The battle over the birth of the Champion of Order begins Armageddon.

1. The Blue Knight
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Chapter 2
“The Battle that Began the War”
Maryll, 34
th
of Aurys, Age of the Winds 11,667
∞∞
A yellow glow silhouetted five figures in green robes
ducking single-file under a low overhang in a narrow
basalt fissure. Each had a large black rat perched on their
shoulder. One the size of a bloodhound preceded a sixth
figure bearing a shining quarterstaff.
Tentative in the dark confines, six human children in
brown tunics trailed behind, followed by six robed figures
without rats.
“I don’t like the dark.”
“I’m scared.”
“I’m not.
“This place stinks.”
“Where are we going?”
“Are we nearly there?”
“I want to go home.”
“I want a rat too.”
“Quiet!” The word was a hiss as the man with the
light spun around, sharp olive face pinched, glaring at
speakers both young and adult.
“Do you want to see what dwells below Arcanica’s
sewers? You won’t like it.”
Their fear brought a gleam to his hazel eyes. He
smiled.
“Don’t worry. You are Father’s chosen. I won’t let
anything happen.”
Over the last three months, the city market had
provided him with a girl and two boys of five, two boys of
six, and a girl of seven, eight being the age when the gods

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2
considered humans moral agents. Innocence was vital for
the covenant renewal ceremony.
“Why are we here, Brother Therus?” said the eldest,
a Kaldarian like him, but with the cool of the north in her
blue eyes.
The other children bunched behind her.
“I’m taking you to Father, Mina. Father’s kingdom is
so wonderful that the way to it must be kept hidden or
everyone would want to come, and there is just not
enough room.”
“Are you one of his children?”
His smile warmed. “Yes, I am. I was also chosen,
freed, and brought here.” He gestured to the two men
and three women with rats. “So were they. We are all
Father’s Children.”
“What about them?” Mina gestured with her thumb
at the three men and three women waiting behind the
children.
He shook his head and sighed. “No. They only wish
to be his Children. For them it is too late. They must wait
until the Afterlife. Now hush. We mustn’t keep Father
waiting.”
Keeping his Children and his most valued followers
on their toes, Father always appointed the time of
Renewal a few hours beforehand, this one a typical
subversion of the Night of Shadows, sacred to Isis as the
yearly peak of Grey Magic’s power.
Mina looked uncertain but hopeful, following with
the younger children on her heels when he turned and
resumed walking.
Quietly, the party made their way down the twisting
tunnel past narrower branches and an intersecting
circular tunnel ten feet in diameter.
The air grew humid and malodourous as the tunnel
levelled out, widening to five feet. Many colours of
mould, fungus, and slime, covered a black floor with
pock-marks containing fetid water. Cockroaches and

3. The Blue Knight
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maggots crawled through it, bloated flies spinning clouds
through the air.
The group stopped.
In the lead, Sister Lucia gripped her silver medallion
while producing a series of precise motions, gestures, and
sounds, triggering and projecting her prepared spell
weave.
“Keep close.”
The others obeyed as she strode forward.
Flies and rats scattered before them, buzzing cloud
and squeaking sea avoiding a ten-foot radius of Lucia.
The tunnel doubled in width, echoes of falling water
growing louder.
Sulphur, methane, urine, feces, and decay, thickened
the breath in the throat, making all but the six priests gag.
“Breathe through your mouth,” said Brother Therus,
inhaling the nostalgic fragrance. It represented safety and
the open expression of his faith, of himself.
Only Father’s Children, vermin, and germs, were
welcome here.
The tunnel opened into a chamber with walls
stretching out of sight, ceiling barely touched by the light.
A couple of inches deep, a stream ran out of the dark
on the right, plunging over the edge of a crevasse on the
left that split a wall of fitted stones just ahead of the
group.
Sister Lucia followed the stream toward its source.
The tumble of water intensified as they approached
a stone gateway. Beyond it lurked a ziggurat buried when
Romulus and Remus had erupted together, driving the
Sumerians to the Island of Zendar to become its Sea
Kings. A set of broad steps climbed up the side. Sewage
ran down.
Brother Therus took the lead, ascending the steps
sixty feet to the top, where sewage pouring from a crack
in the ceiling formed a curtain behind a stone altar.

