'Eternity awaits you!' roared the Omphalos Daemonium. 'An age trapped in fire will be nothing to torments you will suffer!'
Smoke and rubble fell in a constant rain from the walls, crashing anything exposed on the cavern floor.
'You cannot destroy me. I am the Heart of Blood!'
The Omphalos Daemonium ran towards it, fierce, vengeful hunger burning in its eyes. The Heart of Blood sprang to its feet and lashed out with its whip.
The blow struck its foe's head, drawing a bellow of pain and a spray of dark blood as it severed one of its gnarled antlers.
The Heart of Blood staggered away in the respite its lucky blow had gained, wading back into the lake of blood, feeling the invigorating fluid enter its immaterial flesh and new strength seep into its essence. But this was poor, stagnant blood, polluted with the taint of psychic energies and devoid of the hot, urgent nourishment it needed to defeat its foe.
As the Omphalos Daemonium came after it, memories thrashed and screamed in the Heart of Blood's skull, though it had not the faculties left to recall them. The lunacy that had consumed it during its incarceration had robbed it of any clarity of thought save that it needed blood, desired blood... craved blood!
A powerful vision of a great fortress swam across the fluid landscape of its memory - no, not its memory, the blood-soaked memories of the Avatar of Khorne, the creature the armour had become in its absence...
A battle alongside the Iron Warriors, a sorcerous foe in yellow armour - one of the corpse-god's followers - and a howling gale of gore that thundered like a hurricane and fed its spirit with unimaginable power.
Something in this memory was the key it needed to defeat its rival and drive the Omphalos Daemonium back to the fiery prison the Heart of Blood had confined it to for an age.
A single word penetrated the Heart of Blood's fug of amnesia and lunacy.
Bloodstorm...
The first bolt took Uriel low in the gut as he charged, tearing through the knotted mass of scar tissue that covered the wound dealt to him by the tyranid Norn Queen.
He was too close and the bolt was moving too quickly for it to detonate within him, but it exploded a fraction of a second after punching out through his lower back and peppered his flesh with searing fragments.
The second shattered on one of the few remaining portions of his armour, the hot shrapnel scoring upwards across his cheek, and the third blasted a chunk of his side to red ruin.
He staggered, but kept going, hacking his fiery-bladed sword through the neck of the Iron Warrior that had shot him. Pasanius was hit four times, his armour deflecting the majority of the impacts, but unable to save him completely
The sergeant fell, dragging down the Iron Warrior before him and breaking his neck with a loud cracking noise.
Another round hit Uriel and he fell to the hard ground.
Bolter rounds filled the air. Uriel heard a cry of pain and surprise.
Yelling voices and more shots.
He tried to push himself to his feet, feeling sharp pain flare as he moved, and wondered why he was not dead.
Bellowing roars of hatred echoed from all around them, howls of furious anger and anguish. Even over the stench of blood and death that filled this place, Uriel could make out the stink of wet, raw flesh and realised what was happening.
Blood sprayed from a ragged stump of an Iron Warrior's neck and Uriel shouted in triumph as he saw the battered but unbowed form of the Lord of the Unfleshed hurl the grisly trophy to one side before leaping onto another Iron Warrior who fired wildly into the attacking monsters.
'Iron men die!' he roared as the surviving creatures of the Unfleshed fell upon Honsou's warriors.
The mohawked warrior shot down the fused twins, the white-hot blast of his gun obliterating the creature with a hiss of superheated air. Onyx nimbly dodged the brutal, clubbing blows of a pair of the Unfleshed, spinning around them and hamstringing them as he danced aside from their attacks.
Uriel saw Honsou retreat from the attack of the Unfleshed, and rolled onto his side, dragging his bolter around.
He realised how much he missed the ministrations of his armour as the pain from the burning fragments of the bolter shell stabbed into his back. Pasanius lay atop a dead Iron Warrior, two large exit wounds blasted through his back.
'Pasanius!' called Uriel.
His sergeant turned his head, and Uriel saw his face was deathly pale, his cheeks ashen and sunken.
'Don't you dare die on me, sergeant!' shouted Uriel, putting down his sword and bringing his bolter to a firing position.
