The Battle of Death Mountain: Staging

[Okor]

Drifting flakes of ash settled onto the skeletal sentinel, the corrosion of his armour slowly being subsumed by the flame-wrought remnants. Where did the ash come from? There was scarcely any organic matter in this land of death, save its inhabitants.

The immediate conclusion sprang to his mind, as the fire-belching beast still lay coiled within its spire, the airborne cremations of its victims caught in orbit around its lair. In death, they served a purpose: To further demonstrate the enormity of the task the Institute took upon itself. A creature larger than a thunderhawk dwelt within this realm, and his Lord had decreed that it must die.

And so it would. This was the entirety of the matter. Nealaphh had made its will known, and he was Oath-bound to enforce this.

Not all those present shared in his tireless devotion, however. Several had retired to the nearby shantytown, slipping beneath warm covers to dream whatever visions this blighted land spawned. Okor himself rarely slept, these days. His dreams had transitioned into nightmares, the comforting embrace of the Grandfather absent from the realm of souls, the Empyrean of this blasted reality simply reflecting back accusations when what little biology still functioned demanded a cessation.

Seeking a distraction from the ashen dead that coated him, an eye as fiery as its surroundings looked out across its surroundings, the dead wasteland static, unmoving, thoroughly and completely deceased. Nothing grew, nothing rotted. It was devoid of life, replete with naught but stone and flame.

It was anathema. The sooner Volvagia fell, the sooner he could abscond from this atrocity against nature, and return to a realm more conductive to his being. Ceramite-clad shoulders rolled in ossified sockets, fused bones grinding against each other.

There was an anomaly on the fire-scorched fields, a pair trudging towards the outskirts of the staging grounds, singed detritus parting before them, a palpable aura of power demanding the obeisance of the landscape. One did not survive for long in the volatile power structure of Chaos without acquiring a sixth (Or seventh, or possibly eighth, depending on how much the gods favoured you) sense for strength. The prime had it in spades, raw power leaking from their every pore, suffusing the surroundings. Disease-ridden saliva welled up in his ruin of a mouth, the thought of that power belonging to one more deserving bringing a smile to his rotten face.

Another day, perhaps. Jagged markings, the ancient script of a world long lost to the mists of time, crawled across his helmet, accumulating around the approaching auburn-maned applicant. Packmaster. Huntleader. Foeslayer. Blinking away these sycophantic supplications, he dreged his blade up from the silicate of the square, sliding the antiquated copper cleaver into the leather loop, slow strides taking him towards the newcomer. He was Chosen, he was the Dean, he was tasked with slaying Volvagia, not Gildarts. The name erupted into his vision, emblazoned by the primal intellect dwelling within his second skin.

A dark figure detached itself from the shadows of the buildings, lightly following Okor’s mammoth strides, the Plague Marine’s occasional desperate breath and the constant protestations of his armour shielding them from his notice.

It did not take long for the two titans to meet, the silicate storms that pervaded this realm halted as they looked upon each other. The Dean of Security, a towering demigod in armour older than empires, dripping with entropy and disease, sustained by little more than a stubborn refusal to simply stop.

The Strongest Prime, clad within a dark cloak, linen bandages concealing a sigil beneath their muscular chest, the silvered surfaces of their augmented limbs struggling to keep out the ever-pervasive ash.

A bass rumble broke the brief silence.

”You are Gildarts.” It was not a question. In this damned land, there were few certainties. It soothed his tainted soul, being able to latch onto a concrete fact.

An eyebrow raised itself in a quizzical fashion, the mage taking in the sight of the gangrenous giant. “Last time I checked. And who might you be?” A slight smirk was visible on their face, an optimism Okor was entirely incapable of cultivating prevailing.

The Chosen drew breath, rusted respirator rattling as tumorous lungs filled with toxic air. ”Have you come to slay… The Drake? Or assault The Master?” He snarled, looming over the arcanist.

Gildarts leaned backwards, silently praying for the removal of his olfactory organs. “The drake? The master? What are you talking about?” The Plague Marine pulled back, turning from the impromptu interrogation, waving a pestilence-dripping claw. ”Volvagia. Come. Nealaphh seems to… Have faith in you. He can tell you more.” A heavy greave came down absentmindedly on a stone in his path, the lump of obsidian cracking beneath his weight. ”He is more… Eloquent than I.”