“The trick, you see,” said Lich King Araxesendenak to his new invisible junior partner, “is to attack with a plan. You cannot just hurl forces willy-nilly against fortifications put in place by experienced adventurers and hope for the best. If you do that, as you’ve ascertained through a method I like to describe as ‘discovery learning’, all you accomplish is decimating your forces and bolstering your foe’s resolve.”

The lich king lapsed into a thoughtful silence as, on the magically-projected screen in front of him, a troop of fire elementals crossed back and forth on the streets of Melloram, setting buildings and citizens ablaze with impunity.

I gave you control of my spawn points so that you might help me destroy Samuel Tolliver, the voice of his new partner said, sounding slightly peevish. Why are you not commanding the elementals to seek him out and destroy him?

“Because, dear child,” the lich said through his rictus grin, “you need to understand your enemy. Much as I truly loathed the time I spent in my insufferable copy’s cranial cavity, it did give me ample opportunity to observe the boy, and learn how he works. He wears his heart on his sleeve, you see. And even better for our purposes, he believes he must tend to every little problem himself.

“Now, you or I,” he waved a long bony hand at the projection, “we would see this and dispatch a unit of troops to deal with the problem, would we not?”

I would.

“Yes, but not Tolliver. He will receive word not only that elementals are laying waste to that treacherous hamlet, but also that one of the elementals has been demanding to speak to him. And, if he follows form, he will immediately drop what he is doing and race to defend these poor beleaguered and surprisingly flammable peasants from our marauding elementals—and possibly try to understand what made them so testy in the first place.”

That is utterly illogical. He commands many different units now, and is allied with others who are of high combat power. Why would he go out himself to attack?

“Because, and this is the important part so you may wish to take notes,” Araxesendenak said with a skeletal smirk, “he is an idiot. He cares. And because he cares, he believes that he must be present and active in every minor crisis that arises, even when he doesn’t need to be. And so, instead of spending valuable time and manpower by sending these costly elementals round and about to attack various sections of Tolliver’s dungeon in the vain hope—“

Do you realize that you talk a lot? Or is this a quirk of your programming?

Araxesendenak’s jaws snapped shut with an audible ‘click’, and he directed a fiery glare up at the corner of the room he’d decided this strange creature must reside.

“Ware how you address me, child,” the lich king said quietly. “A passing degree of familiarity of tone I do not mind. But I draw the line at insolence.”

You are not able to make good on any threat you might make. You therefore have no reason to attempt to cow me with words.

Do not attempt to destroy her until you have gotten what you want, said the deucedly annoying voice of reason that for some reason he hadn’t banished from the inside of this skull yet.

Unfortunately, as was so often the case, the voice of reason was correct. While he certainly didn’t need the voice and its dubious assets to destroy Tolliver… The Five still existed out there. And if this creature knew where even one of them laid his head, and Araxesendenak could get to him in a moment of weakness…

Well. He hadn’t set out on the path of lichdom because he was looking to limit his power, had he?

“Ah,” the undead monarch grinned then as a familiar figure pounded into view on the projection. “There, you see? What did I tell you. Reliable as a clockwork idiot, this boy.”

* * *

Melloram was burning.

Sam ran full-blast at the head of a flying column of warrior mobs, Thumb Bane in one hand and his bolt-thrower in the other. Tilly ran next to him, her power saws revving in her hands. Next to her were Ma and Pop, and behind them a score of his highest-level fighters. And in front of them, living flames stalked the streets, lashing out and setting ablaze anything that crossed their paths.

“Fire elementals,” Ma hollered, her own hand wreathed in white flame as she called on her Volcano Goddess powers. “They’ll have a stabilizing gem somewhere in the main body. Crack the gem, get rid of the elemental.”

“Thrash” Sam called to the brawny orc as they dashed into the burgeoning inferno. “Take your team and sweep left. Take Pop. Ma, you and Tilly sweep left. I’ll take the rest right up the middle and meet you in the square. How’d they even get past the guards and the walls?”

“Fire elementals, Sammy,” Ma said with a raised eyebrow. “They can fly.”

“Figure they’re working for the same critter who sent the last attack?” Pop asked, drawing his sword.

Sam swore again. Too much. He was forgetting things again. “We need air defenses.”

“We need to snuff some damn fires,” Tilly said, revving a saw. “Good luck everyone! Try not to get crispy-fried! I only like original-recipe stuff!”

Sam nodded and took only a brief second to watch as two thirds of his little response force peeled off and went in separate directions. He glanced back over his shoulder at the ones still following him; a smattering of orcs and goblins, a solid core of shield maidens, a handful of gnomish sharpshooters who’d only just begun getting their minds back thanks to Cora and her ability to transform mindless mobs into thinking people. It was a small force… But it would have to do.

“Let’s go,” he called to them, yanking Thumb Bane from its loop and slapping on his Harness abilities. And, after a moment’s thought, activating his Indiscriminate Justice and Swing For The Bleachers buffs. He had a feeling he was going to need all the firepower he could get on this one.

