[4-14] The Town

[Okor]

The Ascended’s skull clattered against his pauldron, blood-stained bone impacting against the ceramite with every step Okor took, dragging him towards the town. Structures nearly as dilapidated as the Marine loomed on the horizon, hollow holes arrayed across their surfaces, the metallic bones within laid bare to the world, rockcrete rubble clustered at their bases. One such fragment skittered off down a dark alley as he laid a foot on the tarmac, crimson stains, yet to be washed away by the rain, were still evident despite the darkness brought on by the night. Lampposts laid across the street like fallen warriors, a single illuminator flickering briefly, one last swan song of shimmering light before the bulb burst, sparks and shattered glass spraying from its final resting place, a shard skipping across the hard surface before landing next to his feet.

He ground the trappings of civilization beneath his horrid heel, the glass being ground to powder as he snarled, glaring out at the festering remnants of what was once a great city. ”Seems as if they started… without me.”

A howl echoed through the ruins, a hunchbacked creature clambering over a heap of rubble, its twisted spine pressing against jaundiced skin, its fang-lined maw tearing itself apart as it screamed its unnatural rage and undying agony to the heavens. Jagged claws gripped at the fallen cityscape, anchoring it as its warped body fulfilled its purpose, bloated tumours around its throat engorging as it roared, the sound suffusing the atmosphere.

The carrion’s clarion call was quickly taken up by others, warbled hunting howls surrounding the plague marine as he moved forward, fearless of the festering corpses pouring from the ruins surrounding him. His eye fell upon each of them in turn, its gaze menacing the menagerie of monsters. Looming leprous creatures stood next to rotting hulks of corpulent flesh, corpse-gas leaking from every septic seam in the rotten remnants of their corporeal form, twisted mockeries of man skulked in the shadow, cruel eyes and crude weapons betraying the intellect concealed within their rotten brains. Soulless bodies shambled forward, heedless of the massive wounds inflicted upon their physique, entrails and organs spilling from shattered bodies as broken teeth hungrily gnashed at the air, seeking to end an insatiable appetite.

The horde eventually stopped, each and every esoteric abomination beginning to circle the Champion, maintaining their distance whilst attempting to determine whether the newcomer as a fellow festerer, or merely food.

A guttural laugh quickly decided that.

”What a… Disappointment.”

He pulled the flail from his shoulders, the vertebrae gently jangling against each other as the weighted skull crashed down to the blood-stained asphalt.

”When I heard tale of the living dead, I envisioned something more than feral beasts. I have seen the Leprous Legions of the Plague God, marching across reality and freeing its… prisoners from their suffering.”

His fists clenched, slowly cracking the demigod’s spine beneath his claws, thin fissures running through the pure white of the bone.

”I came here for a war, to kill something worth fighting.”

“Instead, I am consigned to Pest Control.”

Whether they understood his words or not, they had reached their consensus, surging and shambling forward as a disorganized mass, nimble necrophages mantling over the detritus of the dead city as their corpulent cousins waddled forward, ham-fisted arms outstretched. His corrupted claw reached down, closing upon a shrunken skull at his waist, the crude technology bolted onto its exterior receptive to his rotten touch, activating the noxious payload within as the ghouls closed on him.

”Pathetic. To think that you know power, when it stands before you. To think that you could be so blind.”

Tainted claws reached out, scrabbling at his nigh-impenetrable ceramite carapace, empty-eyed skulls gnashing, scraping cracked teeth across his armour as he began to disappear beneath the hungering husks.

”Come and see.”

The blight grenade detonated, a cloud of life-eating gas consuming the ravenous rampagers, turning their claws from his warplate to their own throats, their bodies and minds warped and twisted by the infection, but not entirely deadened. As their lives slowly ebbed out, black boils burgeoning across their jaundiced hides and within their esophaguses, Okor began reaping his bloody harvest. The God-forged weapon struck, breaking apart twisted ribcages and malformed skulls, sending the cannibalistic subhumans fying from the deadly fog, only to crash and collapse against the derelict architecture. The murdering mist began to part, the toxic atmosphere no longer able to sustain its killing potential, fading into the ether from which it sprung as the Death Guard delivered a crushing blow from above onto a cowering survivor, the crown of the aspiring deity claiming the unlife before it.

