A Rotten Return

[Okor]

The familiar void of the nexus rose up to meet Okor, the empty expanse filling his vision as he plummeted, the Angel of Death falling from the wraith-infested world from whence he came. The hulk of decrepit flesh and rusted armour tumbled through the air, limbs flailing as the plague marine made his return to reality.

His landing was not graceful. There was no potential for grace within his body or mind, every fiber of his being bent towards simple, overwhelming brutality. Violence was written into his genome, armour melded to his bones, acid sizzled within his throat. Whatever humanity that once dwelled within his rotting remains had long since been discarded, the flesh-shapers and genetors throwing away innocence, burning it away on the flames of the Emperor’s ambition. He had lost a family, a planet, an empire, a war. But now, he’d lost the Legion.

He landed hard against the surface utterly devoid of detail, his massive weight bouncing upon landing, cracked bones and ceramite rolling against the perfectly flat nothingness.

He forced himself upwards, shattered bones regrowing and mending as their jagged ends bit into his redundant organs, sinking into hole-ridden lungs, tearing at barbed, hungry tendrils nestled within a digestive tract that had eliminated the middleman.

He had failed, again. Struck down on the field of battle, cast into the abyss without bringing a soul down with him.

It was disgraceful.

He clenched his steel-clad fist, the patina coating his armour like that of a bloated corpse floating face down in an idle, algae-infested river. It was as old as his own ancient self, every servo-motor, every strand of synthetic muscle having given as much to the long war as he had. The neural sensors and transfusion ports had long since bonded to his skin, the fusion of man and machine irreversible. Even know, he could feel the static burning, burning, burning into his back, the discordant screams of the machine spirit within demanding an explanation, ammunition counters still registering maximal, his weapons unbloodied despite his loss of what little vital signs he had. It was an inconceivable notion to the simplistic, belligerent intelligence that inhabited his wargear.

Error. Error. Error. The simple message burnt itself onto his display, an accusation of his failures, of the great mistake that was his existence. Some days, he could almost believe it was correct in its judgement. Did he even deserve to don this relic of the Great Crusade, to offer its integrity up to the foe to save his own hide? Targeting reticules dotted his sight, analyzing the structural integrity of his surroundings, inspecting reality in the hopes of finding its breaking point.

He saw it.

A furrow on the detritus of his hand, a gleam of tarnished metal peering through the accumulated dirt of millennia. He twisted his deadened appendage, staring at the ivory embedded within the infection. A dim, purplish aura suffused it, a meager remnant of the world-shaking power once possessed by its original owner.

That Warlock had been as a god in its realm, its strength undeniable as it the creation it shared with the forgotten hero was rent asunder. And now, it was sans a tooth. Skarbrand had earned his place in legend for simply striking out at Khorne, and now here he was, the blood of a god staining his hands, a fragment of divine bone clutched in his grasp.

He rose from his reclined position, the warlock’s fang still merged with his knuckle. He raised his bared hand, pressing a fleshless finger to the side of his helmet, the dataverse overriding his perception of the world.

He had work to do.