Dance of the Dreamers

[Kuzuru]

“Well now, what a pleasant surprise,” Kuzuru mused.

Like a starving coyote the demon began to circle the interloper. A single yolk-colored eye followed Kuzuru from beneath Okor’s grime-encrusted helm. Around them the ethereal realm twisted itself to accommodate their standoff. Kuzuru stepped over a puddle of brackish muck and as he did the pus-puddle turned into fresh blood. Wooden posts wrapped in barbed wire sprouted from the ground like wicked saplings. Kuzuru came to a stop and glanced around. A hellish yin-yang of blood and pestilence had formed beneath them.

“Believe you me, your reputation precedes you Paleblood,” Kuzuru said, “you’re on my list, towards the bottom sure, but you’re on it.”

Okor said nothing.

“Though I suppose it is a bit rude to not introduce myself,” the demon continued, “name’s Kuzuru, I’m the leader of the Ashen Blades, badass mercenary group, the kind of group that’d love nothing more than your head on a pike, but you’ve probably heard of us.”

Okor’s body shifted and he answered, ”I… have not… but that is… not surprising, if you want my head… this will be more than just a… nightmare for you.”

Kuzuru lowered his guard as he laughed. If Okor had anything resembling lips they would have been scowling. The impish individual before him stood at least two if not three feet shorter than the Nurgle-worshipper. He wore a sleeveless black shirt that was covered in hundreds of aggressive words like “SLAY” or “DEVIL” or “RAMPAGE”, each of them written in bright red. His skin was stretched tight across a lean but well-defined musculature and the faintest tinge of burgundy stained his flesh. But, most striking of all, was the series of three curved blades jutting out from his forearm their steely black points aimed in the same direction as his fingers.

As Kuzuru’s chuckling subsided he stood up straight and spoke, “nightmare? I think you’ve got it wrong friend-o, I live to fight guys like you, I’m a bit of a sadist that way, and I also think you know what happens next, it’s just a matter of when not if.”

Kuzuru took a few sudden steps towards the corrupted astartes who shifted his weight in response. The demon cut his charge short and stumbled to the side in order to kill his momentum. Kuzuru chuckled and pranced a few steps away from Okor.

“It’s a shame your face is fucked up, I would’ve loved to see the look on it,” Kuzuru said, “you’re not in a rush to die are you? I’m hoping to savor this.”