The High Priest's expression soured, twisting into a mask of disgust. He looked ready to spit a fresh threat, but before he could part his lips, a dry crack sliced through the humid sea breeze.
Beep-Beep-Beep.
The rhythmic chirping echoed in unison inside both Forest Rangers' helmets. The Master, who had his slung at his hip, wasted no time snapping it on before turning immediately toward his disciple.
Ashe, helmet already secured by habit, slapped the tactical visor down over his brow. The crude green-phosphor display hummed to life with an electric buzz, bathing his eyes in emerald light.
A sweep-line cut across the grid-patterned interface, locking onto a signal closing fast from the shoreline. Ashe blinked; the signature wasn't a ghost. An ID code was already strobing in the upper corner.
"It's a ping from the S-117..." Ashe reported, a sliver of genuine surprise breaking through his flat, monotone delivery.
"Drawk..." The Old Man grunted, venting a sigh that hovered between relief and dread. "That scale-skin finally made it back, huh?"
While the return offered cold comfort, the velocity and vector were wrong. Ashe narrowed his eyes behind the visor. 'If it's Drawk… why didn't we trip him earlier? At this range, we should have seen him miles ago.'
Sensing the answer before he could even frame the question, the old Master spun toward the sea.
"Get ready," he commanded, his voice tight.
"Ready for wha—?" the cleric started, but the words died in his throat.
As if answering him, a flash tore through the fog in the same direction as the S-117's signal.
A flare shrieked into the night sky.
Like the ones used by the barges, it was a declaration. A signal for the coastal batteries.
However... its color paralyzed every soul who caught that crimson glare.
It was a hue reserved for a single organization in the entire Regnum.
The Old Man's jaw tightened as his premonition turned to cold iron reality.
From the fog bank emerged a gargantuan beast of dark metal. Its silhouette was angular, aggressive, and massive: a steel razor forged to slice through the sea and any fool stupid enough to cross its path.
To Ashe, that piece of naval engineering possessed a... 'Macabre Beauty.'
Though it was undeniably a Warship—bristling with tiered artillery batteries like iron quills covering every conceivable angle—what dominated the vessel wasn't its guns, but its prow.
There was no mere decorative figurehead there; it was an integral part of the hull: a massive, angelic female figure wrought of white gold. Her eyes were sealed by a metallic blindfold, her body elongated to serve as the cutwater, cleaving the sea while her wings swept back, merging into the steel on both edges of the 'razor.'
Her face, sculpted with unsettling realism, was frozen in a silent scream.
At a glance, it looked like the gesture of a fierce warrior charging with divine fury against the brine and the endless waves.
But... perhaps because of his Master's tutelage... to Ashe's hidden eyes beneath his helmet...
That mute scream could also be read as one of eternal agony. Divinity used as a tool, converted into a... battering ram... for the sake of the crew that enslaved her.
As more steel emerged from the mist, Ashe's gaze instinctively drifted to the towering smokestacks vomiting black soot, staining the night sky.
There, lined up with pride upon the plating, shone the sigils of the great powers of the Regnum:
The elegant Fleur-de-lis of the Frankish Kingdom. The severe Iron Cross of the Germanic Reich. The straight St. George's Cross of Britannia. The sharp Cross of Saint James of the Kingdom of Hispania.
And beside them, the heavy Covenant Cross: an amalgam of emblems from the smaller Kingdoms, smelted and unified under the double-barred Jagiellonian Cross of the Kingdom of Polanie.
All of them were subordinate to the supreme Cross of the Regnum: the Vatican.
And just like the light of the flare, that cross did not shine in gold or immaculate white.
It was a visceral, bloody red.
The color of the Church's executive branch; its judges, executioners, and investigators. The one organization no one expected to see in a forgotten village, or even on the front lines, despite their might:
The Inquisition.
Father Sacristan recoiled, his face turning pale under the red glow, the arrogance drained from his body.
But what truly unsettled Ashe wasn't the ship, nor the cleric's terror. It was his Master's reaction.
The old Forest Ranger watched the vessel without a hint of surprise. There was no shock in his stance, only a fatalistic calm.
