No ideas came to mind. No sudden empowerment from the belt, no sudden epiphany. Only crushing darkness and pressure. He felt the few portions of his suit that were not attached to the exoskeleton being squeezed in tight and tighter, crushingly so. Bits of clay started pushing their way in through the gaps of his right arm’s plating. He held his breath, choosing to hold out as long as he could while he tried to think of a solution. With his lungs full of Fog and what air remained inside his armor, he could hold out for a while, his exhalant having nowhere to go, thus allowing him to recycle his own breath. The Alchemist lulled himself into a calm, numb trance, his heart slowing to a crawl as the sound of combat mere meters away faded into obscurity.

But then, the mound of clay shook; at first he thought it had been struck by artillery, but his mind went in the direction of lightning when he felt the static in the air and smelled the ozone. Again, and again, and then nothing again for a moment. Another shake nearby, a human landing from a great height perhaps, before a slender blade pierced the clay and slid off his chestplate, cutting through the mound but unable to displace any significant mass. It retreated.

There came a shout from a woman, and an affirmative grunt in a masculine voice, the battle-noise from the outside rendering both unrecognizable. Heavy footfalls stomped up onto the mound and then came a scream - the scream of the air itself being set alight. The clay around him began drying out, baking around him, until it cracked away and a giant cutting-torch of concentrated Ignis carved its way through the clay that would have been his tomb… And the better part of his the exoskeleton on his left arm and leg, the strengthening effect fading noticeably as power lines were cut, though this was far less of a concern than the fact his skin was crisped to black in an instant, even if only in tiny spots.

The Swordsman screamed out in pain, causing the torch to suddenly retreat as it was shut off, only for a pair of pitch-black hands to plunge into the crumbling clay, reaching about before it found purchase with his shoulder and started pulling. For a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure if the clay would give before his armor did, but he soon found himself being dragged out of his would-be tomb into the sight of Sigmund’s and Ezaryl’s faces, the latter tensely staring him down. There was no time for talk of recklessness, however, as the mass underfoot shifted and reminded them that it still contained one, perhaps two cores, and more claymen circled in around them still. It was only once the three had carved out a passage back behind the lines did Makhus get a talking to, alongside a good look at the battlefield.

Clay covered the fields all around, clay upon clay upon clay, the occasional corpse or wounded person stuck in the muck to be seen. The Statues were waging furious battle upon the most concentrated groups of claymen, the Guardian of the Wall outright stomping Composites into the dirt and crushing them in their entirety beneath its heels. He was now behind the backlines, where the wounded, dead, and those exhausted beyond fighting now were. A part of him felt like he was back in the trenches, including the fact his injuries were only light, and thus he was low-priority. An Iron Brotherhood engineer would supposedly find him to help him get the damaged exoskeleton back in working order, but even in this matter, there were those with far higher-priority than him, and so Makhus just disengaged the belt’s function for now, his Iron Rider armor vanishing into its storage tablet.

He decided that if he was more useful as an alchemist and a healer than a swordsman, then so be it. There were many at risk of blood loss, and many more whose internal humors could use balancing. So, Makhus found that engineer again, handed him the storage tablet with his armor, and put himself to work helping the wounded.

For hours and hours the battle wore on, men and statues side by side struggling against the claymen. The first, overwhelming wave gave way to a continuous downpour, artillery, guns, and magicks growing progressively more effective, ammunition stores holding up far better than those of any purely defensive “militia”.

Exhaustion, however, took its toll. Injuries piled up, and even cultivators eventually grew exhausted, and even Tankmen had to refuel their suits, not to mention the difficult nature of repairing such sophisticated technology. Only a proportionately tiny minority had the staying-power to keep fighting at full capacity by this point, regardless of the fatigue-reducing effects of DDLV, Liquid Vigor, or its Vitae-based, more volatile counterpart.

Even still, regardless of the continuous downpour of claymen, regardless of the absence of Gestalts to tower over the trees, advance was necessary. Claymen would only be the prelude to true annihilation if Ubul was not extinguished, and so Willowdale’s forces advanced just as planned, while those who remained with the city prepared to defend from a siege, should such time come.

To those in the city, those with the luxury of a degree of separation from the fighting, the Defence of Willowdale was a triumph. Proof that the city-state could stand not just against men and mutants, but against terrible things that lacked human weaknesses, even though the claymen had glaring weaknesses of their own.

To those on the fields, to even Estoras himself, this was just the first half.

Between the time it would take the Elimination Force to reach Ubul’s Tomb, the time it would take to prepare some semblance of a second line of containment if the Elimination Force failed to live up to its name… There was still much work to be done.

Sixty-six was the hard limit on the force’s number, considering that Zelsys Newman’s claim of immunity from the Living Storm was backed up by the Krishorn Heiress as entirely plausible.