The searing pain in his chest
told him he was still alive. That thrice forsaken pulse of energy rushing
through his mind, reminding him he was still but a mere human once more, body
sapped of Energy and drained of that wondrously invigorating Pulse. His hand
gripped at the dirt, his helmet was shattered, the chunks laying upon the
ground, plexisteel and vantos weave, both still firm enough to remain in the
contoured and specifically created shape, laying in ruins around him. He was
regaining consciousness fast enough that he began checking and rechecking the
systems of his suit and weapons.
The H.U.D. flared, the last
vestige of it had been linked to the cybernetic eye within his right socket,
pulsing with energy that it siphoned from him. The warnings spoke loudly,
demanding he fix the issues with the Atmospheric Systems and his Weapon Array,
and restart the nanites within his form for a more proper biological reading.
He was only able to do one of those things, the nanites quickly returning to
work as he finally pushed himself to his knees. In that moment, that split
second of utmost clarity, he came to the reality where he had been. His eyes
widened as his head shot upwards, gaze locking upon that male standing smugly
but a few feet away, canting forward, lips curled into the vestige of a smile,
but oh, it wasn’t a smile, it was the most menacing grin anyone could manage. It showed nothing but malice, and plans
interlaying plans, and satisfaction, that every one of those plans had come to
fruition.
“Oh, so you decide to pay attention now. I
was afraid I’d have to kill her and just let you sleep like a baby.” The…
Thing in front of him spoke like a human, but Pyre knew otherwise. The energy
within him, though smoldering, unable to breath and live correctly yet, yearned
towards what that thing, that insipid monstrosity, represented. He let that
energy smother away as he glanced around rapidly, the full brevity of the
moment crashed into the male then. His shotgun lay shattered and twisted before
him, part of it crushed under The Dark Marine’s boot, while the closest person
to himself, the only thing He’d been able to call Mother and Family in nearly a
hundred years, was curled into a pile, blood dripping from her chest where a
lengthy, wickedly curved blade jutted out like a middle-finger extended to the
sky. The sound of wheezing, rasping breath echoed from Fae’s lips as she looked
up weakly after a few moments. Pyre’s H.U.D. lit up as he looked at her, giving
him a rapid reading of her, as well as the rest of his Khore. Everyone was very
much intact, a few were hurt enough to worry. Pyre and Fae were both near about
the same level, critical vitals and low energy, no shields, and both weapons
destroyed.
‘Oh, could everything have gone
better?’ the silent words scrawled across the bottom of his HUD in a message
box titled ‘GRIMME’. Joking… It felt good. It sent a shiver through his spine
feeling a fleeting, painfully enjoyable nostalgic emotion through his form,
gripping at his soul for the briefest of moments. Pyre knew he would die here, but he wouldn’t let them die as well,
though without his helmet and his energy array, he wouldn’t be able to order a
full retreat. He hoped they knew what to do.
The entire field was almost as
silent as a graveyard, the only sound was the Dark Marine’s footsteps as he
circled Pyre and Fae, hands squeezing at the knives practically sown to his
sides, but he wanted them to bleed, just as he had been bled. He was going to
enjoy every moment he had, and would dish it out to every one of Pyre’s thrice
damned Forsaken Khore personally if he had to.
Pyre’s map had gone silent, his
H.U.D. quickly customizing to display only the needed information, errors
popping up where his Shields, Ammo, Weapons and Map were, then combining into a
single error symbol in the far upper-right corner of his HUD. He shifted
himself up to his Knees, chest heaving slowly as he tried to regain some
composure and energy, just enough that he wasn’t breathing like he had been
beaten as badly as he had actually been beaten. Some modicum of Honor, the need
to die with dignity, on his terms, rushed his brain, but he was unable to act
upon it at that moment. His gaze flicked up to the Dark Marine, watching him
like a trapped wolf would watch a hunter, waiting for something, for
anything! There! He saw it, the
slightest shift of armor with every right step, the opening between the thick
armored exoskeleton, revealing wiring harnesses and highly sensitive motors.
“I’m tired… Pyre, You’ll excuse
me if I don’t play with my food longer.”