4. Michael S. Fricker
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On the front, Ra’s radiant sun relief had been
magically reshaped into the Father of Sin’s tall, muscular
anthropoid form. Leering and naked, his compound eyes
glared under noble brow, pointed ears flanking a
handsome face topped by a crest of feathers, four wings
spreading from back, and legs ending in avian talons.
Malformed, diseased, rotting genitals hung below his
knees.
Brother Therus hardened in anticipation of the ritual
orgy that would follow the sacrifice.
“Come, Mina. Gather the others by me.”
Sister Lucia stood midpoint of an arc facing the altar
with the other four priests; the six worshippers of
privilege making a row behind.
Brother Therus set five children before the priests
and Mina at his side.
He beamed at her. “Here’s what will happen. I will
open a gateway to Father’s kingdom. He will send a spirit
to share your body so that and you can lead the others
through the portal. You will live with Father, learning
magic until ready to return to this world as a priest, like
me.”
The faces of the children lit with excitement, except
Mina. Her cool gaze locked with his.
“What are Father and his kingdom like?”
“Wondrous, terrifying, and amazing.” His awe was
genuine. “Unlike anyone or anything you can imagine.”
Seeing doubt battling hope on her face, he patted
her shoulders.
“Don’t worry. You will be able to see Father’s
kingdom. No one will make you go if you don’t wish to.
No one will harm you. You are free to become Father’s
Children.”
She wasn’t experienced enough to sense lies woven
among truths. She would learn better, if she survived.

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Kneeling before the altar with his head at the feet of
his god, Therus intoned, “My soul is yours, Blessed
Father.”
Standing, he raised the glowing staff above his head,
gripped near the ends, and began a dissonant chant in
Dark Speech. Created by Cthulhu for his daemons it had
become the common tongue of the Underworld, Dark
North, and the Black Order of the Arcanum.
Another priest joined each time the chant repeated.
Once all five were chanting, Therus placed the staff
on the ground parallel to the altar. Drawing a golden
medallion from beneath his robes he executed a complex
series of intricate hand gestures while intoning arcane
sounds designed to trigger and amplify his pre-woven
Tenth Circle spell pattern. Still speaking, he took six
emeralds from a pouch on his belt and closed his fist, a
flash of light leaving an empty palm as he returned to
chanting, ending with one word said three times by all.
“Pazuzu!”
A slurping bulge appeared behind the altar, warping,
twisting and ballooning into a ten-foot sphere. Red light
filled it, flashing orange through violet before revealing a
distorted, upside-down, cobblestone road meandering
through blossoming groves. Coloured pennants flying
from its towers, a marble palace stood just below a
snowy peak looking over a sparkling turquoise sea.
Brother Therus turned and smiled at the stunned
children.
“Father’s kingdom awaits you.”
He offered his hand to Mina.
Slowly, gaze jumping between his and the sphere,
she took it.
He led the children around the altar to face the
sphere.
Letting go of her hand, he left Mina a couple of feet
from its surface, and moved behind the other five.
“The children await their guide,” he called.

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Expectant gazes fixed on the sphere.
A tanned human face appeared broad smile upside-
down and clownish. Then it twisted upright and shrank, a
tall, handsome man in an ankle-length loincloth stepping
from the sphere without disturbing surface or image.
Priests and worshippers dropped to their knees,
foreheads in sewage.
The children copied their elders.
“No, no, no.”
Pazuzu offered his right hand to Mina.
“Only adults need bow.”
The girl peeked up at the smiling man’s hand, large,
strong, and steady.
Reaching up, she allowed him to pull her to her feet.
Then he offered his left hand to the youngest child.
The blonde boy leapt to his feet and wrapped skinny
arms around the god’s muscular leg.
Pazuzu smiled and patted the boy’s head.
The children clustered around him. He smelled
heavily of flowers.
“Stand, Archbishop.”
Brother Therus rose, gaze downcast, sewage
dripping from his nose.
“Forgive me, Father, for the unacceptable reception.
We did not expect your glorious presence.”
“You are forgiven, this time.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“The Champion of Order will be born this Night.”
Therus peered up, grinning. “We are to adopt the
Champion?”
Pazuzu shook his head, dark eyes flashing red.
“Normally that would be amusing, but there are
larger concerns. An agent will neutralize him – crude and
uninteresting, but a favour of great promise.”
Brother Therus nodded. “Yes, Father.”
Speaking his name three times in succession could
summon Pazuzu’s avatar to perform a service in exchange

