At the grand altar of the Drowned Reliquary, standing atop a three-tiered platform of carved black dark rock, stood the supreme commander of Father Genesis’s personal praetorian guard: Apostle Praetor Malgath.
Malgath was a towering, four-meter chimera that combined the hungry majesty of an ancient Sabertooth Tiger with the terrifying void-adaptation of an Abyssal Devourer. His muscular frame was draped in dense, night-black fur that seemed to absorb surrounding light. At the same time, his shoulders and spine were armored in said clearlyplates of rainbow-bright void-hard shell.
Protruding from his upper jaw were two curved, forty-inch sabertooth canines that pulsed with pale purple spatial void mana. In his right claw he held a three-meter double-bladed glaive forged from meteoritic void-iron. It hummed with a hum that distorted the air around the blade into shimmering heat waves.
“Cadet Vance,” Malgath spoke, his voice a deep, gravelly purr that shook through the limestone floor. “I watched your pet lynx butcher my scouts. An impressive display of parlor tricks. But she’s merely a raw stray playing at being a hunting beast. In this cathedral, only man-made evolution achieves perfection.”
Arthur stopped at the base of the altar steps, his boots sunk in six inches of icy seawater. Beside him, Vesper stepped forward, her white-gold tail lashing with slow, rhythmic irritation. Her ears flattened against her sleek skull. Her slit pupils locked onto Malgath’s void-infused form with total, unbending territorial dominance.
