NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 8
Simo stopped, his breath rasping through his battered Vanquisher armor's filters. The desert night was a murky void, the stars smothered by haze, leaving him directionless, blind to north or south.
The visor of his shattered helm was a spiderweb of cracks, obscuring his vision.
But the armor had cost a fortune. Broken or not, he wasn't ditching the helm.
He thought he heard a battle in the distance, toward his right. He'd head that way, praying he'd lost the horde that had hounded him through this nightmare.
The enemy had spotted him moments after he'd radioed Deli, one of them having some way to pierce stealth, and shit got real hot. It'd been dicey for a while.
Abominations swarmed, their claws and fangs hungering, Void Reapers mixed in among them, and for a brutal stretch, Simo was certain he was done for.
He killed most of them, but not all of them, leading them on a grand chase of hit and run all over the place.
His new fancy armor was banged up to Hell now, his lancer, battered to pieces after he'd swung it like a club when the enemy swarmed him, was gone.
He clutched his sidearm in his right hand. His cybernetic left arm was equipped with a Radius Manus mod. He had plenty enough Energy Points left to use it.
So, he was still okay in the arms department, even without his lancer.
Scrambling up a rocky hill, loose shale skittering under the boots covering his cybernetic feet, Simo grit his teeth against the strain.
Halfway up, dark whispers slithered into his mind. Some unholy filth, a disgusting knot of tentacles and jagged teeth, lunged from below.
Simo spun, sliding onto his back, raising his cybernetic arm. A searing blast of energy erupting from his palm, tearing into the creature's flesh. His sidearm, flipped to semi-auto, spat hot rounds into its maw, punching holes that oozed black ichor.
The thing didn't slow, soaking up damage like a sponge, its tentacles thrashing closer.
As it reached him, Simo ducked under its lunge, clawing for its monstrous face with his cybernetic hand. It slithered free, snatching his boot in its maw.
The Vanquisher armor held, but even if the disgusting thing bit through, it'd only find a cybernetic leg, not flesh.
Simo seized its head, channeling another fiery burst from the Radius Manus at point-blank range. Gore sprayed, splattering his cracked visor, but the creature clung on, tentacles coiling around his calf and thigh.
He jammed his sidearm against its skull and fired over and over. As he held down the trigger, instinctively, he tightened his cybernetic grip, forgetting its raw power. The creature's head burst like a rotten fruit, drenching the rocks all around.
Simo grunted, shaking off the mess. He kept forgetting how much strength was in the his new arm. That's how his lancer broke too. Firearms were durable, nearly impossible to break, but that same strength had shattered his lancer earlier, swung too hard in the melee.
Reloading his sidearm, he resumed his climb with his boots crunching on loose rock.
Before cresting the rise, he crouched low, activating his stealth field. Squinting through the cracked visor, he strained to pinpoint the battle's source.
The sounds echoed, but no flashes of light betrayed its location. Not that he could spot. But he recognized where he was. He was pretty close to the station's entrance.
As he rose to move, a piercing shriek split the air. One of the Zephuros' two fighters tore across the sky, flying too low and too fast, its engines screaming protest, dragging something behind it.
Before Simo could blink, it began firing, then plowed into the station's entrance with a deafening roar. A fireball erupted, blowing a ragged hole in the structure, sending debris raining down across the desert.
Simo wondered what that was about. He shrugged his shoulders, then moved out toward the designated fallback.
The more time Angar spent in the Knight's presence, the more the fog clouding his mind lifted, with some clarity returning.
He wished he could speak, to denounce this man as a fraud, but his voice remained locked to some unseen force.
Though the Knight's words about the Cloisteranages held some points.
Angar recalled Venerable Sister Kenson, who saw the Church's failure to employ veterans crippled in glorious Holy War as a fault in policy.
Rather than reform the system, and force the Church to change their policy, she had hired Simo herself, paying him through her stipend meant for rectory upkeep.
Helping one man was a kindness, but it fixed nothing.
Angar, however, for his own world, sought to fix the Cloisteranage system entirely, and in doing so, forge stronger warriors to bolster the Holy Empire.
