [Sight of the Drowned] let her see both threads of life and Aether. The humans far away on the mountains looked liked pinpricks to her sight, but the lunging snake was far brighter. Elizabeth couldn't imagine how that human was funneling so much Aether, but it wasn't her job to kill the mage. Only to enable their escape.
That job was very achievable by comparison.
[Delayed Spring] brought her instantly out of harm's way. The iceberg she'd been building served successfully as both a wall to protect the ship and and a platform for this fight.
The mud snake crashed into her iceberg, making the floating platform wobble in the water, but it remained upright. As the snake pulled back, Elizabeth looked to Valar, catching the sea dwarf's eyes. He nodded, prepping a platform with his hands.
Getting a Subgenitor had been worth all the trouble in the Dungeon.
She raced towards him, planted one foot in his hands, and then jumped as he threw her skyward. The snake had taken a moment to find her, but as it did, she was already leaping towards it. Two [Frostblades] formed in her her hands, each of them dripping with condensation.
The snake struck at the same time as Elizabeth performed a double strike with her blades. The snake would have won the exchange if not for her domain [Chilling Breath]. As it entered within its range, it started to slow even with its grand momentum. By the time her [Frostblades] struck, the surface of its mud had frozen solid. Her blades crashed through it, cutting off the top of its head.
Unfortunately, she wasn't able to fully arrest its momentum. With [Delayed Spring] on cooldown, she couldn't dodge in the air. The bottom part of the snake smacked into her and sent her sailing back into the water. Her Vitality kept it from being a debilitating hit, but her bones rattled from the blow. Somehow after she'd slowed it and cut off half of its head, it had still managed to send her flying.
That mud mage was barely engaged and was already a nightmare. Even with her solid attack, the snake was already reforming.
Thankfully, her clan hadn't been idle. A flurry of [Ice Butterflies] landed all over the snake and continued to freeze it, one spot at a time. Elizabeth swam as fast as she could back to the platform, but the snake attacked in a fury while she did. Congealed blood squirted across the platform as one of her clan was crushed against the iceberg. A whip of the flat part of its head sent three more into the water, sailing over her head.
A glance behind her told her that the otters had already finished getting the ship loaded and were trying to steer it off away from Igna and the Thousand Islands. In a bad turn of luck, only the northeast was clear of boats or land meaning they'd have to pass right by the snake. The smaller surrounding human ships that hadn't been murdered were throwing the occasional spell towards the ship the otters had procured, but they didn't seem willing to commit their ballistas against their own vessel. Lucky that.
Elizabeth flung herself back onto the ice. The chill of it beneath her feet radiated strength through her Body and she already started sprinting towards the far side.
"Stay back!" Elizabeth yelled and her clan immediately made room for her. Sighting its primary target, the snake opened its mouth wide as it sought to pin her against the iceberg.
A quick activation of [Delayed Spring] made it easy to dodge and she continued racing towards the edge of the iceberg. She'd need to extend it if they had any hope of escaping. Drawing hard on her Aether, she forced [Chilling Breath] through her feet as she ran along the flash freezing water.
The snake continued to follow her, but Elizabeth quickly slid to a stop and dodged back the other way - much quicker than should be possible on the slick surface, but ice was no impediment to a Cold One. The snake crashed through the thin layer of ice she'd just made and its head submerged into the water.
An idea formed in her mind and Elizabeth started to cackle madly. "Let's test just how good you are, human!"
As the snake was pulling itself back out of the water, Elizabeth leapt onto its head, her [Chilling Breath] easily freezing a spot for her to stand. Before it even broke the water, the snake bucked wildly to try and fling her off, but she stabbed her [Frostblades] into its head and started to dump as much Aether as she could into [Chilling Breath].
Revealed by her [Sight of the Drowned], she watched as Aether traveled through the ocean and filled the snake with power. Mud poured up over the edge of the part of the snake she'd frozen, but Elizabeth froze that too. She poured more and more Aether into it until a small dome of frozen mud slowly encircled her. Even with the Aether efficiency that came from her Domain, the Cold One was already scraping her barest reserves to keep the crushing mud at bay.
Her Will could keep her going a bit longer, but a fight to the death wasn't the job.
