Chagan stood at the grimy counter of a boxy prefab priory, where incense curled through the air and caught in his helmet's filters, soft chants rising in steady rhythm from the cheap amplifiers mounted in the corners.

  He’d earned a commendation for bravery, a hard-won scrap of recognition that came with a modest sum of credits.

  Enough to afford one of the sacred rites from the pamphlet he clutched in his gauntleted fingers, the paper crinkling under the hidden tremor of his hand.

  Something to sharpen his build as a gunner, hauling a heavy tripod-mounted turret, giving him the edge he’d need when the time came.

  But as his eyes read the offerings, his thoughts drifted to the missive that’d clarified some mistakes, giving him new purpose.

  He both appreciated and liked Fella, who was surprisingly intelligent for a barbarian, her communiques insightful.

  She relayed fragments of news she barely grasped herself, scant and unreliable details scattered in, oblivious that one bit had revealed Angar's murder of his grandfather.

  She had no way of knowing.

  Or that her last missive, the one urging all Tributeans scheduled for that day's Mass to seek out their world's new ruler, Angar, had delivered the precise hour and place to strike straight to Chagan's eager hands.

  Seban's meddling had scuttled the ambush, but Chagan knew the bastard would be chained to the base through the revels this day and the next.

  He had plenty of time still, for both vengeance and redemption.

  A memory came then, pulling him back to the halls of Amaravati, far removed from the harsh conditions outside its walls, the large galleries always carrying the clean scent of hydroponic soil and fungi.

  Grandfather had been bent over the table that last visit, his ancient and lean frame unbowed, filled with so much love and passion it seemed to heat the chamber, his fingers tracing worn grooves in the stone as if mapping future paths.

  "Our future rests on you,” he’d said, his voice quaking not from age but from worry and the depth of his trust, a tremor that lingered in Chagan's bones even now. “No other in this hallowed city has the courage to go off-world, nor the selflessness to send their blood in service.

  “We Amaravatians endure because of the great knowledge we’ve safekept. We Elder Shura have always guided our people and the whole Iramvati Nation with wisdom and altruism, a shield against ignorance and chaos. A terrible responsibility, but ours to bear."

  Chagan's gauntleted hand tightened on the pamphlet, the crinkle sharpening like an accusation from the Trey hung on the wall behind the counter.

  He was only meant to gather intelligence, then return, reporting if Cloisteranage was safe for more Amaravatian children, and if off-worlders merited any trust at all.

  He'd sent a letter back, but he hadn’t returned.

  He failed his people. Abandoned them.

  Had he not been so damned selfish, all the Elder Shura might still draw breath, his people still rulers of their ancient domain.

  Grandfather had drilled it into him countless times that the core of being Amaravatian was selflessness, the whole paramount, the individual nothing, all the sacrifices necessary for unity.

  Almost two years back, he'd graduated Cloisteranage, just five weeks of it before turning sixteen.

  The non-physical tests were still mandatory then, before the Holy Empire waived them for Tributeans otherwise qualifying for the Grim Ordeals of Sanctified Knighthood.

  As an Amaravatian, the academics came more easily than it had for his savage cousins, his mind sharpened by his people's structured education.

  But physically? He was slighter than the other Tributeans. They never let him forget it, mocking him as weak, lesser than them, his people as cruel tyrants.

  That's what drove him to the gunner path. Besides the heavy armor’s bulk, the greater value placed on the Body Attribute had swollen his frame beyond mere parity with those of the Iramvati Nation.

  But that wasn't why he'd forsaken his people, or even attempted the Grim Ordeals.

  Once off Tribute, he'd seen the truth.

  Even the Amaravatians, the only civilized people on that terrible planet, ranked as deformed savages by galactic measure, no different from all the barbarians of his world.

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  It fueled him, the desire to prove them all wrong, to prove that his kind could rise above, just as capable and intelligent as any within the Holy Empire.

  He’d vowed to forge his own path then, free of others weighing him down with their bullshit.

  He lauded Fella's goal, fostering a community for Tributean Crusaders, but he'd chosen the Zealous Few to stay away from those of his world, drawn to that chapter exactly because the others scorned it.

  Its sigil, emblazoned with a woman, reeked of femininity and weakness to them, despite it depicting the blessed Mother, whom they revered as one of the Holy Trinity. It made little sense, their thinking, but the barbarian mind rarely did.

  Things had gone well enough on his path, grueling but still liberating, until months prior, when the second missive Fella sent him shattered his world.

  Angar had slaughtered the rulers of the north.

  The Elder Shura, his own grandfather among them.

  And walked away unscathed. Cold-blooded murder, and no consequence, nor reckoning.

  Instead, he'd been rewarded, and greatly so.

  Amaravati, and thus the north, folded under off-world rule, bending knee to some foreign overlord who, in turn, swore allegiance to the barbarian Angar.

  Unacceptable.

  Chagan had forsaken his roots once, buried them deep, but never again.