The words ripped Pyre out of his
reverie, the plan disintegrating into thin air as he gazed up towards the
Marine, his brow furrowing as he tried to figure out what he meant, only to
watch as he circled near Fae. His massive gauntlet reached out, grabbing ahold
of the armor upon the woman’s back, hoisting her up into the air and holding
her there for all to see, especially Pyre, and his Khore. No one dared look
away, but everyone was arguing for reasons to do so, fighting themselves as
they tried to come up with some excuse to remove the spectacle from their
sight. The all knew what was to happen. “Don’t
blink. You’ll miss the fun.” The words were almost more than Pyre could
stand, his form already preparing to throw itself onto his feet and lunge at
the massive metal frame of the Marine. He stilled, though, muscles tensing for
only a moment before they went limp as he watched the monstrous male grab the
blade from the front of Fae’s suit and simply rip it out. “THIS is for her.” His words
were slow, and he enjoyed watching the woman bleed through her suit, the thick
dollops of energy-infused blood, heavy with the Pulse of the Eldest Ones,
splattered onto the ground, tainting it and and sparking from contact with the
air. Pyre watched in horror as his oldest friend, the one who Woke him from the
Souls Reverie, was suddenly ripped from the Realms. The blade had been brought
up slowly, pressed against her throat, digging into the mesh and metal weave
dangerously, the thick barbs along the edge glistening with malicious intent.
The movement was slow, he watched, unable to even move, or turn away. The drag
of the blade in all its damnable infamy across Fae’s armor seemed to almost do
nothing. Pyre knew better. Pyre knew the blade bit through the armor like
paper, creating a near perfect cut through it. The next movement, that incision
only enough to threaten Fae’s lifeblood, her vitals merely spiking for a moment
as adrenaline began coursing through her form, The Dark Marine simply ripped his
arm from one side to the other. The hellish bite of the blade was more
torturous than the act itself. That violent tear through the armor was met with
the soft flesh of the form beneath.
Pyre saw it, and was horrified
at it, The blood within her form squirted once, a thin line across the blade.
Then it rushed from her form, pouring into and out of her armor, glistening and
dancing with energy as it collided with the air, threatening to spark it all
and send everything into a blaze of cataclysmic fire, but that blade worked
even on that, sundering the energy from her blood and removing it as if it
didn’t exist in the first place. “I told you.” The Dark Marine spoke as he
simply let her form drop, slamming to the ground with a gut-wrenching slap.
Pyre simply stared, his mind reeling and grasping at nothing as he tried to
consider the situation, understand what had just happened. The sounds of his
HUD going off in his mind made him acutely aware he was watching exactly what
he knew he was. The quickly fading pulse of life and the blaring sounds that
told him to react and save her were lost upon him, though. His body collapsed
forward, eyes slamming shut as he smashed his fists, wrapped in thick
gauntlets, into the ground, denting the stone with the sheer force of the
movement. His stomach began to boil, his mind reeling as he fought with the
knowledge it was real. He screamed within his mind until his vision shook. His
mental voice echoed through his mind until he knew not what to do once more. He
grasped at everything he could, trying to make sense of the moment. His right
hand slammed back into the dirt, rearing back again, joined by his other, to
smash into the rocks again. That eldritch Pulse within him grasped at that
rage, the loneliness and the pain. It caught all of it and gulped it all down
like a man dying of dehydration when presented with a water bottle. It feasted on his pain and his anger, his
sorrow and rage, especially the sudden spike of hatred aimed at himself. ‘YOURS ITS YOUR FAULT. YOU DID THIS BECAUSE
YOU ARE WEAK’ His mind aimed at
itself as it roared in pain, lashing out at anything and everything. Pyre’s
form fell to the side, curling around itself, hands gripping at his own head as
he suddenly let out a scream. The sound peeled through the air like knives upon
a chalk board.
A Sudden change enveloped Pyre,
an almost audible snap of control and loss of responsiveness. Every display
within the Khore, and every one watching from hidden ridges and rocks saw the
Male’s vitals dip, and then fade. No one within the Khore responded, every one
of them simply staring on, gaze affixed at the three bodies in the midst of a
large crater upon the battlefield. Moments later the battle was continued as it
had been before, though without an immediate response from the Khore. Every
head, human and otherwise, ducked behind rocks and into small caves, hunkering
down. A few seconds in they began to return fire, figuring they’d do their best
to live up to Pyre’s constant motto, Die on your Own Terms. Plasma bolts and
laser fire began to ring out through the valley-like area, the occasional whine
of a railgun powering up only to send a stake of titanium or some
magnetic-polymer mesh through a wall or outcropping, pinning an enemy to the
wall in a gruesome showing of determination. Occasionally the target was still
alive, thrashing is clawed hands and multi-functional limbs around, smashing
into its own allies as it tried to get off of the wall.