Instead, Elizabeth ripped her [Frostblades] free and used them to climb out of the dome of mud that had been built. Without her direct opposition, the mud formed a wave that tried bring her down and crush her, but it wasn't fast enough. Whether the distance or the mage's Aether was the culprit, she didn't know.
Whichever it was, it gave her enough time to cut her way past the mud just as her Aether bottomed out and her Will started to pull from her life force instead. She leapt off of the frozen dome of the snake to a very pleasing sight.
Her clan had finished making her iceberg wall in her absence, effectively caging the mud snake. Surely, the mud mage could reform it across the other side, but that would take time. She landed onto the iceberg and Valar gave her a smirk as she did.
"That's good enough," Elizabeth said. "Let's get to the ship before those bastards leave us."
*****
"I can't afford any more Aether on stopping them. My [Aether Battery] is running low," Ellen said and the King grit his teeth. He wanted to scream and rage, forcing her to spend her all on destroying the damned otters that had killed his friend.
But he couldn't. He was a King and there was more at stake here than revenge. So he swallowed those feelings as deep as he could and focused on the task at hand.
A spear of shadow pierced the wall of death that Ellen was currently holding back and the King used his [Living Flames] to stop its progress. With Ellen's abilities, they could easily hold this stalemate until the enemy's Elites ran out of Aether.
Fader and Ellen had been an impossible force in the war - unending Vitality paired with unending Aether. Only the Elites of the empires would have had any hope of stopping them, but somehow that otter had done just that to Fader. He'd love to see what an overcharged [Living Flame] would make of him.
He took a deep breath and put those feelings to the side again, ignoring the escaping otters for now. He returned his attention to his army. They'd made it up to the third tier and were pressing the monsters back into a small fortress that was nestled into the mountain. A manticore led their forces and it seemed that monster was the only reason that they had any coordination at all.
It was pretty far and through the wall of death that blocked them from engaging the higher level monsters directly, but it should be doable.
The King blocked another spear before he quickly spiked his Aether, sending it through [Living Flames] in the basic shape of his original [Firebolt] that his Domain had grown from. It shot from where he and Ellen stood on the cresting wave of mud, over the army, and directly into the manticore's chest without any additional fanfare.
A scorched hole appeared in the manticore's chest and he collapsed against heavily against the ramparts. A goblin with an overlarged head tugged at the monster's arm as it struggled to drag its corpse out of sight.
The other monsters barely seemed to register the manticore's death, but even with the lack of immediate response, the damage was done. One side of his troops expended a surge of Aether, burning the opposing leaf monsters to a crisp and leaving a weakness in the monsters rough lines. A weakness that was never filled without the manticore shouting instructions.
That small weakness in their forces led to another and another until the battle turned into a slaughter.
It would only be a matter of time until the bulk of the monsters were slain, leaving the high levels who had to decide whether they wanted to be destroyed by his own hands or skewered by his army.
Hammer meet anvil.
****
After several days of flight, Tiria, Chum, and Orchid all stood on the indefatigable Toucan as they studied the shoreline that started to materialize in the distance. Directly in their path was a small village. Each of the houses looked to be dilapidated and broken even from the distance that they were at, but they could make out a multitude of figures roaming about the village.
"Are those... children?" Chum asked.
Orchid scratched her front appendages together in a habit that she had before her voice chittered in their minds. Surely humans wouldn't keep their children alone in a separate domicile?
Tiria didn't have any answers to her companions' questions, but it was the land beyond the village that caught her attention more. A strange plateau lifted up out of the ground, towering over the village and almost seemed of a similar elevation that they currently flew at.
On top of the plateau, a huge ancient forest reached for the sun. It was hard to judge their size by this distance, but the fact that the trees seemed larger than the village and it was further away told her that the forest had to be massive.
Something about that forest seemed familiar to her. It wasn't in a way that was truly known, but almost as if she'd seen an echo of that forest a long time ago. The more she studied it the less she understood where the feeling was coming from.
Are humans green normally?
Tiria blinked at Orchid's question and then refocused her attention back on the village. She had to squint a bit to confirm, but Orchid was right. The short figures were green.
"Oh," Chum said simply, "they're goblins."