Angar's neck was twisted around, his sight stuck upon the distant fury of Sal battling as his cybernetic limbs hammered the ashen waste, driving him relentlessly towards the battlecycle.
The Wraithlord reared up, a blasphemous titan forged from the Underworld's foulest depths, an obscenity of lashing tendrils writhing like damned souls, armored in bone-fused scales.
Before it stood Salvador like a defiant gnat against such a titan, a bastion of rune-etched steel, his Cataphract armor's Holy sigils flaring under the crackling red sky.
And his weapons spoke the Lord's judgment.
The gatling gun upon his arm erupted in righteous thunder, stitching plasma bolts across the monster's guarding limbs, carving furrows of sizzling ichor and splintered bone.
His arm-mounted cannon boomed alongside it. Each shot burrowed deep into the thicker tentacles, armored in scales of fused bone, blasting forth gouts of profane essence.
From some hidden maw, the Wraithlord unloosed a terrible roar, causing vibrations to claw through the sparse atmosphere, its crimson-veined mass shuddering as a searing green shaft of fell energy lanced forth at its enemy.
Salvador hurled himself aside, his juggernaut frame defying its mass with a surprising grace, the beam gouging a molten trench where he had stood, the earth weeping slag.
The fiend charged forward, scuttling upon a dozen thick, plated tentacles that pounded the low-grav soil, each impact birthing craters and rippling tremors.
Dust plumes erupted in its foul wake, the ground blackening and curdling beneath the infernal radiance bleeding from its undercarriage.
Salvador rose, his armaments never ceasing their litany of destruction, and the gatling's bark gnawed at the shielding tendrils that whipped up to guard the creature's core.
His long-barreled cannon blared. Chunks of fused bone and unholy flesh sprayed outward, igniting brief flares on the cracked earth, but the armored tentacle pressed onward undaunted, without slowing, the monster hardly registering the wounds.
As the distance closed to killing range, half a dozen of its mightiest limbs lashed out like battering rams, hammering downward in a deadly barrage.
Salvador dodged and rolled through the storm, then got his feet, his massive frame strafing sideways as his gatling blazed, plasma streams raking the incoming appendage.
He pressed the evasion, weapons spitting fire as he sidestepped with precision that belied his bulk, the jets flaring to boost him clear of the next onslaught, the ground shattering in stone eruptions that pelted his armor.
At last, Angar reached the battlecycle, skidding to a halt beside the supply cart. Garioch inclined his head in silent acknowledgement from the turret perch, his axe mag-locked to his spine, his lighter Armiger armor blackened and rent in dozens of spots.
Simo hunkered low in the armored cart, his lancer snapping precise retribution at distant pyromancer stragglers, each crack tagging a darting target with unerring accuracy.
Angar swept his gaze about. No Hellspawn lurked anywhere near enough for his sidearm's bite. Even if there were, the discharge wasn’t effective against the pyromancers.
He turned back to the fray, his blood surging with the imperative to act, to do more than bear witness like some impotent scribe.
Under those churning clouds, the contest stretched into an eternity, long minutes bleeding away as the deadly contest endured as it had begun.
Salvador skated sideways in ceaseless motion, his gatling gun and arm-cannon chipping away at the beast in stolen bursts between dives and evasions, the tentacles pulverizing the earth in an unremitting hunt.
Sporadic beams lanced from the Wraithlord's bulk, green fire scorching the air, branding the plain with glowing wounds, each one missing the Seraph by the Three's slender mercy alone.
Once, he stood firm as a lesser cord smashed into his pauldron, the impact failing to budge him. His armor held firm, though a golden rune flared.
Angar focused on the details of the battle, the cannon's repeated fury hammering one thickened tentacle, blasts coring the same scarred patch, ichor and bone spraying in profane rain.
The Seraph was constantly moving, constantly dodging and rolling away from crushing and lashing tentacles, fully exerting himself, an impossible pace to keep up indefinitely.
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With every passing minute, Angar's admiration swelled, watching the man maintain this relentless pace, the full glory of unyielding wrath.
This is what Salvador was famous for – facing monsters by himself no one else could. And winning.
After a few more cannon blasts, the thick tentacle he'd been targeting finally sundered, the severed half tumbling to the ground in a splatter of molten gore, writhing briefly before stilling.
Wasting not a second, Salvador immediately redirected his wrath to a fresh limb, his gatling raking its defending appendages as he strafed the horror.
A drive’s shriek tore through the tumult, and Salvador's light-class cutter plunged from the roiling clouds.
This surprised Angar at first, as the ship joining battle would destroy the experience Salvador earned upon victory. But as a Peak Seraph, XP meant nothing to him.
Twin streams of incinerating energy slashed from its prow, raking the Wraithlord's defending limbs while a shuttle burst from its bay, vomiting plasma in furious gouts.
The Ilarix Accords bound warfare with iron edicts. In-atmosphere, within prescribed bounds, vessels might loose fire against ground forces only with weapons ground troops could wield, manned singly, not by crews.