'Aye, captain.' said Pasanius, weakly.
Smoke and the thrashing combatants conspired to obscure Uriel's aim, but eventually he was able to draw a bead on Honsou.
'Now you die, traitor!' whispered Uriel as he squeezed the trigger and a crash of rubble and smoke exploded beside him.
But in the instant before he lost sight of Honsou, he had seen the master of Khalan-Ghol pitched backwards, his helmet spraying ceramite fragments and an arc of crimson.
Bloodstorm...
The two daemons faced each other in the depths of the lake of blood, their shared hatred a physical thing between them. Swirling eddies of power gusted around them, the energies both had expended in their battle having drained them almost to the point of extinction.
There were no more words to be said. What could two beings that had been enemies since the dawn of time have to say to each other at this moment?
Words were now only for mortals and those with a future to remember them.
The Omphalos Daemonium had prepared for this moment ever since it had been freed by the random actions of two mortals, and its strength was by far the greater.
But the Heart of Blood and the Avatar of Khorne were once again the same creature, and the blasted armour had feasted on the death of an entire galaxy of souls. Both daemons were evenly matched, but none could yet see the other destroyed.
Bloodstorm...
The Heart of Blood spread wide its arms and gave vent to a shout of hatred that parted the vital fluid of the lake and sent a tidal wave of blood spilling outwards from its centre. A rippling whirlwind of raw, red hunger swept from the Heart of Blood's armour, spreading throughout the chamber like the pressure wave of an explosion.
A lashing storm of hate-fuelled energy roared around the ruined domain of the Savage Morticians, lashing like a blind, insensate monster and driving the Omphalos Daemonium back from the Heart of Blood with its unstoppable power.
The bloodstorm enfolded the few, cowering mutants that had hidden beneath the shattered machines and rubble of the chamber. It scythed through their flesh and blew them apart.
The bloodstorm tore into the mutilated ruin of Obax Zakayo, finally ending his suffering in an explosion of red bone.
The bloodstorm streaked past the fleshy wombs of the daemonculaba and, one by one, they exploded like great fleshy balloons filled with blood.
The bloodstorm hurtled around the circumference of the chamber, an ocean of blood swept up in the etheric whirlwind as it howled back to the Heart of Blood at its epicentre.
The mighty daemon swelled to monstrous proportions, its armour and weapons blazing with barely-contained power as it sought to master the energies ripped from the ocean of ripe blood it had just feasted upon.
Now it was ready.
Now all things would end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Howling red winds swept through the Halls of the Savage Morticians, the harsh metallic reek of blood catching in the back of Uriel's throat. He rolled onto his side and scooped up his sword as the fury of the hurricane scouring the air swirled around them, tearing at their flesh with harsh lashes.
The Iron Warriors dived for cover as the etheric whirlwind tore through the cavern and the Unfleshed were hurled from their feet by its power. The desperate battle broke apart as the combatants found shelter or held onto giant boulders to prevent themselves from being swept away.
Uri
el gasped as the very life was leeched from him, feeling as powerless as one of the weakling newborns left to die on the mountains of Macragge. But at the edge of the cavern the power of the bloodstorm was at its weakest and they were spared the horrors of those closer to the Heart of Blood.
Pasanius grunted in pain and Uriel watched as the dotted blood on his back liquefied and was snatched into the air by the vampiric storm. His own wounds ran freely as they fed the terrible daemon at the heart of the chamber.
'Not like this...' he hissed. 'Not like this!'
Then, it was gone - the sudden silence unnerving after the tempestuous violence of the diabolical storm. Uriel pushed himself to his knees, grimacing in pain as those around him began to recover from the hellish experience.
The Unfleshed howled in pain. Without the protection of skin to save them from the worst effects of the bloodstorm, their bodies looked wasted and gaunt, pale and anaemic.
Uriel used a fallen surgical table to pull himself to his feet, the pain from his gunshot wounds and cracked bones sharp and biting. His enhanced metabolism had clotted the blood and already formed scar tissue over the wounds, but he was still terribly injured.
