Tilly spasming was finally noticed by the machine's cold, glowing eyes, and its grip loosened minimally to allow him a gasping breath. Knives shot through his ribs as previously unfelt fractures communicated their presence in a sharp symphony of pain and his Health blinked, dropping a percentage point with each breath as several debuffs hung like dark neon signs under his name.

Despite the pain, the moment Tilly’s lungs filled with oxygen, he whipped his hands forward, recalling his lost hatchets in an instant, hoping to bury them in the Golem Prefect’s side. Unfortunately for Tilly, this thing's speed was on another level, and almost as soon as he had begun moving, the apex automaton reacted in a flash of movement. It didn’t seem to matter that Tilly had attacked from two different sides, or that the automaton only had one arm left and it was engaged in throttling Tilly’s neck.

The moment he initiated his attack, his left arm broke with a resounding snap, and several fingers on his right hand were dislocated as they attempted to hold on to the weapon the Golem prefect so easily deflected. Tilly hadn’t even seen the thing move… He tried not to groan as another injury stacked itself on his already overloaded body and his hatchet hung loose in his hand, despite his broken forearm screaming at him to drop it.

Health: 13%

Tilly smiled, revealing bloody teeth as his mind raced. It was great to have his Titles back, but [Resolute] would only delay the inevitable. If he went offensive and managed to eliminate the Golem, he would still be left with dropping health and no way to heal besides Erash. He hated to risk revealing her, but with Brokenridge out of the fight, he might have to play all his cards if they wanted to make it out of here alive…

Then somewhere in the distance between the sound of the still screaming Corrupted Tree and the fires raging all around the base of the spire, he heard an otherworldly shriek mixed with deeper undertones that faded at the edges. The invisible mark on his chest began to burn again, and Tilly’s eyes narrowed.

The Perfected Golem seemed unable to hear anything out of place and watched Tilly for a moment with a tilted head. The pose reminded Tilly of a four-year-old examining a bug, as the Golem Prefect’s optic devices continued scanning its captive.

“I need more time…” Tilly thought desperately, trying to come up with another plan.

“Can’t *cough* blame a guy for trying, right?” He wheezed, stalling.

The Golem Prefect’s flat expression didn’t change at Tilly’s quip, but his hand began to tighten again, “The Crystals will be extracted from you, willingly or not.” It said as its eyes finished whatever scanning they had been doing, and the machine’s programming came to a conclusion.

A needle rose from its forearm and shot forward, attempting to jab Tilly in the neck. The tip bruised his skin but did not break it, and the Automaton’s eyes focused in on the spot, “Analysis error… Adjusting…” It droned as the needle pulled back like a snake ready for another strike before shooting forward with much more force. The skin overlying Tilly’s jugular put up an admirable resistance, but the pressure was far too great, and the needle broke through, almost bisecting Tilly’s artery in the process as his natural defenses crumbled.

Tilly would have screamed, except there was a large needle shoved in his neck, and he figured the last thing we wanted to do was shift his neck in any direction. Instead, he dry swallowed several times, his eyes watching in morbid fascination as the syringe cavity filled with glowing red liquid before injecting it into his bloodstream.

Epic Quality Organic Growth and Repair Accelerator.

Warning! You have been injected with Nanites. These micro automatons are each equipped with programming specific to their tasks, and not always for the benefit of the host.

Your Title [Hostile Environment] has been activated. Your body is actively working to expel foreign entities.

Shock ran through Tilly’s system as the familiar warmth of healing began to spread from the injection site as the needle withdrew. At the same time, his title stimulated his Mana Pathways, raising the temperature in his cells to supernatural levels.

Unaware of Tilly’s Title, the Golem Prefect pulled him away from the side of the building, rising through the air at a sedate pace as Tilly continued to hang from its grip on his neck, “You are slotted for dissection, Meatbag. We will locate the condenser crystals, and discover the source of your irregular mana signature.”

‘Yep… out of time,’ he thought to himself as he sent his Will into the Celestial Bracelets. It looked like they wouldn’t be making it to the Contested Lands after all, but he would be damned if he was going to let some Terminator wannabe dissect him. He was willing to bet everything on an Intelligence-empowered Flame’s Expulsion if it meant buying a little time to prepare before the Wild Hunt caught up to them.

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Then, like an avenging angel, he saw Brokenridge’s beautiful scally form rise up from the ruins below, shedding ash and smoke in billowing waves with every beat of his wings. A small proximity alarm sounded from the Golem Prefect’s chest, and it turned to look down, watching in confusion as Brokenridge rose from the fires still raging all around the base of the Faction’s central tower.

“The probability of this is untenable,” It droned out, turning to face the recovered dragon.

Tilly’s view wasn’t great from his angle, hanging from the golem's one arm, and was forced to squint out of his peripherals to see Brokenridge rising into the air. In addition to whatever wounds he had received in combat being healed, seven points of light now hovered over his head like a crown. One at each of his horns, shining brightly over the broken and undamaged one alike. The remaining five motes of light circled his head in a seven-pointed diadem that radiated magical potential.

It looks like the most recent deposit had held a lot more than just monetary value… Something of their magical charge had clearly been transferred over to the dragon through the Scorch-linked connection to his Horde.

“You have met your end, Sullied One,” Brokenridge growled as he finished rising in the air, to take up a position opposite of the Golem Prefect, in what Tilly had to admit was an awesome re-entrance to the battlefield. In response, the Golem’s body started to hiss and whirl as several mechanical processes spun within. A black, anti-light started to radiate off its form as power thrummed through its Corrupted flesh.

