‘Blood,’ said the monster, nodding its elephantine head and licking its lips.
The remaining creatures held back as the lead beast approached, and Uriel sensed a tribal, pack mentality at work.
Uriel stepped towards the beast and held his sword, two-handed, before him.
‘What are you doing?’ said Pasanius.
‘I think this is the alpha male of the group,’ said Uriel. ‘Perhaps if I can kill it, the others won’t attack.’
‘Or they’ll tear us to pieces all the quicker,’ said Leonid.
‘True,’ allowed Uriel, ‘but I don’t think we have much choice.’
‘Give it your best shot,’ said Vaanes, sheathing his claws.
The beast watched Uriel approach, flexing the huge muscles of its upper body. He tried to read its expression, but its blunted features gave him no clue as to its thoughts.
‘Come on then. Come and get me if you want to eat me!’ he roared.
The monster sprang forward and Uriel barely avoided a swinging blow that would have taken his head off had it connected. He ducked beneath the punch and dodged around the side of the Unfleshed, swinging his sword for its back. The blade sliced barely a centimetre into its flesh and Uriel felt the shock of the blow up his arms, horrified that the lethal energies of his weapon had failed to cut the monster in two. Before he recovered from his surprise, the beast was upon him, its meaty fists clubbing him down. Uriel collapsed into the water, rolling from a thunderous stamp that sent up a geyser of brackish water.
‘Uriel!’ shouted Pasanius, stepping forward to help.
‘No!’ shouted Uriel, scrambling away from the monster on his backside and into the downpour of rushing water driving down from the Halls of the Savage Morticians. ‘If you help me, they will all attack!’
Uriel pushed himself clear of the foaming torrent and lunged forward, stabbing for the monster’s groin: The tip of the blade barely penetrated the Unfleshed’s hide before sliding clear without further injury. It roared and picked him up in one fist, snapping its jaws shut on his side. Uriel shouted in pain and twisted in its grip, saving himself from being disembowelled and stabbed his sword for the monster’s head.
The blade scraped across its eyeballs, drawing a howl of pain from the monster. Its claws spasmed and Uriel fell from its hand. He landed before the Unfleshed and thrust his sword straight forward with a roar of anger, putting his entire strength behind the blow.
He yelled in triumph as the point of the blade punched through a weaker section of the monster’s flesh and he drove the blade clean through its body. A heavy fist smashed into his shoulder and Uriel was driven to his knees in the water. He felt his collarbone crack and released his grip on the sword hilt. He looked up into the Unfleshed’s weeping-blood eyes and knew that he could not defeat it. Despite a crackling blade impaling its belly, the monster gave no indication that it even felt the wound.
Uriel had stood before the might of a star god, had destroyed the heart of a tyranid hive ship, had faced the unimaginable power of a rogue psyker and now he was to die at the hands of this monster that was kin to him at a genetic level. Its clawed hands reached for him, but before they closed on his head and crushed his skull to splinters, a bellowing roar echoed from the sides of the basin and, as one, the Unfleshed that surrounded them drew back in fearful respect.
A stillness fell, a sudden peace, and Uriel watched as a terrible beast, larger than the others, descended slowly into the water-filled depression. The Unfleshed Uriel had just fought was a gargantuan, swollen monstrosity, but this beast was an order of magnitude greater than that. Its physique was colossal and rippled with abnormal growths of fierce muscle, a powerhouse of primal, destructive energy. Red and raw, its body was a glistening mass of wet, exposed musculature, sinews bulging and contracting as it moved. If there was an alpha male of the Unfleshed, then surely this must be it. Uriel recognised the thing as the creature that had led the attack against the huddled slaves at the flesh camp.
Its head was lodged low between its shoulders, a red skull face with burning yellowed eyes set within a prosaic arrangement of gory features. Without the guise of flesh, its features were dead and expressionless, its mouth lipless, its nose a torn gash in the centre of its face. Unlike many of its brethren, it retained a measure of its humanity in its form, though massively built beyond even what the ancient legends told of the primarchs.
But worst of all, Uriel could see a gleam of intelligence lurking within its calculating gaze. Where the others of its kind might be spared the awful knowledge of their fate and the horror of their existence, Uriel knew that this terrible creature knew full well how the fates had damned it.