"So..." the old man murmured with a nearly imperceptible sigh, barely audible over the roar of distant engines. "The time has finally come."
Ashe glanced at him, confused.
His Master offered no explanations. He snapped his helmet shut with a violent jerk, masking his eyes, and threw an arm out toward the treeline.
"Grab the Alpha's head and follow me," he ordered, before firing his grapple.
The cable went taut and, syncing with the roar of violet flames from his Jump Kit, the Old Man shot into the thicket, leaving Ashe behind with the trembling priest.
Ashe asked no questions. Under the corrupt light of the moon, he retrieved the Alpha's head, still dripping foul, black blood, and engaged his own gear to shadow his Master toward the very same bay the Inquisition's destroyer was bearing down on.
-
Meanwhile… aboard the vessel.
On one of the starboard decks…
A woman of sharp, predatory beauty, clad in a black leather greatcoat reinforced with filigreed steel cuirasses, stood impervious to the brine-laden wind whipping her short hair. In her hand, she clutched a cage half her size… empty.
Under the moonlight—tainted by the breath of the Monoliths drifting in the air like suspended ash—the Hallowed Steel of the cage reacted. It glowed with antagonistic defiance, refusing to accept that corrupt radiance.
The moment she lost sight of the creature the cage had held until mere moments ago—now vanished between the jagged coastal cliffs—she wasted no time. She pivoted on her military heel—sharp enough to puncture the deck plating—and strode through the bulkhead, leaving the damp chill of the night to descend into the steel belly of the ship.
Inside, amidst claustrophobic corridors, scalding pipes, and the constant thrum of machinery vibrating through the soles of her boots. Wherever she stepped, the crew parted without command, executing the Sign of the Regnum:
A curt cross over the chest, punctuated by a dry, painful strike to the heart, performed with rigid discipline.
Only the most hardened—or the most foolish—dared to lift their eyes. But only once she had passed; they were idiots, not suicides.
And they had no desire to lose something "valuable," as the rumors whispered.
Yet, it wasn't the curve of her silhouette that snagged their attention, but the golden glint cutting through the gloom. The small fortune she carried, intricately set within the massive birdcage.
Upon reaching her destination, she halted before a steel hatch identical to any other.
The sector was unnervingly quiet. The crew shunned it, and the few forced to remain at their posts made no sound, as if afraid the noise itself would betray them.
The officer inhaled slowly. With methodical precision, she stripped off her damp greatcoat and inspected the rest of her uniform before entering.
Unlike the crew, dressed in worn fatigues patched with coarse fabric, her attire was a second skin. Her black tunic was seamless, broken only by the Inquisition crimson on her lapels, glowing faintly with an intimidating allure.
Nothing about her screamed; everything whispered control. The skirt was not an ornament: it was protocol. The heels of her boots were not vanity: they were discipline.
Finished, she rapped her knuckles twice. Measured force. No haste, no hesitation.
"Permission to enter."
The hatch slid open with the whisper of well-oiled steel.
Immediately, the fine scent of incense caressed her nostrils—so distinct from the diesel fumes that permeated the rest of the ship, trespassing without leave.
Like the scent, the office did not belong on a warship: floors of dark wood, carved furniture unfit for battle, and heavy tapestries suffocating the pulse of the engine room.
The officer advanced, stopped at exactly three paces from the desk, and snapped into a perfect salute.
Behind the oak desk—polished, worn, yet majestic—a figure sat writing, unmoved by her presence or her salute.
The silhouette, shoulders impossibly broad, was a silent battlefront amidst the shadows wrestling with the glow of a dozen candles.
Still, she did not flinch. She used the silence to look up and observe him, with a mixture of valor and reverence not unlike the fear he inspired in the crew.
Everything about him was red: cassock, short mantle, gloves, and a rigid mask concealing his face. Its texture was fibrous and rough, elongating the shadows across his features, leaving only two sharp slits for sight.
Only the immaculate white of the judicial wig stood out in the gloom... like bone upon blood.
"My Lord. It is done," she announced, placing the empty cage on a nearby shelf with deliberate softness, as if even the faintest clink were an act of insubordination.
He replied without pausing his hands. Linen bandages, scrawled with psalms, peeked from under his gloves while the quill glided over the paper with hypnotic calm.
