For what seemed the hundredth time, Angar had awoken to the cold ministrations of a medicum machine.

  Though his bones were mending under the relentless knit of his stout regeneration, his face had pounded with agony from the Swarm's shattering blow, but the analgesics dulled it to a persistent throb.

  It'd been wired with dissolving sinew grafts and bound tight in medical wrappings, making speech nearly impossible.

  As he lay in the chill embrace of the machine, its needles and probes working their cold alchemy upon his battered form, he'd turned his mind inward, chasing the fragile ember of the revelation that had kindled within during the battle with Ongora.

  That'd been a true ordeal.

  Both battles had.

  Against the War King, blind fury and raw hatred had availed him nothing, a child's tantrum hurled against an unstoppable mountain.

  His fist and feet had hammered against flesh that refused to yield so much as a centimeter, the blows rebounding from a hardened corpse that knew no pain, nor fatigue.

  Ongora’s own strikes had fallen like blazing meteors from the void, each one promising annihilation. Even the strange dullness of his leonine forearms had done little to blunt the impacts.

  System access had been severed the moment he entered the Swarm. Even had it not been, he'd already trained every useful Skill to its Tier limit.

  There'd been nothing left to draw upon or do.

  Trapped in that bloodied arena, battered to the edge of dissolution, his synapses had fired in desperate barrages, like an overtaxed blaster searching for a target that wasn’t there, seeking some option, some slender path to victory.

  And came up empty.

  Only the old, scorned maxims rose in his mind, again and again, the serene nonsense he'd always dismissed.

  Every useless platitude, all that 'empty-mind' drivel of meditation masters, ancient Eeshek’tik's garble on flow over force, yielding to overcome and such.

  He'd rejected them all, having proof after proof that his own methods were superior.

  But in that moment when defeat had loomed as the only certainty, when death’s inglorious shadow had fallen across him like a shroud, those fragments had aligned, somehow, alighting within his soul like a guiding star in a raging storm.

  If the fire of his fury could not burn the mountain down, then he would become wind and water.

  The furnace of his rage cooled. In its place came a detachment he'd never sought, a stillness deeper than any void.

  His breath steadied. His mind cleared. His body loosened.

  Ongora’s titanic force became its own undoing, its power borrowed, redirected, turned against itself with the smallest motion and the greatest effect.

  Serenity’s flow had carried him through where wrath and all else had shattered.

  He had won. Barely. By the skin of his teeth.

  And those duranium-capped teeth, installed months ago, had proven their worth. All the facial trauma should've scattered his dentition across the ground like spent shell casings.

  Not one had been lost.

  Only later, when Saint Thryna had visited while the medicum continued its cold work, spilling secrets in her harsh voice, would Angar learn the full scope of what had unfolded beyond his personal crucible.

  Prior to the Swarm trapping Angar and his companions, unbeknownst to them, the named entity that Salvador had been summoned to confront was none other than the Swarm itself.

  Though in the heat of battle, time had stretched into what felt like an eternity of brutal combat, but Angar's dual clashes within its crucible had endured probably no more than ten minutes, just fleeting bursts of savage fury.

  Simo's ordeal in the Stalker's Hunt had lasted for perhaps an hour, or an hour and a half at the most, before his grim demise.

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  But Garioch's Undead Siege had dragged on far longer, a half-day of sacred slaughter, his axe carving through hordes of zombies in a frenzy of berserker wrath.

  Of course, beyond the antechamber and the active fray, they had been held in stasis, oblivious to the passage of hours.

  But those hours had been claimed by the Seraphs in their relentless search for the ancient fiend.

  They had hunted it, and once it had lingered overlong in one spot, wove a powerful ritual circle around it, a Holy ward etched into the blighted soil to bar its escape.

  At last, the Swarm would be slain, its unholy essence consigned to oblivion, a feat even Dentatus the Black had never achieved, though he had tried.

  Or so went the plan.

  The Pleiadeans had scorned the endeavor as reckless folly and declined to join the fray. To their minds, the Swarm was a predictable predator. It never preyed on the feeble, and it avoided the truly powerful.

  It’d claim some heads, then slink back to the Underworld without further contest, dissolving into shadow.

  They urged unwavering focus on Abyssalhome's terminal investment phase, the Hellworld's dying throes, and the salvation of their brethren entombed in subterranean vaults, eschewing vainglorious distractions so near the campaign's end.

  Especially perils so needless and fraught with unknown risks.

  And the Pleiadeans' caution had proven prescient. The Terrans grievously misjudged the Swarm's true might.

  It had never deigned to give battle itself before, content to orchestrate.