It descended into the valley with a guttural series of grunts and roars, the Unfleshed that surrounded them backing away from what must surely be their lord… the Lord of the Unfleshed. Uriel shivered as he conjured the phrase, grimacing at its appropriateness.
It stomped and splashed through the pool towards him and pushed the creature with Uriel’s sword still lodged in its belly aside. It crouched in the water, its head still metres above Uriel and hauled him to his feet, dragging him close to its horrific features.
Uriel struggled against it, but its strength was beyond even that of a dreadnought and he was held firm. He was lifted from the water and held close to the Lord of the Unfleshed’s face, the ragged flaps of skin around its nasal cavity fluttering as it smelled him.
A thick tongue slid from its mouth and Uriel gagged at the monster’s corpse-breath as the leathery appendage licked the skin of his face. Before he could do more than retch, the Lord of the Unfleshed dropped him back into the water, and he grunted in pain as the splintered ends of his collarbone ground together.
The massive creature turned to the Unfleshed around the pool.
‘Not meat yet! Maybe they Unwanted like us. Smell and taste flesh mother meat on him,’ it said, its words twisted and guttural.
The Unfleshed threw back their heads and gave voice to a plaintive howling that echoed from the high peaks of the mountains, and Uriel could not decide whether the ululating cry was a gesture of welcome or a desperate cry of pity.
THE HALLS OF the Savage Morticians still echoed to the pounding beat of the Heart of Blood, the air still stank of desperation and the psychic deadness still draped the soul. But for all that it remained the same, there was a subtle shift in the dynamic of the chamber. Honsou had not noticed it at first, but as he followed the bronze-legged Savage Mortician through the paths of the dying, he noticed it in the downcast skull-faces of each of the black-robed monsters…
‘Have you noticed…’ whispered Obax Zakayo, reading his master’s features.
‘Aye,’ replied Honsou. ‘They are afraid, and that doesn’t happen often.’
They had good reason to be afraid, though, thought Honsou. Prisoners entrusted to their destruction by the master of Khalan-Ghol had killed two of their number and escaped. Obviously dark memories of the fortress’s last master still burned in the minds of the Savage Morticians and Honsou found himself relishing their apprehension as he reached the mortuary circle where the Space Marines who followed Ventris had been shackled.
In the centre of the circle were the mangled, dismembered remains of two Morticians: their flesh hacked to carven, grey chunks. Honsou knelt beside the nearest, pulling the dead arm bearing a vicious drill from the ruin of its head.
‘I fear I may have underestimated this Ventris and his band,’ he said.
‘You think he might be more than one of Toramino’s mercenaries?’
Honsou nodded. ‘I’m beginning to think that he might not have anything to do with Toramino at all, that he might be here for reasons of his own.’
‘What reasons?’
Honsou did not answer at first, but snapped his fingers and indicated that one of the hissing, dark surgeons approach. A tall beast with wide, bladed legs and clicking hydraulic claws for arms stooped to face him, its gleaming jaws centimetres from Honsou
.
‘You put Ventris in the daemonculaba?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Stitched him in. Into the womb with the others. He should not be alive.’
‘No,’ agreed Honsou. ‘He very definitely should not. Show me.’
‘Show master of Khalan-Ghol what?’ hissed the Savage Mortician.
‘Show me where you implanted him,’ ordered Honsou. ‘Now.’
The creature nodded and reared up to its full height, stalking off between the barrels of viscera and blood towards the nearest ramp that led to the gantries of the daemonculaba. Honsou and Obax Zakayo followed, noting with interest some of the more cruel and unusual experiments in pain that were being carried out in the quest for deathly knowledge.
‘With all due respect, my lord,’ began Obax Zakayo. ‘Is it wise to concern yourself with a fate of a few renegades? The armies of Lord Berossus are at the gates of Khalan-Ghol.’
‘And?’
‘And they are within days at most of breaching the walls…’
‘Berossus will not get in, I have plans for him.’
‘Any you want to share?’
