Dead Man's Dreams

[Okor]

At first, there was the void.

Pale, lean arms clutched themselves to the child's exposed sides, his malnourished torso shuddering and shivering in the endless void surrounding him. Roughspun fabric, stained and dirtied with mud, clung to undeniably sturdy legs. He unsteadily clambered to his feet, the warmth of life slowly seeping from his mouth as steam filled the frozen air. Rag-wrapped feet cautiously advanced over the abject nothingness of this absurd reality, hazel eyes darting around the infinite emptiness, desperately seeking out a point of stability. There was none. His heart hammered in his broad chest, beating desperately against the disparate ribs of his torso, its all-consuming pulse ever-present. Awkward legs fell over nothingness as the whelp stumbled backwards, skinning deathly pale arms on the harsh surface of unreality. Saline solution leaked from innocent eyes, as the child bleated in heavily accented gothic, crying out in the native tongue of Barbarus for a familiar face, for a coddling caress, to be drowned in weakness.

From the void came creation.

Twisting roots burst forth from where there was once the sentience-annihilating nothingness, coiling around each other in rampant growth, entwining around each other as towers of wood soared towards the presumed sky, piercing the infinite darkness. Sobbing cries echoed throughout the freshly summoned world, a lone babe clinging to the byzantine network of plant matter leagues above the hypothetical forest floor. Burgeoning buds, the leafy spear-tips of sharpened shafts, sprouted from the mighty arboreum, vorpal-edged vegetation slicing at the calloused palms of the youth, his grip failing as his limbs flailed helplessly below him. A piteous scream began as new growth began to pierce the whelp's palm, burrowing into already hardened flesh. His grip failed, hard-worn digits failing as his endless fall began.

A hand seemingly carved from marble clasped around the child's wrist, hauling the youth into the air, as a statuesque figure, the gene-scultped physique like that of an ancient Terran god, snow-white skin yet unmarred by scars. As the whelp looked into his own face, the Demigod growled. "Sometimes, I forget you're dead."

Reality warped, shifted, changed once more. His scythe cut through the chaff, the iron blade severing stems as it parted the ever-present fog. It sung a simple song of labour as it claimed its toll from the crop, carving out life from this realm of death. Perhaps his life would have been like this, until the walkers claimed him.

The fateful day came sooner than he had hoped.

Pallid, rotten beings that not longer deserved to be human shambled out of the shrouding fog. The distant cries of the elders could be heard as they scrambled to organize a defense, but it was useless. After all, this was Okor's struggle. Ectoplasmic wraiths drifted at the edge of his vision, ancient warriors fighting and dying to protect a home that fell to dust ten millennia ago. His own scythe swung, lopping a still-moving limb from a lumbering corpse, succeeding in little more than distracting it long enough for an arrow to enter its eye socket. The curved blade took on an erratic life of its own, momentum carrying it in a twirling arc of destruction.

That is, until his sole hope of survival lodged in a ribcage, doing little more than impairing the monster's movement. Terror welling in his untempered soul, the child ran, rag-wrapped feet slapping against the blood-stained earth as the darkness closed in. Shadows slithered ever-closer, seeking the warmth of his life, entwining around his ankles before they broke under his panicked flight, ethereal fetters falling like shredded parchment, its immaterial substance burning away into nothing as it was denied existence.

He threw himself into the wreckage of a shrine, the trio of circles marking its affiliation unfamiliar. The ragged remnants of villagers laid strewn about the simple place of worship, crimson rivers staining the once-hallowed ground. Weak whimpering emanated from the rusted altar in the center of the carnal house, a slight figure pressing a frail hand against a ragged rent in her side.

His Sister.

She cried, wept, begged in the guttural tongue of his people for him to save her, to take her from this place of pain.

His monster.

