Onyx stiffened as the black-robed creature shuffled painfully into a pool of light and Uriel felt a creeping horror scrape its way up his spine at the sight of it. It moved awkwardly on six, spider-like legs of riveted iron, its body braced within an oil-stained exo-skeleton at its cenue. Where its flesh was exposed, Uriel could see that it was withered and dead, a patchwork of sutures running along raised ridges of bone. Its head was heavy and hung low on its shoulders, brass rods piercing the width of its skull and scaffolded by a cage of brass bolted to its temples. Its hooded face was a loathsome, parchment-coloured skull, the lower half gleaming metal and flensed of skin, its eyes replaced with whirring mechanical optical feeds.
Myriad transparent tubes pierced its flesh, running in gurgling loops around its body and hissing valves released noxious gusts as its chest heaved with the effort of breath. It reached forward to lift Uriel with long, augmetic arms, bulky with scalpels, drills and blowtorches.
Onyx stepped in front of the creature, his claws unsheathing.
'No,' he said. 'These ones are for the master of Khalan-Ghol.'
The beast hissed in anger, its clawed hands snapping in frustration and its drill bits whirring dangerously close to Onyx's head. It reached down to push Onyx out of its way, but the black-armoured warrior refused to be moved.
'I said no,' he repeated. 'It may be that the Savage Morticians will have them in time, but that time is not now.'
The creature appeared to consider this for a moment, before its hideous skull face nodded and it retreated into the shadow of the machine once more.
Onyx watched it go and, while his attention was elsewhere, Uriel struggled within the stinking prison of the beast that bore him, Pasanius and Vaanes, but it was no use, they were held utterly immobile. At last, sure the Savage Mortician was not waiting in ambush, Onyx sheathed his claws and led the Exuviae bearing his prisoners onwards.
Uriel's frustration grew with every darkened hall they traversed and every impossibly angled staircase they climbed or descended, unable to move so much as a single muscle. The maddening sound of hammering grew louder the further they travelled and the same emerald light that permeated the city beyond the tower grew brighter as their journey led them from passages and chambers raised by the hands of men into a vast fiery cavern edged with great steam-venting pistons.
A gleaming silver bridge crossed a great chasm in the floor, through which rose banks of hot, sulphurous fumes and the taste of beaten metal. Beyond the bridge was a colossal wall of dark, green-veined stone pierced by a great, iron gate. Studded with jagged black spikes, the gate was flanked by two daemon-visaged Titans, their armoured plates scarred by millennia of war. Uriel saw with loathing that the rippling kill banners hanging from their weapons bore the damnable symbol of the Legio Mortis.
'Behold, the inner sanctum of the fortress of Khalan-Ghol! You are honoured indeed!' cried Onyx, leading them across the bridge spanning the chasm. As they drew near the gate, it unlocked with a reverberating boom that shook the dust from the leering gargoyles clustered around the chamber's roof, and the Titans reached around to open the spiked portal.
Onyx led them through the gateway and at last Uriel and his companions came face to face with the master of Khalan-Ghol.
The walls within the inner sanctum of the fortress were of a dressed black stone, threaded with gold and silver and glistening with moisture. A score of tall, arched windows pierced one wall and the dead light of the sky was reflected as milky lines on the floor.
Surrounded by two score Iron Warriors and seated on a throne of silvery white sat a scarred warrior with close-cropped black hair, clad in a dented and heavily battle-scarred suit of armour. His face was cruel, set in an expression of arch interest, a long, recently healed scar on his right temple. Behind him stood the giant Iron Warrior who had incapacitated Uriel with the writhing energy whip.
'Get rid of the Exuviae, Onyx,' said the warrior.
Onyx nodded and turned to face the slithering monsters, the silver lines on his face flaring brightly and a silver sheened hiss escaping his mouth. Uriel felt the solidity of the creatures become less constrictive and toppled to the floor as their form became sticky and liquid once more. Their substance retreated from the light on the floor, reverting to their sinuous shadow forms. Like whipped dogs, they slipped into the dark corners of the hall before sliding out of sight through the great gateway and back into the mordant darkness of the fortress.
Briefly Uriel considered reaching for his sword, but when he looked up, he stared into the barrels of some forty bolters, their plated sides carved with obscene sigils and decorated with the eight-pointed star of Chaos. The Iron Warriors divested them of their weapons and indicated that they should approach the warrior on the throne.
As they neared, Uriel saw that the warrior carried a huge black war-axe across his lap and recognised him as the Iron Warrior he had first fought on his ascent up the breach. His sword had come within centimetres of beheading this fiend.
'I know you,' said the warrior, recognising him also.
'You are Honsou?' said Uriel.
An Iron Warrior stepped in and hammered the butt of his weapon across the back of Uriel's skull. He dropped to one knee, the wound on the back of his head opening once more and fresh blood soaking his armour.
Honsou nodded. 'You know of me, but I do not know you. What are you called?'
'You will learn nothing from us by force,' said Uriel, rising to his feet and massaging the back of his head.
'It is a simple question,' said Honsou, rubbing his fingers across the scar on his temple. 'I would know the name of the warrior who drew my blood.'
'Very well. I am Uriel Ventris and these are my warriors.'
Honsou looked beyond Uriel. 'You keep strange company, Uriel Ventris - renegades, traitors and runaway slaves.'
Uriel did not reply, realising that Honsou believed him to be nothing more than a renegade himself. Without insignia or markings, there was nothing to indicate that he was still a warrior of the true Emperor of Mankind.
His mind raced as he tried to think of some way to exploit the traitor's mistake as Honsou continued: 'How is it you know of me? Did Toramino tell you?'
'Who?'
'Do not play the innocent with me,' cautioned Honsou. 'You'll find I have no patience for it. You know who Toramino is.'
Still Uriel did not reply and Honsou sighed. 'There is no point in trying to be noble, I will learn what I want to know. If not now, then the Savage Morticians will extract it from you soon enough. Trust me, you would do better to tell me what I want to know now than to suffer at their hands.'
'I learned of you from Toramino, yes.' Uriel said at last.
Honsou chuckled. 'See Zakayo, Toramino has sunk so low that he stoops to the employ of mercenaries. So much for his high ideals of purity, eh?'
'Indeed,' said Obax Zakayo, circling Honsou's throne and lifting Leonid and Ellard with the powerful, hissing claws that hunched over his shoulders. Both men struggled in his grip, but were powerless to resist the giant's strength.
'I told you that you would be beneath my blade again, slaves.'
'Put them down, Zakayo, their blood is not worth spilling here. Put them to work in the forges.'
Obax Zakayo nodded and dropped the two Guardsmen, but remained beside them, his desire to wreak bloody harm upon them plain.
'Why are you within the walls of my fortress, Ventris?' said Honsou.
'As you say, we are mercenaries,' replied Uriel.
'They had passed through the bedlam portals and were attempting to make for the inner keep when I found them,' said Onyx. 'I believe them to be assassins.'