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Orion released Pauline's hand the moment they cleared the brass hull, angling his body to reduce air resistance. A small part of him wanted to keep that connection, but they would need all their faculties to get out of this situation. The danger was not quite over yet. Behind them, the sky kept flashing. The hijacked command zeppelin had slammed nose-first into its sister ship, and the resulting explosion tore the air apart in a firestorm of force.

A blinding sphere of superheated plasma expanded outward, vaporizing the alchemical fuel lines and sending shockwaves rippling through the heavens. The concussive blast hit Orion a second later, hurling him head over heels like a discarded ragdoll. He fought down the rising bile, forcing his eyes open against the rushing wind, and the sight that greeted him was the shattered remains of the two flying fortresses, raining down toward the Shattered Basin in a torrential downpour of burning shrapnel.

To their left, three more airships were engulfed in flames, crippled by the automated broadside he had unleashed before jumping. But the sky was not clear. Six smaller zeppelins remained, and even amid the chaos, he could hear their alchemical engines whine as they compensated for the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure. Unfortunately for the two falling humans, the crews of those surviving vessels had noticed them.

Turrets swiveled on their brass mounts, and whoever was in charge did not waste time mourning their flagship, locking onto their figures. Pauline threw her arms out, attempting to weave a parachute from shadows. Her darkness billowed upward, catching the air to slow their descent, but a volley of artillery fire streaked toward them from the nearest airship. The projectiles trailed thick smoke, and Orion didn't have to guess. It was clearly more Silence.

Fortunately, the high winds and constant shockwaves threw off their aim, but the moment the alchemical artillery passed near Pauline's construct, her shadows frayed and weakened. The magic simply could not maintain its structural integrity against the anti-magic interference.

"I'll deal with them; focus on clearing our path!" Orion shouted back, pulling his limbs inward to stabilize his descent. Debris was still raining down around them, and even a glancing blow from one piece could be fatal. His mind ached from all the spells he had used to breach the hull and during the fight, but he was far from empty. He pushed a fresh surge of power into his CC, calculating the trajectory of the incoming shells.

He didn't try to stop their fall, as arresting their momentum mid-air would only make them easier targets for the gunners. Instead, he wove [Event Horizon] around their bodies, aiming to deflect anything that might bypass her. A moment later, a shell screamed toward him. Orion snapped his fingers, unleashing a burst of positive gravity directly in the shell's path. The projectile struck the invisible distortion and veered violently, passing harmlessly beneath his boots before detonating in the empty air.

Two more shells followed, coming from the port side of another zeppelin. Orion adjusted his vectors on the fly, creating a slanted spatial plane that skipped the artillery fire like stones across a pond. The math was complex, requiring him to constantly update variables for their terminal velocity, wind resistance, and the enemy's firing arcs. Sweat beaded on his forehead, instantly chilling in the high-altitude air.

Pauline cursed, hurling another wave of shadows to obscure their exact positions, only to see the darkness shredded by a second barrage of Silence flak. Though the clouds were dispersing, the more missiles exploded around them, the more interference was heaped upon the Field, weakening their connections. By this point, they had slowed down enough to avoid instant death upon falling, but that had the side effect of giving the enemy more time to fire on them.

"I can't maintain a construct through this much Silence!" Pauline shouted, unleashing beams of shadow at the approaching missiles.

"They are boxing us in!" She was right. The six zeppelins were coordinating their fire, establishing a grid of anti-magic artillery that was slowly closing in. Orion deflected another shell, feeling the violent shudder in the matrix as the Silence ate at the edges of his spell. He had enough energy to keep deflecting for perhaps another thirty seconds, but the ground was still approaching fast, and he needed a significant reserve of mana to arrest their momentum before they became smears on the canyon floor.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Then a flash of silver light lit the sky, drawing his attention away, if only for a moment. He had known that his mother had spent the battle dancing around the artificially enhanced brutes, fighting a war of precision and attrition against their anti-magic armor. But it seemed she'd caught sight of him, and seeing Orion plummet through a storm of Silence artillery stripped her of composure.

The calculated commander vanished, replaced by an aspect of raw power. For a moment, he felt as if time had frozen. Something massive spread through the Field, momentarily obscuring his connection, yet it was not hostile, just greedy. Mana flowed through it so heavily that he had trouble quantifying it, and only after a moment did he realize he was sensing his mother preparing to unleash something huge.

At the same time, Asteria raised her hands, and the full weight of what he'd felt settled on the Ender pressing her. The air around the machine-man froze. A halo of blinding radiance formed above him, a perfect ring of moonlight so dense it warped the visual spectrum into vibrant violet and deep blue. The Ender raised its hydraulic warhammer, flaring its Silence aura to consume the incoming magic and applying countless kinetic fields to its weapon to grant it strength. It was a futile gesture.

The halo collapsed upon it, bypassing the anti-magic plating by overwhelming its absorption capacity, and the monstrous volume of lunar energy struck the cyborg. The armor simply ceased to exist, atomized instantly along with the flesh beneath it. Nothing remained as the augmented warrior was erased from the sky, leaving only a fading trail of silver dust in the wind. Without pausing to admire her handiwork, Asteria turned her blazing silver eyes downward.

