'How long do you think it'll take to get there?' asked Leonid, almost afraid of the answer.
Uriel shook his head. 'I do not know for sure, but I do not believe these machines will be confounded by the magicks protecting this place, so not long would be my guess.'
Leonid nodded resignedly and shut his eyes, trying to block out the dreadful smell of the dead bodies.
As it transpired, the bulldozers' journey through the twisting interior of Khalan-Ghol took perhaps another hour, travelling along grisly thoroughfares of sacrificial altars, winding between dark-armoured bunkers and through the maze of manufactorum that the warrior band had become so lost in.
The vast shadow of the gate of the tower of iron at the centre of the fortress passed over them, and once again they were deep in the heart of Honsou's lair. Distant hammer blows and the grinding clanking of nearby machines filled the gloom, and Uriel heard the clicking footsteps of unseen creatures as they filed past the growling bulldozers. Sickly yellow light came and went as they passed along wide, rockcrete tunnels lit by flickering lumo-strips.
Eventually, Uriel heard the thudding beat of a monstrous heart growing louder and shared an uneasy glance with his companions. The booming bass note was all too familiar.
'The Heart of Blood,' said Pasanius.
Uriel nodded, his muscles tensing as he heard clicking and wheezing mechanical footsteps approaching. The bulldozer ground to a halt with a juddering lurch. A tall silhouette loomed over the edge of the tender and Uriel snapped his eyes shut, recognising the dead skin features of one of the Savage Morticians.
He remained utterly immobile as he felt metal pincers jab into the tender. Hissing claws turned bodies within the pooled and now sticky blood. Corpses rolled and flopped in the tender as the Savage Mortician inspected the dead for some unknown purpose.
He fought back a gasp of revulsion as he felt a claw close on his leg and turn him over, fighting to remain still as his flesh was jabbed and probed.
The Savage Mortician clicked and whistled in its incomprehensible language, presumably to another of its fell, surgical kin, before releasing his limb and clanking off on some other errand. Uriel kept his eyes shut and his breathing shallow until the bulldozer set off once again and they had put some distance between them and the hellish surgeons.
'Holy Throne,' he whispered, sickened by the Savage Mortician's touch.
Their nightmarish journey continued into the chamber of screams, the terrible beat of the daemonic Heart of Blood dulling his senses once more. Even over the heavy thuds of the Heart of Blood, Uriel heard the rumbling whine of heavy machinery as well as the grinding crack of bones and wet squelch of pulverised flesh.
'Be ready!' he hissed. 'I think we have arrived!'
Pasanius and Leonid nodded as Uriel slid himself over the carpet of bodies and raised his head slowly over the edge of the tender.
Sure enough, they were close to the great crushing machine that ground up the dead Chaos Space Marines and transformed them into genetic matter for the daemonculaba to feast upon.
But as before, his gaze was drawn upwards to the centre of the chamber, to the massive form of the Heart of Blood, the daemonic creature that hung suspended above the lake of blood on a trio of great chains.
He tore his eyes from the imprisoned daemon and saw that they were part of a great, curving procession of red bulldozers parked next to the iron ramp that led up to the gantry of the great, daemonic wombs. Their hellish conveyance was but one of perhaps a dozen or more of the bulldozers, lurching in fits and starts towards the blood-smeared conveyor that led to the sticky crushers and rollers. A pulsing forest of pipes pumped a pinkish, gristly matter from the machine to the cages of the daemonculaba and Uriel felt his gorge rise at such a blasphemy against what had once been the sacred flesh of the Emperor's body.
Vacuum-suited servitor mutants on a raised platform stabbed wide hooks attached to lengths of chain into the dead flesh in the tenders then wound the chains through heavy pulley mechanisms. They worked quickly and efficiently, loading the corpses onto the conveyor in a manner that spoke of many years of repetition.
Beside the conveyor, Uriel saw a cruciform frame holding what looked like a rack of meat, positioned close enough to be spattered by blood spraying from the grinding rollers. Uriel paid it no mind as he searched for any of the dark-robed monsters that were macabre lords of this place.
Seeing none, he eased his body up and over the edge of the tender, dropping lightly to the wet, churned ground.
He tapped the tender and said, 'Come on.'
Pasanius clambered to join him, cleaning blood from the action of his weapon and wedging the bolter between his knees to rack the slide. Leonid followed suit, wiping blood from his eyes and scouring the vent-breech of his lasgun.
The three warriors crouched in the shadow of the tender, breathing heavily and clearing their bodies of as much coagulated blood as they could.
'Well, we're in,' said Leonid. 'Now what?'
Uriel glanced around the edge of the tender. 'First we destroy that machine. If the Iron Warriors cannot feed the daemonculaba genetic material…'
'Honsou will not be able to create more Iron Warriors!' finished Leonid.
'And there will be no more of the Unfleshed,' added Pasanius.
Uriel nodded. 'And after that, well, we make for the ramp behind us and slay as many of the daemoncu-laba as we can before the Savage Morticians kill us.'
His companions were silent until eventually Leonid said, 'Good plan.'
Uriel grinned and said, 'Glad you approve.'
Pasanius put down his bolter and offered his left hand to Uriel, saying, 'No matter what happens, I regret nothing that has led us here, captain.'
Uriel took his friend's hand and shook it, touched by the simple affection of the sentiment, and said, 'Nor I, my friend. No matter what, we will have done some good here.'
'For what it's worth,' said Leonid. 'I wish I'd never even heard of this damn place, let alone been dragged here. But I am here, and that's the end of it, so what are we waiting for? Let's do this.'
Uriel racked the slide on his own bolter and nodded.
But before he could do anything more, he heard a great, bestial howl that was answered by a demented chorus of roars and bellows that echoed from the chamber's ceiling.
He rushed to the edge of the tender in time to see the Lord of the Unfleshed rear from hiding in a fountain of blood and limbs, and tear one of the mutant butchers in two with his bare hands.
The Unfleshed erupted from the blood-filled tenders in a thrashing mass of knotted, deformed limbs, ripping into the mutants feeding the crushing machine with the frenzy of predators who had held their anger and hunger in check for far too long.
Uriel watched as the Lord of the Unfleshed's massive jaws snapped shut on a screaming mutant, biting him in two at the waist and silencing his screams forever.
The beast Uriel had fought at the outflow pulled the arms from another foe before hurling its victim into the crushers of the grinding machine. The Unfleshed slaughtered a score of the servants of the Savage Morticians in the blink of an eye, and Uriel was horrified and grateful at the same time for their savagery.
'Damn it,' cursed Uriel. 'There goes the element of surprise!'
'Now what?' asked Pasanius.
'It will only be a matter of time until the Savage Morticians come to investigate, so come on. We don't have long.'
Uriel and the others broke from cover, running over to the roaring machine that had a potent aura of malice and hunger to it, its dark purpose imbuing it with a loathsome evil. The sooner it was destroyed the better, knew Uriel, as he drew near and a clawing sickness built in his gut.