As Simo slogged through the pre-dawn murk toward his job, the sight of freshly shattered windows snapped him to alertness, demanding his full attention.

  Hours remained before sunrise, but he knew Sir Angar was awake. His master would be up even if creatures of the infernal abyss hadn’t come calling for his blood.

  Gripping the entry chain, Simo yanked it hard, the clank echoing as a bell rang quietly inside. His single hand shifted to the auto-blaster’s sling, bouncing it off his shoulder to clutch the grip, and with a frayed boot, he nudged the door open.

  The groan of hinges screamed into the silence, his eyes darting across the vestibule as he stepped inside.

  The air hit him like a punch, thick with brimstone’s sting and the rot of dead flesh. A rift pulsed faintly in the center of the vestibule, its edges glowing a sickly gray, slowly sealing itself like a festering wound.

  Around it sprawled the corpses of over a dozen abominations. Twisted things of the abyss, limbs contorted into grotesque knots, skin splotched with corruption.

  If they were Heretics, warped by maleficia into demoniacs or diabolics, or true spawn of the infernal abyss, Simo couldn’t tell. They looked more disgusting than usual.

  He felt no dark whispers crawling at his mind and strained his ears for sounds of combat. He only heard the faint slosh of water from the right, and he pivoted toward the guest quarters and its bathing room.

  Sir Angar sat there, submerged in a crimson tide of his own blood. His eyes, those cold, piercing voids that carved through a man’s soul, locked onto Simo’s and offered a curt nod.

  A shiver rippled down his spine, as it always did meeting that brutal gaze. Gashes and bruises marred the boy’s flesh, yet he lounged unfazed, ignoring the wounds as if they were flies on a corpse.

  Simo knew his young master wouldn’t want to be bothered by questions of the rift and corpses. Slinging his auto-blaster crossbody to free his lone arm, he let it hang behind him, glancing enviously at the new cybernetic-limb implant Angar now sported, a marvel of steel and sinew he knew he’d never possess himself.

  Nearly forty years he’d bled for the Imperial Army, clawing his way to Praefectus Logis, the ninth of ten enlisted ranks. Then a Hellspawn took his arm, and he was discharged and spat out like gristle.

  As an infantryman, he had no real skills outside of warring, and was put in the Liberi Humiles, the lowest of the Lay Orders, made up of laborers, farmers, and servants, scornfully called serfs.

  He was lucky to have this job. Any job at all, really. Very few were willing to hire a one-armed servant or laborer. He couldn’t fight like he once had, but seeing how often Sir Angar was attacked, he had been doing a lot of it nonetheless, and high-level stuff too.

  In one year and four months with Sir Angar, Simo had seen more carnage than in his decades of soldiering. Hell and Heretics assailed his master relentlessly. He had gotten enough good-quality experience to ascend to Tier 3, a rare thing even among the Laity’s more important Orders.

  And his share of credits from the loot had saved his family. And his pride.

  All thanks to this boy.

  I shouldn’t think of him as a boy, thought Simo. He’s never acted like one and he’s undergoing the Grim Ordeals this week.

  That in and of itself was very strange as Sir Angar had become a Holy Knight before joining a Cloisteranage, schools where most imperial children grew to adulthood, not after graduating from one and surviving the Grim Ordeals.

  He’d been raised to Knighthood straight from the Laity, a feat unheard of since Horridus the Mortifer, Trium Militus Lapsus, a fallen Crusader, a butcher who’d torched worlds and claimed Doomhaven as his Hell-crowned throne a millennium ago.

  That name alone was a curse, spat in fear across the Holy Empire. Sir Angar carried that shadow, a stain no amount of prayer could bleach.

  So, the boy had that going against him. And not just that. His hands were monstrous, screaming Hellsign and unholy corruption. Or hand now, since he’d lost an arm a couple of attacks back.

  Even so, no one dared claim he was under dark influence or a Heretic. Since joining this Cloisteranage, the Underworld had struck at him hundreds of times, its hatred growing as Angar neared his sixteenth year and the Grim Ordeals.

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  Simo snatched a robe and positioned himself near the bath’s edge, poised for his master’s exit. After cleansing, Sir Angar performed the sign of the trey, a silent offering from a man whose devotion burned like a righteous flame.

  Seeing that caused Simo to dip his head and murmur a blessing to the sacred powers above – the Divine System, Holy Theosis; the blessed Mother, Mi Alcyone, the only half-Pleiadean ever born; and the Lord Himself.

  Angar rose at last, water streaming from his bald head, a mark of all Cloisteranage students to prevent lice and such. His frame loomed, forged by a brutal world beyond the Holy Empire’s fold until last year, with sulfurous air that made every breath burn and gnawed metal, gravity a quarter heavier than standard, pressure twice the norm, sculpting his master into a mass of muscle and will.