7. The Blue Knight
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for one in return. Each time he helped, the return favour
pushed the person closer to the Abyss.
“My agent requires a willing vessel.”
“I am yours, Father,” all six priests shouted.
Pazuzu beamed at Mina. “See how good Children
behave?”
“My Archbishop is due this honour.”
Therus swelled. “Thank you, Father.”
Pazuzu’s eyes flashed red. “Do not disappoint.”
Then, he turned the children to face the sphere.
“Come, my Children. Let’s go home.”
They passed into the sphere without disturbance,
appearing upside-down and reversed on the distorted
road.
The scene faded to black.
Darkness streamed from the sphere’s bottom rising
as an eight-foot cloud with four red lights floating in it like
malevolent fireflies.
Because demons drew upon the personal and primal
fears of hosts for forms, Therus couldn’t predict its
abilities. He did know that there were six power classes
and that this was an assassin sent by his god.
Smiling, he spread his arms to expose his chest.
“I am your vessel.”
The cloud engulfed him, invading every orifice with
intense cold until completely absorbed.
Therus shuddered, then blinked and shook his head.
Ecstasy lit his face, darkness flowing from pupils to
fill his eyes.
This demon was Class Six.
Arrogant cruelty, hunger, hatred, lust, fear, and rage,
churned into a maelstrom of agony delicious and terrible,
intensifying exponentially.
A long scream threw his head back, blanching his
face and breaking his voice.
Turning pitch, flesh bubbled, arms, legs, and torso,
stretching with loud cracks and snaps. Shoulders and back

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expanded, shredding clothing as his head sunk within the
chest, silently screaming face left exposed in the centre.
Both arms split into two; hands becoming sharp beaks
that snapped at the air. Long ebony maggot heads
exploded from shoulders, circular mouths oozing dark qi
venom between rows of needle teeth. An umber
carapace hardened over its flesh as avian talons extended
across the floor.
The fourteen-foot demon turned to face priests and
worshippers, two red pinpoints spinning, separating, and
chasing each other, through the facets of each dark eye.
Initially overwhelmed by agony and alien thoughts,
Therus began to understand and relate. Lust for pain and
destruction mixed with the rush of power.
<Who is our target?> He was unaware of mouthing
the words.
“Logosien Di Lzander, born this night to Argus and
Tsinien.” The fluctuating tones came from his mouth.
It didn’t know their location.
<We must find them.>
Ignoring priests and worshippers who dared rise to
their feet, he reached for his divine symbol, fascinated by
seeing his hand sticking out like the beak’s grasping
tongue.
A few minutes of gesturing and arcane sounds
activated a Sixth Circle weave prepared as part of his
standard compliment. His mind reached out, following
Pazuzu’s guidance to the Di Lzander home, but something
shielded the general area from remote viewing. Unable to
incorporate dimensional shifting, the spell mapped the
quickest sewer route to the target, fixing it in his intuition
for the duration.
It was approaching the Witching Hour. The brat
could be born at any time. He needed to go.
“But,” demon and priest said from the same mouth,
“not before a little fun.”
He locked gazes with Lucia.

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Eyes popping wide, she clutched her head and fell to
her knees in a catatonic nightmare.
The demon and Therus laughed and closed the
portal, the sphere shrinking to nothing.
The demon dispelled Lucia’s protective field.
Clouds of flies descended on the eleven humans as a
carpet of centipedes, cockroaches, earwigs, and rats,
flowed over them and their familiars.
Three of the priests vanished, vermin falling to the
floor.
The muffled screams of the remaining eight mixed
with doubled laughing until the crawling shapes fell over.
Amusement done for now, the two minds focused
on the pull of their destination, following swift and silent
toward the city streets and the child.
As they drew near, the demon forced the pathetic
mortal into the smallest, darkest corner of his psyche. It
would play with him, and the rest of the city, soon
enough.
∞∞
The baby kicked, hard, waking Tsinien. Gasping as
her eyes opened, she caressed her swollen belly.
She lifted her head to gaze past her husband,
breathing quietly on their straw mattress.
A wooden chair sat against the sloped wall of the
attic room, Argus’s grey-blue Watch uniform draped over
its back. His new lieutenant’s bars on the collar glinted in
the pale white glow of street globes spilling through a
small circular window a few feet from the stairs to the
kitchen.
The hair on her arms and neck quivered.
A floorboard creaked from the kitchen, the only exit,
her aged mother sleeping on a crude mattress under the
stairs.
Something heavy stepped onto the stairs, chewing
and crunching.

10. Michael S. Fricker
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Her almond-shaped, dark-brown eyes widened. She
struggled to move or make sound as darkness billowed
into the room filling it with cold.
Heavy, wet breathing as something – things –
approached.
Her elbow dug into Argus’s side startling him awake
as she struggled to sit up.
“What the Hell?” he mumbled before being yanked
from bed.
His screams combined with heavy, wet growling,
snarling, and cackling.
Something warm splattered her face.
“Argus!”
His screams became a horrible gurgling ended by
ripping and wet thuds from walls and floor.
The black vapour dissipated and she screamed much
louder.
Transfixed, she watched in horror as the thing came
toward her, a giant anthropoid cross between a
cockroach and two maggots. The armoured body filled
the half of the attic, arms spread, beaks snapping,
dripping blood. Gore coated the maggot mouths. A deep,
growl of a chuckle rose from its boney chest but she
couldn’t look away from the segmented heads.
Fortunately, its shadow muted the blood splattered
everywhere and her gaze avoided the body parts.
Behind it, a muffled voice shouted, “In Athena’s
name, I banish you.”
Maggot heads howled as golden light flowed over its
back, wrapping it in tendrils. Struggling, it broke beams
and boards, an elbow shattering the window. Becoming
almost transparent, it flickered in and out for several
movements, a human shape hovering within.
Absorbing the golden light, it returned to full
opacity, whirled and exploded through window and wall.
The baby doubled Tsinien, unlocking her muscles,
allowing her to roll out of bed and stumbled to the stairs.

