'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.
He forced himself to return his gaze to the horrific gutting. 'You said that the ones who survive have the skin bound to their flesh. What happens to the ones who don't survive?'
Sabatier rasped in laughter, fixing its attention squarely on Vaanes. 'Newborns too badly deformed or mutated are flushed away with rest of filth of Khalan-Ghol into mountains. Your bones and torn skin will join them soon.'
'The Unfleshed…' said Vaanes, recognising the terrible, red monsters that roamed the mountains from Sabatier's brief description. 'They are the failed births…'
'Yes,' hissed Sabatier. 'Most die in minutes, but some survive.'
'You will pay for this,' promised Vaanes, seeing Pasanius finally slide his arm from the restraint as the Savage Morticians continued their noisy work on the hanging carcass.
Uriel tried to scream, but stinging birth fluids filled his mouth and his body spasmed as his weakened respiratory system fought to sift as much oxygen as it could from the liquid that filled his lung. He floated in the loathsome amniotic jelly of the daemonculaba's womb, his skin burning from leaking gastric fluids and the virulence of the flesh magicks used to warp and mutate the woman's body.
He struggled against the sutures that held him fast, feeling his strength grow with each one he felt rip from the blubbery flesh. His determination to free himself burned with a white heat in his breast and he thrashed like a mindless beast, tearing his bindings loose and leaving him floating and unbound in the womb.
Uriel clawed and bit at rippling folds of flesh, tasting blood and fatty tissue in his mouth as he tore his way upward, each breath a spike of fire in his lung. His vision was greying and his heartbeats sounded like thunder in his ears, thudding booms that echoed strangely, as though it was more than just his own heart he was hearing within this prison of flesh.
He twisted and kicked, always pushing up and stabbing forward with his hands.
Suddenly, his right hand burst into dryness, tearing through the drum-taut skin of the daemonculaba's belly. Galvanised by the prospect of near freedom, Uriel doubled his efforts, pressing his other hand into the tear and pulling it wider. The skin tore along the line of the stitches and frothing fluids drained from the beast's belly as it poured out onto the grilled walkway. Uriel pushed his head clear of the daemonculaba, vomiting up the foul birth juices and gasping in a great lungful of air. Stagnant and blood-soaked though the atmosphere in the chamber was, it still felt like the clearest mountain air of Macragge compared to the inside of the womb.
Twisting and turning, Uriel extricated his wide shoulders, using the additional leverage that granted to pull his bruised torso from the daemonculaba. And in a stinking wash of birth fluids, blood and viscera, Uriel fell from the creature's belly to the iron floor.