He pushed into the stygian darkness of the cave, dropping to his knees as he fought to stabilise his internal organs and willed himself not to slip into a sleep he knew he would not wake from.
Pasanius backed into the cave, his flamer billowing out a cone of blazing fuel.
The delirium spectres flapped noisily around the entrance to the cave, screaming in anger at being denied their prey. Several darted in to attack, but only succeeded in skewering themselves on the sharp spikes protecting the entrance. Their thrashing bodies ripped apart, their torn skins and iron frames tumbling down the cliff as they died.
Uriel let out a juddering breath, knowing how close they had come to death.
'Pasanius, are you all right?' he gasped.
'Barely.' wheezed Pasanius. 'By the Throne, I never want to have to do that again. It felt like I was dying.'
Uriel nodded, pulling himself upright using the walls of the cave. His returning vision easily penetrated the gloom of the cave and he saw that they were in a long, arched tunnel carved into the rockface, but by who or what he could not tell.
'Well, at least we are safe for the moment.' said Uriel.
'Don't be too sure about that.' replied Pasanius, kicking over a cracked human skull that lay on the floor.
The two Space Marines made their way carefully along the tunnel, the screeching wails of the delirium spectres fading the further they penetrated into the mountain. Their enhanced eyesight magnified the glow from the hissing nozzle of Pasanius's flamer such that they walked through the utter darkness as though their steps were illuminated by glow-globes.
'Who do you think made these tunnels?' asked Pasanius, staring at the marks of picks and drills cut into the rock.
'I have no idea.' said Uriel. 'Perhaps slaves or the populace of this world before it was taken by Chaos?'
'I still can't believe we have travelled so far.' said Pasanius. 'Do you really think this is Medrengard? Can we really be in the Eye of Terror?'
'You saw the dark city beyond the mountains. Can you doubt that one of the fallen primarchs dwells there?'
Pasanius made the sign of the aquila over his chest to ward off the evil that went with even thinking about such things. 'I suppose not. I felt the evil as a poison in my bones, but to come so far... it is impossible, surely.'
'If this is truly the Eye, then nothing is impossible.' said Uriel.
'I had always believed that the stories of worlds taken by daemons and the Ruinous Powers were nothing more man dark legends, exaggerated tales to scare the unwary into obedience.'
'Would that they were.' replied Uriel. 'But as well as destroying these daemonculaba that Librarian Tigurius saw in his vision, I believe that we have been brought to this place to test the strength of our faith as well.'
'And have we failed already?' muttered Pasanius. 'To truck with a daemon...'
'I know, I have put our very souls at risk, my friend.' said Uriel. 'And for that I am sorry. But I could see no choice other than to make the Omphalos Daemonium believe we would do as it wished.'
'Then you don't plan on getting it this Heart of Blood, whatever that is?'
'Of course not.' said Uriel, appalled. 'Once we find it, I intend to smash the vile thing into a million pieces!'
'Thank the Emperor!' breathed Pasanius.
Uriel stopped suddenly. 'You thought I would acquiesce to the desires of a daemon?'
'No, but given how we ended up here and what it threatened...'
'Breaking faith with the Codex Astartes is one thing, but trafficking with daemons is quite another.' snapped Uriel.
'But we have been cast out by the Chapter, banished from the Emperor's sight and are probably trapped forever in the Eye of Terror.' said Pasanius. 'I can see why you might have thought it could have been an option.'
'Really?' demanded Uriel angrily. 'Then tray explain it to me.'
Pasanius did not meet Uriel's gaze as he said, 'Well, it seems likely that the Heart of Blood is some daemonic artefact meant to bring ruin upon an enemy of the Omphalos Daemonium here in the Eye, so might not we be doing the Emperor's work by stealing it from its current master?'