  A price had to be paid, a toll exacted in fire and lead. Not for his own sake, but for all of Amaravati, for the very concept of justice, for the unity his grandfather had bled so much for.

  No choice left in it, no space for doubt.

  Vengeance would descend, swift and brutal.

  It must.

  If Fella's gushings about Angar held any truth, that barbarian wasn’t just an unnaturally tough monster wielding lightning Abilities, but had a Tier on him.

  Chagan would need every scrap of advantage to succeed.

  Surprise would be key, an ambush from afar, an overwhelming barrage drowning the savage in firepower before he closed the gap.

  He exhaled slowly, the sound muffled in his helm, and refocused on the list. The rite had to amplify his advantage, something to help clinch victory.

  To silence the guilt gnawing away at his guts.

  To grant peace to a grandfather who'd misplaced his faith in such a greedy bastard of a grandson.

  But a grandson who might yet redeem himself with blood and vengeance.

  Two clergymen hovered around him like mosquitoes, hungry to drain his credits as if blood.

  Chagan ignored them, his gaze chained to their pamphlet. This wasn't a choice to rush. Or regret.

  A minute later, just as he opened his mouth to speak his selection, the priory door hissed open with a pneumatic churn, admitting clomps of metal footfalls that rolled off the prefab walls like thunder.

  He turned, at first mistaking them for Crusaders in heavy armor, but their bulk was unnatural.

  They were Tributeans in medium suits, two lighting up as contacts on his HUD.

  And stomping behind, a colossal figure on cybernetic legs clutching a massive hammer, towering sixty centimeters over the others, maybe seventy-five, or more. It was hard to gauge.

  Realization hit like a gut punch.

  That monster was Angar.

  His heart plummeted into the acidic pit of his stomach.

  Seban and Nguri, northern kin of Iramvati City, had turned traitor.

  First, they'd sabotaged his planned ambush at Mass, forcing him inside with them, attending service.

  Now, this ultimate betrayal, trapping him with his enemy.

  An enemy, he realized, he stood no chance against in close confines. This monster would rip him apart.

  A cold certainty draped over him like a funeral shroud.

  He thought he’d be more nervous, knowing his end loomed so near, but he wasn’t.

  He was ready to die, ready for his duty to end. Perhaps his corpse would ignite an investigation, drag some scrap of justice for this barbarian to finally face.

  "Get out," Seban barked at the two Ecclesiastics. The brothers muttered under their breaths, but they shuffled toward the door all the same.

  Chagan's mind raced, playing out the fight. No chance he’d sling the turret from his back, deploy the mount, and spin the barrels hot before that hammer stove in his helm, splattering his brains on the walls.

  The vibro-blade at his belt remained his sole play. It might not even breach the seams of that high-quality third-Tier plate, but it was better than dying empty-handed.

  He drew it, preparing for vengeance or death.

  "Hold now, brother," Seban urged, stepping forward with palms raised. "We're here to settle this fair and honorable."

  Chagan scoffed, the sound bitter through his external grille. "Honorable? Like murdering the Elder Shura in cold blood?"

  To his surprise, Angar released his helm's seals with a hiss of escaping pressure, lifting it free and clutching it in his left hand like a weapon.

  The face beneath, though young, was a ruin, scarred like an old veteran, and bandaged tight around what had to be a shattered jaw, eyes burning with an unholy, demonic intensity, somehow both dead and unimaginably alive with bottomless evil at the same time.

  “God and Empire, Chagan," Angar mumbled through the wrappings. “I've done you wrong. If I were you, I'd crave vengeance too, so I'll give you what I can. And know that I swear upon my immortal soul, before God, that I didn't mean to kill the Elder Shura. My psychic powers manifested unbidden, slaying them by accident. I wanted to kill them, and might've later, but not then, and not like that."

  Chagan nearly exhaled in frustration. A Psychic. Of course. The odds just cratered further.

  His brows furrowed as he worked out the rest. Give what vengeance he could? What in the Three’s name did that mean?

  And how did admitting to accidental massacre, followed by an admission of premeditated desire and likelihood of doing the same on purpose later, pass as contrition?

  Before he could spit his retort, Angar backed into the far corner and initiated his armor's dismount. Servos whined as the plates parted, leaving him in ill-fitting clothing, no harness even, his helm and hammer abandoned beside the empty suit.

  The unknown Tributean of the Wistful Litany, his accent distinctly Kondunean, spoke up to Angar. "It's true about your hands, then? But the tales painted them twisted with Hellsign, like demon flesh. Those don’t look demonic.”

  Angar kept his gaze locked on Chagan as he replied. "The Baptistry remade them like this."

  At a loss for the madness unfolding, Knightly codes screamed in Chagan's ears, but vengeance and opportunity roared louder still.

  This was his best shot, the barbarian stripped bare, unarmored and unarmed.

  He had two Abilities, but one wouldn’t work without deploying his turret. He twisted, dropping Holy Fortification behind him, getting a little benefit from its passives.

  Then lunged, the vibro-blade keening to life as it thrust like a striking serpent.