The Swarm drifted toward the inaugural ordeal, pitting Undead Warlord Rinja against the mortal Simo. His spectral gaze delved inward, a thrill of expectancy resounding within his chest.

  He had registered a flash of astonishment that this mortal had been selected to initiate the sequence.

  A shrewder gambit would’ve dispatched Angar, the unarmored and weaponless warrior of the first Realm, foremost. Then this one second, reserving the mightiest for the climax, the one clad in full armor with the axe.

  A mortal of what those of the Holy Empire dubbed the first Realm had never overcome one of the Swarm’s crucibles.

  He never targeted them. They made for poor training.

  Bereft of helm, this one lacked any augmented displays or esoteric sight modes, reliant upon unaided vision and a drone.

  Though equipped with a somewhat mechanical orb that pierced veils of illusions, such was unnecessary and unhelpful in these contests. The Swarm disdained such deceptive ploys, favoring honorable confrontation.

  Rinja stood as the freshest inductee among the hundred pledged to the Swarm's banner. This marked his maiden contest, and the Swarm harbored an eagerness to witness his performance.

  By any measure, Rinja alone ought to annihilate this mortal, then the two others in their own events with ease.

  The ascension to Undead Warlord progressed along a specific path, commencing as common undead, such as zombies and skeletons, then advancing to boneguards, ghouls, ghasts, and wights.

  Thereafter, accruing might and martial acumen sufficient for elevation to specific roles such as Marauder Chief, powerful enough to manifest a dead field, termed a nullification aura by mortals.

  Finally, qualifying for but renouncing the Warbringer empowerment, which would pervert the dead field into a necrotic field, their style then preferring trickery and sorcery over honed prowess in glorious combat.

  And thus, becoming a warlord, the elite of Hell's undead forces, rigorously forged masters of arms.

  This confrontation would unfold within the skeletal remnants of an abandoned Terran metropolis the Swarm had visited long ago, crumbling under the weight of forgotten ages.

  Rinja's adversary perched upon the shadowed parapet of a decrepit tenement, a ghost amid the decaying sprawl of the forsaken city’s underbelly.

  The night air stank of decaying refuse, moist from rain, the slum below an empty maze, only the lingering imprint of long-gone souls and neon ghosts giving it any sense of life.

  The mortal’s spotter drone, required to feed it visions from safe seclusion, piercing cover and fog alike, plummeted in a cascade of sparks, downed by the warlord's first arrow loosed.

  Simo muttered a curse under its breath, but the lancer stayed firm in its clasp as it methodically scoured for its foe.

  From his aerie in a distant spire, Rinja observed the mortal's living warmth with his honed undead senses. As all warlords forged in Hell’s furnace, he was patient as the grave, safely veiled in his lofty spot, high above the urban decay and detritus, his manifest bow drawn taut.

  He loosed another arrow, an energetic whisper of unholy force. It spanned a great distance, missing its target, thunking into Simo's vantage point and splintering stone, compelling the mortal to roll to safety, then withdraw into the gloom.

  Beyond a vague eastern bearing, the trajectory's arc was an unsolved riddle to Simo, but the duel had begun in earnest, and with it on the receiving end, forced to retreat.

  The Swarm, his mind a library of stratagems, as ever when spectating these matches, pondered how he’d win if put in either warrior’s place.

  As the mortal made haste into the ruins of the tenement's upper reaches, its breath remained measured, and its strides careful, dashing across exposed spans, interposing solid barriers as feasible against the east.

  The initial missile had been an awakening to the peril, a testament to the skill of its opponent, whose precision cut through the night's mist like a shot from its own lancer.

  The slum sprawled beneath and between them, a festering hive of crumbling spires and alley-veins choked with debris, where corroding rebar and rotting structures groaned under the weight of entropy.

  Simo moved like a ghost, employing arts honed on bloodier fields. From one shadowed alcove to the next, it traversed the rooftops, its boots finding purchase on wet tar and cracked brick.

  An improvised mirror from a shard of broken glass, affixed to a length of scavenged wood, served as its spotter, allowing it to peer around corners and over ledges without exposing its form to deadly strikes.