"Impeccable work, as always, Noel."
His voice filled the office despite bordering on a whisper: rasping, deep; a dry, scorched sound, like stone grinding against stone. You didn't need to explain the damage. You heard it.
"Now that we no longer need it, do not forget to take the cage to the Friar Coinsmith. With the Sacred Steel it is made of, he will have enough to forge over a hundred infantry rounds... or a couple dozen pure ones."
Noel nodded as she received the new orders, struggling to suppress any reaction that wasn't useful.
"Even so..." he continued, pointing the nib of his fountain pen at the empty cage before moving to the next paragraph. "I am going to miss his company. But just imagining that old man's face when he sees him return from the Void... makes the sacrifice worth it."
"My Lord... If my presence is not enough, I will find something worthy of your station," she said, devotion weighing on every word. "Someone of your rank deserves a Holy Beast... not mutated vermin."
The quill stopped for an instant.
"I appreciate the sentiment, Noel," he replied, ignoring his aide's comparison of herself to a pet. And with a tinge of sorrow in his broken voice, he added: "But animals, even those touched by divinity, do not settle in my presence."
His gaze drifted to a shadowed corner of the office.
There, cut by a single beam of light, rested an elongated object covered in crimson silk, sitting atop a luxurious velvet pedestal.
He contemplated it for a moment with... a mix of respect and rancor in the same heartbeat.
Noel, for her part, missing none of his movements... did not follow his gaze; instead, she averted hers immediately.
It wasn't a dramatic gesture, just one polished by experience: 'Do not look directly at it, even if covered.'
Noticing that gesture in his assistant, he reclaimed the moment with a flick of his pen.
"And it tends to be worse with the mutated," he completed. "But with... Drawk..."
He paused briefly, recalling the unique behavior of the "mutated vermin," which didn't instinctively flee from him, and was even capable of sleeping in his office.
"It makes me wonder how that old man raised him..."
"Perhaps..." A half-formed hypothesis made him lower his gaze to the confidential file, half-hidden under the letter he was writing.
And, observing the expressionless face of the ash-haired youth in the grainy photo, he answered himself, as if the idea tore an impossible smile from beneath his crimson mask:
—"Because he is already accustomed to living with worse things."
His raspy voice, coupled with Noel's sharp hearing, let her hear something she shouldn't have...
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant. But the words never came... Instead, the sirens exploded in every section, cabin, and engine room.
The lighting shifted abruptly; the warm tone died and was replaced by a tactical red, designed as a cheap and useful way to prep the crew for combat. As well as to acclimate their vision to the darkness of the night.
The Inquisitor didn't flinch. He just lifted the quill and wrote the final period.
Then he stood up and the office seemed to shrink.
The silent war of light and shadow waging across his figure reached a verdict the instant his more than two meters of height blocked the flickering candles.
"It seems we have arrived."
Noel looked up... and swallowed hard as she saw him head toward the velvet pedestal.
The Inquisitor did not hesitate and lifted the crimson silk, readying himself, like the rest of the crew, for the imminent combat that their night landing would bring.
-
Under the same sickly moonlight, the forest wasn't black, but...
—
Green.
The grainy green of the phosphor screen in my visor.
An artificial light that let me stare back into the void between the trunks whipping past at full speed around me—without smashing into them, and above all without stumbling and falling into the dark abyss beneath my feet that not even my visor could light up.
And from which the hungry roars that chased us were rising.
I shook my head to refocus, only to be greeted by a dry crack.
The groan of the branch I landed on.
The sound was drowned out by my own ragged breathing inside the helmet, which instinctively forced me to pause and bring a hand to my side. To my ribs. Fractured, or worse... courtesy of the uppercut from my "travel companion."
I hadn't recovered from the hit, but... 'I paid him back with interest... didn't I?'
Obviously, I wasn't asking myself, but what remained of the culprit "accompanying" me, tied in a sack at my waist.
The cloth; covered in inscribed psalms, sealing in both his valuable blood and the sickly stench he gave off—seemed to answer as it began to thrash violently from the inside.
Without a second thought, I grabbed the sack and drove my armored knuckles into it. Again and again.