  Simo handed over the robe, then grunted as he hefted Angar’s power hammer, a beast of a weapon he could barely lift, and handed it off. His master disliked being unarmed.

  They strode across the vestibule to the chapel, where stained glass splashed the Trey’s glow of a triangle cradling the Eye of Providence onto the stone.

  Angar knelt on bare floor, spurning the mats, his hammer at his side like a loyal hound. Simo joined him, easing onto a cushion to spare his old knees, and they prayed until dawn’s first rays pierced the gloom.

  Simo stood with a groan, his old joints aching. His days serving Angar were waning. The Grim Ordeals loomed, and he knew his master would survive them. He’d soon join a Knightly Chapter, leaving Simo behind.

  As he had always been curious about it, while he still could, he asked, “What do you pray for each morning, Sir Angar?”

  Those terrible eyes turned on him. “What do you pray for, Simo?”

  Most Crusaders were pricks seeing everyone as beneath them, calling all others Layman or Laywoman, ignoring their thoughts and worth entirely. Angar hardly spoke, but Simo wished his master would be a little more formal when he did. For propriety’s sake.

  “The same as everyone else, I guess,” replied Simo. “Guidance. Protection for my family. I told you my youngest boy’s graduating from the Pinaculum Ordinis soon. I asked the Three to help him with his finals, for him to get a good job offer so he doesn’t end up working for some soulless corporation in some nothing position. For him to have a much better life than his father, the Three willing.”

  Angar’s glare pierced deeper, a drill through Simo’s soul. “My faith differs,” he said. “I ask for nothing. Holy Theosis decreed the Lord craves Hellspawn and Heretic blood, and my life is dedicated to satiating His thirst. I don’t pray as I know it to be. I meditate on battles, past and future.”

  Zealous fervor flared in Simo’s breast, but before he could reply, an alarm’s chime cut the silence, signaling someone or something approaching.

  He went into the vestibule to view the scry-slate, his master following, power hammer in hand. It was a young female student.

  This was the Princeps Rectoria’s rectory. Sir Angar’s rank as a Crusader and the threat he posed to the boys’ dorm made it fitting for him to reside here instead. Female callers, however, were a breach Simo knew would earn him the venerable sister’s fury.

  He sensed this was another attack brewing, but if it wasn’t, he’d linger nearby, watchful, ensuring no sins were committed.

  “Female student caller,” he told his master.

  Angar grunted. “Those foul abominations are using students now?”

  “Maybe she has a crush on you, Sir. Should you put on your sweats? I doubt opening the door in a robe is appropriate.”

  Angar, wary of danger, forbade Simo from opening the door in risky moments, preferring to face the threat himself. “I’ll post up on the balcony,” said Simo. “If this is an attack, it’s the closest two have ever been. The rift’s still fading from the last.”

  As Sir Angar went to change, Simo pressed deeper into the vestibule, his footsteps clanking against the stone. He ascended the stairs, auto-blaster primed, and locked its sights on the door, ready to flee to the vault if there were dark whispers, and they were too much.

  Outside, the girl yanked the chain several times, the sound jarring in the stillness. After a pause, she rang the bell again.

  As she pushed the door open a crack and peeked her bald head in, a dressed Sir Angar walked to greet her, and they spoke for a few moments. Simo couldn’t hear what was said, but the girl smiled innocently as she held out a Riftseed.

  Sir Angar lunged, his power hammer arcing toward the girl's hand in a desperate bid to knock the cursed root free. But it was too late.

  Her arm twisted with a sickening snap, the bone jutting through torn flesh, but the root had already burrowed deep, its dark tendrils pulsing beneath her skin.

  Simo, perched on the balcony, steadied his aim and fired. A plasma bolt tore through her eye as Angar's hammer slammed into her skull with a meaty crunch echoing through the chamber, heard clearly even from the balcony.

  Her body shuddered, skin tearing as jagged black vines erupted in thorny coils. Flesh peeled back, bones twisting into gnarled branches, her screams warping into a strange wail.

  She stretched into an abyssal tree-like thing, its trunk a pulsing wound of meat and blood. At its heart, a rift to the Underworld tore open, vomiting thirteen of some type of abomination. He didn’t know what they were specifically – besides disgusting. Charred bark clad their humanoid forms, eyes blazed with unholy fire, and needle-teeth gnashed in gaping jaws.

  Angar vanished in a flash, reappearing among them with a thunderclap. Lightning erupted from him, forking between the spawn, searing their hides. He spun, hammer whirling, unleashing a storm of electric fury that charred and staggered his foes.

  As the dark whispers were easily handled, Simo triggered Defensive Fortification and a shimmering block appeared in front of him. He opened fire with his Pyreclaw. Plasma bolts spat superheated death, searing into abyssal flesh, the air thick with brimstone’s reek.

  As his auto-blaster spit fire, the same question gnawed at him as always – just what had Sir Angar done to draw such wrath from the Underworld?