Elementals were tricky to categorize most of the time, the majority of people were aware of them only in their most basic forms: fire, water, wind, and earth. But these were only the most common ones due to sheer volume or in the case of fire because of the penchant of Pyromancers to be consumed by the very flames they sought to master. Elementals had far more variants than that as most sewer workers in major cities could tell you along with dedicated academics. Forces, objects, substances, or even abstract magical concepts had formed elementals in the past.
Half the time one encountered these more obscure elementals they weren't recognized as such, monster slayers and adventurers are hardly magical academics after all. And who would take the time to examine the strange sewage monster they had slain to discover that when cutting through its "flesh" there would only be more of the same underneath the skin.
What made the subject even more confusing to study was that so many creatures could easily be misidentified as elementals. Dryads, spirits, demons, slimes, and other entities were superficially similar enough that to a layman there could hardly be said to be any differences between them. Magic and ideas made flesh, that was the best and yet the most incomplete summary one could come with-
The Antmite General desperately pushed through the academic postulations as he examined the vast storage of memories that he could access within the Swarm. Distantly he felt his Units dying as the wind elemental raced through his ranks, blasting them with gales of cold wind all the while screaming and laughing at his futile efforts to contain it. He needed an answer and so far it had eluded his best efforts and strategies.
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A woman of wind was smashing through the assembled Units of the Swarm and she was beautiful. Willowy and elegant she almost seemed to dance as she moved between the ranks and with each step lives were snuffed out.
Her power was not beyond that of a medium elemental truth be told, but her particular nature made her almost the worst kind of foe for an army to face. Bolts and other projectiles were easily deflected by wild wind blasts, toxins did little to a being whose flesh literally was the wind itself. Technically speaking she was a physical existence and not an ephemeral one, but with wind elementals that tended to be a theoretical distinction at best.
Workers and Soldiers alike huddled behind their earthen fortifications as the elemental who had once been a half-elf named Elarma Tor battled against the Swarm. It was ironic that this former foe of the Sovereign had been brought back to fight, but it was actually for once a true coincident. Magic had consumed most of the mind of the former Mage and as was so often the fate of those who touched magic, she had become her craft. A child of the North Wind who lived only to race and bring cold to the land. Now cruelly enslaved by an ancient artifact to do battle once more with the foe who had caused her to be consumed.
While the Units could do little to her she wasn't without opposition. He was with them, the General of a Thousand Battles, he who had died more than most could ever imagine. The Antmite General fought against the chained wind elemental with all of his resolve and cunning. He placed troops to ambush her, grounded all of his fliers to make them avoid harm, sent Workers digging through the earth to then explode up below her. And most importantly of all, he sacrificed his energy to destroy the magic she unleashed.
A squad of human Fungal Zombies was saved from being frozen as the cold gust of air was canceled in one moment, her wind dome flickered out of existence for another to allow a single Soldier to wound her before she disappeared and reformed further down the ranks. Her most terrible blasts were destroyed before they could destroy fortifications or shatter the flesh and chitin of the troops.
It was so frustrating that the wind elemental wanted to scream, and so she did.
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The Ant Termite General wondered if this was what it was like to fight against the Swarm. A constantly shifting foe that kept attacking his forces from new angles and in different ways, and was mind-numbingly difficult to pin down or slay.
It took almost all of his concentration to keep up the defense of the army while also desperately plowing through memories and keeping an eye on the fortress. He had to move the troops on almost an individual level to save as many lives as he could while attempting to match the attacks of the rampaging elemental.
One moment he had to block a wind blast that would have annihilated the carts with the insect hives, and in the next, he had to break a horrible cold attack that almost froze over a hundred workers to the point that their blood vessels started to shatter. He attempted for the fifth time to just destroy the magic at the core of the elemental herself, and for the fifth time, he sensed the power simply fail to activate.
Apparently, he couldn't destroy the magic of a being that was living magic itself and it galled him. The world wasn't supposed to be fair! He could feel that Mar themselves was paying attention to the war and that was possibly worse than the frustration of the battle itself. If they had to intervene he would never stop hearing it from the other Collectives. The entire point of the campaign was that Mar was supposed to focus on more important matters.
