In the meantime, please enjoy a (unfinished and rough) potential glimpse into [FRAGMENT DELETED]:







Grand Archbishop Pious Renderic XII of the Church of Constancy listened to the sound of gunfire inside the Temple. He heard the distant cries of alarm as the last few men and women of the Faithful fought against the overwhelming power of an entire world. He knew he should hurry, but he was an old man and his body simply couldn’t be made to move that fast. He knew he had time, though. God wouldn’t let him fail.



Still, he added what little speed he could.



The heretics called him the ‘Crimson Cleric’ or the ‘King in Red’, a reference to his robes of office and the blood on his hands. They weren’t wrong. Ellynt – for that was his birth name, not that of his reign – had had slept too little for all the atrocities carried out in his name. But what mattered his tears? The dead were still dead. Tens of millions of innocent victims, all murdered in the Church’s name in the war he had provoked. His fiery oration had stirred up the populace, leading to a bloody planetary civil war. He had encouraged suicide bombings, massacres and every form of atrocity imaginable. In his speeches, he claimed it was in defence of the Faith and of God Himself, but that was only partly true. He had done it all to save his people. Not just their souls, but their lives, their civilization.... their very existence.



Now, all he could hope to save was their souls.



“Grand Archbishop!” the shout caught his attention and Ellynt lifted his head: a quartet of Ashen, his personal bodyguards, pounded towards him, decked out in the finest armour that the Church could afford. He’d ordered them to protect the scribes in the library. There were splashes of bright red blood across their tactical vests and helmets and the archbishop realized with a tug of remorse that Lynnwyll and her scriveners had been called to a higher power.



“They’ve broken through the west cordon,” Jyllun said, the squad leader reloading his shotgun. “We tried to draw them off, but they brought flamethrower teams into the library.” He lowered his eyes. “They went straight for Cleric Lynnwyll and her staff.”



Ellynt allowed himself a moment of pain as he thought of how the missing Ashen and his fellows in the priesthood must have died, burning amongst centuries of irreplaceable documents. Maybe it was only fair – his martyrs’ brigades had burned so many others alive. He shoved the pang of guilt aside. There would be time enough for regrets when he faced his final judgment. “How close are they?” he asked softly.



“Too close,” Jyllum replied. “We’ll take you to the Heart. You can finish it.”



They made it halfway there before Jyllum held up a hand. “Contact.” One of Ellynt’s bodyguards pushed him to the ground as the others spun to meet this threat. A Nashdanian spec ops team had infiltrated ahead of the main advance. Clad in black, they filtered through the marble columns of the Hall of Reflections, a half-second from gunning down Ellynt and his entourage. It was a half-second more than they had as the four Ashen opened up in perfect synchronicity, their weapons firing armour-piercing rounds at speeds better suited to high-velocity sniper rifles than machine guns. The Nashdanians had some of the finest soldiers on all of Shelter, but the Ashen did not play by the same rules. The spec ops team disintegrated in bursts of blood, bone and rock chips as the Ashen’s fire ripped straight through meters-thick stone columns.



Yukkina grabbed the archbishop, pulling him to his feet. It was the not the most gentle manner, but the old man didn’t begrudge her. “Are you hit, Your Grace?”



“No, no I don’t think so.”



The Ashen gave him a quick once-over, the group hurrying along. “There’s no way they could have gotten this deep into the Temple this quickly,” Killyv hissed. “We’ve been betrayed.”



The thought was anathema, but Ellynt didn’t have the strength in him to argue. “We must reach the sanctum and the Heart,” was all he could say. His own heart was beating in his chest, his tired muscles aching. Everything depended on that. Everything.



There – the entrance to the Temple’s most private sanctum was just ahead and the archbishop’s heart leapt... only to crash down into his gullet as another squad – this one of Drenbeki Conglomerate troops – charged down the main hallway.



“Get the archbishop to the Heart!!” Jyllum shouted as he and Killyv turned to face this new threat, a burst of fire mowing down the lead Drenbeki; the survivors abated their charge as they dove for cover. “That’s your job. Your only job!”



Yukkina grabbed the old man into her arms like a parent with a child as Nakjyr fired wildly, forcing the Drenbeki to keep their heads down. The last sight Ellynt had of the two Ashen who’d stayed behind was a single nod from Jyllum as he and his comrade prepared to sell their lives dearly.



The world shattered into gunfire, bullets whining past the archbishop’s head as his protectors dove into the sanctum. Nakjyr fed a fresh clip into his rifle and Yukkina pulled a grenade from her belt. “Hurry, your grace.”



The archbishop nodded. Jyllum and Killyv might be Ashen, but they were only two against God-knew-how many and if they were right about being betrayed...



