Love it! Great story.

By that (valid) logic it would mean enslavement of his plague children though. Nugle wants his children to be free so they can cause suffering.

Good point on corpse guy!
No more need for a thousand psykers each day, just throw an Immortal at him every once in a while after he got into a fight with one of his kids. Again. So most likely, once a week. 😂

Great dialogue!

No kill I.

Hearts on Fire

Daniel and Michelle both walk into a spiderweb, even while walking one in front of the other, with her huddled behind him. It was supposed to be a simple hike through the woods, but the sun had sat well before they made it back to their cabin.

Daniel’s eyes are closed, and he’s spitting. “It’s in my mouth,” he complains

Michelle’s hair is out of its holder, and she keeps jerking and pulling away from imagined things crawling on her. She combs her fingers through her hair repeatedly and continues to dust off things that aren’t there.

“Ugh,” Michelle groans. “Why did you let me walk into that?”

Daniel runs his palm down his face, then over his hair. “It’s not like I could see the thing. Besides, I thought you were behind me. How did you even walk into it?”

Michelle opens her mouth to speak when a glowing butterfly passes between them. The pastel colors of its wings flap with no discernible body connecting them as glittering dust falls in its wake. Her eyes follow the glitter which leads her to looking down at her feet. Her frantic steps had caused splashes of pastel colors, alternating blue, green, orange, red as she danced away from the web that had encroached on her personal space.

Michelle walks backwards while watching her steps erupt in yellow, purple, then she backs into a tree and turns to see another eruption of color.

Daniel walks up beside her as she’s raising her hands to cover her mouth. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” he says.

She spins back to him. “What’s happening? Are we hallucinating?”

“If you’re also seeing a splash of blue on the tree you just backed into, I’d say this is something other than a hallucination.”

Michelle twirls, each of her steps splashing in a different color. She giggles and runs to a nearby tree, drums on it, then continues her solo onto the other trees nearby. “It’s amazing,” she says, grinning uncontrollably.

Another butterfly takes flight and Michelle looks back to see each of her footsteps pooling and rising off the ground. It’s like they were drops of water that had fallen and splashed but are now rewinding. The drops of color ascend into the air, change into animated wings and fly upward, their glow illuminating the surrounding area.

Michelle’s hands go over her mouth once again, and her eyes go wide, allowing the colors to reflect off of them.

Daniel traces his finger down the trunk of a tree. His finger passes in several loops and arching shapes where a rainbow colored rose soon takes shape. He adds some leaves to the initial stem, then leans forward and blows across the flower’s pedals. Dust moves away from the pedals like the excess that remains when you’re using chalk on a sidewalk.

The flower shifts in an invisible wind, and he reaches, wrapping his fingers around the stem to pull it away. When he turns back with the flower, a gentle dust if falling from the pedals, glittering in their descent. Michelle’s hands are still over her mouth when he proffers the flower. One hand remains over her mouth but the other moves to cover her heart as her eyes fix on Daniel.

“Is this some kind of proposal?” she asks, behind her cupped hand.

“Something like that,” Daniel admits, looking down at the flower. “What would you think about living in a place like this?”

Michelle looks up as the butterflies pass through the treetop canopy and their light, causing the shadows to move as it shines through gaps in the foliage. “I don’t know what you’re asking, but this place… it’s magic.”

Daniel reaches down, takes her hand and closes it around the flowers stem before walking over to her tree-drum. He taps one color and then drags it away from the others, sequentially separating each of them. “You always wanted me to take you home. You wanted to meet the parents, but it’s not that I didn’t want to. My story’s just a little more complicated than you’d probably want to believe.”

Daniel had pulled the separated colors back together and formed a rainbow colored unicorn. He leans towards it and blows. The colorful dust continues to trail off of it as it turns to look at him, then whinnys and gallops across the air.

The unicorn moves over to Michelle, then runs laps around her as she turns to follow it. “The truth is,” Daniel continues, “I’m not from your world. You know the bear attack that you so fervently cited as a reason for us not to come on this trip? Well, those two campers losing their life was actually my fault.”

Michelle gasps. “Are you actually a bear?”

“What? No, of course not. Why would you think such a crazy thing?”

Michelle’s stare becomes flat as she holds out her upturned palm where the unicorn continues to trot in a circle above it. “I’m sort of suspending my belief about how the world works at the moment.”

“Oh,” he says, with a nod. “That’s fair. But this is actually where I’m from, and it’s all I’ve ever known until the day I visited your world. My world is amazing, but it’s also lonely with no one to share it with. Those that I bring here only enjoy it for the night, then don’t remember once they’re gone. After losing those two to that bear, I realized I couldn’t stay in your world any longer and that their deaths were on my hands. You’ll be safe here for the night, but you’ll have to go back in the morning.”

The unicorn’s stage falls away as Michelle lowers her hand back to her side. She looks at the flower, then back at the unicorn. It looks back at her curiously, as if to question why she interrupted its performance. Her gaze then turns back to Daniel, and she walks over to him, reaches for his hand and grips it. “You didn’t bring me here to say goodbye. We came so that you could ask me to stay.”

Michelle presses her chest against his. She turns her gaze upward, compensating for the extra foot of height that he has on her, and meets his eyes. “And if I stay?”

Daniel smiles. “We’d look out for them together, giving them a magical place to stay for the night and letting them go home once the sun is up.”

