Barbarous was a dying world if not an outright dead one already when the gestation pod carrying the Primarch of the 14th legion comes crashing down onto the surface after being spat from the warp.
The landing was not a gentle one for the young Primarch, crashing into the highest peaks of Barbarous. Still very fast asleep within the pod, the superhuman child's pod was designed to take an absolute battering and the toxic soup that was the upper atmosphere of Barbarous seeps into the pod, causing the young child to violently jerk awake and smash its way out of the pod.
Despite being an infant, the child was still a full blooded Primarch and the effort needed to break the pod was nothing to it, the glass cracks and shatters and the child tumbles out of the pod and onto disgusting and decayed soil, soaked in blood of a recent battle fought by the arch tyrant of the world.
Despite the child's superhuman body, its mind was still an infant and it did all it could do, and that was scream out for its mother or father.
For hours and even days the child screamed, getting covered in toxic dust and sludge in the process. The child screams died down as it felt itself scooped up in the arms of an armoured, tainted warlord, and would later be revealed as the tyrant of Barbarous himself.
"What do we have here..." he motions with his hand, cleaning the dirty babe of dirt and grime and caked on blood and recoils slightly as he notices that the child is a girl? But this was no ordinary girl, not at all, no normal child could breathe here never mind crying out for a day.
"I should leave you for the wolves, or the Villigers, a servant to be added to the ranks... but no, you aren't a normal child, I will take you in... and your name will be Mortaria, the daughter of death." says the tyrant, looking down into the child's bright green eyes who stairs back up at him with an eerie curiosity.
And starting his accent up towards his fortress, the fate of Mortaria is sealed and so begins the rise of the reaper of Barbarous...
Over the next few months, the young woman grew up rapidly, well past what it should be possible for a child. At 5 months old she dwarfed most of the serfs and other war lords at 6ft 8 and a semi muscled build.
Mortaria's thirst for knowledge knew no bounds as she grew and grew, from warfare to engineering, science and philosophy to farming and of course, poisons and toxins.
And in the 2nd year of her upbringing under the tyrant, Mortaria stood a full 9ft tall and had an extremely pale complexion about her but one of her gifts was her ever present beauty. Despite her corpse pale complexion, she bore a fit and shapely body, nothing to large but not too small, but her hair? It was beautiful main of grey hair that could easily reach her knees.
However, Mortaria felt... alone, so very alone and cold within the tyrant's fortress, despite the terrified serfs who wouldn't dare as so much as look up at her or even acknowledge her words with the exception of one man she only knew as Tarion...
Her curiosity towards where these smaller people came from grew, like a roaring plaque through her mind and one day, as she studied arcane arts Mortaria's curiosity gets the better of her.
Reaching for her scythe and slinging it across her back and pulling her hood up, she makes her way out of her chamber room, having to bend down quite considerably to do so and despite her best efforts of her biology, she still could not ignore the foul stench that permanently infested the higher peaks of Barbarous.
Standing back upright Mortaria walks through the green fog smeared halls that are only lit by candles and even the eyes of a Primarch like hers she has trouble seeing correctly and as she walks, she bumps right into Tarion, one of the only serfs who could muster the courage to speak to her.
He was carrying a tray of small, likely tainted cakes and some form of brewed drink from the rare Barbaran roses, the treats and tea scattering across the floor and partly spilling over her boots and the man freaks out, desperately trying to stammer an apology through the weak respirator he wore.
"My lady! I am sorry! Please let me mend this mistake" he moves to use his tongue to clean but Mortaria stops him and even kneels to better meet his gaze and pulling her hood back and looking into his eyes.
"Stop this folly, you are a man, not a beaten slave, you mistake me for another within these walls." despite all that the tyrant has done for her she can't help but feel a bitter resentment building within her, for his treatment of the castle serfs and how he would bring battered and broken men women and children to the fortress to torture and resurrect to repeat the process.
