Once House Valean had been mighty, they were founded by Valean the Resplendent, the Archmage of the Elements. Unlike most Elementalists he didn't learn from or imitate the powers of one particular element, he had sought to master all of them. First, he had learned from the most plentiful elementals. Fire, Air, Earth, and Water elementals had all taught the young Valean tricks and insights into their nature, but that had not been enough for him. He had sought out stranger beings as well: Lava, Glass, Lightning, Shadow, Sewer, Light, Ice, and even a singular Heat elemental had been consulted and served as examples for him to learn from.
Had the young Archmage lived he would have been delighted once even more obscure elementals had been discovered, but he tragically passed while battling the first Elemental King, that of the North Wind itself, and that left the noble house founded in his name to squabble over the trinkets he had left behind.
The branch in Chilvale had lived off the treasures passed down through the centuries from Valean, but they had another advantage. Long ago one of his grandsons had bound a straying lava elemental to a ritual chamber beneath his fortress. Charging it to guard the estate and the ones who would own it.
It had been crude binding and the magic holding it had been tied to a scavenged artifact. Greater Elementals were not like their medium and lesser counterparts. While they are more magically potent than most beings, elementals have simple minds for most of their lifecycles. Their nature and magic rendering them beings of instinct more than anything else. Greater Elementals, however, have the wonderful gift of true sapience in addition to being about as magically potent as a Dryad. Elemental Lords were equivalent in power and mind to most gods, and well Elemental Kings were what people made gods to protect them from. Multiple gods who's "domain" was the North Wind existed, but the Elemental King of the North Wind *was* the North Wind. Some scholars even speculated that the Oceans were corpses of previous Elemental Kings of water.
An immortal creature of lava had been trapped and forced to use its vast aura to protect the fortress, but he had the patience of the earth on his side and an unlimited lifespan. It took him only a few centuries to manipulate the scions of House Valean to venerate him like some kind of honored ancestoer, and then only a few more to "forget" where they kept their ancestral scepter. For the last couple of centuries the growing cult around him had learned magic and sacrificed creatures to him in equal meassure.
Had some more time passed then maybe he would have risen to become some kind of hybrid between god and elemental, but the attack had spoiled that chance. Not that Ulgorizumas the Elemental of Lava, cared much about that. He was now free to do...anything.
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Ulgorizumas raged and the Antmite General was retreating from his wrath. Waves of lava had shattered his earthern fortifications and cooked hundreds of Units alive. He felt his mind slipping more and more with each moment as the dozens of casualties he had to endure in his army before were now rising rapidly up towards thousands.
"I don't want to die! Not again! Not again!"
He screamed through the Swarm as he panicked and tried to bring his army back to safety. Everything he threw at the elemental to slow it down had failed. Toxic Spores, ranged attacks, and insect units were scorched to ash in the air before they could reach him. Destroy Magic only worked partially as the entity was strong enough to match the Potency of the Sovereign Swarm, and he was rapidly running out of energy trying to stop the aura and the waves of lava.
Behind the elemental the defenders were cooked in their own flesh and some tried to launch attacks only for the aura to target them as well and leaving corpses were men once stood. It was not just the magical potency of the creature, the Antmite General technically speaking had more power at his disposal even if that gap was rapidly shrinking. The creature of lava was in many ways the perfect counter to the Swarm, it was a creature of singular and intense heat. That heat melted metal, scorched flesh, and burned plantmatter. It was a critical weakness of the Swarm and fire had been employed against it before, but this heat was beyond mere fire.
Even if the General could wound the elemental he realized it would just draw more earth up and into itself to heal and refuel itself, it had ample resources and unlike most conventional earth elementals would not be easily separated from the ground. As panic continued to flow through him he felt a presence reaching out to touch his shoulder. Antmite sighed in defeat as he felt it gazing through his own eyes and he knew what was happening.
Mar was coming. The Sovereign would take to the field themselves.
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Mar had been paying attention to the battle only in an off-handed way. They were responsible for the entire Swarm after all and her General had never failed her before. In many ways the Antmite General was the Collective they were most proud of, except maybe Logistics-Collective. He had developed a coherent identity, excelled at his tasks, and sustained incredible losses without complaint.
They had noticed that the General had sought the advice of Old Yoss and Logistics-Collective, but that hadn't mattered all that much to them. Mar was after all, incredibly appreciative of communal efforts when it came to solving problems. No, two things had truly drawn their attention to the battle.
First, the genuine screams of panic coming from the Fragments that made up the Ant-Termite General. Second a loud prayer coming from the Subjects with the army. One of their Acolytes were with them and praying and Mar couldn't ignore that prayer. It was like a loud buzzing that distracted them from the other happenings going on in the Swarm and once Mar got a talley of the losses the choice was simple.