‘Not with you, no,’ said Honsou as they reached the top of the ramp. ‘Understand this, Obax Zakayo, you are my servant, a mere functionary, and nothing more. You served a master who had forgotten why we fight the Long War, a master who had allowed the bitter fires of the False Emperor’s treachery to smoulder instead of burning brightly in his breast. Have you forgotten how our Legion was almost destroyed piece by piece by his uncaring, unthinking betrayals? Have you forgotten how he allowed us to stagnate and become little more than gaolers? The False Emperor drove us to this fate, condemning us to suffer an eternity of torment in the Eye, and while Forrix forgot that, I did not.’
‘I only meant—’ began Obax Zakayo.
‘I know what you meant,’ snapped Honsou, making his way along the gantry past the heaving masses of flesh that rippled in agony with new life. ‘You think I don’t know of your entreaties to Toramino and Berossus? You have betrayed me, Obax Zakayo. I know everything.’
Obax Zakayo opened his mouth to protest, but Honsou turned and shook his head. ‘You can say nothing. I don’t blame you. You saw an opportunity and you took it. But to think that someone like you could outwit me… please!’
The servo claws hunched at Obax Zakayo’s shoulders reared up, snapping like the jaws of evil, mechanical snakes, and the giant Iron Warrior gripped his toothed axe tightly.
Honsou smiled and again shook his head as a pair of Savage Morticians loomed behind Obax Zakayo. The axe was snatched from his hands and broken like a twig as bronze claws snapped shut on his limbs and crackling, piston driven pincers cut the mechanised arms from his back.
‘No!’ shouted Obax Zakayo as he was lifted from his feet. ‘I know things you need to know!’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Honsou. ‘Toramino is not so stupid as to trust you with anything of importance.’
Honsou nodded to the Savage Mortician and said, ‘Do with him as you will.’
He turned away as Obax Zakayo screamed curses upon his name and was carried away by the Savage Morticians to his no doubt bloody fate. Honsou had not been surprised by Obax Zakayo’s treachery: indeed it had proven to be extremely useful. Soon Berossus and Toramino would learn the price for trusting such a poor traitor.
Putting Obax Zakayo from his mind he walked along the grilled gantry to where a wheezing mass of blubbery, torn flesh was being prodded and cut further by the creature that had led him here. The pain-filled features of the daemonculaba stared at him in mute horror, its glassy eyes rolling in unspeakable pain. Honsou ignored its suffering and leant down to examine its torn belly, where recently sutured flesh had been rudely torn open.
‘From the inside…’ noted Honsou. ‘He climbed out himself.’
The Savage Mortician bobbed its head, though Honsou could clearly see its confusion at such a thing.
‘How could Ventris have done this?’ asked Honsou.
‘Not knowing. Daemonculaba tasted him, fed him soporifics. Should not have happened,’ rasped the Mortician.
‘And yet it did,’ mused Honsou, pulling back the greasy folds of flesh from the daemonculaba’s ruptured belly. The slippery innards of the great beast heaved and shuddered at his touch and Honsou drew back as the creature went into a violent seizure, its entire frame shuddering. Though it had no voice to call its own, a high, keening wail ripped from its ruined throat and a flood of gore gushed from the open wound.
‘What’s happening to it?’ demanded Honsou.
‘Womb ready to expel its issue,’ explained the moribund surgeon.
More blood and amniotic fluids poured from the daemonculaba’s belly and the Savage Mortician reached in to hack at its internal structure with long, sword-like limbs. Hissing, gurgling tubes carried away dead fluids and Honsou heard the crack of bone and the sharp twang of severed sinews from within the daemonculaba’s body.
The Mortician cut the wound wider and with a final splash of blood and blue and purple viscera, the daemonculaba’s offspring spilled out onto the floor.
He landed with a wet, meaty thump: powerfully muscled and hot-housed far beyond the callow youth he had been when implanted. Honsou knelt beside the quivering newborn, the skinless body shivering with the violence of its delivery. Even wrapped in a mutated length of glistening umbilical cord, Honsou could see that this birth was perfect – no need to flush him into the pipes with the rest of the discards.
Filmy, acidic residue coated his muscles and he began weeping in pain as the Savage Mortician lifted him from the ground.
‘Wait,’ said Honsou, stepping forward and wiping handfuls of bloody, matter-flecked slime from the newborn’s gleaming red skull and clearing the birth fluids from his skinless features.