Tarion however, is still deathly afraid despite being the most confident of the serfs and nods weakly, facing the floor to avert his gaze from her eyes, but she grasps his chin, her hand dwarfing his malnourished head and encased in leather gloves.
Tarion coughs as he fights his fear to look at her and eventually looks back into her emerald eyes and something inside of Tarion seems to click into place for him and Mortaria can tell this even not having as close of connection with these "little ones" as she knew them as.
"Understood my lady..." is all he can muster to say as his breathe his harsh but... something sounds of about it to the Primarch, there's a certain ring to it and she let's go of his chin and stands back upright and continue her walk.
Tarion starts to clean the mess but looks back at Mortaria and catches her glancing at him back as she turns the corner...
Mortaria enters the throne room where her 'father' sits upon a throne of twisted and decayed flesh and wood, grown from a tree of his own making and the dark armoured tyrant of Barbarous greets his adopted daughter.
"Mortaria... I see you are well, and carry with you your curiosity, so give voice to your thoughts and I will answer." his tone carries with it the mark of plague and condescension that it always does and Mortaria does not kneel but instead asks "where do the little ones come from, I see them come and go, but never from where they come, why and where do they come from."
This has her father staring her down almost immediately and he growls his reply, his power radiating off him "they are slaves, taken to serve their betters, BELOW our concern and notice beyond our will we set them to, I will not waste what little breath there is on this peak on lower lifeforms Mortaria..."
Mortaria spits back, almost venomously and with anger, her resentment for hr and their treatment coming out in bursts but still coming forth. "That is not an answer father! If they are so beneath us, then sharing the information as to where and what they are should be of no consequence to part with!"
The room goes dark, green smoke snuffing the dim candles out as a psychic pulse of darkness radiates out and consumes Mortaria, blinding her and rendering her unable to see her 'father'
"Oh, Mortaria you do disappoint me... how you have betrayed me, how dare you raise your voice to the one who raised you, to the one who found you in the muck and the mud...? And now you will pay, you will not breathe clean air within these walls again... let us see if you can escape a pit of your own making dearest daughter." and with an audible finger snap light returns but her father is gone...
The castle becomes flooded with a deep green fog and Mortaria turns and looks around her, a no small amount of fear filling her as she sees the green fog get thicker than it ever has been and then? Her very breath is stolen from her, struggling to breathe, coughing fits kick in as this gas was even more toxic than even, she could handle...
Hours of frantic running through the castle, unable to see anything from beyond a meter in front of her, her skin becoming worn and leathery and even more pale than it already is as the oxygen needed to supply her immense body was sorely lacking.
Her eyes burned, her lounges ran dry and wet with mucus that she tried to expel from herself to no avail...
Eventually stumbling into her room, she sees it has been ransacked and ruined even through the fog and the near blindness she is suffering turning her emerald eyes a dark, tainted green.
But one thing stands out as she stumbles forth, a letter, just a letter that has even been wax sealed. Tearing the envelope from it she reads the scrawled Barbarosi text.
'At dawn look to the east, down the mountain side, you will see a candle lit in the window of an old church, if you ever escape your prison... make your way to that light and do not stop until you reach it.
Your serf
Tarion.'
Mortaria lets the letter fall from her fingers and thinks, how long has she been out? Days? Weeks? Months? There's no way that this could have been done with how quickly her 'father' and tyrant had flooded the castle.
And for the next several months she searches for any signs of the light the letter spoke off, her body decaying to the point of being nigh immobile and then...
She sees it, a single orange flame, burning in the darkness of the lower valleys from her window but a black stone wall blocks her exit, she can't escape her confines and is becoming all the more desperate to escape and survive and gods willing, lead the 'little ones' as she knew them to victory against her father, no tyrant himself one day.
Several long and agonizing months were spent within the abandoned fortress and Mortaria was running out of time, her body was near moments from giving out and that's when she sees it again, the candle fire through the fog and desperate she charges for it, her body giving out as she does so.