11. The Blue Knight
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Clutching her cramping stomach with one hand and
the thin handrail with the other, she descended fast as
she dared into the windowless kitchen. Turning left on
the landing halfway down, she plunged into darkness.
The cramp eased as she set foot on the kitchen floor.
Her eyes filled with tears but she didn’t dare give in.
She took four careful steps.
The fifth brought her bare foot down on a hand.
Tsinien lost all reason, bolting across the room
toward where the door should be.
The table stabbed her with a corner. Pain flared in
her left hip. Bouncing off the wall, she staggered a few
steps.
Her right foot slipped in warm wetness and she
landed heavily on her back, flashes roaming her sight.
An intense cramp made her cry out and struggle to
get up, flailing about.
Rolling onto her side, she climbed to her knees and
crawled through the pain.
Her head struck a hard surface and the flashes
returned.
She threw both of her hands against it, feeling up for
knob and latch. Trembling fingers closed tight over both,
turning and pulling.
The door popped open knocking her to the side, light
pouring in.
Tsinien scrambled into the alley, a dead end ten feet
to her left containing the closed door of an apothecary.
Light spilled down the alley from Sword Street to her
right, bordering the Watch and Imperial Precincts.
The cramp relaxed.
Tsinien got to her feet with the help of a wooden
crate and ran toward the street.
∞∞
Blasting through a cloud of debris, the demon
tackled the white-cloaked anthropoid hovering outside,

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rolling across the sixty-foot wide cobblestone road in a
ball of white, gold, blue, black, and rust, before leaping
apart.
Seven feet tall, the hooded man drew a
bastardsword from the air behind his back, silver blade
inscribed with the holiest of Marduk’s fifty names.
Throwing back his full-length, feathered cloak exposed
Athena’s striking owl embossed in full colour across a
gleaming, golden breastplate worn over a blue tunic, and
copper curls framing a radiant bronze face.
As the demon leapt to its feet, Guardian Azrael of
the Fourth Host of Heaven spoke with the full force of his
faith in words comprehensible by any intelligent creature.
“I summon Athena’s wrath upon you.”
Gold energy limned the demon.
Shell smoking and cracking, the demon leapt as
Azrael spun, bastardsword striking its side, chitin splitting,
knocking the creature to his right.
Landing, it sprung at him, snapping beaks and
mouths coming from seemingly every angle. Blade and
armour stopped most, but one beak sliced down his left
calf before he jumped back out of reach.
The cherub could feel cold dark qi invading the
wound but the ward he had cast approaching the house
dissipated it like smoke.
The face in its chest smiled at him, drawing his gaze
to glowing compound eyes.
A barrage of voices and bizarre images filled his
head. Reeling, he yanked his gaze away before they took
over.
Taking advantage of his distraction, the demon
dispelled the angel’s ward and then drove him backwards
down the street.
Behind the demon, eight Watchmen ran around the
next intersection. Seven in padded armour with
crossbows, nets, clubs, and broadswords, the eighth in a
grey cloak hemmed with arcane sigils, gnarled

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quarterstaff in hand. They skidded to a halt, forming a
line of kneeling ahead of the magician as he blew a signal
horn, echoing down empty streets.
Crossbows fired, five bolts bouncing off chitin.
The magician followed with four yellow qi darts that
dissipated upon contact.
Reeling under the demon’s onslaught, Azrael feared
he was just as ineffective. Failure seemed inevitable.
But, he would not, could not, let that happen.
“The child must live,” Azrael shouted, pouring his
strength into an overhand chop that sank between
maggot heads almost to the face.
The demon ran its body along the blade, smearing it
with hissing, smoking tar-like qi. Beaks sliced his right
thigh, right shoulder, left cheek, and left hip. Maggot
heads bit through his armour, tearing circles in his chest.
His veins burned cold as his combined soul fought
the dark qi trying to coat his radiant white. If he still had a
separate spirit it would be cocooned along with his
freewill, transforming him into an undead.
Beaks slashed and bit, twice striking flesh without
piercing, another striking his hilt less than an inch from
his face.
As Azrael sprang backwards into the air, white cloak
flaring, a beak’s tip exposed the bone of his shin.
Landing sixty feet down the street, he drew back his
sword as the demon charged.
Deflecting the blade with one arm, the demon’s
other three beaks stabbed through his armour, one front,
two back, as maggot maws struck at his face.
Summoning golden divine energy around his blade,
the angel smote the creature in the wound between
heads, smashing it to its knees in a spray of chitin and qi,
cutting into the forehead of the face.
The demon became a blur, the angel struggling to
block strike after strike, before its lower beaks sank
between ribs and ripped.

