‘You mean it could turn you against me?’ asked Honsou.
‘Yes,’ nodded Onyx. ‘It knows my true name.’
Honsou turned to Cadaras Grendel and said, ‘If this creature so much as makes a move towards me, kill it.’
‘Understood,’ said the mohawked Iron Warrior, his scarred features alight with relish at the thought. ‘I never killed one that’s possessed before.’
Honsou looked down through the grilled floor of the cage, seeing only a dimly glowing shaft roaring upwards. Its end was lost to perspective, but as he watched, the dark square of the tunnel’s base rushed up to meet them.
With a gut-wrenching sensation of nausea, the iron cage slowed and ground to a halt with a shriek of ancient metal. The grilled door squealed open, but before Honsou could step through, he was knocked from his feet by a tremendous impact and felt the crash of falling masonry from far away, accompanied by the distant boom of massed artillery.
What the hell?’ he roared, climbing to his knees as he heard the clang of metal on stone, and an approaching, crashing din.
Onyx dropped to his knees, screaming in pain and clutching his head with his dead-fleshed hands.
‘The barrier is down!’ he yelled. ‘Gods of Chaos, the barrier is down!’
Honsou pulled himself to his feet and looked up as he pinpointed the source of the approaching noise.
‘Out of the elevator!’ he shouted, diving and rolling into the tunnel as he saw thousands of tonnes of rubble plummeting down the shaft. His warriors moved quickly, but some not quickly enough, as a torrent of massive chunks of stone and rockcrete hammered into the base of the shaft and crushed the elevator cage flat. Roiling banks of choking dust and smoke billowed from the wreckage.
The impact and deafening noise disoriented Honsou, but he quickly gained his feet, seeing that nearly half his warriors were missing, crushed beneath the deadly rain of debris.
Onyx stood unsteadily before him, the threatening form of Cadaras Grendel close by.
‘If the barrier is down—’ began Grendel
‘Then that means Toramino is attacking!’ finished Honsou.
Just saying the words gave Honsou a curious sense of reckless abandonment as he realised that this was probably the end. There was no way Khalan-Ghol could stand against Toramino’s army and he had no more stratagems left to employ.
There was nothing left but vengeance for hate’s sake and malice for the sake of spite.
If that was all he had left, then so be it.
It would be enough.
URIEL PULLED LEONID into the scant cover offered by one of the corpse bulldozers and helped him get the muttering woman he had dragged to safety into a seated position. Tears of joy streaked the colonel’s face and he kept repeating the name of his regiment over and over again.
‘Come on, hurry,’ urged Uriel, desperate to keep Leonid out of the way of the Heart of Blood’s murderous rampage. The mighty, armoured daemon was making sport in the centre of the lake of blood, ripping gold-robed sorcerers from their exsanguination coffins, toying with them in numerous terrible ways before slaughtering them with its axe or powerful, fanged maw.
It waded through the blood, letting the terrified magickers tear themselves to pieces as they desperately fought to free themselves from their coffins. Not one amongst them survived the daemon’s predatory malice and it inhaled their deaths like a fine wine.
‘Psykers!’ it bellowed. ‘The food of the gods!’
Uriel returned his attention to the wan, lean-faced woman Leonid had rescued from the clutches of the daemonic armour. Her hair was long, lank and falling out in patches, while her features spoke of horrors endured and a mind on the very brink of sanity.
‘All dead, all dead, all dead, all dead…’ she repeated, over and over.
‘Who is she?’ asked Pasanius.
Leonid fished out rusted dogtags from beneath her uniform jacket and turned them over to examine them in the chamber’s dim light.
‘Her name is Lieutenant Larana Utorian of the 383rd Jouran Dragoons,’ he said proudly.
‘Do you know her?’
Leonid shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. Her tags say she was part of Tedeski’s lot in Battalion A and he didn’t like other officers mingling with his soldiers. He was old school you see.’
‘How in the Emperor’s name did she end up here?’
‘I don’t know,’ wept Leonid, holding her in a tight embrace. ‘Perhaps the God-Emperor didn’t want me to die alone without someone from the old homeworld next to me.’
