Fortune turns on a slender thread, thought Hidetada, finding its truth resonating deeply. A datum, a mere single point of data, could shift the whole axis of perception, casting once-unknown problems into sharp relief.

  Most dismissed the twin spires protruding from the Zephuros as architectural whimsy, superfluous adornments, useless, never targeted in combat.

  In truth, each fulfilled a major role in Hidetada’s grand calculus, separate, cut off from the ship’s other systems.

  The first spire housed an arsenal of esoteric technologies, accessible only to the Holy Empire's highest echelon.

  Most technologies were deliberately withheld from the masses, or inflated in price beyond the reach of all but important institutions and the wealthy, ensuring the peasantry remained tethered to the grindstones of warfare, labor, piety, and obligation, diverted from the seductions of leisure and autonomy.

  Interwoven with these technologies were those of the Old Guard and United Front, extracted from their captured savants. Such minds, secular rationalists believing in no afterlife, unburdened by faith’s fervor, invariably chose indentured productivity over agonizing demise.

  Church edicts imposed stringent thresholds on mechanical enhancement, delineating the boundary where man transcended into Heretical monstrosity.

  Hidetada had vaulted far past those barriers long ago. His augmentations were so profound that Heretic became a laugh of a descriptor, requiring a neologism of much greater weight to capture the totality, the colossal immensity of his false sin.

  Such prohibitions were prudent for the masses, but absolutely absurd for men like him, stewards of the Holy Empire's destiny, those whose intellects and fortitude served the greater whole, tilting the board.

  Only a complete fool would consider him, one who had given so much, who had secured the Holy Empire so many victories, a Heretic.

  The spire's apparatus granted the exponential amplification of Hidetada's cognitive faculties. Arrays of quantum processors ran probabilistic simulations with neural lattices facilitating parallel cognition.

  And at the core of it all, the neural amplifiers, evolutions of modified Synapse Engines, interfaced directly with his neocortex.

  The companion spire, by contrast, brimmed with over nine hundred comcap stations. This was his network, his independent intelligence system, hidden in banality.

  The spires, fully isolated from the Zephuros’ primary systems and powered by its own hidden core, were controlled solely by Hidetada’s thoughts and his many secondary Machinilitis.

  Thus armed, commanding the shadow network he had seeded across the galaxy, filtering every report and whisper from imperial and clandestine channels alike, he worked to tilt the board in his favor.

  And Angar’s desperate plea, transmitted through standard means to the ship’s known comcap stations, was a spark in the dark, a catalyst.

  The counterpart of the diminished apparition of Mother Mi could only be the Neural Nexus.

  That fact clarified many old questions and justified his extreme caution, what some might consider paranoia.

  Pieces fell together or fit more precisely. Perspective shifted along with hazards.

  Nexus could be watching, undetected and undetectable. Every action risked exposure.

  Hidetada played the part of compliance, dispatching token efforts through official channels to appease any unseen eyes, sending a few cryptic queries, feigned searches for the blessed Mother’s prison.

  But his true work remained cloaked.

  That single revelation of knowledge caused him to reexamine anomalies, disparate data points that, until now, had seemed unconnected.

  There was an adage many used, warriors and inquisitors alike, from Seraph to Lay soldier. ‘Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.’

  For Hidetada, coincidence was a myth. A single mistake always sufficed, but he had missed too many, dismissing them as noise.

  Reported oddities coalesced into a grand tapestry. The picture clarified.

  Not only had he not uncovered the blessed Mother's spectral prison, but he hadn’t even sought it.

  If he was forced to guess, he’d choose Doomhaven. Discounting Abyssal Tyrants, though Horridus the Mortifer shared dominion as one of the Abyssal Sons' three rulers, his fingerprints always marred the grandest intrigues across every enemy faction.

  As the blessed Mother’s apparition once worked through Angar, he’d wager Nexus’ worked through Horridus. That Nofelim had to be a puppet, as his mind was feeble, incapable of orchestrating so much intricate ruin on his own.

  In the days before Horridus' descent, Hidetada had chafed endlessly at the fallacious, foolish parallels drawn between them as intellectual equals. Such comparisons were gravely insulting.

  Horridus possessed a savant's grasp of only engineering intricacies. He failed in total mimicking the facade of human temperament, devoid of even rudimentary insight into the human psyche, fumbling blindly, completely ignorant of what made them tick, his mind a fractured pit long before unholy corruption claimed it.