“Your tricks will not be enough to suspend your termination, Beast.” It declared, tossing Tilly to the side, like a piece of discarded trash. The throw was much more powerful than the motion suggested, and it was lucky that Tilly had been ready for something like the casual dismissal. He shot toward the spire at breakneck speeds, shifting in the air to take the impact on his arms and legs.

His health had climbed back into the eighties after the chance healing from the Golem Prefect and his body had regained its full capability, allowing him to jackknife mid-air along with the throw, recalling his hatchets, and jabbing one into an almost imperceptible crack in the metalwork as his body slammed into the structure.

Behind him, a deafening crash resounded, followed by a shock wave that slammed him against the wall, giving his grip on the handle of his weapon a run for its money. Tilly planted his feet against the wall and braced himself turning to try and see if he could help. He quickly reassessed his usefulness as the battle unfolded before him in flashes of concussive impacts that buffeted him over and over on his unstable perch.

For the most part, their movements were too fast for Tilly to follow, with the exception of the brief glimpses he got of them impacting each other in titanic clashes of strength and fury. The battle moved hundreds of feet per second as the entire surrounding area became the arena for this supercharged contest of wills. Then as quickly as it began, it was over. Brokenridge appeared in the distance, whipping his tail around as it glowed with a fierce brown light. A fraction of a second later the Perfected Golem appeared right in front of the dragon, like a T-ball ready for its batter.

Brokenridge’s tail impacted with so much force that buildings directly underneath the collision were flattened as the chief automaton was Launched with unbelievable momentum back toward the spire. It blasted into the side of the tower somewhere above Tilly with a thunderous clang, quickly followed by a deafening screech of metal as the already leaning tower began to collapse under its own weight.

“Emergency Defense Protocol Omega” The tinny voice announced, once again coming from all directions at once in reaction to the decisive hit. The spire leaned dangerously, releasing a cacophony of shearing metal and the gunshot-like cracks of shattering supports.

Tilly craned his neck to look up as the top of the tower flared into a blazing light that funneled into a glowing orb of anti-light at its tip, gathering what felt like a Fourth-Tier energy attack. Then several explosions resounded from the chamber that Tilly’s had so recently vacated, and the coalescing energy sputtered out.

“Insufficient Power. System Deviations Detected. Catastrophic Failure Probable.” The tinny voice declared ominously as the vertical surface Tilly was hanging off slowly became a steep incline.

‘Stupid dreams of men… and their stupid self-destruct obsessions.’ Tilly thought grimly as the full implications of the announcement sunk like dead weight into his awareness. He looked around wildly for some sort of way out as he cursed every sci-fi movie he had ever seen.

Brokenridge, however, seemed unconcerned with the announcement and had taken the time offered by the announcement to charge his breath weapon to a truly catastrophic degree. The dragon released a bar of liquid heat so intense that the flash blinded Tilly for a second as it sheared through the spire with almost no resistance. The spots cleared from Tilly's eyes just in time to see the Golem’s impact site explode in a riot of flames and thick black smoke, ending the dragon’s battle with a proverbial double tap. Something that the Golem probably should have done earlier in the fight.

Unfortunately for Tilly, this proved more than the spire could take and the top half ripped free from its base as the energy that had flickered out at its top blazed back to frenetic life, flashing in an erratic pattern as the potential energies there slipped free of their guiding systems and began to catalyze.

As if to confirm Tilly’s suspicions, the tinny voice emotionlessly announced the horrendous cliche ending to this conflict in its characteristic metallic monotone, “Weave Dissolution Warning, Uncontested Chain Reaction in Effect. Full Neutrino/Mana-Drive Failure in 5…”

Tilly turned to watch the reaction build, once again cueing up [Resolute], hoping the others would survive what sounded like some sort of fantasy nuclear meltdown. Knowing Kindle, she would be fine, but Erash was still hidden somewhere nearby, and he doubted her defenses were robust enough to survive being so close to the epicenter of whatever this was.

Then the breath was knocked out of him as he was yanked off his feet and pulled into the air in a far-from-gentle rescue from his erstwhile ally.

“4…” the voice continued cooly.

A set of clawed fingers as long as Tilly’s body curled around him, almost too tightly for him to breathe, as a purple glow surrounded them both.

“3…”

“Gnat!” Brokenridge roared.

“2…”

“You better be linked!” He finished as their rapid ascent wrenched into truly impossible speeds as Brokenridge activated True Flight. Tilly’s vision of his surroundings blurred into nonsense as all of his senses were once again overwhelmed by the acceleration into supersonic flight.

“1.” The voice sounded a few moments later, the speed of its announcement barely fast enough to catch them as they passed Mach 1 and the force of their continued acceleration attempted to crush Tilly against the rigid bones of Brokenridges clawed feet.

Then there was a bright flash, so intense that it cut through Tilly’s overwhelmed senses, followed by a blastwave colored with intense magical potential. Tilly’s eyes were still struggling to process the light that had pierced his retinas, but he didn't need to see to feel it when the blast wave hit them, snapping back his head and overwhelming the force of Brokenridge’s ability, knocking the dragon from the sky.

The last thing Tilly remembered before blackness overtook him was a tumbling corkscrew descent through a hellish, acrid, sky.