She smashes through the fortress window and out onto the outer wall and she gasps loudly, oh so loudly and gulps in the much cleaner air, her body already repairing some of the damage but even now Mortaria can feel her body will never be the same again...
She passes out from exhaustion, she falls from the tops of the black walls and onto the poisoned soil below and starts to tumble down the mountain, her Primarch durability being the only thing keeping her from deaths embrace.
When she comes too, she is in a ditch covered in muck and her own blood, her flesh having torn in several places on the way down the mountainside.
She groans loudly as she gets to herself on her feet, wiping her outfit and skin mostly clean as she keeps her eye locked onto the church with the lit candle. She fells a sense of hope fill her and also a deep curiosity, she'll get a chance to see where these 'little ones' lived and where they came from.
One-foot moves in front of the other and before long Mortaria is running across the tainted land but... the land here is much cleaner, there isn't as much taint here, the soil is much cleaner, the plants able to grow to their full hight.
She stops at the edge of the town and kneels down to pick up a stalk of grain and looks at it as she is right near the church, now and now that she is here, she can see an entire town, instead of another fortress of the tyrant.
Her eyes can across the town, most of the windows are shut but some are open and candles can be seen. The town is ramshackle, barely stable buildings that a strong breeze could knock over. "Is this where they come from? Where the little ones come from?"
As she silently asks herself that question, she hears a gasp from someone and Mortaria reaches for her scythe on her back and she turns to the figure and its... "Tarion" says the Primarch as he is holding a candle in a holder.
"It warms my cold heart that you still live Mortaria..." he says clearly, not muffled by a respirator and the Primarch stands up to her full hight and lets the stalk of grain fall to the ground.
"What is this place" she points at the town with the scythe, visibly wincing slightly as her wounds start to heal now her body isn't dying from a constant barrage of toxins.
Tarion answers the huge woman with "the town of Bar'arous... the warlords and tyrants come down from the mountain side to take us for their ends... you've seen some of that yourself." his tone is one of a man talking to an old friend as Mortaria lowers her scythe and responds.
"a town of farmers and the weak... I can make your people anew, introduce me to them." she says with a determination Tarion misses from his time as a serf under the arch tyrant and looks towards the town and in an attempt at humour says "lady's 1st"
The people of the town already inside their homes slam their shutters closed upon seeing the huge, corpse pale woman walk into the town square, the streets once cobbled but now overtaken by vegetation and decayed, dead trees.
Those who were out and about and working stop and stare at her and a few reach for their weapons, but calling that would be an insult to the term 'weapons' in the 1st place, in reality they were farming tools with a keener edge to them than most and Mortaria knows deep down if she wanted, this town would be a ruin by her hands in minuets if that.
Tarion speaks an answer to the question Mortaria had before it has even left her lips "they are afraid, they think you are a new tyrant come to enslave them or worse, kill them to raise anew..." Mortaria knew what necromancy was and grew to despise it but even she knows that isn't a fate to be wished upon anyone.
She lowers her hood and the people gasp, surprised that Mortaria is a woman but still fear what she will do as unbeknownst to Mortaria, she looks truly horrifying to these locals and villagers and a group of dishevelled elders come night crawling out from the longhouse that serves as their town hall under escort by some of the braver of the men and women of the village.
Mortaria speaks to them 1st, her voice a deep but still very much feminine "I mean you no harm... I escaped the arch tyrant's own fortress..." she tries to put them at ease with her words but is met with a skeptism that makes feel almost insulted.
The arch elder speaks, his voice ruined by decades of being alive on this world "what is it... you intend with us... Mortaria..." the villagers knew dam well who she was, the arch tyrant often boasted about her to those under him and it quickly becomes apparent to Mortaria that she will need to do a lot more to put these people at ease.