The newborn lifted his head at Honsou’s touch, looking into his face with a fierce earnestness. Honsou held the newly born Chaos Space Marine towards its dark, clawed midwife.
‘Clean him and then clothe him in fresh skin,’ he ordered. ‘Give him Obax Zakayo’s armour and bring him to me when he becomes ready.’
The Savage Mortician nodded and dragged away the mewling newborn.
And the master of Khalan-Ghol laughed, realising that the Gods of Chaos could sometimes have a sense of humour after all.
WHETHER THE MANUFACTORY facility had fallen into disuse and then been colonised by the Unfleshed or whether they had taken it by force was unknowable, but judging by the state of disrepair and wreckage strewn around, either explanation was possible. Uriel had been shocked at the hideousness of the Unfleshed he had seen on the surface of Medrengard, but they were nothing compared to the horrors of those who remained below in the darkness. How such things could live baffled Uriel, but even as he felt revulsion at their terrible forms, he felt a great pity for them. For they too were victims of the Iron Warriors’ malice.
Uriel had no way of measuring, but reckoned on the passing of perhaps ten or twelve hours since they had escaped the dungeons of Khalan-Ghol. Led by the Lord of the Unfleshed on a gruelling march into the high peaks of mountains, they had set off to an unknown destiny, though it had been impossible to tell whether they had been taken as brothers-in-arms or prisoners. Uriel and Pasanius had bound Ellard’s wound and carried him with them, despite Vaanes’s protestations that the man was as good as dead and should be left behind.
Upon leaving the pool at the base of the cliffs where their lunatic flight from the depths of Khalan-Ghol through the sewage pipes had carried them, Uriel had seen that they were indeed many kilometres from the fortress. After covering many more, the warrior band had eventually been led to a great crack in the mountainside where noxious clouds of vapour gusted and spoil heaps of refuse and bones were gathered.
Descending into the stygian darkness of the mountainside, the rock passageway had eventually opened into a wide chamber where perhaps some underground earthquake had ripped an underground manufactory apart. Buckled, iron columns suppo
rted a bowing ceiling on vast, riveted girders, and beams of murky light speared down through shattered coolant towers that pierced the roof and illuminated the echoing space. Twisting bridges of knotted rope connected the forests of columns and a great pit had been dug or drilled in the centre of the manufactory floor where something unseen glittered and twisted in the dim light.
Piles of shattered machinery lay rusting in pools of moisture and groups of the Unfleshed, hundreds of them, gathered around them, their red bodies wet and glistening. These Unfleshed were the true monsters, so mutated and deformed as to be unable to hunt, or – in some cases – even move. Piles of altered flesh, twisted limbs without number and warped symbiotes of fused flesh that gibbered and howled in constant pain.
‘So many of them…’ said Uriel.
Further comment had been prevented as they were herded down into the depths of the manufactory and the Lord of the Unfleshed indicated that they should sit in the lee of a great pressing machine, with hammers the size of a battle tank.
‘You. Not move.’
‘Wait,’ said Uriel. ‘What do you want with us?’
‘Tribe needs talk. Decide if you Unwanted like us or just meat. Probably we kill you all,’ admitted the Lord of the Unfleshed. ‘Good meat on your bones and fresh skin to wear.’
‘Kill us?’ snapped Vaanes. ‘If you’re just going to kill us, then why the hell did you bother to bring us here, you damn freak?’
‘Weak of Tribe need meat,’ rasped the monster, staring at Ellard with undisguised appetite. The sergeant had surprised them all by surviving the journey, though Uriel saw that he surely could not live much longer. Blood soaked the makeshift bandage of his tattered uniform jacket and his face was deathly pale. ‘They cannot hunt, so we bring meat to them.’
‘You had to ask,’ growled Pasanius.
Vaanes shrugged and slumped to the ground with his back to the Ultramarines.
The Lord of the Unfleshed had then departed, making his way down to the floor of the manufactory to rejoin his tribe, leaving them in the company of a dozen gigantic monsters, each larger than a dreadnought and equipped with a fearsome array of gnashing fangs and long, dripping talons.
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