Threat Elimination Protocols: Active

[Okor]

His blood was irredeemably tainted. A legion of viral plagues ravaged his rotten flesh, parasites squirmed within his ruined organs. This was a situation that had lasted for millennia, the blessings of his patron infusing his very essence. His breath was pestilence, foul new life grew in his wake, and his hunger was that of a thousand famines.

And yet, for the first time since he swore himself to The Lord of All, he felt sick.

The craven’s delicate blade hung from his hip, the Omnillium-forged blade mag-locked to his thigh. The shame that came from taking such a pathetic waste of life’s belongings as a trophy was unavoidable. He had sought to deal justice, to execute a traitor to Primes, to enforce the unspoken rules of humanity upon this warped realm.

But no, the mercurial inhabitants of this realm were never so sane.

Stubs of fingers curled into a infantile fist from the stump of his arm, fresh pallid flesh a scant few centimeters of a slowly advancing sludge replacing his lost ceramite. The loss of a limb was no hindrance to one as blessed as he.

It could have been justice. It could have been right, it could have been witnessed by all as an example: Brutal, fair, unforgiving, just.

But they had turned it into a slaughter.

His cloven hoof impacted against a discarded stormtrooper helmet, another casualty of the endless war between Camelot and Coruscant remembered only by the porcelain armour that flew through the air, bouncing against the uncaring surface of the Nexus. The forgotten fabrication could have been a craven, a champion, an advocate for the cruel mercies of peace, or an agitator for the bloody forges of war. It didn’t matter now. It was a world of constant, endless, infinite change, an infinite spire of haphazard creation piercing the heavens, the collapsed monuments of the past forgotten in the self-destructive drive. Every prime built their own tower of babylon, every brick in the grand cathedral to themselves mortared with their own blood.

It was disgraceful. Okor squatted before the dented helmet, the filth-caked length of his tabard touching the impossibly clean landscape of the nexus. They forgot. They always forgot, their own minds turned inwards, their psyche an impenetrable silver marble into which nothing aside from themselves could enter. Twisted echoes of their own desires, infinitely reflected and warped within their mind.

Shattered sable shards of teeth arranged themselves into a manic grin, a corroded gauntlet raising the ivory helm to his face, corruption seeping into armour from his mere touch. The porcelain purity flaked away as Verdigris overtook it, the Omnillium within it forcing it into an unnatural arrangement, a horn rising from the formerly smooth surface. With a final crack, the wargear was set into place, the aeons-old inertia of Okor refusing to be stalled by something so insignificant as dismemberment and destruction, a hiss of repressurization trapping him within his foul atmosphere.

He was not like those fools. They set themselves ablaze and sought to burn their way into whatever poor excuses for legend this realm had, their every action to be a glorious stand, their every battle one to shake the foundations of reality.

He had dreamed of being a hero, once. He had sought to topple tyrants, to free the galaxy from a false god atop a throne of gold.

He had dreamed of marching, side-by-side with his brethren, the huddled masses of humanity cheering them on as he broke their chains, sprung them free from the mortal coil, delivered them unto Nurgle.

He had dreamed of glory, of righteousness, of being hailed as the prodigal son, of laurel wreaths placed atop his crooked skull in recognition of his duty.

And he had awoken to blood. The deaths of worlds stained his soul, virgin flesh still remained wedged between his fangs. He was broken, battered, betrayed.

And yet, he still went on.

A claw ran across the obsidian surface of the gate, the heat singing the deceased flesh.

He was to kill a titan of legend, a beast the size of a fortress, a monster that had claimed the lives of thousands. It had spawned a nigh-endless brood, its maw was home to a breath that could melt adamantium, its talons could tear him in two, and it lurked inside its own lair, awaiting the fools that came to take its skull.

He was to do his duty.

He stepped through the steaming portal, a flash of flame marking his departure from the Nexus.