Michelle turns her head to lay her ear against his chest. The unicorn is there, looking back at her and wondering why it’s no longer getting attention. She closes her eyes, just listening to the thump-thump sounds of a very human heart. “Just let me have tonight to think about it.”

“Yeah,” Daniel agrees, then lays his cheek against the top of her head.

Tired, ancient, and half-dead. Still I come for you.

Would it put an end to disease? I picture people farming diseases in bodies and animals in order to keep a never ending supply of bacteria/cells for use in medicine. He'd love that

Shiny throne corpse guy would love immortals because they could then be sacrificed. Using this authors logic, it would probably take 3 sacrifices of people imbued with this immortality to bring the emperor back to full health. Ultimately he hates being seen as a god though, and I'm excited for all the fallout if it ever comes.

I'm not even that into 40k, why have I done this 🙃

Probably time travel

If you could sacrifice a petri dish of bacteria, them any mammal or reptile would count as billions to trillions of sacrifices...

That made me laugh. Thank you.

Moar

...so you were dating a polymorphed dragon...

Feel bad for the fourth guy

Dr Joseph was a scientist. His goals in life were to explain the unexplainable; understand when others couldn't. While he had a day job at a laboratory, he conducted his own experiments in his free time, mainly with old "magical" books that contained rituals and rites.

Quite surprisingly, lots of these rituals actually had some science behind them. Summoning a twister required some perfectly placed candles at the perfect time, and creating an illusion entailed some silver and vapour. Of course, on the other hand, a lot of them were bogus. Either way, he had made it his hobby to debunk these curious ceremonies of old. Book after book, rite after rite, the more he could see that these rituals had something behind them after all.

This book, though, was different. He found it on a website, and he was intrigued. He never saw a book that looked so old and peculiar. It was being sold for $1000, which may seem like much, but it would be a bargain if the book was as ancient as he thinks it is.

When he obtained the book, something felt odd. It wasn't just the weird texture of the book, there was also a dark aura behind it. He never felt anything like it. The book was also written in a language he didn't recognise, which is puzzling considering the numerous old books he's gone through.

He took a sample of the book to the lab. All his friends and colleagues knew about his hobby. At this point, they just let him indulge in his curiosities, but even they knew that something was wrong. The book's pages, they weren't paper nor papyrus - they were seemingly animal-based. And the ink didn't seem to be ink; rather, they were a variety of bodily fluids. Joseph didn't look into it further. He was starting to get worried. So were his friends. However, he dismissed these feelings. He must remain objective in his studies, even though it was his personal project. He decided to focus on what was on the book instead of in.

After much research and decryption, he finally obtained the instructions for one ritual. Most of the materials required weren't that hard to come by, but one part did stand out: the need for 100 sacrifices.

This requirement seemed quite extreme. He had never come across a ritual that needed a sacrifice before. He doesn’t even know what it’s for; he can’t seem to figure it out. Although, how bad could it be? The worst he’s done was cause a fire in a summoning circle. Nothing of a large magnitude has ever happened before.

Moreover, the passage wasn't even specific. What sacrifices? Human? Sheep? Oh! What about bacteria? Ha! Maybe that'll work. Who knows! That’s what Joseph’s supposed to find out.

He took some bacterial samples from the lab and safely transported them to his own experimental area, which he rented to meet the ritual’s criteria. He laid out all the objects in the way it’s stated in the book. Everything looked in order. He began the ceremony and heated up a wire to kill the bacteria. As he pressed the wire onto the Petri dish, lights flickered, lightning struck. In all his life, this has never happened before. In his shock, he dropped the Petri dish, the glass shattering and its contents spreading everywhere. What a fool he was to hold the Petri dish up instead of just placing it down on the floor. He’d blame it on the book’s vague instructions, but he’s too busy panicking over his failed ritual.

After a while, everything began to calm down, except for Joseph, who was still pretty shaken. Was this real magic? Joseph didn’t really know. Right then, he was exhausted. He needed some rest.

He was walking to his car when he noticed a red spot on his left hand. He began to scratch it but, to his horror, the red pigment began to spread to his right hand. His heart started to race as the red spots spread more and more. It wasn’t long until Joseph was screaming, his entire body, red, encumbered by some powerful disease. In an instant, Joseph dropped dead. His body liquified, depositing his bodily fluids everywhere.

The ritual didn’t fail at all. He had turned his harmless bacteria samples into a monstrous sickness. This disease would then spread, obliterating most life forms on Earth. It would seem then that the means to lessen the sacrifices lead to a much, much greater death toll.

Counter question, can nurgle even be "happy" in the conventional sense we can grasp?

I guess nurgle would hate this, it would put an end to all desease and make humans immortal.
It would be genocide to all his precious children.

Also, i do not think that shiny yellow throne corpse guy would like the competition of other immortals.

I like the buried frame for the story.

Actually we have a record of a roman dude warning that swamps are full of tiny infectious creatures. We have no clue how he knew, though.

Damn, you incinerated them.

Yes! The first thing that popped into my mind was a gathering of confused husbands waiting for their wyrm wives to buy clothes for some reason, I adapted it from there. These dudes have an army now, they can plan world domination

Lol, you are right though.

"Magic." /s. (Sorry but I couldn't stop myself.)

Honestly, I actually liked the ending a bit more than the declaration „I love you, of course I do“

hahaha thank you very much, der! I had to rush the ending a bit cause I had to leave, wasn't sure if someone was going to like it because of that

Look, I'm not the one who got the flamethrower!

Love it xD