I R O N M A I D E N
L O C A T I O N | Border Space
G E A R | Gjallerhorn | Glyphscript Anvil
On the path of a unremarkable world along borderspace, smoke still curled like mourning cloth from the ruins of what was left as the victors with their spoils dispersed into the stars. The villages lay broken into charred ribs of wood and twisted durasteel; bodies, if not already cleared, had become mere silhouettes scorched into the ground. Sith, Empire, pirates looking for scraps...one of them had visited this world three nights prior, another decree of culling of the weak, a reminder written in fire.
The missionary walked the aftermath with tranquil indifference, her steps unhurried as ash drifted around her like black snow. The air tasted of soot and the ghosts of fear. She felt none of it. War was not tragedy, it was the natural order of things. The weak were devoured, the unprepared culled, the faithless burned to make room for those who could rise. And she felt no guilt for their demise at the hand of their conqueror...
Ha'rangir demanded change through destruction, and Prime was nothing if not his beloved instrument.
But she was hunting.
Freshly razed worlds birthed something far more valuable than plunder.
Foundlings. Young survivors carved out of horror, their old lives shattered and therefore ready to be reforged into something greater. Embers waiting for a divine spark.
She walked between wrecked homesteads until she heard the faint sound of breathing, fear-shaken, shallow. A collapsed barn hid a cluster of victims, huddled together, filthy, starved, and trembling. When Dima strolled by, they froze like prey catching sight of a predator. Curiosity caught her as that large silhouette filled the doorway, vast and striped in the glow of burning debris behind her.
But instead of roaring doctrine or raising a blade, she knelt. Slowly. Deliberately. Four arms open.
"Rejoice." she murmured, voice soft as temple incense. "The fire did not take you. Good. That means you're strong enough to walk forward...with me."
The boldest of them, a girl no older than fourteen, glared at her through tears. "Th-they killed everyone."
Dima brushed ash from the child's cheek with a thumbed claw, her expression almost tender behind the gleam of her mask. "But not you...you lived. After this, i know you will not live small ever again."
Some flinched. Some leaned forward. Most were too exhausted to run.
Her Iron Clergy arrived one by one, robed, masked, gentle in the way only battle-hardened zealots could be when collecting the broken. They passed out water, wrapped cloaks around shaking shoulders, and lifted the smallest into their arms.
Dima rose slowly, like a mountain shifting. "Come, little sparks," she said, her voice now warm, coaxing, a mother calling children inside from the cold. "We must look for others who share this terrible fate."
The orphans followed, some limping, some carried, all marked now by the Warpriest's shadow.
And as they departed the ashes of their old lives, the wind stirred the ruins behind them, scattering cinders in the shape of a rising flame.
The work of His hand.
The children of destruction.
The newest embers of House Prime.
