All that remained of Mecia submitted to Angar that day, their bows a foregone conclusion, now recognizing their rightful ruler. He'd bypassed a few scattered villages, but word would spread, and they'd learn enough.

He'd wager his whole fief's population was nearer four thousand than five. And there wasn't much land to speak of.

But this was only his current domain. Others were out staking claims across the uninhabited parts of this world in his name, planting banners bearing his new noble heraldry of crimson and black.

On it was emblazoned the blessed Mother from the waist up, her face snarling in righteous rage and hatred, ready for war and slaughter.

Across her chest, she grasped a massive hammer in her twig-like arms, its head dripping blood, a glowing Trey blazing through the crimson.

Behind her stood the outline of a crowd. This symbolized not just Angar's glorious ancestors, but all the doughty forebears of Sulfuron 9's southern hemisphere. Even the filthy Konduneans. But not those soft bastards from the northern hemisphere, though.

He'd infused his soul into every stroke, each symbol heavy with layered fervor, and he reveled in what it proclaimed.

His Knighthood began with Spirit. Everything he did now was for her. She would see it. In time, she'd see. She just couldn't understand yet.

All his labors in her sacred name would draw her back, and she'd lead him into glorious battle after battle, just like before, purging the unholy, together again.

The smallest of sparks, rightly placed, could ignite a conflagration, an eruption large enough to purge every hint of the profane.

She had been his spark, and, for her, he would become the galaxy's inferno.

Hidetada called the heraldry too cluttered, but the fool was blind. It was pure glory. He couldn't wait to see Spirit again and show her. He knew she'd love it.

Blind or not, Hidetada's help shaved decades and decades off Angar's plans for his world.

Under a dome, construction had begun on all the basic structures needed before erecting a Cloisteranage and Genitoriums. Outside it, a grand cathedral was being built.

Now, Angar had to fulfil his part and unify this fractious world.

He needed to press toward Thwerk in Tormina lands, then off to Kondune, but one stop lingered. That was Urdmut, the town of his youth. He saved it for his last stop in Mecia, hoping for a warmer welcome there, at least.

As he approached, slowing from a sprint to a measured walk, fear gripped his chest. No lookouts perched on the ridges above or stationed below. No guards were set at cavern mouths.

But entering the main gallery, relief flooded him as close to two hundred familiar forms bustled in preparation for a feast, with only some warriors absent, likely hunting.

Little Squirt, though not so little anymore, spotted him first, bellowing a cry that sparked cheers.

The crowd swarmed, slapping his back with filthy and heavily callused hands, roaring welcomes to the town that raised him.

Off to the side, standing alone, was the town priest, a Trey painted with blood on his bare chest. He and Angar's mother, Laka, had never got along.

He caught sight of Tahgaw, one of the chief's daughters, once his vision of beauty's perfection, the bride of his boyhood dreams, a child in her arms, another growing in her belly.

He had clung to the ideal that this world's women looked as women should, the epitome of true feminine allure.

But his memories were distorted. Or time off-world, among imperial citizens, steeped in their sensibilities and beauty ideals, had poisoned his thoughts.

It sent pain ripping through his heart realizing it, but now, looking at them, the stout, hunched women of this world revolted him.

At least before Theosis, women other than witches stayed cave-bound unless stolen, sparing them men's heavy burns.

But they were just as pocked and sickeningly, almost bioluminescently pale, with massive jaws and limbs, harsh features, disgustingly matted, wild tufts of unnaturally thick hair, hunched like deformed beasts, caked with filth, and stank worse than depraved beggars.

Tahgaw now appeared a half-twisted abomination, more creature than girl, and guilt ravaged him for this unwanted betrayal of his people, his poisoned reasoning and ideals.

The town's chief, Orekga, quelled the chaos, but before he could speak, Angar struck first. "How'd you know I was coming?"

"Squirt was trading in Weyn when you approached there," the chief replied, grinning through his matted beard. "He sprinted back, saying you're now a giant monster with metal legs, a metal eye, and a metal weapon. Looks like he was right, except both your eyes look false. By the Great Lord Almighty, just look at you, towering like a rakar."

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"Squirt sprinted here alone from Weyn?" Angar pressed, his brow furrowing.

"Of course," Orekga said, as laughter rippled through the crowd. "Everything's changed. He's taken to this Divine System like it's nothing. He's higher level than me, and fells three grawloks himself now. Ready to ascend but doesn't know the trick of it, like many. Can't claim I grasp what's been going on since the Ulimuns erupted, swallowing the city of Mecia and heralding Holy Theosis' arrival. We figured everyone was dead down there. But here you are. Is Laka alive? Our king?"

Angar exhaled. He'd been short in his prior conversations with his people, establishing his rule, his expectations, but Orekga had been a father-figure to him, nearly as formative as Baraga. He considered all these people kin. He'd take his time here, enjoy his homecoming.

"No," Angar replied solemnly. "Both my parents are dead. I'll explain what's going on and answer all your questions."

Settling into the familiar cavern he'd grown up in, surrounded by people he'd grown up with, a hunk of grawlok claw was shoved into his gloved hand.

