The grinding screech of the ramp descending tore through the sulfuric haze of Sulfuron 9. Captain Vernost stood motionless until it slammed into place with a metallic clang, then leapt out.
Upon landing, her armored boots cratered the brittle soil. She dug her company’s banner into the ground and swept her gaze across the unholy scene.
The air stank of decay and rotten eggs. This was a cursed world she’d have spat on if not wearing her helmet.
Behind her, the thudding impacts of her sisters’ landings reverberated through her bones like a chorus of war made flesh.
“Chalk empty,” crackled the operator’s voice in her ear.
“Confirmed,” she replied.
She looked south, where a call blared a challenge, a pulsing thud against her ribs. A faithful soul had offered him or herself up as a blessed martyr.
Before all else, she snapped to attention. With a voice hard as steel as she yelled, “Left face!”
Her company pivoted as one. “Present arms!”
A salute was the least she could offer such noble sacrifice. She’d find out the name and ensure it was honored.
“At ease!” she bellowed, her words slicing through the fog of this cursed world.
Before her, a rabble of stunted Terrans, stumpy, hunched, malformed remnants of man with sickeningly pale skin and strange hair, gawked at the Fama Aeterna, her ship.
Their awe was understandable. They had no tech. This planet’s corrosive atmosphere devoured lesser metals like a ravenous beast, but her vessel and Crusader Armor stood unyielding, forged of sturdy enough stuff, and tempered by Holy flame and blessed battle on worlds much rougher.
That these wretched souls had clawed out an existence here was a testament to the Three’s brutal favor, their resilience hammered into their ancestors through generations of suffering.
They wouldn’t need to endure this forsaken rock forever. It wouldn’t be so cursed once terraformed, and the cities and towns placed under domes.
But judging from what little information she got from the communication capsule, or comcap, sent by her chapter’s grand marshal upon arriving to this system, after Divine Theosis’ call to arms, it’d be a long while until the Holy Empire could spare and muster enough resources to make a dent.
Lower-end invasions were handled by the local militias and citizenry. The combat arms factions and imperial military handled the next couple tiers. This was a unique situation.
Another world lost to Hell was a disgrace the Holy Empire couldn’t abide, especially now, with a new galactic war looming.
Before issuing orders, Vernost invoked her Feat, Visions of Daniel, her mind opening to what was to come.
Her skull throbbed as visions erupted. Three gateways splitting the earth, vomiting forth a tide of blights, the world overwhelmed, drowned in their corruption.
She snarled inwardly. Three gateways signaled a Moderate invasion, yet blights were the spawn of Serious-rated incursions. The information she had been provided with was rancid. This certainly wasn’t a Minor rated skirmish as reported.
The remains of a Harmongulan lay nearby, its death unexplained but its presence ominous. Something festered here. None of this was normal.
The scene in front of her was starting to make some sense, but it was far from sensible. How the Harmongulan was killed seemed impossible, as too was how it came to be here in the first place.
Things on this cursed world weren’t right.
Switching to the command channel, she roared, “Sisters, take heart! A fresh invasion looms, and though a new brother, brave and bold, has beaten us to some of it, by the Three’s grace, we shall bathe the ground red with sacred slaughter and collect many world-first achievements still!”
Her voice was a lash, igniting fervor. She let her sisters revel a moment in excitement before barking out, “Three gateways, so we shall place a squad at each. Only three, yet blights shall spill forth. Many of us shall have our names written in gold upon the walls of Aterheart Hall as blessed martyrs! Glory to the Three! For God and Empire!”
Three thunderous stomps of armored boots rang out in unison, her sisters’ approval quaking the earth.
On the operator channel, she snapped, “Send a comcap and relay to Aterheart – three gateways incoming spewing blights. I’m sending coordinates. Send your drones to monitor. We’ve time yet. One rift will tear open right here, where this rare Gatekeeper met its end.”
