Spartans Never Die

The Power of the Gods (Preview)

[This is the first scene of the next part, which is currently incomplete. I'll add the rest when it's finished]

As he examined the printed text on his most prized trophy once more, this time hoping to glean more information from the inscription now that he'd been granted understanding of unknown tongues, the Demonslayer read:

Chief Petty Officer

Daisy S-023

Slowly piecing the words he read on the fallen Spartan's dogtags together, Vorn muttered, "A hierarchical rank, some kind of flowering plant, and a designation code... this is how demons are described by the humans? Kind of comical, given the dread they inspire in the Covenant's ranks."

Vorn's mind wandered back to the day he became the Demonslayer, nearly six years after the war between Humanity and the Covenant began, on the very planet where first contact was made: the world the humans called Harvest. His platoon was among the force sent to trap and destroy a small group of humans before they could escape the planet. As if draining the light of day, the demon and its band arrived on an afternoon barely brighter than twilight; but as they tried to cross a bridge over a deep ravine, the humans met their bane.

Narrowly surviving a burst of high-caliber bullets from the Pelican dropship dispatched for their evacuation, then-Major Vorn Vornaker managed to overturn the demon's Warthog with a luckily-placed plasma grenade. With thick, purple blood oozing from a wound in the side of his abdomen inflicted by the Pelican, Vorn hastily limped to cover, unholstering a needler as his shield recharged. Catching his breath and trying to shut out the pain, Vorn saw the demon and one of its lackeys rushing across the bridge toward the Pelican. Taking aim with his needler, the wounded Sangheili squeezed the trigger and fired a burst of crystals at the group. To his surprise, the demon pushed its lackey out of the way and took the entire burst of crystals itself, with one cracking the helmet's visor and knocking it off, while the rest embedded themselves in the Spartan's chest.

While Vorn's body was in immense pain, his mind shut it all out, entering a state of reckless ecstasy and religious fervor. Unsheathing his energy sword and leaping through the air, he quickly stood over the wounded demon, ready to cleanly kill it and earn eternal glory. But before he could, he felt a burst of bullets ping off his shield from behind, knocking him off-balance with their momentum and sending him keeling over into the ravine.

Recalling the chilling sight of the river so far below, Vorn remembered that were it not for a fluke of a reflex to stab the stone wall of the canyon with his energy sword, stalling his descent, he would have certainly died. Barely finding a toehold to steady himself and having difficulty breathing, he was left hanging 10 meters below the bridge until some Unggoy started kicking rocks off the ledge and looked down to watch them fall. Once he'd been offered a lifeline to reach the surface again, the Vorn chose the Spartan's dogtags as his trophy, and told the few other Covenant survivors to leave the rest. A short time afterward he was transferred off-planet and granted an audience by the High Prophet of Regret, who re-christened him Vorn Vornakree, Demonslayer.

"I suppose it was naive to think I could find more answers so easily," Vorn thought, "it's a shame I'll never know more about the foe who made me what I am. Just a name, a rank, a number, and the fact that it threw itself into the line of fire to protect someone less useful than itself."

Suddenly, the Fleetmaster's aide called into his chambers, "Demonslayer, we need you to bring your Huragok to the auxiliary engineering section immediately. The coordinates have been uploaded."

Setting the dogtags back on his mantle, Vorn replied, "Understood, I'm on my way."