With both Ghelgath and Tartys disabled thanks to Marquis, all that was left to do for the bot was to take the injured Ice Demon back to Hyperion and do unspeakable things to him for one reason or another. As he started towards his fleeing form, slowed thanks to a broken leg, a shard of ice flew by the hunter's body. It was a near miss, but a miss nonetheless, and this prompted the sniper to speed up to a run for his quarry. However, he noticed the vitals belonging to Bastion suddenly drop, much like her current altitude. She wasn't an acceptable capture like everyone else and needed the save. To his knowledge, he was the only one in a position to save her at the moment, and adjusted his plans accordingly.
As he neared Ghelgath, Marquis tossed Bindlebane into the air and caught it by the barrel, index finger slipping into the trigger guard. He came within range of his target and skipped a step, wound up, and swung hard into the back of the demon's head in an attempt to knock him out for the remainder of the battle. Whether or not it worked, hell if it even made contact, wasn't of the robots concern now. With other priorities, he kept running for the closest edge to where Bastion had fallen. The demonic fog everyone was starting to fall victim to reached him partway through his course, and while it did somewhat cloud his vision, this wasn't the acidic breath of the Leviathan that had disabled his body in Ruthria. As such, he paid it very little mind as his right foot made its last solid connection with land for a while, the rest of him skydiving off the isle to save the most important unit the Machina had.
While he fell, he was running calculations for how to land on the ground below without sustaining injury to his platform. The solution came in the form of one of the many trees densely packed in the forest below, which had a few Angelic soldiers impaled on them by now. As he neared one of these many organisms, he stuck one arm out and dug the ends of his fingers into the trunk, slowing him significantly and causing him to pretty much corkscrew down to the forest floor. By the time his feet met the ground once again, Bindlebane had found its way under the robot's arm as usual, back in its rifle form. Classy as ever.
A short walk to where he had tracked Bastion's fall later, the android spotted her prone form in something of a clearing along with a demon that should've been dead an hour ago. Somehow, Henry had survived being technically decapitated, and was now using the unconscious super soldier as a chair. Fitting, really. Anyhow, the sniper raised his gun and took careful aim. He would only have one chance to save the closest thing he had to a charge from becoming corrupted for a second time. He took his time with the calculations this time, wanting to make sure that both nothing went wrong and the sitting demon would be caught unaware. Everything seemed to go still for a moment, as if the deadly fog and aggressive fire didn't exist, like the Nexus was in perfect harmony.
"My apologies, Bastion."And then that harmony was broken with two deafening cracks, both coming from the treeline. One shot definitely hit its mark, as the still form of Bastion gained an exit wound in the side of her head that would make most uneasy. The second was less certain, however, as that one had been aimed at the center of Henry's back, right between the shoulder blades. Whether or not that made contact was all based on the demon's reaction time to a new prisoner getting offed before he could do what demons down with them. Marquis, unwilling to stick to one location for so long, high tailed it deeper into the woods and to the east of where he had been.
Meanwhile, as the demonic fog spread, the legion of Harpies that had been doing a fantastic job of proving themselves as useful got caught in its radius. Unable to supply their massive lungs with the oxygen required to sustain flight, they began falling unconscious in droves like missiles from the sky. They landed everywhere, on trees, in lakes, even on active combatants should they be unlucky enough.
Arcadia was essentially desecrated, once a possible home outside Celestia for the avians, now a wasteland no one would touch for years to come. Morale among these people had to have been killed, to say the least.
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FallenTrinity
