With the maul’s head lodged in the stone, the Gatekeeper kipped up, pressing forward with its own offensive, a precise blade thrust from the right, stabbing toward the boy's heart with the cold certainty of inevitability.

  The hammer jerked free just as Angar twisted aside, barely getting the haft up in time to meet the blade's return slice, the block jarring both their arms, echoing like the toll of a church bell calling the faithful to Lauds.

  The chief followed with a lateral slice from the left, the blade screaming promises of ruin, dodged as Angar pivoted on a cybernetic foot, his movements certain, like those of a Seraph, though I feared each exchange brought him closer to the abyss's edge.

  Then the Hellspawn champion whirled both blades in a savage dual overhead chop, seeking to cleave asunder in a storm of fury, both caught squarely on the hammer’s haft, the tremendous force driving Angar back a pace while their weapons sang against each other with a discordant scrape.

  I waited for the inevitable moment when the whispers would win. They always do, twisting the sure pivot into a fatal stumble, the devout Crusader into an unholy abomination.

  I have seen them corrupt far worthier men than this boy, sung by far older tongues, on far bloodier stones.

  But still he fought, showing an uncanny fortitude, the ancient undercroft's oppressive weight boring down on the combatants, their locked weapons straining against one another, ready to drink deep of life. Or unlife.

  Was it the trinket enhancer? I know he applied it to his strange Psy Crystal. But how could that prevent him from having been overwhelmed by corruption for so long?

  From previous battle, his armor had large cracks in its back, hitching his movements, but he fought well despite this too.

  The two reset, staring through the dust that veiled them like a funeral pall, and in that locked gaze, I discerned the Gatekeeper's tactical mind whirring, probing for the flaw in the boy’s defenses, while Angar’s visor burned with a promise of relentless annihilation, a fire that might consume if it led to a stumble.

  The boy broke the impasse with a savage buck, his hammer’s haft shoving the crossed blades aside in a burst of raw power, disarming the Marauder Chief, sending it skidding back across the flagstones, its boots carving clean grooves in the ancient sediment.

  He followed without mercy, his hammer blazing forth in a crushing swing toward the undead’s left shoulder, the runes on its head flaring briefly as if defying the nullification aura's smother.

  The fiend parried with a swift reformation of a sword, the blade deflecting the head with a clang that reverberated in the air like an unholy curse.

  Angar continued his assault, feinting toward the right hip before morphing into the true strike at the thigh, evaded with a pivot, the hammer's head blazing past the chief’s armor, close enough to stir the crimson shroud.

  A rising smash unleashed, aimed to smash under the infernal brute's jaw, blocked with another newly reformed sword swiped crossbody to redirect the weapon.

  The fiend’s arms trembled under the parry's force, but in the brief respite, it hopped back, dematerialized its swords once more in a swirl of dissolving shadows, summoning the bow and loosing an arrow, this one a curving shot that hooked toward the boy's flank like a seeker missile.

  The hammer rose in a defensive whirl, batting the projectile away. It detonated against a distant archway, crumbling a section of stonework that cascaded down in a quake of debris, forcing the Gatekeeper to shield its face from the flying fragments, the dust collecting like sins upon the soul.

  The boy closed in with a leap, his maul sweeping in a wide horizontal arc.

  The champion rolled beneath the sweep, emerging at the Knight’s rear with a projected burst of fell energy hurled from its palm, streaking toward the boy's back like a lance of unholy fire.

  Angar somehow sensed it, twisted away, the attack blasting a ribbed vaulting of the wall instead, and the pillar took the impact like an insult.

  Carved faces of filthy, almond-eyed Pleiadeans split along their eerie and serene smiles, weeping pulverized marble tears that pattered down like snow.

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  I swear the dust tasted strange, of old blood tainted by undeath and foul Heresy, as though the building itself were corrupted by Hell’s blight.

  Angar rolled in, lashing out with a vicious left backhand while reversing his hammer in the right hand, blazing it toward the Gatekeeper's chest in a dual assault that blurred the line between skill and desperation.

  The chief ducked the backhand and caught the hammer on a hastily summoned shield projection, a brief barrier of profane light that shattered under the blow, absorbing the force but sending it staggering back with a fresh dent marring the breastplate, the metal groaning like a soul in torment.

  The young Knight stayed with his foe, blue-yellow electricity crackling off his left gauntlet. I thought in defiance of the nullification, but it was a psychic manifestation.

  That armored hand clutching the front of the crimson fiend’s helm as if to wrench free the secrets of its blasphemous existence.