Uriel shook his head. 'No. That way lies madness and the first step on the road to betraying everything we stand for as Space Marines. By such steps are men damned, Pasanius, each tiny heresy excused by some reasonable explanation until their souls are irrevocably blackened and shrivelled. With no Chapter to call our own, some might say that our only loyalty now is to ourselves, but you and I both know that is not true. No matter what becomes of us, we will always be warriors of the Emperor in our hearts. I have told you this before, my friend. Do you still doubt your courage and honour?'
'No, it is not that...' began Pasanius.
'Then what?'
'Nothing.' said Pasanius eventually. 'You are right and I am sorry for even thinking such things.'
Uriel locked his gaze with that of his friend. 'Do you remember the story of the ancient philosopher of Calth who spoke of a stalactite falling in a cave and asked if it would make a sound if no one was there to hear?'
'Aye.' nodded Pasanius. 'It never made sense to me.'
'Nor I, at least until now.' said Uriel. 'Though we have been exiled, we retain our honour and though it is likely that the Chapter will never hear of our deeds, we will continue to fight the enemies of the Emperor until our dying day. Yes?'
'Yes.' agreed Pasanius, slapping his hand on Uriel's shoulder guard. 'And that's why you were captain and I was just a sergeant. You know all the right things to say.'
Uriel chuckled. 'I don't know about that, I mean, look at us, tens of thousands of light years from Macragge and stuck in a cave in the Eye of Terror.'
'...filled with corpses.' finished Pasanius.
Uriel turned and saw that Pasanius was right. The tunnel had widened into a domed cave with rough walls and a number of shadowy passageways leading away. The remains of a long dead fire filled a deep firepit at the centre of the cave, a thin shaft of weak light spearing down from a smoke vent in the roof. Skeletal bodies littered the floor of the cave, splayed and broken, scattered throughout the cave, the bones dusty and cracked.
'Throne! What happened here?' whispered Uriel, circling the firepit and kneeling beside a rag-draped skeleton.
'Looks like they were attacked while they cooked a meal.' said Pasanius, poking around in the remains of the fire with his silver arm. There are pots still in the firepit.'
Uriel nodded, examining the bones before him, wondering who they had belonged to and what malicious twist of fate had seen him condemned to such a death.
'Whoever did this was incredibly strong.' said Uriel. 'The bones are snapped cleanly.'
'Aye, and this one has had its skull ripped from its shoulders.'
'Iron Warriors?' asked Uriel.
'No, I don't think so.' said Pasanius. 'There was a madness to this attack. Look at the stains on the walls. It's blood, arterial spray. Whoever killed these people did it in a frenzy, ripping out throats and tearing their victims apart in seconds. They didn't even have time to arm themselves.'
Uriel crossed the chamber to join Pasanius, stepping over the bones of the dead as he noticed something metallic lying partially buried in the dust. He bent down to retrieve it, his fingers closing on a crude, thick-handled knife, the blade long and flexible. He turned to look at the splayed bodies and a sickening realisation came to him.
'They were skinned.' he said.
'What?'
'The bodies.' said Uriel, holding up the knife. 'They were skinned. They were killed and then their killers flayed them.'
Pasanius cursed. 'Is there no end to this world's evil?'
Uriel snapped the blade of the skinning knife and hurled it away from him, the broken pieces clattering from the rocky walls of the cave. What manner of beast would track its prey deep into the mountains to attack with such speed and frenzy before taking the time to remove its victims' hides? He hoped they would not find out, but a sinking fe
eling in his gut told him that there was a good chance they had already stumbled into its territory.
'There's nothing we can do for them, now, whoever they were.' he said.
'No.' agreed Pasanius. 'So which way onwards?'
Uriel crossed the cave, stopping to examine each passageway and hoping to discern some clue as to which direction offered the most hope of a way out.
'There are tracks leading away at this one.' he said, kneeling and examining the ground at the middle passage. 'A lot of them.'
Pasanius joined him, tracing the outline of a huge footprint in the dust. There was no telling how old it was, but, despite its size, there was no doubt that it was human.
'Are you thinking these might lead to the monsters' lair and that we should avoid it?'
'No, I think that they might lead to a way out of these tunnels.' said Uriel.
