Tilly plunged his finger into the bloody hole producing a soft squelching hiss as the writhing infection started to burn. Tilly winced as the smell of charred Corrupted flesh hit his nostrils again.

'I'm beginning to hate that smell.'

“GRRRAAAAAHHHH!” Linus shouted, grabbing Tilly’s shoulder in such an intense grip that he felt his scapula flexing under the strain.

“AHHHH! Hey, I'm trying to help! Hold on!” Tilly yelled.

Like bacon on a hot pan, the tendrils of darkness wriggled one last time before sizzling into nonexistence, leaving behind a spidery network of molted burnt flesh. Tilly pulled his hand free with a wet pop and saw the wound begin to close before his eyes. He whipped his head up to check Linus’ eyes and found a grim but aware visage staring back at him as the Commander panted with the effort of fighting off the foreign substance.

Linus looked over at the blocked doorway and grunted. Without preamble, he stood to his feet and rolled his injured shoulder gingerly, before drawing his gladius to the sound of a thunderous clash from the Titans above the city.

“Come now, Dust Eater! Is that all you got? Give this old Satyr the pleasure of hosting you in his city. It would be rude to come all this way and stay outside… Unless of course, you are frightened?” The emperor called out through what sounded like a clenched jaw.

“SSSSS, You are nothing before my wrath, Old Goat.” The snake god hissed, breaking off the crackling sound of the impact of its breath attack against the magic barrier. Then there was a pregnant pause in which Linus and Tilly shared a look before a booming blast rattled the whole building and probably the city with it.

“FINAL VERDICT!” shouted the emperor, engaging some sort of Ability. A cacophony of giant metallic objects hitting each other whirled around something. Then a snarling “HSSSS!” of fury resounded as whatever Trap the emperor had planned came to fruition.

“Human, step back,” Linus stated calmly turning back to the vine-choked doorway. He did a pretty good job taking this all in stride, but this was Tilly’s first time experiencing power on this scale and he just nodded dumbly and moved to the other side of the room. The satyr Commander who had been comatose moments ago, rolled his shoulders one more time and then rebuckled his cuirass, wincing as his fingers brushed the clotted mess of a magic cloth Tilly had shoved in the exit wound. With a slight squint, he ripped the cloth free from the healing wound, before flicking the cloth once to activate its enchantment, and then tossed it over. Tilly caught it, looking at the cloth and then back at the Commander in confusion.

“Keep that.”- He said, his voice heavy with purpose - “Tell the men that an empire is more than a city, more than an emperor. It is a people and the ideals that unite them. At some point, we forgot that, but it is no less true today than it was at the founding of our nation.”

“Linus… Why do you need me to tell them?” Tilly said, goosebumps tingling up and down his arms as he began to grasp Linus’ intention. Screams of fury sounded almost right outside the door before suddenly shifting to manic laughter.

Facing the door with an expression hard as flint, Linus breathed out two words, “Terminal Bastion.”

He spoke them so softly, with such heavy finality that they came out as barely more than a whisper. The whole room seemed to lean in as if wanting to hear more before an immense pressure was unleashed, rolling off Linus in golden waves of force. So much energy was coming off him, that his hair was literally standing on end and small static discharges spontaneously started popping up near his body.

He gave Tilly a final small nod and then faced the doorway barricaded with dark thick vines and disappeared. Tilly was deafened by the thunderclap, and he completely lost track of Linus as he exploded forward in an incomprehensible burst of speed, obliterating the vines in his way with pressure and momentum alone.

Tilly stumbled back against the wall, recovered, and rushed to the door to the sound of the blood-curdling laughter abruptly being cut off. He emerged into the street and froze for a moment as the enormity of the conflict outside sunk in.

In the sky above the city, the serpent god had been caught fully extended in a thrusting strike of its arrow-shaped head. Chains with links the size of houses had surged up from the edges of the city and bound the god, holding it fast in place just a few feet short of its goal. The emperor stood right in front of the snake god’s unhinged jaw, his arms outstretched with a look of profound effort on his face. Black-tinged blood was dripping from his nose and eyes as he bent his whole will toward holding the divine being in place. The snake god wriggled forward, pushing against the mana-forged chains with all its might.

The sound of a wet meaty “thrump” drew his eyes down from the sky and over to the right, where Linus stood over another headless naga corpse. This one was covered with red welts and black tattoos. The body had collapsed right next to the crumpled form of Amelia, who was curled up on the ground guarding a gushing wound in her abdomen.

Tilly immediately moved into a sprint towards them as Linus’ head whipped up and his short sword blurred to bat away another incoming arrow. Tilly shot a glance towards eardrum-shattering clanging that had not let up since the beginning of the fight and saw Hiro engaged in a duel of blades with a giant four-armed Naga wielding four scimitars in an almost continuous blur of strikes. Hiro’s smooth unruffled motions were unmistakable in their mastery of his chosen weapon and while he bore numerous shallow cuts, his enemy showed far larger wounds.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Franklin meanwhile was doing his utmost to contain a group of 20ish satyr private guards along with Titus Marcellus himself. The honu was evoking a complex pattern of jetlike bursts of water in a constantly changing frequency to keep the group from advancing, but they had formed a wedge and were slowly moving through the maelstrom. He had kept them to one side of the street, and out of the other fights, but his gambit wouldn't last much longer.