Its distinctions sliced through war's every facet, such as anti-personnel artillery versus general artillery, the latter reserved for vehicles and structures alone.
The cutter and shuttle skirted the edge of allowed distance while blasting away.
The Wraithlord bellowed in rage, its unseen maw shaking the air as massive tentacles swiped the earth, hurling boulders aloft at the interlopers alongside beams of fell light.
The cutter banked sharply away while the shuttle wove through the barrages, its discharge caught by lashing cords.
Eons of chaos unspooled in the sky before a beam clipped the shuttle mid-dive, flinging it into a wild spin, smoke streaming from its hull like a comet's tail.
It corrected itself with sputtering thrusters, barely avoiding a crash, limping back to the cutter with flames licking its frame.
And on the battle dragged, until the Wraithlord’s crimson veins throbbed brighter, channeling power into a strike bathing the field in spectral luminescence, unleashing a searing beam and launching three armored tentacles like missiles.
The cutter's shields blazed under the beam's fury, flaring blue before shattering in a cascade of sparks. Two of the tentacle-missiles bounced off the hull, but one entered the docking bay, and an explosion pierced the hull, sending smoke billowing.
The ship fled off in the distance, probably retreating to Fort Acre for expensive repairs under Salvador's command.
Alone again, the Seraph resumed the grim battle, the duel resuming the same brutal ritual as before.
Simo must’ve felled the last of the pyromancers in his range, as his lancer had fallen silent.
Jets propelled Salvador in small spurts, assisting in the evasion of limb-strikes that cratered the soil.
He rolled beneath a sweeping coil, rising to unleash cannon’s shells and plasma that chewed into his foe, weaving through tentacles and sporadic beams.
The pace was merciless, the strife epic in its endurance, Salvador a smear of motion and vengeance.
But the Wraithlord began adapting, its lesser tendrils snaking low to snare and topple.
As Salvador evaded another onslaught, a slender cord looped his leg, its barbs flaming, burrowing into plate.
His cannon boomed point-blank, severing the appendage in a spray of crimson vapor. But the lapse proved costly.
He tumbled clear just as a trunk-thick tentacle pulverized the earth where he'd lain a heartbeat before, the shockwave buckling the terrain.
Nearer now, the beast's bulk rippled with unholy life, the embedded visages stretching wide to spew streams of profane sludge, vicious torrents hurtling towards the Seraph.
Rather than withdraw, Salvador charged, his jets igniting as he blazed at the beast, barreling through the searing streams like a train, gatling gun churning, his cannon blasting into a cluster of gaping maws.
Ichor exploded in viscous gouts as the creature's roar twisted into an anguished screech.
Tentacles thrashed in fury, battering into Salvador with crushing force, slamming him from side to side before knocking him earthward in a dust-choked plume.
Dozens of slender cords slithered about the prone warrior, constricting tight with an infernal vise-grip.
Angar's heart clenched, but luminous Treys whirled around Salvador like Holy guardians, settling on his armor and radiating purifying light, searing the grasping limbs, the tentacles blackening and withering, dissolving into fumes.
The Wraithlord's crimson veins pulsed with renewed malevolence, unleashing a vortex of fell energy that warped reality around Salvador, pulling ash and debris into a maelstrom of howling shadows.
His cannon boomed, blasting more skulls into oblivion, but the storm intensified unchecked.
Tendrils recoiled, withdrawing as a colossal blast erupted, swallowing the Seraph in a green inferno as the air curdled, roaring alive in profane cataclysm.
Angar's hope nearly broke then, but a moment later, from the heart of the blaze emerged Salvador, runes glowing like a Holy pyre, his weapons extended and spitting death, unbowed and unbroken.
The monster reared in frustration as a dozen mighty tentacles descended like giant hammers.
The Seraph vaulted upward on jets, gatling raking the unholy creature in a ceaseless hail as the appendages slammed down, cratering the earth and sending shockwaves that buckled the crust in radiating fissures, unbalancing the fiend momentarily.
More tendrils lashed wildly. The Seraph evaded with surprising elegance, his arm-cannon tearing through the base of a thin, whip-like appendage, shearing it clean to writhe on the ground.
He darted about, dancing through the frenzy of lashing limbs by the skin of his teeth, the jets carrying him airborne in a firing retreat as if the Three had graced him with Divine luck.
But fortune proved fickle. His luck ran out. An armored tentacle struck true, spinning him wildly.
Then a beam blasted into him, hurling him back, only for another tentacle to intercept, slamming him groundward with terrible force.
The impact cratered the earth in a thunderous boom, sending rocks soaring and dust billowing skyward.
The creature's unseen mouth roared in triumph as its bulk shuddered. Another tentacle smashed into the pit. Then another.
Salvador remained down. Worry ignited into fury in Angar's chest. He roared, "Light up the Wraithlord, both of you!" and charged, hammer clenched in gauntleted fist, sprinting across the scarred waste with all the speed his enhanced body could muster.
