Thomas had put up a decent fight, but events had already spun out of his control. Perhaps it was the pain from being shot in his midsection, or maybe exhaustion was starting to set in, but the mage was forgetting things. Several very important things, in fact.
The first was that he had yet to free his throat.
He'd successfully sliced off the drone's left hand, and a human hand thus cut off would have quickly gone limp, allowing the mage to breathe and cast again. The hand currently encircling his throat, however, was not human, nor was it ever alive. With its connection to the main body severed, Johannes could no longer control it, but instead of suddenly releasing their hold, the mechanisms in the drone's fingers simply stopped, locking in place and freezing the hand in its current position, with a tight grip on Thomas's neck. The hold wasn't going to grow any tighter, but it wasn't going to release either, not unless the mage managed to destroy or remove the hand directly. Until then, spellcasting would be just as difficult as it had a moment ago.
Thomas had done absolutely nothing to address this threat, and the machine's severed hand would remain exactly where it was, clamped around the young man's throat. He would not be able to cast all those verbal spells he so desperately needed for his escape, nor would he be able to breathe properly. At this point, the lack of air would be bringing him close to unconsciousness.
This major oversight alone might have been enough to end Thomas's chances, but this was only
one of the factors now aligned against him.
Sukukaja-Spell of Speed, lasts for about 5 posts.
He had also assumed that he would be fast enough to jump back into the trees before Johannes could catch him again. Perhaps, had the altercation occurred a little earlier, he would have been able to use his formidable speed to do so. He had cast his Sukukaja at the very start of the fight, however, and around now it would be wearing off, leaving him without the necessary swiftness to escape, especially while weighed down by the metal arm still gripping him. The drone could have chased him on foot and still caught him quickly, and it certainly wasn't going to stand around while he fled and tried to recover.
Even if this had not been the case, however, even if Thomas hadn't had metal fingers squeezing his throat and the time limit of his speed spell running out, it still wouldn't have been enough, for when he jumped into the trees, he had forgotten something possibly even more critical, the very reason he had stopped jumping around in the branches in the first place.
The trees, or at least a great many of them, were holograms.
Johannes's projector had been able to create multiple images of trees at once, and adding another image to its network (the glimpse of the sun that had blinded Thomas) had not stopped it from keeping up its earlier illusions. A few of them would have vanished, as Johannes moved around and the angle of projection became impossible to maintain, but the majority of the holograms were still there, waiting among the ordinary trees. So, in the unlikely event that Thomas were able to even make it into the trees, he would soon find himself in freefall as he found that half the surfaces he sought to jump on were nothing but empty air and a clever trick of the light.
All in all, the drone could probably have stood back at this point and let the multiple factors arrayed against the mage bring him down on their own. However, Johannes didn't leave these things to chance. Even though the probability of the mage getting away and healing was already quite low, the engineer was still planning one step ahead. Even after his successful shot, he had another countermeasure ready to deploy.
That was the final thing Thomas had forgotten to take into account: the other function of the drone's cannon.
Just after firing, the drone had stepped leftwards instead of moving forwards to grab its target again. This was because Johannes had
not forgotten Thomas's earlier actions in the fight. It had just seen him fire a bullet at the ground to produce a Phasic Spike, and remembered that the mage had fired two shots early on in the fight that had not been aimed at the drone. Johannes knew now that every bullet was a potential threat, and had moved to the side rather than recklessly charging forwards, seeing to avoid getting too close to where Thomas had fired earlier in the fight, and thus stay away from any potential traps. Not rushing forwards meant that it would be more difficult for him to catch the mage on foot- but Johannes had no intention of simply running after his target.
He'd just fired his cannon, and now his right arm was once again blazing hot in the wake of the superheated shot. As he had done before, he pointed it behind him, and leaped, propelling himself into the air and letting the discharge of steam shoot him forwards at high speeds. Once again, he streaked forth like a fearsome metal meteorite- only this time, he aimed not for a tree, but for Thomas himself.
With all the other issues slowing Thomas down, it was highly unlikely he would be fast enough to evade the steam-propelled drone, which was rocketing forth far faster than it would have traveled on foot. On top of this, Johannes could adjust the angle of his arm mid-flight, allowing him to control his course somewhat and home in on his target like a guided missile.
This was an attack that had smacked down a tree like a toy, and its consequences on a human would be disastrous. Even by itself impact of the machine slamming into Thomas would be enough to shatter bones and possibly knock him out, but that wasn't even the worst of it. Though he'd lost part of his left arm, Johannes still had a stump, filled with whirring gears and exposed wires, and as he struck he would jam this into the mage's chest, flooding the stump with power and electrocuting Thomas upon contact, flooding his body with enough current to knock him out, and potentially kill him.
With the situation weighted so thoroughly against him, Thomas's plan to run away and heal himself was no longer even a faint hope. Rather, it veered on sheer impossibility.
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