Angar sat in the dim confines of the cargo shuttle's rear bay, clad in a finely crafted set of d'klar armor, churned out by the Zephuros' main fabricator.

His hammer rested heavy in his grip, its shape greatly changed by its new mods.

Its head and haft were both bigger, and the counterbalanced core in the half shifted as the shuttle bounced. He could handle it with much greater ease, its attacks were heavier, and its graviton infused strikes now did some plasma damage.

His Crusader Armor lay stowed, pushed against the rear of the bay, unworn for now. This was a homecoming, and the boy who left was as Mecian as the Knight who returned.

A flutter of excited nervousness churned in his chest. He was finally returning home to the world that had forged him as much as the Grim Ordeals, and it would bend to his will.

The journey from Lerig Imperial Megastation had been uneventful, mostly.

He'd spent his days mostly in prayer, reading works like Seneca's 'Moral Letters to Lucilius,' the Siege of Suiyang, and practicing exercises to manifest a psychic power, all in the solitude of his quarters.

Saint Thryna had somewhat kept her word, guiding Angar on the Glorious Path, but only by sparring with him most days.

And not so much sparring as all-out brawling, but he racked up minutes on his Vitalulum harness and Vinculeparo necklace.

He emerged from his room only for daily service, Sunday Mass, the spars, and to aid Simo and Veerta in cleaning the ship, as labor purified the soul, he believed, just as Sister Kenson had. And with his grand plans for Sulfuron 9, he refused to be a hypocrite, shirking the toil he'd demand of others.

But as if fate conspired to test his resolve, Iyita appeared every time he stepped out, always seeming to linger in his sightline. Even though she was old, her tempting curves were a constant distraction that drew his eyes despite his efforts.

It had taken Slavo over a week to recover from his new implants. Iyita claimed none for herself, insisting she'd received all the sacred rites and cybernetics she needed from her former commander-admirer in the Aces.

Four heavy-class ships orbited Sulfuron 9 upon arrival in the Ecliptica System. Besides the two corporate vessels there for their own reason, there were two of Hidetada's, ferrying supplies and personnel. Alongside these were a scattering of lighter vessels.

Gloves sheathed Angar's hands, concealing their leonine strangeness.

Before the Holy Empire's arrival, his hands might have been hailed as a great omen, a Divine gift. Now, he wasn't sure how his people would view them, or what they knew of Hellsign and corruption.

He shifted to the slit in the rear hatch, peering into the churning yellowish-brown clouds on the horizon that swallowed the view, showing nothing of the land.

The shuttle shuddered through descent, and he performed a clairvoyance manifestation exercise until the craft touched down with a heavy thud an hour later.

The rear hatch hissed open, revealing the Rinsach mountain range, the same as his childhood town of Urdmut, far southwest near the tail end of it, but only the most distant peaks rang familiar, as his enhanced vision and Cognizance pierced a far distance through the gloom.

They'd landed in the farthest reaches of Mecia's former domain, near the Tormina border, west of the Dunga River, between the cities of Scarthe and Tormina's Thwerk. They were small cities but historically had ruled themselves until conquered by a bigger power, and that meant something.

Other shuttles, laden with supplies and workers, would descend seven kilometers north, in the northern badlands where the beasts were too deadly to hunt and the heat grew suffocating.

Angar now knew his planet was sectioned in thirds. Around the equator stretched a raging sulfuric ocean, its waters roiling under temperatures of 100 Celsius or more. It didn't boil as it would on Terra, as the doubled air pressure required temperatures exceeding 120 for that.

Flanking it were dense jungles, fog-shrouded and teeming with colossal beasts far mightier than those in the outer hemispheres, the ocean itself home to leviathan predators.

He clambered out the hatch, the heat enveloping him like a smothering embrace, the rotten-egg stench assaulting his nostrils.

Gravity tugged harder, air pressure squeezed like an invisible vice, and sulfuric fog entered his lungs as he inhaled. To his body, none of this registered. He was as comfortable as in a dome's controlled environment.

The shuttle pilot, Len, the longshoreman from Ierne, emerged from the front in the light armor Hidetada had purchased for everyone, more a biosuit than proper soldier gear, hurrying over. "Excuse me, Sir Angar, but I was wondering if you knew when I'd be sent home? I have a family, Sir. Kids. I haven't seen them in two months, Sir. I just want to go home."

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Angar struggled to hold in a sigh, his heart filling with sympathy for the man.

Hidetada poured fortunes into Sulfuron 9, but the initial expenses, for some reason, were loans to Angar. He technically controlled a company, Cloudy Skies Consortium, though his name couldn't appear as an owner, as it'd violate noble strictures against owning rent-paying businesses or corporations operating on his lands.

Hidetada believed in two types of accounting called aggressive and creative, tangling the books in knots Angar had no chance of unravelling.

But Jon had him sign some papers, and one listed Len as a permanent employee, with a five-hundred-credit bonus and family relocation, all-expense paid, including per diem.

Angar didn't want to dash the man's hopes in case that was some accounting trick and not the truth. "Harc hasn't told you anything?" he asked.

"No, Sir," Len replied. "The last I asked, when we were allowed in the crew quarters to use the rain locker weeks ago, he said he'd shoot me in the face the next time I talked to him."

Angar grunted. "Fly north, to the construction point, and ask Jon. Tell him I require this answer, and I want it confirmed by Saint Hidetada or Harc."

"I can't, Sir," Len said. "I was ordered to stay here with you, to fly you to the next destination when you're done here, and so on."

