Their faces were human in proportion only, flensed of the disguise of skin and glistening with revealed musculature. Crude stitches crisscrossed their skulls, and when they turned their heads as though hunting by scent, Uriel saw they were utterly featureless save for distended and fanged mouths. They had no eyes, nose or ears, only discoloured swellings that bulged and rippled beneath their fleshless skulls.
'Daemons!' shouted Uriel. 'Foul abominations! Come forth and die on my blade.'
A daemon's patchwork face swung towards him, tumourous tissue in its neck bulging with horrid appetite. None of the foul creatures moved, content merely to watch the two Space Marines as a billowing cloud of steam vented from the side of the vast daemon engine. With a clang of locks disengaging, a thick iron door squealed open and a gigantic figure stepped onto the platform.
Standing head and shoulders above them, the giant wore a clanking, mechanical suit of riveted iron plates and thick sheets of melted, vulcanised rubber. Over its rusted armour it wore a charred apron, and a crown of blackened horns sprouted from a conical helmet with a raised visor. For all its crude fabrication and disrepair, Uriel recognised the armour as impossibly ancient power armour, such as had been worn by warriors of legend many thousands of years ago. The stench of scorched meat enfolded it, together with a crackling sensation of depraved evil and unquenchable rage.
One shoulder guard was studded with star-shaped rivets, the other emblazoned with a symbol of ancient malice that both Ultramarines recalled from the depths of righteous anger instilled in them by Chaplain Clausel's daily Litanies of Hate. A grinning, iron-visored skull that once was the heraldry of a Legion that had fought for the Emperor in hallowed antiquity, but was now a symbol of unending bitterness and hatred. It was a symbol that now belonged to the most lethal foes of the Imperium: warriors of unutterable evil and malice - the Chaos Space Marines.
'Iron Warriors…' hissed Uriel.
'The Betrayers of Istvaan,' growled Pasanius.
The figure carried a long, iron-hafted billhook, the broad, curved blade rusted and pitted with reddish brown stains. A pair of burning yellow eyes, like sickly, dying suns, shone from beneath the helmet as the figure took a heavy step towards them, the skinless daemons moving to stand behind it.
'Deadmorsels feed the new fire, blood is supped by the faceless Sarcomata, and flesh of man will come with me,' said the figure, its voice like rusted metal on their skulls.
It gripped its enormous billhook in one blackened, burned hand and beckoned them impatiently towards the hissing daemon engine with the other.
'Come!' boomed the giant. 'I have purpose for you. Obey me or the Slaughterman turn you into dead-morsels! I am the Omphalos Daemonium and my will drives this suit of flesh, and it will turn you into dead-morsels! Now come!'
Uriel felt sickened even being near this thing of Chaos. Could it really believe that they would willingly have truck with such evil? The featureless daemons, which Uriel guessed were the Sarcomata the Omphalos Daemonium spoke of, spread out on the platform, unhooking long, serrated knives from their belts.
'Courage and honour!' yelled Uriel, leaping towards the nearest of the Sarcomata and stabbing for its belly. His sword passed straight through the creature, its form transforming into a cackling pillar of red steam. He pulled up in surprise, grunting in pain as the beast's form coalesced beside him and its blade slashed across his cheek. Another darted in, its rusty blade stabbing into his neck. He twisted free of the weapon before it could penetrate more than a centimetre and swung at his new attacker. Once again, his assailant flashed to steam before his blow could land and Uriel found himself off balance as another knife blade laid his cheek open to the bone.
'Burn, Chaos filth!' roared Pasanius and sprayed a blazing gout of promethium at the giant Iron Warrior. The volatile chemical flames licked hungrily at the giant, but no sooner had the fire taken than it guttered and died.
The creature's booming laughter echoed from the sides of the arena. 'I have been a prisoner in flames for aeons and liveflesh thinks it can burn me!'
Pasanius slung his flamer and reached for his pistol, but, with a speed that belied its ungainly form, the Chaos creature stepped forward, wrapping its blackened fingers around Pasanius's throat and hauling him from his feet.