She swept her hands apart in a tearing motion, targeting the empty air beneath Orion and Pauline. The fabric of space ripped open. But this was not a delicate portal, as she'd cast to take them away from the First Forge. No. It was a violent tear in reality, glowing with the same intense lunar light, and beyond it, nothing could be seen but infinite darkness. Orion and Pauline fell straight into the rift. The sensation of terminal velocity vanished instantly.

The roar of the wind was cut off, replaced by the disorienting, silent void of the spatial tunnel. A fraction of a second later, they were spat out onto the solid stone of the high cliffs overlooking the Shattered Basin. Orion hit the ground rolling, bleeding off the last of his momentum before coming to a stop near a cluster of Collegium artillery mages. Pauline fared a little better, her boots skidding on the stone as she dropped into a defensive crouch.

Above them, the spatial rift snapped shut with a thunderclap. A moment later, Asteria blinked into existence atop the ridge. She did not look particularly tired, but the radiance around her had dimmed to a steady glow. She took one look at Orion, scanning him for injuries. Upon finding him whole, if a bit battered, the brief flicker of maternal panic vanished, replaced by cool calculation as she turned back toward the heavens.

"Good job," she said, surprising him with how even her tone was. He searched her face, but he couldn't find any trace of anger at his recklessness. In fact, her lip quirked as he climbed back to his feet, as if amused.

"Six airships still remain," Orion pointed out, conjuring a quick cleansing spell to clear the worst of the muck from his clothes. When he went to adjust his glasses, the adamantine frames were warm to the touch, a clear sign of how much he'd pushed himself, since they'd yet to do anything of the sort since Daelin's improvements.

"You need not worry about them," a deep voice rumbled. Archmage Valentia descended from the sky, his blue robes whipping in the wind. A glance behind him revealed twin trails of smoke where his enemies had once been. Apparently, Asteria's actions had given him the chance he needed to end them. Elder Candra joined them shortly after, seemingly barely winded but more hunched than before.

The clearest sign of her fatigue was her silence, her milky eyes fixed on the remaining Iron State elites, who were struggling to regroup without their destroyed peer. Valentia raised his staff, and the amethyst crystal atop it crackled with elemental fury.

"The Priestess is right. You have done us a service," he declared, locking onto the six zeppelins desperately trying to regain their original altitude.

"Without their fog to shield them, those ships are nothing but targets. Focus your fire!" That was all the Collegium mages on the ridge needed to launch a coordinated barrage. Fire, wind, and lightning tore across the sky, unhindered by the Silence. The remaining airships, stripped of their primary defense, began to take damage as their hulls buckled under the unrelenting magical assault.

Asteria began adding her own, as did the Archmage, who once more took to the sky, while Candra remained as she was, apparently divining for something, if the dullness of her eyes was any indication. Knowing that even under such intense attacks, it would take time to destroy the airships, given the sheer distance, Orion turned his attention from the burning sky to the Shattered Basin below. In the time he'd been away, the battle on the ground had devolved into a grinding melee.

The destruction of the command zeppelin and the subsequent rain of debris had crushed dozens of Iron State machines, but the surviving Centurions and Burrowers were relentless. They kept advancing, tearing through the protective roots and vines summoned by the druids with their rotary saws and pneumatic hammers as if in a frenzy. They felt no pain—unlike the cyborgs, which had been mostly dealt with—and could only be stopped by complete destruction.

At the canyon's center, the False Heartwood still stood tall, but eerie shadows flickered around it. Orion took a moment to realize these were dark vines, visible only when a machine was struck and pierced. But the cost of defending it was becoming clear. Through the Arcane Overlay, Orion could see the fading life signatures of the druidic circle. At least four of the twelve elders had already fallen. Their bodies lay broken in the mud, their blood watering the soil.

Elder Tasmeos stood guard before the artificial tree, planted firmly in the earth by root-like growths that had sprouted from his armor. The old druid looked up at the sky, watching the burning zeppelins fall, and Orion had the strange impression that he'd come to a decision. A booming chant shook the bedrock of the basin, too loud and garbled to be understood, yet the surviving seven druids echoed his words, harmonizing into a sorrowful chord. Orion's eyes widened as the data streams in his vision spiked.

This was not the Song of False Dawn but something older, a form of sacrificial magic of some sort. Given the distance, the interference in the Field, and the chaos on the battlefield, little could be gleaned, but Orion still saw the moment when Tasmeos and the remaining druids offered themselves to the Field. The ambient life mana in the canyon surged inward, drawn by their action, growing with each passing moment as something he couldn't quite understand fed it.

The druids then stepped back, pressing their bodies against the trunk of the False Heartwood. The bark shifted, parting like liquid to envelop them. Tasmeos looked up at the cliffs one last time before the wood consumed him. Every druid merged with the tree, giving it their life force, centuries of Attunement, and, if Orion was right, their very souls. The False Heartwood erupted.