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Seven Great Unclean Ones stood in a great semi-circle around the battlefield, each one pouring maggots, filth, innards from their orifices. They had gathered on this battlefield in silence, as they had countless others. Ku’Gath Plaguefather, the first member of their ever growing family, raised his great, gnarled, meaty fist, then swung it down. The funerary bell in his hand let out a somber, resounding peal.
The Warp responded.
It rolled and shuddered and screamed as something far too massive, far too dangerous rolled within, called to this place of rot and death and sweet, sickly decay. The sound of the bell reverberated, like a thousand throats both laughing and crying at once, then a sickly, pale green grin split the air in the middle of the battlefield.
A rusted, filth encrusted scythe blade slammed through, and reality screamed as the scythe tore the hole in the Immaterium wider. Maggots, corpseflies, scarabs, and dungbeetles fell through it in waves, pattering on the ground and scuttling away to wreak havoc on this new battlefield.
The rift tore massive, then the scythe disappeared, and two hands with stubby, knubbly fingers burst through the rift. Ku’Gath’s own hands resembled these. They pushed the rift even wider, and an obsequiously obese, bulbous stomach burst through. It was split in the center, but no mere carrion insect spilled from it. No, instead, nurglings, happy and giggling spilled from the monstrous belly.
Reality groaned as the being kept fighting with his emergence. And with a final wheeze like a death rattle, the being pushed and was through.
He looked just like the Great Unclean Ones arrayed around him. Or rather, the Great Unclean Ones looked just like him. The Grandfather cast his eyes over the battlefield. A mighty skirmish between his Metastatic Brotherhood and the Raven Guard.
The second Great Unclean One in the funerary procession raised his hand, swinging his massive bell, and it’s peal added to the dirge. It began the Grandfather’s work.
With loving care, he collected every single child. The broken, the desperate, the angry. He laid one out, then nodded and drove his own finger into his chest, carving their name amongst billions of others. An ever running tally of the children that had given themselves for him. They had sacrificed the one thing that he refused to take from them.
Their mortality.
The third bell pealed as Nurgle cleaned each one. They lived in rot, they deserved cleanliness before they became. He cleaned and dressed wounds, washed away soot, cleaned away sins and troubles, then anointed each with blessed oil taken from Ku’Gath’s cauldron. Each got the holy sigil of rot, the threefold pox, the triple boil branded on their foreheads.
The Grandfather then clothed them. It was their best, metaphysically. In reality, it was scraps. Rags and shrouds, each one taken from the many sacrificed in his name. He wrapped each one in their shroud, and with the fourth peal, he wept.
He wailed, he shook, he shuddered. He threw himself to the ground and grieved. A father grieving the death of a thousand sons. He threw himself to the ground and emitted sounds that can only come from the deepest, darkest wells of suffering. His face ran with mucus, his eyes funneled filthy tears as the God of Chaos mourned his children one last time.
The fifth bell pealed, and Nurgle stood, digging. No one helped him. It was his task. He alone would bear the burden. It was the least he could do for being given their final gift. He broke ground one thousand times, he dug six-feet down, and then with gingerness, love, and care, he laid each one in their grave.
On the sixth peal, Nurgle stood, overlooking his task, acceptance coming swiftly. This was the cycle of grief. Of rot, for his children weren’t dead. They had begun the cycle anew.
Mirth came to him then, a great, joyous warmth, and his grotesque laughter rang out over the battlefield, then was gone, the only sound remaining, the lingering peal of the seventh bell.