"We need to go up there and help them."

Hallow, standing separate from him, shook her Minotaur head. "No, Beef, we must figure this out, or else the fight does not matter."

Beef groaned. He itched to pick up Bedlam and jump into the fray. As useful as everyone said this was supposed to be, he couldn’t shake the instinct to start pummeling monsters. He glanced over at the boulder that had nearly taken them out. It had crashed into one of the empty houses of the city, and it sat there amid the dust and rubble. It was dripping wet from whatever muck was outside the walls, and it even had a few fist-sized bits floating around it. They trembled alongside the boulder as water pooled around its base.

Wait. Trembled? "Hallow?"

"Focus, Beef, we must figure—"

"Hallow, that's not it!" He grabbed Bedlam. "The boulder! It's—!”

The massive rock unfurled, segmented sections of stone click-crashing into a new, sudden configuration. With lightning speed, a lashing tail covered in spikes whipped for Beef and the others.

“Entropic Paradigm!”

Chitin shields lifted into the attack, but the material screeched as it was scored, deeply.

“It’s a Major Elemental!” Tzfell warned. Her tattoos glowed. “Get back, everyone!”

The Legionnaires all around them—Inscriptionists all—shied away, their work abandoned as the elemental unfolded in a sinuous rush.

“Exultant Command! Multipede!"

From down the street, a thundering blur caught the stone dragonling in the side. Layered in chitin armor, the Multipede rolled the Elemental into the remnants of the shattered shopfront. The creature screeched, a sound like sharp stones falling down a slope, and slashed into his Risen Multipede. Chitin armor broke, shearing entirely from several segments, and blackened-green Mana sprayed free like blood. The Elemental roared, gleeful.

It failed to notice the dark shape from above.

A pony-sized lizard landed on the Elemental’s wedge-shaped head, and immediately the thing began to buck. Wings of midnight and a tail lined with sharpened chitin flexed, maintaining a precarious balance, before driving pale claws into its rocky hide.

The Elemental toppled, the weight of the Multipede and Fafnir’s fury forcing it to flounder. The Risen Hatchling tore into the false dragon, ravaging its eyes. Pieces flew off, Mana vapor pouring from its wounds like blood.

"Don't kill it!" Beef shouted, flaring Exultant Command. The Multipede listened, of course, but Fafnir only slowed her savaging. "Just keep it restrained; we need to check its glyphs!"

He stepped forward, hammer in hand, already summoning chitinous restraints around the creature. They spread over its limbs and body, congealing into thickening, ridged bands. “We needed a live specimen. How nice of you to drop into our laps.” His hooves splashed across the ground as he stepped closer, a cool sensation that brought him up short.

Water? He looked down. A puddle, ankle-deep on him, had spread across the ground. It flowed toward the others as they frantically adjusted their chalk drawings.

"Beef!" Hallow cried.

He jumped, but it was too late. Tendrils burst forth from the shallow water, congealing into the spread-out body of a dark Elemental. A thing of mud and liquid, it seized the Inscriptionists, pulling them down in a spray of blood. They were subsumed, covered in thick water that streamed into their open mouths.

It poured up Beef's legs, latching onto his arms and wrenching Bedlam from his grip.

“Entropic Par—!”

His Skill cut off as the Elemental wrapped entirely around his head. Sound vanished, replaced by a warbling hum as his vision was clouded by shadow. Pressure plied at him, invisible tendrils dragging at his eyes and nose and mouth, trying to get in. He couldn't breathe, could barely move, but Beef could hold his breath for a long time. Swiftly, the Elemental abandoned its invasive tactics and settled for trying to crush him. His chitin armor creaked, breaking under the thing’s strength, and he heard several muted pops as others succumbed.

No! Beef strained, lifting his arms by slow inches. The bitter cold of the creature was even stronger than its pressure, and it drove a tingling numbness into his limbs. His fingers brushed the haft of Bedlam, the hammer just out of reach. His Mind was fuzzy, and his Skills felt tangled. If he could—just reach—the weapon—!

A fist of stone struck him square in the chest.