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Qi billowed from Azrael’s mouth like winter breath.
The demon pulled a beak across his face, slicing his
nose and opening a flap of cheek.
He managed to dodge a slash at his throat and
brought up his weapon just in time to stop the reverse
slash.
Azrael shot straight up, taking a slash across his left
thigh in order to get sixty feet into the air. Focusing
through the pain, he touched the emblazoned owl and
uttered the trigger sounds for his most powerful
necromantic spell, an aura of white sinking into him and
healing his most serious wounds.
If he could keep clear a little longer, he could cleanse
the dark qi poisoning his body.
If only he could heal doubt.
To prevent repeating the destruction of the first two,
the Third Existential War was to be waged by Champions
representing each of the Council of Power’s five Factions.
The Armageddon Accords allowed Factions an equal or
lesser response to the direct actions of other Factions.
Only a few thousand years an angel, Azrael felt the
lesser response against this ancient horror.
If he failed, Armageddon would be lost.
“Destroy the assassin,” Athena had commanded. “If
you cannot, deliver mother and child to Xondra. Above
all else, the child lives.”
He had memorized the route from Athena’s temple
to Xondra’s and the Di Lzander home before stationing
himself at moonrise to watch for the assassin.
He glanced toward the house as Tsinien, splattered
with blood, emerged from the alley and stumbled toward
the soldiers, arms clutching her belly.
About to leap, the demon noticed his gaze and
turned. Spotting its victim, the maggots spat thin streams
of dark qi that splattered against Tsinien’s back, sinking in
and dropping her to her knees, spread-legged, head
bowed.

15. The Blue Knight
15
Her water burst.
The demon charged, getting within five feet of its
victim before the angel swooped in and lifted her into the
sky, sword held beneath her, cloak beating like wings.
The demon shot after them, rising over Watchmen
and light poles, four insect wings exploding through its
back as it disappeared into the dark.
Azrael climbed above low houses and headed west
toward the Temple Precinct flying as fast his innate ability
and cloak could carry him.
Tsinien screamed. Black veins multiplied and spread,
robbing her flesh of heat and colour, eyes swirling with
darkness, body trying to force the baby out before the
poison completed its work.
If he slowed, he could purge the dark qi and return
her vigour, but that would let the demon overtake them
and wouldn’t stop her delivering. At full speed, he could
get there in around eight minutes.
A shape came out of the dark and pain erupted from
his left shoulder along his spine, the demon plummeting
past head-first, upper-right beak trailing white. Cold
spread across his back.
He didn’t know how it had caught them, but if it
struck the woman, neither mother nor baby would
survive.
Buildings passed on either side, a few reaching six
storeys, the Racing River creeping closer. Across the wide,
dark water, the domes and spires of Temple Precinct rose
behind the warehouses, taverns, and inns of West Bank.
This time, cackling preceded the pain as the demon
tore through flesh from left hip to calf. Fighting through
pain and cold, Azrael struggled to maintain full speed and
stay on course.
Their speed being roughly equal, the demon had to
be dimensional shifting.
Tucking Tsinien under his body, he swooped
between the three and four-story buildings of East Bank,

16. Michael S. Fricker
16
heading toward the river in a tight serpentine course
through alleys and over warehouses.
A buzzing came close behind so he executed a series
of random, hopefully unexpected, turns through the taller
buildings.
A glance told him that the creature had fallen
behind, slightly.
Tsinien screamed and convulsed in his powerful
arms.
He heard crackling too late to avoid a dark qi ray
striking his right foot. His entire body shivered, grip on
Tsinien slipping.
Azrael clutched her to him, swerving around a
peaked, four-storey building and over a three-storey
warehouse near the river’s edge.
Low barges dominated the line of boats tied along
the riverside. Between tides, the river was placid.
Constellations, auroras, and nebulae turned the surface
into a sparkling ribbon of colour washed grey by
moonlight.
Shining full and huge in the sky, the Matron was
minutes from the centre of the Hexagram. Beginning of
the Night of Shadows, the grey Face’s rise increased the
power of Grey magicians, peaking during midnight’s
Witching Hour and decreasing to normal at moonset. Had
this been the Night of Darkness or Light, their battle
would already be over.
Flying over boats and river, Azrael searched above
and ahead for movement while Tsinien’s contractions got
closer together.
He glanced down in time to spot the demon
hovering just above the water.
A thin ray of dark qi crackled upward.
Azrael rolled, taking the magical blast in the centre
of his back but resisting its effect.
Fire blossomed into a massive, yellow-red ball
ahead. Unable to dodge, the angel curled around Tsinien

