The invading cords smoked and withered beneath the relentless onslaught of Angar's Lightning Bolt, their tendrils curling inward like sheets of scorched parchment even as they pressed forward without pause, slithering deeper into the cone's crackling rage with a mad, relentless tenacity

  The second pulse erupted then, a surge of electric wrath from Angar's gauntlet, and this time it unmade some cords utterly, dissolving the appendages into drifts of ash that swirled in the confined space as foul remnants.

  And in the wake of those dissolving remnants, even more cords slithered forward relentlessly, probing blindly through the ragged breach in the creature's hide, their twisted forms already beginning to smoke and char under the lingering fury of the strike.

  As they burned, the world around Angar started to warble with a sickening distortion, ripples of unreality spreading through the air like the heat haze rising from a funeral pyre.

  Another pulse of Lightning Bolt thundered forth from his gauntlet then, obliterating a fresh wave of the intruders in a glorious cascade of crackling annihilation that lit the confined space like a merciless sun.

  But even as the echoes of that destruction faded, the warbles deepened into a bizarre undulation, the cavity's walls convulsing around him with an unholy vitality, as if the Wraithlord's innards had awakened to some foul, independent life of their own.

  With each fresh warble came a sound that pierced straight through his head, lancing deeply into the skull, like a wail distilled from the purest essence of insanity, a horrific shriek that resounded not just in his ears but in the very marrow of his bones, dripping madness.

  Then blackness flashed across his vision without warning, an endless void that swallowed the entire world in a single instant of absolute, soul-erasing negation.

  And just as suddenly as it began, the noise ceased altogether, cut off as abruptly as a scream from a severed throat.

  When sight returned, it came in grainy monochrome, the cavity leached of all color, reduced to a stark tableau of blacks and whites, shadows etched like engravings in an ancient, forbidden tome.

  His helm glitched and stuttered, flickering, struggling to calibrate against this profane intrusion, as if the mechanics recoiled from the taint.

  This was the liminal nightmare he had glimpsed before, the same alien plane that tailed the arch-druden's foul presence, a shadow realm existing in the uneasy space between here and nowhere at all, stitched together from the rancid stuff of unnameable horrors, a place lodged between reality and the Underworld.

  But here, buried in the Wraithlord's guts, it manifested differently, intimately, as if the creature's essence had curdled inward to birth a personal abyss.

  The cavity around him morphed into something sickening, profane beyond words, everything sick parodies of life, the bone-walls sprouting glistening polyps of flesh that pulsed with veined tumors, drooping tendrils of malformed sinew that twitched and grasped blindly, tipped with clusters of tiny, eyeless mouths frozen in silent, gibbering pleas.

  Overhead, the ceiling, or whatever profanity passed for it, churned ceaselessly like a roiling void of gray static, where half-formed shapes slithered perpetually just beyond the grasp of mortal comprehension.

  From that churning murk came whispers of pure madness in tongues no man should ever hear, shouting insanities that tore relentlessly at Angar's mind, dragging across his psyche like rusted nails scraped slowly over his brain matter.

  And through it all, his Lightning Bolt's pulses chained outward in ethereal fury, but in this warped plane they took on a spectral hue, arcs of pallid, ghostly light forking through the monochrome gloom like veins of frozen light, illuminating the horrors in stark relief before fading into wisps of ashen vapor, as if the very essence of his power was being leeched and corrupted by the realm's insanity.

  The air grew rancid, a cloying miasma that choked his filters, a vile blend of rot and feces, mingled with brimstone and bile, pressing against him like the breath of a dozen decaying corpses exhaling in his face together.

  The pressure in Angar's head built to an agonizing pinpoint, an evil drill burrowing deeper, twisting until it forced a scream of unbridled agony from his throat, and the howl wrung endlessly.

  Then, abruptly, peace. True peace, descending like a shroud of blessed oblivion.

  He lay sprawled on a cave floor, the moist stone hot against his bare skin like an old, familiar embrace.

  He cracked his sleepy eyes open, the lids heavy with a child's innocent languor, and recognized the chamber at once, its shadowed contours dear and unmistakable.

  This was the dim sanctuary of Urdmut, where he and his mother had slept, huddled against the world's indifference.

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  As he should be. As was right.

  Footsteps approached, soft and familiar, and he rolled over to see. His young mother, her face radiant with a warmth he had almost forgotten.

  She lowered herself to the ground with gentle grace, wrapping her arms around him, pulling his tiny back against her chest in an embrace that enveloped him wholly.

  He lay his head upon her arm, breathing in her earthy, comforting scent, and she kissed the top of his head, her lips like a benediction. "I love you, Son."

  Little Angar smiled, a pure, untainted joy blooming in his chest.

  She curled tighter against him, her body a cooling blanket despite its heat, a sanctuary woven from flesh and devotion, a tangible vow that he was her universe entirely.

  Her arms formed a fortress against the cruelties of neglect and indifference, her love unbreachable and eternal.

  This was perfect. Everything was perfect.

  Garioch's mind raced chaotically, like a cornered beast, grasping at scattered fragments of strategy, searching for some desperate ploy to drag Angar back from the brink of doom.