Uriel nodded and locked eyes with Pasanius as he gripped his sword hilt tightly. ‘Aye, perhaps you’re right, my friend. If a man has to die, it should be with his friends.’
THE DEAD, WHITE sky burned with magickal energies, whipping plumes of blue fire shooting up into the heavens from the geomantic towers Toramino’s sorcerers had constructed around Khalan-Ghol. Monstrously powerful energies had been unleashed, and now that the eternal barrier that had kept Honsou’s fortress safe from the fell powers of the warp was no more, it suffered terribly under the immaterial assault.
Black lightning speared from the cloudless sky, blasting colossal slabs of rock from the mountain and fearsome red storms of bruised, weeping clouds hammered the few remaining towers and bastions with mutating rains that dissolved fortifications which had stood invincible for ten thousand years.
Great, ravening beasts of the warp swooped and dived around the high reaches of the fortress, tearing apart the flying creatures that circled the topmost towers, and a fog of magickal energies enveloped the redoubts and bunkers that Honsou had only recently rebuilt in the wake of his victory over Lord Berossus.
Nor was the fortress attacked only by sorcerous powers, for Toramino’s grand artillery batteries were finally unleashed to bring explosive ruin upon the mountain of their master’s enemy. Thousands of tonnes of ordnance rained down on Khalan-Ghol, smashing apart the very mountain itself.
Huge columns of soldiers and an entire grand company of Iron Warriors, led by Toramino himself, marched upon Khalan-Ghol, a host of thousands that would destroy whatever of the half-breed’s force might survive the furious assault now wracking the mountain. Khalan-Ghol’s final doom was upon it.
URIEL FELT A familiar churning sensation in his stomach, hearing a chiming, splintering sound of glass breaking, and a terrible sensation of powerlessness gripped him. He experienced sickening vibrations deep in his bones as a restlessness rippled through the ground. A powerful vision of jagged stumps of bone jutting through the ground gripped him, and a mad howling built from the air, piercing and vile, with an unimaginable thirst for revenged
He blinked as a fiercely painful sensation built within his skull, as though hot needles were being pushed out through his eyeballs.
‘Oh, no…’ he whispered, as he realised what was happening, and looked up into the face of Leonid, whose gaze betrayed the same knowledge that had just come to Uriel.
‘God-Emperor, no,’ wept Leonid. ‘Not again, please no, not again!’
‘What is it?’ said Pasanius.
Before Uriel could answer, they heard the Heart of Blood roar in sudden awareness, sounding like a cry of unexpected pleasure.
‘My old nemesis…’ it rasped as the very air in the chamber became saturated with an electric tang of ozone and sulphur. Uriel felt his stomach heave and gripped onto the side of the bulldozer as the Hall of the Savage Morticians seemed to… shift…
The ground now felt soft and loamy underfoot, a weeping red fluid seeping upwards where his weight had forced it from the dark earth. Uriel looked up, already knowing what he would see.
Above him, a lacerated crimson sky, flecked with cancerous, melanoma clouds boiled, wheeling carrion creatures circling and awaiting their chance to feed. A familiar mad screaming, like the wails of the damned, echoed painfully, but it was nothing compared to the misery he had already seen in this place, and he pushed it aside.
Fleshless, bony hands r
eached up through the dark earth and Leonid kept his eyes shut tightly, holding onto Larana Utorian. Rippling spirals of reflective light coiled from the walls of the chamber, twisting the image of the rock behind like a warped lens. The walls seemed to stretch, as though being sucked into an unseen vortex behind, Until there was nothing left but a rippling veil of impenetrable darkness, a tunnel into madness ringed with screaming faces.
Brazen rail tracks coated in crusted blood ran from the previously impermeable walls of the chamber, streamers of multi-coloured matter oozing from the cracked rock.
With no eternal barrier to stop it from reaching its hated rival, the Omphalos Daemonium manifested within the walls of Khalan-Ghol.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ROARING FROM THE mouth of the tunnel like a dark force of nature, the Omphalos Daemonium thundered into the Halls of the Savage Morticians. The armoured leviathan’s mad structure was doubly hateful to Uriel now that a suspicion that had been nagging at the back of his head was horribly confirmed.
‘It knew…’ he snarled.