Beef grunted, breath forced from his chest all at once as the water exploded. He fell to his knees, completely unsupported, as vision and sound returned in a rush.

“It’s weaker on the outside than inside!” Eagin called, stomping his massive Eidolon foot onto a writhing section of dark water. Telys followed suit, her own equally sized boots kicking through the suffocating pillars holding other Inscriptionists down. One by one, they were all freed.

“Found it!” Telys snagged a large chunk of ice from the muck. The Elemental surged, flailing against her stone Body, but weakened by its injuries, it found no purchase. Eagin barreled through its flowing form, scattering its strength.

The ice chunk shone with complicated glyphs. It was layered with them, so tightly packed that it resembled nothing so much as a distant, glittering galaxy. With a disgusted snort, Telys crushed it. The ice exploded in her grip, blackened-green light streaming in all directions, and the water splashed, limp and lifeless to the ground.

You Have Killed A Major Water Elemental!

XP Earned!

Beef climbed back to his feet, still breathing hard. "Thanks, but we could have used that."

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Eagin shook his head. "Did you want to live, or did you want to study?"

"Can we have both?"

"Ungrateful." Telys laughed, slapping Beef on the back. She lifted his hammer and handed it back to him. "Next time, we'll let you finish the thing."

“I was this close to beating it.”

“Mhm.”

Fafnir screeched a sound of victory that whipped Beef's head in her direction. The rocky Dragon was pinned. It had cracked many of the rudimentary bonds Beef had made, but it was held by the Multipede and the other Risen Exults that had taken their time getting into position.

Beef rushed over, Tzfell not far behind. New chitin restraints folded up and over the creature, thicker than before and far wider, allowing it zero movement along its segmented length. More than Beef supposed it might need, but he wasn't taking any chances.

"Look, here," Tzfell said, pointing to where its segments interacted. Sigaldry spread across those sections, radiating in looping circles. The Dwarf rolled up her sleeves, her bald head gleaming in the faint moonlight. "Let's see how you tick, then."

Gabby hovered over Hevaan, held within the Yintarion's claws. "Get right up next to it!"

The Dawn Wyrm didn't answer, but his Body moved like a barracuda through the shallows. They flashed through the night, toward the Greater Swamp Elemental.

The thing was imposing and absolutely massive, but it didn’t hold a candle to the Echo of Noctis. Admittedly, it was far more disgusting up close, and the rotting stench that filled the gales off its form was stomach-turning. Worse still, what she had once taken for clouds were instead sleek, shadowflesh manta rays equipped with claws and spiked tails. A clutch of them peeled off, headed in their direction, but Yintarion opened his jaws. A light like the morning sun scoured through their number, and the shadow rays fell from the sky.

As did Gabby.

She twisted her body, angling herself feet-first toward the Elemental. "Luminous Raiment!"

Her golden armor solidified around her just as she landed. Brilliant boots sizzled against the wet earth and humid tangle of vines and roots that made up the Elemental's shoulder. At twenty-two feet tall, she was almost big enough to top its head, and it turned slowly to regard her with eyes that burned with swamp fire.

“Hi! Brightblade Crescendo!” The weapon congealed as she swung, slicing down into the swamp Elemental's neck with a cleaver-like blade.

The creature screamed. It was a sound that passed straight through her Affinity and stabbed at Gabby’s Mind directly. She shook, but didn’t release her hold on her weapon as a cloud of foul water swarmed against her. It sizzled, swirling around her like a reverse rain, but evaporated against the gold. Still, the foul water blocked her vision as shadows swarmed, the manta rays clutching around her. They had no hope of damaging her armor, but they tangled her steps.

Gabby didn't care. She wasn't going anywhere. She flared Brightblade Crescendo, and her cleaver became a harpoon, stabbing farther down into the wound she'd already cut into stone and wet earth. With a twist, she ballooned the other end. If she could make weapons with her Brightblade, she could make tools just as easily.

The end expanded into a wide paddle, flaring through the Elemental’s neck. Golden light burned bright, cracking the stone and withering vines and roots by the hundreds, but the wet earth merely hissed. The ample humidity of it all doused her light, packing its mud all the stronger.