'Come on.' he urged Pasanius. 'There's no way out here. We have to find another way'
'I don't know that I can.' said Pasanius, but Uriel did not give him a chance to argue further, pulling the sergeant upright over his groans of pain. Eventually, Pasanius nodded slowly and said, 'All right, all right, you're worse than Apothecary Selenus.'
Painfully, Pasanius sat himself against a pile of rubble, freshly-dotted blood gummed on his chest from multiple bolter wounds.
The sounds of the battle raging in the centre of the chamber continued to echo, but there was a renewed fury to the roars and clash of weapons. As the bloodstorm abated, Uriel heard savage laughter, brazen and malicious, and felt a sick sensation in his bones as his soul recoiled from its evil.
Through the swirling dust and cascades of rock, Uriel saw the furious climax of the two daemons' battle, the sight of such incredible power taking his breath away. The Heart of Blood towered above the Omphalos Daemonium now, swollen to three times its size, and its sheer physicality was like nothing he had ever seen before.
Even the Bringer of Darkness had not awed him as much with its dark majesty. Its nightmarish presence had filled his thoughts with tormented visions of his own darkness, but this...
This was something else entirely.
Where the Heart of Blood walked, death followed. A red mist came in its wake, a bloody veil that glistened with wetness, and its weapons clove the air with every stroke, leaving dark trails that split the very world open. The daemonic Iron Warrior fell back before it, battered and broken, the armour torn from its body and its wounds spewing ichor from every cut.
Each mighty blow of the Heart of Blood forced it to retreat, its parries growing more clumsy with each backwards step it took. It desperately fell back towards the hissing daemon engine that had brought it here, its screaming stacks billowing shrill screams of anguish.
But the Heart of Blood was not to be cheated of victory and its whip lashed out, snapping around the armoured daemon's arm and tearing it off in a fountain of black blood. The Omphalos Daemonium fell to its knees and bellowed in angry defiance, but it was in vain as the Heart of Blood stepped close and hammered its axe down against its shoulder, cleaving its head from its body with one mighty blow.
The armoured daemon collapsed, a flood of gore spilling from the mortal wound and the Heart of Blood raised its weapons to the heavens with an ear-splitting roar of triumph to the Blood God that shook the very walls of the chamber.
Dark energies swirled from the destroyed daemon and the Heart of Blood convulsed as it drank of the essence of its ancient foe, its limbs shuddering with the inherited power.
Even as it savoured the spoils of its victory, the red sky that had come into being at the arrival of the Omphalos Daemonium began to fade and the screaming souls trapped in the damned metal of its engine howled with renewed vigour.
Hissing bone-pistons ground upwards as the monstrous daemon engine built power to escape its dying master and the collapsing cavern.
Then, as though the battle and sheer power its victory had unleashed were too much for the terrible creature, it dropped to its knees, sated and overwhelmed with dark energies. The axe and whip fell from the Heart of Blood's clawed hands as it toppled onto its side, the lustre of its red flesh deepening to a hot vermilion that smoked and hissed like that of an electrocution victim.
With the collapse of the two abominations, the discordant shriek of clashing daemon weapons was silenced, replaced by the omnipresent thunder of artillery from outside. The battle within Khalan-Ghol might be over for now, but the violence unleashed by Toramino was still very much ongoing.
Uriel held his breath, afraid that even the slightest motion would bring the daemon surging to their feet again. But nothing of the sort happened and he let out a great, shuddering breath as the Lord of the Unfleshed
limped over to him and leaned down so that its head was level with his.
'We kill iron men!' he said.
'Yes.' said Uriel, wearily. 'We did.'
'Emperor happy?'
Uriel looked around the ruins of the Halls of the Savage Morticians, seeing that there was nothing recognisable left of it, everything had been destroyed in the cataclysmic battle of the two daemons. The surgical horrors enacted here were gone, the suffering victims of the bizarre experimentations finally granted the Emperor's peace. The lake of blood was now nothing more than a dusty crater, the gantries where the daemonculaba had been housed reduced to twisted masses of mangled iron.
