Chapter 329

  Lost Sands Death Zone

  Ruins of Chiron, Outskirts

  "You are certain the signal disappeared here?" Asked the Adjudicator, as she gazed at the gigantic lake, a miniature sea really, arrayed before her.

  The ruins of the Old World always unsettled her, but these more than most. That city had been annihilated, not by heretical hands, but by her God. There was still a...charge in the air. An echo of the death scream of ten million souls as divine wrath rained from above, turning the prosperous megalopolis into a crater, whose shattered canals had slowly filled into what it was today, burying most of the ruins under the glittering water.

  It was perhaps for the best that few, so, so few, realized how much of the God of Fire's 'righteous retribution' had been a pitched battle. The city had died, but it hadn't died easily, nor alone, and the debris field of divine warships it had taken with it still orbited Alcheryos to this day, stabilized to serve as a reservoir of spare parts and processed materials for the Citadel.

  There was still malevolence in the air. The spirits that haunted this place hated her and her seraphims with every fiber of their being. Even if their capacity for thought had long since decayed, alongside their damned souls, intent remained, and there was a pressure on her mind, hammering her from all sides.

  "When it comes to tracing stealth signatures, nothing is certain." Said the Seraphim by her side, as he checked something on his armor's vambrace. "But yes. Orbital scanner sweeps indicate it has not left either."

  "Wonderful." The adjudicator closed her eyes. The Order had, indeed, been driving towards the New Republic's army, no doubt to destroy it, and prevent it from forcing negotiations with the Far Reach. But they couldn't allow that to happen. If the New Republic drew the Far Reach into war, they would eventually have to call upon their allies, and guarantee that the monster that controlled Rebirth, this 'Alexandra', would absorb them.

  They couldn't let that happen. Not on the Order's terms, anyway. The dungeon core was key to their plans, obviously, and had the God of Light, Hoeth, not interfered, they would have simply killed her. Since that wasn't an option, they had to use more...indirect means.

  Assassination had little success, even when they allowed the guild and the UDC to go ahead with their little plan, and she had little doubt that sponsoring their own would be discovered by Hoeth and his Custodians. So, sabotaging the Order's plans was their only recourse.

  For now. While other things were being set up as the Purge gathered pace.

  "You were correct, we had gotten ahead of them." Said the Seraphim.

  "There is that. And the army will continue its march. But their ability to come in and slip out..." Their skirmish with the Order had been short, and brutal. She hadn't been so close to dying...ever. Even the Seraphims had seemed seriously worried. It was why they were pursuing now. They had an enemy kill team, and they needed answers. Answers on the Order's true capabilities and power. Whatever they had expected, fighting a team of Seraphims to a standstill, however briefly, with glorified saboteurs was not one of them.

  "Is concerning." Completed the Seraphim. "Nevertheless, we-"

  The Adjudicator survived for one simple reason: her equipment and power was lesser than the Seraphims. They were all angels, true, but she was non combatant. She was an investigator, one who made hard decisions, and one who interacted with mortals, the face of the Custodians and His Divinity on this fallen world.

  Thus, she survived the initial barrage, thrown to the ground, missing half of her face and her right arm, seared clean off by the energy blast that annihilated the Seraphim she had been talking to, who was deemed the greater threat.

  There wasn't time for words, or even to reach out for her amulet as her flesh flowed and reformed and she began dodging madly, weaving between the incoming attacks, each one more than powerful enough to finish her off. Distantly she could hear the Seraphims, those left standing, returning fire, and saw several of the towers, tall enough to be protuding from the waters of the lake, glitter with flashes of energy, entire sections of their facades vanishing.

  More worryingly however, she saw the same flashes appear around her Seraphims. That...wasn't possible. Hyperfold weaponry was divine technology, the heretics had never-

  She felt more than saw the heretic as they sprinted out of cover, a split second before the building vanished, scattered to the atomic level into hyperspace, and lashed out with her power.

  She grunted as her power met layers upon layers of defences. But her attack was enough to illuminate the soldier of the Order, and the Seraphim that had been firing on them retargeted.