“Heliacal Blaze!”

Her light Mana surged, the burn of her Skill pouring through the Brightblade. The wet earth beneath dried, the water that splattered against her armor vanishing in a cloud of pale steam. Immediately, the rock ahead crumbled, shearing away from the Elemental's neck in a five-ton chunk.

Heliacal Blaze is level 135!

The Greater Swamp Elemental roared, clearly in pain. Gabby clutched onto its shoulder, nearly thrown in its violent thrashing. Through the steam and dust she could just barely make out exposed sigaldry in the wound, wafting with layers of blackened-green Mana.

Necromancy. The array flared, its magic pulsing into tiny, barely visible threads. They tugged at the creature’s neck, and in response, vines grew rapidly, crisscrossing the sheared stone like healing flesh.

Gabby adjusted her grip on her weapon, shifting it once more into an outsized cleaver and twisting back. She swung, but the ground bucked beneath her, throwing off her attack. She adjusted, maintaining her balance, just for the Elemental’s rocky fist to slam into her chest. Armor squealed, sparks flying and plates of light shattering as she was launched into the thin air.

She fell.

“Hold!”

The screeching cry punctured the rushing wind, and Gabby canceled her Raiment with an effort of Will. Yintarion swooped in not a second later, seizing her forearms in his claws. He groaned, dipping at her weight, but they steadied out as they flew back over the jungle, away from the city. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

"Thanks," she grunted, putting her second hand on his claw.

"The creature cannot be stopped without killing it!" Yin shouted over the wind. "You cannot tame this thing. The Hierophant has corrupted it entirely, and it will reach the walls soon!"

"We're not killing it," Gabby snarled, pulling herself up onto Yin's back. "Bring us down!"

Yin roared, a mingling of frustration and defiance, but they dropped, threading through the swarm of shadowflesh. The manta rays buffeted Gabby with their meaty wings, their claws and sharpened tails aiming for her joints and eyes. She bashed them aside, her casual Strength more than enough to splatter them into oblivion.

As the surface of the churning waves rose up to meet them, Gabby pulled out a Mana Elixir and drained it. It burnt in her chest, but her reserves leapt back upward. Enough for a few more big moves.

Yin dipped lower, skimming the surface of the heaving waves, and Gabby summoned her weapon. She leaned forward, knees bent as Yin spun around the Swamp Elemental in a tight circle. Her Brightblade shifted from sword to halberd, its head a heavy, brutal axe.

"Now!" she called.

Yin pulled forward, faster than ever. Gabby held tight to his ridged back with her knees as he tucked between the Elemental’s legs, all but tilted sideways, and she swung. Her weapon chomped into the creature’s knee, catching between the craggy stone and wet mud.

“Heliacal Blaze!”

A golden Inferno tore at the limb, drying as it burnt. With a mighty cry, she leveraged the halberd as Yin flew on, her Endurance matched against the Dawn Wyrm’s speed. Her weapon’s haft crushed at her chest, but Harn’s armor held out—with a thunderous crash, a mountainous chunk tore free of the Elemental’s knee.

The creature bellowed and bent low, in clear pain. Immediately, the wound began to stitch close with vines and accumulating muck.

“Not again!” Gabby leapt from Yin’s back, landing in a sprawl within the healing crevasse. “Luminous Raiment!”

Vines withered against her light, sizzling the wet that tried to gather around her, and Gabby stabbed a hand into the rock. Her golden armor filled the space of the wound, forcing it wider as she braced against it—then she started punching. Stone cracked and fell, turned to dust beneath her Strength. In three strikes, the knee collapsed entirely.

The Greater Elemental fell into the water.

Luminous Raiment is level 140!

Brightblade Crescendo is level 142!

Gabby jumped, and Yin was there once more to catch her as she banished her Raiment. Collapsed, the Swamp Elemental drove down into the water, heaving its mass away from its body in a ripple that quickly gathered massive strength.

Her eyes widened. “Shit.”

The water rose up into a tsunami, headed towards the walls of Hevaan—filled to the brim with Major Elementals.