And on the duel raged, the fury mounting as battle took its toll, me assuming Angar finally stumbled into darkness, then him proving it hadn't consumed him. Yet.

  The chief unleashed a blaze of dual slashes, a diagonal from shoulder to hip, the other mirrored from the opposite flank, the blades crossing paths like the snapping jaws of an abyssal monster.

  The boy met them in a spinning parry, his hammer a blazing vortex of defense that clashed against both swords in rapid succession, the impacts echoing through the confined vault like cannon fire, sparks cascading in brilliant waterfalls that cast flickering shadows, twisting the combatants' forms into nightmarish silhouettes.

  Angar broke through the deadlock with a savage knee to the midsection, the blow connecting solidly in a crunch of compressed armor and undead flesh, drawing a pained rasp from the fiend, staggering it back several paces, one hand clutching its bruised abdomen.

  The chief straightened slowly, but with unyielding resolve, ichor threading from the corner of its decayed mouth like black drool.

  It looked at Angar then. Truly looked. And for the first time those undead eyes flickered with something besides strategies, what might have been recognition.

  Not fear. Recognition.

  As if it had seen this exact helm, this exact fury, long ago, in a different place, swinging a different hammer.

  Then the moment passed. Its void-like eyes filled with tactical malice as twin blades reformed in a resolute shimmer of profane light and the foul residue of Hell's sorcery.

  The boy lunged, his hammer streaking forth in a relentless flurry, each met with expertise honed in the Underworld's eternal pits, deflecting each in sparks that lit the crypt.

  And on the deadly dance went, both doomed but for skill or luck a thousand times over, the two leaping over sweeps, clearing deadly strikes by mere centimeters.

  How was he resisting for so long?

  Hammer and blade kissed in ruinous sacrament, the flagstones splintering like vows broken, the walls groaning like a choir chanting vengeful litanies.

  And in that mortal crux, among shrapnel and settling ash, the duel bared them raw.

  There but for the grace of God go I.

  Echoes of the same unquenchable hunger, teetering on the knife-edge where distinctions and motives blur, and a man realizes he’s become more like the monsters he fights than the people he protects.

  Where the abyss first glimpses back, and you realize you’ve been in the abyss this whole time.

  That the filth you’ve spent your whole life wading through is the abyss.

  It's all the deep end.

  It’s all muck.

  Unholy muck churning endlessly, inescapable.

  Until all that’s left is the fight.

  Just the fight. And that feverish grip on the eternal promise, praying the Almighty's balm awaits for every wound, every unspeakable horror witnessed, every vile deed wrought in righteousness' name, in the hereafter's unscarred dawn.

  The chief twisted in the air, swords ripping and slashing in a volley reminiscent of a turret's unrelenting barrage, their edges blurring with unholy speed.

  Angar parried and dodged with an agility one of his Realm shouldn’t possess, once managing to disarm the Gatekeeper three times in a row, each time the blade vanishing in a puff of dissolving shadows only to reform in a split-second invocation of infernal might.

  As the champion dodged, a metal foot lashed out like a ram of Divine retribution, sweeping the fiend's legs from under it, sending the crimson brute crashing to the floor in a clatter of ancient armor, sending dust exploding upward like the breath of exhumed graves, dark ichor seeping through the cracks in armor like the tears of a widow.

  The maul descended, but the undead rolled away, skittering backward on all fours like a monstrous arachnid until its palm shot up, hurling an energy-projectile low at the legs, leaving a burn-trace in its wake.

  The boy juked it, the blast cratering the stone behind him in a shower of fragments that pelted his back.

  He charged, unleashed an overhead smash, stopped by a hasty shield projected from the fiend's gauntlet.

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  The barrier of profane light shattered under the blow, its fragments dissolving into mist as the residual force blasted the creature against the stone wall, cracking masonry and sending fissures crawling outward like veins of corruption spreading through the skin of the pure.

  The fiend spun on the ground then, its legs twirling like a dancer’s, a whirlwind of crimson shadow that forced Angar to hop back, his cybernetics grinding on debris, almost losing his footing.

  Getting its feet with undead agility, undaunted despite the dents and ichor marring its armor, the chief unleashed a barrage of three projected blasts in quick succession, each trailing embers.

  Angar weaved through the deadly barrage with preternatural grace, deflecting the first with a swing of his hammer, the orb bursting in harmless shards, then dodging the second by a hair's breadth, and twisting around the third like a liar evading truth.

  His maul smashed forward, met by crossed blades in a colossal impact that cracked the floor beneath them in a radial burst of fractures, the undercroft groaning like a dying beast.

  Laughter barked from the chief then, a grating noise, like the cackle of a witch reveling in blasphemy, scraping out of it like a rusted portcullis being raised.

  I’ve heard that same laugh before, many times, rasping from the throats of the Hell’s damned across a thousand bloody battlefields.

  I hate it.

