Angar moved like a shadow, slipping aside from Ongora's lunging advances with flowing dodges, effortless, as if the warlord's mounting fury fueled the mortal's new grace.
It wove through a rush, evading a thunderous straight punch, exploiting the momentary opening with a strike that drilled deep into Ongora's exposed flank, even wrenching a grunt from his decayed throat.
As the colossal warlord lunged again with a trunk-like arm sweeping in an arc of annihilation, Angar pivoted fluidly, its body coiling like a serpent before the strike, using the momentum as its metal leg whipped low in a scything sweep.
Ongora's bulk, unbalanced by his own force, crashed to the ground in a sprawl, sending dust billowing outward in a cloud.
As he got to his feet, rage etched deeper into his desiccated features, twisting once greedy joy into something feral and deadly.
And he adapted with the cunning of one who had earned his dread epithet across countless battlefields of the Underworld.
The War King feinted with a swift and massive left hook, drawing Angar's guard outward in a reflexive block that committed its single working arm, only to unleash the true devastation of a right punch thrown with every fiber of his being.
For this titanic eruption of strength, Ongora, his hulking frame a pure monument to undead fortitude and Hell's fell empowerment, poured every last reservoir of power into the strike, the strain bulging corrupted veins across his body.
His fist rocketed forward like a siege engine forged of Hell's most profane alloys, splitting the air with a crack, hurtling toward Angar with the intent to annihilate utterly, to shatter bone and spirit in one obliterating blow.
And it just stood there. Unmoving.
Like a great fool daring the storm to break upon its feeble mortal form.
The Swarm watched anxiously as the punch barreled forward, the air compressing around it in a deafening whoosh.
At the very last moment, its ruined body twisted in a flowing whirl that captured the warlord's hurtling momentum like a sun's gravity ensnaring a wayward celestial body, meeting the onslaught with an exquisite orchestration of motion and leverage.
It drew it in, inverted it, and amplified the force.
With its good arm guiding the redirection in a fluid flow, Angar wrenched Ongora's colossal bulk off its axis, hurling the War King around and downward with redoubled, catastrophic ferocity into the unyielding stone below.
The thunderous impact exploded like a bomb, shattering the floor in a violent spray of jagged fragments and choking silt, the shockwave rippling outward with such profane force that it rattled the tiered stands themselves, provoking involuntary gasps from the ninety-seven warlords, their croaks faltering into stunned silence.
Completely dazed, Ongora rose slowly, unsteadily on trembling legs.
But his stoic gaze still burned with defiant hatred, refusing to yield to a mere mortal.
He staggered forward one grudging, wobbling step, only for Angar's metal foot to whip around in a vicious strike, cracking into his skull with a snap that echoed through the vaulted dome, sending the War King stumbling sideways, ichor weeping from split gray flesh, forcing him down to one knee in a humiliating kneel.
The mortal really got to work then, its long-simmering rage at the loss of its companion, the grief festering like an open wound throughout this trial, finally finding a cathartic outlet, each blow like a reckoning for Simo's fall.
It tore into the dazed enemy with unrelenting fury, a maelstrom of punches and kicks that rocked Ongora's hulking frame like a meteor shower battering a planet.
The warlord, senses overwhelmed and balance betrayed, could mount no true defense, but adamantly refused to go down, straining with unholy resilience to rise from his knees, his arms flailing in futile wards as he croaked out defiance.
All to no avail, as the mortal's onslaught was merciless.
Punch after brutal punch hammered into head and torso with loud thuds.
Kick after savage kick drove into hardened flesh with booming cracks that fractured bone and pulped muscle, spraying black ichor in wide arcs, pooling on the cracked stone beneath both opponents.
The audience watched in an almost profound, astonished silence, transfixed as one of their own, the mighty War King, was ravaged by this animal.
At last, a metal foot crunched deep enough into his head, crushing half the skull inward into brain matter.
He crumpled then, finally, in a heavy collapse, his body going slack among the debris as unlife fled into true death.
With the War King's form stilled in its eternal, final repose, the arena fell into a prolonged hush, broken only by the distant drip of brain and blood onto fractured stone.
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Angar stood in the wreckage, its body battered but his spirit unbroken.
A testament to the fact that, even after so long, the Swarm could still be surprised.
He could still be wrong.
A necessary reminder of one of existence’s inviolable and inexorable truths.
A first Realm mortal had the tenacity to fell two warlords, where one should’ve spelled its certain doom.
The spectral lights dimmed, the encircling ranks of spectators groaning murmurs, their gazes fixed upon the victor with a mix of awe, respect, and intense hate.
The Undead Warlords of his hundred, brothers forged in battle if not by chains of blood, now hungered for retribution against this defiant mortal.
But the Swarm allowed no vengeance for honorable victory in his trials.
He hovered above, linen wrappings fluttering around him in an unseen gale.
A rare tremor stirred within its ancient soul.
Not fear, for such was alien to one who had subsumed and surpassed death, who had trained and grown in power for unknown millennia.
It was a profane exhilaration, a spark of unholy delight among the eons of monotonous dominion.
This mortal, this fragile vessel of warm blood pulsing beneath feeble flesh, had transcended the grim calculus of certain probability.
Vengeance had been denied.
Overwhelming, brute force met with a ruthless fusion of grace, fury, and unwavering, suicidal resolve.
