Bear had worked non-stop for the past three days, organizing a defensive against an enemy he had no doubt existed, but harbored plenty doubts they could defeat. He had seen Behemoths before and knew full well what the right morphotype could do. Stone-chucking, fire-breathing, acid-spurting, venom-injecting bastards - all of them. Try as he might, he could not imagine what horror would crawl up from the power station when the time came and, as much as he trusted Logan, this was still his town.
Wandering along the Chapter, he thought back on returning from the Purge to find it in a state of disrepair - having been abandoned for years in his absence. Not a single warrior save Isaac had returned alongside him and so many of the duties had fallen on the pair of them. He could see them now - strapping men covered in deep cuts, recovering from the injuries of a war against the Spawn of hell itself; repairing walls by cannibalizing imported crates and polishing metals until they were half their original weight.
In the innermost sanctum of the Chapter, where he had first found Logan studying his equipment, he had his most precious weapon hidden beneath the bed. He reached inside and even in the pitch darkness of the night, he found it with ease and felt its familiar weight in his hand.
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He brought out his magnificent battlehammer - a pristine, solid-metal construct of colored metals: metallic red, blue and silver to form the Order’s crest on the head. On either side of the weighted hull, he saw the spikes that had crushed more Spawn than any in the town could count - more than he could count, certainly.
He swung it about as he wandered through the quiet courtyard and strode towards the open gate, waving a hail at the half-sleeping wall guards before turning to the left.
He felt like his old self again as he arrived on the hilltop overlooking the powerplant. The leather armor was older and a few of the bindings had fallen into disrepair, but it would still stop a tooth or two. More importantly, even with the added weight of the hammer, he’d still be more than fast enough to report any changes in the lakeside anatomy to the village to prepare them for the assault. He wasn’t sure how much good it’d do, but standing and watching his co-inhabitants was not his strong-suit. Better to at least be a smidgen useful, he thought.
“Fancy meeting you here.” A snarky voice made his skin crawl and had him ready his hammer to face the aggressor. He spun around to see something white in the darkness - a white, porcelain mask over a coat so dark it seemed the grinning face floated in the air.
“Let’s go for a walk.”