17. The Blue Knight
17
and tumbled through its heart. Heat reddened the
woman’s glistening face but the manoeuvre and his
flame-warding ring saw them through with only slight
burns.
Water streaked underneath, echoing with Tsinien’s
screams.
Azrael spotted the demon against the sky soon
enough to avoid it with two quick rolls.
Tsinien’s screams weakened, but not her
contractions.
The warehouses, taverns, and inns of West Bank
rose before them, crowds and individuals in masks
roaming the riverside, enjoying the Festival of Faces.
A few pleasure craft paddled their way upstream
from the harbour toward Reversing Falls, flowing over the
ridge connecting the volcanoes separating Uptown and
Downtown.
The demon appeared ahead.
He dove below.
Agony flared as a beak tore into the base of his neck,
narrowly missing his spine.
The woman seemed ten times heavier. The horizon
flipped and spun as his vision dimmed. He struggled to
make it level off the right way up. The night turned frigid.
The temple of Xondra beckoned, less than two
hundred yards ahead.
Bleary eyes almost missed the demon appear
below.
Holding her tight with one arm, he twisted, sword
blocking the incoming beak from hitting her leg, a maggot
biting a chunk from his left thigh.
The yards crawled, each precious second making him
weaker and bringing the birth nearer.
Two hundred feet square, the four-storey stone
temple was surrounded by a ten-foot high stone wall, a
fifteen-foot tower at each corner and two flanking the
bars of the front gates. A moat separated the outer wall

18. Michael S. Fricker
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from the main building, spanned by a wooden bridge
leading to a set of large wooden doors with four barred
windows above them. The peaked roof was covered by
ceramic shingles with upswept eaves in the style of the
Eastern Arm of Harkindia.
As soon as he neared the deserted forty-foot wide
street running north-south in front, Azrael dove toward
the outer gates.
Tsinien moaned a scream.
Pain lanced through Azrael’s back, a white cloud
exploding from his mouth as the creature and he passed,
demon rising, beak piercing his left lung.
Azrael swung his legs down, leaning back as he
descended, cloak flaring, Tsinien panting in his arms,
landing hard enough that his trembling legs almost failed.
On the towers, pairs of shocked guards in loose blue
tunics and breeches recovered enough to raise
crossbows.
Dropping to one shaking knee, Azrael laid the semi-
conscious woman on the ground before the wrought iron
gates.
“Get her to the sanctuary.” His command came out
as a gasp.
Skin pale, black veins spreading, he rose and turned
to face the landing demon, trembling bastardsword
gripped two-handed to the right side of his head.
Martialling his remaining strength, he poured his faith
into a challenge that echoed through the quiet.
“The child will live.”
One guard on each gate tower rang a bell while
partners ran down rear steps to the gates.
The demon charged.
Azrael dropped his blade down and thrust forward,
holy steel sliding through Therus’s open mouth, erupting
out the demon’s back covered in dark qi.
The demon jumped back, hilt sticking out of its front.

19. The Blue Knight
19
Upper-right beak extending a hand, it reached down,
grasped the sword and pulled it out.
Hand blistering and charring, laughing in gurgles
from its sliced mouth, it locked its compound gaze with
Azrael’s and then cut off his head.
Bright white qi fountained from the angel’s neck,
body standing while the head rolled up against the
temple’s outer wall, then falling forward with a thud.
Cracks appeared in both, streaming glowing mist until
only a cloak, breastplate, tunic, and sandals remained.
The gates opened and the two guards pulled the
woman through by the shoulders.
Four crossbow bolts fired from corner towers
bounced off the demon.
The demon tossed the holy weapon from its smoking
hand. Pain was the creature’s existence, feeding a hunger
to share it, but Pazuzu’s orders forced it to focus.
It roared from three mouths.
The two guards in yellow cloth belts stopped ringing
their bells and leapt down to join the pair at the gates, all
four tunics embroidered on the back with a black dragon
holding a white orchid.
The demon spotted a figure in the windows above
the main gates. An alarm gong sounded and the
reinforced, wooden gates began to swing open.
The demon rushed the outer gates, one guard
closing them as the other passed the woman to the two
in yellow belts. A beak crushed the neck of the young
human man as the gates banged off the towers. It flung
the body against the temple wall, into the moat with a
splash.
The female half-elf grasped her silver medallion,
thrusting the divine symbol toward the creature.
“Glory of Xondra,” she shouted.
Golden energy surrounded the symbol striking the
demon in a blazing bolt that scorched a circle above
Therus’s right ear.