‘Knew what?’ said Pasanius, shouting to be heard over the howling roar of the Omphalos Daemonium’s arrival. Uriel ducked back as the swirling red tendrils of smoke that were the hallmarks of the Sarcomata slashed past, carried onwards by the passing of the colossal daemon engine. It came to a halt before a newly-raised platform of bloodstained rockcrete with the sound of squealing iron and brazen roars, hissing souls escaping from its billowing stacks in shrieking waves of pain.
‘It knew we would try to defy it,’ said Uriel, sick with the realisation that they had been used. ‘It knew we would try and destroy the Heart of Blood.’
‘Then why did it send us here?’
‘Because now that the psychic barrier Obax Zakayo spoke of is down, it can manifest within Khalan-Ghol. Remember the tale Seraphys told us? These daemons are ancient enemies and now the Omphalos Daemonium will wreak its vengeance upon the Heart of Blood for trapping it within that daemon engine.’
Pasanius turned as the Heart of Blood stepped from the crimson lake, its slaughter of Honsou’s psykers complete and the promise of battle with its ancestral foe drawing it towards the seething engine. The brazen machine heaved with power and red mist writhed around its thick plates as the heavy door to the interior heaved open and the Slaughterman stepped onto the platform, the thick, clanking iron plates of his armour dripping with a black, oily residue.
The daemonic Iron Warrior was as huge as Uriel remembered it, its bulk made all the more massive by the extra plates of armour welded and bound to its fabric over the millennia. It still wore its charred and blackened apron, stiffened with ancient blood and reeking of cooked flesh and blood.
A crown of dark horns sprouted from its battered helmet and Uriel was not surprised to see that it still carried its murderous, iron-hafted billhook, the blade broad and crusted with aeons of bloodshed.
The Heart of Blood roared with mirth as the Slaughterman stepped into the Hall of the Savage Morticians.
‘Is this what you are reduced to?’ it bellowed. ‘To wear the flesh of your gaoler?’
‘Only live flesh left to me,’ barked the Slaughterman. ‘Enough words. I rip your warpself apart!’
The Heart of Blood broadened its stance and raised its enormous axe, cracking its whip and roaring its bloody challenge to the Slaughterman. Thick red tendrils of smoke coalesced around the gigantic Iron Warrior, becoming solid things of dead flesh and immaterial energies.
‘Sarcomata!’ snarled Uriel, seeing the featureless daemon creatures that had carried them aboard the Omphalos Daemonium’s horrific daemon engine. Eight of them attended their daemonic master, each wearing a grey, featureless boiler-suit and knee high boots with rusted greaves protecting their shins. They carried knives, hooks and saws and, from the loathsome snapping of their jaws, looked eager to use them.
Their disgusting faces were red and raw, like the Unfleshed, but where the Unfleshed still possessed qualities that were human, even if they were only rudimentary, the Sarcomata were utterly flensed of the mask of humanity. Their eyeless faces were crisscrossed with crude stitches above their fanged mouths, and their narrow, questing tongues licked the air.
Uriel expected some form of retort from the Heart of Blood, but words were not part of the equation when it came to daemons of the Blood God. The Heart of Blood cracked its whip again, the barbed tip scoring across the Slaughterman’s chest in a slash of sparks. The iron-armoured daemon roared and hurled itself from the platform and the Heart of Blood leapt to meet it, the two mighty creatures hammering together in a blazing corona of fiery warp energy.
Machinery was crushed and great, iron pillars were smashed aside as the two powerful daemons tore at one another with a hate that had burned for uncounted aeons. Deafening shrieks of diabolical weapons echoed as the cavern shook with the violence of their battle.
Uriel hunkered down against the bulldozer, realising that more than just the daemonic battle was destroying this place. He felt a bass thump, thump of impacts against the rock and smiled to himself as he knew what was happening.
‘Honsou’s fortress is under yet another bombardment,’ he shouted.
Pasanius looked doubtful. ‘The shelling must be incredible to be felt this deep.’
‘Indeed,’ agreed Uriel. ‘Toramino must be attacking with everything he has.’
Rock and machinery flew, hurled aside as the two daemons fell back into the lake of blood. Geysers of flaming blood and flesh were thrown into the air and a foul red rain began to fall as the daemons tore at one another.
