The instant that the portal on the Rohni Peninsula opened, many, many things happened all at once. First and foremost, I teleported my main chassis and every single aerial asset the Amali Republic had to the battlespace simultaneously. In the sky over the rift, my kilometer-wide triangular engine of war suddenly appeared, accompanied by thousands of heavily armed aerial battleships and millions of autonomous fighter jets. Each and every unit immediately routed main power to dimensional jammers, in an effort to force the portal closed.

At the exact same moment, massive waves of Daemonic tanks, infantry, and fighters poured forth from the hell gate, marching onto the peninsula only to be swiftly and mercilessly obliterated by barrages of nuclear fire from my Pulsed Proton Cannons. Immense craters were blasted into the terrain with enough force to obliterate cities, molten debris getting kicked high up into the atmosphere.

None of us were willing to let this continue, so wave after wave of nuclear missiles were launched through the rift in an attempt to put a stop to the daemonic reinforcements. A constant stream of millions of self-propelled projectiles streaked through the skies, streaming contrails of superheated water vapor as they flew towards the massive gash in reality.

This very unfortunately did not work, as Daemons continued pouring out of the hellrift in massive numbers despite enough nuclear weapons to slag a planet being fired through the gate. In addition, while the nuclear fire from my cannons was still preventing any Daemons from getting very far, this was at most a stopgap solution. If I kept this level of power output up I’d heat the planet to the point of being uninhabitable, and the Hellrift was still growing despite the immense amount of dimensional jamming currently active.

It was quite clear that ground forces would be needed in order to mount a proper defense against the daemonic invasion, and to that end the teleportation arches I had been using to deploy the Republic’s Clockwork and Paladin armies against Daemonic cults prior to this current battle came into use once more. Immediately, millions of Clockwork Knights, power armor-wearing Paladins, assorted combat vehicles, and more came streaming through the portal.

As the Republic’s armies charged into battle and began fortifying their defensive line, I received an additional nasty surprise in the form of a massive flight of nearly a billion Daemonic Fighter Jets. This immediately drew the vast majority of aerial firepower, putting a massive dent in my ability to directly stem the Daemonic tides for my ground forces short of nuking them again. While I would do that if there were no other option, I would very much prefer for the planet to still be inhabitable at the end of this.

Despite the lack of air support, the Amali Republic Army acquitted themselves admirably against the daemonic hordes, accounting for utterly disproportionate losses thanks to the artillery, particle beams, spells, and other assorted lethal implements at their disposal coupled with unshakable resolve and excellent tactics.

For a brief, wonderful moment, all of this was coming together to hold back the Daemonic horde, the rift was shrinking ever so slightly, and we were outright winning. In that single instant, I could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Then the portal erupted in writhing arcs of space-rending red lightning, slashing nearly a thousand of the aerial battleships into pieces and mercilessly carving up the ground-based forces at an immense rate.

Panicking, I dumped a tenth of my emergency mana reserves into my dimensional jamming projectors, equal to nearly an hour of my reactor array’s maximum output. Instantly, the bolt that had been heading right towards me vanished from existence as the battlespace cleared of deadly space lightning. The massive spherical portal flickered for the briefest of moments before erupting back to full size, but before it did, my sensors clearly detected a jet black figure floating in the middle of the rift, cloaked in an aura of thick Daemonic Mana. Target acquired.

Elizabeth was a Clockwork Knight that had been around since the founding of the Republic, and had gladly joined the campaign to exterminate daemonic influence from Terra Magnus. Thus, when the call came out to save the world from a massive portal straight to the Daemon Layer and an accompanying Daemonic invasion, Elizabeth had immediately jumped into the fray. Dashing through the teleporter arch, the bright pink bedazzled combat automaton immediately attached herself to one of the squads she saw forming, and began digging in.

Elizabeth’s sword was the tool of choice for this task, the deconjuration field generator built into the hilt allowing it to simply erase large slices of ground with effortless swings, near-instantly carving basic earthwork fortifications out of the terrain. Considering the situation with the massive daemonic army bearing down on Elizabeth’s position, it was an extremely good thing that fortifications were so rapid.

Whipping out her customized omni-rifle, Elizabeth opened fire on the incoming daemonic hordes in Proton Beam mode, firing bursts of relativistic nuclear plasma downrange at an immense rate of fire. Daemons hit with it defended briefly with force fields, followed by the hell-forged power armor they wore, then finally their tough hides. After that, the hapless Daemon was mercilessly obliterated as the pink war machine targeted the next hostile; fire, lightning, and other effects digging into her heavily armored hull as she did so. Most of the gashes were nearly instantly erased by Elizabeth’s self-repair system, but it was a testament to the ferocity of the battle that she was still being worn down.

An angular red and black daemonic battle tank soon made its presence known after somehow avoiding getting obliterated by an air strike, and was immediately targeted by Elizabeth, a power-armor wearing Paladin next to her, fifteen other Clockwork Knights, and an artillery piece for elimination. Micro-missiles from omni-rifles, a slashing wave of glowing golden power from the Paladin, and the deep booming CRASH of the artillery battery firing all came together at once, ripping a massive gash through the war machine and spewing Daemonic gore out the back of it.

