With the Harmongulan’s venomous needles torn from his flesh, Angar’s agony lessened, giving him some respite from the storm of his constant torment.

  He couldn’t move. Beside his mind still being a battered fortress staving off madness, his limbs were restrained.

  Pain still gnawed at his ravaged body, but it was a damn sight better than the nightmare he’d endured before.

  Starvation clawed at his gut, exhaustion dragged at his bones, and sleep remained a cruel mirage, denied by the lingering venom and its torture, no matter how much he yearned for its respite.

  He wondered if he could activate Ground Current. He didn’t risk testing it. Shackles bound his wrists and ankles. If he activated the power while he had such little control of his body, he’d fall face-first into the ground and just be hauled back into chains.

  He’d bide his time, wait until his tongue and limbs obeyed him again. If the Crusaders’ talk of new gateways held true, he hoped to join them in combat, and prove he wasn’t corrupted by giving battle to the spawn of Hell alongside them.

  These off-worlders stood like titans, their massive armor grinding with each step, but their frames extended thin and long, like Spirit’s, as if stretched out or flattened under a rock.

  The captain, the only one to remove her helm, looked too young to be in charge. Her features echoed Spirit’s alien softness, though her ears weren’t pointed, her hair a normal color, and though her skin was much darker, it gleamed as impossibly flawless as Spirit’s own.

  Most Crusaders gripped a weapon in their gauntlets or slung them over their shoulders with straps, some long device not unlike the Homunculus’s own.

  Angar, piecing together things Spirit had said, figured these were firearms, kind of like the beams built into some robots. It made sense as they had the general shape and length of an arm, and spat fire.

  Three bore sleeker, elongated variants, while three others hauled hulking machines strapped to their backs and held nothing like these firearms.

  Some wore cloaks of various colors, but none were as grand as the captain’s own crimson cloak. Some wore something like a backpack among other strange items too.

  Questions gnawed at him. How did his shackles, their ship, their weapons, and their armor defy the metal-eating fog that choked this world?

  All the massive, armored suits worn by every Crusader seemed somewhat similar, though there were differences. The ones with the sleeker firearms had slimmer armor, and the ones with the machines on their back had much heavier armor covered in heavy slabs.

  On the top right of their chests was a picture of a hunched man grimacing, his body covered in wounds, bleeding all over, his weapon spitting out fire. Over this was a strange shape, and on the pauldron’s a similar shape.

  On the center of every chest was a triangle pointed upward, an eye in the center of it.

  And where was Spirit? If the Crusaders landed on schedule, six days had passed since she’d fought with him against the Harmongulan. He hoped she was okay. He owed her the truth. She’d been right.

  If he could turn back time, Angar would flee, and never face the Harmongulan. He’d take the jeers of coward and oath breaker from every soul over the torment he’d suffered. No words could cage the dread for that beast he’d once met with blind courage, before its venom taught him the true meaning of regret.

  Once the area was cleansed. His maul, recovered from the carnage, vanished aboard their tiny spaceship, or tiny compared to the Steadfast.

  Before Mikhin and those he commanded marched off, they’d filed past Angar, each saluting him.

  Then Angar was dragged a kilometer off and propped against a rock.

  “Third Lieutenant Zilos!” the captain’s voice cracked out like a whip. “Why hasn’t your cherry set her armor to this world’s gravity and pressure?”

  Zilos, wheeled on another. “Sergeant Enci! Why hasn’t your cherry tuned her suit?”

  The sergeant snapped at a new target, Angar guessed this ‘cherry,’ now scrambling under the chastisement.

  “Gather, sisters, for prayer!” Vernost bellowed a moment later, her command a thunderclap. The Crusaders massed before her, a wall of metal and zeal.

  “Kneel for the Penitent’s Prayer,” she ordered roughly, and all obeyed.

  “Oh Lord, my Shepherd, my beacon in this black abyss,” she intoned, “let not the sacred martyrdom of Mi, our blessed Messiah, Mother of all, be squandered. Arm my fist with might to crush Hellspawn and Heretic alike. Kindle my mind with Holy rage and light the path to their throats, that I may reap a glorious harvest of slaughter. Set my soul ablaze with righteous fire, guiding Your flock from this endless gloom. With my dying gasp, I offer myself on war’s altar, treading this Glorious Path. For God and Empire! Amen!”

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  “Amen!” roared the Crusaders, their chorus a feral hymn.

  “Lieutenants, to me!” Vernost barked, stalking a few paces off.

  Sometimes, to Angar, it seemed like these Crusaders could communicate without talking. He could hear amazingly well now, so would know if they were whispering.

  If they could communicate silently, these ones were doing so. But he now knew what the strange shape was over the bleeding man spitting fire on their upper-right chest and pauldrons. It was rank, and shaped differently for sergeants, lieutenants, the others, and the captain.

  A few moments later, the four women tensed. One of them called out, “Form up! Captain Baron Ernhold comes in the Sanctum Gladius.”

  Soon, a new but very similar spaceship flew into view, its rear gaping wide. Thirty-four Crusaders leapt out, these ones taller and their armor broader at the shoulders, crashing to the earth like falling rocks.

  All the new Crusaders but one formed up in rows as the other Crusaders had. The lone figure removed his helm, revealing a shaved face with a small mustache. The man’s skin was as dark as the captain’s though his hair was a strange type of gold instead of colored normally.