20. Michael S. Fricker
20
His face sneered and stared into her feline eyes,
filling her skull with babbling voices and mind-rending
images before a maggot bit off her head.
Supporting Tsinien’s back and shoulders, a young
human man in a yellow belt disappeared between doors
already closing.
Roaring, the demon charged.
∞∞
“The child must live,” a voice whispered in
Nicodemos’s head, accompanied by the familiar
confirming warmth in the centre of his chest that
answered prayer.
In his smallclothes, the sixty-seven year-old
Archbishop grabbed his belt and component pouch from
the table bedside his bed. Rising and crossing to near the
door, he unsheathed the most powerfully enchanted
scimitar hanging on the wall of his sparsely-appointed
bedroom.
With his right hand, he grasped the golden medallion
whose chain never left his thin, corded, olive neck,
voicing vibrations as he passed his blade before body and
legs to summon an invisible force sheath of qi.
Then he jogged through his office into the hall where
masters and archmasters in smallclothes crossed to the
courtyard balconies, medallions identifying priests from
monks.
Dressed in her blue gi, Frieda appeared around the
corner, platinum hair in a tight bun, green eyes in plain,
angular face taking in everything for unceasing
calculations. A grey leather strip near the end of her black
cloth belt marked her as second of four degrees. Two red
leather strips marked her as leader of all defenders of
their faith.
Nicodemos didn’t know what to think of the new
Grandmaster. He had suspicions about the death of her

21. The Blue Knight
21
predecessor, a rigid old twit that he didn’t miss, but this
wasn’t the time.
“Perfection demands that we save the child.”
Frieda’s freckled brow twitched slightly, a hint of
confusion, before she nodded and dashed out the nearby
balcony door, already on the third floor in the time it took
him to start down the stairs.
∞∞
The demon hit the heavy doors just before they
closed, throwing them inward.
Shoulders nearly touching walls, it charged down the
fifty-foot tunnel after prey standing before doors
swinging inward at the other end.
All but the last few feet of floor opened into a spike-
lined thirty-foot deep pit.
The demon flew on, wings folded.
Beyond closing gates, the two monks carried the
woman across the courtyard at their best run.
Reinforced doors clicked shut, internal iron bars
sliding into place.
The demon flew straight at them, full speed.
∞∞
City bell towers sounded midnight, adding to the din
of the gong.
Monks and priests lined the four balcony levels
forming the courtyard perimeter.
Simultaneously yelling, “Demon,” two adept monks
ran into the courtyard, carrying a pregnant woman.
Vicars, bishops, and cardinals ran to the nearest
stairs, descending from the third and fourth floors while
monks flipped and swung their way to the ground.
Nicodemos and Frieda reached the balcony on the
front of the sanctuary, joining the on-duty commander
above the doors.
The dwarf’s crystalline sapphire irises glittered in his
slate face as they focused upon the gates across the

22. Michael S. Fricker
22
courtyard. Four-foot eleven and nearly as wide, the
faerie’s stoic expression had been carved by life in the
Underworld.
Frieda addressed him. “Vicar Fergoth, commence
Defense Four.”
The dwarf turned and raised his hand to his mouth.
“D-Four,” he shouted, gravelly voice echoing.
Nicodemos pounded the balcony’s wooden rail with
his sword.
“Save the child,” he yelled pointing the scimitar at
the woman.
Moving with practiced efficiency, monks lined up
before priests on either side of the main path, forming
double rows past the central fountain containing the
statue of Xondra to the steps of the sanctuary, where a
row of archbishops behind one of bishops defended the
doors.
The two encumbered monks were halfway past the
fountain when the demon burst the inner gates off their
hinges and flew into a gauntlet of enchanted
quarterstaffs and kukri, qi-enhanced punches and kicks,
blue qi darts, bolts of electricity, blasts of cold vapour,
and bursts of sound. Some knocked it to the side
momentarily, a few piercing armour or fracturing bone,
injuries that healed almost as swiftly as inflicted
Sweeping monks to the sides with its arms, the
demon flew low, running down those who got in its way.
Slowed, it threw its last dark ray at its target.
Sensing danger, the man carrying her torso shielded
Tsinien with his back, black veins spreading through pale
skin, brown eyes clouding black as he fell to his knees,
nearly dropping his moaning burden.
A woman in a bishop’s miter leapt to replace the
stricken monk.
The demon buzzed over the statue as divine energy
blazed from raised medallions, gold bolts hammering it,
searing armour and flesh.