The stumpy Terrans were hesitant to approach her, uncertainty etched into their blocky and burn-ridden faces. To help put them at ease, Vernost removed her helm, revealing a scarred visage framed by sweat-matted hair, proving she was a normal woman, and not a monster under this bulky metal.
And her sisters’ chatter had buzzed too often in her ears, idle tongues she’d silence, but removing her helm gave her an excuse to let them get it out of their system, silenced later.
Her gaze fixed on a boy clinging to life, skewered atop the needles of the Harmongulan’s strange, venomous spikes. The boy dwarfed the others in size, his chest and shoulders broad and thick. All the Laymen and Laywomen in front of her seemed way too broad and thick.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She couldn’t see the boy’s face too well, but what she could see seemed handsome enough, if in an overly ruggish way.
By his size alone, the impaled boy had to be a Crusader, risen from the Laity, low of Tier, felled by a foe no one but a Saint would face alone.
But this boy had, bravely, insanely, gloriously.
His hands, blackened and twisted by corruption, told of a soul lost to darkness. A pyrrhic victory. His only reward, as so often in life, was agony, his flesh a trophy for the infernal abyss.
A Layman ascending to Holy Knight in this way was a rarity, but not unheard of. Before she removed her helm, her sisters had been chattering about the last known Layman to do so.
Horridus the Mortifer, Trium Crucesignatus Lapsus, a Crusader fallen while a Seraph, becoming Nofelim, whose name was a curse, his oath forsworn nearly a thousand years ago, now reigning over a Hellworld.
But many Crusaders had fallen to unholy corruption, their souls twisted to darkness, cast from grace.
Vernost had dismissed the prattle of her sisters over the squad channels. Unlike their clattering tongues, she cared nothing for how one started their journey down the Glorious Path. All that mattered was that they had the guts to tread its merciless track, and the faith to cling to its blood-slicked edges.
And this stumpy boy, this man really, her heart ached for him, the terrible anguish he must be in. His life bravely given in such battle, faithful unto victory, fulfilling his Holy oath.
But, in the end, unfairly, the unholy shadows claimed their due.
His hands alone, warped and seeped with corruption, told of a warrior broken beneath the weight of damnation. Still, his defiance, standing alone, no blaster, no Crusader Armor, against a dread Harmongulan, when much higher Tiers would’ve retreated, stirred something primal in her.
Approaching the stumpy locals, she performed the blessing of the trey, touching her forehead, right shoulder, then left while intoning, “The Lord above, blessed Messiah, Divine Theosis,” in her gravelly voice like a hymn.
They mimicked her clumsily, their faith green, unknowing, untested.
“For God and Empire, Laymen and Laywomen,” she declared. “I am Knight Vernost, captain of the Grim Martyr’s Dragon Company F. Who commands here?”
A man stepped forward, less wretched than the rest, clean shaven, the most presentable of the stumpy bunch. “I believe I do, blessed Crusader. I’m the highest-ranking military official. Sergeant Optio Mikhin.”
“Name the blessed martyr giving their soul to the challenge beacon to be honored, and why haven’t these infernal remnants been purged by flame?” she demanded, gesturing at the corpses that had once made up the bulk of the Harmongulan’s mass, their black blood pooling in the dirt.
The man’s eyes squinted. “We don’t know the name of the blessed martyr, Crusader, and we thought we weren’t supposed to touch anything. The…in case it corrupts us. Holy Theosis gave me a task to protect our Crusader here from wildlife but said not to touch him. We don’t know his name either, but he looks corrupted. He did a lot for this world, so I hope you factor that into any decisions you make. We’re only alive because of this man.”
Vernost’s jaw tightened. “You are mistaken, Layman. Divine Theosis doesn’t give out such tasks.”
The man’s brows furrowed. He stood taller, looking at her defiantly. “I don’t lie, Crusader. He’s been giving me tasks since I joined the Imperial Army. First to mobilize a defense against and purge the undead the reavers left behind, then to inform members of the imperial military to move north in defense of the beacon drawing Hellspawn.
