Grand Saint Alloy

“Move, Move, Move!” Kale yelled.

He took his own advice as a giant metal claw carved a groove through the dirt. Most of his men took his advice, but one of the slower ones took the claw to the shoulder. The tower plate held, but Kale could still hear the cracking of bone.

An explosion went off as an elemental lord that had flame affinity threw a fireball. Kale hoped it was at a ghost crab not one of his people. He hefted his great sword and smashed a tier two skeleton out of the way. Its water essence bones shattered under the impact of the tower steel blade.

In ordinary circumstances, Kale would have stopped, reversed his grip on his great sword, and stabbed its heart. Today he had a ghost crab to kill. He ducked under a massive scythe claw as its sharp edge whistled over his head. The bottom of its jaw was still a little higher than his head, allowing him to run under the entire crab while standing upright.

Not that he would try that. The first few warriors who had tried were sat on by the multi-ton creature. Those with artifacts had secured themselves a kill, but it was mutual destruction at best. Kale had a different goal, he regained his feet and swung a mighty blow at the joint on the forward leg.

The sound of metal echoed as dozens of men fought a similar number of elementals. It had been hard before these mythical beasts had interrupted. Seven in total had plowed their way into the fight, turning an organized retreat by the humans into a desperate fight for survival. The one thing they had learned about these metal beasts was that peace was only reached with the complete annihilation of the opposing force.

Kale's sword managed to punch through the metal film protecting the joint and cut through to the other side. The four foot section at the end of the leg fell to the ground. The crab screamed, a sound like a rusty hinge the size of a building being pried open. Several warriors around him flinched, almost costing them their lives.

Faster than was reasonable the crab spun, its five remaining legs doing a good job spinning it on its axis. Kale ran counter to its turn, it could move faster than he could, but it could not overcome its own momentum. The ghost crab tried to cut him down as he passed in front of it, but it missed.

One of his soldiers finished an elemental with his axe and went to work on the far leg while, Kale sliced into the front one. An axe ended up being the better tool for the job, but the Guard Crab went from five legs to three. It was forced to use one of its scythes to stay upright, slowing it down dramatically. Slow enough for Kale’s fellow warrior to cut the final leg off his side.

“Kill, or leave,” The man yelled.

“Leave,” Kale yelled. The crab was now immobile, it would take too long to kill and it was not harmless yet, but something had removed its stinger earlier making it too difficult a task to risk. Even if they won, another guard crab would show up and eat it later.

Nodding the man opened his mouth to say something. Something flaming and red crashed into him, burning its way through the crab's armor. Kale instinctively stepped back into a ready stance. A cadaverous creature walked up, a brown skeleton covered in flaming muscles and red flickering eyes. Molten armor covered its body and a helmet with two massive horns was sitting on its head.

Kale cursed and stepped around behind the crab's corpse as the creature summoned a dull red spear and threw it at him. Its obsidian tip dug into the ground as the molten shaft splattered all over the chaff on the ground. Damn elemental lords. They were monsters without equal, combining weird powers and the durability standard with elementals to make borderline unstoppable menaces.

Fortunately, the metal crab did not know. It saw a threat and it killed a threat. Another crab, this one with its stinger intact crashed into the elemental lord. Its stone armor was undoubtedly heavy, but still, it was lighter than the two ton steel battering ram that ran it over.

The lord yelled indignantly and summoned a sword of obsidian, and cut all the legs off one side of the crab. Kale was not willing to miss such a distraction, he ran as quietly as he could at the lord’s back. Admittedly, running in armor with a limp was anything but quiet, however, it matched the sound of violence all around.

The crab fell on the molten elemental lord, however in a display of immense strength it caught the crab. Both hands held above its head, burned into the metal, liquifying it and cooking the animal inside. Kale slammed into the elemental lord’s back, point first. The lord staggered forward as the sword went straight through a crack in the armor.

Tower steel swords lacked a lot of the flexibility that made spring steel so popular, but that made them better at stabbing. The blade slid in, bounced off a stone rib, and crunched into the interior of the front plate of the elemental lord's armor. It staggered forward and the body of the crab fell on it.

Kale turned and ran. There were two outcomes to the attack. Either the lord had just lost his heart and would separate into a pair of flame elementals or he would get back up, unharmed and super pissed. Kale did not want to be there in either case.

He kicked an air skeleton over. It was tier three but those elementals had very low mass. Kale’s great sword bashed through a second elemental rib cage and bisecting its heart. The warrior they were ganging up on nodded his thanks as he crushed the downed air elemental with his polearm. This battlefield was pure chaos, and it was basically a giant game of hot potato.

They would kill as many skeletons as they could until the elemental lord showed up and started butchering people. The crabs would get excited by the smell of blood and stomp in like a bunch of blood thirsty puppies looking for a treat.

“Follow me,” Kale yelled as they rushed to the nearest clump of warriors.

An explosion, followed by a rain of fist sized armor and pieces of meat told Kale the elemental lord was still alive. Where did they get all their essence from? No matter, Kale could not do anything about it at the moment.

What he could do was lead his new partner to a group of six warriors and a healer facing off against a team of nine earth and fire elementals. The pole axe worked like a spear, crushing a tier two rib cage, but missing the heart. It was hard to overstate how difficult it was to hit a fist sized heart protected by a rib cage of solid essence. Normally, a warrior only needed to do enough damage to win, and unless trained for these elementals specifically, many of their tactics would become useless.

Kale smashed his own elemental to the ground. This one was fire, good thing he had a fire kern as well. Once the elemental hit the ground Kale stomped onto its rib cage three times to break through and crush the heart. An earth elemental tackled him, and unlike most other kinds, earth elementals were freakishly heavy.

“Die!” A maul crushed the elemental's head, not killing it, but knocking it off Kale. Surviving out here was more about luck than skill.

Kale shoved his hand up into the diaphragm and created a compact fire construct. It would look like a marble no bigger than his pinky nail. But it held half his essence.

BOOM!

The upper body of the elemental was torn apart as a tiny sun lived out its life right above his head. He would have died again without the Tower plate as stone shrapnel ripped through everything around him. The warrior with the maul was thrown back, and all the fire elementals were killed. Hundreds of fast projectiles were good at slipping through their ribs and pulping their hearts.

“Which one of you stabbed me!” The elemental lord yelled, “The one wearing a silver shell, Where are you?”

None of the warriors paid him any mind, as all of them were wearing a silver shell. A crab scuttled toward the now prone Kale. He tried to get to his feet but was too slow. He was saved yet again by another warrior with a maul, however this one managed to kill the ghost crab in six savage blows.

“What are you doing here?” Kale asked his old commander. He was supposed to be at the mine.

Siren shrugged, “The mine is gone, have to stay occupied somehow.”

Kale felt a pang of worry, “Grace, Conni, are they alright? What about the boys?”

Siren shook his head, “Conni and Grace are fine. Tristan is unaccounted for, and Luke well, just watch the show.”

Kale frowned, what show? He got his answer in the form of lightning and fire.