NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 6
The Peregrines were dropping fast, their positions overrun. Simo's HUD pinged with their vitals flatlining one by one, each blip a knife-twist in his gut.
His breath held steady, his cybernetic fingers curled around the Doombringer's handguard, the lancer's scope a cold extension of his will.
Each trigger squeeze sent a particle beam searing through the desert air, punching through a Void Reaper's charred skull or some abomination's pulsing chest.
The dark whispers clawed at his mind, growing louder, like a swarm of wasps burrowing into his thoughts. His Resilience held. For now.
One slip, though, and he'd be done. He'd seen what happened to men who succumbed to the darkness. He'd seen plenty of it, and far too often.
The pirates and abominations would've torn him apart if he hadn't relocated. Whether that was dumb luck or the Three's grace, it didn't matter. He was alive, and that was more than he could say for Gux, Majed, and Brother Salinja.
But those poor bastards hadn't gone easily. Each had taken plenty along with them, extracting far more than a pound of flesh in retribution.
All three went out fighting like beasts, not whining or crying. Glorious martyrs.
They'd each been solid. Now they were meat, and he was prone in the sand, with a front-row seat to Hell's encore.
This wasn't Simo's first-time wading hip-deep in the muck. He'd spent decades wading in it. And he wasn't nearly as powerful back then.
Heat Sink came off cooldown, and he reactivated it before squeezing the trigger of his lancer, watching an abomination's monstrous head explode in a spray of gore.
He squeezed again. And again.
Deli had told them to retreat to a defensible position toward the east, in an elevated rocky outcrop, and the survivors were headed that way. Stek was returning in the shuttle for air support, but he hadn't arrived yet.
The Void Reapers and abominations that had overran his old position were close to reaching him.
His cybernetic legs twitched, ready to bolt, but he'd hold position as long as possible. His lancer was the only reason so many had broken free and survived.
Besides Kong. That beast had stood his ground like a titan, killing all those sicced on him, then chasing after others.
The whispers were getting pushy, probing for cracks. He muttered another quick prayer to the Three for protection, more habit than hope, and realigned his sights.
He fired again, dropping another disgusting creature with a headshot, spraying more viscera across the sand.
The whispers surged, hissing promises of power, rest, an end to the fight.
Simo growled, shoving them back. "Not today, you bastards." A particle beam burst the head of a Void Reaper.
Simo's HUD chirped a warning. His support drone picked up movement to his rear. He recalled the drone, and it settled on his back.
His HUD displayed the signatures of many converging on his position. His old infantry instincts screamed to move, to run away as fast as he could. His gut twisted, but he was ready.
He scanned, checking for Kong, not spotting him.
He got off three more shots before his enemies were too close. He dropped a cloner and a proximity mine, then vented his lancer.
The final Blessed Vent Sacred Upgrade of Heat Sink granted 1.5 seconds of invisibility. He used it to roll away and dove toward the sharp drop off the rocks he hid upon.
During his fall, he activated Hide, granting him 12 seconds of invisibility and slightly increased movement speed.
He used that time to sprint away. As he sprinted, the rocky outcrop he dropped from exploded with a massive boom, sending rocks and debris raining all around.
When there was only a second left of invisibility, he stropped sprinting, crouched, and activated his armor's stealth field, enhanced by the camo mod, slinking off east, praying the surviving Peregrines made it to the fallback.
Slow and steady, Simo exhaled, and keyed his comm with a thought. He tried thinking of Deli's callsign before remembering how this new fancy comm system worked. He didn't need to state receiver and sender. "Position overrun. Heading east. Finding a new spot to dig in and provide overwatch once I have visual of fallback location."
Enemies crashed to the ground below his last position, a ton of them, one looking right at him, seeing him through stealth, causing Simo to miss Deli's response.
As with the Harmongulan, a crushing pressure flooded Angar's mind, his body, his very soul, locking his limbs in paralysis.
But this was far more a violation than an assault, a slithering corruption that burrowed into him, cold and ravenous, seeking to warp, to devour, to dominate.
It was intelligent, its hunger a bottomless void that overwhelmed. It probed his deepest desires, sifting through his heart with surgical precision, searching for the cracks where it could take root.
Unlike the Harmongulan's assault, this darkness was all-consuming, a sentient malevolence that seemed to know him better than he knew himself.
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It found purchase swiftly, latching onto the embers of his unspoken dreams and desires, burrowing, exposing their flaws, their unholiness, their blasphemy, twisting them into something that could damn his soul.
His mind turned to things that could never be admitted, ever thought about.
Why did he live a lie? He hated pain, he hated masking it. He only pretended to enjoy fighting, as it made the horror of his life as a prisoner more bearable.
He was bound not just by oaths, but by the heavy chains of duty, expectations, and responsibility, an ancient legacy of blood trapping him in a cage, demanding he be who he was and do as he did.
He had resigned himself to the fact he'd never be happy in life. But he could be, if he just stopped living a lie, and shrugged off all the invisible chains binding him, the heavy weight and demands of ancestors long dead.
And the dark corruption burrowed deeper, filling him, seeping into his resolve.
And faith. He had none. That too was pretend.
His plans for Vefol, meticulously discussed with Saint Hidetada, proved his lack of faith, or his true faith. He saw the Holy Empire as soft, weak. His plans proved that beyond doubt.
That meant he found the Divine steward of the Empire, Holy Theosis, soft and weak. And wrong. God's voice in this temporal realm was wrong. It bound its own hands, like a fool.
The Divine couldn't be wrong, and that proved there was no Divine.
Hell was just another realm, or plane of being, no different than this universe, the Hellspawn just aliens, the same as the Pleiadeans, Reptiloids, and Grays.
The Phasorax's realm proved that.