He couldn't deny the Knight hadn't spoke some truth regrading that flawed system.
But this last scene? It was indefensible. The Knight had sworn a sacred oath, a vow freely chosen, not coerced. If he was so full of lust, he could've joined the Laity and married.
Even with his Knightly oath, if lust gnawed at him too strongly, that's what Voluvicas Credits were for.
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Purging his lust with a married woman, one wed to a man under his own command, and claiming it to be love? That wasn't the way.
The woman, too, had freely sworn an oath, and shattered her matrimonial vows. For what? Satiating desire? Angar had no pity for such oath breakers.
This Knight knew nothing of love. Love wasn't lust. It wasn't the surrender to carnal hunger.
It was pure, a searing honesty that bared the soul. Love was the agony of sacrifice, a mother's anguished tears as she gave all to her children, a father's unyielding duty to keep going, keep providing, no matter what, day in and day out.
It was a force that could rend a heart at the mere thought of loss, just as it had torn his mother apart, and brought her fall.
But love had also given his mother the strength to do what was necessary, raising Angar to be strong.
He held many qualms with the blessed Mother's gospels, her calls for peace, love, and forgiveness clashing with his warrior's views, but her most cherished scripture rang true. 'To love another fully, selflessly, with your whole soul, is to touch the Divine itself. In this sacred act, life's deepest truths shine forth, and the path to Heaven is revealed before this mortal shroud is lifted.'
A strange energy battered Angar's mind, a relentless assault from without, but a faint pulse of resistance stirred within, a spark of his own will, some unknown part of his mind, fighting back.
He tried to focus on it, to nurture that defiance, but the world warped around him, reality twisting like a fevered illusion.
The air turned acrid, heavy with ash and brimstone, as Angar found himself on a ravaged world's surface.
It was a dark and desolate wasteland of destruction and smoldering craters, the sky choked with roiling, blood-red clouds that flared with unnatural light.
In the distance, the constant roar of gunfire, explosions, and the screams of battle, of desperation echoed.
Towering far beyond, the gargantuan form of the Demon Lord Eurynomos emerged, a colossus of profane horror.
His skeletal frame, wreathed in blue-black skin like that of a rotting flesh, rose like a blasphemous monument, each of his bones etched with glowing runes that bled shadow, covered only with a tattered loincloth made of greasy black feathers.
His skull was crowned with jagged antlers, and his eyes were large orbs, filmy and milky white. His giant maw gaped open, dripping saliva, vomiting swarms of chittering imps. Chains of molten iron dangled from his limbs, dragging skulls that wailed with tormented souls crying out in eternal despair.
Beyond, a relentless orbital bombardment crashed down, driving the Demon Lord in one direction.
Angar had studied this. This event kicked off the last galactic war.
Following the Seventh Galactic War, the Holy Empire enacted the New Plan. With stagnant Lux Aeterna Drive technology, it fortified its roughly 25% of galactic space, bolstering Lumen Anchors, preparing for future threats.
In 4027, that threat emerged as Demon Lord Eurynomos attacked a key world. The planet was evacuated as fast as possible, abandoned as Knightly Chapters and the navy gathering in the system, building numbers for a mass assault.
Bound by the Ilarix Accords, which barred orbital bombardment of living beings, permitting strikes only on non-organic targets like infrastructure or vehicles, the Holy Empire devised a cunning strategy.
Naval forces relentlessly bombarded the terrain behind Eurynomos, driving it toward layered lines of Templar companies of Saints and Seraphs. As each line engaged, they peeled back, ensuring the Demon Lord faced a continuous assault from fresh forces.
As long as the navy didn't target the Demon Lord, the Demon Lord couldn't target their ships, and neither could his forces. If he walked into a bombardment, that was on him.
In mere months, this ceaseless strategy banished Eurynomos back to the Underworld, preventing the planet's transformation into a Hellworld.
Though losses were extremely heavy, they weren't as heavy as usual, as the prolonged battles against Demon Lords throughout history had been, and the tactic proved brutally effective.
"He reached the Cloisteranage, Saint Aas," a younger, helmetless Crusader, his voice filled with grim resolve, a headset on, reported to an identical version of the Knight beside Angar.
