The first transformed warrior of the Salamanders Legion climbed out of his coffin.
His movements were stiff and slow, like someone who had just awakened from a long slumber.
His fingers gripped the edge of the coffin. His nails had fallen off, exposing the purplish-black nail beds beneath.
He sat up in the coffin, and the rotten broth of flesh and maggots covering him slid off his body like a waterfall, pooling on the floor in a dark red, viscous mass.
His body was healing.
Those maggots, those thousands upon thousands of white, plump maggots, writhed across his body, burrowing into his wounds and gnawing at his rotten flesh.
But their gnawing was not destroying him. It was rebuilding him.
They secreted a green slime that fused with his cells, reactivating dead tissue, reconnecting severed blood vessels, and piecing shattered bones back together.
With the maggots' help, quadrillions of cells began to divide, multiply, and reorganize, reshaping his body at a speed that defied the laws of nature.
The instant his reconstruction was complete, green Chaos fire suddenly engulfed his body.
He twisted and convulsed in the flames, a shrill, inhuman howl tearing from his mouth.
That sound mingled pain with ecstasy, resistance with acceptance, death with rebirth.
His soul was receiving the blessing of Grandfather Nurgle.
He could feel a warm, corrupt power pouring into his consciousness, caressing his soul, transforming his very essence with a kindness that could not be resisted.
He began to vomit, doubling over as he spewed mouthful after mouthful of black mucus mixed with blood clots.
The mucus hissed as it hit the floor, eating away at the metal surface.
Scarlet blood and yellow pus began seeping from beneath his skin. The fluids squeezed through his pores, forming a viscous protective film over his