#vorx

Of course! A bit of angst though, just because I had it in my head that Vorx would absolutely know if Mortarion's feeling especially down at any moment. >:3

Tried designing him a bit, somewhere between Caipha and Calas for the haircut I think? Just something very rough. And baby. I like him a lot as well. 💚

“Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyd,” the sound leaks out of its mouth. Vorx lowers himself to be as close to the ground as he can be.

“Do you need help, child?”

“Aye,” the second sound is even quieter than the first. The child’s eye detaches as another tremor wracks its body. Vorx catches it, letting a half-formed hand with eight fingers (and only three of them flesh, isn’t that interesting) take the eye back from him and attempt to jam it into its socket.

“Brace,” Vorx warns, lifting the skin-and-stem body. Despite the lank, the body itself is small and light enough that it weighs less than a half-full pack would. “We’ll head back early today.”

“Are you sure about this, sir?” One of the others, he can’t tell which one, asks.

“It is a denizen of Nurgle, and it needs our help. Why not help it, in Grandfather’s name?”

There are no further arguments.

-------

The form shifts as he carries it, rapid vines wrapping around his arms to act as anchors. There are small buds on some of them, and he can see them bloom, weeks of growth in seconds, unnaturally colored pollen drifting onto him. Where it lands, his armor is painted with new plagues and stains of those same colors. 

Adorable.

The walk, thankfully, is short, and treatment enough for the child to remain undying, to have the chance to grow itself into a stronger version, can begin shortly.

The one that meets them is Boyeinn, his yellowed eyes creasing in concern.

“A denizen we found who needs some help,” he explains as he deposits the form onto the dirt floor without agitating any of the wounds. “A little too young to endure on its own.” 

Boyeinn is not one to stand idly, moving before Vorx is done to start removing the largest chunk of shrapnel in the child's torso that keeps the wound from closing or even staunching the bleeding. 

“Disinfection, sir?” It’s an old joke, but one they both find themselves chuckling at.

“Remove any external objects so the flesh can heal. That is all.” How silly it would be, after everything, to even think of removing one of Grandfather’s gifts. Once Boyeinn finishes on the chest and starts working around the vine-most arm, Vorx addresses the child again. “What is your name, young one?”

“Flourithh.” The name comes out as little more than a whisper.

“A fine name. Do you know where you are from?” Are you lost, he wants to ask but that feels like the wrong thing to say when he’s the one who moved it from where they met.

“Inth-inthide.” The words are quiet, pained, but the voice hitches don’t match Boyeinn’s movements. “T-the yarthen, ar-r-” another pained sound, and he can now see the dark blood, accompanied by a dull yellow mist, trickling from the child’s mouth.

“Can you open your mouth a little wider, bryony?”

The child obeys. Vorx’s hands aren’t as graceful as they used to be, not with the armor quite well-fused to them, but he can be gentle enough while holding Flourish’s jaw to see that her teeth don’t fit in her mouth. Some are small, rotted, and others far too big, barely letting her mouth close. The jagged edges are too much for her to talk without cutting up her cheek and tongue, and before his eyes one of the front teeth grows until it is practically drilling into her lip. 

Someone behind him hmms. “Can anyone still take off his helmet?” The overall denials and headshakes say no. “Hold for a moment. I will return.” Two minutes later, Arjun is back, holding a human skull with only a slight amount of mold on it, and bringing it to Flourish’s eye level.

“Do you see the teeth here?” Arjun’s voice, while still distorted, is careful and as quiet as he can make it. Flourish nods. “Can you try to make your own teeth resemble that?”

It takes more than a few seconds, the time punctuated with small whimpers of pain and Arjun’s soft assurances, but Flourish’s teeth fit in her mouth properly. They are almost humanoid, if wildly uneven and several still too sharp.

“Try saying something now,” he coaxes. Flourish looks up with one milky and one bloody eye. 

“What.” She pauses, draws another breath, restarts. “What is your name?”

Arjun smiles.

“So polite. I am Arjun Nam’d, and the one who carried you here goes by Vorx.” Vorx gives a small wave as the child looks at him, a rare moment of regret for being unable to remove his armor. Perhaps Flourish would have been more soothed by a human(-ish) face more than their helmets. Flourish tilts her head at him, her neck snapping and dropping the head a good foot lower than humanly possible, held only by the vines within as she awkwardly resets it.

“You not plant or meat.” Her left hand, now more human than plant save for the green tone, taps on the metal of Arjun’s forearm covering. “You do not rot?”

“We are Plague Marines,” Arjun says before Vorx can respond, “in service to the Grandfather. Our flesh is hidden under the metal, fusing with it slowly, one of the Grandfather’s many gifts.”

“Grandfather?”

“Nurgle, little one.”

Flourish does not seem happy at the name, hunching her shoulders. 

“Why were you out here, Flourish?”

She looks at them again, seemingly oblivious to how her left leg has unspooled and is creeping around Vorx’s armor. 

“They won’t let me heal if I stay. Hurts lots.” The sixth and seventh finger on her right hand twiddle with the thumb until it snaps off, then seem to attach it to her pinkie. Nervous habit? “You make me go back?” 

Vorx trades glances with Arjun, then Boyeinn. No orders have come about the child, and there are no brands or claims visible on her except the Grandfather’s, and he is usually content to let them all roam his garden. 

“If someone comes and they have the Grandfather’s blessing, we may have to,” he says eventually. “But you can stay until then.”

“No comes,” Flourish says, then repeats herself. “No comes. Alone unless they hurt me.”

“Do you know who raised you?”

“Raise?”

A new concern.

“Who taught you to speak?” He tries to keep his voice soft, an inquiry and not a reprimand.  Flourish points a newly moss-bandaged hand at one of the many Nurglings Boyeinn keeps. “Them-like. And scraps from them that hurt me." That would explain the teeth. But how odd, to find one so young, and so clearly born here rather than recruited, alone.

Vorx serves the Grandfather, the Reaper, and the Death Guard. But he remembers who they served before they were blessed, before the golden ships of the false god. He remembers caring for the village’s children.

“You can stay with us, Flourish, for as long as you need.”

-------

Their food is, as always, simple but plentiful. One of the younger members makes a sandwich for Flourish, putting rotted meat and a few alyssum leaves on a piece of half-molded bread. She still can’t move her arms in full, but she’s able to take it from his hands when he approaches her, and she eats on her own. 

Jordan approaches Vorx, joining him in watching the child eat in small bites, the sandwich that seemed so small in gauntleted hands being almost the size of her head. 

“Are you sure about this? She needs to learn on her own, after all.”

“She cannot learn to hold her hunger if she is too young for it.” And he remembers being too young, remembers watching so many children on Barbarus starve and starve and die starved and so small their bones felt like those of birds. “To withhold help from someone so young is not training, it is needless cruelty.”

Flourish will learn, he can already tell. She is young, but not weak. She did not complain when Boyeinn yanked a long nail from her calf. She will be strong, undying and enduring.