Some fighting coming up!
When asked How do you fight a fire elemental? Carefully?, Jimmy would always laugh. ‘Careful.’ That’s what amateurs would say, he’d reply, then go on, Actually, they wouldn’t say anything, because they’d be too busy screaming to death. Then he’d take another drink of beer. Nah, he’d say, you can’t fight carefully something that has infinite fireballs. So you don’t even God-damned well try.
But you could still fight smart.
Nobody in the damned huddle seemed to have a crossbow, which was a problem that kept cropping up in the liberated lands. Something about how the Dominion used to turn any of their slaves caught carrying arms into bears, half-starve them, and then release them in their home huddles. For some reason, Dominion mages thought that was a hysterical joke, because it was always bears. It took a while for the former slaves to understand that the rules were different now (it had also taken a few hangings to make certain Alliance soldiers understand that the rules were different now, but Jimmy didn’t dwell on that). Clearly this particular huddle was still taking a wait-and-see attitude on the new dispensation.
On the bright side, at least that meant that everybody firing a missile weapon in this fight would be one of his people. Or the garrison, if they figure out how to pull their thumbs out of their adels, Jimmy thought. Though that was unfair, he knew. Who’d think the Dominion would waste a fire elemental on this place?