  When the mockery faded, it croaked out, "You fight well, mortal, but how long can you match the unliving? I am sustained by Hell's eternal flames, while your frail flesh falters ever more."

  No retort came, only a silence I turned over in the shadows.

  Perhaps the dark whispers had finally burrowed too deeply, sowing seeds of doubt in that resolute mind, for who wastes breath on taunts when corruption claws at the soul?

  Or was it mere focus, the trance of a warrior lost in battle's embrace?

  I’d watched the fray's intensifying fury, wondering how the boy had resisted the whispers for so long, those insidious tendrils of corruption that should have unraveled him by now.

  Was I wrong in assuming his Resilience was frayed to tatters?

  No. I was certain. If it were in decent shape, he would’ve told me. Instead, he had avoided my question, and that was before he took the Layman’s corruption unto himself, as if such poison posed no threat to his eternal soul.

  Foolish, perhaps suicidal. But here he stood, defying the inevitable. It impressed me, this pluck, this resolve, even as I awaited his fall, like so many vainglorious Knights before him who danced too close to the abyss, only to be dragged screaming into its maw.

  Either way, the tension wound tighter in the ancient crypt, steel clashing against indomitable will, Angar resetting, then advancing once more, lunging high toward the helm to draw a reflexive parry that sparked brilliantly, illuminating the fiend's decayed features in a flash of unholy light.

  The next strike followed low, the hammer angling with brutal precision to shatter the knee joint, forcing a desperate hop aside as the head smashed into stone with a massive crunch, sending shards exploding out, peppering them both.

  In the silt-fog, arrows of shimmering force loosed from the fiend's reformed bow, and the boy rolled beneath them, emerging in a crouch in settling dust, his maul blazing forward like a train, seeking to crush.

  The chief deflected with a downward block, the clash producing a resonant boom that vibrated to my perch, shaking loose more silt and debris.

  At the same instant, the other blade lashed out in a lateral slash to the neck, followed by a new strike, then a flurry of cuts that blurred into an unholy storm.

  Angar ducked and weaved through the onslaught, blocking some with the hammer head or haft, the blades whistling harmlessly around him, never quite connecting, the near-misses carrying the whispers closer, louder, insidious promises of madness and ruin that must’ve been slithering past his frayed resistance.

  As the chief’s assault faltered, the boy spun his hammer in one last defensive block before launching his own offensive.

  Angar rushed in like a whirlwind, an overhead smash descending like God’s wrath to crush the skull, then a lateral sweep that cleaved the air with a howl, and a crushing blow that would crumple both armor and the undead flesh within.

  The fiend met the first high, driven to a knee with a grunt, rolled from the sweep, the hammer's passage stirring eddies of dust where it had knelt, and twisted from the final blow, but the impact sent shockwaves that dislodged a chunk of ceiling cascading down in a rumble that nearly buried them both, forcing a momentary scramble from the chaos.

  In that fraught lull, the chief summoned a cascade of four projectiles in a rapid volley.

  With a quick flick of the maul, the boy deflected the first, shattering the orb in a harmless spray of dissolving shadows that hissed against the stone, and the next two with a sweeping block of his weapon.

  He vaulted over the fourth, landing close enough to deliver a punishing strike met by swords, the clash driving the brute back, followed by a knee that was barely avoided.

  But the follow-up blow landed squarely on the Gatekeeper’s shoulder, knocking it down, sending it crashing to the floor, pain etching deep lines into its usually stoic undead visage visible through the helm’s slits.

  Dark ichor trickled down the arm from the shoulder, dripping patterns in the dust like omens scrawled in blood as the fiend rose with defiant resilience in a blur of crimson fury.

  Angar charged, sweeping his hammer in a low arc to the legs. The chief leaped over the strike, projecting a pair of bursts downward like falling stars, twin lances of unholy fire aimed at the upturned helm. Both were dodged with quick jinks, the blasts scorching the stone.

  Landing solidly, the undead reformed its swords, slashing in a deadly crisscross pattern, the blades whistling in discordant harmony.

  The boy parried the right with his hammer's head, then kicked at the left, his metal foot connecting with brutal force, stopping the arm and blade cold, but the force spun Angar half around.

  He reversed into a back-thrust, his maul extending rearward like an extension of his will, smashing toward the chief's side with fury

  Though the undead twisted aside, the head met armor in a screech of crushed metal, denting a furrow from which more ichor wept, foul and black as Heresy itself.

  Unfazed, the fiend sent a boot to the boy's exposed back, the blow landing with explosive force that drove him forward with a staggering step before collapsing in a heap.

  Both blades followed in a downward chop, aiming to sever and kill, the edges flaring with the cold certainty of eternal damnation.

  In that moment, the whispers must have taken hold, for I beheld Angar falter, a momentary hesitation as if Heretical visions flared in his mind, corruption's talons digging deeper into his soul, making the real and the imagined indistinguishable.

  He’d given a valiant effort, worthy of praise and song.