  Each reflection captured fragments of the night, but not a glimpse of its quarry.

  It eschewed the obvious paths, leaping silent chasms between buildings where the wind howled like damned souls, using the urban decay as an ally.

  Across the scape, Rinja watched the mortal’s movements from its skeletal high-rise piercing out of the city's indifferent sprawl, an artisan of death, waiting for an opportunity to end this match.

  Atmospheric treacheries informed his every adjustment, minutely tweaking his draw, undead breath held in ritualistic pause, a remnant from his mortal life.

  As Simo made a long sprint between covers, the warlord loosed again. The attack missed, as it was an impossible shot to make, but forced the mortal back into the poor cover it had just left.

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  Then Rinja released in rapidity, each arrow of fell energy a strike that chipped away at Simo's sanctuary.

  A burst of masonry here, a splintered beam there, eroding its defense like a fetid field upon flesh.

  As it rose, preparing to retreat to better cover, Rinja executed a strike that impressed even the Swarm, the shaft of energy shattering half an archway.

  Cascading boulders hammered Simo's armor, the impacts battering its form. The plating endured, though bruises doubtless blossomed beneath skin, its body protesting in silent agony as it staggered but remained upright.

  The warlord's accuracy and power were a reminder that this was a true duel of annihilation.

  As Simo dodged and rolled through a barrage of arrows, rain began to lash down in sheets, transforming the rooftops into treacherous mires where footing would betray the unwary.

  Visibility plummeted, the world reduced to a haze of silvered torrents and blurred outlines, the slum's underbelly becoming a drowned warren.

  Simo retreated, huddling in doorways, seeking refuge under covered overhangs as its adversary unleashed barrages that riddled walls and rooftops, cracking stone and ancient brick.

  Arrows continued whining through the storm, flushing Simo from cover after cover, forcing it to dance along the thin edge between evasion and exposure, between existence and extinction.

  And the mortal remained an edifice of stoicism, its features a mask of granite beneath a sodden mat of hair.

  It didn’t cower.

  Instead, it calculated.

  Rinja had loosed many attacks, revealing his location in the distant spire, a coordinate etched now in Simo's memory, and its lancer’s reticule.

  The standoff stretched out as they positioned and repositioned, a protracted siege where seconds bled into eternities, each warrior probing the other's defenses like a demon seeking to possess a host.

  Simo circled wider between shots, using the rain-slicked gutters and fire ladders to close the noose imperceptibly, exchanging attacks in the gloom, its lancer barking retorts that cratered the warlord's perimeter, forcing its enemy to relocate many times.

  Rinja, as expected, adapted every time Simo melted into the architecture like a specter forged of shadows.

  And the match wore on, lancer fire muffled by storm, shattered rock lost in the thunder.

  The balance shifted back and forth, then back again as Simo forced a path toward reckoning.

  The rain persisted in its merciless onslaught as the mortal began anticipating Rinja's rhythms, the subtle patterns in its foe's methodical predation.

  From a concealed niche among a cluster of stone and rusted rebar, Simo uncoiled a grappling line.

  With an expert cast, the hook caught, and the mortal propelled itself across the chasm between decrepit spires, a shadow against the lightning-veined sky.

  The gambit risked much, but if it worked, it'd be a flank that exploited the warlord's perch, closing the gulf significantly.

  Rinja, peering westerly, missed it with his undead senses, realizing the encroachment too late.

  A final long-range exchange erupted as Simo alighted upon an adjacent ledge, its boots scraping against wet grit, barely finding purchase.

  Rinja drew his manifest bow in a fluid arc, loosing an arrow that sheared through the air like a vengeful spirit, piercing Simo's shoulder pauldron, drawing a splatter of warm blood that mingled with the rain.

  Wounded, it didn’t falter, its lancer spitting a shot that cratered the warlord's barricade of debris, forcing him to roll away and retreat, evading as shots blasted by him, a few getting far too close.

  Then the distance narrowed, the duel transforming from a contest of precision at range to near ambushes, where the urban rot funneled them toward a collision.

