NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 76
Angar's heart pounded, dread and anticipation warring within his chest.
Fear raked at his heart with sharp, icy talons, though he loathed to admit it, even to himself. He knew he was about to die, and he didn't want to. Azgoth had crushed him before, effortlessly, like swatting a fly.
But, beneath the dread, an ember of wrath bloomed alongside the fear, like a righteous flame. Last time, he hadn't landed a single blow.
This time, he'd not go so easily, vowing that Azgoth would know he faced a worthy foe, burning Angar's past shame away in glory.
His unfinished penance worried him, a curse weighing on his soul's ascent. Would his stand against this unholy filth, resisting corruption's taint, be enough to secure the eternal bliss he'd earned? He clung to that hope.
"Am I under Dominate's grip now?" Angar asked, his tone calm despite the fear within.
She released her embrace, drifting back some, her luminous eyes brimming with grief, locking onto his.
"Yes," she said softly. "As is everyone else in view. It's a mass application, and applied stealthily, so not nearly as strong. But that's why no one on the ship sensed Azgoth or the Thrall slinking among them."
His cybernetic eyes narrowed as they dissected her words. "Dominate can cloak like that? I thought only Psychic Veil could hide someone from notice."
"You're a Psychic now, Angar," she said. "How do you not know this? Few can evolve Mind Influence to Dominate, but once a mind is seized, masking presence is not difficult."
"Understood," he said. "I'm assuming that guilt on your face means you won't be helping me?"
She looked away, tensing as if struck. "I can't," she whispered, her voice almost cracking.
Angar nodded. He'd hoped Spirit had forgiven him, perhaps battle shoulder-to-shoulder with the blessed Mother at last, as they'd never truly fought together.
But her presence here, her goodbye, was plenty enough, and he appreciated it. "Can you protect the people? Use that boof-thing of yours to clear at least the children from danger?"
Spirit's gaze studied his own, warm with approval. "That only works on Hellspawn. Besides, it'd be far too dangerous to use on children." A genuine smile broke through her sorrow. "But it gladdens my heart that you care about saving them, Angar. I feared you'd sunk too far into depravity to think of innocents."
Rage ignited in his chest, tangled with as much frustration. "How can you say that?" he spat out indignantly. "Did you never read the Knightly oath that you had me swear? Why do you pretend not to understand me? I'm a simple man, not some monster."
Spirit's expression crumpled, and he appreciated she at least had the grace to look chastised. "I'm sorry," she replied. "This wasn't the time to bring any of that up. I've always known, deep down, there's a good man inside you. Thank you for proving me right."
Even though it was a backhanded compliment, her words doused his anger, leaving only a dull ache of disappointment. "You didn't answer," he stated. "Can you save all the Layfolk? Or at least the children?"
"That's why I can't help you fight," she said, guilt infusing her voice. "Azgoth's strike is targeting your midsection, where repairs weakened your armor. He'll shatter it, the blow crippling you. Then the arch-druden will shed its Thrall and possess your body."
She sighed heavily. "Azgoth wants to make you suffer as much as possible. When you're possessed, he plans to drain the vitality from every child here as you helplessly watch."
Angar's jaw tightened. He couldn't fathom how a once-Seraph, a man that had been sickened by the Holy Empire's abandonment of children to a Demon Lord, could do something so disgusting and evil. "Understood. And your plan?"
Her gaze hardened. "My only chance is to wait until the arch-druden possesses you. I'll strike Azgoth then, when the druden can't free him without abandoning your body. I can fill his mind with agony, as I did the Homunculus, buying enough time for the Layfolk to flee. Your death, your sacrifice, will grant them that chance."
He nodded, his mind processing. "Understood." It was a good plan, with an attainable victory condition. Duty demanded he stand as a bulwark, shielding innocents with his life.
But that didn't mean surrendering. It didn't mean lying down and dying quietly.
As Eeshek'tik had stated, Angar manipulated psionic energy poorly and incorrectly. But that ancient Gray's promised lessons were beyond a dead man's reach.
Even if Angar's method was wrong, he needed to be better at it. "Can I allocate Skill Points while you've got time dilated?"
"Why?" asked Spirit, her platinum-blonde eyebrows creasing in confusion.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
"Okay." Spirit's luminous blue eyes held Angar's, a storm of sorrow and resolve swirling within them. "Ready?" she asked, her voice nearly trembling.
Angar's heart thundered, his palms slick with sweat. "Yes," he replied, his whole body, though still frozen, tensing. Fear chipped away at his resolve, but his soul blazed with zealous fervor.
He hungered to sear his mark into Azgoth's unholy flesh before his life was given in tribute to the Lord, honoring his legacy, and his ancestors.
This was his sacred charge, to shield the innocent, to sate the Lord's thirst with a tide of blood.
This time, he vowed that some of that blood would be Azgoth's own.
Time snapped forward, sending reality lurching into motion like a beast unleashed. The world blurred, and Angar surged into action.
He couldn't see Azgoth's strike, but his left hand shot out to intercept the unseen blow. His right hand began to swing his maul, infused with an Energy Point, its head crackling with barely contained wrath.
He didn't dare risk Ground Current or Lightning Strike. Last time, the attempt had birthed agony, a white-hot betrayal from his core. This time, he needed perfection, a flawless dance of violence to defy the odds, to stand against a titan.