And lost.
For the first time, a mortal of the first Realm had triumphed in one of the Swarm's crucibles.
In its defiance, it illuminated the majestic beauty of violence, a victory that filled the Swarm’s chest with glory and honor.
Two warlords had fallen, but three mortals had entered, and one remained untested. The final ordeal beckoned, stoking the Swarm's ancient appetite for another trial of arms, and more glorious carnage.
If the third participant fell, Angar would have to fight again.
He would usually think it was a near certainty Garioch would fall, but this crucible wasn't going as usual.
This last mortal employed only a melee weapon, an extreme rarity among its kind. He was excited to learn if it had any skill with it.
As the scene dissolved in a ripple of necrotic sorcery, he moved his location in the mortal realm. That was only to avoid being bothered as he observed the final match.
He looked forward to meeting the Seraphs hunting him. He may battle himself, an act which would solidify the gains of the residual epiphanic energies when he later meditated.
The Swarm's spectral gaze lingered on the dissolving arena, savoring the echoes of the hard-won and brutal victories, before shifting to the next trial.
Below him, the chill flagstones yielding to the forsaken sprawl of a blighted village, its crooked streets crawling with restless dead, choked with fog and the ceaseless patter of rain that turned the ground to a sucking mire.
Hovels slumped like rotting flesh, their thatch roofs sagging under the weight of decay, while at the heart of this desolation sat a church, its spire piercing the fog like a broken fang, besieged by a teeming horde that pounded relentlessly against its barred doors and walls, their claws raking stone with fury.
These were no mindless, shambling husks, no fodder for lesser participants. They were infused with a profane potency befitting the warlord who commanded them in this siege, Grubin.
Long ago, Grubin had been blessed by the Dweller of the Abyss, an entity unbound by singular form. It was neither a solitary being, nor a vessel like the Swarm or Legion, but an infinite ocean of churning chaos, where countless shapes writhed and dissolved in an eternal, depraved flux.
That blessing had made Grubin a Choronzon, empowering him, and in turn, the undead he spawned bore the same boon.
Beastly in frame and savage in strength, they towered over common zombies, their limbs bulging with girth and unnatural muscle, their hides armored in thick skin and pelts, their claws razor-sharp, their faces protruding with fanged snouts.
Where lesser undead were driven by an overwhelming, mindless hunger for the living, Choronzon embodied something far more insidious.
They were vessels of true evil, their deeds devoid of purpose, born solely from malignancy.
Destruction for its own sake, cruelty untethered to gain, a whirlwind of pointless malevolence that reveled in the unraveling of order of any and all kind.
They weren’t intelligent, but possessed a feral cunning, capable of simple plotting and using the weapons stolen from their victims.
It materialized, the last participant, Garioch, within the drab and damp interior of an empty hut near the church's flank.
It clutched a technologically wrought greataxe, a hulking monster of mechanicals, its haft etched with Holy runes that glowed dimly in the gloom.
It sank onto the ground, withdrawing a compact Energy Battery from its belt pouch with armored fingers, clicking it into the axe's hilt, a union of cold machinery and latent power, feeding the weapon's voracious core.
The battery couldn’t kindle the forbidden fires of Abilities, sealed by the Swarm's unyielding edict in his realm, but it could ignite items, powering the forged steel of mechanics.
The haft’s runes brightened some, and the circular blade at its head began to stir.
The Swarm had beheld such a weapon before, an axe that glowed with baleful crimson, the edges of its circular head spinning like a drill-bit maw, hungry to devour and rend opponents apart, to rip and tear.
He hated such technology. It tainted the majesty of violence, contests between skilled warriors, a crutch for the weak, a profane shortcut that mocked the sanctity of true combat.
In this instance, he didn’t mind too terribly.
Better by far than the vast majority of cowardly mortals, skulking at great distances with their belching firearms, huddled in their filthy companies, bolstered by artillery thundering from even farther afield.
Craven wretches, all, devoid of honor.
Where was the artistry in such slaughter?
There was no skill, no mastery, no beauty.
For great range, the bow was the sole true warrior's instrument, drawn taut by endless practice and expertise alone, the same as the arsenal of melee arms that demanded blood and sweat in equal measure.
A voice thundered through the village then, resounding through the fog.
“Do not let the house of worship fall."
The words hung in the sodden air, instructions enough, a gauntlet thrown down.
And with the words, the bell tolled, signaling the trial's commencement.
The mortal peered from the hut's cracked doorway, its visored helm scanning the chaos beyond.
The undead horde began assailing the church in a frenzy, their beastly, bulky Choronzon forms smashing at barred doors and weathered walls.
Matted pelts clung slick and black to their hulking frames, rain sluicing off fanged snouts and taloned limbs, stolen weapons clutched in their grasps, pilfered from the corpses of the fallen villagers.
Without hesitation, it strode forth into the seething mass, armored boots sloshing through the sodden street.
The horde sensed the intruder, and an excited ripple passed through their ranks.
Many turned, pivoting with croaking, feral growls, the undead horrors gibbering as they charged, an unliving wall of gnashing maws, claws, and stolen armaments hurtling toward the lone figure.
From his shadowed vantage high above, the Swarm observed, anticipation growing for the horde to descend in full, like a deadly, relentless hurricane, testing this final mortal's mettle in a riot of glorious violence.