'I knew you were going to say that.' sighed Pasanius.
Uriel and Pasanius set off down the tunnel, its course meandering through the mountains for what felt like many kilometres, until they completely lost track of which way they were headed. As the ground underfoot became rockier, the tracks vanished and Uriel knew they were hopelessly lost.
But just as he began to think that they might never again see the surface - not an unappealing prospect in itself - he caught a hint of something on the air. A breath of motion, the faintest gust of a breeze on his skin.
He held up his hand and quieted Pasanius as he opened his mouth to speak.
Just on the threshold of audibility he could hear a soft rumble, like a distant crackle of white noise. Though it took all his concentration, he followed a twisting path through the tunnels, doubling back, stopping and retracing his steps every now and then as he followed the noise.
As it grew louder, his path became surer and within an hour of first hearing the noise, he saw a bright sliver of white sky ahead.
'I never thought I would be grateful to see that sky again.' said Uriel.
'Nor I, but it is better than that accursed darkness.'
Uriel nodded and the two Space Marines emerged from the tunnel, blinking in the perpetual daylight of Medrengard. As they stepped out onto the mountainside, Uriel saw the source of the noise he had been following.
'Guilliman's oath!' swore Pasanius.
Many kilometres ahead over the mountain was a fortification built from dark madness and standing in defiance of all reason. Its steepled towers and mighty bastions wounded the sky, its massive gateway a snarling void. Its walls were darkened, bloodstained stone, veined with unnatural colours that should not exist and which burned themselves upon the retina.
Lightning leapt between its towers and the clanking of great engines and machines echoed like thunder from beyond its walls.
Pillars of smoke and fire leapt from the walls where explosions blossomed against them, hurling great chunks of black stone from the colossal fortress. The distant rumble of artillery crashed and boomed, bright muzzle flares of innumerable great howitzers and siege guns firing upon the fastness from the jagged rocks below.
The primal battle cries of thousands, tens of thousands of warriors - perhaps even more - were carried on the wind from the distant battle, together with the smell of burnt iron and war.
Clouds of ash and smoke from the blazing pyres surrounding the fortress flickered and twitched with the
fury of the siege below, and Uriel felt his soul blacken in the face of such savagery.
Nothing could reach that fortress and live.
But that was exactly what they had to do.
PART TWO
BENEATH A BLACK SUN
CHAPTER FIVE
A blast of superheated air whooshed between the stumps of the merlons, hurling Honsou from his feet and vaporising the top half of one of his Iron Warriors. He rolled to one side as the smoking legs collapsed beside him and leapt to his feet, leaning over the ragged remains of the fortress wall and waving his mighty toothed axe.
'Come on, Berossus, you will need to do better than that!' he shouted.
Far below, the metallic coughs of massed artillery fire echoed from the dark mountains, shelling the lower bastions of Khalan-Ghol to oblivion. The screams of dying men drifted up towards him, but Honsou paid them no mind. They were but slaves and those too badly injured for skinning in the flesh camps, and there were plenty more of them to expend.
He wiped dust from his armour as more Iron Warriors marched forward to plug the gap the stray shot had blasted in the upper levels of his fortress. It had been a lucky impact and Honsou felt a thrill of adrenaline course through his body at the near miss. Ever since the siege on Hydra Cordatus, he had craved the fire and thunder of battle once more. The fighting on Perdictor II upon his return to the Eye of Terror had been desultory and unsatisfying, the warriors of the Despoiler proving no match for his advance forces.
But now his 'fellow' warsmiths were attacking him, and this was sure to be a battle worthy of the name. Once again he was forced to prove his mettle to those who thought him no better than the Imperial dogs they fought the Long War against. The bile rose in his throat at the thought that even though his predecessor had named him warsmith, he was still not considered their equal.
'Lord Berossus is thorough in his attentions.' said Obax Zakayo, his grating, static-laced voice snapping Honsou from his bitter reverie. 'The lower bastions will be nothing but dust and bones soon.'
