The Driller, having just gorged himself below the surface and still craving more, let out a silent rumble of satisfaction. He bared his massive rows of teeth and tore his way back out into the open air.
While the rest of the battlefield was distracted by the sudden arrival of the Autobot reinforcements, Computron and Defensor pivoted. They charged straight toward Skygnaw and Blackarachnia.
Skygnaw wasn't caught off guard, but he was forced to temporarily abandon Ultra Magnus, who was already on the verge of collapsing under his blades. He executed a quick maneuver to evade a heavy strike from Computron.
Computron stood roughly twenty meters tall, but unlike the stubby-legged Menasor or the awkwardly long-limbed Defensor, his physical proportions were perfectly balanced.
The energy lines across his chest flashed, and the twin missile pods mounted on his shoulders unleashed a volley, while his rapid-fire cannons rained down a barrage of acidic shells.
Skygnaw shifted into his assault craft form to dodge the incoming fire, immediately answering with a series of heavy photon rounds targeted directly at Computron's center.
The direct hits caved in a massive section of Computron's chest armor, causing the giant combiner to stagger heavily.
Although a combiner's power sat somewhere between a high commander and a true Prime, they weren't true independent commanders. The endless mental friction between their component minds always kept them from fighting at peak efficiency.
It made sense; the bot forming the head might order a punch, while the limbs held a completely different plan. This internal chaos became even worse under a life-or-death crisis, when standard pre-arranged priorities were completely thrown out the window. Internal conflicts were practically inevitable under that kind of pressure.
Fortunately for the resistance, the level of trust among the Autobots was significantly higher than anything found within the self-serving Decepticon ranks, allowing their combiners to usually outmatch their counterparts.
Case in point, Computron and Defensor had managed to fiercely batter Predaking and Abominus away before finding the breathing room to rush to Ultra Magnus's aid.
"Ultra Magnus, fall back!" Computron roared, his deep voice carrying a rough, synthesized overlay of several different warriors speaking in unison.
"Get out of here, Magnus! Retreat!" Defensor echoed, his tone tight with urgency.
Ultra Magnus ground his teeth, shifting into his heavy turbo tank mode without a second of hesitation and racing toward the mouth of the Sonic Canyons.
He knew this was no time to argue. The Technobots and Protectobots had paid a heavy price in structural damage to forge this escape window, and he refused to waste it. Lingering any longer would simply mean none of them made it out alive.
He was currently the only active independent commander left to lead the resistance on Cybertron. If his spark was extinguished here, the remaining Autobot cells would suffer a fatal blow, likely dissolving without a single shot fired.
"How annoying," Skygnaw muttered, glancing back at the turbo tank as it sped into the distance, leaving a thick trail of dark smoke behind. He climbed higher to evade another missile volley from Computron.
To prevent his new hidden assets from revealing too much data to the enemy, he hadn't allowed Dirge's squad to participate in this ambush. Otherwise, he could have easily handled the Autobot combiner.
"Commander Skygnaw, we have your back!"
Fortunately, two massive shapes recovered their footing and rushed over to reinforce his position.
Predaking and Abominus had finally stabilized their positions, arriving on the flank long after Ultra Magnus had already broken away.
Skygnaw looked at the two titans trying to make up for their failure, choosing to swallow the sarcastic reprimand on the tip of his tongue. Though their sloppy coordination had allowed the prize to escape, now was not the time to balance the logs.
"Skygnaw, do not let Ultra Magnus escape!" Shockwave bellowed from across the plains.
Watching the Autobot commander slip through their fingers just as execution was within reach, all because a rogue cell had suddenly dropped onto the grid, left the master logician furious.
Overturning a flawless plan only to have it disrupted by desperate combiners was unacceptable. If he weren't entirely pinned down by a manic, hyper-aggressive Superion, he would have chased down the tank himself.
"Relax, Shockwave. He isn't going anywhere."
Skygnaw offered a cold assurance before executing a sharp bank, tracking a direct course straight toward the Sonic Canyons. Under his watch, a ground vehicle stood zero mathematical chance of outrunning an advanced flier.
Skygnaw intended to handle Ultra Magnus completely on his own this time. Every major execution he had secured so far had involved an ungraceful gang-up, and letting that trend continue would ruin his reputation.
Back on Earth, facing Optimus Prime required absolute cooperation because the Autobot leader was a true Prime, and Skygnaw's authority within the faction wasn't yet fully established, making a joint assault with Megatron a practical necessity.
But now that he held the power of a High Commander, it was time to verify his own limits in a true duel. More importantly, he wanted to harvest whatever unique components Ultra Magnus carried inside his chassis. The value of an independent commander-class body required zero explanation.
Looking down from the high altitude, the entire battlefield was heavily pitted, scarred by smoking craters and littered with the broken, burning remnants of both factions.
Deep, cavernous trenches ran across the metallic plains where the Driller had plowed through the soil, leaving the landscape looking like a field torn up by a heavy industrial plow.
Utilizing his absolute speed advantage, Skygnaw closed the gap in a matter of minutes.