Of the daemonculaba themselves, there was nothing but sad piles of ruined flesh and Uriel felt a great weight lift from his shoulders as he saw that their death oath had been fulfilled. The creatures Tigurius had seen in his vision and Marneus Calgar had charged them to destroy were no more.
'Oh, yes.' said Uriel. 'The Emperor is happy. You made the Emperor very happy.'
The Lord of the Unfleshed reared up to his full height and beat his chest with his massive fists. The few of his surviving brethren did likewise and howled their joy to the fading red skies.
'Tribe! Tribe! Tribe!' they shouted, over and over.
Uriel nodded and copied the enormous creature, hammering his fists on his chest and yelling, 'Tribe! Tribe! Tribe!' at the top of his voice. Pasanius looked oddly at him, but Uriel was too caught up in the primal exultation of the Unfleshed to care.
As the chant faded, the Lord of the Unfleshed returned his attention to the few surviving Iron Warriors who began picking themselves up now that the fury of the bloodstorm had abated.
The Lord of the Unfleshed twisted his hungry head towards Uriel and asked, 'Meat?'
Uriel's heart hardened as he slowly nodded.
'Meat.' he agreed.
These Iron Warriors had been the mightiest of Honsou's grand company, but even they could not stand before the fully-unleashed savagery of the Unfleshed. The ground was littered with the dead, both Iron Warriors and their monstrous by-blows, but it was only a taster of the slaughter that followed.
Armour was broken open and limbs were torn from their sockets as the Unfleshed feasted on the still-living bodies of their hated creators.
Uriel helped Pasanius to his feet as he saw the daemon-thing, Onyx, surrounded by a pack of the Unfleshed. The dark-armoured warrior cut and stabbed with furious speed, but the Unfleshed fought on, uncaring of wounds that would have slain a lesser opponent thrice over.
Uriel felt no pity for Onyx, it was a thing of the warp, an abomination and, as it was borne to the ground beneath a roaring mass of the Unfleshed, he turned away.
'So what do we do now?' asked Pasanius, leaning against a shattered pile of rockcrete slabs and wiping dust and blood from his face.
'I am not sure.' answered Uriel honestly. 'We did what we set out to do. We fulfilled our death oath.'
Despite his obvious pain, Pasanius smiled, and the sullen weight his friend had carried since the last days on Tarsis Ultra seemed to slide from his face. .
'It is good to see you smile again, my friend.' said Uriel.
'Aye, it's been a while since I've felt like it.'
'Our honour is restored.' said Uriel.
'You know.' said Pasanius. 'I don't think we ever really lost it.'
'Perhaps not.' agreed Uriel. 'If only there was some way we could tell them that on Macragge.'
'I don't suppose they'll ever hear of what happened here.'
'No, I do not suppose they will.' said Uriel. 'But that does not matter. We know, and that is enough.'
'Aye, I think you're right, captain.'
'I told you before, you do not need to call me that.'
'Not before.' pointed out Pasanius, 'but we've honoured our death oath, and you are my captain again.'
Uriel nodded. 'I suppose I am at that.'
The two warriors shook hands, pleased to be alive and enjoying the sensation of having achieved what they set out to do. No matter that they were still trapped on a nightmarish daemon world, thousands of light years from home. Their success felt good by the simple virtue of its accomplishment.
No matter what happened now, they were done. It was over.
The Lord of the Unfleshed approached, thick ropes of clotted blood dangling from his jutting, fanged jaws.
'We go now?' he said. 'Leave now?'
'Leave?' said Uriel. 'How? There is nowhere to go. The passage to the elevator cage is impassable and hundreds of tonnes of rock have shut off the outflow pipe. There is no way out.'
The Lord of the Unfleshed gave him a lopsided look, as though he couldn't believe that Uriel was being so dense. He pointed over Uriel's shoulder and said, 'Big iron man's machine leaves!'
For a second, Uriel was mystified until he followed the Lord of the Unfleshed's pointing finger and saw the dark shape of the armoured leviathan that had carried the Slaughterman here. It ground towards one of the skull-wreathed tunnels it had created to manifest within the cavern. The red-lit door to its interior was still open and though the masterless machine was slowly building speed, there was still time get aboard.