Crusader Gaius held the line.

A machine with snakelike heads clawed up the mountainside, snapping after him, jaws filled with occult blades.

His squires remained focused behind him as they opened fire from cover, tackling the unshielded Screamers climbing the mountain after them.

This foe however, this would be his burden. Only an occult blade could slay something of this league. And Gaius was almost certain that blade wouldn’t be his.

He struck back, trying to keep it off the squires. If it fully scaled the cliff here, it would be attacking them all with far more than three heads. The entire creature had a lower body built like a lion, and equally as well equipped with claws and power.

He didn’t need to win. He only needed to keep it off balance and away from the rest of his fireteam. And it would likely cost him his life to do it.

That life had taken him to strange places over the years, but some part of his mind knew this would be the final place. At the far summit of a forsaken mountain, among the ruins of a machine railcannon position, attempting to hold off a small army of machines trying to reclaim it.

They’d all charged in through one of the blessed Icon’s portals, striking the machine operation here into pieces, laying down a power cell for detonation, and extracting right after. That failed from some kind of countermeasure the machines had begun using.

If that cell had detonated as expected, he would have been out of here far earlier. Instead, they’d had to take a portal back to the summit and go to work destroying the railcannon with sword and spite.

The issue being they were never meant to stay in this theater of war for long. They hadn't been properly supplied for it, all the Icon's plans running on razor thin margins of error.

Which made protecting his squires far more important - they couldn’t afford to miss their shots. Those bullets were the last of their team’s stock. And with a massive machine swinging right for them, forcing them to dodge and retreat, those shots weren’t going to land on the enemy trying to swarm past their chokepoint.

Of his Contubernium, three of the squires were just about halfway through the cannon behind them, ripping apart the electronics, following the blessed Icon’s direct instructions on where to strike. The moment they were complete with the task, the Icon would extract them all just as quickly as they’d struck.

Emperor willing, the squires would complete the mission in time. Because among the eight of them, they had no hope in fully fending off the machines trying to scale back up to their cannon.

“Hold position, Gaius.” The Icon spoke directly to him, as he once more forced the hydra monster back down the mountain side, heads snapping away at him, hissing. “You are in queue for reinforcements. Crusader Octavia and her squires will be arriving within T minus four minutes.”

A grim omen. He knew the Icon was a machine of the old ages, built by their forefathers in the golden age, dormant until the moment she was most needed. Capable of calculating anything with near certainty.

If she was attempting to send him reinforcements, that meant she had calculated either the squires would not destroy the cannon in time, or that he would be overrun and killed before the squires completed their own task.

As far as Gaius imagined, Crusader Octavia, whoever she was, must be currently occupied fighting off her own war and was expected to win soon. Afterwards, she’d be jumping through a portal sent by the Icon to ferry herself and her squires here to give him backup.

He imagined this because he’d been the one saving other desperate nearly overrun positions just earlier.

Four minutes. He wasn’t certain he’d survive that, and the Icon wasn’t either. He’d need to hold regardless. If he died, he died. He was fine with that, but the idea that his squires would equally die with him forced him to fight to the best that he could.

The machine before him hissed once more, while he breathed heavily himself, longsword held ahead of him in a defensive stance. It tried to put a paw further up for leverage, and Gaius lunged forward, blade held high, threatening to cut that off.

The machine decided to call his bluff and commit to the attack.

He ducked under the snapping head, sliced upwards and beheaded the exposed neck, then pure reflex saved his life.

The other head to the side struck for him and he threw his blade directly into its throat, striking deep within, breaking the gears and mobility it needed to function.

But the third head completed its attack, barreling into him, lifting him off his feet for a few inches, and down against the rocks. Trying to sink those teeth filled with occult edges into his armor.

Two well placed gauntlets on the interior of the jaws saved him, but he could feel his relic armor start to give, the angle too difficult to hold off. Slowly the jaw was going to close over him.

He tried to kick out, and found the action forced him off position, his back now against the rocky mountain.

“Gaius!” One of the squires called out, rifle almost turning to provide cover fire.

“Remain focused!” He called back, struggling to manage his relic armor. Hoping the unlocked permissions Emperor Urs had sent to them all would overcome this hellspawn.

The squires further behind him followed the order, remaining focused on their task, keeping the chaff off.

On his end, he debated if he could survive the next three minutes trapped like this. Or if he could cripple it in some way before he was killed, so that the squires would survive past him.