  In the past, on more than one occasion, every one of the hundred Undead Warlords bound within its form had been defeated.

  And so it transpired this time as well. A cadre of a dozen Seraphs challenged it, invading its domain to vanquish the remaining ninety-seven warlords through trial after trial.

  Once they were defeated, as always, the Swarm tore open a portal to the Underworld, independent and unbound, unlike the systematized gateways that scarred the temporal realm, or the impassable tears in reality known as rifts.

  This type of portal could only be utilized by Hell's higher echelons, a clue to its great power that ought to have given pause and instilled some dread.

  Angar had never thought to ask Spirit if anything had come of the forbidden knowledge Theosis had harvested when he thrust his hands into a gateway's maw, gazing into the abyss beyond.

  Something had, indeed.

  Powerful explosives crafted to ignite upon reacting with the atmosphere of the infernal abyss, their charges erupting in violent communion with the Underworld's blasphemous ether.

  They couldn't be deployed against gateways, for fear of invoking a repeat of the Gateway Incident of 4184, an event that had wrought untold death in its unholy backlash.

  But these unconnected portals? They demanded only a martyr charge through with the explosive. Imperial Command had awaited eagerly for such a chance as this.

  Among the devout, such volunteers rallied forth, thirsting for immortal glory.

  Hence the bilious green fumes Angar had beheld rising from the portal, the residue of those detonations.

  In all recorded prior encounters, instead of engaging directly, the Swarm summoned the portal, calling forth past Undead Warlord champions from its ancient history.

  And they numbered thousands, each much more powerful than its present hundred.

  They would surge forth, overwhelming both the encircling ritual and assembled host.

  This time, no ancient champions emerged before the portal was blasted asunder by the novel ordnance.

  Still ensnared by the ritual's grasp, the Swarm, at last, was forced to fight in direct combat.

  And it proved far mightier than any had assumed, a tempest of undeath that reaped a grim toll of blood and ruin far beyond reckoning.

  Grand Marshal Hulmnir, the Iron Father, had pushed for the assault with zeal, hungry for glory to restore his waning chapter's renown.

  He envisioned the Pontifex Maximus intoning the grand victory in his scry-captured allocution during Sunday Mass, the news resounding through the Holy Empire, the name of the Thorned Chalice uttered with awe in reverent tones once again.

  Or so Saint Thryna had told Angar.

  Seventeen Seraphs, including the Golden Matron, met their end in the clash, though she and three others were vivified, having plenty of Hierarchs and ships with a Vitaelux Apexium available.

  So, in sum, thirteen Seraphs fell to slay the Swarm, nearly all of them Holy Knights whose names Angar had never heard before, unsung titans lost to the fray.

  Those, along with more than ninety of the second Realm, chiefly from the Black Vanguard, who had been judged secure beyond the ritual's bounds, safe on their mighty battlecycles.

  Of the martyrs who offered themselves up to carry the bombs through the portal, eight had been selected, and three succeeded in breaching the threshold.

  Statues in their image were rising outside Fort Acre, and their names resounded from the Pontifex Maximus's lips during Sunday Mass, a profound honor, their oblation inscribed upon the annals of eternity.

  Hulmnir's ambitions blazed brightly, and he lavished rewards upon those who advanced his designs.

  Simo, blessedly alive again, besides free medical care and cybernetic repairs, was bestowed a superior set of light, Low-Realm armor, a truly princely gift of the extremely rare Infiltrator design, coming with an extra mod slot.

  Garioch, whose exploits had garnered experience sufficient for ascension to the sixth Tier, received a suit of High-Saint Armor and an invitation to join the Thorned Chalice.

  The Saint didn't reject the offer outright, instead requesting time to ponder the honor.

  As Angar's own suit was whole, exemplary, and matched his current Tier, he was permitted to choose his reward freely from a listing.

  He selected an item with exorbitant value, an enhancer to upgrade a cybernetic, wrought to improve any by one quarter of its potency.

  Claims diverged on whether it bestowed an ancillary mod-socket besides. Some stated it did, others swore it didn’t.

  He knew its destination with certainty. It’d be applied to his nervous system implant, as he believed that'd reap the greatest gains.

  The crew of Grand Marshal Hulmnir’s vessel, the Beachhead, could have handled the installation, but it meant cracking open his skull for brain surgery. With no way to verify they'd actually used the enhancer, he refused.

  He'd heard tales of medici pocketing such prizes, swearing blind they'd done the work.

  No, he’d have Doc and Kong install it.

  Besides, he had other, better rewards to focus on.

  Rewards which, when combined, would grant him a grand opportunity.