The three Crusaders advanced in grim silence across the shattered plain, their feet crunching over the ashen crust of what had once been fertile soil, now curdled by infernal taint.

  Packs of bloodwraiths howled and gibbered in the distance, drawn inexorably toward the intruders like oxygen to flame.

  Questions grew in Angar's mind. He had no desire to appear foolish before Salvador, but no orders had been forthcoming from the Seraph, no directive to guide their assault.

  Angar and Garioch couldn’t battle in close proximity to allies. Were they to wait for the enemy to be upon them, then move away to a safe distance from others? That struck him as nonsensical.

  Simo had yet to unleash a single blast, though endless legions of Hellspawn swarmed within his range. Angar assumed the marksman held his fire out of uncertainty on whether he should ignite the fray before the Knights.

  He knew he should ask Salvador if he could break away, but kept hesitating, wanting to impress the man, not annoy him.

  He felt no worry facing this type of Hellspawn. He’d tear through this filth like a scythe through wheat.

  But he knew his ego sometimes caused his thinking to be skewed. He wondered if he should be worried, at least a little.

  Bloodwraiths erupted from Major-rated gateways, the fifth tier of designation. Usually.

  But on Hellworlds like this, where the veil between the mortal realm and the infernal abyss had worn to gossamer threads, the usual rules didn’t apply.

  Gateways could yawn open without warning, anywhere, or even large rifts.

  The Demon Lady Oneskelis had claimed this planet as her prize, only to forsake it after its profane conversion, returning to Hell.

  Abandoned Hellworlds began to mend, their unholy vigor ebbing like blood from a staunched wound, and a millennium had ground by since her retreat.

  Without prey to torment or objectives to corrupt, the gateways dwindled, their eruptions growing sporadic, feeble.

  But the Crusade's arrival had stirred the embers anew. Imperial boots upon this blighted soil, the clamor of faith and fury, were provocations to the Underworld, reigniting the infernal engines.

  Gateways flared with renewed malice, escalating in frequency and potency, the presence of mortals goading the darkness.

  He’d been told to expect gateways vomiting forth lesser to mid-rank Hellspawn in an endless barrage. Some higher ranks would spew, but not many, and not all that often.

  The ultimate goal hinged upon the Crusade weathering this storm of resurgence, shattering Hell's hold, downgrading the planet to a mere Infernalis, a scarred remnant with the veil frayed still, but not so much, no longer a conduit for wholesale damnation.

  And that had to be achieved before the subterranean vaults, entombing millions of Pleiadean souls in communes, unsealed in four months' time, or the masses would become fodder for the unholy.

  Salvador's voice cut through Angar's musing. "Flank them from both vectors as best you can. Herd the beasts toward the center. I’ll stand here and cull."

  Angar grunted in affirmation, while Garioch responded with, "Got it, Sal."

  Positioned on the Seraph's right flank, Angar veered off at an angle, his heavy strides carving three clawed divots into the blighted earth as he forged toward the encroaching hordes.

  He performed the sign of the trey, sending up a prayer, offering a tribute of battle and blood.

  Questions filled his mind on how, precisely, he was to corral these monsters, to shepherd them like errant livestock toward the Saint's killing ground.

  They wouldn’t flee from him in terror. These were fiends spawned of Hell, drawn to the pulse of life like scavengers to carrion.

  He assumed it’d devolve into the usual attrition. His presence would draw their malice upon himself, and he’d cull those that approached as best he could, trusting carnage to take its natural course.

  He’d try to improvise, see what he could think up, but only if it didn’t ruin his first chance to engage in wholesale slaughter in far, far too long.

  He wanted to impress the Seraph, but with his combat prowess, not his capacity to mindlessly obey impossible commands, unfairly allowing Salvador to stand there reaping a massacre with his multi-barreled gatling gun as Angar ran around like a sheep dog, begging for a treat and a scratch behind the ear.

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  After covering some distance, a vanguard of seven of the wretched things intercepted his path, their chittering cacophony swelling in his mind like a swarm of venomous insects.

  But it remained a feeble buzz, impotent against the fortified bastions of his will, shrugged off like ash from his pauldrons. He had endured the soul-scouring corruption of far mightier foes, and when he was far less powerful.

  The urge to unleash Lightning Bolt, his new Ability, stirred within him, but he quelled it, not wanting to waste it on a small skirmish. He thought it better to probe their mettle here, before being swarmed.

  With a surge of armored might, he charged the central beast, an alpha, as the others circled, his maul sweeping in a two-handed arc aimed at its chest.

  The creature reared, forelimbs crossing in futile defiance, and the hammer cleaved through them as easily as the mist trailing the claws.

  The rune-etched head plunged into the twisting morass of white smoke veined with crimson, hurling the wraith backward in a tumbling sprawl. It scrambled upright on skeletal limbs, screeching madly, its form unmarked by any tangible wound, the blow doing no true damage.