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Their General was in risk of being destroyed as the Fragments almost separated out of sheer fright and due to the pain of their casualties. Mar would not allow that to happen, so the entire bulk of their mind wrapped around the General to keep him together and they whispered.
"Shhhhhh, I am here. Let me take care of this situation."
If not for the dire situation Mar would have enjoyed the joke coming from Queen Meath that they sounded almost motherly in that moment, but the Swarm only sent a twinge of displeasure before they took control over the situation.
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The world was pure fire! Mar could sense the discomfort and pain from the entire assembled army as hundreds were injured or dying from the sheer heat of the lava. Burns were rampant and moisture was being wringed out of the army. No defenses could effectively hinder the growing elemental as he arrogantly stepped through the field and left lava behind as the earth melted beneath him.
Mar realized why their General had been so frightened by this foe, he truly was as perfect of a counter to their forces as one could find. No conventional anatomy to subvert, powers that made it practically impossible for the Swarm to attack him directly, and a nature that made the numbers of the Swarm irrelevant or more accurately a liability for them rather than a strength.
"Nasi or Queen Meath might have been able to defeat this one still. Ysandra would be able to fight it even if she is heavily disadvantaged."
The Sovereign Swarm speculated as they dedicated all of their efforts to considering the battle, which meant that they even thought about non-avatar individuals which was a task they usually didn't bother with. Specialists, that was what the Swarm lacked. Mar would need to develop more specialists that could operate independently in situations like these, every Sovereign needed heroes they could call upon for battles and Mar realized that they had been neglecting that aspect of this proxy war.
"At the moment that is irrelevant, alternatives."
Thoughts raced through their mind as they considered the foe before them. Imbue an Avatar perhaps? It would cost a lot but that was a potential option, the Swarm was running out of vessels to choose between among the literally decimated army. But they would reserve it if the next and most obvious plan didn't work out.
Draw Water From Soil, was a Power that the Swarm had not yet really used. It was primarily a civilian Power and only the Hor and Refugee Collectives have had any cause to use it. The Antmite General had not considered it for this as his mind was sadly limited by the scope of his own abilities, but Mar was every Collective and being in their Swarm. They saw that if enough was invested in it then it could work.
First things first, Mar started sacrificing the most wounded Units to help enhance the Magic Destruction Power. It specifically, targeted the oppressive aura of heat around the elemental and with a monumental energy expenditure shattered it. The lava creature stumbled for the first time as the aura disappeared and before he could react Mar had their Soldiers launch hundreds of projectiles at the elemental.
A wall of lava rose to block most of them, but some hit and that caused the earth beneath the elemental to melt and be drawn up and into him to heal. Exactly as Mar had hoped he would, the lava creature stood in a small pit and that was needed for the next step.
Mar sacrificed thousands of Units being born back in Hor to help accelerate the Power that had once been usurped from Old Yoss. Water was drawn up from deep beneath the earth to practically explode out of it and around the lava elemental. Steam rose as rapidly up into the sky as the water engulfed the elemental.
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Ulgorizumas had laughed as he first emerged to battle and later, perhaps, take his revenge on House Valean. The panicking insects had been nothing to him and his aura alone would have killed them all eventually, but he had decided to have fun and send a few token lava waves their way. The abomination of an elemental that had been spawned using the power the Scepter of Elemental Dominion had stolen from him, fled before his might rather than attempting to pit cold air and glass versus lava.
He pitied that unfortunate creature, but ultimately he was just glad to be free. This Silver-Wind would likely not last long and be put out of its misery soon enough. As for the army he almost ignored them as he walked down the plains, flexing his legs for the first time in centuries before that brat had imprisoned him.
Then suddenly the screams of panic had died down and he felt a massive force clamp down around his aura and shattered it like a twig. He had felt the monsters in the army attempt to undo his magic and most of the time it had not worked as he was too strong for them. But this had somehow been a far more potent attempt.
Ulgorizumas stopped laughing as the projectiles pierced his body and he felt pain for the first time since he had been captured, and he screamed and drew more lava into his body to heal the damage. Pain! He was beyond being hurt by mere mortal attacks like these and now some strange projectiles had cut through his glorious form?
"Inconceivable!"
He shouted that just as the water exploded up around him and his powers and nature wrestled with the continuous flow of water up from the soil. Lava and water met but he couldn't heal as the explosion of force had blasted him off the ground. As his entire being screamed in pain the elemental attempted to calm himself and reform his shattered aura.
The body of a lava elemental was not easily extinguished by water, at worst it would just alter his nature and not destroy him. But Ulgorizumas had no interest in becoming a creature of stone to be torn apart by the Swarm, nor have his mind altered by such a transformation please and thank you.
Magic started repairing his shattered aura and he could feel the water evaporating around him as he formed a dry eye within the burgeoning lake, an eye within the storm if one would. And that was when the Silver-Wind struck.