#quick post before work

When he did, the realization came too late. Something slammed into the hull of his sky armor, causing it to teeter precariously. The head of an axe had embedded itself into the plate exterior, pinning one of his men to it's side and completely skewering another. The corpse hung loosely, like a marionette with its strings cut. The soldiers were confused at first, unsettled the next as the cadaver began to do an unnatural jig.

The axe had begun to tremble violently, vibrating against the armor it had lodged against before it seemed to wrench free from the body of steel and fling itself back into the night. They could see nothing in the dark, but when lightning flashed overhead, briefly illuminating an imposing shape at a distance they did not hesitate to open fire. The moment erupted in chaos.

It was not a pretty sight, and each flashing burst of gunfire and lightning revealed a scene more gruesome than the last as brief instances of darkness were punctuated by the screams of soldiers being cleaved in several parts. He had never witnessed such savagery, as a sanguine spray splattered across the outside of the protective glass shell that surrounded the cockpit.

The decurion could no longer see anything from within the confines of his vehicle which did not respond to any of his frenzied console commands. Flashing red emergency lights from within told him that its primary functions had been compromised and so he watched helplessly as his men dove for cover and fired at a figure that moved so seamlessly between them and the environment. There was a militaristic efficiency between each death and the next and by the sixth felling, those that were left had become desperate to avoid their own ends.

They gave ground quickly and retreated behind his machina until he could no longer view them. The officer heard the cry signaling explosive measures, and he saw the beeping canister soar through the sky towards the figure who had chased them back. He moved impossibly fast, his axe glinting against the thundering sky as it connected with the grenade and launched it back towards his vehicle. It landed between the legs of his Predator and the Decurion was helpless to escape the blast.

His world erupted in fire. The shake and boom of it deafened him while the groaning crunch of metal and screaming tinnitus pierced his skull. There was smoke in his lungs, the ground had become the sky and he could not feel his legs. Blind now in one eye, it took time to make sense of the battlezone around him. His men were still shouting, and he could not save them. Only watch them fall victim to what could only be described as a terrible force of nature.

The sloppy earth seemed to churn and shift as if a restless giant tossed and turned beneath its layers, and seemed to conform to the will of the unknown assailant. At least, it seemed that way to the Decurion, who could not trust his vision in entirety as at times it seemed soldiers were simply swallowed by the very ground they stood upon.

The mud became further saturated by the bloodshed, tears and the constant downpour as jagged pikes of rock and spears of lightning decimated the people he had once fought with and likely would now die with. The man, if he could even be called that, began to pulse and crackle like the sky itself, warping the environment around him in a magnetic polarization. The smell of ozone and charred bones permeated the air and made the officer nauseous. He did not consider himself a man with a weak stomach.

It was both methodical and destructive, the ways in which the Decurion’s people were dispatched. Some did not die immediately, and those soldiers were finished off with swift and savage blows from an axe. The brute collected his weapon from the husk of a soldier with little regard, and with his halved-vision the Imperial could see clearly the savage before him, and the seeping red that bled from his eyes in a wispy, crimson trail of mist. The Decurion might have been hallucinating, but he found himself asking,

“What are you?”

The beast turned its head.