  The flash of energy coalesced...and half of the heretic's body disappeared, as the remaining half fired.

  The Seraphim let out a silent scream, that nonetheless hit the Adjudicator's mind like a sledgehammer, driving her to her knees, just in time to evade the heretic's sweeping counterattack.

  The Adjudicator threw her spells forward, and this time the heretic's defense was found wanting. The other screamed as well...and it hit her just as hard.

  She reached for her amulet, and crushed it between her fingers, as she stared in horror at the body before her.

  That...that woman...

  No. Not woman.

  That Seraphim.

  They...they were fighting Seraphims. And not the God of Light's either. Those were angels of the God of Fire. Just like her, or her soldiers, even now fighting for their lives.

  What-

  The amulet pulsed with power, and she was suddenly no longer standing alone, the universe screaming around her as the citadel's teleporter array punched through the jamming that had enshrouded the area.

  A giant in golden armor stood over her as he scanned the battlefield, and the fight paused.

  Then he moved, faster than most would believe possible.

  The Custodian strode the battlefield, taking lives with contemptuous ease. Not that there was much need, for the enemy had begun pulling back and disappearing into secret routes, remnants of the tunnel network that had once underpinned the city, as soon as they had felt his arrival.

  It was over in seconds. Fifteen heretics laid dead, five killed by the Seraphims, and ten by his own hands.

  And six of the eight Seraphims that had accompanied the Adjudicator were now gone.

  The Custodian gathered the two remaining Seraphims, and went to find the one who had called him.

  He found her where he had left her. Except that now she was kneeling by the body of the heretic she had slain.

  "How?" She asked, her voice distraught.

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  She didn't need to spell out what she was asking about.

  "We call them the Fallen." Said the Custodian. "Over the millenia...some, among our own ranks, have faltered."

  "Why...why was I not told?"

  "Their very fall ensures that we could not tell you everything."

  The Adjudicator's head whipped around, and the Custodian simply gazed at her. There was...doubt, in her eyes. Growing doubt.

  If only she knew, how far some could fall.

  After all, there were six seats on the Citadel, but only five Custodians to fill them.

  Not everyone's faith was absolute. And not everyone could stomach what had to be done.

  "Report." Finally said the giant, and the Adjudicator shook herself out of it.

  "We got ambushed, my lord. They were on us before we could react. Tell me, where they all-"

  "No. Only one was Fallen. Most likely their leader."

  "Thank the Pyre."

  "Indeed. Had there been more, you would not have survived."

  "We barely did as it is."

  The Custodian nodded.

  "Do not blame yourself, Adjudicator. You fell into a trap. But they paid the price, and-" His head whipped around.

  "My lord?!?" She said in alarm.

  She didn't have the time to say anything more, as the Custodian grabbed her as well as the closest surviving Seraph, and they were suddenly somewhere else.

  The Adjudicator opened her mouth to ask what had happened...and the words died in her mouth as she saw the sphere of intolerable light rising in the distance. Rising, dimming...slowly forming into a mushroom cloud.

  The Custodian took a knee, and the Adjudicator realized with a start that his armor was flickering into motes of light, the very energy that bound the giant together consumed to allow him to punch through the jamming that had surrounded them, to get them to safety.

  She knew it hadn't been to preserve his own life. He could have walked through the heart of that explosion and come out of the other side scorched, but alive. No, he'd done strictly this to save them.

  "It seems that our enemies...did not wish for bodies, or equipment, to be recovered." Let out the Custodian, before slowly rising to his full height once more, and the Adjudicator finally realized that the Seraphim with them had taken a guard position, scanning their surroundings with his hyperfold rifle, still held in what little remained of his arms. "We must return. Through the Citadel's own abilities, my power...is spent. For now, at least."

  She felt a pulse of...not quite energy, and not quite thought, as the Custodian reached out to his fellows in orbit.

  The answer must have been satisfactory, as the giant simply nodded, and after an excruciating few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to convince the Custodian to let her help him as the Citadel's teleporter finally recalibrated, they disappeared.

