Angar jolted back into the grim clutch of consciousness, the world resolving in a haze of ashen air and the throbs of his own battered flesh.

  He had been deposited with scant ceremony in the towed cart, his eyes flickering open to catch the retreating form of Salvador after setting Angar's hammer beside him.

  Twisting his gaze, Angar beheld Simo slumped at his side, unnaturally rigid, like a statue.

  He hauled himself upright, his limbs protesting with a weary ache.

  Salvador had paused in his stride towards the cycle's pillion, his armor fractured in jagged cracks, while Garioch stood in the turret mount, sidearm extended in a steady grip, its muzzle trained unerringly upon Simo.

  The Seraph pivoted, his blue visor reflecting the sullen glow of the ruined landscape, peering at Angar.

  “What afflicts Simo?” demanded Angar, his voice hoarse, just a scrape against the wind's mournful howl.

  “Lost,” Salvador intoned. “Pre-Enslaved. Pray he remains an empty husk until we reach Fort Acre, and the rites of exorcism can be invoked.”

  “No need for delay,” Angar stated. “I can purge him here and now. I’m versed in the Absorptio Profana ritual. Ward Against the Abyss too, a bulwark against possession.”

  Salvador hesitated, his stance filled with a caution forged in the fires of countless campaigns. “Too perilous. You collapsed mere moments ago, I assume drained by your psychic exertions. That monster was named. Osenas, the Wraith Prince. If I knew that, I would’ve fled instead of facing it myself. What killed it?”

  “I ripped it in half,” answered Angar. “Not the form you saw. Either in my mind or in the shadow realm.”

  Salvador’s helm jerked disbelievingly. “What?” After a moment, he audibly exhaled. “Never mind that. What’s your Resilience now?”

  Angar summoned his Annals with a thought. The modified score stood at eleven, scarcely inspiring, but irrelevant in truth.

  Simo lingered in the liminal Lost state, a vessel primed but unoccupied. Angar knew he could absorb the taint with the ease of shrugging off a fleeting shadow. As his oath dictated, he was incorruptible, a bastion against the insidious, against evil.

  “Enough to suffice, Saint,” he replied, steeling his tone. “The risk's negligible.”

  Salvador exhaled again, a sound like the sigh of a forge bellows. “There's ever peril when one dances upon the precipice of the shadow realm. Have you been subjected to vivification?”

  The serpent of temptation coiled in Angar's thoughts. It'd be so easy to lie, to say no. But sin was anathema to him. He wouldn't embrace falsehood, the easy path.

  It was said vivification sapped a soul, making attempts to buck certain corruption, especially that involving the shadow realm, more difficult. But he'd just proved that false, at least regarding his own ability to do so.

  He did need to employ these rites for real, to fulfill some of the requirements of ascension to the second Realm, but far deeper ran his bond to Simo, his comrade in arms. Each passing instant courted possession, and with it, annihilation.

  He said, “Grant me leave to attempt it, Saint, for the salvation of my friend. I vow no jeopardy shall befall me, nor any other.”

  A handful of seconds passed before Salvador responded. “Do you even bear the requisite components?”

  “Yes, Saint,” Angar affirmed. “All that is required.”

  The Ward Against the Abyss worked with soil, grit, or sand. Salt was optimal, but ash was a close second, and this blighted world offered it in abundance.

  Beyond that, mere blood and spittle sufficed, both his own and Simo's.

  “Very well,” Salvador conceded grudgingly.

  Angar set to his grim toil without delay, a cybernetic foot gouging the parched soil precisely, etching the contours of the hamsa into the blighted ground, a splayed hand against the malefic gaze, its palm pierced by a vigilant eye that stared unblinking.

  The lines he carved were deep and deliberate, forming an aegis against the encroaching darkness, an ancient symbol of warding.

  With the outline inscribed, he scattered the world's own cursed ashes into the furrows, filling the glyph until it lay starkly upon the earth.

  Retracting his gauntlets with a hiss of servos, he extended a claw from his leonine hand, plunging it into the flesh of his left wrist until blood welled forth in crimson rivulets.

  He poured it liberally over the ashen outline, the spilled essence igniting with an ethereal luminescence as he intoned liturgical chants, ancient scriptural invocations rolling from his tongue like a sermon, binding the ward with the iron of his will.

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  As a mere third Tier, his Ward Against the Abyss was no grand bulwark of might, but a humble redoubt, sufficient to stem the tide of corruption's insidious creep, and protect against some possessions.

  Garioch lent his strength, the two of them maneuvering Simo's limp form to the hamsa's heart, where the eye's pupil gazed upward in silent judgment.

  Together, they depressed the emergency releases on either flank of the helm, holding firm for a count of ten seconds until the seals parted with a pneumatic sigh, revealing the ravaged visage beneath.

  Simo's flesh was a pallid mockery of life, drained to the hue of grave-shroud linen, veined with obsidian streaks that pulsed like the arteries of an infernal heart. From fresh pustules wept a vile ichor, a secretion of the profane that fouled the air with the putrid reek of sick rot.

  With utmost caution, Angar pried open an eyelid, exposing the orb rolled back in its socket, and there, etched upon the inner lids of both eyes, leered unholy sigils, warped glyphs that seemed to writhe in the dim light of the crimson sky.

  After removing his own helm, Angar thrust one of his thick digits into his mouth, coating it with saliva before daubing the moisture across Simo's sealed lids, a transfer of essence to bridge the profane divide.

  Then, with reverent care, he insinuated the finger into Simo's slack mouth, gathering the afflicted's spittle upon it, only to anoint his own eyelids in turn, a mingling of fluids that sealed the ritual's intimate bond.