Within moments the flow of battle began to sway,
tilting slowly, favoring one side, as many soon did. In this case sheer numbers
and poor entrenchment forced them to fall back to a small cave whose
outcroppings made decent enough barricades and places to hunker behind while
returning fire whenever they could. Even so the Khore was beginning to take
damage, plasma rounds began to roll off of shields, melting the face of the
armor beneath and irradiating the air for a moment. Concentrated blasts of
lasers were boiling through rocks, splattering molten debris in wide arcs. Soon
enough what was merely a somber exchange became a grim, tooth-and-nail battle
of attrition.
The exchanges continued on as the Dark Marine
simply relaxed upon a rock nearby the corpses below him. He watched them both
with a look of almost orgasmic bliss, as if in the throes of passion. He merely
shook his head at the situation, hoisting himself off of the rock. His boots
crunched across the dirt and the remains of armor and weapons strewn nearby.
The Khore had originally held this position as a defensive point, a small
rapidly constructed bunker of plexisteel and Vorshian Shielding had been
pressed into the spot like a thumbtack. Yet the Marine had sundered it
personally, killing everything within save the two he wished to toy with. Now
his playtime was over, his form twisting on the spot to saunter off slowly. The
Khore’s gazes flicked one final time down to the crater, watching the massive
hulking exoskeleton climb the ridge and simply leave them to their fates.
However, they saw it. Every HUD in the vicinity
lit up, warning of an ‘Aggressive Life-form Detected.’ Every head craned down
towards the Crater as it was suddenly engulfed in pitch black energy, thick
bolts of electricity, brilliant enough to both blind and sear itself upon an
onlooker’s vision, peeled from the heart of the crater, shooting out to arc
across the scattered hunks of metal. Many of the Khyr’Tan, simply ignored it,
shrugging the cataclysmic storm within the crater off as something from The
Dark Marine. The first of the foolish creatures to fire off a round was struck
with a bolt of thick energy, it and the area behind it were vaporized for a
short distance, the energy dispersing in a short cone behind the point of
impact, though the blast was enough that the debris would force several more
out of commission. A second bolt
careened from the heart of the crater, speeding towards the Marine’s form
though missing by only a foot, blasting a thick hole in the far wall of the
valley. “I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU.” The voice that roared out from within
the crater was beyond human, the tones and words held some sort of eldritch
perversity about them, tainted with malefic intent, yet so very familiar at the
same time. The maelstrom began to withdraw into the massive dent in the ground,
almost literally inhaled by the being standing there. Familiar chunks of armor
were there, patches and insignias that marked it as Pyre’s armor were visible,
but the helmet had been remade, the draconian shapes were far more tainted than
before. The stylized horns thicker, holding a more Demonic, than angelic,
presence about them, while the eyes of the helmet blazed with black-fire. The
armor was far from whole, thick, tattered holes radiating a black energy much
like flames or liquid metal, the shadows behind him condensing, seemingly
liquidizing as they began to take the shape of wings and a tail, both caught
between demonic and draconian shapes.
For the briefest of moments the Male’s hands held
nothing, and a split second later thick black tendrils shot out of his hands,
slamming into the ground around both Pyre’s and Fae’s armaments, thin,
vine-like tendrils slipped from it to stab into each piece of the metal, as
well as all those nearby and even the bones of fallen allies and enemies. The
merest moment passed, every Khyr’Tan quickly turning to unload their full
attention onto the creature so brazenly uncovered. Each shot hit its mark,
slamming into the body and piercing through it, leaving a momentary hole which
rapidly healed over, filling with fire, as if the air was caught aflame, only
to liquidize, becoming rather metallic in sight. A long moment of stillness
from that walking monstrosity, only to have it shattered as the tendrils ripped
the metal and bones from the ground, the twin masses of metal and shattered armament
combining in mid-air until there were two vaguely handgun shaped masses of
bones and metal, energy coursing through each separate piece and lighting up
the area with radiant darkness and devouring light. The twin weapons flared and
pulsed with life and need and want, and a moment later they were brought to
bear against those whom had fired upon him. Both began to expunge gouts of
energy, releasing thick, hefty bullets, coated in vibrant flames. They seemed
to lack even the slightest of cares as far as accuracy went. Ever shot hit
something, though, slamming into rocks, only to explode in a sphere of fire
which burned for a visible moment before disappearing into smoking nothingness.
The ones that collided with one of the insectile creatures elicited a screaming
rebuttal, its body engulfed in flames only to have its entirety ripped into
itself, leaving only a thick, gooey sphere floating in the air, a moment later
gravity remembered it was supposed to affect it, and a thick splat had that orb
bounce across the floor, leaving a trail of some gods forsaken ooze.
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