Angar stood, blood seeping from torn flesh, his monstrous hands gripping the maul, unbowed, unshaken.

  His gaze burned into the Harmongulan, its grotesque bulk now gouged and spilling dark ichor where the cords had been torn free, its screams going from rage to raw pain.

  He charged forward, his pierced calf throbbing with every step, fresh bruises blooming atop old, his maul glowing with the same fierce light, striking at the monster's legs with all the force he could muster, trying to topple the beast.

  Each blow sank uselessly into squelching flesh, doing little if any damage. Then power thrummed through him. Glory Thunders erupted as his maul slammed its leg, a shockwave ripping forth.

  The beast howled, blood and gore spraying wide, sending a tendril and the beast’s fist reeling away as it staggered back, and the earth trembling under its faltering bulk.

  After steadying itself, the monster went mad. It fought back with its remaining tendril, its fists, and feet working in unison to crush this pest.

  The tendril whipped through the air, seeking flesh, while the massive fists and foot stomps shook the ground.

  Angar dodged, his movements less fluid due to his injuries, but his determination growing. Much of this thing’s blood was being given to the Lord in tribute, and it had to be slowed now, less able to chase down the people of this world.

  Live or die, Angar had stood as a bulwark, and fulfilled his oath.

  The tendril grew wild. Instead of rearing back for a powerful strike, it hovered near Angar, striking relentlessly over and over, each parry with his maul causing sparks to fly.

  He dove between its legs, the tendril snaking under, snapping at his heels. As it struck again, he seized it mid-air, wrapping the writhing cord around his wrist.

  Dodging a stomping foot, he yanked it tight around a leg, heaving with all his might to unbalance the beast.

  The Harmongulan roared, yanked back, sending Angar slamming into its leg, then pulled through them right into a massive fist grabbing for him he barely got away from.

  The impact caused the world to spin, but he had no time for that. The tendril, a foot, and the other fist blazed towards him.

  Ground Current took him behind the monster, and his maul smacked into its lower back, just below the needle-laced spine.

  Despite the pain coursing through his body, Angar's spirit burned bright. He swung his maul again and again at the already bleeding parts of the writhing bodies making up the mass of the Harmongulan, dodging massive attacks.

  Then Tempest came off cooldown. He waited and caught the tendril again as it struck, wrapping it around his wrist, grabbed his haft with that hand too, and twisted around.

  As before, the cord pulled tight, stopping his spin as Tempest tried forcing it. The tendril dug into his monstrous forearm, deeper and deeper.

  A foot came down, stomping where Angar stood a moment ago, and whatever magic fueled his Ability continued to try forcing him to spin around as the cord dug in deeper.

  The Harmongulan’s roar was filled with agony as its last tendril ripped free, torn from its neck. Angar’s spin drove on, his maul cracking against the creature's legs with each turn.

  With a thunderous crash, the beast’s giant helmet, filled with a grotesque mass of writhing bodies, tumbled to the earth, crashing down in a spray of blood.

  His heart leaped, a surge of triumph screaming victory, mistakenly believing the Gatekeeper defeated, but this was snuffed out quickly as the giant fought on even without a head.

  Angar dodged another of the Harmongulan’s punches as dozens and dozens of skinless horrors, bloody and twisted, erupted from the helmet’s wreckage, charging.

  Tempest continued to twist Angar around, lightning crackling from his maul, bursting forth in rhythmic pulses, searing the Harmongulan and nearby skinless bodies, its reach widening with each thunderous snap.

  But as with the creature itself, the lightning bolts seemed to do little, if any, damage to these minions. Without regard for self-preservation, the skinless horrors charged at Angar in a frenzied, relentless wave, clambering over each other in their mad rush to overwhelm him, piling onto him with abandon.

  As Tempest continued, his maul proved more effective than the lightning, blasting right through many of these horrors, sending a shower of strange blood and viscera raining down.

  Many, but a small number in total.

  Numerous horrors managed to climb onto him as he spun, safe from his maul, biting and clawing in a mad frenzy.

  Angar received some new wounds, but the damage mitigation from spinning nullified the worst of it, making the new injuries he sustained mostly superficial.

  He couldn’t see much of the Harmongulan now and worried about being stomped or punched, so he moved away as fast as his spin would take him.

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  Tempest faded, leaving him buried under a writhing pile of horrors, more piling on with frenzied claws and teeth.

  Blind in the suffocating press, he thrashed. Bites sank deeper, slashes stung, dulled only by his iron Toughness.

  He needed to get out from under this, away from this, but Ground Current still had long seconds left on cooldown.

  Blindly, he hit with Glory Thunders, sending body parts flying away, clearing a path in front of him. He surged forward trying to clear the mob, but was quickly swarmed again, the claws and bites digging into his flesh.

  Angar shifted how he held the maul, moving his right hand grip closer to the chert head. He grabbed a thrashing horror, and with maul in one hand and an enemy in the other, began to beat on these mindless, mad foes.

  He kicked one in the face, thudded his hammer into another, and battered the squirming thing in his left hand so hard into two more that it splattered all three into bloody clumps.

  With his newly freed left hand, he grabbed another horror from his back to use as a makeshift weapon, and dual wielding again, got back to work.

  With a roar, he surged free, his gore-slicked hands smashing a path.

  He could finally see his true enemy. The Harmongulan stood still, not attacking, fifteen meters off, its maliciousness and dark energy pulsing as horrors swarmed, almost as if guarding them.

