Pain was an old companion, a spur to fury. His armor held well, surprisingly whole, but the mist had gotten through seams and breaches, as had some bites and rakes.

  Angar broke into a sprint, his digitigrade cybernetics propelling him forward in loping bounds, their hydraulics whining as he closed the gap to a denser cluster.

  The horde was dwindling, and he wanted it to seem like he was trying to push the wraiths inward, toward Salvador's killing field, so the greedy Saint's gatling gun could steal unearned glory.

  In the distance, the glow of Holy flame betrayed Garioch's own rampage, fighting his share of the swarm with brutal efficiency.

  Simo's turret no longer thundered ceaselessly from the rear, no precise bursts mowing down Hellspawn too close to the battlecycle, only cracks of his lancer targeting solitary foes.

  A knot of wraiths converged ahead. Angar didn't slow as he closed to within a meter and thrust his free hand forward.

  Lightning Bolt erupted from his gauntlet once more, a channeled torrent of fury that fanned out in a cone, ensnaring the alpha and front ranks in convulsive agony.

  The Ability had less utility fighting large groups than he’d assumed it would, the cone too narrow. For a channeled area of effect, the difference between ninety degrees and sixty was significant.

  Against powerful enemies, it’d work just fine though.

  The bolts pulsed rhythmically, each wave burrowing deeper into their spectral forms, black smoke billowing as hides blistered and burst.

  A secondary bolt followed, half as potent but no less lethal, searing through the press to claim more victims. When he attained level 75’s Ability Option, he’d acquire the last Sacred Upgrade, causing the second bolt to fork twice, amping up its damage.

  The air crackled with electricity, the smell of ozone overriding the burnt reek of ectoplasm, and for a moment, the horde fractured, beasts tumbling in smoldering heaps or veering wildly to escape the searing strikes, swarming him.

  Angar ended the channel, charged through the cleared area ahead, his maul descending in a plasmatic-infused overhead smash that cratered a torso, then kicking out, clearing the few on the side.

  He spun, most remaining foes at his front now, swarming. His hammer sank into the face of the closest, imbued with Glory Thunders, sending a shockwave rippling outward, liquefying some, hurling others backwards in crimson chunks.

  One clung stubbornly to his back, its jaws locked on his helm. He reached back, gripping it in his armored fist, wrenching it free in a spray of goop, then slammed it down onto his rising knee, the impact breaking the bony body with a sharp snap.

  The herd was thinned now, small packs or larger clusters spread out, trickling in.

  He chased them down, staying clear of Garioch, Simo picking off distant stragglers, Salvador’s weapons mostly silent.

  When only a few hundred remained in total, the ground rumbled, and over the ridge, an infernal tide of writhing flame and darkness swelled, new legions drawn by the clamor of battle.

  These weren’t bloodwraiths. He couldn’t make out what they were for a bit.

  When they were close enough, he pegged them as pyromancers, higher-rated Hellspawn. Unlike the bloodwraiths, these heavily employed fell powers.

  Angar felt the whispers intensify, slithering tendrils probing his mind's fortifications, promising madness and bliss.

  He shrugged them off easily, etching the sign of the trey on his armor with his bloodied gauntlet, offering up a new prayer, a promise tithe of fiery blood.

  There’d be more slaughter coming, much more, the sacred dance of hammer and storm, culling the unholy as tribute for the Lord.

  The fusion pistol bucked in Angar’s grip, spitting a searing bolt that barely singed the hide of these infernal, flame-wreathed creatures.

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  He holstered and charged his foe.

  The carnage dragged on without mercy, an eternal grind under the bruised sky, where pyromancers skittered like embers on the wind, borne aloft on coiling tendrils of infernal flame, less walking than gliding through the haze.

  They scattered wide across the fractured plain, elusive shadows that spat gouts of fire and hurled explosive orbs from afar, refusing the bloodwraiths' mindless clustering, turning the field into a deadly game of pursuit amid the ash and embers.

  Hours bled into the fray, the sky filled with the unending roar of combat.

  He caught the bark of the battlecycle's turret mingling with the sharp cracks of Simo's lancer. Garioch must’ve withdrawn to the vehicle, either his wounds too grievous to swing that axe any longer, or the pyromancers' darting evasion rendering his close quarters combat too futile.

  Angar sympathized, his breaths coming in labored rasps through the helm's filters, each pursuit a taxing slog across the blighted earth.

  And he had to keep moving. Standing still for a moment was a terrible idea, practically begging for more explosive orbs to target him. There weren’t many alphas, thankfully, as they were smart, and set up attacks nearly impossible to avoid.

