The Dark Ages [Dark Data]

[Okor]

Okor took the proffered pie, his helmet hanging, mag-locked, from his thigh as his claws scooped great gobs of greasy meat down his gullet, blackened fangs gnashing and tearing as he swallowed the fatty flesh. The watcher smiled as the Corrupted Cyclops guzzled down the meal, the elder’s eyes like dark constellations, stars alight in the infinite blackness. The man bowed, his teeth shining amidst the great whiteness that made up his beard, fading into the crowd of the festival, one more smiling face amongst many, many others.

“You sure you should be eating that, big guy?” Questioned Hiro, the Digital Daimyo cocking an eyebrow at the Rotting Revenant’s ravenous consumption of the pastry. Okor turned to his companion, a hunk of pre-masticated meat trapped between his teeth. ”Hiro. I have, on multiple occasions, poisoned a water supply by spitting into it. My blood is poison. My soul is claimed by the great Gods of the Aether. If their poisons or magicks can affect me, then… I believe we have bigger problems.” The hulking figure raised a clenched fist to his festering maw, coughing as he felt one of his four lungs collapse, riddled with rot and devoured by parasites. He was being consumed from within, his blessed host continuing its biological and ideological imperative despite him being deprived of Nurgle’s eternal gifts. Already, his stomach was little more than a seething mass of maggots and stranger, a roiling ouroboros that only stalled its self-destruction to feast upon the gifts of flesh from above.

He wiped a sickly mixture of his own nearly-gelatinous pale blood from his ravaged lips, looking over the grinning crowds. Dark lanterns drifted overhead, pinpricks of light shining through abyssal cloth, floating towards some distant destination. If one was able to ignore the dead-eyed stares, long, brilliant teeth, and the slightly warped tones of the seemingly sourceless songs that pervaded the atmosphere, it was almost a pleasant occasion.

The simultaneous feeling of emptiness and weight within him reminded him of the perpetual hunger of his parasites. Unless they cut the head from this blighted beast-of-many-forms, he would be devoured by his own host of symbiotic creatures. He scraped a handful of crumbs and gristle from the gravy-soaked bottom of the tin, rolling what little remained of the meat on his rotting tongue. Grox? Horse?

Human?

He couldn’t tell. Sauces, spices, and his own ravenous hunger denied the opportunity to taste anything but a passable meal. His maw slavered, pathogen-blessed spittle seeping from between fangs still anointed with grease and gravy. He turned towards the nearest attendee of the festival, clothes bedecked in a quartered pattern of black and purple, eyes blank, lips stained with gravy and crumbs. Looming, he made his demands: ”The pies. Show me to the… Pies.” The peasant nodded, slowly extending a single grey finger, pointing it towards a tent adorned in an alternating pattern of ebon and royal purple, cheers and shouts echoing from within its greasy depths.

Armour rattling, he stepped forward, descending into the belly of the beast.