"And I'm giving you different orders. Meet me outside Thwerk tomorrow at dawn. Go."

A smile cracked Len's face through the clear shield. "Yes, Sir." He scrambled back aboard as Angar headed west toward Scarthe.

He sprinted at first, his digitigrade legs propelling him effortlessly, lightning and skyspark explosions flashed, illuminating the yellowish-orange atmosphere of his world.

He spotting lookouts on a mountain lip long before they could pierce the haze to see him.

Warning horns blared, muffled in the dense air, and Angar slowed to a walk, granting his people time to muster.

A warband of nearly two hundred awaited, easing the tension in his chest. If Scarthe could field so many warriors not out hunting, warring, or raiding, their population neared a thousand, better than he'd dared hope.

Most gripped spears and bows, hammers and clubs at their feet, their hunched, compact, muscular builds a testament to Sulfuronian adaptation. He wondered why he spotted no axe.

As he emerged from the fog, murmurs rippled, such as awe at his size, his cybernetic legs, his massive metal hammer.

"Halt, off-worlder!" bellowed an older man with a thick, gnarled beard.

Angar stopped.

"Do you come in peace?" the man shouted. "If not, you'll wish you had."

"I do," Angar roared back. "But I'm no off-worlder. I'm Angar, son of King Baraga, and Laka, the Weirding Witch, descendant of Elaxada the Mighty, Mahtma the Conqueror, the great Kondunean Emperor Xon Gheir the First, Knight of our glorious Empire of the Holy Trinity, and rightful ruler of these lands."

Surprise ignited the band, whispers blazing like lightning through the ranks.

The leader silenced them, then yelled, "Kingship isn't hereditary. And Mecia's gone anyway, nothing but ash. King Norninga rules Scarthe now, as King Hidarga rules Konswelt and King Unga rules Weyn."

"No," Angar thundered. "There are no kings anymore, only the King of Kings, our Heavenly Master. But here, in these lands, I rule."

Eager to press on, as Mecia was the easy part of his consolidation, he bellowed, "If you disagree, chuck those spears and pluck those bows."

Shock rippled anew. The leader hushed them and ordered the attack. Angar's chest swelled with pride at their discipline, as the chatter instantly cut off, and the band attacked as one.

He stood about seventy meters distant, but with an unarmored Adroitness score of 7, his enhanced reactions, and mental processing, he perceived the volley in near slow motion.

The storm of arrows arrived first, whistling through the sulfur-choked air. He sidestepped most with fluid grace, batting others aside with his free hand. A few glowed with Ability enhancement, and those he met squarely with the maul's head, shattering them in sparks.

A few seconds later, the spears lumbered in. He treated them the same as the arrows, dancing aside from the bulk, battering a few away. The lone Ability-infused spear exploded against his hammer in a spray of wood and obsidian shards, peppering his skin but failing to pierce.

He evaded lingering arrows, then planted his maul and snatched the last spear to fall out of the air.

Hefting it behind the balance point, he surged forward a few steps, rear leg thrusting with cybernetic power, and hurled.

The spear blurred through the air like a blaster bolt. He hadn't thrown a spear in a long while, but, thankfully, his body remembered well enough how, and it thunked into a giant gigan tree's trunk two hundred meters off, embedding deeply, like an arrow in a stomach.

Retrieving his hammer, Angar advanced as a new volley came, easily avoided. His heart burned with pride. The band held firm, unbroken. Not one man ran, nor hesitated.

Closer now, they hefted melee weapons and charged, stone hammers and wooden clubs swinging in disciplined fury.

Angar wove through them like a shadow in the haze, his Adroitness turning the fray into a dance. He parried a sweeping club with his hammer's haft, twisting to disarm the wielder with a flick.

A hammer blow aimed at his head whistled past as he ducked, countering with a gentle shove that sent the attacker sprawling into the corrosive mud.

More warriors converged, their weapons swinging. He leaped back, his cybernetic legs coiling like springs, then surged forward, knocking weapons from grips with sweeping swipes of his hand, or careful arcs of his hammer.

One burly fighter grappled close, trying to overwhelm and tackle. Angar pivoted, using the man's momentum to hurl him into two others, tumbling them in a heap.

Another, a large man glowing with an Ability, chucked a boulder. Angar caught it and set it down.

Sweat beaded on their skin, but their endurance and mettle burned bright, their breaths steady in the searing air that caused every inhale to burn, and they kept coming, unyielding.

They surrounded him at last, a wall of will and fury, forcing him to vault skyward, landing beyond their ring to disarm another pair with precise slaps to their hilts.

After minutes of this whirlwind, the leader barked, "Either let us die well, with honor, or end this game, man!"

The band halted, sweating, their chests heaving, waiting to see what came next.

Angar had forty-six souls yet to save as penance, but he couldn't justify counting these men as being saved, as he never planned on killing his own people.

When he realized Angar wouldn't attack, the leader knelt, head bowed deeply, the others following.

"Rise," Angar barked. "My people will not bow to me, only to the Holy Trinity."

Pointing at the leader, knowing by the armor this wasn't the king, Angar demanded, "Your name? And where's Norninga?"

As the man rose, he declared, "I'm Ingar, son of the former chief of Scarthe, Kithga, descendant of Elaxada the Mighty, Mahtma the Conqueror, and Rolva the Slaughterer. Norninga and a few others are raiding Konswelt's northern villages. What should I call you, cousin, if, as you said, there are no more kings?"

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