  He chased down lone foes, counting himself blessed when three converged close. The temptation to unleash Electrokinesis, to down distant enemies with Electrocute, or light up clusters with chained lightning, was strong. But he resisted, mindful of his dwindling Resilience.

  Salvador's barrage never faltered, a ceaseless chatter from his gatling gun and arm-mounted cannon, the barrels glowing white in the gloom, pausing only twice in the ordeal, brief silences where the Saint doubtless swapped out his depleted, giant ammo pack.

  The toll mounted brutally, hour upon grinding hour, leaving Angar's armor battered and blackened with chars, breached in a dozen spots, crisping the flesh beneath.

  Victory, finally, crawled into sight as the pyromancers thinned to fewer than a hundred, though spread out across the vast distances.

  But as they mopped up the remaining, the air twisted without warning, an unnatural vortex rising from nowhere.

  The whole area began to throb with a strange profanity that literally vibrated through Angar's armor and into his bones, though the spectral maelstrom stirred no wind, leaving the drifting ashes undisturbed in their lazy descent.

  Not the fallen corpses of Hellspawn, though. They rose in the strange wind’s grip, the pyromancer and bloodwraith husks, all the charred and smoldering remains scattered across the corrupted plain, stirred, their limbs twitching, hollow eye-sockets flaring with embers as the vortex claimed them.

  Thousands upon thousands ascended, their forms blurring into streaks of ash and shadow, pulled toward the cyclone's heart, spinning around it like debris, merging together in blasphemous union like clay in an ungodly sculptor's hands.

  They coalesced in a hideous alchemy of unholy flesh, the corpses melding with slurps, like organs pulled from guts but amplified in grotesquery.

  Limbs fused into writhing appendages, elongated, veined with pulsing rivers of molten ichor that glowed like a well-used turret barrel, slavering sparks that ignited brief flares on the ashen ground below.

  Skulls stacked and merged into irregular clusters, each forming a disgusting bulge along the emerging monster’s bulk, each cranium gaping in silent howls, flames licking from fanged maws.

  The stench of burning Hellspawn, rot, and brimstone filled the air, thickening it with an unholy miasma that choked Angar’s helm filters, almost forcing him to gag on the foulness.

  He watched in shock as the nightmare grew and grew, swelling to fifteen or twenty meters height, a writhing, colossal horror, far too wide to topple, its outline warbling as it forced this reality to accept its being.

  Dozens, perhaps a hundred tentacles sprouted from the titan, nightmarish amalgamations of corpse parts, some as thick as ancient tree trunks and armored in scales of fused bone, others slender and whip-like, tipped with clusters of flaming barbs that hissed and spat embers like Hellish serpents.

  Angar exhaled a frustrated breath. Of course, it’s a monster made of giant tentacles, he thought. He truly hated tentacles.

  They lashed outward, cracking the earth where they struck, sending up geysers of dust and rock that rained down in stinging pelts, the impacts resounding like earthquakes.

  Beyond the barrier of cord-limbs, the creature's surface rippled with constant motion, the embedded faces of the Hellspawn perpetually twisting, their features melting and reforming in cycles of torment, the red eyes bulging with liquid fire, the mouths stretching wide to vomit streams of some profane crud.

  Veins of crimson energy spiderwebbed across its hide, crackling with fell power that illuminated the monster from within, casting elongated shadows that danced madly across the plain.

  Angar felt its presence as something tangible, a weight of ancient hatred that pressed against his soul like the crush of a rockslide.

  Dark whispers emanated from it now, but not the slithering probes of the corpses making up its mass. This was a united chorus of thousands of voices merged into one intrusive roar, powerful enough that Angar worried for Simo.

  But the veteran was a good distance away, crouching in the battlecycle’s towed bed, so it wouldn’t be as overwhelming.

  As it moved toward Salvador on tentacle-limbs, the ground beneath it curdled, the ashen crust blackening further as infernal heat radiated downward, cracking the soil into glowing fissures.

  The comms hissed to life in his ear, Salvador's voice remaining calm despite this nightmare forming. "That's a Wraithlord. Pull back to the cycle now. And stay there. None of you engage. I’m calling in Templar Companies."

  A second passed. “Scratch that. I think I can take it.”

  A location icon bloomed in Angar’s HUD. “Head to that point if the dark whispers become too much for any of you,” added Salvador. “Until then, use that lancer to keep the strays off me, Layman.”

  As he pounded back towards the cycle, his helm craned to fix upon Salvador, a part of Angar yearned to defy the order, to hurl himself into that exalted carnage against the monstrosity.

  He knew nothing of what a Wraithlord was, nor the measure of its infernal might, if it was a Gatekeeper or Dreadfiend or what, but the other half of his soul understood, with iron certainty, that he had no chance standing against it in battle.