Its visor fixed ahead, unblinking behind the helm's glowing slit, Garioch advanced into the horde, hands clenched around the axe's iron haft like staunch clamps.

  The greataxe hung low at first, trailing a furrow through the muck, its edge hungering.

  Then, with a shift of armored shoulders, the mortal heaved it aloft in a gathering motion, the weapon's core igniting as the infused battery awakened into its mechanisms, its blades spinning into a crimson whirl.

  The weapon's impossible mass tore through the air with a growling whoomph as Garioch unleashed a horizontal sweep.

  A group of undead met it headlong, their crude charges ending in an instant deluge of ruin.

  The saw-axe bit deep into the first, its spinning edge tearing into its victim in a fountain of arterial black.

  The impact shuddered through the steel, bisecting the beastly zombie clean from hip to shoulder, ribs sundering as the torso peeled away in a glistening slide to slop on the ground.

  Momentum drove the strike onward, and the second undead's arm flew free at the elbow, the stump fountaining thick ichor, before the axe clove its chest in a lateral rupture, lungs bursting forth in ragged flaps.

  The third, fourth, and fifth fared no better, the blade's insatiable bite carving them as they lunged, pelts parting like sodden rags, innards uncoiling in steaming ropes to slap the muddy ground.

  The sixth, caught at the cleave's trailing apex, took it across the throat and neck, the head lolling back on a hinge of gristle before tumbling into the slurry, the body staggering like it was on puppet-strings before collapsing.

  Blood hosed the air in overlapping sprays, warm and reeking of foulness and offal, pattering back onto Garioch's armor like black rain.

  But it didn’t pause. The strike's fury carried Garioch forward, the axe’s weight inverting in its grip as he pivoted into the breach he'd wrought.

  The Swarm smiled, watching on as broad slashes followed, relentless and mechanical, each a buzzsaw of annihilation.

  One upraised strike pulped a lunging snout against the flat of the spinning blades, sending brains erupting in a gray-pink smear.

  A backhand return eviscerated two flankers, their bellies gaping open to spill loops of intestine that tangled underfoot.

  It waded deeper, the axe rising and falling in wide, devouring strokes, carving dark-crimson corridors through the press, undead after undead unspooling into meat and bone-shards, their weapons and talons clanging against its armor.

  No mercy, little true enjoyment or skill, just the brute toil of slaughter, Garioch a machine of iron pushing inexorably onward, the horde parting before him in splatters of viscera.

  A spear lanced toward the mortal from the throng, its tip barbed and crude. The mortal twisted minimally aside, the shaft scraping along its breastplate as it brought the axe around in a parrying block, the flat of the blade deflecting a descending club swing with a clank.

  It pivoted on a heel to drive a vertical cleave downward, the axe descending like a hammer, splitting the club-wielding undead from crown to groin in a ruinous stroke.

  Momentum carried the attack into a spin, the axe whipping horizontally through the air in a blurring arc that caught three flankers, their snarls turning to gurgles as the whirring blade eviscerated them across the midriffs, bellies gaping open to unleash gore that sloshed against its armored boots.

  From its shadowed vantage above, the Swarm observed with some joy at the carnage, and some curiosity on strategy, as this mortal fought with detached precision and cold economy.

  Still, the outcome hung certain in the fog-shrouded gloom.

  He hoped not.

  Perhaps this one's mettle would surprise, as the other had.

  But if not, he’d get to see the Angar fight again. That gladdened his heart and filled his chest with profane delight.

  Garioch waded deeper into the crowd, making its way slowly to the church's door, its strikes as mechanical as its axe, a brutal but professional slaughter.

  Stroke by methodic stroke, the horde thinned around the church's flank, a path clearing in the chaos.

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  But then, a breach shattered any hope of this being so easy.

  The church doors burst inward with a booming crack, splintering the frame and crumbling chunks of weathered stone from the archway, the horde surging through like a fetid river undammed.

  Garioch plowed forward, barreling through the crowd to claim the threshold, the shattered doors framing a portal to pandemonium, where the Choronzon-enhanced undead swarmed in slavering waves, their hulking bodies heaving against the mortal's lone stand.

  The interior echoed with croaking howls as it swung the growling axe in sweeping strikes that ravaged clusters of the beasts as they swarmed.

  Broad arcs cleaved through their ranks both front and back, pelts shredding, bodies crumpling in sprays of blood that slicked the stone floor, leaving just a few stragglers on the inside.

  It then faced the advancing horde head-on, planting its boots firm against the threshold, the greataxe whipping around to seal the gap, the weapon's crimson whirl like an omen of ruin.

  Still, they came, just starting really, undeterred in their chaotic frenzy, claws raking, weapons clashing against its armored form, mostly glancing off to embed in the mud.

