Mortarion's Despised Early Life: A Side Story

# Chapter 6 Extra 1: Mortarion's Despised Early Life

Mortarion stood outside, curved blade in hand, gazing at the distant mountains shrouded in poisonous mist.

Upon the highest peak, amidst the thickest of the toxic fumes, stood the castle of his foster father, Nac'Lare.

That bastard… his father… Mortarion had sworn countless times that either he would die, or I would.

Mortarion deeply feared his foster father, deeply loathed him.

From his earliest memories, abuse and insults were commonplace. He was forced to complete impossible tasks, only to be rescued from the brink of death by his foster father's psychic powers.

When he was still weak, Mortarion had been forced to climb cliffs in acid rain.

Or fight dozens of rock-eating dogs before he had even learned to stand.

Or be thrown into a poisonous swamp to be torn apart by rotting, diseased sorcerous corpses.

Inevitably, he was too weak. He failed every time.

"Useless thing."

"Only good for whimpering in the mud, then needing me to save you."

"How many more times must I save you, you waste?"

His father would say.

"One more failure, and I'll snap your neck."

Yet Mortarion never succeeded.

"You are a failed weapon, a freak. You are unlike any other creature here."

"You are a failed product of my sorcerous experiments. I should have destroyed you then."

"Oh well, failed thing. Your only use is to fight the other warlords."

"Appreciate my mercy, my useless son."

He wanted to kill him.

Mortarion wanted to kill his father.

He swore it countless times.

He swore it when his bones were broken, his lungs torn out, as he trembled and struggled in the swamp. He swore it as acid rain corroded his skin, causing it to peel away, as his chest was pierced. He swore it as his limbs were torn off, as he was nailed to a cliff, struggling.

He swore, he swore, he swore, he would kill him.

Mortarion's world had once been simple: become stronger, stronger, even stronger, until he could stand on the most toxic peak of Barbarus, until he could tear his foster father's head from his body.

He wanted nothing, sought nothing, but to kill his father.

His world was made of slaughter, cages, rage, and fear.

In his countless fantasies, his end was always one of two things: either dying weak in a fight, or becoming strong enough to kill his foster father.

He had no time for anything else.

Until those two strange underlings appeared.

Yes, his foster father forbade him from contacting the humans in the valleys. They were the "underclass," a kind of living crop.

Before then, Mortarion had never met a human.

He did not know what "kin" was.

But when that strange little boy looked Mortarion directly in the eye through the poisonous mist, Mortarion's world was instantly overturned.

He was a human.

Mortarion was a human.

Hades and Typhon shattered Mortarion's small world. They showed him a completely different world, a world full of his own kind.

Even if this world was not perfect, it was fragile, rudimentary, and crude.

People were deeply imprisoned in fear, raised as livestock by the lords on the mountains. They were toys, expendable resources.

In them, Mortarion saw his own weak self.

The one who struggled in fear and unease.

But when he met his kin, he was no longer weak.

He was Mortarion, he was human, and he would lead humanity in rebellion, Against all this oppression and injustice.

They would kill all the oppressors.

Even if it meant sacrifice, so be it.

If I had to seriously describe Mortarion in one word, I would choose "rebellion." Mortarion was a rebel, which also destined him to forever be at odds with the "father" who symbolized "power and dominion."

Unless he himself became the ruler, he would never submit.

But to be honest, Old Mortarion is quite benevolent as a "father." He is very good to the Death Guard. Excluding Typhon, that "filial son," he and the other Barbarus-born Death Guard are truly a picture of paternal love and filial piety.

(Could this also be one of the reasons he was favored by Grandfather Nurgle…?)