Uriel trotted after his former captain. 'But why am I here? Why are you here? And why shouldn't I go down to the farm?'
Idaeus shrugged. 'As full of questions as ever you were,' he chuckled. 'I can't say for sure why we're here, it's your mind after all. It was you that dredged up this memory and brought me here.'
'But why here?'
'Perhaps because it's a safe place to retreat to,' suggested Idaeus, lifting a wineskin slung at his waist and taking a long drink. He handed the skin to Uriel, who also drank, enjoying the taste of genuine Calth vintage.
'Retreat to?' he said, handing the wineskin back. 'I don't understand. Retreat from what?'
'The pain.'
'What pain? I don't feel any pain,' said Uriel.
'You don't?' snapped Idaeus. 'You can't feel the pain? The pain of failure?'
'No,' said Uriel, glancing up as the dark shadows of clouds began to gather in the topmost reaches of the cave and evil thoughts began intruding on this pastoral scene.
Dead skies, the taste of iron. Horrors unnamed and abominations too terrible to bear…
A distant rumble of thunder sent a tremor through the clouds and Uriel looked up in confusion. This wasn't part of his memory. The underground caverns of Calth did not suffer such storms. More clouds began forming above him and he felt a suffocating fear rise up within him as they gathered with greater speed and ferocity.
Idaeus stepped in close to Uriel and said, 'You're dying Uriel. They're stealing the very things that make you who you are… can't you feel it?'
'I can't feel anything.'
'Try!' urged Idaeus. 'You have to go back to the pain.'
'No,' cried Uriel, as a heavy, dark rain began to fall, hard and thick droplets sending up tail spumes of mud.
Suffocating, cloying, questing hands within his flesh, a horrific sense of violation…
'I do not want to go back!' shouted Uriel.
'You have to, it's the only way you can save yourself.'
'I don't understand!'
'Think! Did my death teach you nothing?' said Idaeus as the rain beat down harder, melting the skin on his bones. 'A Space Marine never accepts defeat, never stops fighting and he never turns his back on his battle-brothers.'
The rain pounded the fields flat, the workers running in fear towards the farm. Uriel felt an almost uncontrollable desire to join them, but Idaeus placed a palm on his chest and struggled to speak in the face of his dissolution. 'No. The warrior I passed my sword to would not retreat. He would turn and face the pain.'
Uriel looked down, feeling the weight of a perfectly balanced sword settle in his hand, the blade a gleaming silver and its golden hilt shining like the sun. Its weight felt good, natural, and he closed his eyes as he fondly remembered forging its blade in the balmy heat of the Macragge night.
'What awaits me if I go back?' he asked.
'Suffering and death,' admitted Idaeus. 'Pain and anguish.'
Uriel nodded. 'I cannot abandon my friends…'
'That's my boy,' smiled Idaeus, his voice fading and his form almost totally washed away by the hard rain. 'But before you go… I have one last gift for you.'
'What?' said Uriel, feeling his grip on this fantasy slipping and his perceptions growing dimmer. As the vision of his captain diminished, Uriel thought he heard him say one last thing, a whispered warning that vanished like morning mist… beware your black… sun? But the words faded before he could hold onto the sense of them.
Uriel opened his eyes, feeling the sting of amniotic fluids on his skin and hearing the heartbeat of the dae-monculaba above him as reality rushed in once again. He roared in anger, feeling questing, umbilical tendrils invading his flesh. They burrowed in through the sockets cored into his body where the monitoring systems of his armour interfaced directly with his internal organs.
Suckling, feeding parasites wormed inside him, feeding and sampling his flesh.
Chains clanked as a pair of dangling hooks connected by a horizontal iron bar were lowered from the framework that encompassed the anatomist's arena. Connected to sturdy block and tackle, the heavy hooks were dragged onto the metal gurney upon which Seraphys lay. As one Savage Mortician prepared the hooks, the other cut his armour from his body with practiced ease. Lastly, it removed the helmet from the Space Marine and produced a heavy iron mallet from the whirring mechanisms of its arm.
Before Seraphys could do more than shout a denial, it smashed the mallet repeatedly against his skull.
Seraphys grunted in pain, but after the sixth blow, his eyes glazed over and his head rolled slack. The Mortician nodded to its compatriot, who lifted the unconscious Space Marine's legs and sliced a heavy blade across his Achilles tendons then thrust a hook into each ankle for hanging support. Seraphys's legs were spread so that his feet hung outside the shoulders, and, satisfied his body was secure, the Savage Mortician hauled on the rattling pulley and dragged the body into the air.
'What are you doing?' shouted Vaanes. 'For the love of the Emperor just kill him and be done with it!'
'No,' hissed Sabatier. 'Not kill him. Not when he has such succulent meat on him. See how they keep arms parallel to legs? This provides access to the pelvis, and keeps his arms out of the way in a position for easy removal.'
Sabatier chuckled as it continued its gruesome narration. 'Observing anatomy and skeleton, you can see that you humans not built or bred for meat. Your large central pelvis and broad shoulder blades interfere with achieving perfect cuts too much. You are too lean as well, no fat. You see, some fat, though not too much, is desirable as "marbling" to add a juicy, flavourful quality to meat.'
'Damn you,' cursed Vaanes as he watched the Savage Mortician bend to the insensible Blood Raven. Red streams caked his face where it ran from the portions caved-in by the iron mallet. A long-bladed knife cut a deep, ear-to-ear slice through the hanging Space Marine's neck and larynx, severing his internal and external carotid arteries.
Blood sprayed from the cut before Seraphys's enhanced metabolism began clotting the flow. But Sabatier limped over and prevented the wound from closing completely by jamming the fused meat of his fists in the cut and allowing the bright, arterial blood to splash into a stained iron barrel.
Unable to bear the sight of the savage glee his captors took from his comrade being butchered like an animal, Vaanes turned his head away from the sickening surgery as a Savage Mortician prepared to remove his victim's head.
Vaanes heard the grotesque sound of muscle and ligaments being sliced and the ripping of tendon and skin as the Savage Mortician gripped Seraphys's head on either side and twisted it off where the spinal cord met the skull.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, straining at the thick fetters that held him immobile on the table. His face purpled and veins bulged taut against his skin as he fought.
'No use fighting, so do not,' called Sabatier, seeing his struggles. 'Just make meat tougher. Damage skin too, but no one cares about that, we get enough of that from flesh camps in mountains, despite what you destroy and burn.'
Despite the horror, Vaanes felt a sudden rush of interest. 'What do you need the skins for anyway?'
'To clothe the newborns!' said Sabatier proudly. 'The brood of the daemonculaba are expelled from the womb as mewling, skinless things. Those that survive have new skin to bind their flesh and make them whole, ready to become one of the iron masters!'
Vaanes felt his own skin crawl at this latest vileness. That the camps in the mountains were used to produce masses of skin to flesh newborn soldiers of the Iron Warriors was an abomination too far. He opened his eyes in time to see Pasanius rolling his eyes at him, desperately indicating that Vaanes should continue talking. For a second he was at a loss as to why, then saw that, without the length of his forearm, Pasanius had almost worked his cauterised stump from the iron clamp securing the limb to the table.