The little strike force dashed up Melloram’s main street, avoiding the burning buildings and trying to ignore the charred outlines on the cobbles that could only have been a person at some point.

The first skirmish was almost not worthy of the name. A pair of fire elementals the size of small horses stormed out of a stone alleyway off the main road right in front of Sam. Sam had a brief impression of bright yellow light and violent heat washing over him. A month ago, that would have caused him to hesitate, to fling his arms up for protection, to backpedal away from the pain the heat would cause.

But that Sam was long gone, and in his place stood the Sam of today. Stronger, more experienced, and with reflexes that had been honed by a dozen battles in a short period of time. So instead of backpedaling, he stomped to a stop, grounded his feet on the rough cobbles, reared back, and flung Thumb Bane end over end into the nearest elemental. The hammer slammed through the flames, struck something solid, and shattered it into a million pieces without even slowing. The fire elemental winked out of existence as its gemstone fell to the ground as so much shiny dust.

The second elemental fared little better. It had barely begun to advance towards Sam when a fusillade of shots rang out from behind and to the left of Sam. A half-dozen rounds from gnomish blunderbusses—Blunderbusses? Blunderbussi? Blun… From gnomish guns—tore into the fiery mass, blasting ragged holes in the living flame. One of the rounds found the gem, and just like that there were no more elementals in this section of the street.

Well, that worked a treat. Sam grinned and Called Thumb Bane back to his hand. But it could have worked better. If we hadn’t been as fast…

“Shield maidens up front,” he called, dropping back in amongst his little group. “ Shields up. You’ll give the shooters time to get a shot off if the next ones we come across aren’t as flat-footed.”

“Right chief!” Four of the women with huge shields and short stabbing blades came forward and formed a wall of metal in front of the group. Sam glanced at his display and saw that they all had gained the Shield Wall trait, increasing both attack and defense as long as four of them fought in a line.

“Gnomes, pick your shots. Orcs, Goblins, stay to the sides and pick anything off that comes around. Let’s move!”

A chorus of acknowledgments sounded, and the little force moved inwards. The deeper they got into the town, the worse the fires raged. Buildings were infernos. Men and women and children fled past them, or cowered inside untouched structures.

Sam: How we doing, folks?

Jackson: Killed three groups so far.

Tilly: Is it just me, or do they seem kinda disorganized?

Annie: Yeah, I’m not seeing anything I’d call a plan here. They’re just killing and burning without any real goal, near as I can tell.

Sam found himself agreeing. They ran across two more groups of a pair of elementals, one of which was engaged in combat with a trio of Melloram’s guards. One of them perished in the melee, but the other two managed to get behind the shield maidens with little more than superficial burns as Sam’s forces blew the elementals apart.

“Captain Ard Shi’s got a detachment trapped just outside the square,” one of them, a tall man with sideburns, said in a pained voice. He had burns over half of his visible skin, some of which were bleeding heavily. “He got stuck trying to rescue the council!”

“Then that’s where we’re headed,” Sam said decisively. “Fall back to the dungeon, Char and Cora have the infirmary ready for casualties.”

The man hesitated, clearly torn between retreat and continuing to fight. Sam placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a nod.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We got this.”

The man nodded and allowed the other guard to help him as they limped away to the rear.

The group kept moving inwards. For all the chaos they were causing, the elementals proved to be fairly weak foes whenever they tried to stand and attack Sam’s group of warriors. By the time they made it to where Ard Shi’s group was pinned down, Sam was starting to get suspicious.

“This seem too easy to anyone else?” he asked just as they rounded a corner… And he got his answer.

“I think you jinxed us, Sammy,” Tilly said as the group stumbled to a halt and stared. There in the middle of the road was an elemental easily three times the size of the largest one they’d fought to this point. It looked like someone had set fire to a three-story building, then given it arms and legs of flame. Gouts of flame erupted at random intervals from random points, like solar flares come to earth. Fifty yards away, Sam could feel the heat pouring off of the thing like he had just walked outside on a summer’s day.

Then the creature turned, and Sam saw two things behind it. The first was Ard Shi’s party; seven or eight guards with long spears trying desperately to fend off the attack and keep the fires away from the twenty or so civilians behind them.

The other was four more giant elementals tromping down the street towards them.

“Well hell,” Tilly said with a laugh. “And here I thought this wasn’t going to be any fun at all!”

Sam swallowed and raised his hammer, but before anyone could do anything, the huge elemental raised its—for lack of a better word—hand and looked straight at him.

“Samuel Tolliver?”, it boomed in a voice like a forest fire.

Everything seemed to come to a halt. The elementals all turned towards Sam, taking the pressure off the defenders, who after a moment’s wide-eyed disbelief also turned to look at him.

“Uh, yes?” Sam said, suddenly very off balance.

“My master wishes to speak to you.”