'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 harder 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?'