He did not stop. Leaning on his cane, he trudged into the lethal poison mist, stumbling with every step. It could kill a healthy adult within minutes. His destination was the Quarantine Zone at the edge of the village, where several unfortunate souls lay after the Xenos Lord's aircraft had sprayed them with a new toxin the day before.
He was going to save them. To do everything he could to rescue every mortal tormented by this land of despair.
Mortarion felt as though he was about to die.
He had tried to climb to the very summit of the mountain, to challenge his brutal Xenos foster father, the highest High Lord, Nakare.
But he had failed. The supreme poison mist at the summit, the exclusive domain of the Xenos Overlord, was far more corrosive and toxic than his body could currently withstand. He had retreated in defeat, falling from the summit like a pale meteor and crashing into the lowland poison marsh he had once loathed and despised.
He would not die on a glorious battlefield, nor in an epic duel with the Tyrant. Instead, like a stray dog that had wandered into an acid swamp, he would slowly rot amid silent agony, suffocation, and humiliation.
Just as his Primarch heart began to beat slower and slower, and the thick, poisonous mud was about to extinguish the flame of his life, a small, blurred shadow appeared in his fading vision.
It was an elderly mortal who looked countless times older and frailer than any slave he had ever seen on the summit.
The old man's back was hunched, as though he bore the weight of the entire world. He wore a ridiculous, crudely made gas mask fashioned from an animal bladder and leaned on a battered iron rod.