  For a heartbeat the crypt lit up like a cathedral during a holiday, illuminating carvings on the walls, forgotten icons of sanctity now defiled.

  And then, nothing. The undead didn’t even stagger, nor did its helm crumple.

  I felt the old, familiar disappointment settle in my gut. The disappointment of a man who had seen too much, desiring to witness a miracle, if only once.

  The display laid bare whether the boy could tap his psionic powers amid the nullification aura, though I remained uncertain of this specific manifestation's intent, a puzzle that ate at me like the whispers did him.

  I had observed him wield his peculiar Electrosynapticism in prior battles, but never in quite this manner. He had much more effective attacks.

  And why did he forsake the pistol holstered at his side? It could mean victory. At the least, it possessed an energy-blade, which granted the capacity to meet the Marauder Chief’s twin swords with equal measure.

  Were these decisions made purposefully, forsaking better psychic attacks to prevent further degradation of Resilience? Or perhaps forsaking the pistol out of some misguided sense of fairness?

  Or did this hint at corruption's sick touch fouling his mind?

  How had he not yet succumbed?

  Whatever the reasons, that manifestation of psionics had little effect on the Gatekeeper, who jumped up and kicked the boy's chest with explosive force, launching itself rearward while sending Angar stumbling back a few steps.

  The Marauder Chief’s eyes narrowed in calculation, voids of tactical acumen assessing the fray with the cold precision of one who had trained in Hell’s depths for an eternity.

  I sensed the atmosphere shift in that fetid undercroft, a palpable congealing of the air, which had already hung heavily with the rot of centuries, the stench of profane energies clashing against Holy resolve.

  The stones themselves seemed to lean in, no longer groaning, whispering secrets instead, as if the very architecture of this sacred building hungered for the bloodshed unfolding in its bowels.

  The two warriors had taken each other's measure now, circling like beasts in an arena, their shadows twisting on the cracked walls.

  The boy prowled with a grace that mocked his frayed Resilience, his maul gripped low in his right gauntlet, promising righteous fury. Its runes, once aglow with light, now dulled to near invisibility amid the hanging dust, smothered like embers in the ashes of a pyre long extinguished.

  Across from him, the crimson-shrouded brute peered through the rusted slit of its ancient helm, baring teeth in what might have passed for a smirk (though on the undead, the grimace decayed into parody, the gray flesh peeling away in rotted strips).

  Twin blades reformed in its grasp, materializing with a silent hiss of profane vapor that coiled upward, tainting the air with the sulfurous reek of Hell.

  "You're less cowardly than they say all your kind are," it grated out, the words scraping through translation like gravel dragged across exposed bone. "I was told you all cower from true battle, one against one, how true men fight."

  The boy offered no reply, his visor a blank slate of armored stoicism as he continued his slow orbit, the cybernetic feet clanking on the flagstones.

  Then the fiend erupted forward, a blurred torrent of unholy motion that closed the distance in a millisecond, leading with a right-hand stab to the chest, the blade a searing streak of desecrated light, a promise to rend armor and flesh, the attack drawing the maul up in a defensive block.

  The left sword followed in a low, sweeping cut to the knees, forcing the boy to hop back and land in a stumble, almost tumbling down in a spiral.

  And so it began, that falter where the world narrows to surviving the next breath, the next swing, each a prelude of the inevitable unraveling.

  Though no one ever spots it coming.

  Not until it's too late, and Hell's got you fast.

  In truth? It starts long before that, before swearing the Knight's oath, with that first fire igniting in the veins, a righteous blaze where you're convinced you'll sear the darkness clean.

  Then, you stride into the fray believing the Almighty's hand guides you, that each kill carves a notch in Hell's endless ledger, tallies toward some dawn where the muck recedes and the sun shines eternal.

  But that's the joke, isn't it? That certainty, the spark that starts a Crusader along the Glorious Path? It's the same that feeds the forge of his undoing.

  You'll show them all. You'll be the one to make a real difference, to drag this Holy Empire to true glory. At long last.

  The whispers? They'll never get you, not with your pure heart and faith. You're different. Untouchable by taint.

  Your fervor's an aegis against madness, proof enough you're immune to whatever the infernal abyss hurls your way. The rules don’t apply to you.

  They all think their resolve is a flame devouring shadow.

  No.

  It's the wick, burning down to wax, pooling in the filth you swore to drain.

  That spark is deadly.

  And faith's not a bulwark, but the bait.

  Same as hope.

  Lures for the deep end.

  Yet here we are again. Because what else is there to do? Quit? Give up?

  Surrender's just the muck rising faster.