  That plunge into darkness had been inevitable, a trajectory Hidetada had foreseen with crystalline certainty.

  Regardless, absent some capricious intervention of Divine Providence delivering the blessed Mother’s coordinates into Hidetada’s lap, her whereabouts would remain an unknowable enigma.

  Though he’d relentlessly tried for centuries, he couldn’t find her when she remained uncaptured.

  And how, precisely, did one liberate such a ghost from a ghost?

  He wished he could do something. There just wasn’t anything within the realm of feasibility to be done.

  Even armed with method and locus, should she languish on Doomhaven or any comparable enemy stronghold, assault would ignite the next galactic war, a conflagration the Holy Empire could ill afford currently.

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  And it seemed galactic war loomed nearer than Hidetada had calculated. Far too near.

  The grand tapestry, brought into focus by a single piece of knowledge, unveiled a concerning picture of enemy fleets slinking into imperial systems.

  They crept into position not as a mass of hostile armadas, but as solitary vessels moving slowly and carefully, cloaked in meticulous secrecy.

  Not to the Holy Empire’s major or critical systems, nor its fortified border strongholds.

  Inner systems and worlds of little renown, deep in undisputed imperial controlled space, where oddities would be overlooked.

  Worse, their sparse defenses were ripe for conquest, easily overwhelmed.

  One fleet would bulldoze through maybe half a dozen of these systems before meeting a significant imperial response.

  Though of little renown, these worlds fed the Holy Empire’s forges, granaries, and factories.

  Cut them, and the arteries bled.

  They would bleed, but not bleed out. This would be far from a fatal blow.

  He was missing something, sensing the incompleteness of the picture before him, a massive missing part, a vast segment obscured from view.

  As the Zephuros carved its path toward Holy Bastion, Hidetada’s mind churned, probabilities aligning like stars in a constellation, weaving clandestine countermeasures, a strategy spun outside official channels.

  The necessities of the Holy Empire’s survival, balancing the worth of individual lives, was a brutal calculus, never simple. Many would fall in the coming gambit, their loss a bitter sting.

  The arithmetic of war demanded such expenditures, heedless of both the heart and desires.

  Divine Theosis never relented its unwarranted barbs, every one of its messages laced with fallacious criticism.

  Despite that, it appeared attuned to Angar's needs, yielding item drops that seemed tailored to them.

  Upon his reunion with his companions, the first Gatekeeper to perish beneath his hammer relinquished a prized named-mod, Vita Nanitica Armorum, designed to knit the damage done to power armor with sacred precision.

  Akin to its brethren mods employing nanites, it required two mod slots, but the benefit it conferred far outweighed the sacrifice, a welcomed and silent guardian against the ravages of battle’s attrition.

  He’d love to have a tentacle mod, to twist those hated appendages against his foes, but nanite repair demanded precedence.

  With a thought, Angar summoned the Equipment Tab, the ghostly ledger unfurling to reveal his armor’s configuration with the two named mods slotted.

  Armor: Crusader Armor, Armiger, Tier 3, 6/6 mods, w/customizations (+1 Adroitness, +13 Body, +3 Spirit, +82 (88) Toughness, +6 Cognizance, +4 Resilience).

  Mods:

  Omnivis Interface – Provides Ammo Count, Biomechanical Feedback, Customizable Widgets, Dynamic Crosshair, Enhanced Vision Modes, Environmental HUD, Gravity Indicator, Hacking Overlay, Loot Notifications, Map/Radar, Overheat Gauge, Ping System, Proximity Alerts, Range Finder, Reload Prompt, Stealth Meter, Suit Environment Auto-tuning, Target Lock Indicator, Team Status, Timers (Clock, Cooldown, Status Effects), Trackers (Injury, Resource, Motion, Objective/Task), Universal Translator.

  Phasorax Core – Phase through 3 meters of solid matter once daily.

  Sacred Aegis – Increases armor’s Toughness by 6 points and consumes one Charge every 12 hours providing superior shielding against physical and radiant attacks (non-physical-Ability, energetic, and thermic). Cannot be slotted alongside any mods increasing the same Stat or providing the same shielding effects.

  Vita Nanitica Armorum (two slots) – Consumes one Charge every 6 hours to deploy nanites that infuse the power armor with moderate self-repairing properties, prioritizing electronic systems, then mechanical actuators, followed by structural integrity. Cannot repair breaches or cracks wider than 4 mm, nor replicate sacred alloys.