“Not long after that, another to assist this Crusader in his battle against the brutes, then to move as many citizens south as we could when the Harmongulan appeared. Lastly, after the Harmongulan fell, to protect this Crusader until your arrival.”
After a pause, he added, “Crusader.”
Mikhin’s words burned with conviction, his voice raw with earnest zeal, but Vernost knew they couldn’t hold truth.
A task from Holy Theosis to muster a defense and purge the undead – yes, that could be a task given to the highest-ranking military official.
Moving citizenry out of the path of danger – yes too, but no one could’ve reported the Harmongulan’s emergence as its corruption would’ve consumed all of this world that got close enough to lay eyes on it.
Mikhin couldn’t have known of this Gatekeeper, so Theosis couldn’t have tasked him. That just wasn’t how the Divine System operated.
Unless these Terrans, fresh to the Holy Empire, operated under different rules, rules loosened by Divine Theosis, a possibility she couldn’t dismiss.
The mention of reavers made her wonder. She had been told this world faced a Minor invasion, and reavers matched that info. But brutes came from Moderate invasions. This world was beyond fortunate to have survived them, and enduring the Harmongulan was a true miracle.
She shoved her curiosity aside. This man knew too little. Further questions wouldn’t solve the mystery.
“Crusaders are addressed as ‘Sir,’ ‘Madame,’ or ‘Knight.’ Madame or Knight Captain in my case, Layman. This area must be cleansed. Set the Hellspawn ablaze. It’s safe to touch them. Begin that task as we prepare for the next invasions. We’ll do what we can for our brave new brother, on my honor.”
Mikhin hesitated. “If you don’t mind, there’s another matter, Knight Captain. Our biggest city, Kondune, is close to civil war. The old emperor is dead, killed by one of his own guards claiming he turned Heretic. The Holy System’s named nobles, but they’re snarling over low ranks and angry that they’re not above the Laity.”
Vernost held in a grunt. “Unless Heresy festers, Lay matters are not Crusader matters. I could spare a member of my retinue to help settle things. We’ll see. It’s not a priority.”
She nearly pointed out that if this city was in the southern hemisphere, it wasn’t the largest. The northern hemisphere housed five million souls, the southern a little over one.
The deadlands around the equator claimed roughly half the world, burning too fiercely for even these tough, stunted Terrans to cross. She didn’t know how the populations had split. Contact between the hemispheres was impossible with their current tech level.
But she held her tongue. More pressing duties demanded her focus than schooling savages.
“Thank you, Knight Captain,” Mikhin said, turning to bellow orders as Vernost put her helm back on.
“Silence your tongues, ladies!” she roared over the command channel. To her operator, “Land. I need Medicus and the chaplain. Send out our servants to assist these soldiers.”
Her primary intent with the servants wasn’t the aid, but to have them address the questions of these new Laymen and Laywomen here, so she and her sisters would be spared the task.
As confirmations crackled, Sister Yuuga leapt from the ramp, her ancient frame clad in battle-scarred armor. She hit the ground laughing, a mad cackle from a face creased like old leather. “Finally letting me get some and spill blood, Child? Finally? I told you that I was raised on Nihil, and far from any city, a world drowning in Hell’s spawn. My flock closed hundreds of gateways with no help, just zealous faith and blasters!”
Vernost bit back a retort. Sister Yuuga was a liar, a sin members of the Ecclesiastic should condemn, not commit. Vernost knew what would be said next – some nonsense softening the lie, allowing latitude, making it a mere exaggeration.
“Or, it seemed like hundreds, Child,” added the excited, lying Presbyter.
“No, Sister Yuuga,” Vernost cut in, happy to end the chaplain’s delusions of fighting alongside Dragon Company. “See to my brave new brother impaled on that vile Harmongulan device.”
Yuuga squinted at the large, stumpy boy, then snorted. “See to what, Child? Look at his hands. May the Three protect us, but he’s too far gone. The darkness has claimed him. Best we can do is end his suffering and cleanse his corpse along with this Hellspawn. Can I do it? I’ll get XP. You wouldn’t.”