But she feels hope, she can smell real food, not the tainted foods of the castle, genuine laughter on the far edge of town, and the occasional smile and she takes her scythe from her back, deeply scaring the people around her as she answers "to liberate you from the tyrants... I see most of you are in the midst of a harvest, where is your field, I will harvest it myself and be back before sundown."
She proclaims that to even more gasps and sceptical looks, even from Tarion but the elder that spoke raises a weak and spindly hand and silences the murmurs as he cranes his neck to look up at the Primarch, even if she is only 8ft tall.
"You will do this... and as for you Tarion... you will house this visitor... she is your burden." Mortaria looks down at the man at her side, his own head barely reaching her chest as he does the same and Tarion responds to the elder "I will do this." and with that? The elders depart and the towns people went about their day and Mortaria set about to the wheat field.
And so began the rise of the 'Rose of Barbarous' the nickname was granted to her only a few years into her rise to lead the people of Barbarous to freedom due to a rose she wore over her right breast and unbeknownst to the people she leads, it was a gift from Tarion, the younger man having fallen in love with the Primarch and saviour of Barbarous.
Over the many years and through the tyrant wars, Mortaria's body restored itself to its original state, now being free of the gas that almost killed her, her hatred of pyskers had grown deeper and deeper and her desire to see barbarous free of the tyrants and necromancers.
However, as she matured with age, certain desires started to take root within her, feelings of belonging, feelings of genuine joy and... romantic desires, and Tarion? Was one of very few men who could come close to earning that affection.
And one day, she sits in her room inside of his house, since considerably expanded to act as a command post for her crusade at her desk going over battle plans and supply routes that she and her death guard had to protect and execute and her mind still keeps drifting back to these human feelings she has, having since learned that is what the little ones were called.
She breaks the writing feather in her immense grip out of frustration and is about to slam her fist down onto her desk when a much older and much stronger and braver Tarion comes into the room, being one of very few men who could do this and remain intact.
"What troubles you Mortaria..?" he asks her with genuine concern and even places a hand on her shoulder after taking his rebreather off. The Primarch turns her head to him, her face having healed considerably since her imprisonment and she notes how Tarion seems to look at her as if not a commander and not a precious object but instead a form of friend or lover, if her observations of the humans around her was anything to go by.
"My feelings, I feel things and I cannot put any words to them... it angers me, and to make it worse, it is towards you, the one who I have known for years at this point, who gave me this rose." she gestures to her right breast of her chainmail clad shirt, where a white rose sits pinned to it.
Tarion relaxes his grasp and moves ever so slowly to cut the right-hand side of the Primarchs face, his calloused hand cupping the oddly silky smooth pallid grey skin. "What you feel is natural, you feel affection, and going by what thou have said? Its towards me and I have to be forthright with you, I have loved you ever since we met, your beauty is unmatched but your spirit is what I adore... your kind but ruthless but not needlessly, your intelligent but not arrogant..."
Mortaria looks him in the eyes, those deep blue eyes and reaches up with both her hands and gently caresses the bearded face. "Are these words you speak the truth?" is all she could think to reply, despite her transhuman mind being able to outthink people several times over.
Tarion doesn't recoil but instead warmly smile "yes this is the truth, I won't school you like a child on matters of romantic feelings Mortaria, but if you feel the same of me, I would be honoured but the decision must be yours to make."
Mortaria doesn't speak her answer but makes it pyscical and drags him into a kiss, running off purely what she has observed other humans doing but has to retrain her strength as to not tear Tarion's head free of his shoulders.
She picks up the fairly largely built man and Tarion pulls off the frantic kiss "I'll take this as your decision being made" is all he could say before Mortaria near on bursts through the door to her bed and deposits her human lover upon it and starts to disrobe
"Silence... show me what it is to be romantic as you put it," she has her gear off in a near on flash and catches the mostly naked sight of herself in the mirror and stops to admire how she looks, very seldom getting the chance to do so due to how rare glass is on Barbarous.