  A fetid and ravenous maw from his left snapped toward him, and Angar channeled graviton wrath into his hammer, whipping it upward in a savage underhand strike that caught it beneath its beastly chin.

  The infusion detonated in a vortex enhanced with searing plasma, pulverizing the skull, catapulting the Hellspawn backward, silent in death.

  But that victory invited reprisal, as two wraiths had lunged from behind as he struck, their maws clamping onto his armor with vice-like tenacity, claws raking furrows that hissed with acidic crimson vapor.

  Warnings flashed red in his helm's display, the assaults piercing deeper than anticipated, etching corrosion into sanctified plate.

  Infusing anew, he smashed the hammer into another's oncoming skull, erupting it in plasmatic fury, while his gauntleted fist seized the one at his shoulder, wrenching it away in a spray of vaporous gore that tore its jaw free, the rest of the head dangling in his hand.

  Before he could recover from his last swing, another pounced, only to meet spinning toes, which drilled into the roof of its maw, churning deep into whatever unholy goop made up its cerebral matter.

  Pivoting with lethal economy, he hurled the chunk of head at an oncoming assailant, his maul descending to obliterate another's shoulder in graviton explosion.

  His free hand snaked rearward, grasping the persistent clinger, jerking it free and slamming it earthward, where a metal foot stomped it to viscous ruin, its head reduced to steaming pulp.

  The final wraith darted in, and as a test, the Unspoken Way’s shielding retracted, and Angar loosed an invisible surge of Electrocute straight into its head.

  The beast convulsed in spasms of agony, its ethereal vapors darkening to inky foulness, the coagulated blood of its eyes smoldering before exploding in twin bursts of ichor.

  It crumpled, lifeless. That confirmed Electrokinesis was certainly effective against this type of Hellspawn.

  He had little time to admire his handiwork before the next wave descended upon him, their howls echoing through the thin, tainted air, crimson mists trailing from maws and claws like evaporating curses, a sea of red eyes aglow with profane malevolence.

  Angar broke right, his cybernetic legs propelling him into a thunderous sprint across the fractured desolation, the horde's flanks curling toward him like the grasping tendrils of an abyssal leviathan.

  Tripod-feet hammered the ground, each impact cratering the ashen crust as he hurled every ounce of his enhanced might into the sprint, the lower gravity giving him a loping buoyancy.

  But the bloodwraiths’ elongated forms bounded with unholy speed, outpaced him inexorably, especially the alphas, their crimson-veined silhouettes pulling ahead in a blur of malice and mist.

  When it was clear he’d never position correctly this way, he bent reality to his will.

  A maelstrom of lightning erupted upon the cursed ground where the swarm's vanguard sped, a cataclysmic tempest infused with the righteous fury of Flow. Or his version of that power.

  Ethereal arcs of blue-yellow voltage cascaded across a vast expanse of corrupted earth, enveloping the forerunners in a searing embrace that wracked their forms with convulsive and burning agony.

  The bolts danced like Divine retribution, igniting their translucent hides, sending black smoke billowing upward to cast strange shadows twisting the Hell-tainted landscape into even deeper grotesquery.

  More of the fiends blundered into the electrified killing field, their momentum betraying them as they sprawled and thrashed amid their smoldering kin, granting Angar precious moments to forge ahead.

  The bloodwraiths were beasts, but beasts possessing a predatory cunning, like that of wolves. Those unscathed veered wide of the crackling perimeter, flowing around the hazard. But this evasion exacted its toll, fracturing their cohesion and slowing their relentless advance.

  Angar redoubled his sprint, a blaze of armored determination streaking through the infernal gloom, every sinew and servo straining against the limits of flesh and machine.

  Long seconds bled away until the reformed swarm nipped at his heels like ravenous wolves, their dark whispers clawing at his mind.

  As they surged to overtake him, he cast Lightning Strike, then pivoted, his free gauntlet thrust outward, zeroing in on a patch of ground a dozen meters distant, unleashing Lightning Bolt.

  Crackling tendrils of electricity erupted from his palm, fanning outward in a sixty-degree cone of unbridled devastation, lancing toward the targeted earth.

  The pouncing bloodwraiths were ensnared in the channeled torrent, hurled earthward in spasms of agony, every beast within the arc scorched by the relentless electric fury that burrowed into their ethereal cores.

  A half-second later, the bolt pulsed again, then again, new waves of electric wrath.

  But the cone's breadth proved extremely insufficient against the tide's breadth, the onslaught a deluge, not a trickle.

  Fiends beyond its edges spilled into the periphery, some blundering or shoved into the kill-zone by the press of their fellows, but the flanks circumvented it entirely, their maws and claws lunging with undiminished hunger toward Angar.

  Free hand held high, releasing lightning, he lashed out with his hammer, battering aside the nearest assailants in arcs of graviton-infused might, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  He really wanted to maintain the channel for the full three seconds, but that meant many latched onto his frame, their corrosive fangs and claws raking his plate, with dozens swarming around him.

  I really love being a Crusader, he thought, a grim smile splitting his face.