My ribs complained anew, but I kept hitting until cartilage, muscle, even bone became crunchy pulp beneath my left gauntlet… and until, finally, the Alpha's head stopped moving.
Meanwhile, neither my condition nor my "companion's" made the figure leading the traverse slow down.
Forcing me to jump again and thumb the detonator in the glove palm of my other hand, if I didn't want to lose him.
The ÆTHER System, regulating my Jump Kit, responded instantly, roaring at my hip before accelerating my world with a controlled explosion. Inertia carried me to my next anchor point, which my visor's software highlighted with an amber outline: 'Relatively Safe.'
The crown of a tree, which tilted dangerously when I latched onto it with the gauntlet hook.
I managed to ignore the crash and the snap of broken branches against my head and chest, thanks to my helmet and the dented plating of my vest... but my limbs felt every painful jolt and lash tearing through tissue as I used the trunk to pivot.
Amidst a shower of splinters that flew with me, I twisted my body, tucked my knees, and catapulted myself again. Propelled by the violet flares venting from my Jump Kit burners, matching the glow staining the night sky.
Despite my ribs screaming and the lead in my legs, the worst part was being unable to catch the "Old Man" ahead of me.
He moved from branch to branch with an almost lazy grace; hands clasped behind his hunched back. A posture that, at this point, made me wonder if it was the erosion of age or a camouflage of false frailty.
A few minutes later, we reached our destination. The Old Man raised his left arm for the first time since we left and fired his grapple into a sequoia.
Seconds later... I landed too.
The branch he chose was thick, high, and dark. A natural balcony with a perfect angle toward the bay, located a kilometer and a half away, or maybe two; I wouldn't be sure until I ranged it with the LRF built into my helmet.
The Old Man killed his systems and flipped up his visor, revealing his wrinkled eyes through his Ocularium.
I, on the other hand, let the grainy darkness close its embrace around me as I cycled my system to passive mode, killing the tell-tale glow of my Tri-lens cluster.
We exchanged no words. There was no need.
When the sun fell, the forest's hierarchy shifted. And we had to behave accordingly.
We minimized our silhouettes. Covered ourselves with our cloaks and became just another knot in the wood.
On the outside, our camouflage looked like simple coarse, olive-green wool; but its interior hid layers of different fabrics. One porous, acting like a sponge to retain and blend our scent with the strong ointment of resin and earth we had treated it with. And others thermal, designed to block the heat signature of the burners still humming hot against our hips.
Then, seconds later, at ground level, the forest answered our intrusion.
Heavy footsteps. Snapping branches. The rasping, hungry growls of our pursuers catching up.
We both held our breath and made ourselves even smaller. After searching for our trail, which they had suddenly lost, the sounds seemed to pass us by, leaving a tense silence.
However, just as I opened my mouth to draw breath...
A vibration climbed up the trunk, traveling through the wood into my boots. The prelude to the sound of claws scraping against centuries-old bark.
I lowered my gaze, but my visor, in passive mode, barely caught the splinters flying off as something began to climb...
Our camouflage had failed.
The Old Man moved first.
A sharp elbow to my injured side as he stood up. Not hard. Measured. A mute reminder of my mistake in letting myself get hit at the worst possible moment.
With a grimace of pain and annoyance hidden by the metal, I glanced at him sideways through the visor. He extended his hand calmly, waiting.
Understanding what he meant, I untied the bundle at my waist and pulled it out from under my cloak.
Observing how the sack had lost its shape, conforming to the irregular, grotesque mass it contained, the Old Man shot me a reproachful look; as if I had gone too far or done something unnecessary.
I simply responded with a shrug, while the scratching noise grew louder and closer. I know it was impossible for it to escape... but something in me, besides the pain in my side, made me keep hitting it.
Shaking his head, as if he didn't like my answer, the Old Man sealed his helmet.
Aware of his intent, I mimicked him: locking the neck and nose seals, and switching to breathe through the filter on the right vent of my faceplate.
The scratching continued. Closer. A lower branch cracked violently, and finally, I saw the first famished Drexer frantically scaling the wide trunk.