Still, this constant parade of nuclear-powered violence was a rhythm that Elizabeth and her fellow clockworks could handle, especially with the paladin in their midst periodically projecting a glowing golden force field to hold back the tide of Daemons while the Clockwork Knights’ self-repair systems restored them to peak condition.

Then suddenly, writhing red lightning flashed across the sky, the arcs of Daemonic energy carving straight through terrain, fortifications, and the Amali military alike. Elizabeth spotted one arc in particular headed straight for the Paladin she was fighting alongside, and without delay shoved the power-armored woman out of the arc’s path, everything below her waist being sheared off by the arc of discontinuous space-time.

Immediately, Elizabeth’s self-repair system kicked into overdrive constructing a new pelvis and pair of legs, temporarily skipping out on the strengthening enchantments in order to get the limbs functional sooner. Simultaneously, the massive rift in reality briefly flickered under the force of a massive pulse of dimensional jamming.

Even as the pink war machine hauled herself to her newly-made feet, a message crackled through the tactical net, saying “A Daemonic Commander has been sighted at the center of the hellrift. Their elimination is priority one. Titan of Steel over.”

And then a transmission came from the power-armored Paladin even as she got back into the rhythm of combat, noting “This is Ruby Sherridan in sector D-6. I’ve got a plan to take out that Daemon in the rift, but I’ll need an airlift to pull it off.”

Ruby Sherridan leaned forwards into the wind stream as the fighter jet below her rocketed towards the hellrift at several times the speed of sound, the magnetic clamps in her power-suit’s boots the only reason she wasn’t blasted off backwards by the continuous shock front ahead of her. Scanning the skies for threats, Ruby immediately spotted a squadron of Daemon Jets vectoring to intercept at two o’clock, missile exhaust flares clearly visible.

Immediately, the jet underneath the Paladin pulled up and to the left in an evasive maneuver, even as madame Sherridan herself fired off her Light Barrier spell to block. Bursts of nuclear fire crashed against Ruby’s force field, taxing her reserves to the limit. Unlike last time however, she’d gotten her suit’s reactor tuned to produce mana compatible with her innate abilities. Onward the duo of fighter jet and power-suited paladin flew towards the rift in reality, even as they had to frantically dodge another arc of space-rending red lightning.

And then, right as Ruby and the fighter jet acting as her transport reached the event horizon of the massive gash in reality, she sent a signal to the Titan of Steel, their massive triangular chassis looming in the midst of the battlespace. That signal was the single word “Pulse.”

Then with a tactile slam, a massive surge of dimensional jamming was unleashed, forcing the rift to flicker. A fraction of a second later, Ruby found herself in a different location, resembling a massive room with an elaborate blood-filled pattern etched into the floor and the Daemonic Commander floating above it, surrounded by projected displays of the battlespace. Immediately, the jet Ruby was riding vectored towards the Daemon and opened fire with proton beams and missiles.

The Daemon in question immediately reacted by throwing up a glowing red force field and lashing out with that space-shearing lightning attack again, but by now everyone was more than ready for it, the jet pulsing its dimensional jammer at just the right time to nullify the attack completely. The Daemon’s force field meanwhile still held against the onslaught of particle beams and missiles even as the jet came ever closer. For a few moments, it even looked like Ruby’s jet was about to ram the Daemon in question, before they dodged out of the way with a sudden burst of speed.

As the distance between jet and Daemon rapidly increased inside the growing gash in reality, Ruby messaged the flying machine under her “I think we need to flank that Daemon. Their force field was directional, and they were overly focused on us together. Fly over him and drop me before attacking from a different angle. Sherridan over.”

In response, the autonomous jet replied “Affirmative, madame Sherridan.” and immediately pulled into an effectively vertical supersonic climb over the place where the Daemon floated, constantly dodging space-lightning and Daemon-fire as it ascended. At the apex, Ruby jumped off and disabled her magnetic boots, beginning to fall downwards towards the Daemon in a classic skydiving pose.

Below, the fighter jet that had been Ruby’s transport blasted downwards at an angle far, far faster before turning around for another attack run. The Daemon had predictably moved to block the fighter jet’s attack and retaliate with everything it had, meaning that it wasn’t paying any attention as Ruby drew her sword and ignited it with blazing golden energy.

Three seconds later, Ruby crashed sword-point first into the Daemon at terminal velocity, stabbing him right through the spine even as she desperately grabbed hold and outright refused to let go, the energy around her sword slowly burning the Daemon out from the inside.

The Daemon refused to go down easily however, whirling around and trying to blast Ruby with an arc of that red lightning again. Ruby was having none of that, latching onto the Daemon with her legs, pulling back to dodge, and shooting the Daemon in the face with her pistol. The Daemon reeled in midair as the Paladin pulled up on her sword, wrenching the incredibly sharp blazing implement directly through the Daemon’s cranium.

Then Ruby was falling again as the rift violently shook around her, and found herself ejected into a dreary and spiky landscape with a massive Daemonic army arrayed below and marching into the portal in lockstep fashion. Well, they were until the portal suddenly started growing at an immense rate and the Daemons started to panic. Oh dear.