He had to find a way to stab this third head or break the shields it carried.

“Gaius! Survive!” The Icon shouted, “Reinforcements arriving now!”

That wasn’t the four minutes. Barely even a single minute had passed. Unless Crusader Octavia had managed to clear her fight early somehow, but the Icon’s predictions were rarely that far off schedule.

He heard the whomp of a gold portal opening near him.

The angle was wrong. It had instead been opened far above Giaus, to the side. And through it, he was looking downwards.

No imperial strike force dove through the portal either. Instead, what he was would remain in his mind for years on end after.

Frozen ice surrounding a central dias, all in a perfect circle. And by that dias was a single surface knight of black and red, knelt in reverent prayer, helmet looking down at his blade and armguard. On his back, he carried a husk of a man, with eyes glowing blue, nearly drowned out by the sheer occult static and electric power crackling off the man’s plate.

Occult ghosts carrying his armor and weapons flowed out of him by the hundreds, and they raced straight through dozens of gold portals that surrounded him in every direction.

Giaus saw a dozen of those ghosts lift up off the man and fly directly at him. Directly at the portal that connected them both.

They roared out into reality on this side, blades out, swinging into the machine holding him down. Shields over it crackles as armguards were slammed into it, breaking its shields almost instantly. The blades sliced through the rest, violets lights flickered off as the machine slumped over him, crashing off to the side, the neck itself cut from the body. Cut in a hundred different locations. Pieces were already starting to roll off the mountain, as Gaius pushed the dead beast’s jaws off of him, standing back up as fast as he could, scrambling for his discarded blade.

The world around him was a battlefield now. Glowing ghosts were flying everywhere, slicing out at enemies left and right, surrounding the squires in a circle of protection.

And the railcannon further ahead collapsed, the foundations failing as the squires there completed their task.

The portal connecting Giaus to the man on the ice vanished, closing up. The ghosts remained for moments, each completing their final movements before fading away, leaving an overturned battlefield.

“Extraction available, proceed through.” The Icon spoke, his HUD highlighting the path out, where a portal had been opened.

Gaius raced straight at it, taking guard at the front, blade ready to hold off the enemy until his squires had all passed through.

Screamers and the chaff enemies finally scaled over the mountain side racing after him, howling in rage as their command unit had been slain.

One by one the squires jumped through, until only Gaius remained outside, turning to follow the final squire behind.

The screamers never reached them, the portal breaking apart the instant he stepped through.

An imperial armory. One of hundreds so far, filled with non-combatants on the other end. Logistics. The room here was sealed off, small and tiny. Now filled with subfreezing air.

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“Close.” He said, breathing hard in his helmet. Around him, his squires were already moving to the airlock doorway, waiting for the light to turn green as the air was warmed up.

“It was.” The Icon agreed. “I’ve scheduled you for rest. Please eat and drink, take some time to gather and resupply.”

“I will be ready immediately." Gaius spoke. Death hadn’t taken him earlier, thus he’d continue on until it did.

“I would strongly prefer if you take some time to rest first, Sir Gaius.”

Which was an order, albeit far more kindly put. The Icon had been a constant companion to him these past ten hours, and clearly cared for him. Cared for all humanity. He knew she was talking to all the squires here, likely simultaneously.

“I will take your suggestion into consideration.” He said, giving a final grunt before the airlock announced temperature had been normalized.

He turned and walked through the airlock with his team.

Ahead, imperial squires and volunteers from different cities were swarming the area, a pair already setting down stew and food on the table for his team, one bringing a set of magazines to resupply his spent ammunition. The other squires were equally getting the same treatment, helmets already off as they sat down to scarf down food as quickly as they could.

They all wanted to be back out on the field as quickly as possible. This was what they had trained for.

He always considered his life held meaning before in fighting the machine forces in the name of the Emperor. Today put the rest of his life into a pale light instead.

And given the nature of the fight, they’d need to be back out, likely jumping into a warzone halfway across the world to save another estranged group of warriors. Perhaps imperials like himself. Or some Undersider city he had never known existed.

“Who was that?” He asked, drinking water first from his armor’s internal straw. Still taking breaths in between even as other logistics squires here fussed over his armor and belt, making sure it was restocked with grenades and tools.

He had the idea it was a powerful warlock. Perhaps the guild’s greatest one.

The answer he got took the breath from his lungs.

“The Emperor.”