It placed an armoured hand on his shoulder, pressing a broken piece of masonry into his hand as it growled into his ear. "She'll bring them here. If they don't take the both of you, she'll rise, hungry for... Flesh and Blood." Fetid breath wafted over his face, adding another reason for his tears. "There's only one way to survive. She'll wake them." He pointed a claw, almost a mirror of the walker's own, towards the mauled corpses. "It would be a... Mercy. End her. Save us." It insisted, a malevolent, blazing eye burning itself into his retinas. He raised the jagged hunk of rock over the young girl's head, the whispers of the damned urging him onward to violence and his condemnation. The mist-shrouded sun illuminated the stone, framing it at the apex of its murderous arc.

And then, he stopped.

"What are you doing? She will be our end!" Shouted the Daemon hovering over his shoulders, necrotic claws passing through his torso. He shivered, the ice-cold touch of the beast seeking his soul, rather than his flesh. "This is how you survived! This is how we were born!" It gripped his throat, shouting into his tear-streaked visage. "Either she dies, or both of you! Claim her, and be reborn! You will walk the st-"

He dropped the stone, its pitted surface clattering against the masonry as all sound died.

That is, save for the hateful scream of the Neverborn, iridescence streaming into its blighted frame, forcing it into a shimmering portal, chains of light forcing back the darkness. It still screeched lies at him, promising a symbiosis that would save him from this reality. He no longer listened, smiling as the tableau of atrocities began to fade, as the familiarity of home began to creep back into vision, freeing him from this awful, eternal dream.

[Okor]

A shriek of pure agony echoed across roiling nexuses of energy the colour of bruised flesh, a harrowing howl borne of soul-shattering pain. Gaping holes burnt their way into his rusted carapace, the shimmering sheen of Omnillium tearing him apart as it left him, rending decrepit flesh in its flight. With a sigh, the gangrenous giant collapsed, slumping to the ethereal surface of the immaterium, dead flesh refusing to trespass on where the smiling god's grace had fled.

Rejected.

His failures echoed through his maggot-ridden brain, reinforcing the undeniable truth: He had been denied. His own self had scorned him, cast him off. He had kept them alive, hardened their soul and hide, suffered through the millennia. And yet, he was spurned. He had paid the cost for immortality willingly and eagerly, and all he had to do was accept the gift. But he had failed to do that. And so, he was without purpose, without form.

Just what was he now? He ran a claw through the tides of dreamstuff, plague-ridden digits twitching in the languid river of imagination. He was banished to the etherium, but he was no Daemon.

He was Okor Paleblood, son of Barbarus, gene-child of Mortation, veteran of the Long War, Champion of Nurgle.

He was alone.

The whispering susurrus of his symbiotes was silenced, their incessant hunger vanished. With a groan, he forced himself to his benumbed feet, ceramite and machinery creaking as it augmented the strength of mummified limbs. A lone ravaged eye blinked in the sunless light, minute tunnels left by parasite suffusing his vitreous humours. He took a rattling breath, inhaling a wide variety of toxic gasses into his decrepit lungs. Rusted steel stomped on a strand of raw potential, its infinite surface supporting his titanic weight. Deathly breath seeped from gaping wounds in his hide, glimmering sparkles of Omnillium residing within his tormented corporeal form.

He was alive.

He took another lumbering step, his corruption seeping into the disparate threads and spinnerets of dreams. A gurgling laugh spilled forth from his infectious maw, echoing around the numerous nebulae present in this realm of raw power. For once, he was in something approximating home. The Warp. He stood in the realm of souls, in the home of Gods. He trespassed upon their deific domains, inhaling their atmosphere of ambrosia. Decayed digits twitched, settling into clenched fists. This was something he could work with, a realm he was familiar with. Oh, the endless intrigues and manipulations that affected the Legions was a hard-learned lesson, but The Warp? It was intrinsic. Its infinite power, its potential, its dangers.

He was no longer ensnared the The Smiling One, enthralled by an empowered child's whims.

He was home.