Forty seconds after Ruby entered the rift, my sensor array screamed with alarms. The hellrift had stopped spewing out deadly space lightning, but now it had started growing much, much faster. Worse, a quick analysis indicated that the rate at which the portal was growing was increasing over time. If that trend continued, there was very little time to act before the portal engulfed the entire planet, and possibly the universe as a whole.

Immediately, I ordered all forces present to pulse their dimensional jammers. With a massive expenditure of mana the walls of reality slammed closed around the rift... only to prove almost completely ineffective, barely shrinking the portal by 4% of its radius.

Quickly, I went over everything I knew about dimensional physics, particularly pertaining to forcing portals closed. My dimensional jammers worked by reinforcing the boundaries between realities, they made use of detailed mana thematics to selectively target dimensions for blockage, and they followed the inverse square law for intensity. Wait, the inverse square law means that the closer the jammers are to the rift, the more potent the effect they’ll have!

That revelation had, I ordered all remaining forces into immediate proximity of the hell portal and dimensional jammers to full. My triangular hull and thousands of aerial battleships pressed right up against the portal’s event horizon. The rift’s growth slowed massively, going from devouring terrain at speeds of roughly 100 km/hr to a much more sedate meter per second. However, the portal was still growing, and the rate at which it was doing so was still increasing.

I did a quick mental calculation of the manufacturing time for more dimensional jammers compared to the rift’s projected growth rate, and the outlook didn’t look good at all. Think, Steely! Is there anything else that can be done to stop this? The only way to get a dimensional jammer even closer would be to put it inside the hellrift.

If that was what it took in order to save everyone I had put so much work into liberating and improving the lot of, then so be it. Without any further delay, I announced over the tactical net “I’m going to try closing the rift from the inside. Any and all volunteers, come with me!”

The massive rocket engines mounted to my triangular hull engaged, and I pushed forwards into the rift. As far as I could tell, the clockwork minds operating around 600 aerial battleships opted to come with me, coming to a halt alongside my chassis inside the tunnel of warped space-time. between Terra Magnus and Hell.

I sent a transmission to the outside asking “How’s the portal’s expansion rate doing?”

The reply I got was “Rift growth has slowed to ten centimeters per second, growth rate still increasing at five millimeters per second squared.”

I acknowledged this and stated “Understood. Pulse jammers in three seconds. Use every single scrap of reserve mana.”

There was little argument. Three seconds later, I sent the trigger command.

Pulse.

To properly describe just what happened next, it is necessary to step back and view events in the omniscient third person. An utterly massive gash in reality had just received a direct hit from the inside with an immensely powerful effect designed specifically to force such gashes in reality closed. Furthermore, the power being used to do this was typed with Holy thematics to counteract the Daemon Realm it was intended to block access for.

The result of this was to put it quite bluntly, complicated, and incredibly destructive. The rift immediately slammed shut, but due to the antithetical nature of Holy-themed mana to the Daemon Realm along with the principle of unlike charges attract, the space-time occupying said rift was immediately catapulted directly towards the Daemon Realm. As this space-time was still loosely coupled to the material plane, the geographical region nearby also found itself hurtling through interdimensional space, shattered into countless shards of reality containing Clockwork Knights, Paladins, Aerial Battleships, and other elements of the Amali war machine.

Though all of this displaced space-time was aimed squarely at the Daemon Layer, it didn’t stay there, since the immense levels of Holy-themed power used to shut the rift immediately reacted with the very existence of that plane. It did this through mutual and total annihilation. The end result was that a truly vast region of a realm that could reasonably be described as Hell was completely and totally obliterated. Certain very specific beings like the Titan of Steel, their Clockwork fleet, and the Paladin known as Ruby Sherridan were unharmed as they had no Daemonic power to react with, and were simply cast into the multiverse largely unharmed. Any and all Daemons who might have been caught up in this however, were completely annihilated.

Thus, the Titan of Steel and many, many others were scattered across realities. Some of these unwitting multiverse travelers would unfortunately drift forever, but others would find that they had a different fate in store.

Groggily, I regained consciousness. Taking stock of my combat chassis revealed that nearly all decks had received severe crushing damage and loss of atmosphere, all exterior systems were completely nonfunctional, and I only had a few of my emergency backup reactors still active. All in all, not the worst I’d gotten one of my my chassis trashed.

Diverting a small amount of mana to the creation of some telescopes on my exterior hull, I swiftly found myself confronted with a barren starfield. Checking all directions revealed quite rapidly that I was at minimum half a light year away from the nearest stars, meaning I was in for quite the long slog to reach anywhere interesting once I’d constructed a new chassis for interstellar travel. Still, this did at the very least explain the total loss of atmosphere on all decks.

The first thing Ruby was aware of when she awoke was pain. That was at least somewhat good; pain meant she was still alive. After a few moments of this, Ruby channeled some of her mana towards healing and hauled herself to her feet. Looking around revealed that she had landed in an alley of some sort. Walking forwards into the daylight, Madame Sherridan immediately found herself attracting gobsmacked stares from a quite bewildered crowd. What, had they never seen a lady in powered armor before?