The Dark Ages [Dark Data]

[Okor]

Black flames burst from the upper stands of the colliseum, the audience descending upon the arena as their flesh warped and twisted, dark muscle protected by armoured plates propelling them down from the walls as they sought to tear and rend at the liberator’s flesh. Shards of stone descended from on high, crushing the mechanisms and metallic carapace that shielded Okor from the world, the walking shrine to his Gangrenous God collapsing against the blood-soaked sands of the arena.

The Dark Knight laughed, blood bubbling from his split lip as he brought down all that he had accomplished upon his head, a self-sabotage meant to allow him to retain some small measure of dignity. An end to his legacy, one final display of power meant to redeem him in the eyes of his distant master.

From beneath tonnes of metal and masonry, a gauntlet tore through the grinning sarcophagus, an atrophic arm following as Okor pulled himself free from the ruin, his armour and sickly skin slick with rotten amniotic fluids, umbilical cables tearing as he started to lurch forward. He gurgled through his festering fangs as he advanced upon the kneeling knight, drawing his septic sword as his companions fought battles of their own against the Darkling Horde.

”That’s not how this ends, ‘Champion’.” A Darkling’s downwards stroke bounced off his much-abused armour, a contemptuous thrust piercing the abomination’s innards, sending them slumping to the sands as the Corrupted Crusader advanced. ”You do not get to simply give up. You have cast your lot, and earned this fate, and none can save you from it.” The knight snarled and twisted his massive blade in the earth, a shard falling from on high, skewering Okor's chestplate as he advanced.

Murder was evident in Okor’s eyes as the war-priest of the plague god advanced, snapping off the tip of the stalactite driven through his torso, holding it like a knife.”There will be no songs sung of this day, no memory of your name. No… trophies. Just the silence of death, and one more failure for your weakling God.”

The walls of the coliseum shuddered as the knight pulled his blade free, swinging it with a roar of anger and pain, his wounds weeping with dark blood. The massive sword dug deep into Okor’s side, cracking his ceramite carapace and his fused ribs. A bloody, twisted smile spread across the Plague Marine’s features as he raised his own improvised weapon, bringing it down upon the knight’s gorget, his stone blade breaking into pebbles against the dark steel.

He laughed, the sound bouncing off the collapsing coliseum, rising over the din of battle as he wrapped his claws around the Knight’s blade, drawing it deeper into him as he began to drive his shard of stone down, again, and again, and again. He screamed out, unholy blood mingling between them as he struck out. ”This is what you’ve chosen! Every lie, every drop of blood shed, has led to this!”

More stone fell, clouds of dust choking the darkling hordes, drifts of sand obscuring sightlines as the hunter and the hacker fought their way through the horde.

Okor snarled, raising what remained of his implement of injury overhead, his cyclopean eye staring contemptuously down at his victim, the ceiling of the coliseum threatening to crush them at any moment.

”Now, be silent, and die.”

597 Words. Okor is staying behind to murder the hell out of the Black Knight.