Honsou turned to face his lieutenant, a huge, wide-shouldered Iron Warrior with yellow and black chevrons edging the plates of his dented power armour. Hissing pipes wheezed from every joint, leaking stinking black fluids and venting puffs of steam with his every step. Like Honsou, he carried a fearsome war-axe, but he also wielded a crackling energy whip, writhing on the end of a mechanised claw attached to his back.
'If Berossus thinks he is achieving anything by killing such chaff, then he is even stupider than I believed.' sneered Honsou, wiping grey dust from his visor with his glossy black augmetic arm. His former master had gifted the mechanical arm to him after his own had been hewn from his body by the late castellan of Hydra Cordatus. It had once belonged to Kortrish, a mighty champion of ancient days and had been a physical indication of his master's favour.
'What he lacks in imagination, he makes up for with determination.' said Honsou's personal champion, a tall, slender warrior in power armour so dark and non-reflective that he moved like a liquid shadow. His voice was a ghostly monotone, his face a crawling mass of bio-organic circuitry that ran like mercurial fire beneath his dead skin and made his eyes shine with a lifeless, silver sheen.
'Berossus is irrelevant, Onyx. He'll shell the lower bastions to rubble and not be able to move his artillery up. No, it is 'Toramino that we must keep a careful watch on.' replied Honsou, turning from the battlements as fresh explosions and the roars of charging warriors rippled up from below.
'Agreed.' said Onyx, long bronze talons unsheathing from the grey flesh of his hands. 'Do you wish me to destroy him?'
Honsou had seen some of the most hideous things in this galaxy - having perpetrated a great many of them himself - but even he was unsettled by the malefic presence of Onyx. The Iron Warrior, if he could even still be called such, was a shunned figure, the daemonic presence within him making him outcast even amongst his own warriors. Though his human side still held sway in the symbiotic relationship with the daemon bound to his flesh, its diabolical presence was unmistakable.
'No.' said Honsou. 'Not yet, anyway. I'm going to break these vermin against my walls first. I can defeat Berossus easily enough, but I want Toramino to see this half-breed beat him, to know that the warsmith was right to name me his successor. Then you can kill him.'
'As you wish.' said Onyx, a barely-perceptible haze of power surrounding him.
When the creature had bound itself to Honsou's service, as master of Khalan-Ghol, it had spoken its true name as a sign of its fealty, but its pronunciation had been beyond Honsou, so he had settled for the closest appro
ximation of the part he had been able to understand: Onyx. Honsou had seen, first hand, just how lethal Onyx could be when the warp-spawned part of him rose to the surface and he unleashed the full terror of his inner daemon.
Onyx was his dark shadow, his protector, and he could think of no better a creature to be his champion and bodyguard.
'Berossus is proud though.' said Obax Zakayo, 'and not to be underestimated. He has great strength and many warriors in his grand company'
'Let them come.' said Honsou.
'They already do.' pointed out Obax Zakayo, gesturing over the edge of the wall.
Honsou followed Obax Zakayo's pointing gauntlet and grinned with feral anticipation.
Tens of thousands of soldiers swarmed across the smoking, cratered hell of the lower bastions, screaming like beasts as they slaughtered the few, mangled survivors of the shelling. Their victims begged for mercy, but their attackers had none to give and the carnage was on a truly grand scale.
Banners with the devotional heraldry of Berossus were raised high and sacred standards that proclaimed the glory of Chaos in its most raw, visceral aspect were planted in the bloody soil. Within minutes, disembowelling racks were set up and the soldiers who were still alive were ritually butchered before the walls to taunt those who watched from above.
'So like Berossus.' scoffed Honsou, shaking his head and watching as another hundred screaming soldiers had their entrails dragged from their bellies and looped around rotating drum mechanisms.
'What?' asked Obax Zakayo.
'He doesn't even have the wit to allow some of his prisoners to live to show his honourable mercy.'
't fought with Lord Forrix at the side of Lord Berossus before.' said Obax Zakayo wistfully, 'and I know there is no such quality left within him.'