A vast, dark range of mountains towered over it alclass="underline" blasted black rock where no living thing had ever lived or ever would. The peaks seemed to scrape the sky itself: the jagged stumps of the mountains a dozen or more times taller than the highest summit of Macragge. Uriel felt his blood chill as his eyes travelled up the terrifying heights of the enormous crags, seeing vile tendrils of noxious black smoke writhing from behind the mountains and clawing impossibly into the sky.
Strange turrets reared beyond the peaks and Uriel knew with awful certainly that some nightmare city lay concealed and brooding in the deep, dark valleys of that damnable mountain range. A city where walls and bastions spread across the ground and distant domes fouled the rock like fungi after the rain. It was a hideous, dead-ringed outpost of malice that was rightly abhorred by all living things. Tarnished steeples and stained walls, deathly weed-tangled spires and empty halls were filled with limping and shuffling ghosts in rags who blindly obeyed the loathsome will of the city's diabolical master: the daemon primarch Perturabo, lord and master of the Iron Warriors.
'The hate…' whispered Uriel. 'So much hate and bitterness.'
'Yes,' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'Imagine all the rank bitterness I smell within you - poisoned and grown strong by millennia of vengeful brooding, and it is still but the merest fraction of how much a living god can hate.'
Uriel closed his eyes to shut out this nightmare vision, understanding that to take even a single step towards the dreadful city was to die, but its cyclopean immensity was etched forever in his mind such that nothing could ever remove it.
The futility of existence in the face of this nameless horror was almost too great to bear and he raised his eyes to the dead sky, its soul-destroying emptiness preferable to Perturabo's baleful city. The ghostly black tendrils squirmed through the sky and he saw that they poured towards the solitary thing to stain its emptiness.
A vast black sun, its surface so dark that its darkness was not simply the absence of colour and light, but such that its fuliginous depths sucked all life and soul from the world.
Pasanius wept at its horrible, crushing weight and Uriel was not surprised to find that he too shed tears at the sight of such an abomination against nature.
'Emperor protect us,' he whispered. 'This is…'
'Aye,' said the Omphalos Daemonium. 'This is the place you call the Eye of Terror.'
'Why…?' gasped Uriel, tearing his gaze from the morbid sun. 'Why here?'
'This is the end of your journey. The place where you will fulfil your oath.'
'I do not understand.'
'That matters not. The things you seek to destroy, the daemonculaba, are on this world, shuttered away in the darkness, far from the sight of man in a great fastness fashioned from madness and despair.'
'Why would you bring us here?' demanded Uriel, a measure of his self-control returning. 'Why would a creature of Chaos seek to aid us?'
The Omphalos Daemonium laughed its booming, discordant laugh and said, 'Because you are to do my bidding, Uriel Ventris.'
'Never!' snapped Uriel. 'We would die before aiding a beast such as you.'
'Perhaps,' agreed the giant warrior. 'But are you willing to sacrifice all that you have fought to protect by defying me? Everything you have sacrificed and everyone you have bled to save will be washed away in an ocean of blood if you do.'
'You lie,' growled Pasanius.
'Foolish morsels. What need have I of lies? The Architect of Fate has lies enough for this universe: the Lord of Skulls demands no such pretences. I know what you saw as we travelled the bloodtracks, your world afire and your people dead, ashes on the wind as it burned to death.'
The Omphalos Daemonium took a ponderous step towards them, its billhook lowered to aim at Uriel's chest.
'I can make that happen,' it promised. 'All the splintered futures you saw can be shaped and I can ensure that your precious home dies screaming in the flames. Do you believe that?'
Uriel stared into the leprous yellow eyes of the daemon and knew with utter certainty that it could do the things it spoke of - Macragge destroyed, Ultramar gone…
'Yes, I believe you,' he said at last. 'What would you have us do?'
'Uriel!' cried Pasanius.
'I do not believe we have a choice, my friend,' said Uriel slowly.
'Think of what you are saying,' said Pasanius in disbelief. 'Whatever this bastard thing wants us to do can only be for evil. Who knows what we might unleash if we agree to do what it wants?'
'I know that, Pasanius, but what else can we do? Would you see Ultramar destroyed? The Fortress of Hera brought to ruin?'
'No, of course not, but—'
'No, Pasanius,' said Uriel evenly. 'Trust me. You have to trust me. Do you trust me?'
'You know I do,' protested Pasanius. 'I trust you with my life, but this is madness!'
'Then trust me now,' pressed Uriel.
Pasanius opened his mouth to speak once more, but saw the look in Uriel's eyes and simply nodded curtly.
'Very well,' he said sadly.
'Good,' hissed the Omphalos Daemonium, revelling in their defeat. 'There is a fortress many leagues from here, high in the southern mountains, and its master has something deep in his most secret vault that belongs to me. You will retrieve it for me.'
'What is it?' asked Uriel.
'It is the Heart of Blood, and that it is precious to me is all you need know.'
'What does it look like? How will we recognise it?'
The Omphalos Daemonium chuckled. 'You will know it when you see it.'
'Why do you need us for this?' demanded Pasanius. 'If it's so damned important, why the hell don't you just get it yourself?'
The Omphalos Daemonium was silent for a beat, then said, 'I have seen you with it and it is your destiny to do this. That is enough.'
Uriel nodded, hearing a distant, shrill cry on the air.
The Omphalos Daemonium heard the noise too and cocked its head, turning and marching back to the rectangle of red light that led back into the daemon engine and the hissing Sarcomata.
As it reached the shimmering doorway, it said, 'The delirium spectres come. They hear the beat of your hearts and their hunger tears at them. It would be wise not to be found by them.'
'Wait!' said Uriel, but the Omphalos Daemonium stepped through the doorway and he watched helplessly as it faded and vanished from the mountainside, taking their daemonic captor from sight.
A leaden weight of despair settled on Uriel's soul as the Omphalos Daemonium disappeared, and he dropped to his knees as he heard the cries of what sounded like a skirling chorus of air raid sirens.
He looked into the dead sky and saw a flock of hybrid, winged… things, flapping rhythmically on fleshy pinions towards them from the high peaks of the mountains.
'What the hell…?' said Pasanius, squinting into the sky.
'The delirium spectres,' said Uriel, scrambling over the ashen ground to retrieve his weapons.
'What do we do?' said Pasanius, belting on his pistol and slinging his flamer over his shoulder.
'We run,' said Uriel, as the madly screeching flock drew closer.
CHAPTER FOUR
Black shapes against the white sky screeched as they descended from the heights of the mountains and streaked towards the two Space Marines. The delirium spectres filled the air with the wails of murder victims and Uriel could hear their agony in every shriek torn from their bodies.
He scanned the plateau for obvious hiding places, hating the idea of flight, but knowing that the Omphalos Daemonium had not lied when it had told them that it would be wise not to be found by these creatures.
'Uriel,' said Pasanius, pointing further up the steep slopes of the mountain to a narrow defile in the rock-face. 'There! I don't think they will be able to get in there.'