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From The Crux
Chapter 9: Grace, Fate, and Fear
It is Slaughter who led the rancorous assault against her home world resulting in the gruesome deaths of the entirety of her people. I know she spent too many lifetimes quelling all of the grief and terror of that fateful day. Her only comfort was knowing that his legions were ultimately, completely destroyed.
Before his armor was installed, Slaughter was a far less fierce humanoid. An elegant angelic figure outlined by starlight with a hollow form sharing few recognizable details. His anatomy, like those of his brethren, was simple, shaped in the casings of mortal men but without its feeble organic nature. It was composed entirely of the energies that propel the Firmamentia’s continual evolution and faceted from the very remnants of its genesis. They were organized and tightly woven within their cast as to provide power unmatched by their foes.
The Vindicators, as a collective, were fashioned to be the cosmos’ ultimate defenders, with the utmost in confidence to accomplish such by their supreme crafters. Then to ensure their victories would exceed contestation, they were given armaments forged in the same bowels of space where the galaxies were conceived. Each Vindicator was given equal protection but one. A leader was determined, blessed by the Elders, chosen because of his brilliance, agility, and cunning.
The general was given an extraordinary gift, a suit of armor and weapons designed by Reality modeled after and from the very essences of the spirit and elements of war. Greaves and bracers riddled with razor sharp horn-like spikes dipped and anointed in the blood of fallen Elders. Faulds, breastplate, and spaulders forged in the fires of the bleakest star with impenetrable chain mail, fastened together as close as air, concealed within. A belt fashioned from the same steel that forms around the molten core of the harshest planet. It was finished with a horned helmet retrieved from an existence far separated from our universe once belonging to an ancient tribe of warriors whose mere appearance eventually birthed the fiercest concepts of feral life in the Fleshworld.
The weapons bestowed upon this marvelously ominous commander were a large, cumbersome flail and immense baneful mace. The flail’s ball and chain were capable of reaching any foe, as it possessed the power to extend in range at the mere thought of its master. Its crushing blow savagely toppled entire front lines of opponents with a single stroke, reduced bone, stone, and steel to shrapnel and ash in a brutal instant. The mace’s long onyx crystalline handled derived from compacted minerals that articulate the most stringently composed comet. Its spiked ball as large as a giant’s torso tore flesh like wet paper and shred muscle as if brittle autumn leaves.
Defining intimidation and despair, the general first called himself Requiem, as in death’s hymn, but as his blood-soaked, corpse laden, hate saturated campaigns lingered he took the name Slaughter. It is unknown if the armor first corrupted him or the reverse. Despite his already direful appearance, his corruption manifested itself into a far more apocalyptic emergence. The membranes of his once graceful wings decayed leaving only a skeletal framework that he dipped in vats of unexplained, indestructible metals and stained them with the blood of the innocents he had viciously trampled upon.
His entire form became darkness as he grew in impressive size and stature, towering high above even the mightiest foe. Eyes as red as hellfire penetrated the smoke and flame of the ruination he smote upon his hapless, hopeless prey. He became evil personified, in all of its definition, barbarity, and remorselessness.
The legend tells that he was destroyed and dissolved in the mysterious incinerators of the Controller. Apparently that is where fact becomes legend, and legend persists when truth becomes an annoying distraction. All myth and legend have foundations in sincerity, but when we need our heroes and fantasies to prolong, integrity is so readily sacrificed to protect our selfish and pretentious denials. Where lies are told in the moment, fables are designed with longevity to defy time and memory.
But why would he keep the armor?
What purpose could that serve other than the concentrated darkness and evil that artifact affords?
It would be unimaginably foolish to take the chance that it could be used for its hellish purposes again.
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