The wind elementals come, and they are very different from what I expect.

They came in as expected, falling like a storm from the above. Teleported like the fire elementals.

The fire elementals were all very similar to one another. The only real different one was the leader with its armor. The water elementals, now those guys have a lot of differences.

Those differences came from the things they attached to their bodies. All of them had water bodies, and then they shoved some kind of animal part in there and boom! Differences. Just surface differences though, at the end of the day all of them were water blobs with things put inside of them.

The wind elementals however, they seem legitimately different from one another. The first difference is that some of them are clearly made out of ice.

The leader is a tall lanky man, made out of snow and ice. He takes the form of a bald man, literal snow white skin, eyes made of clear ice and a long beard that seems to be made of hoarfrost.

His robe is long, loose and constantly flowing. It seems to be made out of frigid clouds, there is some kind of mist clinging to it. The system says he’s an Northern Winds Elemental.

Another elemental is a translucent…horse-man-thingy. It has the front hooves of a horse, the back legs of a man. The neck of a horse and the face of a man.

I ignore the weird wind elemental and pass onto the next. The next one is a Spring Mist elemental, another weird one, for different reasons. This one takes the form of a young man, its skin and hair are softly shining in rainbow colors, like a kaleidoscope. The only thing that does not change colors is its robe, a pure white cloud color, flowing just like the old man’s. The other thing not changing is the eyes, a constant shining yellow amber, bursting with vitality.

Another being is a glass child, very very small. Its proportions are exaggerated, it has a very tiny body and a very large spherical head, with no characteristics, just a blank body. It is sitting on a small white cloud, around it are two rainbow rings, one horizontal and another vertical.

Another weird thing, no birds.

There are winged beings in the group, but they are not birds. Instead they are winged, feathered serpents. They look like snakes with colorful feathers, except the part of their bodies that connects to their wings, they have huge muscles there, probably for beating those wings. Some have normal snake heads, while others have actual beaks, and some have beaks and fangs that come out of them like tusks.

One of the weirder ones though, are the mantas and sharks. They seem to be made out of coral, and have adapted some of their parts, like their gills, to create wind propulsion and fly. They are called Flying Coral Elementals, and apparently can move well in both water and air.

These wind weirdos come and, immediately, start bullying my flying skulls. Most of them are actual Flying Skulls now too, still it doesn’t seem to save them from the elementals.

My skulls have never actually seriously fought a flying group until now, and it’s showing. The flying elementals are hounding and grouping and dodging their attacks.

One problem seems to be that my skulls can only really attack on their front. Their only real attack is their laser eyes, which they can only shoot when looking at something. The elementals quickly realize it, they use a mixture and wind wave attacks to cause them to miss. The icy air elementals can actually shoot waves of biting cold that accumulate ice on the skulls, making them slightly slower.

I told them to try and go down, but the elementals do not want to let them. With their wind attacks my skulls are constantly being pushed back up.

I do have a plan to help my little skulls, but I need an opening.

I quickly give some orders to my undead. I have to make this one count, the elementals clearly are not giving my grounded undead the vigilance they should. They are keeping an eye out but they also clearly expect to see anything big coming way before they are able to do it.

This tactic my undead will do is not something we have practiced at all. In fact it was just discord a few minutes ago, while Merlin and Stinger were mopping up the water elementals, accidentally too.

I wait a few seconds to make sure everything is in place, a few seconds while my flying skulls are getting tossed around and destroyed by the elementals. Then I tell them all to dive down.

As expected, the elementals use their wind powers to create an updraft pulling the skulls up. That is not the only thing they pull this time though. Just as the skulls dive, Jack is thrown up by Kaiman, and Stinger is springboarded by the shields. The updraft carries them up towards the winds.

Jack starts to slap the skulls, shooting and igniting them at the same time. The skulls and Jack use their skills together and this time the winds can’t quite contain them. The flying flaming skulls set aflame any elemental they touch.

Stinger is different, she was launched in a place where the elementals roughly lined up. She prepares one of her new skills. {Piercing Lightning Blow}, she holds it for a second, waiting.

Merlin shoots a necrotic beam, it passes her by, and then she punches along its trajectory.

The lightning skill has a short range, yet it is also a lightning made of necrotic energy. The lightning is charged by the incredibly pure mana of Merlin and becomes a huge lightning bolt.

An explosion of purple light launches Stinger back. The lightning branches like a gigantic tree, piercing almost all of the elementals. The skulls don’t let this opening go to waste and now it’s their turn bullying the elementals.

A single bolt touches the weird glass child, and it shatters into a million pisces. The sound it makes as its body is destroyed is like that of a thousand wind chimes being thrown into a woodchipper that just inhaled a tank of helium. Absolutely strident, if I had ears they probably would’ve exploded into jets of blood.

The little rainbows around the thing also expand, I can tell they seem to be some kind of mental effect as they pass my undead and do nothing.

Stinger and Jack fall, right below them are skeletons ready to throw them up again. Now that the wind elementals stopped moving for a second the mages are shooting them.

This time as Stinger is launched it is even easier for her to line up a shot. The elementals seem to be dazzled from the attack, I can see lightning scars on them. Interestingly enough, I notice that there seems to be no storm elemental or something like it. I wonder how the necro lightning would have fared against them.

Stinger is midair as a necrotic beam passes her, yet this time she kicks it. The explosion launches her up this time. Merlin sends another beam and she punches it, again angling it so she is pushed upwards or sideways.

Together with the help of Merlin, Stinger is staying airborne and shooting lightning at the elementals. The elementals who seem to have no counter to being electrified by necrotic energy.

Stinger is keeping the pressure on, not letting them heal enough or move too much. Meanwhile Jack and the skulls are nibbing and headbutting the weaker elementals.

The icy grandpa dies just as easily as the rest, and his snow body falls to the ground. I tell Merlin to manipulate the snow and make a snowman. He quickly complies with it, all the while not looking at it or stopping his beams.

Two balls of snow are created, and now we have a featureless snowman. Looking at it, I can’t help but remember the time I made one when I was a child. Probably my first golem ever, which was pretty normal for a kid, these guys are very easy to animate.

Gorger comes close, he tears off his teeth and uses it to make eyes and buttons on the snowman, just like in my memory.

Now all that’s missing is the scarf— Gorger bites off his tongue, then rolls it around the ‘neck’ of the snowman.

That’s… well, thanks Gorger.

“Ghgbhurwhrul” He says, patting his chest.

I don’t care that everybody here can understand it, that’s still not a language.

He stops gurgling and looks at the snowman, which is slowly disappearing. I bring my attention up and see that the elementals are all dead. That was easy.

Invasion Trial!

Earth Gnomes have invaded!

I quickly scan the greenhouse and… find nothing.

Then I feel it. I bring my attention to my five floor dungeon, and find them there. For a second I had trouble ‘seeing’ them, their bodies are that similar to stone. Which makes sense, they seem to be literally made from stone.

They have child-like bodies, being very short. They have large hands, larger than an adult’s.

However their most striking feature is their faces. All of them have a cavity in the places of humanoid features, these holes are metallic and have geometric patterns. It’s very similar to bismuth in fact, but the shapes come in many forms. Some of them have crystals around their faces too, almost looking like hair or beards.

There’s almost 100 of them, and they are all… staring around, looking over the statues.