#ohrmuzd

The Legion is dying. He is dying, too; Ohrmuzd can feel the bastard seed within himself, the broken matrix unspooling the threads that pull him together. He has one year, perhaps two, before he is unmade into a horrific abomination of flesh and bone. Briefly, he will experience the worst pain known to man, and then he will die a monster, forgotten by his Empire.

That is his fate. A fate he will defy.

Like his brother, Ohrmuzd is gifted in the way of psychic might, and so tries to force the fault in his genetic code to light with his biomancy. It slips him, always just out of reach, until he finally realizes that magic is no help, no ally in this venture. Undoubtedly, the error is of a sorcerous nature, but a far greater power holds the key to that secret, and Ohrmuzd knows better than to bargain with the sharks of the Great Ocean.

Instead, he turns to science.

As time ticks his final countdown, Ohrmuzd seeks out the alchemists, masters of flowing humors. In the dark, they labor endlessly against the gene-curse, until Cytherean light at last blesses their efforts with success: as the celestials of Terran skies align, a serum is distilled from living blood, mercurial alloy and the leaf of a rare lotus and caught in smoked glass.