The world echoed with the shriek of falling artillery shells and the screams of the dying. Roiling torrents of flame and great towers of black smoke clouded the dark red skybox, rising up from scattered hunks of rubble. Overhead, the silhouettes of distant starships cast their darkness over the earth, raining orbital bombardment down upon everything below or engaging in combat with each other.

As each one went down, its wreckage drifted down into atmosphere and began to burn up, the charred and shattered remains plummeting onto the sight of a massacre.

Fallen Xan-Klar Knights littered the earth, the metal husks of their armour painted in the blood of those who had piloted them, and the plates that shielded their bodies from harm ripped asunder like tectonic plates after an earthquake.

Only one remained standing.

Lothrak Karugen gripped the controls of his armour so tight that the colour drained from his scaly knuckles, his eyes darting nervously around. He could neither see nor sense any of his own kind, for not Graxir mind-lights burned within his surroundings. The only glow to be found was from the streaks of burning fuel that lay smeared across the earth from the ruptured fuel tanks of armour suits. He tried to breath, his mouth hanging open and his chest tightening as he continued to scan his surroundings.

Suddenly, a great snarl echoed over the nearby horizon, rising from behind a chunk of destroyed starship that had fallen from overhead. It lay about twenty feet away, and was large as a house... and yet he heard part of it crunch and break as easily as twigs as something lurked right behind it.

Lothrak's heart pulsed, and he immediately reacted. Stepping back with one foot, he took a fighting stance, lifting his plasma blade in one of his armour's titanic hands and raising his shield with the other.

Over that chunk of spacecraft, a huge, hunched clawed its way into his sightline. A knuckle-walking beast, moving with a loping stature as it crawled across the earth. Almost as tall as a Knight at the shoulder, its body was a great hulk of muscle coated in thick plates of crimson armour. A long, snouted head was enclosed within a large, rectangular helmets, with two huge metal tusks protruding out from the front, slick and dripping with gore. The three-fingered hands it walked upon were armoured too, its forearms and gauntlets scraped and studded with burn marks and bullet-scars.

A Kropen bloodcharger... and it was coming right at him!

A thundering bellow shook Earth and sky as the beast leapt down from its high ground and charged. Fear drummed through Lothrak's body, and he began to step back, raising his shield to protect himself while his mind rushed to think of a plan.

He looked at the Kropen's armour, almost as thick as his own, and a terrifying question filled his mind - how was he going to cut through that?

But his thoughts were immediately interrupted when a titanic force smashed against his shield. The Kropen has swung one of its gigantic fists against his shield, smashing it aside and roaring furiously as it did so! Lothrak's guard was now open! Acting on instinct, the young knight leapt back, the jet engines on his armour launching him away from the rampaging beast.

A thousand things desperately cycled through Lothrak's brain, too fast for him to properly think. How could he fight something like this? Regret and terror filled him, making him freeze in place, unable to focus on anything other than his own inferiority.

He didn't know any way that he could win. So as the Kropen charged again, he just stepped forward and swung with wild abandon hoping to keep the beast back. The green glow of his sword's plasma blade blurred across his field of view, creating an arc of burning energy.

But the Kropen didn't even react - it just barrelled straight towards him, its knuckles pounding the earth with each step it took. As Lothrak's last swing went too wide, the raging beast smash its armoured frame against him as a mad, berserk roar swallowed all of Lothrak's senses. He jolted forward, whiplash cracking through his neck as he was slammed into the earth. Screaming wildling, the young knight watched as the enormous creature raised its enormous fist and smashed it down upon him, pounding the chest of his knight armour. over and over.

With each strike, cracks and sparks flew from the screens that gave him his vision, and some of them cut out all together. And then, with one final hit... silence.

Dark, cold silence. The infinite void...

But then, out of the darkness, a red light suddenly blared into his face. It went on, then off, then on, the pattern repeating over and over. As Lothrak's eyes adjusted, he saw that it was red text, and before he could read it, an automated, monotone voice read it for him, as though to rub it in.

"Simulation terminated. Scenario: fail."

Those words repeated over and over, pressing shame into his body like shoving a poisoned knife deeper into a wound. As it continued, there was a loud clunk and a hiss, and the door of his armour's cockpit automatically opened up.

Well, actually, it wasn't his armour's cockpit. It was a simulation pod. One of many lined up against the wall of the training room.

Bright light seared Lothrak's eyes as he stood upright from his position inside the pod. Looking around, he found himself back inside one of the practise rooms in the Fireheart Warden sanctuary on Sirtha Prime. Two weeks had passed since the Xan-Klar victory over the Hand of Reclamation, and now everything was back to normal as the knights prepared for their next battle, sparring in combat arenas, firing shots at the practise ranges, or playing out combat scenarios at either the strategy table or in the simulators.

Just below him, Kathonir and a few of his fellow Wardens were stood. They had been watching his actions in the simulator upon display of holographic screens next to the pod. Through the Graxir, Lothrak could sense the single emotion that they all shared - disappointment.

The only slight difference was that Kathonir's brain bore a tinge of certainty, as though he knew this was going to happen. And while the others simply walked off as Lothrak jumped down, Kathonir just stayed still, his green eyes boring into the blue-scale's soul.

"Same old, same old..."

Anger prickled Lothrak's brain, his back muscles tensing and his claws instinctively extending from his fingertips. "What was I supposed to do, Kathonir?!" he shouted. "How are you supposed to fight a Kropen bloodcharger without any ranged weapons?!"

"Everyone else I know pulled it off. And if we're going to face the Kropen in the future, you will too. Such a situation could face you on the battlefield..." Kath replied. "... and simulating it might help you finally stop that bad habit of yours." he said.

Lothrak felt a growl clog in his throat, his frustration growing. "What do you mean?" he asked, trying to feign ignorance, even as his mind radiated the pungent sensation of falsehood that showed he was lying.

"You know exactly what I mean." Kathonir replied. "In the thick of combat, your mind locks up - I've sensed it before. You start questioning your own capabilities, wondering if you can overcome the obstacles before you." The black-scale placed a hand of Lothrak's shoulder. "You doubt yourself."

Lothrak looked up at his friend, and after a moment of silence, his nodded and lowered his head in shame. Sadness and self-loathing welled up inside him, and he felt as though he would cry.

"I do." he admitted. "But I don't understand, Kath. How can I not question whether or not I can win when I'm in the middle of a fight?" he asked.

Kathonir replied with the same words he'd heard over and over from so many others. "You stop being afraid. You trust yourself and your instincts." The hand on his shoulder patted him. "And you fight like a Xan-Klar - without fear."

Lothrak sighed forlornly as he and Kathonir began to walk away from the simulation pods. His friend was right, and this wasn't the first time they had talked about this. Lothrak needed to get his act together. He was a Fireheart Warden now, so he had no excuse for cowardice. If he froze like that again, or worse, ran away, he would bring shame to everything. Himself, Kathonir, Gendros and the entire order.

Even if he died in battle, he would not be remembered well in the Graxir. And he dreaded the thought of being thought of as a coward by his peers and his people for all eternity.

His reputation was on soft ground as it was anyways. And he knew because as he walked through the training hall, he felt admonishing flares of emotion flare up as his fellow Wardens noticed him and directed their attention at him - accompanied by sensations of dismissal and disappointment darting through their minds.

He didn't even have to look at them, and he didn't want to. He didn't want to know their identities and scapegoat them as just 'not appreciating him'. The fault was, and his alone, and he needed to get stronger or die.