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.
'Nothing,' said Pasanius. 'Just some rubbish.'