23. The Blue Knight
23
Three mouths screaming in fury, the creature shot
up forty feet then dove toward the temple doors as its
prey moved through.
Archbishops and bishops closed ranks and presented
blazing symbols, arcs pounding and burning the creature,
large patches exploding into black clouds.
Measuring the strength of the demon’s qi with a
necromantic spell, Nicodemos realized that the host
might survive even if it didn’t. He couldn’t chance either,
so he grasped his medallion and uttered the trigger sound
for Miraculum, the only Eleventh Circle spell.
“For this sacrifice,” he called, raising his scimitar, “I
place a triple power Forbidding on the sanctuary.”
The sword vanished and Nicodemos collapsed,
physical qi nearly exhausted.
Fergoth dropped to his side, gripping his medallion
and chanting to channel radiant qi through his palm into
the old man’s chest.
Frieda leapt onto the demon’s smoking back as it
flashed underneath.
A priest helped lay Tsinien on the floor while two
more closed the doors, only to be knocked flying by the
demon, Frieda stabbing blue-limned kukri between
maggots.
Wings spread; it touched down a few feet from
Tsinien, Frieda leaping off as a blue nimbus surrounded it.
The baby’s head emerged.
All three heads screamed as blue light engulfed the
demon, brighter than daylight before fading, leaving a
crumbling husk dissipating in dark streams around a
smoking human skeleton.
Between Tsinien’s legs, a female human priest held
up the infant and a male monk cut the cord with a kukri.
Four priests worked to cleanse and heal the mother
with spells and divine energy.
The city bells and temple gong fell silent.
The baby cried as his mother let go.

24. Michael S. Fricker
24
A soft golden glow drew Frieda’s attention to the
altar at the far end of the sanctuary.
A tall, broad leonine anthropoid solidified behind the
altar, golden fur shining. An ultramarine silk robe
hemmed in arcane sigils covered its muscular body. Long,
pointed ears rose before a gleaming mane. A platinum
medallion engraved with the Tao symbol hung on its
chest. As it came around the end, its clawed feet hovered
two feet off the floor.
Across its upturned palms was a clear, light-blue,
crystal sword with a sickle-like blade. The creature floated
toward the group, silver gaze fixed upon the crying infant
as it came to a stop.
“Hush child.” The words rumbled from leonine jaws
startling those with mother and child. “I bring your
soulmate.”
The creature bent and touched the pommel to the
child’s forehead.
The infant went silent, clear brown eyes fixing on the
weapon and then its bearer. The boy smiled.
“Behold, Logosien Di Lzander, Armageddon’s
Champion of Order.” Its voice rolled along the stone
walls.
Returning the sword to its palms, it floated to Frieda.
Her face was emotionless.
“I am Abyl, First Prophet of Ptah, first rakshiri.” They
held the weapon towards her. “This is the Axiom of
Order’s Champion. They will grow together in power and
wisdom. Teach him the Path and the Way and, in his
thirteenth year, send him towards knighthood. He must
become strong enough to stand alone and wise enough
not to.”
Frieda stared at the creature for a few moments,
calculating vulnerabilities and strengths, the possibility of
its words being true, and what that meant for her, the
faith, and the world.

25. The Blue Knight
25
She stepped forward and slipped her hands under
the weapon, between the rakshiri’s.
“I accept, but I determine the methods and subjects
of instruction.” She gazed unflinching into eyes beyond
ancient.
“Of course,” Abyl said. Then in her head, <In
conjunction with your priestly equal.>
She nodded, accepted the weapon from the rakshiri,
stepped back two steps, and then bowed at the waste.
When she looked up, the rakshiri was gone.
Cradling the sword, she considered the squirming
infant.
“What I have gotten into?” she muttered as
Nicodemos arrived, pale and panting, at her side.
The Archbishop sighed at the sight of the healthy
boy, harder upon seeing the motionless woman, and then
noticed the sword.
He swallowed to gather his voice. “What do we have
here?”
She gave a hint of a grin and a small shrug.
“We’ve just become parents who hold the fate of
the world in their hands.”
Nicodemos blinked in momentary confusion, and
then started issuing commands, voice strong.
“Seal the temple. I want every inch sanctified and
warded against chaos and evil. Expand the dimensional
barriers and place Forbiddings everywhere. Until further
notice, no one enters or leaves without my permission.
And,” he turned to include those gathered around corpse
and baby, “not a word of what happened tonight. All
witnesses are to consider the information sacred.”
The priests in the doorway gave sharp nods, turned
on their heels and closed the sanctuary doors.