(Preshow) Staging Area

[Okor]

His helm lay upon the transparent table, the corruption slowly seeping from the armour turning the surface opaque. Pallid flesh, stretched taut across angular cheekbones, competed for domination against ebon follicles, a constant war for domination of his face. A claw, coated in contaminants, raised a steaming cylinder to blackened lips, shattered shards of teeth lurking behind them, riddled with cracks and cavities, to mention nothing of the parasites. The serf manning the recaf dispenser had given him only the briefest of looks before scurrying off to acquire his order.

Chemicals spat from the noxious brew clutched in his grasp, the liquid sizzling against his skin as it began to burn through, melting through leathery flesh. The potent brew of stimulants he even now tipped towards the black abyss of his maw was never intended for mere mortals. Mankind’s greatest minds had forged the likes of Okor, and its greatest foes had sculpted him into something more.

And all it took was a lapse of discipline, a painfully pathetic firefight in a chemical plant, and half-remembered recipes from a homeworld cloaked in toxic fog to create something that could perfect it.

Frenzon. Stimm. Onslaught. Spur. A thousand other lesser variations of these mind-ruining incitations to slaughter passed his lips, the chemical sludge slowly melting its way down his throat, every second bringing more ruin as the decidedly lethal brew entered his bloodstream. A warning flashed from his abandoned helmet, his armour registering the change within his bodily systems, desperately attempting to warn him off of his course of action.

With the corrosive liquid now sizzling through his throat, he tumped the thermos onto the table, its continued integrity speaking volumes to its construction. The seat creaked and cracked as he rested his weight against it, the constant hum of the atomic fire that powered his warplate silencing his quiet sigh.

His hearts stopped beating, frozen in shock by the overdose of stimulants, barely spasming before they were overtaken by the lethal amount of toxins within his blood. For the briefest of moments, he remained rigid, untold centuries of rigor mortis setting in.

And then, it kicked in. His twinned hearts whipped themselves into a frenzy, sending the venomous vitae coursing through every centimeter of his corroded circulatory system. Hands clenched as the muscles received their dose, almost tearing themselves off the bone as they rejoiced in the moment of life they had been gifted. His eye twitched, the infectious mass of gelatinous tissue briefly scouring his surroundings for things he had so long repressed: Wine, women, words, the unknown pleasures of cooked meat. He could get up right now, break through the glass, tear off his armour, and prance through the meadow forever, feeling every gust of the wind, tasting every particle of pollen adrift on the breeze. He was ali-

The numbness seeped back in. Extremities once alight with sensation died, the familiar feeling of nothingness propagating through his being. The madness of the living abandoned him, his cells returning to their half-functioning state of normalcy. His face warped into an expression of pain for a moment, coughing up a bloody gobbet of lung tissue and lethal combat stimulants.

There were things to be said for living, to be sure. But those days were past him.

He resettled his weight, pulling the rusted mass of his bolter to the table, running his hands along its corroded mass. He pulled the magazine from its feed, carefully inspecting every irradiated shell, gazing upon the devotional etches and taunts scratched onto the explosive tips.

But now, he was but another corpse on the battlefield.