She turns back to Tarion as he himself is disrobing and asks "am I beautiful in your eyes despite my appearance? Am I a woman in your eyes?" Mortaria had always doubted how she looked, never quite liking how much of a corpse she appeared to those around her.
And Tarion's answer seals both his and her fate and that of the astartes legion that hails from her gene seed not a star system away at this point.
"You are the woman I fell in love with Mortaria, nothing else comes close to you..." Mortaria doesn't need to hear anymore words and crawls atop the human man and the two begin their night of passion...
The next day Mortaria awoke violently vomiting into a bucket that sat beside her bed, making the utterly exhausted Tarion lurch upright to ask what was wrong. "Mortaria! What is wrong?" Mortaria clutches at her stomach area "something has taken root within me... I do not know what it is... call for the doctors..."
What was revealed to be the cause of her sickness and thanks to the doctors being somewhat accomplished sorcerers was that she way with child, multiple children much to her shock and that of Tarion as it would seem that she was yet to discover that pregnancy for her was a rapid process, almost too rapid.
And seven months later? She gave birth to two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, but with the boy being born 1st she had decided to name her 1st child 'Mortarion' using both her name and that of her now husband and naming her 2nd child and daughter 'Morticia' but had changed her mind to using Albedo, due to her extremely pale complexation.
With most of the world behind her, with a loving husband and two children behind her and with many of the tyrants being slain and her 'father' being the last one between her and her people being free? Mortaria was ready to lead her people up to the highest peak of Barbarous to begin the siege of the black citadel.
But disaster had struck... Tarion had fallen sick with a sickness that could only have come from the arch tyrant himself with its potency and Mortaria? She was utterly enraged and grieving for him and she was determined to slay the tyrant, to force the cure from his lips.
And leaving her now one year old children in the care of her Death Guard she set out and up the mountainside to scout the citadel before launching the siege.
She sits on a short rock, looking through a telescope up at the fortress of the tyrant she feels her rage boil in her veins as she looks through it and can see the ever-mocking gaze of the arch tyrant upon her.
And that is when one of her Death Guard, Kemmler comes riding up to her on horseback with news "my lady! There is a stranger in the great hall expecting to see you at once" the man tries desperately tries to keep his mount upright this high up in the fog and Mortaria is not happy with this news.
"Go back to the city, I will return shortly" is the Ptimarchs answer and the rider takes off back down the mountainside and Mortaria gets back up and heads down the mountain not a few minutes later, as her Death Guard prepare to launch the siege effort.
She barges her way into the great hall and sees amongst a group of her pallid skinned brothers and sisters and Tarion and her own children she sees a massive bronze skinned titan of a man dressed in only robes and the figure addresses her as if an old friend despite never meeting her once before.
"You must be Mortaria, the 'Rose of Barbarous' the daughter of death itself." says the man with a calm voice of an accent she has not heard before in her life but can find a strange familiarity to it.
However, she barks her reply at the man "whatever business you seek with me will have to wait, the final battle to liberate this world is at hand and I will not squander it on a stranger." she folds her arms across her chest.
The stranger responds "you will die if you or anyone tries to scale that peak to the citadel, you could not do it, I am here to advise you and bear witness to this once in a life time victory." that response has Mortaria raging and she bellows "all of you except my family and this stranger get out, NOW." she did not have to raise her voice very high to make her presence felt and the elders and commanders flee the great hall.
Once they are gone Mortaria sends a table flying across the room with but a flick of her wrist and bellows "MY people are enslaved by this tyrant STRANGER! My husband dies at this very moment by a plague crafted by that same tyrants' hands! The cost be dammed, I will tear down every single stone of the citadel and do so by night fall!"
Her voice bellows through the great hall, blowing out candles in the process and only a few lamps are lit now and Tarion has never seen his wife this angry before, even fighting the tyrants and has to set Albedo down on her feet to cough into a cloth and it becomes green and red from tainted blood and Mortaria rushes over to him with a water skin at the ready as the stranger stands up.
