More blood and amniotic fluids poured from the daemonculaba's belly and the Savage Mortician reached in to hack at its internal structure with long, sword-like limbs. Hissing, gurgling tubes carried away dead fluids and Honsou heard the crack of bone and the sharp twang of severed sinews from within the daemonculaba's body.
The Mortician cut the wound wider and with a final splash of blood and blue and purple viscera, the daemonculaba's offspring spilled out onto the floor.
He landed with a wet, meaty thump: powerfully muscled and hot-housed far beyond the callow youth he had been when implanted. Honsou knelt beside the quivering newborn, the skinless body shivering with the violence of its delivery. Even wrapped in a mutated length of glistening umbilical cord, Honsou could see that this birth was perfect - no need to flush him into the pipes with the rest of the discards.
Filmy, acidic residue coated his muscles and he began weeping in pain as the Savage Mortician lifted him from the ground.
'Wait,' said Honsou, stepping forward and wiping handfuls of bloody, matter-flecked slime from the newborn's gleaming red skull and clearing the birth fluids from his skinless features.
The newborn lifted his head at Honsou's touch, looking into his face with a fierce earnestness. Honsou held the newly born Chaos Space Marine towards its dark, clawed midwife.
'Clean him and then clothe him in fresh skin,' he ordered. 'Give him Obax Zakayo's armour and bring him to me when he becomes ready.'
The Savage Mortician nodded and dragged away the mewling newborn.
And the master of Khalan-Ghol laughed, realising that the Gods of Chaos could sometimes have a sense of humour after all.
Whether the manufactory facility had fallen into disuse and then been colonised by the Unfleshed or whether they had taken it by force was unknowable, but judging by the state of disrepair and wreckage strewn around, either explanation was possible. Uriel had been shocked at the hideousness of the Unfleshed he had seen on the surface of Medrengard, but they were nothing compared to the horrors of those who remained below in the darkness. How such things could live baffled Uriel, but even as he felt revulsion at their terrible forms, he felt a great pity for them. For they too were victims of the Iron Warriors' malice.
Uriel had no way of measuring, but reckoned on the passing of perhaps ten or twelve hours since they had escaped the dungeons of Khalan-Ghol. Led by the Lord of the Unfleshed on a gruelling march into the high peaks of mountains, they had set off to an unknown destiny, though it had been impossible to tell whether they had been taken as brothers-in-arms or prisoners. Uriel and Pasanius had bound Ellard's wound and carried him with them, despite Vaanes's protestations that the man was as good as dead and should be left behind.
Upon leaving the pool at the base of the cliffs where their lunatic flight from the depths of Khalan-Ghol through the sewage pipes had carried them, Uriel had seen that they were indeed many kilometres from the fortress. After covering many more, the warrior band had eventually been led to a great crack in the mountainside where noxious clouds of vapour gusted and spoil heaps of refuse and bones were gathered.
Descending into the stygian darkness of the mountainside, the rock passageway had eventually opened into a wide chamber where perhaps some underground earthquake had ripped an underground manufactory apart. Buckled, iron columns supported a bowing ceiling on vast, riveted girders, and beams of murky light speared down through shattered coolant towers that pierced the roof and illuminated the echoing space. Twisting bridges of knotted rope connected the forests of columns and a great pit had been dug or drilled in the centre of the manufactory floor where something unseen glittered and twisted in the dim light.
Piles of shattered machinery lay rusting in pools of moisture and groups of the Unfleshed, hundreds of them, gathered around them, their red bodies wet and glistening. These Unfleshed were the true monsters, so mutated and deformed as to be unable to hunt, or - in some cases - even move. Piles of altered flesh, twisted limbs without number and warped symbiotes of fused flesh that gibbered and howled in constant pain.
'So many of them…' said Uriel.
Further comment had been prevented as they were herded down into the depths of the manufactory and the Lord of the Unfleshed indicated that they should sit in the lee of a great pressing machine, with hammers the size of a battle tank.
'You. Not move.'
'Wait,' said Uriel. 'What do you want with us?'
'Tribe needs talk. Decide if you Unwanted like us or just meat. Probably we kill you all,' admitted the Lord of the Unfleshed. 'Good meat on your bones and fresh skin to wear.'
'Kill us?' snapped Vaanes. 'If you're just going to kill us, then why the hell did you bother to bring us here, you damn freak?'
'Weak of Tribe need meat,' rasped the monster, staring at Ellard with undisguised appetite. The sergeant had surprised them all by surviving the journey, though Uriel saw that he surely could not live much longer. Blood soaked the makeshift bandage of his tattered uniform jacket and his face was deathly pale. 'They cannot hunt, so we bring meat to them.'
'You had to ask,' growled Pasanius.
Vaanes shrugged and slumped to the ground with his back to the Ultramarines.
The Lord of the Unfleshed had then departed, making his way down to the floor of the manufactory to rejoin his tribe, leaving them in the company of a dozen gigantic monsters, each larger than a dreadnought and equipped with a fearsome array of gnashing fangs and long, dripping talons.
Since then, they had waited for hours in the stinking twilight as their captors - or brethren - debated whether to kill them or not. The creature Uriel had fought in the outflow pool was one of their guards, though it still appeared not to care about the weapon lodged in its flesh.
'Damn it, but I wish I knew what they were doing,' said Uriel, turning from the creatures that surrounded them.
'Do you?' said Pasanius. 'I'm not so sure.'
'We can't stay here. We have to get back to that fortress.'
'Back to the fortress?' laughed Ardaric Vaanes. 'Are you serious?'
'Deadly serious,' nodded Uriel. We have a death oath to fulfil, to destroy the daemonculaba or die in the attempt.'
'You'll die then,' promised Vaanes.
'Then we die,' said Uriel. 'Have you heard nothing I have said to you, Vaanes?'
'Don't you dare lecture me about honour and duty, Ventris,' warned Vaanes. 'I have seen enough of what your honour has to offer. Most of us are already dead, and for what?'
'No warrior ever died in vain who died for honour in the service of the Emperor.'
'Spare me your borrowed wisdom, Ventris,' sneered Vaanes. 'I have had my fill of it. If we survive this, there's no way I'm going anywhere near that fortress again. I am done with your heroics and will leave you to die.'
'Then I was wrong about you, Vaanes,' said Uriel. 'I thought you had honour left within you, but I see now that you do not.'
Vaanes ignored Uriel and stared sullenly at the lumpen, misshapen beasts that watched over them.
Uriel turned to Pasanius and said, 'Then we are on our own, my friend.'
'So it would seem,' agreed Pasanius, slowly, and Uriel could see that his friend was struggling to speak - burdened by the terrible weight of guilt.
An awkward silence fell between the two friends, neither knowing the right way to break it or how to begin to say what needed to be said.
'Why didn't you tell me?' said Uriel at last.
'How could I?' sobbed Pasanius. 'I was tainted. Touched by evil and corrupted!'
'How? When?' asked Uriel.
'On Pavonis, I think,' said Pasanius, the words, now undammed, pouring from him in a rush of confession. 'You remember that I hated the augmetic arm the moment the artificers of the Shonai cartel grafted it to me?'