He laughed as he ensnared power in his dead hands, twisting the strength of the Gods themselves to his will. He forced purposeless energy together, setting it in place as a rusted trail of steel. Claws dangled behind him, leaving furrows of rot, the eternal life promised by The Grandfather. With every stride, he spread the glory of his Lord, the tormented immortality that was offered by the God of Entropy. Infinite possibilities solidified as he walked, coming to the inevitable conclusion: Death. It was a spreading disease, a cancerous lump of pure silence in this world of raucous noise. A manic grin blossomed beneath his ancient helmet, a rotten visage warping as its jaundiced skin pulled back, revealing blackened, broken teeth. There were no Gods here, no Daemons, no one to stop him.

There was only Okor, and his will was reality.

And he would make this new realm into paradise, a gangrenous garden of living death, an eternity of half-dead revelry and life. He cackled as he waved his necrotic hand over an expanse of dreams, watching them grey and slowly still, hopes quietly fading away at his whim.

Mad laughter echoed in the Astral Realm as the Dead God did his eternal work.

[Okor]

Eventually, the rollicking peals of laughter that echoed across the aetheric eternity ceased, fading into the immaterial existence the Demigod was imprisoned in. The shattered hopes and shorn dreams that bore his blighted form aloft withered as they melded with a featureless porcelain plane, a seemingly endless disc of ivory that stretched as far as his infected eye could comprehend. His prior nihilistic abandon discarded, a corroded sole, a match to his own entropic essence, gingerly touched the alabaster realm. Far on the horizon, a dark figure stood resplendent, a midnight-blue contrasting against the pale infinity. Rotten hands clasped around the decrepit leather wrapped around the rusted hilt, sliding the cleaver from its poor excuse for a scabbard, a single eye struggling to size up the intruder from this distance. One more fool, one more corpse, and one more sacrifice to the Grandfather’s glory.

It was at that point the world warped and shifted, tossing the gangrenous giant forward, his verdigris-coated tool of violence clattering away into the abyss as the endless horizon collapsed and shrunk, the momentum of its sudden shift bringing him to his knees before this newcomer. Hooves forged of stars blended into ebon fur like that of the abyss, a tableau of the emptiness between worlds, the cold and hungry void in which countless ruined warships twirled and danced their final dance amongst the shrapnel of their final battle. His rot-riddled iris continued trailing up the contours of the creature’s equine body, cataloguing the noted lack of armour, the raven-like wings, the curious lunar sigils, and the jeweled crown prominent behind the sharp spine of bone jutting from their forehead, a beauteous mirror to his monstrous horn. Translucent blood slowly seeped through his body, barely-functioning glands and injectors adding combat stimulants into the sludge of filth flowing through his veins, every sense sharpening as his desperate breaths turned shallow, ancient lessons in ruthlessness returning as he prepared to tear out this unknown assailant’s throat. Every dessicated muscle tensed as pestilent claws twitched, the addictive thrill of battle built into his very being singing a siren call, beckoning his violent urges, demanding the death, the kill, the spilling of this abomination’s blood, a revelry of mankind’s glory over the creature’s ravaged corpse. He surged forward, hands bent into rending talons seeking the beast’s throat, eager to maim, to kill, to burn until there was nothing left but ashes.

Invisible chains tightened around his necrotic limbs, binding the murderous power he was desperate to unleash, holding the titan immobile before the elegant equestrian. Servos snarled as he strained against his chains, refusing to be contained by sorcery. A resonant voice that slid into both his mind and his ears issued forth from the adorned creature, the tone harkening back to the dimly recalled decade before The Legion took him. “Such anger, in such a wounded form. Tell me, Warrior. What happened to you? Who made you what you are?” The words caressed his consciousness, an unspoken promise of redemption and kindness hanging in the air. A crimson oculary organ, still level with the creature’s own eyes despite his restrained stature, hatefully gazing into the face of his captor. ”I do not… answer to you.” He spat, both metaphorical and literal acid present in his declaration, corrosive spittle flecking the jagged, disarrayed fangs scattered around his infested maw.

“No, perhaps you do not. Why would someone of your stature sing their story to a stranger in this strange realm?” Pinpricks of light rushed to their horn, convalescing into a nimbus of power, the light burning away his sight, incinerating his perception as all that he shrouded himself within was burned away, a howl of pain and anger silenced by the tempest.