  Only the empty wasteland was there to suffer as the shockwave tore through it like a hurricane born from the depths of hell, carrying an echo of the fury of the Great Night with it, and the savage howl of spirits, at long last having gained a sliver of the vengeance they so craved.

  *****

  "What the hell is going on?" Screamed Alexandra as her hologram entered the bridge of the Flickerlight, in the middle of blaring alarms.

  Ghost turned towards her, and to Alexandra's amazement, saluted, before clearly remembering who they were to each other.

  "Sorry. The sensors...you have to see this." The apparition gestured, and a hologram appeared. It showed...

  "Holy shit." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the spreading shockwave. "When?"

  "Forty five seconds ago."

  "Yield?"

  "Thirty, thirty five megatons?"

  "Jesus."

  "Yeah. Medium yield fusion bomb. Helium three-helium three. And the computers...hard to tell, but they insist they recognize the pattern. Sagitarian naval munition, the kind escort ships used on their missiles. There's an energy signature that's supposed to be the remnants of some kind of wave pattern disruption. The computers are returning a lot of conflicting results from that, but it's a variant of what the plasma missiles you used did. Disrupt shields in some ways."

  "Someone must have really wanted someone else dead."

  The apparition nodded.

  "Big time."

  "Will we get shockwaves?"

  "At this distance? Yeah, with a seismograph. But nothing really felt. The blast is also weird. It's kind of...shaped."

  "Gravity lenses?"

  Ghost shook her head, and Alexandra's eyebrow rose.

  "No, no, more like it bounced off of something. The ground, I think." She highlighted the map.

  "Ah." Alexandra grimaced. The place had once been a Sagitarian city. According to the Flickerlight's sensor data and reports, it had been flattened at the beginning of the war. But the canals and now, lake, hadn't been present then. Someone had rebuilt it...and then gotten it vaporized again. Except that this time they'd made sure the damned job was done right. "Some kind of armor?"

  "That or whatever bombed the place turned it into...something else. Whatever the case, most of the energy's been thrown right back into space. Whatever's in orbit is about to have a bad day."

  "Good." Alexandra shrugged at the apparition's questioning gaze. "Space right now means the Church."

  "Think that was them?"

  "They hardly need to nuke stuff. If they have the orbitals, they have kinetics. No, this is the Order. The Church would do a false flag with nukes if they needed, but there's no one to see it there."

  "That's...one hell of an escalation."

  Alexandra closed her eyes.

  "That...may be the point. For whatever reason, both sides are trying to keep their involvement quiet. This would make the Church more cautious."

  "And more aware."

  "Aware of what? That the Order is here, and a threat to them? Perhaps the latter, but if they're heading for a reset, like we think they are, the Order might think they have nothing to lose. In that case..."

  "In that case, making them more cautious might be worth the mess."

  "Yes. The Church will thread more carefully now. They don't want something like that happening somewhere populated. If the 'Fires of the Old World' are seen there, people will start asking questions, and clamor for the Custodians to protect them."

  "Why not just do that then?"

  "Because this is almost as effective in hampering them, without potentially creating a surge of religious zealotry."

  "You know, our nukes..."

  "Might cause that kind of reaction, I know." Alexandra closed her eyes. "Fucking hell. And the Church had basically sanctioned our use of the plasma missiles."

  The apparition nodded, the UDC and Sunrise had tried to make some noise after the Old World weapons were deployed, only to be shut down by the Church. The weapons were authorized, had been salvaged with the Church's blessings, and they'd made those facts sufficiently public to make the two shut up about it. Besides which, as many had pointed out, the dungeon core had been using Old World technology since the beginning, and only now they were complaining?

  "Unlikely to change."

  "For now."

  "For now, yes."

  Alexandra looked at the hologram, at the slowly spreading shockwave.

  "We're running out of time."

  "We are. Though there may be a detente, for a bit. As you said, neither side seems to want an open war."

  "That won't last. They're only laying the groundwork for it. This is the calm before the storm."

  "Yeah. The calm before the storm..."

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