Gaius almost choked on his water.

“The…” He coughed, trying to clear his throat and mind. “The Emperor?”

“Yes. He has completed the first set of preparations and is now assisting worldwide. The second set will require him to travel to the surface soon and make contact with the orbital fortresses. However, I am uncertain how much time that will take. For now, he is available in helping desperate situations like your own.”

Gaius slowly sat on the table.

Reeling at the realization the Emperor himself had seen him, reached out directly and saved his life. The power was insane. He’d only given them a sliver of his attention, and yet the entire mountainside had been razed to the ground, the enemy routed and ripped apart by wraiths flying everywhere.

He felt something warm within his core. A sense of hope. The Emperor of mankind himself was truly alive. He wasn't a legend. He was here, fighting for them, right now. At this very moment. Everywhere across the world.

The Icon served as his eyes, guiding his blade to save humanity. And if he had come to save Gaius at his final hours, then certainly he was doing so for the rest. “How… how many has he saved?” He finally asked.

“Fifty three thousand, eight hundred and forty nine.” The Icon said. “He is active within an average of ninety different battlefields at all times, and assists around seven hundred fifty three soldiers on average, per minute. That number grows to the thousands when he intercedes in far larger battlefields, which skews the average to eight hundred ninety seven soldiers.”

He didn’t know what to answer. But a squire passing by unhooked his helmet, cutting off the discussion then handed him a loaf of freshly baked bread.

Very likely at the direct order of the Icon for this stubborn knight who still refused to eat his stew and take a moment to calm himself from a near-death experience.

She scuttled away to the next arriving group of Imperials, opening their own airlock doorway, walking in with snow and ice still holding onto their armors.

The Crusader ate his food as quickly as he could, before he took his helmet again, locking it into place, only a minute after the rest of his team had finished their own meal and done the same.

As the HUD lit to life, the systems turning back on, Gaius closed his eyes, speaking prayer to the golden goddess. Then he brought out his blade, and went through every blessing he could remember.

He belatedly noticed the rest of the squires in his team had done the same. Looking shaken as he was. Likely having asked the Icon the same questions he had.

They had seen the Emperor himself.

Had been saved by his hand, and directly at that. For a reason.

Whatever happened, he would make himself worthy of that reason.

He had to.

“Send me out again.” He spoke to her. “I am ready.”

*****

One hour earlier.

The Icon opened a portal and within the occult sight a small new sliver of world appeared nearby. Part of the bridge that Avalis had been building on the northern front, still far from range on the citadel walls.

The storm was midway currently, wind gusting everywhere, but the occult strings were pulled taut, the fractals drawing danger being layered down on the ground, acting like magnets.

The machines seemed to notice the portal almost the same second it had appeared, but it was too late by then. I sent a few phantom mirrors through it, swinging occult blades straight for the fractals on the bridge ground they were constructing.

They collapsed, and winked out of operation, leaving the entire bridge crew caught within the storm unprotected now, the very occult strings that had been shielding them now whipping around wildly, destroying both the construction crew and the shield defense crew to get sliced to pieces.

She sealed the portal before the rest were fully dead and gone, leaving my mirrors to do what I had imagined their movements as. I’d gotten really good at doing that, and with Urs channeling his cross dimensional fractal for us both, the singular event here was repeated as many times as the Icon could summon portals around me.

The warmap ahead was getting cleared of red dots beyond the wall at fast speed, now almost none of the occult bridges anywhere in range of opening fire on the wallside.

“Mister Winterscar,” The Icon said, pulling me out of my trance. “I will need to pull forces away from the citadel now. The situation on the surface is growing dire without Clan Altosk there to handle threats.”

“And if I’m guessing right, you also want me to be fighting out there instead of defending the citadel?”

She gave an affirmative beep. “I do not mean to make you believe your own situation here isn’t dangerous. However, the objective isn’t to defeat To’Avalis’s forces. It is only to withstand long enough for Talen to arrive. We have eliminated his internal forces, and now scouts and visibility ahead in the centerfield show we have dismantled the majority of his ability to damage the wallside defenses. We can also immediately adjust and send attack forces to hamper any emergency response from him at our leisure.”

“No, I get it. You don’t need to convince me of anything.” I looked over the warmap. Avalis had taken a beating. He’d tried a few extra last second plans, including setting off more power cells far away enough from the destroyed pillar heart that the leftover miasma didn’t prevent the detonation.

