Saint Garioch fixed Angar with a stare of profound skepticism. "So," he uttered, his voice filled with incredulity, "your true form is that of a colossal giant, clad in radiant armor that blazes with a light to scour the unholy? But only within the recesses of your mind?"

  "For the most part," Angar conceded. He could feel the weight of their gazes upon him, Garioch's and Simo's alike, as if he were some raving Heretic spouting blasphemies. The doubt in their eyes burned like acid on exposed flesh.

  Simo shook his head as though to dislodge the cobwebs of uncertainty that clung to his thoughts. "It reeks of madness," he admitted gravely, "but the proof lies in the deeds, does it not? An arch-druden and this Osenas creature can attest to your veracity."

  Before Angar could muster a reply, Salvador approached with long strides and tossed a small object through the air.

  Angar snatched it, his fingers closing around the cold metal of a trinket enhancer.

  "The cleansing crew unearthed two items we missed," Salvador rumbled out in his deep thunder of a voice that brooked no interruption. "Or that they didn’t steal. Now a hail calls us. A Gatekeeper has breached our sector, a foul intrusion we must excise. Draw near, all of you."

  The three men complied, stepping into the orbit of the Seraph's imposing presence. Angar doubted that was all the cleansing crew found. He’d wager they stole the rest.

  Salvador's visor, its glowing azure, swept over them. "We danced with fortune against Osenas," he declared in words like a litany meant to rebuke sin. "Errors were made. By each of us. No more. I disdain the yoke of companionship. Since fate binds me to shepherd you three here, my commands shall be seen as Holy scripture. Obey them, even should they lead to folly. Understood?"

  The trio replied in unison, "Understood, Saint."

  "This is Crusade," Salvador continued, his visor’s gaze unyielding as God’s judgment. "We will not scurry back to the fort at every crack in our plate. Hours have bled away in idleness here, and not one among you has tended to armor or armament. Such negligence invites ruin. Henceforth, maintenance is your first rite after battle, save in dire exigency. Understood?"

  "Understood, Saint," they all echoed.

  His scrutiny fell upon Simo then, piercing deeply into the veteran. "Layman, should you witness me or these other Knights at such labors, abandon your own tasks and lend aid. No excuses. Understood?"

  "Understood, Saint," Simo replied, his posture straightening under the weight of attention.

  Salvador inclined his head. "The burden of my battlecycle falls upon you all. It demands daily ablution, and I mean absolutely thorough cleansing. The munitions need to be replenished without fail post-conflict. You shall not fail in this. Understood?"

  "Understood, Saint."

  "Very well,” said Salvador. “Rectify these oversights immediately. Then we hunt the Gatekeeper. It’s merely a Marauder Chief from a Serious-rated gateway, which should pose no true difficulty. I’ll observe, intervening only if you falter beyond redemption. To your tasks."

  Salvador’s Historia Calamitatum

  October 7th, 4186

  I have chronicled the tempests of war, a thousand thousand battles across shadowed worlds, where the Three's light shines dim against the unholy darkness.

  Ash bade me let the boy make his own bed, to observe and form my own judgment unclouded by his own.

  For instance: is the lad suicidal, courting oblivion with reckless fervor, and somehow blessed (or cursed) with the Lord’s own inscrutable luck? Or merely the unluckiest soul to tread these forsaken paths, depending on one's vantage?

  I glimpsed some of his clash against the dark Nofelim named Azgoth, a powerful abomination I myself felled that same day, its severed head now adorning my sanctum alongside trophies reaped over endless centuries of strife.

  At the time, the boy lingered at the pinnacle of the second Tier, or perhaps teetered into the early third. I cannot recall with precision, though he dwells in the early third now, I’m certain.

  Either way, he should have perished in seconds. Yet he endured, defying the grim fate of certainty given his Tier and such a perilous encounter.

  Of course, that had been pure luck. Azgoth had only toyed with the boy. Had it unleashed its corruption, the boy would have succumbed to the darkness in an eyeblink.

  As per my prior entry, short hours before this new fray, I bore witness to his seeming triumph over a potent entity from Hell: Osenas, the Wraith Prince, a foe that pressed me sorely. I would’ve survived, as I had buried myself deep for protection, but even I could not fell the creature solo.

  The boy claims he rent the specter asunder within the confines of his or its own mind, or perchance in the shadow realm beyond. An impossibility, by all sane reckonings.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Nevertheless, Osenas fell, obviously to some outside interference, the only sound explanation.

  Prior to that, throughout the night before, I observed him stand against hordes of bloodwraiths and pyromancers, facing the tide with the unyielding mien of one born to the battlefield, like an angel of war, reveling in the carnage.

  Impressive, true, but all who tread this Glorious Path harbor a love for battle's embrace, though it may manifest less overtly in the long eras dominated by ranged armaments over the intimacy of melee.

  But it was in the undercroft of that forsaken edifice, one of the bizarre constructs the Pleiadeans deem a church or cathedral, with arches groaning beneath the burden of decayed sanctity, that I beheld the opening salvos of a duel etched indelibly into my recollections.

  I shall do my best to do the fight justice, accounting the blows as remembered.

  The boy, Angar, beseeched me to let him face the Marauder Chief alone, to test his mettle against such a foe, despite the large cracks deforming the back of his armor, hampering his movements.

  He had tended to his equipment with rudimentary field repairs before we departed camp, but the great fissures that marred the backplate demanded the skilled hands of a proper armorer and a foundry.

  I feigned concern, as granting such folly invited only ruin. I had vowed to Ash to not steer him from peril, but to let him be further tempered (or shattered) by his own foolish decisions.

  I stationed Garioch at my battlecycle on the outskirts of the ancient, abandoned township, alongside the Layman, for stray Hellspawn prowled in seclusion or packs.