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The General gritted his metaphorical teeth as he sent up a team of digging workers to once again try to ambush the wind elemental from below, but she simply flew over them as they burst out from the earth. His troops had wounded her once and even in the confusion of battle he could still see that wound in her side through the eyes of his forces.
His focus was drawn away for a moment as arrows and spells began to rain down from the walls and he poured energy desperately into canceling out the magical bombardment at least. Fireballs and globules of magma were stopped while arrows bounced off the hardened carapace of the Soldiers and the remaining troops took cover behind the fortifications built by the Workers.
It cost him a lot of energy but he had reduced the bombardment from an existential threat to a mere annoyance, but that in turn had caused that damned elemental to slip out from the waiting ambush he had set up. And worst of all she reestablished her defenses again after he had so painstakingly stripped them away.
He gritted his metaphorical teeth and redoubled his efforts to "hunt" down the elemental causing havoc in his army. Soldiers began unleashing ranged attacks on the fortress in a futile attempt to strike the defenders, but that burning heat burnt even the metallic chitin shards before they could reach the battlements.
At this point he had only two real advantages in this battle, the first was that he had more energy to throw into the pot than the assembled Mages and the wind elemental combined. The other? Wind could only do so much damage if it weren't allowed to become a hurricane.
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The Count of House Valean stood on the battlements and watched the chaos that his ancestral artifact had unleashed, and then he watched some more as the chaos grew more and more...orderly. Initially, the rampage of the wind elemental had been devastating as it blasted the flyers out of the sky and sent monsters hurling through the air. But the wind seemed to die more and more down as the army shifted to match and contain the wind elemental.
Her laughter and screams could be heard by all as she struggled against the massive horde of monsters and at one point he had ordered the troops to attempt to bombard the enemy. They were further away than his advisors liked, but even if they weren't certain to strike anything they could at least try. Or so had been Miltor's reasoning behind the order, and his Mages along with the Archers did their damnedest, but that was when the real shock came.
The lava and fire spells that had been unleashed to explode among the monstrous horde had been stopped cold, the magic being destroyed before they could reach the troops which left only the arrows. Which mostly either missed their intended targets, fell short, or struck without much damage actually being done.
His advisors could not explain how or why the magical bombardment had failed, but he did consent to draw the Mages back for now. If this gambit failed then they would be needed so he gave the order.
"Go down and prepare the ritual. My men will buy time if it comes to that and I will unleash the full power of the scepter first."
Miltor ordered the cabal of Mages before he turned to look out at the flagging wind and the surging horde. He still had thre- two trump cards left and he unleashed them as he focused his will into the artifact and the leftmost gem began to glow.
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Soon, the frustrating battle would come to an end. He could sense that the wind elemental was running out of magic to unleash and whatever had summoned it here kept it from fleeing. All he would have to do was to be patient and soon enough the enemy would be cornered. The General had exhausted a large portion of his energy, but with the way his army kept expanding and the reinforcements he drew from the subordinate forces in the region, he would still have ample power by the time the wind elemental was completely dry.
That thought left him as soon as the first spire of glass impaled a Soldier through the underside and pinned it up in the air.
"What?"
He wasn't even angry at this point as yet another complication entered the battlefield...and then another.
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A glass elemental was not exactly ideal for a battle like this, the leftmost gem glowed with a pure translucent light that was barely visible. The scepter had summoned a compact being of pure glass to join the battle, shaped roughly like an orb with several retractable limbs the reflecting ball of glass rolled forth and began summoning glass spires and shards to attack the troops.
One would not have to be a military genius to realize that it would be caught and killed in moments unless given support or intervention on its behalf. So that was exactly what Miltor did as he held up the scepter and let it spin in his hand. The glow of the two gems began shifting as the orange centermost one intensified in color and radiance. Soon enough all three gems were uniform in color as the power of the patron of House Valean reached out and smashed the two lesser elementals together.