With Mikhin and Yuuga flanking him, Angar triggered the release seals of his Crusader Armor, preparing to battle an army.

Servos and hydraulics hissed, and the pieces and chestplate split with a groan, its panels retracting like unfolding petals of steel.

He eased his arms free first, his skin twitching where the Neurvux connectors disengaged, then stepped from the armor's embrace, his cybernetics clanking on the rocky ground.

The suit still fit his frame, though somewhat snugly, its inner padding straining against his growing bulk, but still plenty of centimeters shy of being too tight a fit.

With deliberate care, he folded the armor's segments. He nestled the helm within the block, then hefted the suit into the cargo shuttle's hold, sliding it as deep into the shadows as he could without crawling in.

"I believe deliberately forging this world into an Infernalis is brilliant," Yuuga declared in her gravelly rasp. "I was forged on one myself, Child. Ever heard of Nihil?"

"No, Sister," Angar replied, placing his hammer in the shuttle, standing now in the faux-d'klar armor.

An Infernalis, a world that became a scar upon reality, where the veil between the mortal realm and Hell had frayed to tatters, birthed constant lower-rank gateways spewing out abyssal filth.

Reconquered Hellworlds always became Infernalis, repurposed by the Holy Empire as training worlds, brutal forges for its warriors.

Yuuga let out a throaty hrmm. "One of the foulest blights in the galaxy, that pit. I clawed my way up far from any city too, my cradle a sea of Hell's vomit. Endless tides of spawn clawing at the edges of sanity. It's a balm for the soul, Child. Etches the fear of damnation into your bones, makes you doughty."

"Agreed, Sister," Angar intoned, his chest alighting with fervent conviction. That's precisely why he craved it. Maybe I was too quick to judge Yuuga, he thought. And maybe I've judged her too harshly. She understands.

Sects and cults proliferated across the Holy Empire like weeds in a forsaken garden, myriad deviations from the orthodox path.

Many, such as the simpering Order of the Sacred Heart and Still Mind, wallowed in pacifism, cherry-picking milksop verses of gospels espousing peace and mercy, scorning the righteous fury of Holy wrath.

Such cults demanded exemptions from Divine Theosis itself to exist, permissions to stray from the standard Trinitarian dogma, or to invent new ranks for new Ordos and Orders.

On the scorched cradle of Mercury lurked a bizarre but sanctioned Ecclesiastic Ordo, a small but elite cult known as the Sisterhood of the Mountain's Peak. They dwelled in the Divine Valley Convent, their existence shrouded not by their own vows of secrecy, but by the collective revulsion of the faithful who wished their doctrines buried in oblivion.

Their creed declared a man was born at the bottom of a mountain, his life's worth judged on how high he climbed, and a woman was born at the top of the mountain, her life's worth judged on how far she fell.

When Hidetada had told this tale to Angar, he thought he knew where it'd go. The sisters would value purity above all else, becoming untouchable, unsullied by mortal hands, maybe with the Alcyonic faction's absurd rituals wedding themselves to God, an act as sensible as marrying the sun or the galaxy.

He was dead wrong. That wasn't it at all. These clergywomen went in the exact opposite direction, proclaiming a Divine calling to hurl themselves into the valley's depths, giving their life in service to the men who had reached the mountain's peak, the male Seraphs of all three estates.

Holy harlots of the cloth, clergywomen who spread their legs as an act of piety, their bodies altars for their Empire's greatest warriors, striving for conception, to bear the strongest children as Church tithes.

Whatever one's judgment on their beliefs, these sisters furnished Angar with a vital precedent.

Pacifist and other cults provided further ammunition, their exceptions paving the way for his own deviations.

He'd birth his own cult, one fixated solely on the most warlike edicts of the gospels, the verses of Holy slaughter, unrelenting war, and ruthless judgment, where mercy was a sin and weakness Heresy, requiring large tithes of battle and blood to the Lord.

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Only the Ecclesiastic could oversee Cloisteranages, and only the Ecclesiastic could raise Genitorium-spawned infants.

So, all of Sulfuron 9 would be a Cloisteranage, all its people joining the ranks of the Ecclesiastic.

The Ecclesiastic were eternally barred from the Sacrament of Matrimony, forbidden the indulgence of family, for their kin was the flock, their progeny the souls they shepherded to salvation or slaughter.

Carnal desires, too, were tightly bound by Divine decree. Casual relations or fornication outside the expenditure of a Voluvicas Credit was a grave sin, punished harshly.

So, as the Sisterhood of the Mountain's Peak, they'd all become prostitutes, men and women both.

