Rapid Fire Challenge: Disgust - March 2021

[Race Bannon]

Prompt: Disgust

Maximum length: 500 words

Deadline: 31 March 2021

Where to post submissions: In this thread

Note - please make sure all submissions adhere to the forum rules. Any entry that breaks one or more rules shall be removed.

[Mazer Rackham]

From the rancid corpse,

Wracked wickedly by Nurgle,

My soul turns away.

 

(My second attempt at short and sweet....or not... )

 

MR.

[Berzul]

Hungry

 

“It’s good for you.”, his buddies had told him, as they had handed him the dark green canister that was now nestled in between his aching palms.

 

Sure didn’t look like it. 

It was a big, cold, metallic thing. In every way unappealing. With the color around it halfway faded, along with most of the lettering that had once been printed on it. All that was left for one to really make out were some serial numbers down the side. 

“Zero, nine, five, five… dash seven.”, he read aloud to himself.

“Zero, nine, five, five… dash seven.”, he read a couple of more times. Silently mouthing the words at the last number, on the last utterance. 

“Seven…”

He had once served under a sergeant named Seven. 

He suddenly found himself reminiscing about his time with the 144th. The siege of Argepoli. Ten solar months of travel for a deployment lasting less than ten solar days, that had been. Seven, with his blind eye and crooked smile, had riled them up good since the beginning. With stories of the battle that they would be a part of, and of the many lives that they would save by liberating that agri-world. He had infused the fiery spirit of the Imperium into their hearts, with stories of the feast that would follow after their victory. Served from untold treasures, taken from the great kitchens and pantries that they would save.

Ten solar months of daydreaming through a fast, and in the end, the siege had been broken by the Emperor’s own Angels of Death. 

 

The 144th’s job had been to clean up after them. Gathering up corpses and throwing them into the grinders, for disposal. Shoveling up grain, and packing it up for storage. Digging out the ground, to make water drains for the various cisterns. 

Their promised celebration feast then came, in the form of service orders for a new deployment. Under a new sergeant. After Seven had been declared killed in action, with any and all attempts at finding him having been abandoned. 

He grew tired of meals in big, cold, metallic things, painted green, after that. 

Two years from the siege, yet he still could not muster an appetite for them. Rather forcing himself to eat, just to survive. 

But this time?

“Seven…”, he mouthed again, as he snapped open the canister. 

Inside of it he found the same brownish cube of starch, as in every canister before it. But also, something else. A crooked fold under a pale-white blister, there, on the surface of his food. Staring up at him.

“... It is… very good to see you again, sir.”, he murmured to himself. With a fiendish smile forming upon his face, and an unholy form of ravenous hunger beginning to grow deep inside him.

He devoured the thing, and then looked up while licking the lid. He stared at the faces of his fellow guardsmen. Saw their crooked smiles and pale-white eyes, and noticed how hungry he still was.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Berzul

[Brother Lunkhead]

Delightfully horrific ..... ........

[Berzul]

Thanks! :D

I'm not satisfied with the ending, though. I feel I rush into it a bit. But, 500 words makes it hard. In any case, I might change it up a bit for my own collection at some point. It will stay as is here in the thread.

[Brother Lunkhead]

Thanks!

 

I'm not satisfied with the ending, though. I feel I rush into it a bit. But, 500 words makes it hard. In any case, I might change it up a bit for my own collection at some point. It will stay as is here in the thread.

I think the ending is perfect. Although, I understand. An artist is never satisfied.

[Berzul]

 

 

Thanks!

 

I'm not satisfied with the ending, though. I feel I rush into it a bit. But, 500 words makes it hard. In any case, I might change it up a bit for my own collection at some point. It will stay as is here in the thread.

I think the ending is perfect. Although, I understand. An artist is never satisfied.

Thank you.

 

... Ok, I'll leave it is as is.

 

It's probably just my obsessive take on it, playing against me.

[Kierdale]

My entry for this month.

 

Hidden Content

Even the scream of his jumppack could not drown out the roar of battle. Artillery continued to pound the gates of the enemy fortress, and he could see massed infantry advancing upon the walls once again. Crossing a no-man’s land pockmarked with craters and wrecks. Carpeted with bodies. Near constant streams of fire, both energy and solid shot, flowed both ways.

At a hand signal he and his squad dove down from their vantage point upon the mountain overlooking the stronghold. An attack from this quarter was unexpected. The enemy underestimated them, but he knew the tactic would pay off.

Their weapons bucked in their hands, the few sentries collapsed, and they were in. Polished boots pounding across the rooftop landing pad they leapfrogged toward the doorway and pounded their way down the stairs. He spared a glance over the parapet, out across the fortress’s courtyard to the turret-flanked gates, where their comrades continue to throw themselves against the defences. No frontal assault would take this stronghold anytime soon. Numbskulls.

* * * * *

Running from alcove to alcove they advanced through the hallways in silence until that was split by the roar of high caliber gunfire. The commander’s personal guard.

The trooper to his right went down but immediately his squad mates dragged him back into cover and he waved them back while another emptied his magazine toward the doorway the guard had appeared in. Suppressed, they managed to retreat.