Tearing through the sky, the two fighters rapidly left the boundaries of the Sonic Canyons behind them. Once they cleared the narrow pass and the defensive cover vanished, Skygnaw dropped his altitude, preparing to drop a heavy payload onto the turbo tank.
Before he could lock his weapons, a massive ruined metropolis loomed on the horizon ahead. The Sonic Canyons sat remarkably close to Kaon, and with Ultra Magnus running his engines at maximum output, they had crossed the border without realizing it.
"Kaon!" Ultra Magnus thought, his mind calculating options as he stared at the skeletal skyscrapers ahead.
He had flagged the predatory assault craft tracking his position long ago, but his slow land speed left him entirely unable to shake the pursuit without utilizing the environment. The labyrinth of the ruined city was his only hope for escape.
Watching the turbo tank plunge into the ruined alleys of Kaon without slowing its speed for a single second, Skygnaw hesitated for a fraction of a beat before diving in right behind him. Though he had many missing data points regarding the layout of Kaon, a solitary, broken Ultra Magnus couldn't possibly turn the tables on him now.
*Hum.*
The heavy turbo tank roared through the broken streets, crashing through structural debris and flattening the crumbling foundations of the old city.
A heavy missile slammed directly into the armor plating right above the tank's left tread, causing the entire chassis to shudder violently.
Skygnaw was growing tired of the chase, refusing to waste any more time playing cat and mouse with a broken opponent. The graveyard Ultra Magnus had chosen for himself looked perfectly acceptable, and it was time to end this dance.
"Skygnaw!"
Sustaining another direct hit and realizing that running would only result in a slow, agonizing execution, Ultra Magnus slammed his brakes. His primary turret and dual auxiliary launchers swiveled instantly, unleashing a barrage of superheated plasma and high-explosive rockets toward the sky.
The incoming rounds whistled past Skygnaw's wings as he pushed his thrusters into a steep dive, dropping out of the sky to slam his weight directly onto the roof of the turbo tank.
"Get off me!" Ultra Magnus roared in terror and fury. He tried to initiate his transformation sequence, but Skygnaw rammed the Black Hell Blade straight through his exterior armor, jamming the internal linkage gears and locking the transformation mid-cycle.
"Farewell, Ultra Magnus."
Skygnaw gripped the tank's primary barrel with one hand, offering a polite parting word as the heavy fusion cannon on his chest spun up, glowing with a blinding, superheated light.
*BOOM!* A massive fireball erupted right across the forward hull of the tank.
The crushing blow hurled Ultra Magnus hundreds of feet through the air, his broken frame tumbling across the metal streets. The Black Hell Blade tore free, clattering onto the ground nearby.
Just as Skygnaw retrieved his greatsword to deliver the final strike, the battered Autobot leader forced his broken body up, lunged blindly toward a dark opening behind him, and vanished from sight.
"What?" Skygnaw's eyes narrowed as he sprinted toward the spot where his target had disappeared.
A colossal abyss appeared before him, stretching dozens of yards in width, the tumbling form of Ultra Magnus already shrinking into a tiny black speck against the darkness below.
"Is that a well?" Skygnaw thought, stepping up to the precipice with an investigative gaze.
Why would a warrior choose to jump into a deep hole mid-fight? Even if he wanted to deny his body to the enemy, jumping blindly into a pit felt entirely extreme.
"Wait," Skygnaw muttered, a sudden realization hitting his thoughts. "This is... the Well of All Sparks?"
The ancient data logs he had reviewed back at the capital flooded his mind, immediately mapping the coordinates. The Well of All Sparks had been abandoned for eons, explored and picked clean by generations of scavengers. It looked like Ultra Magnus had been driven into an absolute corner, forcing him to leap into this legendary dead end to escape execution.
"How interesting. A final, desperate gamble. Let's see what's at the bottom." Within a single fraction of a second, Skygnaw made his decision.
Showing mercy to an enemy was nothing but cruelty to himself. He could not afford to let Ultra Magnus survive.
This campaign had turned the Autobot commander into a bitter enemy; leaving an independent commander-class warrior alive to plot his revenge in the shadows was a recipe for a very stressful future. In Skygnaw's universe, the only acceptable enemy was a disassembled one.
He stepped off the ledge, falling into the Well at a controlled, uniform velocity. The ambient light of the surface faded rapidly into absolute darkness, though his vision adjusted effortlessly to the pitch black environment.
The architecture of the Well was perfectly square, looking almost as if it had been carved out by an industrial machine, though Skygnaw knew it was an entirely natural formation. To be exact, it had formed the moment Primus shifted into his planetary configuration.
Alpha Trion had never witnessed the creator god's alternate configurations, if a humanoid form even existed. Ever since Primus took the shape of Cybertron, he had remained locked in that single mode.
It was a supreme irony. Every other Cybertronian buried their life-giving spark as deeply as possible beneath layers of heavy armor, yet Primus had done the exact opposite, exposing his core to the open air so his creations could gather energy to keep him alive. Now, the heart was gone, the core was broken, and the creator was thoroughly finished.
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