Ultramarines Omnibus

'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 feeling 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.