The next wave approached as the Conqueror strode forward, vitae coating his armour, staining the ragged strips of yellowed flesh hanging from his ancient bones, bent on carving his name into the corpses before him, earning his place in this damned realm’s oh-so-short history.

A behemoth charged forward, their obese bulk shaking as thick legs carried them onwards, their oversized maw dripping glowing green liquid of thankfully unknown origin, seeping through blackened fangs. The thunderous cacophony of the wretched refuse of the teeming city, the huddled masses yearning to devour the flesh of the living, came from behind the Champion, rotten feet threatening to drown out the cataclysmic approach of the corpulent corpse before him.

”Come and see,” he snarled, turning as the hulking creature trampled towards him, the weight of its remains preventing it from altering its course as it collided with the horde of lesser beings, scattering whatever remained of its victims through the area, appendages briefly filling the atmosphere. Whatever vestiges of peace the area had once possessed disappeared, the temporarily tranquil town now seething with the living dead, the carnivorous corpses scrambling towards their most recent foe. His bolter barked, sending its last few rounds careening into the back of the bloated monstrosity, blowing apart whatever remained of its innards as it collapsed to the surface of the road, leaking long-rotten bodily fluids onto the ground, spasming as the mockery of life it has possessed slipped away.

Come and see!” He howled to the uncaring universe, his abdomen tearing itself apart as foot-long fangs gnashed at the empty air, dessicated innards flowing forth from within his stomach, seeking fresh meat for his insatiable appetites.

In its absence, it would settle for a new infection to add to the menagerie of maledictions within his malformed corpse.

Barbed lengths of intestinal tract wrapped around the walking dead, tearing their fermenting forms apart, dragging scraps of flesh into the great maw within his stomach, blood and rot flowing from the abyssal chasm set in his abdomen as it devoured, a slurry of masticated meat seeping from between great fangs.

Sanguine stains and still-twitching heaps of flesh lay scattered across the scene of battle, the once-mighty horde devoured and destroyed by the divine warrior, his body shaking as it digested the corpse-meat shovelled into his body, assimilating it into the abominable ecosystem within. He breathed heavily, the lethal air within his lungs little more than a taste of home to the Barbarus-born Nurglite.

A macuahuitl dug deep into his torso, the unnatural strength behind the blow driving it through the ancient armour shielding him from the world, the ambusher striking from behind his back, a cowardly, yet undeniably sound act. The skull-mask worn by the warrior was cracked and broken, giving way to festering flesh and diseased bone, the once-proud tribal warrior corrupted into an eternal killer, a mindless mockery of Okor’s own profession.

”Come and get it.”

He turned and fell, the primitive sword lodged deep within his body, dragging its wielder down to the ground as they desperately attempted to pull the blade from its prison of pestilential flesh. His pauldrons landed upon the forearms of his attacker, rolling on to the ghoulish guerilla to the sweet sound of splintering bone, driving  an elbow into their masked face, sending shards of skull into their visage. His claws wrapped around their throat as they struggled to recover, curses in the black tongue of Daemons spewing from his mouth as he tightened his grip, liquid corruption dripping from his hands. The divine bacteria began to consume the corpse, eating away at its esophagus, the spasms of the creature slowly dying as Okor’s grip spread to its spine, crushing it to dust, vertebrae by vertebrae.

As the corpse gurgled its last breath, the Marine tore the cranium from its resting place, freeing it from its final fetters of flesh. The damaged skull was set upon his side, one more trophy collected over his millennia of murder.

Snarling, he looked to the trauma inflicted upon him, the deep gouge in his shoulder nearly severing his arm, shards of bone lying in the wound where his reinforced skeleton had failed to stop the blow. He reached over with a gangrenous gauntlet, pressing the split flesh together, allowing the bountiful corruption of Nurgle to flow over his maimed body, mending his maimed body, replenishing his unnatural vitality and prolonging his abominable existence.

He dredged his flail from the remains of its last victim, pulling it free from the feeble remnants of a skull as he moved deeper into the arcology, dragging the head of his weapon against the road, the grating of bone on stone a herald of his arrival.

Chaos had come, and may the Gods have mercy on any that dared to stand in its path.

1 SP used for regeneration. 2 Damage healed, up to 16/20 health, by my count. 1620 words according to google docs. Fresh out of SP and fucks.