Darkness tore at Angar's mind, threatening to drag him into oblivion. Pain consumed him, a molten anguish that seared deeply, right down to his soul.

His face was a wreck, the flesh ruined by Azgoth's fell beam, the skin melted like wax under a torch, exposing raw muscle and splintered bone.

Each nerve screamed, agony ripping at his broken body, the foul stench of his own charred tissue choking his breaths as he tried drawing air into his melted mouth, blindness smothering him with black despair.

His shattered arm dangled by threads of sinew in two places, proving his leonine forearm's strange dullness to pain didn't apply to breaks. It hurt just as much as it should.

But despite all this, despite his broken body, his ruptured side leaking life, the Lord still thirsted, and he wasn't dead yet.

The Harmongulan's venom and Baptistry had inflicted far worse torture on him than he felt now.

He was God's hammer, superior to all others, and before his final breath, Azgoth would know it.

In fact, he was doing much better than expected.

Now that he was broken enough, the tricky part was coming up, a necessity for Spirit to save the children and others.

Angar would be the victim of an arch-druden, a nightmare spirit, a master of hostile possessions.

If he rebuked the takeover, it'd be free to counter Spirit's mind-attack on Azgoth, the same as he'd seen her use before, on the Homunculus.

That meant he couldn't rebuke it. He needed to figure out a way to slay it using his mind alone, somehow, despite never training for anything like that, nor having any idea on how to accomplish the deed.

Druden weren't demons, but malevolent spirits, weavers of nightmares that drowned their prey in terror, lacking physical bodies to leave behind in the Underworld when possessing a host.

Unlike demons, they made no pacts. Every possession was a violation, usually a temporary theft, trapping the host's mind in a labyrinth of horror as it went around causing mischief, inflicting nightmares on others.

They could snuff out a mind entirely, leaving the body a mindless husk, but they rarely did, as they preferred jumping around, inflicting terror and chaos, leaving corrupted souls in their wake.

Druden weren't as powerful as demons, especially demons in physical form. Most weren't from Hell's higher planes, but some were, such as arch and elder types, the strongest of their kind.

Battles of the mind, along with nightmares, were their specialty.

Spirit was certain he'd fail. She bound him to a vow allowing possession if he couldn't slay it. Angar's own hope was frayed by many doubts, just a fragile thread.

But little hope was not no hope, and even if he failed, he'd still die shrouded in glory. He'd landed two blows on a Nofelim.

That was two more than Spirit believed possible, two more than anyone else would believe possible.

The Visio Aeterna implant hummed and vibrated as nanites did whatever they did to repair its devastation. Within moments, a dim glow pierced the darkness. His vision returned in stuttering bursts, resolving into normal sight in seconds.

He had to be careful. It'd take days for his sight to return if he was blinded again.

He tilted his head, the jagged pieces of metal of his helm biting into skin, and beheld the Thrall, the arch-druden's hollow puppet, wracked by unnatural convulsions. Its human guise, a frail shell of flesh, convulsed as if rejecting its own existence.

A sick and wet tearing sound rent the air as a bulbous head erupted from the puppet's chest. The ribcage split wide, and bones snapped like brittle twigs, spraying strange blood all over, sizzling on the ground.

Clawed tendrils unfurled, ripping through muscle and sinew, dragging a writhing, amorphous mass free.

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The arch-druden emerged, all blurry edges and coiling shadows, its form a blasphemy against all that was Holy and right.

No face marred its surface, only a maw of needle-like teeth that pulsed with a nauseating green glow.

Its limbs, if they could be called that, were spindly and segmented, tipped with barbs that wept black venom, each drop hissing as it burned the ground.

The world warbled, then the warbles intensified, each accompanied by a sound piercing deeply into Angar's skull, a wail like distilled insanity.

Blackness flashed, stealing his sight, and the noise stopped.

After a moment, his vision returned, but in grainy monochrome, the world leached of color, a stark tableau of black and white.

His cybernetic eye glitched, struggling to calibrate in this alien plane that felt both here and nowhere, a liminal nightmare stitched from Hell's horrors.

The ground beneath Angar morphed into something sickening, something profane he couldn't describe.

Trees of glistening flesh sprouted from the earth, their bark pulsing with veins, branches drooping with tumorous limbs that twitched and grasped blindly, tipped with malformed hands and eyeless faces frozen in silent screams.

The air grew rancid and thick, like an unholy miasma, a blend of rot and feces.