  Thus, Angar and I ventured inward together. I to observe from the shadows, he to court the battle that I assumed would spell his end, as I knew his Resilience was frayed to tatters, and unrecovered.

  He had restored his other resources through devout prayer in the hours prior, but Resilience mends only with the slow mercy of time, and his own remained threadbare, I was sure.

  Among the foul legions that spill from the abyss' ruptured seams, the entities known as marauders stand as extremely doughty melee adversaries. Middling in the hierarchy of infernal power, true, but forged in endless strife.

  These undead cretins, drawn from Hell’s deep pits, cling to a perverse semblance of life through their unquenchable thirst for battle, training with relentless fervor in the unholy halls of damnation, their decayed forms animated by a martial zeal that mocks the purity of Crusaders.

  Their chieftains, rough-hewn brutes more akin to hulking Dreadfiends than normal Gatekeepers, emerge solely from Serious-rated gateways, making their threat discounted.

  They fight like nightmares incarnate, embodiments of unholy fury and hard-earned skill. They are deemed no great threat only because they are drowned in the withering hail of blaster volleys, lancer beams, and turret barrages from afar, long before they can close to melee, where their true horror unfolds.

  Ah, but up close and personal, in the dread press of ancient savagery, they reign as kings, true masters of the sword, their edges honed in the forges of eternal evil, capable of carving through faith and power armor alike with a precision that chills the soul.

  Worse yet, they possess a zone of nullification, almost ten meters centered on their forms, an aura preventing both Ability usage and a core’s Divine Energy expenditure. If the boy had a battery or energy pack, that couldn’t be stopped, but as far as I knew, he had nothing like that.

  Well, he did have a pistol, and its cell would power its blasts or blade.

  I have seen such fiends dismember the devout when they close ranks, each of their strikes delivering ruin and death, and only through the most vicious of battle are they consigned back to the Underworld from whence they crawled.

  Their corrupting effects are known to be strangely overwhelming to those close at hand, and, again, Angar’s Resilience was frayed to mere tatters.

  The dark whispers would corrupt the young Knight quickly, this an unavoidable certainty, in seconds, or a minute if lucky.

  Did the boy even know about the nullification aura?

  I know where the fiend hid, easily able to sense the foulness, and I led Angar straight to it.

  If on my own, and my ship repaired, I would’ve just had it bombard the structure, strange church or not.

  Descending to the undercroft, the Marauder Chief stood poised in a crimson shroud covering ancient armor. And it stood ready, taking a stance showing its eagerness for battle.

  Its eyes, twin voids of tactical acumen sunken in undead flesh behind a helm, scanned the darkly armored form of Angar approaching, far down the ancient crypt.

  Angar gripped his hammer with a surety, the runes on its heavy head glowing like Holy vengeance under the pallid light.

  That he infused the weapon outside the nullification zone could’ve been due to knowledge of the aura, or just luck. I’d find out soon enough.

  The air between them crackled with unspoken challenge, a tension that held for but a short heartbeat. The fray ignited without preamble, as Angar exploded forward in a blink of electricity.

  The chief caught the streaking lightning on its bracer, absorbing it whole as the energy hissed away in profane smoke.

  Angar struck, his hammer swiping in a high arc aimed at the fiend's head, slicing through the air with a sneer, the head warped with a graviton pulse that bent the very light around it.

  I believe the boy was trying to spin into his whirling Ability, which, obviously, failed. The nullification aura had claimed his powers, silenced in its radius.

  The Marauder Chief evaded the attack with a flowing sidestep, its boots scraping the flagstones in a puff of ancient dust that swirled like ghosts disturbed from slumber.

  Instantly, Angar followed with a strike toward its chest, seeking to bash the breastplate inward.

  The chief parried swiftly, materializing its twin blades, seemingly forged from profane light that flickered like dying stars.

  The clash rang out like the peal of a forge anvil, sending sparks erupting in a brief corona that illuminated the grim lines of their helms, casting elongated shadows across the crypt's cracked walls.

  Angar retracted his weapon in a fluid arc, pressing relentlessly with a low sweep intended to hobble the legs and unbalance his foe.

  The crimson fiend leaped back just enough, the hammer's edge whispering past greaves, stirring more dust into the chill air.

  Another strike followed, a high feint before the hammer dipped low to target the chief's exposed side, but it twisted away with a supernatural deftness.

  Then it countered at last, replying with a downward slash from its right blade, descending toward Angar's shoulder.

  He blocked with the maul’s haft, the impact jarring both warriors, their bodies straining in a momentary lock that resounded through the vaulted chamber, echoing off the forgotten tombs.

  The undead brute broke free first, spinning its left blade in a horizontal cut aimed at the boy's midsection.

  Angar leaped back with a grunt, his cybernetic feet landing solidly on the uneven stone, the retreat buying him a heartbeat's reprieve to charge anew, unleashing a spinning overhead blow, the hammer warped in a helix that would bash a man to pulp.

  The Marauder Chief ducked beneath it, the air above its head whirling with displaced force, and thrust upward with both blades, crossing them.

  Angar, already committing to a follow-up downward bash, met the crossed swords head-on. The strange light of the blades ground against the haft in a screech that set my shadowed perch shaking, where I watched unobserved.

  They were centimeters apart, close enough that, if the boy were unhelmed and the chief not undead, their breaths would mingle in hot exhalations of exertion.

  I was unsure if Angar could use his psionic powers, but I noticed his visor seemed to burn with feral glee, as if lost in the ecstasy of battle, a state I often find myself in.

  The fiend's eyes, exposed through its ancient, open-faced helm, remained cool, assessing, already plotting the next exchange in this deadly duel.