Alongside him, Lord Berossus growled as he watched the Titans' guns train upon them, spooling up his own weapons. Toramino looked up at Berossus and shook his head at his vassal warsmith's lack of restraint. None here could face a Titan and live, but such were the ingrained responses of Berossus that no other reaction was possible.
Toramino stepped onto the iron bridge, the metal hissing beneath his armoured boot and rippling like mercury, reflecting his massive, armoured form in its glistening lustre. Standing well over two metres tall, Lord Toramino wore a suit of exquisitely tooled power armour, handcrafted on Olympia itself and burnished to a mirror sheen. Its trims were edged with arabesques of carven gold and onyx chevrons and its every surface wrought with terrible sigils of ruin. An ochre cloak of woven metallic thread, stronger than adamantium, billowed around his wide frame, partially obscuring the skull-masked symbol of the Iron Warriors on one shoulder guard and his own personal heraldry of a mailed fist above a plan view of a breached redoubt on the other.
An Iron Warrior from his most trusted retinue carried his elaborately carved helm, and another carried his blasted standard, an eight-pointed star of blackened bone set upon a spiked, brass-rimmed wheel and woven with sinew extracted from a thousand screaming victims. Long white hair, pulled into a tight scalp-lock, trailed down his back and his stern, patrician features were pinched and angular - speaking of long years of bitter experience. His eyes were opalescent orbs of gold, smouldering with suppressed rage beneath thick brows.
As they approached the wall, huge blasts of stinking, oil-streaked gases jetted from the pistons either side of the gate and with a groan and squeal of grinding metalwork, the colossal locks disengaged with percussive booms that shook the dust from the chamber's ceiling.
The Titans lowered their mighty weapons and the upper portions of their bodies twisted around on bronze joints to grip the spiked gateway and pull. Steam jetted from wheezing fibre-bundle muscles, and slowly the awful gate groaned open, spilling an emerald light into the chamber as Toramino and Berossus passed between the mighty death machines and into the sanctum sanctorum of the lord of the fortress.
Toramino remembered this place from the many times he had come to pay homage to Khalan-Ghol's former castellan - a great and terrible warrior who had now ascended to the dark majesty of daemonhood. The walls within were of a plain black stone, threaded with gold and silver and glistening with moisture, despite the heat radiating from the terrazzo floor of powdered bone. Sickly white light reflected as pearlescent streaks on the floor from a score of tall and thin arched windows that pierced the eastern wall, draining the chamber of life and imparting a deathly pallor to its occupants.
A score of Iron Warriors stood to attention at the far end of the chamber, gathered about a polished throne of white and silver upon which sat a warrior in battered power armour.
It galled Toramino that he came before the fortress's new lord as a supposed equal. The half-breed was a bastard mongrel, not fit to wipe the blood from an Iron Warrior's armour, let alone command them in battle. Such an affront to the honour of the Legion was almost more than Toramino could bear, and as he watched the lord of the fortress rise from his throne of fused iron and bone, he felt his hatred rise in a venomous wave of bile.
The half-breed's appearance matched Toramino's opinion of him in that he was unclean and had none of the nobility of the ancients of Olympia. His close-cropped black hair topped a rugged, scarred face with bluntly prosaic features, and his armour was dented and scarred, still marked with the residue of battle. Did the half-breed not care that he was now receiving two of the most ancient and noble warsmiths of Medrengard? That this upstart's warsmith could have appointed such a low mongrel as his successor beggared belief.
'Lord Honsou,' said Toramino, forcing himself to bow before the half-breed while keeping his hands clasped behind his back. His tone was formal and he spoke in low, sibilant tones, though he was careful to include a mocking inflection to his words.
'Lord Toramino,' answered Honsou. 'You honour me with your presence. And you also, Lord Berossus. It has been many years since the walls of Khalan-Ghol shook to the tread of your steps.'
The floor cracked under the weight of Lord Berossus, a hulking monster of dark iron and bronze with a leering skull face. Fully twice the height of Toramino, the living remains of Warsmith Berossus had been fused within the defiled sarcophagus of a dreadnought many thousands of years ago.
The grotesque machine hissed and a grating voice, muffled and distorted by a bronze vox-unit, said, 'Aye, it has, though I feel sullied to stand within its walls knowing a bastard mongrel like you is its new lord.'
Augmented and extensively engineered since his interment, Berossus's mechanical form towered above the other dreadnoughts of his grand company, his leg assemblies strengthened and widened to allow him to carry heavier and heavier breaching equipment. The dreadnought's upper body was scarred and pitted, the testament of uncounted sieges engraved on its adamantium shell. One arm bore a mighty, piston-driven siege hammer, the other a monstrous drill ringed with heavy calibre cannons.
Four thick, iron arms ending in vicious picks, blades, claws and heavy gauge breachers sprouted from behind Berossus's sarcophagus and hung ready for use over his armoured carapace.
Toramino saw Honsou bite back a retort and his soulless, golden eyes sparkled with amusement at the directness of Berossus. Honsou must already know what had brought them both here. There was only one thing that would make both him and Berossus deign to step within the walls of the half-breed's lair and he smiled, easily able to imagine Honsou's chagrin at having to share what his former master had won.
'You must forgive Berossus, Lord Honsou,' said Toramino smoothly, stepping forward and extending his hands before him. Unlike the rest of his armour, his gauntlets were fashioned from a brutal, dark iron, pitted and scarred with innumerable battles. Steeped in carnage, Toramino had long ago vowed never to clean a death from his hands and his gauntlets were gnarled with aeons of blood and suffering. As his armoured gauntlets came into view, the Iron Warriors behind Honsou snapped their bolters upright, every one aiming his weapon at Toramino's head.
Toramino grinned, exposing teeth of gleaming silver, and said, 'I come before you to offer my congratulations on the victory at Hydra Cordatus. Your former master executed a masterful campaign: to carry the walls of such a formidable stronghold was a truly great achievement. And your fellow captains, Forrix and Kroeger? Where are they that I might fete them with honours also?'
'They are dead,' snapped Honsou, and Toramino took pleasure in the vexation the half-breed took from his exclusion from the honours of victory. He scented the mongrel's pathetic desire to be accepted by them and closed on the true purpose of their journey here.
'A pity,' said Toramino, 'but their deaths served a greater purpose, yes? You were successful in capturing the prize that lay beneath the citadel?'
'A pity?' repeated Honsou. 'It is only a pity that I was not able kill them myself, though I did have the pleasure of watching Forrix die. And yes, we took the spoils of war from the cryo-facility beneath the mountains - what the Imperials hadn't managed to destroy at least.'