The image on the screen became murky, as if covered with a thick layer of grease.
It wasn't the dry dust of Colchis.
It was a sickly, pale grey-green.
If Lorgar's tragedy stemmed from a longing for love, then this Primarch's tragedy stemmed from a hatred of suffering.
The Fourteenth Legion, Death Guard.
Their Primarch—Mortarion.
The scene pierced through the heavy toxic mist, landing on a Death World named Barbarus.
This place was practically the physical embodiment of hell.
The Planet was shrouded in poisonous fog, which ordinary sunlight could not penetrate.
Here, the ecosystem was twisted.
Humans lived in low-lying swamps and canyons, barely surviving like livestock.
And at the tops of the towering, most toxic mountain peaks lived a group of Xenos Overlords.
They were powerful Psykers and cruel necromancers.
They preyed on humans, using living people for stitching experiments to create disgusting Flesh Golems.
Mortarion landed in this place filled with the stench of corpses and toxic gas.
But he wasn't adopted by humans like the other Primarchs.
His luck... was perhaps the worst.
In the image, a giant Xenos Overlord, dressed in tattered black robes and holding a scythe, picked up the crying infant from a pile of corpses.
Nikaea.
He adopted this child, not out of love, but to cultivate an ultimate weapon, or... a toy for torment.
Mortarion grew up in the toxic towers. Every breath was agony, every heartbeat fought against toxins strong enough to kill an elephant.
But this didn't kill him; instead, it allowed him to evolve the most resilient physique in the entire Milky Way Galaxy.
He learned to endure.
He learned to stay clear-headed in pain.
More importantly, he learned—hatred.
He hated the high-and-mighty Xenos, hated the 'Witchcraft' they used, and hated their enslavement of others.
The scene fast-forwarded.
The adult Mortarion escaped the towers and came to the human settlements.
He became the leader of the resistance.
He not only possessed unparalleled martial prowess but also displayed exceptional inventive talent.
He used crude scraps to create respirators that could filter toxic gas and Power Scythes capable of piercing the armor of the Great Lords.
It was a hard-fought war of liberation.
Mortarion, with his Death Guard, gradually ascended the mountain peaks that were once considered forbidden zones.
He washed away thousands of years of human humiliation with the blood of the Xenos.
Watching that tall, slender figure, wielding a scythe in the toxic mist, reaping Xenos lives like the God of Death, even the audience from another World couldn't help but feel reverence.
This was a true hero's story—the oppressed overthrowing tyrants, mortals fighting against sorcerers.
But in this Universe, hero stories are often the prelude to tragedy.
What Mortarion didn't know was that this Planet... was not merely occupied by Xenos.
Deep within Barbarus's perpetual toxic mist, something older and more malevolent was watching.
The camera shifted to a person completely hidden beside Mortarion.
It was a young man.
He was as strong as Mortarion, and hated Xenos just as much.
But in the unknown dead of night, while Mortarion was studying combat tactics, he stood alone at the edge of the toxic mist.
He was... listening.
There were sounds in the toxic mist. It was a buzzing like the beating of flies' wings, a whisper of bubbles bursting in a putrid swamp.
"Do you feel it, child?"
"This is the cycle of life. Decay is not an end, but the soil for new birth."
A strange light flickered in the young man's eyes.
He possessed Psyker talent—a trait Mortarion hated most.
But he hid it well.
He silently responded to that voice in his heart, the entity that called itself 'Father Nurgle'.
Nurgle. The Lord of Decay among the Four Chaos Gods.
Long before Mortarion's arrival, this Planet had already been marked by Nurgle as His garden.
Mortarion thought he was fighting Xenos; in reality, he was struggling in a Chaos God's petri dish.
The scene returned to the day of the final battle.
Mortarion decided to launch a full assault on his adoptive father, the last overlord, Nikaea.
But just then, the sky split open.
Golden light dispersed the perpetual toxic mist.
The Emperor descended.
This should have been a touching scene of father and son reuniting, but for the extremely proud Mortarion, it was a disaster.
The Emperor proposed a wager: if Mortarion could kill Nikaea alone, the Imperium would leave; if he failed, Mortarion would pledge allegiance to The Emperor.
Mortarion accepted.
He charged towards the highest toxic peak.
But the toxic gas there had long since exceeded the realm of physical laws.
His respirator corroded, and his lungs began to dissolve.
He knelt before Nikaea, watching his adoptive father raise the butcher's knife.
Just as he was about to die, The Emperor intervened.
Just one sword stroke.
The tyrant who had tormented Barbarus for thousands of years was crushed like a fly.
Mortarion survived.
But the light in his eyes extinguished.
He looked at the golden, supremely powerful new father, not with gratitude, but with a deep, humiliated resentment.
He didn't win his freedom.
He was merely transferred from one tyrant to another, more powerful tyrant.
He hated sorcery, yet it was the strongest Psyker in the entire Galaxy who saved him.
He sought to endure everything by his own strength, but in the end, he survived only through the charity of others.