  “Ah!” he crowed. “The radiant Captain Asha. God and Empire. Your face lifts this darkness.”

  “God and Empire, Captain Ernhold,” Vernost growled before taking her helmet off. “No one told me Dragon Company’s other half was joining us here. We were set to write many names in gold upon the walls of Aterheart as martyrs.”

  “Nor did I know you’d be here until we arrived in this system, my dear sister, Captain Asha,” he replied, grin unshaken.

  “It’s Captain Vernost.”

  “And it’s Captain Baron Ernhold. We all take small comforts where we can find them in this endless gloom, my beautiful sister. Your report was relayed to me. Three gateways spilling forth blights. I say that I keep my second and third squad with me, you do the same, and we both put our first squads on whatever gate your vision told you would be the weakest. Our ships too, one on standby in the event either of us are overrun.”

  “Agreed, Captain Ernhold,” she replied curtly.

  Ernhold’s gaze swept the scene, halting on Angar. His smirk faltered. “What in the Three’s name is that thing? One of the natives?”

  “Enough!” shouted Vernost. “That boy…that man is a brother. He stood victorious against a Harmongulan. He stood against it without real arms or armor, just a sanctified stick with a rock attached to it. You will not mock him in my presence!”

  Chastised, the man smiled and nodded his head again. “Indeed? Then I salute such mettle and bravery. May the Three shine their light on our new brother, and cleanse him of that dark taint, a grim reward for such pious steadfastness. Is your first squad going on my ship, or mine yours?”

  Vernost turned her head and shouted, “First Lieutenant! You’re in command of both Dragon Company’s first squads and the north gate’s slaughter! Embark the Fama Aeterna! Make our chapter proud!”

  “The Grim Martyrs!” bellowed the Crusaders, save the captains, their cry shaking the ground.

  Once both spaceships roared skyward, the remaining twenty-three Crusaders set to carving the earth.

  Angar figured the hardpan, unyielding rock stretching flat and barren, would defy their efforts, but they tore into it, metal shovels and raw might rending stone like flesh.

  He couldn’t fathom these pits’ purpose as the warriors squared off in front of them, not in them, mostly grim silhouettes against the ashy dusk, and waited.

  Two of the hulking sisters shrugged off their massive rigs, planting them on three legs. The machines whirred, expanding into towering contraptions of blackened metal, bristling with menace.

  Angar was set off to the side, the Crusaders arrayed in a column before him, facing to his right. He still couldn’t move his body, so he could only see what was in front of him.

  Hours dragged by, and he had watched some tents be erected, and the Crusaders mostly stand around doing nothing.

  Much later, Captain Vernost’s voice cracked the air like a flaying whip again. “It’s near time, sisters! Purge the cowardice from your guts and wipe the sand from your snatches. Prepare to give righteous slaughter to the minions of Hell!”

  After a minute, she roared, “It tears open! Holy Fortification, now!”

  Shimmering blocks, translucent and pulsing with faint light, snapped into being before each Crusader.

  “Lock and Load for the Lord, now, sisters!” Vernost bellowed. “Send this filth back to the Underworld! For God and Empire!”

  The sky shattered as firearms unleashed their wrath. A cacophony of guttural thumps and searing flashes ripped through the air. Thump-thump-thump-thump, an endless hymn of destruction.

  The Crusader nearest Angar wielded one of the longer, sleeker firearms. It didn’t blaze out fire like the others, and her discharges seemed more deliberate. After every measured fire spat from her weapon, she’d whisper, “Get some,” or “Get some impact,” almost growling.

  The two large backpack contraptions roared loudest, like relentless storms of light and terrible sound, spewing fire in a ceaseless barrage that shook the ground.

  The third Crusader away from Angar fired sparingly. Every so often, she’d cry out, “Marked area, Holy Bombardment! Marked area, Righteous Raze!”

  Angar cursed his unmoving body. He wished he could see the gateway and the rest of the fight, but all he could see were the Crusader’s in front of him and their side of the battle, the terrible ruckus their weapons making nearly shattering his eardrums.

  Occasionally, the woman nearest him would remove something from her firearm and place a new thing in while screaming out, “Reloading!” Like all the other Crusaders, once in a while, she’d scream out the name of what Angar assumed was an Ability too.

  At one point, she stopped resting on her block as something Angar had thought was a metal shield, but was like the robot drones on the Steadfast, flew off her back and forward, releasing beams at something Angar couldn’t see.

  She pulled out a very tiny firearm held in one hand and started firing it, yelling, “My front right, Voluntas! Clear it!”

  Seconds later, she was hunched over her long firearm once more, growling out, “Get some,” and the drone returned, settling on her back again.

  Angar had clung to the hope of reclaiming his limbs before the clash faded, to prove in battle the corruption hadn’t claimed him. He moved his arm as best he could, trying to wrestle back control.

  The Crusader nearest him looked over. “Don’t move again! Not while we battle. I’ll assume the dark whispers have taken hold and put a few holes right through your mug.”

  Sometime later, as abruptly as it ignited, the sky’s flashes died, and a heavy silence smothered the field.

  A loud cry of, “The Grim Martyrs!” shattered the stillness.