  Hacking Module S3 Prime – Skill Level 3 Prime-rated Hacking Semi-AI, with full hacking kit.

  Abyssalhome lashed out in the throes of its terminal investment, transforming the preceding weeks into a hectic, unyielding meatgrinder.

  Gateways tore open the fabric of existence far more often, spewing endless streams of infernal filth, and far more Gatekeepers befouling the air with their vile presence, which translated to far more XP gain despite his penalty.

  And the escalating demands of slaughter had helped Angar focus, the lingering pain and void Spirit had left in his chest lessening as time crept onward, like a wound scabbed over but still tender beneath, flaring only in quiet moments, her bloody face during the farewell forcing its way into his thoughts.

  This increase in battle also compelled the four companions to return to Fort Acre with greater frequency, to mend their battered armor and replenish their arsenals.

  When he’d achieved level 79, with the Feat granted therein, a new option had shown in his list, coveted for cerebral sharpening, one of the handful known to assist with psychic manifestations.

  ENLIGHTENED GRASP OF SARIPUTTA: Your insight mirrors the foremost disciple's razor-sharp perspicacity, allowing you to swiftly analyze complex patterns in enigmas or combat, granting enhanced strategic foresight and the ability to predict and react to an opponent's next move with uncanny accuracy.

  He had selected it, of course. Psionics were the most potent tool in his arsenal against strong foes.

  Plus, enhanced processing and gut instincts were powerful survival tools, and nothing was more important than speed in battle, and by focusing on such incremental gains, he’d eventually increase Adroitness for free.

  He also gained a Stat and Attribute point, applied as usual to Physique and Body.

  His harness and necklace had risen his First Aid and Mechanical Repair Skills to 3, the peak the items would take them.

  Salvador was twice more called away to clash with some monstrosity of Hell, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other powerful Seraphs.

  During these times, he’d abandon his charges upon a desolate mountain spur, commanding them to conceal themselves within the protective shroud of Angar's Ward Against the Abyss ritual, reducing the chance they’d be spotted.

  But Angar had pegged Salvador's bluster, recognizing all the bark held no true bite.

  He’d bristle and threaten if disobeyed, but if his three wards emulated his beliefs, like venturing forth to scourge the Hellspawn in righteous carnage, he never harbored true nor lasting anger.

  The Seraph had been called away again today, having to drop everything and immediately rush to the crisis.

  Shortly after Salvador departed, the trio plunged down the mountain into sacred butchery, unleashing their wrath upon swarming horrors, only to ascend once more and nestle anew within the protective embrace of Angar’s ritual.

  Below, the cleansing crews worked to erase all traces of their disobedience, though they were in no great hurry, methodically stripping the Hellspawn corpses for any valuable parts.

  Angar suspected fear of the Crusaders kept the crews from stealing much, if any, of the drops lost across the battlefield, but every Knight assumed the crews pocketed whatever they found and could carry.

  He toiled over his armor’s repairs, sealing fractures with a viscous balm of sealant.

  Simo lent his hands to the labor, talking the whole time. "Do you think Saint Hidetada will keep me slotted as a servant, now that I've ascended to Paragon?"

  "I’m unsure," answered Angar, pressing another seam shut with careful attention.

  The Vita Nanitica, allied with the Vinculeparo necklace, took care of the armor’s components he couldn’t repair, like damaged processors, and those he had the hardest time with, such as circuitry.

  This had made him more reckless in battle, a flaw he knew needed correction.

  "I hope he does," replied Simo. “A Paragon servant. There's a bitter jest in that. I wonder if the other crewmen will call me Paragon?"

  Angar glanced at Garioch, the Saint methodically oiling his axe, then at Simo, discerning the undercurrent of disquiet in the veteran's weathered features.

  As no true fanfare had heralded Simo's ascension, Angar believed it bothered the man.

  But he and Garioch had contrived a proper observance, this to unfold during their designated rotation at Fort Acre for New Year's Mass and festivities. They’d been assigned the 27th and 28th of December for their mandated retreat, a scant five days’ distance from then.

  "I’m sure they will, Paragon," Angar stated. "Might you pinch this fissure closed, so I can seal the final breach?"

  Simo complied, adding, “Did you hear that Saint Hidetada forces Paragons out of the Free Agency? Kong, Deli, and Anarat all teeter on the brink of the second Realm. Stek's not that far off.”

  Before Angar could respond, his gut screamed that something was grievously wrong, that peril closed in. As he scanned around the makeshift camp, darkness swallowed all three men.