Dead Man's Dreams

[Okor]

Eventually, the rollicking peals of laughter that echoed across the aetheric eternity ceased, fading into the immaterial existence the Demigod was imprisoned in. The shattered hopes and shorn dreams that bore his blighted form aloft withered as they melded with a featureless porcelain plane, a seemingly endless disc of ivory that stretched as far as his infected eye could comprehend. His prior nihilistic abandon discarded, a corroded sole, a match to his own entropic essence, gingerly touched the alabaster realm. Far on the horizon, a dark figure stood resplendent, a midnight-blue contrasting against the pale infinity. Rotten hands clasped around the decrepit leather wrapped around the rusted hilt, sliding the cleaver from its poor excuse for a scabbard, a single eye struggling to size up the intruder from this distance. One more fool, one more corpse, and one more sacrifice to the Grandfather’s glory.

It was at that point the world warped and shifted, tossing the gangrenous giant forward, his verdigris-coated tool of violence clattering away into the abyss as the endless horizon collapsed and shrunk, the momentum of its sudden shift bringing him to his knees before this newcomer. Hooves forged of stars blended into ebon fur like that of the abyss, a tableau of the emptiness between worlds, the cold and hungry void in which countless ruined warships twirled and danced their final dance amongst the shrapnel of their final battle. His rot-riddled iris continued trailing up the contours of the creature’s equine body, cataloguing the noted lack of armour, the raven-like wings, the curious lunar sigils, and the jeweled crown prominent behind the sharp spine of bone jutting from their forehead, a beauteous mirror to his monstrous horn. Translucent blood slowly seeped through his body, barely-functioning glands and injectors adding combat stimulants into the sludge of filth flowing through his veins, every sense sharpening as his desperate breaths turned shallow, ancient lessons in ruthlessness returning as he prepared to tear out this unknown assailant’s throat. Every dessicated muscle tensed as pestilent claws twitched, the addictive thrill of battle built into his very being singing a siren call, beckoning his violent urges, demanding the death, the kill, the spilling of this abomination’s blood, a revelry of mankind’s glory over the creature’s ravaged corpse. He surged forward, hands bent into rending talons seeking the beast’s throat, eager to maim, to kill, to burn until there was nothing left but ashes.

Invisible chains tightened around his necrotic limbs, binding the murderous power he was desperate to unleash, holding the titan immobile before the elegant equestrian. Servos snarled as he strained against his chains, refusing to be contained by sorcery. A resonant voice that slid into both his mind and his ears issued forth from the adorned creature, the tone harkening back to the dimly recalled decade before The Legion took him. “Such anger, in such a wounded form. Tell me, Warrior. What happened to you? Who made you what you are?” The words caressed his consciousness, an unspoken promise of redemption and kindness hanging in the air. A crimson oculary organ, still level with the creature’s own eyes despite his restrained stature, hatefully gazing into the face of his captor. ”I do not… answer to you.” He spat, both metaphorical and literal acid present in his declaration, corrosive spittle flecking the jagged, disarrayed fangs scattered around his infested maw.

“No, perhaps you do not. Why would someone of your stature sing their story to a stranger in this strange realm?” Pinpricks of light rushed to their horn, convalescing into a nimbus of power, the light burning away his sight, incinerating his perception as all that he shrouded himself within was burned away, a howl of pain and anger silenced by the tempest.

“You will show me.”