Beyond all of this, a burst of light announced the arrival of Linus at his target. The two distant figures clashed and then separated, covering crazy distances with each maneuver. Tilly hoped Linus would be able to lock down the archer long enough for the battle to turn their way.

Then he was at the body of the dead naga, sliding to a stop next to the headless corpse. It had collapsed over its weapon, which was a spear shaped like a serpent. Tilly drew both hatchets as the thing suddenly tried to wiggle free of its master. It had a serrated blade held in place by what looked to be the jaws of a living snake griping the tang of the spearhead. The serpent-body shaft wriggled and writhed, trying to pull free of the weight of its master’s dead torso, but Tilly’s hatchet was already swinging down on its neck as the creepy weapon registered his presence. His primitive stone blades collided with the shaft’s scales and rebounded, causing the snake head portion of the spear to whip around in a limited attempt to lash out at its assailant. Tilly slammed his moccasin down on the head, trapping the flat of the blade with the weight of his body.

Then with a grunt of pain, he enflamed his hatchet head, and slowly lowered the bladed edge onto the neck of the spear, watching for the coloration in the scales to change before pushing the blade into the skin and beginning to saw off the head. After a few passes, he reached the spine. The whole thing went rigid and he lifted his nonoccupied foot and stomped down on the back of his hatchet, completely severing its head from the body.

Turning away from the elite naga with the sapient weapon, he knelt next to Amelia who was curled into a fetal position in the middle of a sea of wrecked vine growth. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her face was buried in the plant growth in a heartwrenching infantile defense reflex. Blood had pooled under her, and he didn't have a clear view of what sort of wound she was guarding but he didn't want to move her if she was already gone. He laid his hand on her back, waiting as the shouts and clamor of the battlefield fell away and zeroed in on his patient's chest.

'There it is.'

An almost imperceptible rise of the ribs, indicating a single shallow breath. He felt for a pulse with one hand, while gently rolling her onto her back with the other arm. Her eyes were closed, and her arms were wrapped around a horrendous wound in her abdomen. The jagged edge of the spearhead had left a bloody mess of cloth and flesh that was still gurgling blood. Tilly gently lifted away the pieces of her shirt and found another network of black veiny infection reaching outwards in all directions from the wound. Most concerning was the thick nest of tendrils actively reaching for her heart.

'Shit.'

This was much worse than Linus’ wound, and he probably had double the Endurance Amelia had. He stoked the mana in his chest as intensely as the ability would let him and breathed out over the wound, watching in frustration as it began to bubble in response. The wound continued to dribble out blood and clotted knots of Corruption. The only sign that his ability was doing anything to the poison was that it had stopped spreading, leaving a root system that spanned all of her lower torso.

'It wasn’t going to be enough. She would either be turned into one of those things or die.'

Tilly looked up in desperation, at a loss for what to do to help. He spotted Linus still chasing the archer and Hiro almost having dismantled his naga opponent but at the cost of numerous wounds crisscrossing his body. Worst of all, the contingent of private guards had almost reached Franklin, he probably had a minute left max. Tilly looked back down at Amelia in distress, cursing his limited abilities. It's not like he had anything to actually help heal her; all he could do was burn as much of the Corruption as he could and hope that the additional trauma didn't push her over the edge.

He clenched his fist in frustration, letting out a shout of impotent rage. No matter what he did, he always found himself helpless when it really mattered. One more person he could do nothing to save.

'Could he have done something different?'

'Would she have gotten this injury if he hadn’t dived after Linus?'

'Would Linus have even been hit if he hadn’t been running his mouth like an idiot?'

For some reason, there, with little hope, and a city collapsing around him, Tilly thought again of the little girl outside the shop. The one that was now safe on the other side of the portal.

He couldn't answer any of his questions, and he would anguish over them later.

For now, he had a fucking job to do.

Heat bloomed in his chest, as he shoved the weight of his guilt and uncertainty into that flame at his center, stoking it to an inferno. He unclenched his fist and opened his hand sending the new heat at his center down his arm to materialize as an intense blue and white flame dancing above his palm. Then with a deep breath and something that might even have been a prayer, he laid it gently against the deep, bubbling wound on her abdomen. The flame sizzled as it touched her waxy, corrupted flesh, and even unconscious, she shivered in pain, releasing a deep groan.

The flame sunk into her navel, crackling as it consumed flesh and corruption alike. Tilly watched as Amelia's already shallow breathing quickened and her eyes fluttered. The glow from the flame continued to emanate from her even as her wound was cauterized and sealed, trapping the flame within.

“Amelia, I need you to hold on! We are getting out of here and those kids need you.” Tilly growled down to her, tears falling on the new source of pain he had just added to her fragile wounded body.

'It would work.'

'It had to work.'

He stood up, heat smoldering in his eyes as he looked to the group of Satyrs about to push through the area effect of Franklin’s spell and reach the Tidecaller.