Elimination Exit

[Okor]

Okor saw nothing. It was not the familiar darkness, something that would have been a familiar sign of his failing eye, unable to cope with the damage dealt. Instead, he was swallowed up in the empty void that had characterized his existence in the Omniverse so far. He drifted through Oblivion, feeling nothing. Of course, that was hardly out of place. Nurgle had given him freedom from his mortal worries, ascending him to a prime position in regards to the endless cycle of life and death. But this was unnatural. He would at least have the sensation of movement, pressure, something! He looked down at his limbs, expecting to see shattered ceramite, broken skin, and a severed appendage. Instead, what he saw was far more unsettling.

Instead of the jaundiced skin overlaid atop reinforced, overgrown bone, his hide was pale and white, free of marine augmentation and Nurgle's touch. It was devoid of follicles, the chest of a youth, barely into adolescence. He barely remembered it. Hairless, lean arms flailed in the void, seeking some form of sanity in this realm of sensory deprivation. As his previously severed arm scythed through the darkness, this time, it met substance. Looking up through two pale brown eyes, he gazed upon the rusted cuirass in front of him. Scars from a thousand battles marred its ancient surface, rot and rust ever-pervasive. It tilted down a cyclopean helmet, gazing down at the whelp in front of it. A massive, corroded arm reached down, lifting the child up to its empty eye. A voice, a deep bass rumbling, his own voice, echoed throughout oblivion.

"You have not earned me, recruit. You fell in battle against mere mortals, failing to claim one lone life. You are a disgrace, a failure to the Legion, to Nurgle, and to Mortation." The fingers, kilometers long, began to close, threatening to crush the child. "I would do our king a great service by ridding his ranks of a maggot like yourself." Okor began to run along the arm of the suit, fear filling his mind, stumbling along organic protrusions, encroaching on the helm. He was almost lost to the void, popping pustules and sprouting spirals of bone threatening to throw him free. The armour seemed to shrink, his strides taking him great distances along the expanse of infinite steel. Finally, he clambered over the gorget of the antique armour, slicing his hands on cracked and rusted ceramite, watching the helm shift to focus in on his pitifully small figure. "Why do you think yourself worthy of life, waste? Your story is over. Perhaps it will be sung in some excuse for a tavern, as they mock your very being. You are nothing. Is there one Gods-Forsaken reason you should continue? One reason why you should not go gently into that good night?" He snarled, his youthful face contorting with determination. Bulges began to form beneath his skin, as ceramite began to burst through his skin, necrosis almost immediately setting in. A horn broke his once-handsome face, as his eyes began to merge, running into a single eye. Bones warped and twisted, contorting themselves underneath his flesh. He took a single step forward, his foot merging with the substance of the titanic armour.

"My name... Is Okor. And I am. Not. Finished." He spoke, challenging the figure to deny him. It laughed, as Okor felt an irresistible pull, flinging him from its surface, into a growing blackness, dragging the marine back into reality.

Okor gasped, pulling in a breath of air through his rusted rebreather. He pushed himself up, his two arms allowing him to rise to his imposing height. He began to shamble, seeking out his brothers, shame and failure still fresh in his mind. As was Vengeance.