The archbishop hurried past the rows of empty pews. Once, the sanctum sanctorum had been a place of quiet reflection, a place to commune with God. It was a beautiful room, with a skylight set high above, creeper vines winding around the marble columns as they grew towards the light, sculptures of water running through carefully-carved channels in the stone. Relics of the Church’s past adorned the alcoves, memories of brighter times. Some of them were missing now, either looted by greedy cowards or by those seeking to preserve them from the enemy.



There was a pulpit here, one that had been unused for decades. It was intended to be thus; here, no man or woman was to interpret the will of God for you. It was up to each visitor to but listen and meditate until they knew God’s Will. The grand archbishop had spent many nights here, looking in vain to the pulpit, as if beseeching his God to answer his prayers and let him know that what he was doing was right. Perhaps, in His own way, He had.



Ellynt ran his hand over the bio-scanner set into an alcove in the back of Temple’s sanctum. This device was centuries beyond any other technology on the world – most of the laity (if any were still alive) would have been horrified at the presence of such technological trappings within the heart of the Church’s most holy site. In his younger days, the great archbishop supposed that he would have been too. Now, it would save his life and ensure that he could finish his work. The device pinged in recognition of his gene-code and Ellynt tapped his password in. There was layer after layer of security protocols here, and for good reason. What lay within could – must – only be accessed by the highest-ranking officials in the Church.



The sounds of fighting outside had stopped.



There was a slowly-rising hum as the hidden elevator began its ascent. Moments, they had only to wait a few moments...



“Burning ground!” Yukkina shouted as she hurled her grenade out through the sanctum’s doors. There was a panicked squawk and then the dull roar of the incendiary cooking off. Men and women screamed as they burned. Nakjyr sent a fragmentation round out. The Ashen sought cover behind the pews, waiting for the Drenbeki survivors to try their luck.



There was a soft ping as the elevator arrived at its destination. Its doors had barely opened before Yukkina shoved the archbishop inside. Ellynt turned, saw Nakjyr rise and runs towards the elevator, saw the Drenbeki charge into the room, weapons drawn, the barrels swinging towards the trio-



-Yukkina’s hand slammed down the ‘door close’ button and the elevator doors snapped shut. Ellynt’s last sight before the lift descended was of Nakjyr’s body dancing like a spastic marionette as the Ashen died.



“He wouldn’t have made it,” Yukkina said. She was flushed, staring straight ahead. Where her hair stuck out from under her helmet, it was bleached of colour, her skin turning a sickly grey-white pallor.



“I know,” Ellynt said. A touch of darkness rippled through her hair as the archbishop put his hand on her shoulder. “I know.”



The elevator came to a gentle stop as it reached its destination. “It won’t take them long to override the lift now that they know it’s here,” the Ashen said as she stepped out onto the gantry leading to the Heart. She had no eyes for the grandeur, the majesty of what was all around them. This would be the first and last time she ever saw such a sight, but there was no sense of awe in her. Only duty. She pulled a string of grenades from her bandolier, kneeling and starting to wire up the elevator. The explosives wouldn’t so much as scratch as the ancient metal, but they would be a nasty surprise for the first poor souls who summoned the lift. “You go ahead, Your Grace. I’ll hold them here.”



The archbishop opened his mouth to protest, when he saw the determination in her black eyes. He nodded, taking a moment to make the sign of the sun over his last follower. “May God be with you in all things, Yukkina of Nazharredan. May...” they both knew what would happen to her, but the old man found it hard to say the words. “May He take your soul unto His eternal realm for life everlasting.”



She nodded once, gesturing to the deeper structure of the Heart. “I’ll hold them here,” she said again. “You go and save us all.”



Ellynt hurried as much as his frail body would let him, door sensors detecting his presence and identifying him. The Heart was the Church of Constancy’s deepest secret. There were tales that it was the colony ship that had brought the Edrex to Shelter, the lone survivor out of a fleet of a thousand. The Church’s enemies had long held that the priesthood had hidden or destroyed the vessel in order to suppress the technological development of the people and thus maintain their grip on power. That again was only a partial truth.



As the Church’s power had waned and the strength of secular governments had risen, more and more technological progress had been made. More and more compromises with Chruch doctrine had occurred – Ellynt and his predecessors had railed against it, but they had been unable to do much of anything. Then, the Signal had been detected.



One of many ancient, decaying warning beacons scattered across the stars had sent a courier to Shelter, a herald of a nightmare thought lost to time. Even the priesthood had forgotten, mixing apocryphal tales with scripture, truth and mythology, unable to truly understand what it meant. But the Heart, ever faithful and immortal, had known. It had recognized the message for what it was and it had warned a much younger Pious Renderic XII of what was coming.



They’d had decades of warning. So little time... And now, there was none at all.