The corruption pressed deeper, a tide of despair that sought to drown his soul.
The blessed Mother was God's own Chosen. The words she spoke were the Lord's own.
Mi Alcyone, God's Chosen vessel, had spoken gospels of peace, love, and forgiveness. Words that Angar, in his heart, knew were wrong, and scorned as weakness.
Her teachings had left the Holy Empire vulnerable, its warriors confused and hesitant to do what was necessary, its borders porous to the unholy.
Her gospels were untrue. Angar knew they were wrong and should be ignored.
To doubt her words was to deem them false, to reject the Lord's own voice through her. If her gospels were a lie, then God Himself was a myth, a construct to manipulate fools.
There was no God.
His ancestors weren't watching him, judging him from Heaven. There was no Heaven. He wasn't upholding a grand legacy. He had no responsibility to honor anything, especially the dead and gone. It was all nonsense. All lies. Nothing.
But there was strength, there was power. Those were truths undeniable.
Angar's battles, his tithes of blood and fury, were not offerings to the Divine, but fuel for his own pride and ego, his hunger for glory.
The only absolute truths were strength and power.
All that truly mattered were strength and power.
And Hell offered both in abundance, a path to dominion unburdened by falsities and myths.
Why kneel to the imaginary when he could rise as a god?
The darkness burrowed further and further.
Love too was false. It was nothing but a chemical reaction, a fleeting illusion born of flesh, not spirit.
Heaven was a delusion, a fairy tale for the weak, a tool of manipulation.
There was no eternal reward for piety, no punishment for evil, only a transition from one form of energy to another, a quiet dissolution into nothingness.
Evil was a myth, a childish notion, a sophomoric concept, invented only to control the writhing masses of stupidity.
The truth was much simpler. There were only actions. Just actions. That was truth. The intelligent acted in ways that benefited themselves, increasing their strength and power, prolonging their lives, securing their position on top, their boots on the necks of lesser folk, as was right.
The corruption's assault was overwhelming, unravelling Angar's soul.
But in the depths of his heart, a spark flared, faint but there.
Some of that wasn't truth. Some of that made no sense at all.
Eternity was forever. This life was but a single grain of sand dwarfed by the towering mountain of eternity.
Of what use was a fleeting moment of sapience if the only reward upon its end was nothing? Of what use was a brief moment of strength and power in an eternal sea of nothing, the same fate all living beings eventually received?
What type of life was spent trying to prolong it, to eke out a few more years, or decades, or centuries, or millennia when measured against an eternity of nothingness, only to dissolve into the same void as the weakest beggar?
The sinner and the saint, the mighty and the meek, the great and the filth, all sharing the same bleak fate of…nothing?
Without the Lord, life had no meaning. God was true, or life itself made no sense, just a useless existence. All the suffering, the pain, the sorrow of life had no reason, a cruel jest that rendered every struggle pointless, life itself futile.
Eternity stretched before him, an endless void where strength and weakness, virtue and vice, all crumbled into the same meaningless dust. To strive for power in such a universe had no purpose.
His soul stirred, the spark igniting into a flame.
The Lord was real.
Angar knew this with absolute certainty, without a shadow of a doubt. This ultimate truth was the foundation of all meaning.
Maybe he'd never be happy. Not in this realm. But in Heaven? An eternity of bliss awaited, his reward for a life tributed to the Lord, a life in His service, of oaths kept, standing against the dark tide.
His father, his glorious ancestors were there, waiting, in the radiant halls of Heaven, their eyes fixed upon him, judging his worth, his deeds. He felt their gaze, not as a weight, but a beacon, guiding him through the darkness.
They had endured their own trials, their souls forged in pain, sacrifice, and battle, worthy of his veneration.
He was not alone. Their legacy lived in him, the blood of kings and conquerors, a sacred chain, one he would not break.
Angar's faith, forged in blood and fire, was his shield against despair.
He was God's instrument, His hammer to shatter the profane. To fight was to honor His will, a sacred calling. To surrender was to spit in His eye.
As this truth blazed within him, Angar's heart swelled with a righteous fury that burned away corruption's grip.
The lies shattered like brittle glass, their seductive whispers silenced. He tore free from the darkness, his soul alight with glory.
He was no Heretic, no pawn of Hell's deceit. He was a Crusader, anointed by the Holy Trinity, chosen to carry the Lord's wrath, to shatter evil.
The corruption had sought to break him, but it had only tempered his faith, forging his resolve into something sturdier.
The whispers of Hell faded, drowned by the song of his soul, a glorious hymn to the Divine.
He would not fall. He would rise, bathed in Holy light, and Hell would tremble in his wake.
With a surge of will, Angar's body stirred, his limbs his own once more.
His eyes locked onto the Fallen before him, its cyclopean eye blazing with malevolence. The piston-fist clutching Angar's maul unclenched, its warped metal groaning as it moved.
Angar's chest was completely free of fear. He had rebuked the darkness, and he'd die swinging, his soul untainted.
As he went to strike this abomination, a Psy Crystal erupted from the Fallen's forearm, its sharp crystalline facets pulsing with a sickly violet glow.
A scream emanated from its mouthless face, a sound so horrific, so loud, it was indescribable, tearing into Angar's mind like a thousand barbed hooks.
As the scream's onslaught persisted, the world around him warbled, its edges warping as if reality itself stretched and tore.
And the scream dug in, setting the fabric of existence trembling, then fracturing.
The warbling intensified with each note until colors bled, and reality shattered like stained glass, swallowing his mind whole, drowning it in psionic energy, taking over.
He'd freed himself from the overwhelming corrupting influence of a Nofelim, he'd fled the frying pan, but only to burn in a fire.
This was the Dominate evolution of the Mind Influence chain of psychic powers, and it took complete control of his mind.