  And in the hush before his prayer, Angar bowed his head, the thin air whipping around his armor, whispering doubt. He intoned the invocation he'd worked out with Stek, conforming to the specific brand of his faith.

  "Lord Almighty," he spoke in a whisper, "You who drank the first sip of creation, and spat it forth untainted. I am Your incorruptible hammer, forged in righteous wrath and unholy blood, and I willingly take this dark rot unto myself.

  "Not for treasure's shine, nor glory's hollow crown, but for oaths sworn before You, and my brother's husk before me, flesh of this campaign, lest his soul be stolen or snuffed out by evil."

  The invocation swelled, the verses falling from his throat like gospel. "By the Holy Trinity, I am the sieve through which the profane shall strain and shatter. By the Mother's roar, I am the cleansing flame that devours the impure. Let the darkness break against my soul, and find only the pyre, as I once more prove my superiority over all others. Amen."

  His claw flashed again, carving a shallow wound into Simo's brow, a crimson delta from which blood oozed like tears.

  Angar pressed his own lacerated wrist to Simo's lips, then bent low to suckle at the forehead gash, drawing forth the tainted blood with rhythmic pulls.

  Many heartbeats elapsed before Simo stirred, his mouth latching instinctively upon the offered wrist, suckling with the desperate fervor of a newborn at a mother’s teat.

  Some moments passed before the transference commenced in earnest, a torrent that clawed its way from Simo's tormented husk into Angar's body.

  It began as a chill whisper, a slithering tendril of shadow uncoiling from Simo's pores, wafting like smoke through the air before burrowing into Angar's skin, right through his armor.

  It felt like his pores widened unnaturally to receive the profanity, as if his flesh were a sieve for the perverse rot.

  The corruption surged inward, a bile-flood of unholy essence that scorched his veins, twisting through his channels like barbed wire drawn through living tissue.

  He felt the weight of Simo's burdens settle upon his soul, the insidious hooks of evil that had sought to hollow his comrade now latching onto him, testing his own mettle.

  Angar's breath hitched, the profane taint corrupting his cybernetic eyes, manifesting as glitches and flashes of horrific illusions.

  Needles of ice pierced into his marrow, the taste of ash and rot coating his tongue, as he absorbed the malediction like a leech draws blood from a host, until the foul pulse ebbed into him.

  As the last dregs transferred, he noticed Simo's form slacken in relief.

  His eyes blurred as visions filled his mind, fractured glimpses of infernal vistas.

  Leering demons capered around beautiful, giggling women lounging about a pool of blood, sweat beads glistening on the bare swell of luscious curves, followed by flayed forms in agony, entrails spilling from guts, and far more brutal and sickening sights, all while a ceaseless chorus of elderly cackles rattled around his skull.

  Then the darkness overwhelmed Angar, and there was nothing.

  But only for a moment.

  Angar's eyes snapped open, the veil of oblivion parting like a torn shroud.

  Simo lay sprawled upon the hamsa, his pallor restored to the ruddy hue of mortal vigor, his chest rising and falling in the gentle rhythm of untroubled slumber.

  A sinister growl tore the ashen air, a mechanical thrum that set Angar's teeth on edge.

  He turned, his gaze piercing the haze, to behold the strange silhouette of a Pleiadean vessel, light class, hovering with ungainly curvatures amid the despoiled wastes. Its hull was unnatural, twisting the eye with strange and sharp angles that confused the mind to look at.

  Tall, gaunt shadows of three armored Pleiadeans, their forms elongated and spectral, retreated toward the ship with an eerie grace.

  The sigil on the vessel bore a dagger in white and blue, a single drop of blood falling from its tip, marking them as the White Company, the Pleiadeans’ first and oldest chapter, their answer to Dentatus’ Knights of the Black.

  Angar heard Salvador mutter under his breath, "I hate those lanky scum. Creepy bastards, all of them."

  It required no great feat of deduction to suss their purpose here. The emergency card they’d been issued, inscribed with channels and protocols, decreed that beyond a certain parallel, distress hails would go to the Pleiadean base, not Fort Acre. That had clearly happened.

  "You good?" Garioch inquired in a voice edged with both uncertainty and rough camaraderie, eyeing Angar with a wary scrutiny, pistol held firm in his grip. "You look fine."

  Angar pivoted to face his companion, the ache of the ritual's toll still echoing in his bones like the aftershocks of a bombardment. "I'm fine. How long's it been?"

  "Fifteen, twenty minutes at the most," Garioch replied.

  Angar nodded.

  “What’s the name of the encampment we first met at?” asked Garioch.

  “South Point,” replied Angar. To stave off further questions, he carefully lifted an eyelid. It being clear didn’t prove he wasn’t possessed, but it was good evidence he wasn’t. He performed the sign of the trey, also more evidence. The best he could provide at the moment.

  Garioch nodded, then holstered his sidearm.

  As Salvador showed no haste. He sat on the ground, leaning on his bike, typing onto a slate.

  There was time enough, then, for prayer and meditation, for Angar to replenish some of his flagging Resilience, to restore some resources.

  He badly wanted to inquire after item drops, the spoils of their grim toil, but he had something more pressing to do.

  No longer adrift in the void's embrace, cocooned within an Alcubierre bubble, Angar had ached for far too long to return to that enigmatic hub-plane he had unearthed.

  And he could make the attempt now.

  Perhaps this time he might breach the Mindscape portal, and claim the three arcane training sessions proffered by the ancient Gray Eeshek’tik.