‘Come on!’ yelled Uriel over the din. ‘We should get out of here. Toramino’s army will destroy this place soon and I do not want to be anywhere near these two creatures while they fight!’
‘Where do we go?’ asked Pasanius as chunks of rubble fell from the walls of the chamber, smashing to the ground and throwing up huge clouds of debris and smoke.
‘Anywhere but here,’ said Uriel, nodding to the long passageway that led to the elevator cage that had brought them here from Honsou’s chambers. ‘If that elevator is still working, we can get back to where that silver-eyed daemon thing brought us into the fortress.’
He knelt beside Leonid and said, ‘We are going now, colonel. Come on.’
Leonid looked up through his tears and Uriel saw that the colonel was at the end of his endurance. The
colonel shook his head. ‘No. You go. I will stay here with Larana Utorian.’
Uriel shook his head. ‘We will not leave you here. A Space Marine never leaves a battle-brother behind.’
‘I am not your battle-brother, Uriel,’ coughed Leonid sadly. ‘Even if she and I get out of this place we will not survive more than a few days. The cancers the Mechanicus infected us with are growing stronger every day. It is over for us.’
Uriel placed his hand on Leonid’s shoulder, knowing the man was right, but hating the feeling of betrayal that settled on him as he accepted Leonid’s decision.
‘The Emperor be with you,’ said Uriel.
Leonid looked down into the face of Larana Utorian and smiled. ‘I think He is.’
Uriel nodded and turned from Leonid as Pasanius said, ‘Die well, Leonid. If we survive, I will light a candle for your soul to find its way home.’
Leonid said nothing, cradling Larana Utorian’s wasted frame and rocking back and forth.
Knowing there was nothing more for them to say, the Ultramarines turned and ran towards the entrance to the cavern as more of the Savage Morticians’ domain was brought down by the battling daemons.
Behind them, Colonel Mikhail Leonid and Lieutenant Larana Utorian of the 383rd Jouran Dragoons held each other tight and waited for death.
PASANIUS FLINCHED AS a huge cascade of rocks crashed down beside him, hurling him off balance and wreathing him in powdery dust. He coughed and shouted for Uriel as everything became obscured in banks of smoke. ‘Here!’ shouted Uriel, and Pasanius made his way towards the source of the
shout.
He tripped on something on the ground and rolled, putting his arm down to push himself back to his feet and falling flat as he remembered that there was no arm to take his weight. He cursed himself for a fool, then saw what he had tripped over.
The gurgling form of Sabatier painfully pulled itself towards safety, its twisted, deformed body, dusty and covered in contusions. A great crater had been gouged in its back where the creature that had stepped through the portal had shot it, but Pasanius was not surprised to see that Sabatier still lived. After all, it had survived Vaanes snapping its neck like a dry branch.
Bone still protruded at its neck from that wound and Pasanius flipped the repulsive creature onto its back as it mewled in pain and fear.
‘Not so proud now, are you?’ said Pasanius.
‘Leave Sabatier! He never did any harm!’
‘No,’ snarled Pasanius. ‘He just gloated while my friends were butchered like animals!’
The huge sergeant knelt on Sabatier’s chest, his weight alone cracking the hideous creature’s ribs. A horrid gurgling burst from Sabatier’s throat, but Pasanius felt no remorse for its suffering. It had stood and laughed as Space Marines were killed and for that Pasanius knew it had to die.
Keeping it pinned with his knee, he gripped Sabatier by the neck with his remaining hand and heaved.
The mutant’s neck stretched and Pasanius heard the crack of splitting tendons before he wrenched Sabatier’s head clean off. Sabatier’s mouth still flapped, but no sound came out.
Pasanius had no idea whether he had killed Sabatier, but didn’t care. To have struck back at it was enough. He stood and spat on the twitching body, stamping repeatedly on its altered limbs to crush the bones to powder before turning and hurling the mutant’s head back towards the lake of blood.
If Sabatier could live through this, it would have nothing left of its body to return to.
‘What was that?’ said Uriel, emerging from the cloud of dust and beckoning him onwards towards the entrance to the tunnel.
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