Uriel slashed at the Sarcomata as they surrounded him, each thrust and sweep of his sword hitting nothing but chuckling tendrils of steam that vanished only to reappear elsewhere to cut him. Clotted blood caked his face and he knew that he could not fight such foes for much longer.
He saw the giant in the rusted armour lift Pasanius from his feet and hurl him through the iron door the Omphalos Daemonium had first stepped from, and surged towards the Chaos creature. He could not fight foes that could disappear at will, but he swore that this traitor from the elder days would die by his hand. He swung his sword towards the Iron Warrior, the blade wreathed in pellucid flames able to cut through armour and flesh with equal ease.
The sword struck his enemy full square on the chest, but the blade simply clanged from the heavy iron plates of his armour. Uriel was. amazed, but drew his arm back to attack again. Before he could strike, the Iron Warrior's fist slammed into his face, sending him sprawling across the platform.
He fought to regain his senses, but the Sarcomata surrounded him, their blackened fingers reaching hungrily for him. Their touch felt like rotted meat, wriggling with the suggestion of maggots and freshly hatched larvae. Their dead skin masks were centimetres from his face, their breath like a furnace of cadavers. They moved their undulating faces around his, as though tasting his scent, their fearsome strength pinning him to the ground.
'The Sarcomata favour you. Ultramarine…' laughed the giant, striding across the platform towards him. 'They are corruption of spirit given form and purpose. Perhaps they sense a certain kinship?'
Uriel waited for death as one of the Sarcomata lowered its mouth to his bared neck, but the Omphalos Daemonium had greater purpose for him than mere murder, and roared in impatience.
The skinless daemons hissed in submission, hauling Uriel from the platform and carrying him towards the iron door of the massive daemon engine.
Burning air and the stench of cooked meat gusted from within, and as he was carried inside, Uriel knew that they were truly damned.
CHAPTER THREE
Blood. The stench of it filled his nostrils, overpowering and sickening, the bitter, metallic taste catching in the back of his throat. His neuroglottis sifted hundreds of different blood-scents and the searing tang of burning flesh made his eyes water before his occulobe compensated and secreted a protective membrane across the surface of his eye.
He blinked away the moisture, twisting in the grip of the Sarcomata and trying to get a bearing on his surroundings. Despite what his eyes told him, he knew he must be seeing things, for the interior of the daemon engine confounded his senses and flouted any notion of reality. It defied geometry, impossibly arching beyond the limits of vision to either side: a sweltering, red-lit hell cavern. A wide-doored firebox roared and seethed at one end of the chamber and long lines of dangling chains and pulleys, each with a limbless human torso skewered on a rusted hook, hung from the darkened, dripping roof.
He and Pasanius were dragged past scattered mounds of human limbs, each piled higher than a battle tank, the flesh rotten and stinking. Two of the Sarcomata slithered away from Uriel to lift a headless torso and thrust it into the firebox.
They stoked the daemon engine with flesh and blood, its belching stacks spewing ashen bodies into the air. The giant in the armour of the Iron Warriors dragged Pasanius behind it, the mighty sergeant helpless against such power.
'No!' shouted Uriel as the Omphalos Daemonium dropped its billhook and easily lifted Pasanius with one hand while reaching for an empty hook with the other. The iron giant took no notice of him and rammed the rusted hook into the backplate of Pasanius's armour, drawing a grunt of pain from him.
Uriel struggled all the ha
rder as he saw an empty hook hanging beside Pasanius, but the Sarcomata held him firm and he could not break their hold. Fleshy, wriggling hands lifted him high and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from crying out as he too was spitted on a hook, the barbed point went through his armour and pierced his back. The Sarcomata hissed and drew back, the lumpen growths beneath their exposed flesh rippling in monstrous hunger.
The clang of mighty pistons echoed through the impossible structure, hissing spigots belching stinking clouds of oil-streaked steam and iron-grilled furnaces flaring with blue and green flames. Moans and the creaking of molten metal mingled with the chittering glee of the Sarcomata, and Uriel could imagine no more complete a vision of hell.