The result had been lackluster on his part. He’d built a shaped charge that mostly directed the blast of the power cell, baited a portal to spawn, and then revealed his attempt last second, detonating the cell at an angle the Icon couldn’t have spotted.

The destruction hardly passed through the portal. It collapsed from damage before any of it really flew into my face.

“All right, let’s move the sphere of combat outside the citadel to the wide world.” I said, “I trust you’ll pull me into a defense here if Avalis starts to bring something new or unexpected.”

“Of course Mister Winterscar.” She answered, already opening several portals within the room, each sucking out huge amounts of hot air from the vault out into the white wastes. Already the vault doors ahead were sealed, so I wasn’t too worried about the Icon opening up holes into the freeze above.

We got to work on the wider planet.

The limit was space within this vault. That and directions. In each reality, there was only one Keith after all, and only one Icon that could pass on one set of more detailed instructions.

As such, the default orders I’d follow were pretty simple: Destroy everything metal on the other end of any portal, and smash everything that looks expensive, at my leisure. Which I had been preparing my entire life to do exactly that kind of work.

Very quickly the chamber here grew subfreezing, the water around the terminal turning into ice.

She’d always have me do one task with more detail, explaining it to me as quickly as she could and which portal it was needed through. Usually that involved having to weave through more delicate situations, and occasionally had Urs himself called on to provide occult shielding on the other end of the portal, which the God was capable of doing with the fractal of Resolve powering it up.

Everything else, it was a blur of mirrors. Sometimes I’d be throwing my occult ghosts out into nothing but enemies. Other times right into the middle of a pitched fight where the few surviving humans were desperately holding on.

I got to see the full scale of the war, and the most desperate tail end of it. With only so much space in the vault here to spawn portals within, the Icon had to be very critical of where I’d be sent. If the situation could be handled without me, it most certainly would. I was the final line of defense, when the Icon was truly out of all other options and needed absolutely everything in the area wiped out.

I was witness to hundreds of final stands before completely desperate soldiers, often right at the very last second before death. I can’t say I managed to save them all, but there were plenty of timelines where I did.

In some ways, they all survived. And there was at least one singular reality that got every Keith’s undivided attention the entire way through. They surely survived there, though that reality diverged from mine a long while back.

I just held my ground and fought without pause, with Urs keeping me connected to a greater set of timelines all working together. An hour and a half passed like this, all blurred together.

She’d open up portals, I’d instantly flood the area with as many occult wraiths as I could then use my limited soul sight into that direction to plot out what to slice and where to move my phantoms. The portals would then seal off when the Icon decided enough had been done, and the occult ghosts on the other end would complete their imagined movements, vanishing away shortly after.

She’s replaced that portal almost instantly with another, leading to another desperate situation.

Avalis continued to try and breach the wallside defenses, but ever since the full victory here, his forces really hadn’t been able to ever recover.

Oh, they were there all right, outnumbering us several hundred to one. But so long as the biome remained impenetrable, they couldn’t actually make use of that number advantage.

Anything that got too far out of hand, the Icon would send a strike team into it.

Up until something started systematically destroying them from the rear.

The Icon opened up a video feed, then zoomed the sight in. And I saw the sheer destruction happening on his backline.

A single man was slowly walking through, covered with grey and brown rags. A vacant stare ahead, with what looked to be slivers of an occult blade occasionally seen within the rags, drawn at the ready.

A vagabond without destination. No beard, but completely matted white hair. Not even noticing the destruction around him. The only technology I could spot was a helmet half-plate, worn like a shoulderpad while not in use, like a traditional Deathless would have.

The enemy surged at him, leaping from every direction. They were split apart, disassembled pieces floating around him in a circle before they were disposed of behind him, falling into the rock ground. Nothing could get within even twenty feet of him. I don’t think he even noticed them.

Lasers from Drakes were fired, only to hit a domed shield like the one guarding the wallside. They licked the side of the barrier, light and colors flickering around in almost a prism-like display as the light was broken apart into different colors.

Those he seemed to notice, if only absentmindedly. He slowly turned his head to look where they were, and they broke. Often blasted away into pieces. There weren’t explosions, no fading violet lights or even the time for that. They were drakes one moment, and scrap metal jettisoned away the next.

Then he stared directly forward, at the camera the Icon had aimed his way. As if he could feel us watching him from all this way away.

“He has come.” Urs said. “Talen.”