Fire

Memories flee from me. My mind is broken, shattered beyond repair. Fragments form, shining with horror and sorrow. Black sand. Burning skies. Thunderous booms and heat washing over me. I feel nothing below me. I am on my back. Darkness. I am being dragged. The earth ruptures before my dulling eyes. I hear voices. Blackness. I’m not on sand, I feel nothing. I see darkness, save for a hazy light above me. I hear a clang to my left. A cough to my right. Darkness. ‘Vulkan…’ I rasp my throat dry. ‘He’s dead, brother,’ a voice in the darkness calls out. ‘He died on the sands, consumed by the fires of war and betrayal. I saw it happen.’ the voice was melancholic, distant and numb.
Was he a son of Vulkan? ‘Whe… where am I?’ I ask, my mind throbbing. Nothing. Darkness. I awake in light. It bathed me in its warmth. I look around, finding my armor hung upon a wall, the Mantles of Ash looked ruined, broken. It hurt my hearts. My helm was dented and missing the draping’s of Damen-Salamanders hide. My identity of a Pryrocast was stained, broken, like my memories. I stared at it. I was in a white room, it stank of antiseptic. Apothecarion. I am safe. Beyond the horrors, the sands of the Massacre. Yes, I remember it, but nothing else before that. My life, surely long and arduous, didn’t register. I was stuck in a nightmare that never ended; it spewed and bubbled, throwing molten pain into my mind and heart, like the volcanoes on Nocturne. I remember running, my armor shining in the flames as my flame projector whooshed and cried. Before me were Death Guard dregs, their sickening color turned black, then to ash. They ran. I laughed. I was falling from the Vows that Vulkan had taught us. I fear that I did not care.
I wanted to kill the traitor. I wanted to feel the heat wash over them, seeping into their armor, down their blasphemous throats. They burned inside out. One tried to confront me with a sword. He swung poorly; I noticed his right side was gone, blown out by another legionary. Information played out before me on my visor: threat levels, incendiary levels, and a myriad of other things. I ignored it. I blinked it away. I focused the nozzles of my flame projector, feeling the power swell in my breast, I let loose. My arms were raised before me, Nocturnean hate made manifest spewed - howling like a drake in the bulbous caverns beneath one of the volcanoes. The flame projector began to alternate; the stream of fire became more narrow and sharp. I wielded it like a sword. I raised my fire wreathed hands and slashed down. Armor melted, glowing bright orange, flesh sizzled and bubbled, bone charred and cracked into ash. He split from groin to shoulder.
He was split in two; both pieces of his body glowed bright, smoking a sickening foulness. I strode forward and unleash another spurt of liquid fire. He melted before me. He became one with the earth. I raised my helm as I heard my father bellow for his sons to advance. I ran, my armored boots digging furrows in the soft ground. Target reticules popped up - Death Guard climbing out of a trench there, another crawled on the ground with his legs torn away, three more badly maimed held firm in a small redoubt. I killed them, not quickly.
I smashed my helm into the Death Guard that climbed out of the trench, he staggered back, and I pressed my attack and thunder two, three, four blows into his face and midriff. I managed to rip off his helm. The sickly bastard that wore the armor looked at me with cold hate, I felt it. Like a disease spreading through me. I shoved the nozzle of my flame projector on my left vambrace into his mouth and ignited his existence.
That image will be with me until the fires take me. His eyes burned like mine as the fire burned through his skull, I saw it travel down as it ate through his esophagus, into his belly. He was ash before he hit the ground. I moved to the legless warrior, with my incendiaries low, I smashed my boot onto his skull, over and over again. The ones in the redoubt saw me and raised their weapons and fired. The ground before exploded as the mass-reactives ignited. I pulled the pin out of the grenade I held, it was a fire bomb.
I threw it and heard it clunk against one of them. Then a whoosh of heated air blew out. I saw flames above the redoubt. I stood up and watched as the fires consumed them. They struggled of course; however, they still tried to fight as their armor melted into their flesh. Tough bastards. Strong against toxins, weak against the gift of Nocturne.