“You will show me.”

[Okor]

The confidence was little more than a veneer, a mask of self-assurance projected over the doubt that wormed away at the princess from the inside. She had been drawn here by the corruption seeping into the Astral Realm, the damage that was being done to dreams, and the shining beacon of a damaged soul, a situation that demanded her attention. She had expected to save a lost dreamer from some form of dream monster, and instead... This.

What kind of a man dreams with his sword drawn, and his body clad in armour? Most people let their guard down in their dreams, clinging to the belief that these were mere dreams. Luna had seen more than enough to discount the theory that the Astral Realm was safe and innocent. This creature was a mystery, a wounded mind that needed to be healed. She refused to leave a single soul behind in this land. The princess closed her eyes, and delved into the rotting hulk's mind...

... And tasted the decayed flesh of a brother. A gobbet of meat, torn from the fallen corpse of a warrior nearly identical to himself in every way, was shoved into a twisted maw, broken and blackened fangs masticating the life-sustaining material. Cooled blood splattered against the dark hair that matted his chin, as his claws reached forward to salvage more flesh from the deceased. A long piece of shrapnel piercing the decrepit helmet of the warrior marked the wound that slew him, the blow that ended a legacy centuries in the making. It was no use debating mortality, or the morality on what had occurred. The lives of the Death Guard were at Nurgle's liberty to spend, and nothing would take them without his permission. Not the gifts he blessed them with, not the cold void of space, and certainly not hunger. A dead eye gazed up into the heavens, piercing the clouds as it looked upon the planet it orbited. Or rather, the planet it used to orbit. A molten core began to disperse, a glowing ooze, its dying light shining through the great emptiness, spreading over the splintered remnants of a planet he'd never bother to remember. He could muster no oaths of vengeance, no howls of rage to mark the demise of his brother. This was just one more debt to be repaid to the Imperium, a single death when entire Legions had been gutted and slaughtered at the walls of Terra. Justice would be done, though the heavens themselves bled and burned. Even here, things would be made right, the damned eternity forged by a mad god would bend and break under the Gods' will, and he would be anointed their champion...

There. That was it, the key, the mental lock to crack, the one that would end his madness. She focused her mental energies upon the grim scene portrayed, and began to change it, warping and twisting his consciousness, seeking to sever what man might remain in that blasted shell from the corrupting influence of its strange beliefs. He would need to face his fears, and emerge from his trials reborn…

Okor opened his cyclopean eye to the emptiness that prevaded this damnable realm, blinking away bloody tears as he forced himself off of the porcelain plane. Where was the creature? He began to seek for his foe, an endeavour which ended as he settled his sight upon the hallowed ground in front of him.

A mound of skulls, every one a unique facet in the titanic construct, some larger than a battle tank, others disquietingly small, stood before him. Frozen torrents of liquid rage stood in stasis on its monolithic flanks, glowing tributaries resplendent as they burned their immortal hatred into his retina. Two massive skulls, great burning rents marring their ivory surface, capped twin cliffs of bone, sparks of infinite anger still burning in empty eye sockets. Leaning against this macabre monument was a blade of legendary proportions, the hate-spawned runes rampaging across its length giving it the strength to shatter reality itself, carving through the thin barrier between the material realm and the Etherium.

Resting in the seat of this ossified temple to murder, the capstone to this petrified plinth, was nothing.

Where the great blood and grass God of Slaughter should have rested, was a silent void, a chilling emptiness utterly devoid of the smouldering rage that defined Khorne. Pressing his hands to his temples, Okor spun away from this scene of existential horror, only to be faced with further evidence of inexpressible terror.

A crystalline tower, iridescent geodes containing enough arcane power to annihilate the world and remake it in a maddened parody of what it once was, stood empty. It’s ever-changing master was absent, his constantly warping seat of power frozen in time, defied its uncontrollable mutation. Tzeentch, the changer of ways, the shaper of fate, was removed from this damnable reality.