The Old Man calmly spooled cable from his gauntlet and, spinning his hook like a lasso, tossed it over the branch we were on. Inertia did the rest, coiling it around the wood with ease.
The gilded layers on the damascus blade of his combat knife glinted before unceremoniously slicing the psalm-inscribed cloth with which the High Priest had sealed the Alpha's head.
The next instant, the smell didn't just escape; it assaulted.
It wasn't just the stench of death.
It was a chemical signal. A violent hit of pheromones and rot that punched through my helmet's filters. I felt my stomach clench and my eyes water.
The Alpha's head—or what was left of it—peeked through the slit: hardened grayish skin, ears broken like bat wings, a dislocated jaw, and a stare into nothingness from a bald, eyeless forehead.
Then he let it drop.
The bundle plummeted a couple of meters... until the cable went taut. Leaving it there, swaying beneath our branch, like a grotesque lantern of ground meat and bone dripping black blood into the darkness.
The same darkness that, suddenly, swallowed the growls.
Dead silent.
A second passed. Two.
Then came the howl.
Not of hunger. Of panic.
One... then another... and a third; disordered, discordant.
The one in the lead "descended," trampling the Drexers behind it before crashing into the ground, crushing ferns and fleeing as if the forest had turned radioactive.
As the rest fled, the Old Man wiped his knife blade on his own boot, unperturbed. As if the stench didn't even reach him.
Then, with the exaggerated delicacy an old man should have, as if suddenly afraid of breaking a hip, he sat on the branch and trained his binoculars on the steel razor carving its way into the bay.
I remained standing and simply deactivated passive mode. The tri-lens cluster on my visor hummed to life briefly, multiplying the relayed image on my screen several times over.
It was ironic. The Old Man had taught me almost everything I know... and yet he avoided technology whenever he could.
It wasn't resentment; not from the way he taught me. You could tell that, in another time, he had loved it.
But now he treated it like you treat a wound: without touching it more than necessary.
Penance, perhaps?
Through the zoom, I could observe the ship in greater detail.
On none of the multiple decks was there movement. Nothing to betray life... save for a faint glow, escaping at intervals through the armored portholes.
Its massive, sharp silhouette didn't reduce speed even as it crashed against the coast.
Steel shrieked against stone, kicking up a cloud of dust and rock shards, while friction ignited the darkness with a violent shower of sparks.
The sudden flash caused a washout in my lenses, forcing me to look away sharply.
The Old Man chuckled at my reaction, enjoying the simplicity of his binoculars.
The resulting thunder was deafening; a dry explosion, flameless, that woke the infection the Kingdom of Hispania could not purge. Not with the Southern Front bleeding the peninsula dry; turning it into an open, festering wound radiating its sepsis throughout the Regnum.
The response was immediate: over a hundred shadows stirred, slithering quickly between the tree line and the boulders surrounding the bay.
They weren't just Drexers.
Among the humanoid figures, quadrupedal silhouettes, massive for what their size should be, skulked low to the ground, while more erratic ones crossed the air, blotting out the stars with their fluttering.
However, before the immense metal beast stranded on their shores, the hierarchy of the forest halted. All had declared an instinctive truce, inching closer little by little like a united tide.
Wet growls and echolocation clicks filled the air, guiding bizarre snouts and ears toward the cold steel.
But... when they were halfway there... the vessel came to life.
A second flare shot up into the sky, bursting with that unsettling crimson glare. Stripping the tide of shadows of the darkness that had sheltered them, it revealed the horror of their forms.
Turning them into easy targets for the hundreds of men and women hauling heavy weapons and ammunition crates who, waiting for that signal, flooded every deck.
Once they had secured their guns to the ship's armor... Thousands of stroboscopic muzzle flashes lit up the display in front of my eyes.
Shattering rock, tearing trees apart, they drowned out the screams of the creatures closing in both by land and by air.
Abominations shaped like bats the size of underfed children dove in, crumpling against sand and stone with wings punctured through and broken.
On the beach, the first wave of Drexers stopped dead, stumbling and writhing as their grayish skin tried to regenerate the flesh the bullets had just torn from them.
And yet the tracer rounds glowing on my display had their limits against the horrors of the forest.