His mind clawed at the psychic chains of Dominate, fueled by two freshly allocated Skill Points in Psychic Defenses. He had no idea what he struggled against, and the split moment since time resumed wasn't enough to figure it out. If he had time and a target to set his iron will against, that'd be a different story.
The air charged with malevolence, and his HUD flickered, warning of an imminent threat his eyes couldn't yet perceive.
Then his gauntlet had it, the invisible piston-fist, blazing toward his midsection with unholy force. He clamped his hand against it, trying to halt the blow with his great strength.
His left hand, all his might, was as futile as if he were a gnat, his desperate bid to shield himself from the piston-fist failing terribly.
The impact was devastating. His wrist shattered with a sickening crunch, the plating splintering into shards. The force then snapped his forearm, the radius and ulna erupting through torn flesh and jagged metal, sending blood spraying in a crimson arc.
The fist relentlessly drove through his ruined limb, crashing into his lower left side. His armor buckled, the repaired plating shattering like glass, and the blow tore into his abdomen.
Organs ruptured, causing a visceral explosion of pain that shoved his diaphragm upward, spasming, stealing his breath.
Angar's body hurtled backward, the world spinning into a haze of agony and panic. His lungs refused to draw air, each gasp a futile stab against the suffocating void in his chest.
Pain seared every nerve, his side blazing like a furnace of torment. His left hand dangled, barely tethered by shredded sinew, the lower half of his snapped forearm swinging uselessly, bone exposed, blood spraying.
Spirit had told him he wasn't strong enough to stop Azgoth's piston-fist, but she'd never had faith in Angar. She'd always underestimated him. It was worth trying. It just didn't pan out.
His Psy Crystal, the Unspoken Way, was still intact and touching his skin, even if that part of his arm was dangling uselessly.
And one arm was all he needed. He'd proven that against the Phasorax.
As his body flew backward, the veil of Dominate parted. Azgoth materialized, his flayed hide glistening with corruption, his cyclopean eye blazing with malicious glee, his barbed chains moaning with tormented wails, and his serpentine tendrils scorching the ground.
Beside him stood the arch-druden's docile, possessed Thrall. Druden were powerful spirits of Hell, this one cloaked in human flesh, a plain and indistinguishable man, his puppet eyes hollow.
Azgoth's tentacle-limb lashed out, the chomping mouths snapping to intercept Angar's maul as he was hurled backward, but his haft was long enough, and the cords barely slowed the blow.
A psychic grip seized the hammer, pinning it mid-air with a malicious will, but the hold came a fraction too late.
The maul's head, its runes glowing, warped with distortions of graviton wrath, slammed into the Fallen's grotesque, mouthless helm just as it was pinned.
A micro-well of gravity erupted on impact, amplifying the force of the blow, infused with burning plasma, unleashing a localized maelstrom that warped the air in a concussive ripple, twisting light and sound into a fleeting vortex.
The baleful red of Azgoth's cyclopean eye flashed angrily, then dimmed for a moment, and the barbed chains dangling from his frame wailed with fury.
As Angar continued to fly backward, the pinned hammer's haft tore from his hand, but a righteous fire blazed in his chest, and pride swelled along with it, drowning the agony of his shattered arm and abdomen.
He'd marked the Nofelim right off the start. He'd already gotten a hit in. He'd already exceeded Spirit's expectations.
But the Fallen shrugged off the blow as if it were nothing. His serpentine tendrils coiling taut, scorching the ground with sizzling ooze, as the psychic weight of chains crashed against Angar's body, and, like his hammer, he was pinned in the air.
But he felt it this time. He felt how it was applied. He almost had enough to work with.
His Psy Crystal warmed against his mangled arm, and he bent reality to his will. A tempest of psychic electricity erupted inside the Nofelim, chaining through its flayed hide.
The Fallen's muscles locked, his massive frame convulsing as invisible psionic currents seared his corrupted flesh. The jagged spines pulsing flames on its hunched back flickered out, the cyclopean eye flared erratically, and the chains' moans rose to a fevered shriek.
A grim smile split Angar's face as the psychic hold released. He dropped onto his cybernetic feet, and his hammer clanged off the rocky ground.
He'd spent two Skill Points on Psionic Energy Manipulation too.
He poured everything he had within him, all his titanic will, into that Electrocute, and he felt his Resilience plummet, draining his resolve like a ravenous beast.
With a roar, Azgoth shrugged off the attack and surged forward, his piston-fist rearing back, the rune-studded knuckles glowing with profane light.
The tentacle-limb's mouths lunged, latching onto Angar's chest with a grinding slurp.
Before he could react, before he could even think, he was yanked forward, the world blurring into a haze of motion.
The piston-fist rocketed toward his head like an unholy meteor, connecting with devastating impact, shattering his helm.
Metal shrapnel sprayed outward, and pain exploded across his face as his cheekbone and jaw collapsed in a nauseating crunch.
Roiling in a daze, fighting off the blackness drowning his battered head, the tentacle-limb set him down, and the mouths unclasped from his chest.
His vision swam as he staggered around, nearly collapsing, teetering on the edge of consciousness. Azgoth slithered closer, blasting a searing green beam of fell energy straight into Angar's exposed face.
Agony devoured him in total as he hurtled backward under the beam's might, his face melting, his eyes burning in their sockets, his world becoming only pain and shadow.
He crashed onto the rocky ground, tumbling through a storm of anguish and spurting blood, darkness clawing at his fading mind.