Day 2 Morning

[Okor]

Translucent blood pumped through torn ventricles, the diseased blood even further tainted with potent combat stimulants. Fury burned in the desiccated wrinkles of his gangrenous grey matter, a red haze clouding his vision. Opaque scabs had already formed over what injuries he had suffered in the madness, parasites barely visible through the glassy coagulant, squirming within their ancient host, the recent defeat stirring up dissonant whispers of doubt within the hive.

Gods-Damned magical children.

An iron-clad fist crashed into a tree, splinters flying from the impact, embedding themselves in dead flesh and distant dirt.

He was so close.

A kick this time, the weight behind the rusted grave cracking the massive trunk, hairline fractures stemming from the pulped dent in its flank.

He was Okor Paleblood, not some weak-blooded loyalist lapdog, not some pathetic killer, not a damnable failure.

A horned head careened into the tree, the impact dealing the final blow to the ancient arboreal being, its damaged form unable to withstand the brunt of the marine’s rage. With a resounding crack, the tree fell into its final resting place, its fellows crowding around its corpse in a sepulchral shield, as if their presence could spare it from the ravages of death.

Okor Paleblood. Tears came to his eye, not only because of the spear of wood impaling that crimson orb.

The name used to mean something, back when things still made sense. Okor, his given name.

The name of the boy that died long ago, that accursed day on Barbarus. He had tried so hard to forget, to wash the blood from his hands. He thought he had succeeded, that millennia of dreamless sleep had allowed him to leave the past behind.

Choked laughter filled the vista of violence, gaunt claws wrapping around his helmet, attempting to drown out the voices coming from within. The accusatory apparitions on the edge of his vision speaking in tongues, whispering condemnations into the rotten holes where ears once existed. Disemboweled parents lifted maimed hands towards him, moaning with cleaved jaws, implying that he could have stopped the madness, that if he had just been stronger, faster, braver, he could have saved them all. Screams seemed to come from all around him, wisps of flame filling his vision as his home burned.

Little sister, her name, like Barbarus, lost to the mists of time, floated into his vision. Ethereal tatters of a pure white dress hung around her slight form, blood staining the virgin cloth. A face that would have been beautiful, given time, was caved in, fragments of brain and bone adorning raven-black hair.

He could still feel the weight of the stone that did the deed in his hands, every bump and notch on its surface noted and committed to memory. He knew that rock better than he knew himself.

He swallowed blood and bile as the past assailed him. Terran-born gene brothers, his rounds frozen mid-detonation in their bodies, could do little more than glare at them as their lungs collapsed, Imperial citizens were frozen mid-scream, their bodies disintegrating as an Exterminatus brought about by his contagions killed a world.

Brothers.

Sisters.

Fathers.

Mothers.

He had killed, and he had killed, and he had killed. He had fired his bolter until it clicked dry, severed and stabbed until his blade blunted, and crushed until there was nothing left to destroy.

Heretic. Traitor. Murderer.

He could not deny these curses. He looked down at his hands, seeing the innocent blood shed over the millennia flowing from cadaverous claws, the undeniable scarlet sin seeping from them, tainting the scuffed surface beneath him.

The sacrifices had been worth it. Every slaughtered world, every heart carved out with the sacred blade, the trail of ash and death left in his wake. He had done so much good with the power, he was saving reality, breaking down the lies of the Imperium, he had found a purpose in his eternal life. He could stand alone against the Empire that had forged him, and win.

He was a force of nature, the inevitable end of all life, the eternal warrior of entropy.

And now it was contemptuously easy for a little girl to defeat him.

The wraiths vanished, fading into the deadened recesses of his rotten mind, their task complete.

What in the hells was he doing here? Trying to win this for the institute? He failed to stifle a laugh at that notion. They were doomed. They were little more than playthings for the elder primes, heaping mud on their heads and proclaiming themselves as kings, only to have it all torn away from them in a singular moment of cruelty.

He had joined the Institute because Nealaphh had offered him a war worth fighting. It seemed like Hubris now, a foolish dream of glory that existed for as long as it took for a child to pound him into the dirt. Why would he fight a war he had no hope of winning?

The answer pierced his haze like an answer from the Gods themselves.

To make the bastards bleed.

If weakness did not exist within their demiurge-forged bodies, then he would force it upon them. He would taint their disgustingly pure blood with the love of Nurgle, he would shatter bones under his blows, he would sever the bonds that tied them to this world. He would make them just like him. When they looked over his broken body, feeling his gifts worm through their veins, they would see the cycle, see how it all needed to end, to start again.

He staggered forth, his emaciated frame ravaged by a thousand minor wounds. He was already damned, doomed to die in this worthless mockery of realspace. If he could not have his victory, then he would deny it to the unworthy. If he could not kill, he would maim, he would break, he would let their wounds fester and rot.

He would teach them what it meant to live, what it was like to suffer through ten millennia of guilt, of shame, of the sheer inability to die and know some kind of peace, or they would die attempting to comprehend his suffering.