"I will watch over him, you are not ready to face this tyrant, alone or with an army at your back." this again has Mortaria seething with rage as the fear of losing Tarion takes her "you expect me to stand by and allow my husband to die in agony!? How DARE you! I will not be talked into becoming an oath breaker at the behest of a stranger..." tears are threatening to spill down from her eyes as she holds Tarion upright at the great halls table.
"If there is no getting you to see reason then so be it, your army cannot follow you, they will die, if you pursue this path, you must do it alone, if you succeed, I will apologise and leave you be but if you return and fail, you will swear yourself to my blade." his tone is dripping with the disappointment of a father and this makes Mortaria fall deeper into her rage as she sets Tarion down onto a bed in the far north of the chamber and calls for doctors.
"I swear fealty to no one, to no tyrant, I do this for the man who has made me who I am, stay away from my children, I will not have them tainted by your words stranger, if I win this day, you will leave and NEVR return or I will have your head." she threatens and leaves the great hall, getting her heavier gear ready as she departs the town alone, her commanders following her to ask.
"What are you doing my lady! What has overcome you" asks one of them and Mortaria responds with "you cannot follow... the gas would kill you all, I must do this alone, if that stranger does not leave? Kill him, hang his corpse from the bell tower." her tone is angry but laden with fear for Tarion's life as she takes off sprinting up the mountain path.
She makes little effort of the start of the journey but as she reaches the very tops of where the older, now abandoned castle she grew up in in the 1st years of her life, her respirator rapidly spews out breathes as Mortaria is falling into a panic, every step closer making her panic deeper, her breathes pump out from her lips faster but her eyes scowl with rage.
She reaches the base of the citadel walls and puts her climbing spikes on, even as the gas eats at her armour and respirator, her lunges burn and her eyes water as the gas of the higher peaks of Barbarous are proving to much for even her to deal with.
Each time she plants her spikes into the wall's cracks and crevices, her body screams at her to stop, to turn back and don't do this! But she can't, Tarion's life and the people of Barbarous's freedom is more important than even her life at this point and to give her children a chance at a better tomorrow.
Her right foot slips, nearly sending her tumbling down the several dozen meter tall walls, but her iron cast will carry's her onwards, each further spike increasing her pain tenfold which only carries her forwards.
"For you Tarion... Barbarous will be free... I just hope you live long enough to see me return victorious..." she says aloud to herself as she finally pulls herself over the top of the buttress of the citadel's walls and stumbles onto the floor.
She feels a fire burning across every inch of her skin, her eyes are blurring and her lunges feel utterly wrecked and ruined, her respirator failing, even tossing it away it is unusable...
Then she sees HIM...
The arch tyrant is waiting for the Primarch, sword and power in hand, the tainted, disgusting courtyard teeming with maggots and tainted creatures, even those serfs dragged up to these hight shamble about, only carried upright by dark sorcery...
"The prodigal daughter returns to me at long last... shall this be our last dance Mortaira? Your repayment for all I have done for you?" he asks mocking her as she jumps from the walls and into the courtyard.
Her vision becomes blurred, her limbs shaking and shivering as she is barely able to stand as she draws her scythe, her eyes bleeding from the gas but still she makes ready to fight, even as her flesh melts from her very body, her armour decaying to a rusted bright orange soup.
The arch tyrant starts to walk forwards and Mortaria bravely, if not suicidally charges her adoptive father down but her charge falters and she falls onto one knee, now unable to see clearly even meters in front of her and she violently vomits onto the cobbled and tainted soil floor...
"no... I must stand... for the people... for Tarion!" she roars as she summons the last of her strength and lunges for the arch tyrant, her scythe held high and the tyrant smirks as he catches her blade and sends it downwards into the ground and smashes his fist across her face, sending several teeth flying away and blood and she stumbles back, barely remaining standing and only doing so thanks to her scythe.