The Omphalos Daemonium watched their futile struggles and stepped forward, gripping Uriel's jaw in one blackened gauntlet. Uriel could taste the ash on its fingers and smell the cooked meat beneath. The creature… was it an Iron Warrior or some daemonic entity within the flesh of one? Uriel could not tell, and as it leaned close, its breath like the air from an exhumed grave, he kicked out, his boot ringing harmlessly from its ancient breastplate.
'You waste your energy, Ultramarine. It is not within your power or destiny to destroy me. Save your strength for the world of iron. You will need it.'
'Get away from me, you bastard abomination,' shouted Uriel, struggling in his captor's grip, despite the fiery pain from the hook gouging his back.
'It is pointless to resist,' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'I have travelled the bloodtracks between realities for countless aeons and all things are revealed there. What has been, what is and all the things that might yet be. I have snuffed out lives yet to be born, changed unwritten histories and travelled paths no others may walk. And you think you can defy my will?'
'The Emperor is with us, yea though we walk in the shadows—' began Pasanius.
The Omphalos Daemonium smashed a gauntleted hand across Pasanius's chin, swinging him wildly around and drawing a hiss of pain from him as the hook in his back dug deeper into his flesh.
'Prayers to your corpse of a god mean nothing here. His power has gone out of the world and nothing now remains of him.'
'You lie,' snapped Uriel. 'The power of the Emperor is eternal.'
'Eternal?' snarled the Omphalos Daemonium. 'You would do well not to use such words so lightly until you have experienced such a span, trapped and helpless and tormented beyond reason.'
The yellow eyes of the Omphalos Daemonium burned into Uriel's and he saw the depthless rage and madness within them. Whatever the malign intelligence that lurked within the ancient suit of power armour was, it was clearly insane, the torments it spoke of having driven it into a depthless abyss.
'What are you?' said Uriel eventually. 'What do you want with us?'
The Omphalos Daemonium released its grip and turned from him as the Sarcomata began gathering up more body parts and carried them towards the furnace, hurling legs, arms and heads into the flames.
'That is unimportant for now,' it said, pulling a thick chain that hung beside the firebox and hauling on a rusted lever with a thick, rubberised handle. 'All that matters is that you are here and that, at this time, our journeys follow the same path.'
Uriel felt the impossible room judder as the lever was drawn back fully, the iron door they had been carried through shutting with a squeal of tortured metal. Pain flared in his back as the hook twisted between his ribs and the massive daemon engine began to move. Cadavers on other hooks swung on their jangling chains and Uriel felt the familiar churning sensation in his belly of a warp translation. Was this infernal engine somehow capable of traversing the currents of the warp? Was that how it had managed to intercept Calth's Pride within the treacherous shoals of the immaterium?
He knew not to dwell too long on such things. The asking of such dangerous questions led to the path of deviation, the very thing that had seen them condemned to this fate.
The churning sensation in Uriel's stomach grew and he gritted his teeth against the growing pain. The Omphalos Daemonium turned from its labours and retrieved its billhook as the Sarcomata continued feeding the fires with corpses.
'Where are you taking us?' hissed Pasanius through gritted teem.
'Where you need to go,' said the giant. 'I know of your death oath and what has led you here. The Lord of Skulls has more artifice to him than simply the art of death.'
'You are a daemon!' snarled Uriel. 'You are an abomination and I will see you destroyed.'
'Your skull will be laid before the throne of the Blood God before that happens, Space Marine. I have already seen the manner of your death: would you know of it?'
'The words of a daemon are lies!' shouted Pasanius. 'I will believe nothing you say.'
The Omphalos Daemonium slashed its billhook around, the blade flashing towards Pasanius's neck. Blood welled from a shallow cut across the sergeant's throat.
'You seek death, Ultramarine, and I would gladly rend and tear your soul. I would rip your flesh screaming from your bones and garland this body with your entrails, but your death is to be far worse than even one such as I could devise. Your skull will be honoured with a place in one of the bone mountains within sight of the Blood God.'
