[1-3] The Nose

[Okor]

Diseased breath rattled through leprous lungs as Okor awoke, seeing naught but darkness, an odd sensation given the arcane mechanisms of his wargear. It always went wrong, didn’t it? Chitinous shoulders shifted, debris and the corpses of the casualties sliding to the side as his titanic strength exercised itself, the meter-long tube impaling his torso tearing apart his seat, unable to keep Nurgle’s Chosen down. Tainted talons embedded themselves in the rubble, dragging the decrepit bulk of the Champion from the impromptu grave.

Small fires burnt in the ruined fuselage, tattered wires short-circuiting as shattered steel severed their structure. Bloodied, broken limbs protruded from the devastation, the crew of the vessel unfortunately not sharing Okor’s unholy resilience. The stench of burning jet fuel and charred flesh filled the air, fumes far less noxious than those which already infused his respiratory system, permeating the atmosphere.

What in the infinite hells of the warp possessed Jak and his cronies to fabricate a craft so fragile? He’d see Thunderhawks take off after crashes like this, their armoured hulls repainted with the blood of whatever unfortunates happened to be beneath them at the time. Liquor dripped down from fragmented bottles, sparkling champagne mingling with the crimson flowing from shattered bodies.

An arm, twisted and bent by the ravages of the crash, protruded from a dislodged countertop, the all-too-familiar sound of agony and fear issuing forth from the rubble.

How easy it would be to crush their throat, wringing the life from them with a single hand, watching their pathetic existence slip away into the welcoming embrace of the Grandfather. To fill their mortal soul with Nurgle’s gifts, and deliver them to the plagued paradise of the Garden, to sate the eternal thirst for slaughter burning within his soul.

To break his oaths, to toss aside the pledge he made to his Master like a spent bolt casing.

The Legionnaire reached down, diseased digits prying the pink granite slab from the survivor, allowing it to shatter against the opposite wall, shards of iridescent igneous rock falling to the floor. A voice weathered by the atrocities and agonies of millennia spoke. ”Can you… Stand?”

He barely finished speaking before the survivor scurried off, saline solution building in the corners of reddened eyes, nearly stumbling over the wreckage as they disappeared through a gaping hole in the chassis, clutching their broken limb.

Okor followed not far after, cresting the breach as he looked out at the clearing. Splintered trees lined the impact site, the few trunks that remained standing embedded with shrapnel from the crash. Primes and secondaries milled about, tending to wounds, shuddering in terror, or, in the case of primes, simply failing to care. It was Chaos, but without the singularity of purpose that Okor strived for, without the blessing of the Gods. This was mere confusion.

He pulled the pistol mag-locked to his thigh free, thin trickles of pale blood seeping from the pipe buried within his chest. A single round was fired, soaring into the sky before igniting, an unfortunate pelican combusting as it entered its path. For the briefest of moments, the assemblage paused, looking towards the gangrenous giant atop the ruins of the craft.

There was a brief snarl as his helmet adjusted, initiating the vox-caster within.

A claw coated in contagion jabbed itself at the servitor abandoning the scene, the stench of Omni’s corruption in him as rank as it was within Okor’s own self.

”Where do you think you’re running to, Prime? He sneered, the words dripping with contempt and bile.

The half-man stared at him, a crimson lens a near mirror to his own infested Oculus. Their words were devoid of the monotone drone he had come to expect from the lobotomized cyborgs of his own world. “This area’s unsafe, we need to evacuate before it-”

”I don’t know about… you, Half-a-man, but I swore an oath to save lives.” An armoured fist slammed into his semi-organic breastplate, shaking the spear piercing his second heart. ”And I dare say us immortals can risk immolation to pry these… unfortunates from their fate. You can either run, and live forever in shame, or you can… leverage the curses Omni laid upon you to do something worth dying for.”

He laid his eye upon the survivors, holstering his alchemical armaments.

”The strong, start tearing the wreckage apart. Half of you, isolate the.. Explosives, move them into the sea, other half, search for survivors. If your… talents lie elsewhere, get the wounded to safety, tend to them if you can.”

He stood upon the wreckage, a mortal injury barely slowing him, his mammoth frame waiting to be obeyed, the pitted, scarred, and burnt warplate adorning him attesting to his millennia of warfare, the onyx sigil upon his pauldron marking him as The Dean of Security.

823 Words according to Google Docs