The Battle of Death Mountain: Alpha

[Okor]

It is often said that it is preferable to burn out, than to fade away.

Astartes know this better than others. Their fate is to be incinerated atop a mound of fallen foes, swinging blades and emptied guns against the never-ending tide of hatred arrayed against them, until the Gods see fit to allow them to rest. Whether surrounded by their final sacrifices, or by their battle-brothers, they go neither gently, nor alone, into that good night.

Perhaps this fact was why something analogous to fear was creeping into his mind, a quiet dread of the unknown sinking into his psyche, icy needles plunging into his previous bravado and bravery. He couldn’t feel anything. This was far from uncommon, the blessings he had fought so hard for shielding him from agony. More disturbing was the lack of any sensation. He was blind, deaf, mute, and seemingly immobile. He commanded himself to rise, for his armour’s pistons to augment his leprous limbs, to continue the fight. It was impossible to stop now. The foe still lived, and it pursued the weaklings he had sworn to shield. He had made an oath to slay Volvagia, to cast it into the deepest pits of hell, whether to save the Gorons, or to eliminate the competition, he was unsure. He had been commanded to, and so he had fought.

A charred mandible fell from a soot-black skull, the carbonized muscle still clinging to the surface unable to hold it in place as he struggled to make use of now-incinerated lungs.

Why in the infinite hells had he tried to fight that beast? It was larger than a superheavy tank, with more firepower than the average orbital bombardment.

Why did he fight?

Decayed and starved brain cells proffered forth an answer. Because he lived.

As long as he drew breath, he had to steal life from the world, to draw blood and let it into his own veins, earning every second of his existence by ending others. It was a biological imperative to kill.

Electric signals ran down his singed spinal column, ending there as they failed to find his limbs, which settled around him as particulate mounds of ash.

It was an gene-forged addiction, an inbuilt impulse to find and kill the enemies of mankind. And Omnillium could cure it, could it not? The Smiling One’s insidious gift could rid him of his flaws, heal the maimed, allow the blind to see, tear the cancerous geneseed from his heart. He could be reborn, an Okor that no world had known, for a world none wished to know.

And he would die.

Every flaw, every scar, every psychosis he tried to banish to the darkest reaches of his mind, the parasites that crawled through the hearts that laid blackened in his heat-warped ribcage, was him.

The chill that passed through his slowly cooling remains, that barest reflection of fear, was him.

He didn’t want to die alone. There were no Gods watching his final breaths, no warp-sprites hovering over his broken form, awaiting his ascension from the realm of mortals. There was no vindication, no righteousness, no final testament to his strength, one last feat of battle to burn his name into legend. Just a slow, shameful, agonizing death. He needed to get up, he needed to draw blood, to interpose himself between his wards and the enemy.

But he couldn’t. By the Gods, he couldn’t.

With one last shudder of what few scraps of broiled muscle remained clinging to his scorched bone, the infernal energies that animated the long-dead legionnaire fleeing his incinerated corpse, leaving the broken and blackened remnants upon the ashen steppes.

Just another corpse on the battlefield.