Taint of Chaos

The air was thick with the smell of death. Everywhere there were bodies, and the ground and shattered stonework were so drenched in the blood of mankind that it seemed the dying fortress itself weeped blood for those brave deffenders, now slain. The stronghold had literally been buried under its own broken towers and breached battlements. Only the skeletal remains of a few scorched structures left as a testament to the once impenetrable fortress, which had stood so stubbornly against many antagonists.

But now that this place had fallen, who would remember it? Who would remember those who fought to defend this place before it fell to death? Who would speak the name of this once jewel in the Emperor's crown, yet now doomed to become a world of corpses. Death had come here, as inescapable and frightening as it had always appeared to mortals. Relentlessly death had attacked the Fortress walls, not even the deafening guns and the earth shattering ballistics of the Imperial Guard strong enough to hold death back. Truly it could not be stopped, for when it was felled it would rise again. And a powerful enemy it had proved itself to be, breaking down the battlements that protected those inside so that it could gorge itself on the sweet deliciousness of those inside.

Even the Space Marines had fought here to hold back death, to stop its timeless advance and endless persuite of mortal lives. They may have even succeeded for a time in holding the second breach, stopping death from sending its immortal warriors to harvest the endless souls it required as tribute. But any chance of victory was but in a fleeting wisp of hope that was brushed aside as the dark slaves of death entered the breach at last and killed even the mighty Space Marines in their pride of place.

It was then all hope was lost, and all knew none would be left to remember this day...save one.

One lone soldier had survived the attack. He had not defeated death, or hidden from it, or cheated it. He had watched his battle brothers die. He alone bore witness to their unholy and gruesome execution, as one by one they were flayed alive and offered as human sacrifices to the hungering Deity that was death. The slaughter that he had witnessed granted him the wisdom to know that his life had been spared only because death had not taken him. It was on the whim of that thing that held constant vigilance over the lives of mortals until its time had come to strike, and this lone soldier's time had not yet come. He did not know why he had been spared, and in the recesses of his now black heart he wept that he had been granted life.

How could anybody live after they had seen such death? This soldier had nothing left to live for but death. His battle brothers were all dead, his superiors dead. Everybody was dead, lying in a sea of blackened and defaced corpses around him. The stench of them made him want to vomit, the very sight of them horrifying because he had known them in life. He wondered within himself if he were the only living creature left in this cursed place, where death had found a home?

Despair strangled his courage, and his will to act. Yet suddenly an emotion stirred within him, and burst into flame within his heart in an unexpected burst of rage. He felt his body tensing, and the anger coursing through him in a rush of hot blood. He cried out in his sudden frenzy, and rose to his feet though his armour weighed him down. He kicked at the bodies around him, and threw stones and smashed skulls and stomped the dead into dust. His grief now forgotten and converted to rage, he now knew his purpose in living. He wanted revenge for what had happened here today. He wanted death to pay for what it had taken from him, his brothers, his way of life, his honour.

But he knew his adversary was strong, and unstoppable. He would make it regret the day its clammy presence had come to this world and attacked this fortress. But this feet could never be accomplished by any mortal man. In his fury a realization dawned on him, that the Imperium was deffenceless to stop the ageless monster that is death. The Imperium was built on the foundation of the hopes and courage of mortal men. All of these things death could destroy, hope, courage, and life.

There was but one thing that could ever bring about the banishment of death.
Change.

'Welcome, my follower,' spoke a voice in the soldier's ear. 'I am the Lord of Change, and I can give you what you want!'


The End

he he nasty little story indeed. i like it :D