The Dark Ages [Dark Data]

[Okor]

The earth crumbled beneath his tread, claws flailing out, seeking the succor of stable stone, only to be denied as his diseased bulk fell, tumbling into darkness, his allies slipping deeper into the shadow and out of sight. He snarled as he turned, attempting to view his fate, only to see the infinite blackness rising up to meet him, a scream of defiance cut short by the enveloping darkness suffocating any hopes of awareness.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Tainted water fell from a rusted grille above the crumpled heap of maggots, rotten meat, and corroded metal, a steady stream upon the helmet wiping away the bloodstains so recently applied. One eye opened, crusted by pus and dried blood, tinged crimson by millennia of hatred and infection, looking out at the surroundings. Greenish water flowed around him, flakes of rust joining the less easily discernible debris in the almost-stagnant stream, the water serving to feed flourishing colonies of moss and algae along stone walls, untouched by light.

A seething mass of symbiotes, clinging tightly to a skeletal hand stripped clean of flesh, reached out, writhing worms picking the rotten revenant off the ground, steadying him against the side of the sewer as he stumbled along on partially skeletonized legs. What little flesh remained on his bones was concealed by his ancient armour, the aegis that had protected his flesh, if not his soul, for the entirety of The Long War.

“Awake at last, hm?”

Okor turned, his head turning just a bit too quickly than his flesh should have allowed. A wraith floated before him, a blank mask daubed with a bloody smile, topped with a hat adorned with skull-shaped bells. One arm floated by its side, an inch apart from a ragged, ethereal stump.

“And here I was hoping that you’d save everyone the trouble and have the decency to die down here.”

”No… Such luck.” His voice had adopted a buzzing rasp, his immeasurable host only growing with every moment. He lashed out with his blade, the rusted tip passing harmlessly through the phantasmal fool, releasing an ear-piercing screech as it glided across the sewage-slick stones behind the illusion.

“Resorting to violence already?” Laughed the jester, passing through him as it came to rest behind his shoulder, the crimson grin painted across its ivory mask smiling at him from the corner of his vision. “Death made you, Okor. It took your life on Barbarus, and used you to sow itself across the galaxy. Again, and again, you’ve propagated the cycle: You killed to raise an empire that sought to kill you. You killed to steal a kingdom, and now you kill to save one. When will it end?”

”When Nurgle declares it to be so,” grunted the marine, tearing his blade free from the wall as he began to splash down the sullied stream, the odd maggot falling from his writhing mass into the waste-water.

“Nurgle, Nurgle, Nurgle…” The fool floated past him, level against the ground, one arm propping up their head as its severed counterpart floated idly along with the wraith. “You know, it’s the funniest thing. Apart from a crazed cult lurking in the sewers of Darkshire, I don’t think a single being in the Omniverse knows his name.”

”Yet,” he snarled, bones swaddled in his ever-hungering symbiotes gliding across the stone as he peered into the darkness, his ethereal tormentor providing a dim glow that only seemed to serve to highlight the darkness.

Laughter seemed to surround him, from every angle came demented giggling, the waters around him sloshing and shifting. “Nothing but death and pain follows in your wake, Okor. Fiara? Broken and left behind in Dante’s Abyss. The Gorons you were pledged to save from Volvagia? Burnt and cast out into the wastes. Darkshire? Its most vulnerable given an eternity of pain and suffering to march through. Everything you touch turns to ash.” Masses of pallid flesh and tentacles wobbled forth from the shadows, multiple toothed orifices dripping corrosive fluid. “This is where you belong, beast of buboes and woe. Locked beneath the earth, far from the innocent lives you have yet to ruin.”

Okor snarled, a hand of maggots and malice grasping a tentacular limb from a mutated beast, throwing it into the stone wall, its already-tenuous form splattering into a fleshy paste. ”I am a man!” He drove his blade downwards, skewering another monster as he pressed onwards. ”My hate!" Another creature rose above him, its underside little more than a hungering maw the size of a man, lined with needle-like fangs. He pressed forward, teeth sinking into his pauldron as he shoulder-checked it against the masonry, whatever internal organs it possessed rupturing upon impact. ”My ambition!” He howled as he stomped downwards, the skin-bag of meat and teeth splattering into a fine red mist. A tentacle lashed out, skewering the increasingly abused flesh of his abdomen, writhing within his tortured innards. Okor leaned forward, grasping onto the tentacle with a hand made of ravenous parasites. ”... My love.” A tide poured forth from his decrepit form, rats fleeing a sinking ship as the horde consumed its newest host, the monster squealing as it disappeared under the tide. ”I am more human than any other in this realm could claim to be! I live, I die, I live again, eternal and undaunted!”

He paused, panting as what little remained of his opponents dripped down from the walls. ”You can taunt and lie and scheme and deride all you like. But you cannot change me. You cannot stop me. I... cannot stop me. All that I am, and all that I will be is sworn in service to The End of all things.” He reached down, grabbing a still-squirming abomination, slamming it against a raised stone in the wall, every impact eliciting another twisted squeal, another splash of blackened blood. ”I am cancer. I am death. I am the rot at the heart of creation.” What little remained of his latest victim fell to the floor. In its stead, he raised a maggot-made fist, the stench of fresh air and fresher flesh tantalizingly close. ”I am birth. I am growth. I am the life that blooms from what remains of that which came before.”

He slammed his fist down, the stone sliding deeper into its slot, its surface cracking as mechanisms began to grind within the wall.

”Now open wide and let. Me. In.”