[4-12] The Mines

[Okor]

The Plague Marine barely registered the latest loss to their roster. Malfunctioning electronics sparked, the sizzle of molten circuitry a near-silent requiem for their robotic companion. It was all their damned ilk deserved, a half-hearted attempt at mourning the all-too temporary demise of a would-be champion.

A brief moment of silence passed, all that they could offer to their fallen friend.

”This island is trying to… kill us.” Spat Okor, caustic bile searing his throat. ”Cannibals. Caveins. Gods know what else.” He held a clenched fist to his helmet, a natural reflex thousands of years of disease have been unable to entirely stimy. As his lungs finished tearing themselves apart, he looked up at his fellows. ”Jak’s been planning this from the... beginning.”

“I don’t know what we expected.”

As the static wave began to wash over them, the binaric screech of madness and power so often associated with technological progress overriding all thoughts, the all-consuming white noise devouring conscious thought as it drove the survivors to their knees.

Fiara screamed as the pain overtook her, blood pouring from her ears, mingling with the similar scarlet of her mane, marring her alabaster skin, already dirtied from their descent into the underworld.

The Terminator was face-down in the mud, his machinery failing as ones and zeroes fled from his pneumatic maw, screaming incoherent parcels of data into the uncaring earth.

And Okor’s voices returned. THREE. Three accursed primes, all that remained of those that stood against the madness of the Island, the trio that baptized themselves in blood, reforging themselves around an unbreakable core of defiance when reality itself turned against them.

THIRTY-NINE. Thruscas Sine. He remembered it, how it gleamed in the night, like a beautiful jewel in a galaxy of stinking, how it cast off its shackles of sickness, listened to disease’s dirge. He remembered how Nurgle and his children rotted it from within, rendering a perfected people into naught but festering corpses. The 39th millennium, and every single cardinal sin committed within its thousand years.

FOURTY-TWO. Seven Sevens less Seven. The most sacred expression of Nurgle’s Numerals, but undeniably missing something. The Seventh Marine. Beneath the dirt and grime of his armour, VII was emblazoned upon his pauldron, the sole remaining survivor of the Long War, the last number standing, the only Son of Barbarus that existed in this twisted reality, this faithless hellhole.

Slowly, the group began to stand, blood and hydraulic fluids leaking from their ears, Arturia wincing in pain, as was her right as the closest thing approximating humanity within this subterranean hall of horrors. “Th’ hell was that?” She slurred, attempting to reclaim her senses after the synthetic shriek had passed. ”Nothing… Good.” Responded Okor, his blighted biology wholly incapable of registering the suffering inflicted upon the others. The familiar sensation of his machine spirit began to slip back into his psyche, antiquate neural interfaces returning to life, allowing the malevolent sprite to claw its way back into the cybernetic carapace bonded with the Legionnaire's body. ”With every passing instant, this isle… seems to come up with new ways to torment us. I have no doubt that Jak is planning… something, and only a few of us will live to see it. Every single particle of this place will bend itself towards our demise, and before we go out to meet it with blades in hand, I would very much like to know something.”

The Plague Marine loomed over his two companions, corruption dripping from his every pore, the quiet hum of the atomic fire that powered his ancient armour filling the void of silence, a reminder of the near-absurd power contained within his rotten bones.

He breathed in, toxic gasses filling punctured and shredded lungs, a small amount of noxious fumes slipping from the pipe still embedded within his torso, a memento of the crash that had doomed them all.

”Are you... afraid?”