Cloisteranages required rearing students in Terra-normal environs.

So, the protective domes encasing everything but the Genitoriums and some other critical structures would tragically succumb to the planet's corrosive fog all the time, and this world would never be terraformed.

And so forth, layer upon layer of calculated subversion.

Terrans had reaped four millennia of genetic ascension, enhancements and modifications rendering them far superior to their ancient ancestors. Terran children could live fine on Sulfuron 9, only experiencing some discomforts and minor cognitive decline.

But this world would raise Sulfuroneans.

Hidetada had pressure applied to Knightly Chapters with Sulfuronean recruits to impose the full suite of genetic engineering Angar himself received, including posture correction. The offspring of those would come from the Genitoriums, as his people would walk tall on their own world, their heads held high, unbowed.

A prostitute clergyman and clergywoman of Sulfuron 9 would be joined in exclusive union by the Sacrament of the Warrior Covenant, just a new name for traditional matrimony, but with one caveat – the price of conjugation being a Voluvicas Credit.

Craving further couplings than the single credit bestowed yearly to clergy? Earn more credits through blood and battle, deeds of glory, turning lust into a forge for martial prowess.

The women of this world were already steeped in martyrdom, indoctrinated to view their existence as a perpetual oblation, their wombs vessels for the species' survival.

That ethos would endure unaltered, but for each natural birth spawned from a warrior covenant, the mother must claim an additional Genitorium-forged infant, the inverse of the imperial system.

What would change was the mother's role. They'd no longer be mere broodmares. They'd ascend as warriors, as ferocious as the planet's scarred sons, rearing their spawn with a brutality that would make ancient Spartan matrons weep in horror at the savagery.

It'd be far harsher than the trials Angar's own mother inflicted upon him. It would war against their natural instincts, that primal urge to cradle and shield from all suffering, twisted instead into a regimen of torment and peril, forging fragility into unyielding steel.

Angar had never once doubted his mother's love. Amid the ordeals she inflicted on him, he knew she loved him down to her bone, and she did it to make him strong, to make his father proud. It all had a purpose, a noble reason, and he loved her for it, and thanked the Lord she had the fortitude to maintain it.

No matter how sweltering the night, when she slipped to the ground next to him, curling against him, her body's furnace never stifled, but a cooling blanket instead, a sanctuary, a tangible vow that he was her universe, her arms a fortress against indifference and neglect.

It gnawed at Angar's mind that the vast majority of imperial citizens would decry his mother's actions as monstrous abuse, blind to the truth.

Even the depraved Azgoth knew the truth. Those born in Cloisteranages grew without a mother's love, her warmth, her maternal affection. That was the true atrocity, a loveless void breeding hollow shells, cruelty far beyond physical abuse.

No, the children here would have mothers. Parents.

The children of Sulfuron, its progeny, would grow without knowing fear, their minds inoculated from the dark whispers of Hell, intolerant, hating weakness, scorning the soft throngs of other worlds as effete vermin unfit for their gaze.

The Holy Empire's hypno-indoctrination was a feeble crutch, ineffective, paling before the inexorable grind of culture, peer pressure, pride, the unyielding forge of expectation and tradition.

Starting at six, the children would drill for war, but more, they would live it, every breath a skirmish, existence a perpetual campaign.

His own children would be subjected to this, more so than the rest, as he was superior to all others, and so too would be his offspring, be they his own or plucked from a Genitorium.

With slaughter among men now strongly frowned upon, alternatives were being sown. This world would transcend mere Infernalis status, it'd be an eternal peril, transforming into a living anvil upon which unbreakable warriors would be hammered, a horror making Hellworlds jealous.

Zygoraths and voracithraxs, those hyper-adaptive abominations, voracious swarms of fangs and fury that bred like plagues and thrived on any biosphere, would be seeded across the globe, their relentless multiplication turning every shadow into a potential ambush.

Hidetada had scavenged every Abyssal Catalyst and Infernal Artifact within grasp at every world and station they'd stopped at, hauling them to Sulfuron 9, with fresh shipments en route.

The inaugural Cloisteranage would sprout in the northern badlands, amid teeming hives of mighty predators, to baptize the young in blood from the cradle, and battle would follow them to the grave.

And that was merely the prelude.

Angar's ambitions spanned the stars, each child indoctrinated from first wail with unassailable faith in the Lord, ironclad pride, familial bonds forged in fire, unswerving duty, unbreakable fidelity, and intolerance.

The Knightly oath would be their creed, etched into their souls from infancy, a guiding star toward righteous slaughter, toward Holy War, toward victory.

It would be glorious. Truly glorious.

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