"I will... not be an oath breaker..." she readies her strike again as her very body is melting from the gas but it is all for not as whilst she does strike and wound the tyrant, her scythe falls from her nigh bone exposed fingers...
"no... I can't fall... Tarion..." she whimpers out in but a whisper as the arch tyrant kneels to the dying Primarch "such a valiant effort Mortaria, it is a shame you never realised what it is killing Tarion, after all... I was the one who taught you the very magic that is killing him, and judging by that look of realisation... ahhhh you haven't realised, have you?"
"What... do you mean...?" she whimpers out, clutching at the rose on her right breast, her energy seconds away from depleting as the tyrant leans into her right ear to speak "that isn't a plague... that is a necromantic curse... every moment you spend fighting against me, it brings him closer to deaths door, so, what will it be, your life to safe that of those humans? Or will you claim his soul to grant yourself one last chance to slay me Mortaria, daughter of death."
Mortaria feels her hearts sink in her chest, tears streaming hot down her face as she feels not the pain of the gas now but white-hot rage for the tyrant, she even now, she knows Tarion would gladly sacrifice himself for the chance of his people's freedom but can she bring herself to end his life for just once shot as killing the tyrant?
As she looks over the tyrant's shoulder, she can see what she thinks is the ghost of Tarion looking down at her from the top of the walls, the sun behind him as he silently nods and fades to rose petals, the very same colour of the one he gave her...
She realises that he is dead and a corpse is awaiting her once she returns and she is engulfed in green fire, her body very slowly regenerating her body as she lunges at the tyrant giving one last defiant yell as the ensuing battle can be seen from miles around as flashes of green in the smoke.
However, even with her taking Tarion's life to defeat the arch tyrant the battle is hopeless for Mortaria the ground becoming soaked with blood, puss, and tears...
Mortaria slams into a wall, losing her scythe and the last of her strength leaves her and she lies there weeping and defeated, having failed her people and Tarion and resigns herself to her fate, at the very least she will have died fulfilling her own oath...
And then... HE arrived...
A golden figure emerges from the smog and a flaming sword rends its way through the tyrant's chest, tainted blood bursting forth from the wound before being burned by the divine fire before fading to ash.
Mortaria's vision blurs and she looks up to see the outline of the golden form of the emperor himself, in his full battle plate and raw power on display holding the flaming sword. She can see his bright golden eyes looking down at her as he speaks, her tears that have been spilt start to form patches of rose plants and the sky clears and the smog starts to clear and she can breathe normally once more but is still damaged beyond what even a Primarch should be able to endure.
Mortaia should feel elated... should feel joy that her people's freedom has been finally earned but it's a hollow victory for her, she lost her husband, used his soul to empower herself and STILL couldn't defeat the tyrant... she had been made an oath breaker and a murderer in her own eyes.
And when a hand is extended towards her? And he speaks "take my hand, and rise my daughter, as Primarch of the 14th legion." she swats it away and her right fist smashes into his face, breaking her hand, blood pouring from her hand after the impact.
"You stole... my victory... decades spent... thousands of dead... my husband dead... and you made me an oath breaker... go back to whatever pit from whence you came... and let me die in peace..." she goes to stumble away and the emperor brings up a hand to clutch at his face where he was struck as he also watches his wounded, on deaths door daughter force the gates open.
Mortaria can hear the thundering roar of cheers and her people surging up the mountain side but at the very front, her most trusted lieutenant carry's the now corpse of Tarion up the mountain and reaches her and lays him down on the ground in front of her and Mortaria falls to her knees as her strength leaves her and she clutches her dead husband to her as she weeps, each drop causing roses to form around her.
As the sounds of celebration die down as her people see what has happened and as her children waddle towards her, she hears the emperor's voice in her ears as she hopes to die here and now to redeem herself.
"I will not burry a child"
To be continued...