Powered armour hissing, the guard advanced down the hallway, weapon tracking back and forth, his eyes glancing to the blood trail of the intruder he had dropped. He followed it into a vaulted chamber, eyes scanning the forest of columns that held up the ceiling. The trail ended in a slumped form, barely moving. He raised his weapon to finish it off, a question nagging at the back of his mind. Where are the rest of them?

They did not engage their jumppacks as they fell from the rafters, jagged knives seeking out the joints between the guard’s armour.

* * * * *

Their comrades found them in the command center, stood to attention, weapons across their chests, their squad leader with a foot resting upon the enemy commander’s body.

Warboss Grimgob stroked his squig-hair beard and his beady red eyes looked from the tidiest squad in his army to the flattened gates and the smoking towers that flanked it. The wrecks of tanks, buggies and battlewagons that littered the courtyard and the fields beyond the wall. All the bodies, greenskin and ‘ooman. What a glorious battle it had been.

He looked back to the squad of stormboys.

And these young gitz had spoiled the lot of it.

“Youze idiots!” He spat. “Disgusting!”

This wasn’t how Orks fought! Oh, how he despaired for da yoof of today.

[Mazer Rackham]

I'm a little late with this, for which I apologise, but just busy ;)

 

Berzul: That is very gribbly indeed!  Urgh!  

 

Kierdale: A nice direction swerve away from the prompt, enjoyed that one a lot.

 

MR.

[Dosjetka]

A short senryū for Mazer, loosely fitting this month's theme.

 

an inquisitrix

vomiting, kneeling, weak -
ravenous kroot advance

[Urauloth]

Editing this down was brutal, it was over 1000 words as a draft. It... kind of survived, in concept anyway, but it's a bit like one of those guys in Age of Sigmar who cut their faces off to wear as belts and replace their arms with knives. I wanted to look at the boundary between disgust and fascination as well as poking about a bit in tech-heresy. I hope it's interesting.

edit: neither spoiler nor hidden tags are working on this post, sorry for all the editing. Looks like horizontal rule doesn't work anymore either, so this post is formatting hell now.

 

Knowledge

 

He had to know.
It was forbidden, of course. To speak to a heretek was a crime and a terrible risk - to the mind, soul, and the integrity of one's data. Magos Eustakhios had taken all the precautions he could. The link would be simple vox, secured against intrusion. He would use a secondary memory core to platform the event, warded and partitioned from his main systems.

 

When the channel opened, there was a moment of dead silence. As he fought to suppress organic nausea, his questions tumbled out as a single accusatory interrogation. "Why?"

 

A series of quiet clicks was his only reply. He continued, angry, before the limited functions of his partitioned core deduced the heretek was likely adjusting some system to synthesize fleshvoice in reply.

 

"Why did you turn from everything sacred to the Machine-God to grub in the dark with witches and xenoforms? Why did you betray the Omnissiah?"

 

He braced himself for the ravings of a blood-mad fiend. Instead, a measured synth-voice replied as though his accusations were a matter of scholarly debate.

 

"I did not," said Magos Oshaard Holst, "there is no Omnissiah. All I do is within the bounds of the Machine-God's designs. It cannot be otherwise in the galaxy he made."

 

Eustakhios gave an involuntary bark of binharic repudiation, silent to the isolated vox channel. "You make mockery of his works. Where he creates, you bring only decay and corruption. You spit upon the divinity of mankind. To deny the Omnissiah-"

He was arguing with the heretek. This was dangerous ground. He considered closing the channel, but he had yet to learn anything, and acquisition of knowledge was paramount.

 

"The myth of the Omnissiah is a fetter to a tyrant's throne," Holst replied. Such abomination spoken so casually. There was the faintest burr of static to the synth-voice, as if it came from a system beginning to deteriorate. "The Machine-God creates and destroys with an even hand, you know this. He did not create a static galaxy. Did he not create the miracle of rust? Did he not plan for entropy? Decay and collapse are his mechanisms, just as they are Quaramar's, and his father's. Olympian dogma blinkers you. The betrayal is your own - of the Quest for Knowledge."

 

Eustakhios' revulsion was heightened by the glimmer of logic he identified in the words. This was fascinating, but far too dangerous to be retained. He initiated core separation. Before the vox-link closed and the secondary core was explosively ejected from his spine, it caught Holst's final words to him: "Knowledge is why you reached out to me. When your walls fail, as all things must, I will enlighten you."

 

With a jolt Eustakhios re-engaged with his main core. The secondary lay on the deck, wisping smoke. What was on it? He should destroy it. He would not have ejected it without good reason. But to destroy knowledge...

After a second's consideration, he picked it up carefully and stowed it inside his robe.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Urauloth

[Mazer Rackham]

Whatever editing you did was a good job, this is pretty tight.  Good stuff!

 

MR.

[Kierdale]

Urauloth, that was excellent work! :tu:

 

I hope you will be able to continue the story in a future challenge. Or if it’s not in the challenge but simply as an independent thread please post a link here so we can continue to follow it. :)