He tore into the rubbery meat, his jaws straining against the chew as if his body wasn't so enhanced. He'd forgotten how terrible the food of this world was.

The meat of all creatures was slightly less tough than the few edible mosses and roots. That probably answered why Sulfuronian jaws were so massive.

But as he ate and answered questions, his mind spun, answering his own.

From what he'd pieced together during his sweeps through Mecia's remnants, the survivors had stayed cut off from the wider chaos that had unfolded on their planet, ignorant of the happenings, and the galaxy beyond.

Larger holds caught murmurs of off-worlders and monstrous assaults, but it all meant nothing to them, remaining islands in a storm they barely knew existed.

Theosis had touched them, though. Personal messages from a Holy System changed things, as did magical empowerment, witnessed acts of Divinity that transcended faith.

They'd grafted Trinitarianism onto their old Ikimism, like a new hide over weathered bones, still invoking the Great Lord and such.

Lacking Ecclesiastic for sermons and confessions, Theosis doled out penance itself, its harsh words branding most of their traditional reasons for killing as murder.

That judgment had forged an uneasy truce, at least in Mecia. Wars among the splintered city-states withered, the deeply faithful Mecians shunning this new form of Divine condemnation.

As beasts were weaker game now, raids persisted on non-aligned holds, but tamed, with clubs over axes, and bruises over burials, dodging Holy Theosis' messages demanding their soul's absolution.

The raids' purpose endured unchanged, the same as always, despite the situation changing. Old habits and ancient drives died hard.

Resources weren't scarce. They'd always been abundant. Dying of starvation had never truly been a worry. The prey literally hunted the hunters inside their homes. Trees were everywhere, as were stones. Everything people needed to survive was at hand.

But death prowled every shadow, eroding life relentlessly, the harsh world grinding populations down and down again.

Women and children were the prize, the spark of survival, the only truly valuable resource. Raids claimed them to swell fading numbers.

Surveying the crowd, Angar noted the women, especially the old ones. These were the first women he'd seen since landing.

There stood old Geda, not just alive but standing tall, her belly rounded with child. She should be dead by now. A few others, too, defied the grave, their skin less sallow, eyes brighter, moving around just fine.

Things had changed all right.

By ancient decree, one etched into the collective soul of all peoples and religions, women were to be kept safe within the caves, in a state of near-perpetual pregnancy.

They reared the young while crafting the tools and gear for the men's hunts, labors, and wars.

Stolen women were treated with honor and respect. No man ravaged them, as that dark sin earned swift execution in the community's shared depths where all lived together, raised children together.

A captured woman would take time to adjust to her new people, then signal when she was ready for courtship, soon marrying the suitor of her choice. Her stolen children were adopted fully, raised as the new husband's own blood, his ancestors considered their own too.

Witches existed outside this system, deemed untouchable and sacred. Witches' sanctity extended beyond themselves too, as any settlement she visited was obligated to provide an escort to her next destination, and those men shared her untouchable status, immune to harm or interference.

With every man chained to the brutal necessities of survival, witches were the guardians of knowledge, ancient lore, and arcane secrets, the stewards of the cryptic petroglyphs carved deep into cave walls across the southern hemisphere.

Only the barren were elevated to witchhood, forever barred from marriage. Their duty was to roam between all lands, all settlements, wielding their esoteric wisdom to help communities, solve crises, and ensure the species' survival. As the relentless radiation bleeding from the Steadfast's wreckage pushed populations eastward, they'd inscribe fresh petroglyphs into new cave systems.

Of course, the barrenness had not held completely for Angar's mother, nor the wandering, but that was another tale.

At the heart of this ancient knowledge pulsed the most primal edict, the first tenet of the witches, the unyielding cornerstone of their wisdom – women must birth as prolifically as possible, beginning at fourteen and continuing until dead.

Childbearing always took its toll, but on this forsaken world, it ravaged a woman's vitality, siphoning her life away. Three births marked the inevitable death sentence, condemning her to perish young, around thirty, a few years more if lucky, but usually far less.

The toll was indifferent to quantity beyond that threshold. Whether three offspring or thirteen, it spelled the same early death, so they aimed for as many births as possible before their end.

Men fought and bled and worked their fingers to the bone so their people survived. That was their lot. As long as enough remained to protect the women, their people would continue.

But if a people's women ran low, they were doomed, so they gave birth after birth, knowing it to be their own doom. That was their lot.

That was the brutal reality those bastards that fled to their soft life in the northern hemisphere inflicted on those abandoned in the south.

But Holy Theosis and its Divine empowerment had changed that.

And as the women did the vast majority of crafting, they'd be offered crafting-related Classes and safe early ascension through the first Tier.

That would have to change.

As Angar watched Geda move with a vigor she shouldn't possess, a knife of guilt stabbed deep into his gut as he envisioned her new future.

The women of Mecia had given so much for their people. But now, the Lord demanded they give far more, and for far longer, their past sacrifices a pale shadow of what was to come.

Their long millennia of soft, protected lives in caves, their suffering cut short so mercifully early in life, was now over.

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