Seeing Eye Sister

[Okor]

The rotting hulk that was Okor collapsed through the shimmering sheet of Omnillium stretched between the palm posts, the dead mass of his body slamming against the emptiness beneath him, black smoke pouring from the charred remains of his eye. A necrotic hand stretched out into the infinite darkness, groping and grasping at the endless void in abject futility, touching nothing more than the barrier of force, of insubstantial invisibility, that formed the floor of the Nexus. Then, he found a face, soft, yielding flesh was clutched within his diseased claws. "Rebecca?" he gurgled, cursing his own weakness. To be so crippled by a lone infantryman! His brothers would be ashamed of him. "I'm right here, mister Oh-Keer!" she said, the curiosity and indefatigability of youth triumphing over any fears she may have. Was he like that, once? Perhaps until the screams first started, before he bore arms against the endless waves of the dead. He chuckled as he reminisced, the sound coming unbidden from the cesspit of infection that passed for his mouth. He began to push himself off from the void, rising unsteadily to his feet, stumbling as he reached his full titanic height. He could feel a grip of some kind on his arm, Rebecca clambering over him, using his massive frame as an impromptu playground. He began to walk, trusting in Nurgle and his children to guide him. The swarm shifted beneath his skin, skittering across yellowed bone, and tunneling through decayed flesh.

He could barely feel his minute traveling companion standing atop his shoulder, a petite pale hand grasping his horn. Her voice spoke up, piercing the background noise of the Plague Marine's plodding tread and rasping, ragged respiration. "What's this place, Mister Oh-keer?" In his mind's eye, he could imagine her casting her wide-eyed gaze across the white horizon, drinking in the seeming purity of the Nexus. "This is... The Nexus, dear child. This is where Primes are... taken, when they are first stolen from their homes. Every creature our captor believes to deserve this... prison, is spawned here, drowning in strangeness and the madness." He could feel the Sister shift her weight, sitting on his pauldron, idly kicking her legs, her heels lightly tapping slime-covered ceramite. "'S pretty." She slurred lazily.

"Beautiful? My... child, I find this place disgusting. It is a reminder of our jailor's ineptitude, how he cannot create. Look around, and see what... he can create." A barely noticeable change in pressure indicated she did so. "... Nuffin?" she said, reaching this conclusion once she stared into the endless emptiness. "Pre...cisely. All he is capable of doing is stealing, ripping champions from their own reality to his pale imitation. Worst of all, it is... static. None of us may die. Secondaries fall like wheat before the scythe. Usually..." He drifted off for a moment, reaching his bare hand to the ember-filled hole in his eye, a hole burned through it by the heat of the trooper's strange las-pistol. Regaining composure, he resumed his speech. "Tell me Rebecca, what is the point of a story without an end? Where every tale must end with a promise of eternal life, life without struggle or pain?" Rebecca's youthful face contorted into a visage of concentration, pondering this question. After a few moments, she questioned: "... Is there one?" The millennia-old walking corpse threw back his head and laughed. "No. Every story needs an end. How else would there be a lesson, a moral to the fable? If ... history spent its entirety recounting one tale, when would there be a chance for a new one? All things must come to an end, if only so something can begin. This realm... seeks to pervert that law, to keep us all in a perpetual existence, with no rest, no respite. Only endless life. Is that any way to live?" He gave a chuckle as he continued his seemingly endless trek. "Child, we seek a gate of cut stone, I have been told. Tell me when you... see it." "'S over there. Little bit to the... right." The familiar voice of his companion spoke from atop his shoulder, the pause probably allowing for her to determine which direction was which. Laughing, Okor adjusted his course, bouncing off of the solid surface of the gate, a small amount of crude mortar falling like dust onto his armour, to the amusement of Rebecca. Guiding himself forward, he stepped through the stone pillars, leaving the empty void behind him.