  When only four horrors remained, he grabbed one up and threw it at the Gatekeeper. Instead of striking the monster, it was snatched out of the air by a massive fist and slammed against the needles lining the Harmongulan’s spine. The beast’s flesh rippled, drawing the horror in like a lost limb reclaimed.

  Angar’s maul thunked into the face of a horror, sinking in deeply, but the thing still thrashed and madly tried gouging Angar with its claws. He dislodged his maul with a disgusting slurp as he kicked the thing away, his hammer swinging two-handed at the next to rush in, bursting it apart like a blister.

  With an upswing, he took the third horror under the chin, sending it into the air, flipping backwards, crashing to the ground with a slopping noise. Without pause, it rushed to its feet and charged in besides its flat-faced brethren.

  Angar spun his maul around, clocking one in the side of the head with a massive hit, sending that head into the other’s with an awful crunch, and both slid to the ground, unmoving.

  With all the horrors dead, the headless Harmongulan lumbered forward, and Angar lumbered right back at it, bellowing out the war cry of his ancestors.

  He had taken a lot of hits from the horrors. They added up. Glory Thunders sent the Gatekeeper staggering, almost unbalancing it again, but failing to knock it to the ground.

  With no tendrils left, it was just avoiding massive feet and hands as Angar whacked already bloody parts of its legs making up its writhing and living mass.

  Ground Current had been off cooldown for a while, but he was saving it.

  The glowing head of his hammer beat against thighs, knees, and shins. He began to hit the creature’s hands and feet as he dodged them, somewhat testing if parrying was now a possibility.

  It wasn’t, but judging by the Gatekeeper’s yells, it was causing it enough pain that the strikes were often pulled back or aborted.

  And on the battle went.

  Angar was hurting, his body littered with bloody wounds and bruises. The battle of endurance would end with him the loser if things didn't change. Tempest had long been off cooldown, but he was saving that too, planning a way to use it more effectively.

  A massive foot stomped where Angar had been just a moment before. He dodged a swinging fist and leaped onto the thigh of the bent leg, grabbing onto the squirming bodies that made up the flesh of the thing.

  He climbed the torso as quickly as he could, only needing to strike an incoming grasping hand twice with his maul before he attained his goal, standing on the bloody wound between the shoulders, where a head once had been.

  As the Gatekeeper’s hands reached for him, Angar spun into Tempest, his maul battering both, making the creature scream as its hands recoiled.

  And as he spun, Tempest drove his feet into the open wound he stood upon, into the Harmongulan itself, down into its chest.

  Lightning crackled from his maul. Wriggling bodies squirmed frantically as the weapon beat against them, pushing them back, clearing space for Angar to delve deeper.

  Then, darkness enveloped him, the sky above blocked by a writhing mass that closed like a mouth, trapping him inside the Harmongulan, his only sources of light being the glowing head of his maul and the flashing lightning extending from it.

  A second later, his descent stopped as Tempest continued, and he stood on something solid, smooth, unmoving, unlike the rest of the monster's flesh.

  And what he stood upon glowed dimly with a reddish tint, then brightening for a moment, like a heartbeat.

  When Tempest ended, the flesh around him pressed in, but he could still move through it well enough. He stomped on the object beneath him, trying to break it, only producing a hollow, thudding noise.

  But the stomp did have another effect. It caused screaming, but unlike the other screams of the Harmongulan, this one was not unified. It didn't come from all the bodies of its flesh at once. The bodies screamed in dissonance, in discordance.

  Angar, as best he could amid the writhing mass of flesh, which wasn’t great, brought the glowing head of his maul down onto the object. White cracks webbed outward through the reddish glow, the discordant screams intensifying.

  He bashed it again with a scrunch, widening the web of cracks, the bodies now emitting endless, screeching howls so loud he feared his head might split.

  The third bash shattered the object. Hot light burst forth, scorching Angar’s skin for a moment before the object exploded in a shower of debris and searing light, sending him hurtling through the air along with the freed bodies, the skinless horrors.

  Just as Angar went to activate Ground Current, a massive fist smashed into his face, altering his trajectory, sending him crashing into the cliff with terrific impact, the back of his head cracking against hard rock with a wet thud.

  Sliding down the cliff, blood trailing, his vision dimming, he fought to stay conscious.

  Through blurred vision, he witnessed the Harmongulan disintegrating into hundreds and hundreds of skinless horrors, raining down to the ground, rising to charge at him in frenzied, relentless waves.

  One creature, pallid and deformed, stood apart from the horrors, laughing in a high-pitched squeal, clutching some strange device in one of its hands.

  Angar had hoped that glowing, pulsing thing he broke was the Harmongulan's heart, and destroying it would mean its death.

  Just as when the Gatekeeper lost its head, it still fought on without a heart, or whatever that thing was. It was broken apart more now, into hundreds of parts, maybe a thousand parts, and each part was still fighting.

  But Angar’s fight was now over.

  Pride swelled in his heart, warm and fierce. He had done far more than Spirit thought he could. He had forged a battle for the ages, given this beast a glorious fight to be sung about.

  He had fulfilled his oath. He had stood as a bulwark. What was once an undefeatable foe was now broken into many far less deadly parts.

  He knew his father would be proud of him. God, to whom he offered his own remaining blood and last breath in tribute, would surely welcome him into Heaven now, and sing of his praises too.

  As the skinless horrors rushed in to finish him off, Angar’s struggle with consciousness ended, and darkness consumed him.