The sky above was a churning void, a roiling expanse of gray static where shapes of half-formed, writhing things slithered just beyond understanding, whispering madness, shouting insanities no mortal should know, clawing at Angar's mind like rusted nails.

The arch-druden slunk forward, its maw pulsing, its barbs clicking against the ground, leaving trails of smoldering venom.

Angar's cybernetic legs churned, the hydraulics grinding as he forced himself upright, ignoring his agony-racked body.

Pain lanced through his melted and shattered face, his broken arm, his mangled side, but he got his feet under him, and stood defiant, a Crusader unbowed before Hell's nightmares.

The arch-druden paused, its maw quivering, as if savoring this moment, its prey thinking it wasn't.

Dark whispers grew louder, chanting despair, promising unimaginable suffering, of flesh peeled from bone, of screams savored like a rich delicacy.

It slithered closer, its barbs twitching, its maw widening to reveal a churning abyss within.

Angar prepared to meet this nightmare head-on.

Unlike Aude's limited grasp, Spirit understood the mechanics of psychic powers well.

His Electrosynapticism was a cousin to the Grays' power, but distinct, an uncharted force.

He had no Electrosynapticism Skill to train as Holy Theosis was unraveling the anomaly of his power right along with Angar.

The two Feats it created were not specific to Angar's manifestation, as they couldn't be. They were both powerful, assisting with psionics in general.

Spirit had clarified the Light of the World Feat was not a gateway to Telepathic Insight as Angar had assumed, but a warning. Theosis watched him, its unblinking gaze piercing his heart, knowing his mind, judging his deeds.

The Feat's true function reduced mental strain and Resilience drain when manifesting psionic energy.

He'd poured two Skill Points each into Psychic Defenses and Psionic Energy Manipulation, gaining four hundred hours of System training.

Though Angar didn't remember the training, Holy Theosis did, and it gained enough data to etch a new Skill in the interface.

But it wasn't Electrosynapticism. The Skill was called Electrokinesis.

He'd invested two more Skill Points, reducing his total pool from twenty to fourteen.

In the counselors' chamber, by force of will, he'd made his power manifest as he knew Arc, Chain, and Flow were supposed to, but it didn't have to manifest that way.

Spirit explained how psychic powers fell into the five basic core categories of Astral, Clairvoyance, Energy, Telekinesis, and Telepathy.

Most Psychics manifested within one category, their first power hinting at the other powers they could attain.

A Telekinetic Force user commonly unlocked Telekinetic Restraint, maybe Gravitational Control too, or, less likely, Tech Disruption.

The same was true of Mind Assault, Mind Influence, Mental Breakdown, Telepathic Insight, and Emotional Manipulation.

Strong Psychics could have powers from multiple categories, but most didn't. Most unlocked either Telekinesis or Telepathy, and this was true for all species.

The Energy category encompassed Vitality Drain, Electrosynapticism, Biopsychic Manipulation, Pyrokineticism, and Cryokineticism. Though it was a rare power, Vitality Drain was attainable by all species, the latter four exclusive to only Grays.

No Gray had ever unlocked two Energy powers, strong evidence they were exclusive, and no Psychic unlocked an Energy power first.

Angar was an anomaly.

It was unclear if he could unlock other categories. It was unclear what his version of Electrosynapticism, his Electrokinesis, could do, as was the extent of it.

As he knew he was superior to all others, he decided this meant he could do anything with it, unshackled by limits. Or only shackled by the limit of his willpower, his ability to bend reality to his will.

The arch-druden's barbed limbs skittered across the indescribable ground, venom sizzling in its wake, closing the last few meters towards Angar.

It lunged, its needle-toothed maw gaping, a vortex of green-glowing malevolence promising to drown him in nightmares.

Angar channeled psionic energy, the Unspoken Way amplifying his power. A torrent of psychic electricity flooded his palm, crackling with ethereal blue-yellow fury.

He thrust his hand forward, seized the arch-druden above its maw, what he hoped was the head, his fingers sinking into its amorphous essence.

The contact burned in an odd way, hurting his mind, not his gauntleted hand, but he held fast.

The arch-druden's intent was to invade Angar's mind and possess his body.

With a roar that shook the nightmarish plane, Angar began bending reality to his command, his intent to reverse the assault.

Instead of the spirit burrowing into his psyche, he'd force his way into arch-druden's own.

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