Uriel could see Leto Barbaden atop the first Leman Russ, his helmet's visor pulled up as he shouted orders to his soldiers. Uriel could see the relish in Barbaden's face, the righteous notion that he was doing the Emperor's work butchering these people. Verena Kain and Sergeant Tremain marched before Barbaden's tank, and Uriel saw the same zealous gleam in their eyes. Uriel wished that Kain's death had been more painful.
He hated himself for such a visceral reaction, but the emotions stirred within him by the knowledge that Barbaden had not only ordered the killings, but had taken such pleasure from them was too powerful to be ignored.
'How do we end this?' asked Pasanius.
'I don't know,' replied Uriel, 'when Thayer thinks we've seen enough.'
'Then I've seen enough,' said Pasanius, 'enough to know that a bullet in the head's too quick a death for Barbaden.'
'Agreed,' said Uriel, 'and I know how this has to end now.'
With those words, the sight before them blurred and shifted, transforming from the burning heart of Khaturian to the devastated House of Providence.
Uriel blinked as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he saw the Lord of the Unfleshed towering over him. The killing light in his eyes was undimmed, yet there was no hatred in them, only a sense of profound sadness. Behind the mighty creature, Uriel saw Leodegarius climb to his feet, the entire right-hand side of his armour drenched in blood.
'You know how this has to end?' asked the Lord of the Unfleshed.
Uriel looked down at the ruined, mutilated body of Sylvanus Thayer and nodded. 'I do.'
'How?'
Uriel looked past the mighty creature towards Leodegarius.
'Brother Leodegarius, are you still maintaining your aegis sanctuary over Barbaden and Togandis?'
'I am,' said Leodegarius, and Uriel could hear the exhaustion in the warrior's voice. This hero of the Imperium was wounded nigh unto death and yet still he stood tall. 'What of it?'
'End it,' said Uriel.
The prison was in uproar.
Prisoners screamed and shouted for guards, but if any heard their pleas, none dared show their faces in the prison complex. For now, the spirits of the dead ruled the Panopticon.
Shavo Togandis stood before the bars of his cell, mouthing prayers and confessing every base, petty thing he had done in his life. He spoke in words barely above a whisper, knowing that the Emperor would hear them, but unwilling to share them with Leto Barbaden.
The ghostly figures heard his confession in silence and he hoped they understood his regret and pain. They had made no attempt to come closer since the spirit of the young girl had been hurled back by the psychic barrier erected by Leodegarius, but had simply watched, and waited.
His confession done, he said, 'I tread the path of righteousness. Though it be paved with broken glass, I will walk it barefoot. Though it crosses rivers of fire, I will pass over them. Though it wanders wide, the light of the Emperor guides my step.'
'Can't think of words of your own, Shavo?' sneered Barbaden. 'Whose are those? And don't try to tell me they're yours, I know you better than that.'
'They were said by Dolan of Chiros, the man who helped bring down Cardinal Bucharis.'
'Ah, the confessor who stood before the tyrant during the Plague of Unbelief. Is that it? Do you think men will remember you in the same breath as Dolan? You may have been a confessor, Shavo, but you're not a tenth of the man Dolan was,' said Barbaden, lounging unconcerned on his bunk. 'You were always too much of a worm to be granted a place at the Emperor's side.'
'And you think there's a place for you? A murderer?'
Barbaden laughed. 'I'm no murderer, and as soon as this farce of an incarceration is over, I'll be back in the palace. I have the right of appeal to the Sector Governor, and do you think he's going to let me swing for killing a few terrorists?'
'If there is an iota of justice in this galaxy, then yes,' said Togandis, closing his eyes and wishing Leto Barbaden would shut up.
'There is no justice, Shavo. Don't be so foolish. There's no room for justice in this galaxy,' said Barbaden, 'and if you'll permit me to quote back to you, I think you'll find this one illuminating: ''When the people forget their duty they are no longer human and become something less than beasts. They have no place in the bosom of humanity nor in the heart of the Emperor. Let them die and be forgotten''.'
Then it shall be so.
The voice had sounded right in his ear.
Togandis opened his eyes and he cried out as he saw that their cells were filled with the ghostly figures who had stood, silent and unmoving, beyond the bars, waiting.
Fear clutched at his heart, but it was instantly replaced by a wash of relief. It was over, the waiting, the fear of humiliation and the dread that they would somehow escape retribution.
'Get away from me, damn you!' shouted Barbaden. 'Get away from me, I said!'
Togandis watched as the dead crowded in around the former governor of Salinas, eager to be part of his unmaking. Though they had been called ghosts, they were no phantom apparitions of mist; their nails could tear skin and their teeth could rip flesh from bones.
Barbaden screamed as they plucked at the soft meat of his face, bearing him to the ground and clawing his flesh. His eyes went first, torn from their sockets with a swift jerk of cold, dead hands.
They tore the skin from his face, ripping the muscles from his skull and peeling him back to the frame of bone beneath. His limbs bent and snapped and his screams filled the cells as the dead fought to bloody their hands in his entrails.
Togandis watched in horrified fascination as Leto Barbaden was torn apart before his very eyes, the meat and bone of his existence ripped asunder in a frenzy of vengeance.
In moments it was over and there was nothing left in the cell that even remotely resembled what had once been a human being. All that remained was a jumble of torn offal and a vast lake of blood and snapped bone.
The dead turned their faces to Shavo Togandis. 'Do what must be done,' he said. The dead came at him and as he felt their hands reach for his eyes, he said, 'I forgive you.'
Uriel knew it was over.
The dead light in the eyes of the Lord of the Unfleshed faded and sudden silence fell upon the House of Providence. The howling of the ghosts ceased and the filmy scraps of light began to fade. Uriel felt a tremendous wave of relief pass through him as the dead began their final journey, their spirits finally allowed to disperse into the warp.
The gloom that had settled upon Salinas was gone in an instant, and Uriel had not fully realised how oppressive it had been until it was removed.
Uriel heard a rasping sigh from the bed next to him and looked down at Sylvanus Thayer as the machine maintaining his life hiked and stuttered. The rhythmic machine noise of his life slowed until it became a single, shrill note that could mean only one thing.
Sylvanus Thayer was dead, and with him the threat to Salinas.
The wound in reality was gone, sealed up without the link between worlds that the former leader of the Sons of Salinas had provided.
Uriel took a deep, cleansing breath, looking around to make sure that he was not imagining things: that it was truly over. Pasanius stood next to him and the injured Leodegarius held himself upright with his one remaining arm.
Cheiron staggered over to his commander and Uriel turned his attention to the Lord of the Unfleshed. The last of the Unfleshed swayed on his feet, unsteady and uncertain, his head turning this way and that as though awakening from a deep slumber.
His eyes, milky and rheumy, focused on Uriel and he dropped to his knees, his massive clawed hands coming up to his face as a heartrending moan of self-loathing issued from deep inside him. Great, wracking sobs burst from the Lord of the Unfleshed's chest and Uriel felt deep sorrow that it had come to this.