  The mad flood of their squat, bulky forms heaved forward with stolen swords thrusting wildly, clubs and spears raised in taloned grips, their pelts sodden under the storm's unyielding assault.

  A mace swung in a powerful, overhead crush, the head shrieking downward.

  Garioch ducked low, the head still battering the helm, denting it, as the mortal exploded upward in a rising slash, the weapon carving from stomach to chest in a diagonal rupture.

  It held its ground amid the onslaught, the mechanical axe slick with undead gore, its colossal blade spinning through the air as it unleashed wide slashes that reaped enemies, each stroke claiming two, three, sometimes more in a single, bloody pass.

  Bodies tumbled in dismembered heaps, limbs severed at jagged angles, heads rolling free in sprays of arterial filth that mingled with the downpour, painting the ground in broadening pools of black.

  And still they came, this unholy tide.

  The greataxe bit deep into the crowd, shearing through torsos with churning crunches, pelts parting like rotted canvas to spill steaming viscera into the slurry below.

  Pivoting with mechanical precision, it drove the axe into an assailant, the spinning blades churning through a chest with sickening crunches of sternum and spine.

  It hefted the impaled form aloft before flinging it into the oncoming mob, the corpse tumbling end over end to smash into its brethren, limbs entangling in a momentary pile-up that helped choke the breach.

  But others rushed on relentlessly, a seething wall of fangs and talons, never-ending waves of horrors scuttling forth in croaking packs.

  The onslaught mounted, always more joining the fray, their bulky legs tearing across the mud, wearing the mortal down, its armor taking rent after rent, breached again and again.

  And more surged forward in a mad frenzy.

  The Swarm's gaze narrowed from above, sensing the growing strain in this mortal's battle, the armored stance faltering under the ceaseless impacts.

  Its breaths now escaped in labored grunts through the helm, wounds beginning to accumulate as bites and scratches pierced gaps in the plating, poisoning the mortal, slowing it further.

  The Swarm admired the holdout, this emotionless bulwark holding firm in the storm, that there was no despair, just the grim labor of slaughter.

  The church crumbled bit by bit under the assault, as Garioch's methodical strokes ravaged clusters, thinning the influx until the breach and surrounding area stood littered with dismembered heaps, its enemies reduced to twitching meat.

  For a breathless interval, a temporary lull descended, the structure cleared of the undead tide, the mortal's ruthless vigil granting a fragile respite in the desolation.

  It paused, the axe dripping black sludge in the downpour, and carefully scanned the wreckage, the heaps of dismembered forms steaming in the cold rain, filling the air with the harsh stench of rot and wet fur.

  Its armored chest rose and fell in measured breaths, the Holy runes on the haft flashing brighter for a heartbeat.

  In that silence, broken only by the patter of rain, it straightened its back, letting the axe’s head rest in the muck.

  And Garioch stood proud, triumphant, the victor of this hard-pressed battle.

  But that illusion shattered like a cruel awakening from a pleasant dream.

  Distant howls swelled into a roar, the village's fog-veiled streets disgorging endless, new waves of unliving.

  Choronzon poured forth in a chaotic flood, their beastly forms heaving across the mud with a feral madness.

  The mortal lifted the axe, placed its back toward the choked breach, and waited for its doom.

  And it arrived quickly, in a furious rush.

  It pressed on through the new horde and the rain, the droplets hammering the village streets into a churning swamp of muck and offal, where the undead surged with snarls.

  They adapted in the frenzy, some coordinating rushes with stolen weapons thrusting in unison, flanking, clambering over fallen brethren to overwhelm from all sides.

  The mortal held the threshold still, the axe's crimson whirl a crumbling damn against the flow, the strain of its armored movement clear to the Swarm's eyes.

  More and more wounds stacked from the ceaseless barrage, talons finding rents in the plating to inject undeath secretions that sizzled into flesh and muscle, slowing its swings with insidious rot.

  A grunt escaped the helm as a club cracked against its visor, scoring cracks that fogged its vision, another as a spear breached its armor.

  The mortal ever slowed, weakened, the horde charging in endless, burying gaps in sheer numbers.

  From above, the Swarm's anticipation grew. Though the mortal showed some skill with its weapon, it was far from enough.

  The end came in a seething burial, the undead swarming over Garioch in a croaking, gibbering flood, forcing the mortal to its knees, axe still swinging in futile sweeps until talons wrenched it free, the weapon sinking into the slurry of viscera.

  It slumped at last, vanishing beneath the mass like a sad, broken monument, breaths rasping in defeat and shame.

  The Swarm smiled inwardly, his gaze already turning toward the half-dead Angar, eager to see that one fight once more.

  He rarely claimed the victims of his trials as undead, letting them forge their own path in Hell.

  But he’d do so in Angar’s case, that mettle and defiant spark too promising to discard.