This is the thorn in the heart of the Death Guard Primarch.
A thorn that could never be removed, eventually festering and rotting.
---
DC Universe
"Well, I'll be damned."
John Constantine threw his cigarette butt to the ground, stomping it out fiercely, a look of absurd disbelief on his face.
"His lungs are dissolving... dissolving, do you understand?"
"Any ordinary person, no, any demon I know, would be screaming and begging for mercy by now."
"And this guy, he actually has the leisure to feel 'humiliated'?"
He pointed incredulously at the screen, yelling at Batman and Superman:
"What the hell kind of physiology is that?"
"Are his pain nerves connected to his self-esteem?"
"Superman, when you're being tortured by Kryptonite, do you get angry because your posture isn't cool enough?"
Superman frowned, his expression solemn:
"I wouldn't. His endurance is beyond my comprehension, but this is no longer a matter of endurance."
"It's a... disregard for pain itself. As if his body is just a vessel, and what's truly harmed is his pride."
"That's the problem."
Batman's voice came from the shadows, cold and precise.
"The Primarchs' psychological models have huge flaws. Konrad Curze is a typical antisocial personality, packaging torture as justice."
"Lorgar, on the other hand, exhibits an extremely dependent personality; he must cling to a 'god' to gain self-identity."
"Now there's Mortarion, an individual completely twisted by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and paranoid personality disorder."
He paused, as if organizing an invisible criminal file.
"Haven't you noticed? These so-called demigods, their mental age might be even lower than a mature Earth teenager's."
"They possess World-destroying power, yet they use it to deal with the most childish emotional problems."
"Is there... I mean, even just one, who is mentally normal?"
"Perhaps the problem isn't with them."
Wonder Woman Diana's gaze swept past the screen, as if seeing the figure seated on the Golden Throne, her tone filled with the caution and disappointment of a mythologist. "The problem lies with their father."
"The Emperor. He has lived for tens of thousands of years, witnessing the rise and fall of countless civilizations."
"I've seen the mistakes Zeus made, but even the most arrogant Olympian god wouldn't rush in and snatch away his son's spoils just as he was about to complete the most important coming-of-age ritual of his life, merely to prove 'I am stronger than you'."
"That's too... crude."
Diana shook her head.
"He doesn't act like a wise man who has lived for thirty thousand years, but rather like a young god experiencing fatherhood for the first time, only wanting to show off his muscles in front of his son."
"If he truly regarded these children as tools, then he is the most clumsy craftsman I have ever seen, personally cracking his most resilient tools."
She looked at Batman and Superman, offering a conjecture that even she found unsettling:
"Or... is it possible that he genuinely developed feelings for these 'tools' but had absolutely no idea how to express them, ultimately resorting to this worst, most clumsy way to respond?"
Marvel Universe
"Friday, analyze the cellular regeneration rate and neural system's tolerance to necrotic damage for this species."
Tony instinctively commanded, but then interrupted himself the moment the words left his mouth, "Never mind, don't analyze it, this thing doesn't conform to biology at all."
He took off his glasses, rubbing his temples, a look of utter collapse on his face, like a tech geek witnessing magic.
"Lungs dissolving... if my suit gets a scratch, the alarm is louder than he is."
"This guy can still kneel there, contemplating philosophical questions about 'honor' and 'humiliation'? Is his brain not connected to the pain center?"
"That's not the point, Tony."
Captain America's expression was unusually serious.
"The point is, I feel like I'm watching a group of... troubled children, with the power of gods but the minds of kids."
"Lorgar, like a child who joins a gang because he feels unloved."
"That guy named Konrad Curze, he reminds me of Red Skull, but even more insane."
"Now this Mortarion, just because his dad wouldn't let him land the final blow, he hates the whole World?"
Steve's tone was filled with heartbreak at such a waste of great power.
"Is there even one normal person among these Primarchs?"
"I think it's quite normal."
Loki let out a chuckle from the side, full of appreciation for such family drama.
"My dear brother, didn't you also throw a tantrum when Father wouldn't let you sit on the throne? It's just that this Mortarion is a bit more paranoid."
"That's different!" Thor retorted angrily, electricity crackling around Mjolnir.
"Odin banished me to Midgard to teach me humility! To make me a better king!"
"And that golden-armored Emperor... what did he do? He humiliated his own son! He used absolute power to tell Mortarion: 'All your efforts, all your resilience, are worthless before me!'"
Thor looked at Loki, his eyes complex:
"Even my father, during the worst of our relationship, never so cruelly trampled on my honor."
"He doesn't act like a God-King who has lived for tens of thousands of years."
Dr. Banner pushed up his glasses, saying softly,
"He's like a... clumsy child who has a toy for the first time but doesn't know how to take care of it, only disassembling and displaying it over and over until the toy is completely broken."
"Doesn't he really know what consequences such actions would bring?"
"Or... does he actually know, but the arrogance brought by his long life makes him simply not care?"