Another shudder, more intense, passed through the chamber and Uriel felt as though red-hot skewers were being pushed through his skull.
'You should honour me, for you travel in ways no mortal has dared for aeons.'
The Omphalos Daemonium raised its arms to the ceiling and laughed.
'We travel the bloodtracks. The Heart of Blood and the daemonculaba await!'
And the daemon engine roared into realms beyond existence.
Uriel screamed.
Space folded, the currents of the warp vanishing: the arena, the daemon engine, the firebox, Pasanius. All disappeared, ripped away as everything around him turned inside out and became meaningless concepts. He felt himself simultaneously explode into a billion fragments and implode within himself, compressed to a singularity of hollow existence.
Faces floated before him, though as a dense ball of nothingness and a fragmented soul he knew not how he recognised them. Worlds and people, people and worlds, flashing past in a seamless blur, yet each as clear as though he examined each one in detail. Time slowed, yet rushed, splintering crystals sounding from far off as fractured realities ground and shifted like tectonic plates.
He saw the daemon engine spiral through the cracks between dimensions, snaking a path that wound through the shifting glass shards of reality, existing outside of everything, travelling in the slivers of null-space between all that was and all that ever could be.
He saw worlds of choking fumes, people in walking comas shuffling from one banal day to another, grey and dead without even the awareness to scream at the frustration of their pointless lives. Worlds where twisting numbers fell upon mountains of implausibility before running in molten rivers of algorithms to a sea of integers. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by a towering world of mountains and seas, white, marble and gold. Flames roared and seethed from every surface as the world burned, its people ashes on the wind, all life extinguished. Uriel, though he could no longer be sure he even knew who that was any more, saw with mounting horror that he knew this world. He saw the Fortress of Hera cast down, her once proud walls splintered and broken, the Temple of Correction no more than a shattered ruin. Daemons made sport in the Shrine of the Primarch, gnawing on his holy bones and defiling his sacred corpse.
He wept at such vileness, furious at his helplessness and incapable of wreaking his vengeance upon those who had visited such wrath upon Macragge.
Black, howling things closed on the daemon engine, unseen, slithering guardians of nothingness worming their way through the cracks to close on them.
The daemon engine had travelled the bloodtracks for millennia and knew that these blind sentinels were no threat to its terrifying power. Such guardian creatures fed on the souls of those unwitting fools who breached this realm by acc
ident: madmen who pored over forgotten lore and forbidden magicks to unlock the gates between dimensions. Mortals who dared to travel to realms not meant for souls were devoured and made into yet more of the dark worms. The bloodtracks carried the daemon engine away from the toothless, questing mouths of the guardian creatures, its evil and power burning those that managed to approach too close.
Clockwork worlds, worlds taken by evil, worlds of elemental madness, worlds of chaos, worlds of insanity and worlds of arcing lightning. Everything was here. Every action that spawned a new realm of possibility could be found here and Uriel felt the knowledge of such things fill him as he hung from his hook, bleeding and raw.
The glue that held his fragile mind from sundering into pieces began to come undone, awful knowledge of me insignificance of being and the pointlessness of action tore at his sense of who he was and he desperately fought to hold onto his identity.
He was Uriel Ventris.
He was a warrior of the Emperor: sworn to defend His realm for as long as he lived.
He was a Space Marine.
His will was stronger, his purpose and determination greater than any other mortal man. He was in the belly of the beast and he would fight its corrupting touch.
He was… who…? His existence flickered and despite the protection of the daemon engine, he knew the madness that claimed the minds of the ignorant fools who sought such places out was enfolding him. He struggled to hold on as shards of his life began spiralling away from him, each spawning fresh realities within this terrifying multiverse.
Visions of potential and unwritten pasts floated past Uriel's eyes and he gasped as he saw alternate histories…
slide past his eyes
He saw himself as a wrinkled ancient,
He saw himself as a young man,
Lying prone on a simple cot bed and
but one who was no longer a
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