  A very poor choice for the mortal to make.

  As the two warriors converged upon a precarious rooftop ledge slick with pooling water, overlooked by the indifferent towers of the long-abandoned city, Simo grabbed a grenade from its belt, hurling it with a masterful accuracy, the explosive arcing through the downpour to detonate in a supernova of blinding fire, shrapnel, and deadly concussion.

  Rinja somersaulted clear, but the detonation's periphery caught him. He reeled, his senses overwhelmed, his ears ringing with the void's clamor, his balance betrayed on the treacherous precipice.

  Extracting daggers from his Underworld cache, he hurled them in a blind spray, then reverted to bow, the arrow of fell energy veering wild into the night, shattering a distant wall, eliciting a ruckus as stones crashed into the alley far below.

  Simo closed the breach with a quickness, discarding its lancer to draw a pistol, firing as it ran.

  The warlord recovered with the unholy resilience of one schooled mercilessly in Hell’s furnace, parrying the shots with armored forearms, sending sparks flying as light-discharge ricocheted into the dark, then drove forward in a tackle that slammed them both against the ledge's rusted railing.

  The Swarm smiled as a hand-to-hand maelstrom ensued amid the storm's screeching.

  He relished the guile of pursuit and evasion, the hunt, the calculations, the fluidity of evolving tactics.

  But nothing stirred his ancient soul like the savagery of a life-and-death brawl.

  The pistol was knocked from the mortal’s hand as fists and elbows were exchanged in brutal violence, trading rapid, wild blows, fighting with the ferocity of cornered beasts.

  Rinja could’ve manifested swords, ending the match quickly, but eschewed them, lost to the rapture of the scuffle, much to the Swarm’s delight.

  Simo tried.

  It certainly did, refusing to yield to the inevitable.

  The fight was lost as soon as it had closed to melee. It should've kept its lancer.

  And kept at a great distance.

  Though it pressed on with grim persistence, attempting to go blow-for-blow with a warlord, its armor and cybernetic limbs absorbing punishment, its flesh-and-blood body taking hits that would fell a lesser mortal.

  It ducked under a sweeping elbow, throwing a sharp jab that cracked against armor.

  Another hook followed, aimed at its opponent's face. Rinja allowed it to land, shrugging it off, his undead form unyielding as ancient stone.

  Once the warlord was done toying with it, he worked it over with contemptuous ease, a barrage of fists pummeling its guard like hammers on mortar, buckling armor, cracking ribs, denting cybernetics, forcing the mortal ever backward, closer to the railing.

  As it had fought courageously, instead of prolonging the bout, and further shaming his foe, Rinja’s fist struck its jaw clean, shattering bone, eliciting a grunt of agony as Simo struggled to keep its feet.

  He then manifested a sword and drove it through the armor, piercing upward under the mortal’s ribs.

  “It’s been an honor,” croaked out the warlord.

  But Simo still refused to accept the inevitable.

  Clasping the warlord’s wrist, it began wrenching the sword free.

  Rinja’s unoccupied elbow hammered against the forearm, fracturing plating and appendage with a resounding snap like that of a victory bell.

  With the same arm, he immediately threw a punch, and the mortal’s nose shattered in a spray of blood.

  It staggered backward, one leg buckling, and in that fatal moment, Rinja snatched the back of its neck with a vise-like hold.

  He yanked the mortal up off its feet, then smashed its face down into the roof, then did so again with profane might.

  He propped the senseless mortal against the railing, its bloody eyes staring vacant into the abyss below, warm crimson streaking down its broken and pulverized face, life fleeing the body like rain out a gutter.

  Rinja stood, surveying his defeated adversary with neither much triumph nor regret.

  This victory, won in the slum's shadowed heights, secured his place among the hundred, and cleaved a path toward a new match.

  Next, instead of Ongora, he'd face the mortal Angar, then the axe-wielder after that win, with greater honors to be secured.

  But this battle, what should’ve been a flawless victory, had become a protracted affair, exacting a toll it shouldn't have.

  Rinja bowed to his foe, then pushed the body over the ledge, tumbling down into the depths of the slums far below.