A marble chaise, it's unmarred surface veined with gold, its structure shaped to support an anatomy that was largely up to the creature’s whim of the moment, stood resplendent in a sea of faceless, impossibly beautiful androgynous figures. Diamond barbs idly twisted along its surface, seeking to aggravate and intensify both pleasure and pain, stimulating every possible sense in the hopes of making the Dark Princeling feel anything. This world was denied the twisted vision of perfection and hedonism, the joy of life, and the drive to exaltation offered by Slaanesh.

A throne of thorns and swords stood shrouded in the shadows, its average size making it seem miniscule in comparison to the monolithic structures that surrounded it. An aura of aggression radiated from it, undirected hatred of all things infusing the air, carrying a silent promise of bladed death. Even the seat was not safe, innumerable points facing inward to ravage who dared to claim this place of power.

Still reeling from these revelations, the Plague Marine stumbled backwards, the sheer nothingness where there should have been the very essence of both creation and destruction overwhelming him. Slipping on a patch of his own putrescent emanations, he slammed to the ground, rusted armour clashing against the illogic that formed this realm, cracking his horn against the solidity of madness. Hastily drawing a corrupted breath into leprous lungs, he was unable to do naught but stare at the scene before him.

A massive construct of rotten wood rose above him, warped spires of pus-stained timber connecting a seat of massive size to twin curved rockers, their size nigh-incomprehensible. It was the throne he had dared to dream to take for his own, the titanic relic filling his vision. It was the seat of power of The Grandfather, The Lord of All, his patron. The great God that had kept him alive during millennia of warfare, the one that had blessed him with all of his gifts. It was an age of constant war, of endless death and decay, but while Battle Brothers were created and destroyed, Entropy was the one constant, the only thing that he could be sure of in this life.

The emptiness dispelled that notion. Translucent tears slid down his rotten face, claws clenching as he laid in this anathema, this godless realm.

“There is no reason to fight here, Warrior.” Came a voice without source, its presence intruding upon this hallowed ground. “Your fight was left behind you, in a realm you are no longer a part of. There is no need for conflict, no want, no need.” A ghostly image of the mage’s equine visage floated into view, their prominent ivory spear shrouded in an aura of tangible power. “You need only lay down your arms, and this can become a paradise.” Images of an idyllic land, a veritable pleasure world began to seep in at the edges of his vision, peaceful vistas starting to overlay themselves over his vision.

”No.”

He hauled himself upwards, wrapping an arm around his greave to steady himself. ”This world is devoid of gods, without any king worthy of his title, and I have seen not even half a dozen that… deserve to be called men.” He raked a claw down his helmet, wiping away his bloody tears. ”There is no life without an end, no glory without failure. A legend in this world is… consigned to ignominy in reality. Every blow I strike here, I strike to bring meaning. I kill and I take trophies, so that they remember their failure. I slay and bring shame, so that they will... never oppose me again. I force an end upon them. I bring fear, and I bring pain, so that the primes remember their mortality.” Infected saliva dripped from his fangs, falling into the cesspool of his pestilent mouth. ”If there are no Gods to bring strife and forge mankind into something greater, then…”

“I will bring them here.”

He coughed, wracking his ethereal form with plague-wrought spasms. He stumbled to his feet, Omnillium coalescing around his being. ”I will save this realm from its indolence. They will know pain. They will know… hunger. With every torment they endure, they will scar and grow stronger. The weak will fall, and the worthy will rise.” A hole-ridden tongue slid across shattered teeth. ”And I intend to be on top.” Hissed the monster, as chains forged of raw potential wrapped across him as they pulled him downwards, tearing him from the Astral Realm to the mundane world.

The princess was able to do little but blink at the chasm where the man once stood. She had given him purpose, but was it proper? They had been galvanized into action, inspired to wield blade and bullet against the Omniverse at large. Had she done the right thing? They nervously swallowed before flexing their wings of starlight, lifting themselves into the ether on pinions of power. Whatever fate had in store for him, it was no longer within her power to control.

There was little she could do but watch.