I adjusted the zoom, and through the grainy display I could see the callused hide of a bear, twice its natural size, soak up a burst to the chest without slowing its pace.
["Exam question, kid."] The old man's static-laced voice cut across my comms, calm and bored over the symphony of gunfire. ["What's the difference between a mutated animal and a Holy One?"]
For an instant I hesitated at the sudden question, then answered mechanically, repeating the same lesson, skirting heresy, that the old man had drilled into me years ago.
["They both come from the same root, adaptation to the environment. The Holy, or the Divine, are usually diurnal specimens that live in areas with a high density of the particles responsible for what humans call 'Miracles.' The Mutated…"]
A sharp, high-pitched screech cut me off. It wasn't the chaotic echolocation clicks reverberating through the air, it was something familiar, something that made both of us look up, the clean call of a bird of prey, but with a sibilant, reptilian undertone.
The creature, the moment it detected us, folded its wings and dove like a projectile.
In its path, one of the hundreds of bats heading for the coast quite literally lost its head in a cloud of blood, in the span of three frames on my display.
With the comm line still open, I heard the old man laugh under his breath, before raising his left arm, offering his armored gauntlet as a steel perch for specimen S-117.
It landed with a heavy impact, driving its talons into the metal. With a satisfied croak, it began to devour the head of its freshly taken prey, its beak, serrated like a saw, crushed bone, letting fall drops of dark blood with an unnatural lilac sheen.
And when it turned its head toward me, reptilian eyes with bright orange, vertical pupils met my gaze with a cold, predatory intelligence.
["…Mutated ones, like Drawk, are an adaptation to the environment… or."] Without meaning to, I lowered my eyes to the bat's severed head between its claws. ["Food contaminated with the particles the monoliths release. The stuff we associate with corruption, and the Church directly with… hell."]
The old man raised his hand to greet it, touching only the dense rust-brown and slate-gray plumage on its chest.
The bare phalanges of his fingerless leather glove stayed away from the parts where the feathers fused and hardened into thick, chitinous scales that armored its back, and the tips of its wings. Above all, away from its reptilian tail, whose edges were sharp enough to cut flesh with ease.
I lifted my hand so it could catch my scent.
Drawk sniffed it.
At once, its pupils tightened into a thin reptilian line. It shrank against the old man's forearm, shook its wings with a nervous flutter, and tried to push off to flee.
The old man stopped it without changing expression. He caught one of its legs with calm firmness, not hurting it, just killing the impulse.
"Don't be a brat." He murmured to Drawk, letting his voice slip out through the slits in the faceplate of his helmet.
The wrinkled look that slipped through his ocularium wasn't an order, but I felt it like one all the same, keep going.
I swallowed, and slowly, I brushed the feathered chest with the bare phalanx of my right glove. Barely a touch. A greeting.
Drawk went still, trembling, and when I pulled my hand back, the tremor deflated. Its pupils returned to their normal size. Its wings folded again with that predatory elegance, back in its natural state.
It took me a second to react, until I finally asked, ["Why do you think it reacts like that with me?"]
The old man let out a short snort, almost a laugh.
["Maybe you stink, kid."]
For a second, he got me. I dropped my gaze and sniffed at myself, and all I caught was resin, dry leaves, wet earth, the scent of my camouflage.
I was about to insist, but he didn't let me. He turned his head back toward the bay, and his voice took on that test tone again, dry and practical.
["Then what's the difference between our "charming" Drawk,"] he said, as Drawk almost purred while the old man's finger stroked its neck ["and the misshapen horrors on the beach?"]
For an instant I looked at him. Why are you asking me this now? I thought, before turning my gaze back to the bay.
Through my visor I focused on an immense, gaunt stag, its anatomy grotesquely elongated and spasmodic. It wasn't soaking up the damage, it was simply ignoring the impacts that tore chunks of flesh away, thanks to its frantic regeneration. Its antlers had mutated, branching into a dense crown of jagged, irregular black spines. And instead of a herbivore's muzzle, it opened rabid jaws, and it didn't hesitate to bite and gut, with its antlers, the wounded Drexers in its path.
["Its reaction to Sacred Metal,"] I said, flatly.
Right after, a thunderous flash proved me right.