Saint Aas exhaled heavily as his shoulders sagged. "The children are lost, then. I cannot fathom the clergy abandoning them."
"Aye, Saint," the Crusader replied. "Only the babes and younglings incapable or too slow to march to the evacuation point were left behind. They can easily grow more of those."
Saint Aas sighed again, this time with a weary disgust.
An awkward silence stretched out for a long moment, broken only by the distant sounds of war.
The Crusader shifted uncomfortably and said, "Templar companies are dug in. They're summoning all lone Seraph to advance and engage Eurynomos, Saint."
Aas donned his helm, but he remained unmoving after, only his visor flashing on, glinting in the Hellish light.
A minute later, the Crusader spoke again, urgency now creeping into his voice. "They're calling for you, Saint. Shall I report you're moving up?"
"Give me a moment to think, brother," Saint Aas replied in a strained voice.
The Crusader nodded, waiting in tense silence. After several minutes, Saint Aas' helmet turned to the man, and he said, "Come, brother. We're leaving."
"You're going forward?" the Crusader asked as confusion knit his brow. "I'm ordered back to the command post when you do. One moment, I'm calling it in."
"Halt!" Aas nearly screamed. "No. Not forward. We're leaving this world."
"What?" The Crusader asked in a voice cracking with disbelief. "But…"
"I'm a Psychic," Saint Aas said, his tone hardening. "We don't have the safe range of others. We have the poor range of our psychic powers. I'd be too close to Eurynomos. I'd die in seconds, dealing him no harm.
"You really want me to throw my life away? For what? An Empire that abandons babies and toddlers to a Demon Lord because evacuating them would be too much of a hassle? Because they can just grow more?"
His voice rose, trembling with righteous fury. "By the blessed Mother, they weren't wheat! They were children! I'm not wheat either. And I'm not some mindless robot that can be ordered to throw my life away for nothing. We're leaving. Now. Come."
The Crusader hesitated, his gauntlets clenching. "But…I can't…we can't leave."
"Why not?" Saint Aas demanded, stepping closer.
"Because we're Crusaders. This is the job. This is our purpose."
"Our purpose is to die for no reason?" asked Saint Aas, his voice filled with contempt. "That's not my purpose. Not anymore. I said we're leaving." He turned on his heel, walking off.
The Crusader called after him, nervously. "I have to call this in, Saint!"
Aas halted, turning back, his silhouette stark against the blood-red sky. "You don't. If you won't come, just let me go, brother."
"I can't," the Crusader said, his voice breaking. "My oath. The Edicts say…"
The Psy Crystal on Saint Aas's forearm flared with a sinister pulse. The Crusader staggered, blood streaming from his eyes, nose, and ears, his body crumpling to the scorched earth, lifeless.
Angar knew the psychic power used. It was the last evolution of the Vitality Drain line named Extinguish.
Saint Aas turned away from the corpse, walking off, vanishing into the world's haze as the distant wails of battle grew louder.
The Saint Aas beside Angar turned, his eyes glossy, but with a zealot's fire now. "I wandered after this for a while, brother, then I joined Libertas. Those freedom fighters claim to have principles. They're as corrupted as everyone else. It's all muck. Just dirty, filthy, corrupted muck everywhere. A galaxy swimming in it, bathing in it. There's no escaping it."
Angar's mind recoiled as the strange energy battered him harder, but whatever part of his mind resisting it was growing stronger. It was almost as if he could guide that part of his mind, but it was slippery, like oil, defying control.
"Only Hell has a true principle," Aas continued in a low, almost reverent tone. "Only Hell is honest. Winning is its single tenet. Victory, pure and absolute. Anything to win. All is allowed in its service. No hypocrisy, no pretension, no twisting of reality to fit a false narrative. Perfect clarity. In the end, to stand triumphant."
His gauntlet clamped Angar's shoulder, and his eyes peered deep into Angar's soul. "I'll give you the same choice I gave my attaché here. Come with me, brother, and be free, win. Or die, clinging to the lies of an unholy Empire and false faith."