  The Knight's vitals still pulsed green in his HUD, but his form remained nowhere to be seen in that sickening bulk.

  Moving along with the beast, unresponsive, Garioch could only assume he was unconscious at best, or teetering on the edge of damnation, his body reduced to a vacant throne, waiting silently for some slithering infernal usurper to claim it as its own.

  As the battlecycle tore across the scarred plain, its grav-engines howling in defiance, the turret behind him spat a ceaseless litany of fire, plasma bolts stitching across the abomination's defending tentacles like vengeful rain.

  Garioch triggered every weapon system he could identify, and his gauntlets could reach, blind to the full arsenal but unleashing what he could.

  Paired lasers lanced out in iridescent fury, a clutch of missiles streaking forth on trails of smoke and retribution.

  But the Wraithlord answered in kind, a colossal tentacle whipping down like a crashing pillar, forcing him to bank sharply, the cycle’s frame groaning under the strain.

  He dove then, skimming low beneath a searing beam of viridian malediction that scorched the air above, leaving the taste of fetid rot and burnt ozone in its wake.

  He scanned the beast's flank again, his visor’s sight-modes flickering through the haze of dust and embers, but Angar remained a phantom, lost in that profane mire.

  "Did you spot him?" he barked over the comms, his voice edged with frustration.

  This was the thorniest stretch, pulling away from the titan, twisting in his saddle to track incoming threats, the cycle's controls bucking as he tried keeping it straight.

  A fresh tentacle lashed out, and he slewed aside by the grace of the Three alone, as it cracked the earth nearby in a thunderous eruption, the shockwave rattling his teeth.

  By the time the next beam speared a lance of unholy fire, he was far enough out to evade it with relative ease, gaining safety for a fleeting breath.

  He poured on the throttle, the engines belching blue flame as he blazed away, gaining precious distance to loop around in a wide arc.

  His instincts had screamed to veer for Salvador first, the Seraph's vitals still burning steady in the HUD, alive if not unbroken. Hauling him back into the fray could invert this doom.

  Simo had begged otherwise, pleading to aid Angar, or drop him off so he could, but the fool Knight had known what he was about. Atone in flames. The creed was ironclad, sacrosanct, a vow etched in blood and fire, not to be profaned.

  And if truth be told, the voice he knew was God speaking to him told him to get in the fight, that His chosen wasn’t a coward that ran.

  What in the Three’s Holy name was Simo doing now? No reply crackled through the comms after Garioch asked if he’d spotted Angar. The turret had fallen into an ominous silence, its once-ceaseless bark of retribution replaced by nothing more than the hollow whine of wind over armor.

  Garioch hated it, the certainty that Sal would blame him for this unraveling mess, this cascade of failures piling up like rubble in a breached fortress.

  He was doing his damnedest, clasping at survival in this forsaken waste. What more could any man do?

  He exhaled sharply. The only gambit that surfaced in his mind was folly.

  Plunging in himself, carving through that writhing horror to haul Angar free.

  After completing the loop, dodging another errant beam that gouged a molten furrow in the ground, he straightened the cycle's path, aligning it for a blistering pass right alongside the Wraithlord's disgusting bulk.

  His armor was damaged. The bloodwraiths and, especially, the pyromancers had done a number on it. He regretted picking Speedster as his Archetype. But he hadn’t been a Knight for long when he ascended to the second Realm, and he needed speed more than anything.

  Strider armor was like tinfoil. What use was crafting power armor from galvornium if it was only the thinnest of plating? It made no sense.

  In the United Front, even light power armor was crafted thicker than imperial medium sets. Relying on Tier and Energy to temper tinfoil still left it razor-thin and about as useless. In the Empire, only heavy armor had any sort of sane thickness to its plate.

  But he needed the extra speed Strider and his Archetype granted. Speed was everything in melee.

  And the rents in his armor didn’t matter. Even if it were whole, he knew his new plan was a foolish idea, and he’d quickly die. But God stayed silent, so he had to press on with it.

  "Simo, switch with me," he commanded over the comms, his tone brooking no dissent. "Stay near this course. I'm jumping off and going in for Angar, then you go for Sal."

  Silence answered again. They were well within its range, but the turret was a mute sentinel behind him. "Simo!"

  He twisted his neck, risking a glance back at the Layman, and fury boiled up like bile. "Damn it!" he roared, slamming a gauntlet against the cycle's handle in a clang of armored frustration, then continued doing so.

  It was all going to shit.

  Simo sat rigid, unmoving as a statue in an abandoned crypt, a Lost, his will eroded by the dark whispers, his flesh a hollow vessel beckoning possession, ripe for some unholy tenant to claim without a fight.

  Garioch squeezed off a few parting shots from the cycle's prow mounts, the bolts vanishing into the Wraithlord's defending limbs like sand into a storm, before banking away early to evade another beam.

  No choice now but to circle back for Salvador, clinging to his original intent like a drowning man does a lifeline.

  And the Seraph would doubtless lay the blame at his feet for this catastrophe, the weight of judgment and disdain a foregone conclusion.