He was lifted up and deposited roughly on the earthen ground beside Pasanius and Ardaric Vaanes, both of whom looked at him with expressions of fearful awe. Uriel shrugged, too breathless to speak.
The Lord of the Unfleshed knelt beside him and said, 'Emperor loves you.'
'I think that maybe he does…' gasped Uriel.
The Lord of the Unfleshed nodded and pointed to the pit. 'Yes. You still alive.'
'Yes,' gasped Uriel. 'You are right, the Emperor does love me. Just as he loves you.'
The creature nodded slowly. 'Will help you kill iron men. Flesh mothers too. Should not be more of us.'
'Thank you…' hissed Uriel.
'Emperor loves us, but we hate us,' said the Lord of the Unfleshed, painfully. 'We did nothing, did not deserve this. Want to kill iron men, but not know how to get into mountain. Cannot fight over high walls!'
Uriel pulled himself breathlessly to his feet and, despite his brush with death, smiled at the Lord of the Unfleshed as a portion of their journey into Khalan-Ghol returned to him with a clarity that was surely more than mere memory.
'That doesn't matter,' said Uriel. 'I know another way in.'
Khalan-Ghol shook with the fury of the renewed bombardment, shells exploding like fiery tempests against its ancient walls. Armies of heavy tanks and entire corps of soldiers mustered at the base of the gigantic ramp that led to the mountainous plateau which was all that remained of the fortress's outer defences and the spire of the inner keep.
Temporary, yet incredibly robust, revetments and redoubts had protected the workers and machinery constructing the ramp and now that it was complete, Berossus began his final assault.
A marvel of engineering, it climbed thousands of metres up the side of the mountain, beginning many kilometres back from the rocky uplands of its base. Paved with segmented sheets of iron, rumbling tanks climbed in the wake of a pair of monstrous Titans, their armour stained red with the blood of uncounted thousands of sacrifices, the thick plates still dripping and wet. Equipped with massive siege hammers, pneumatic piston drills and mighty cannon, these colossal land battleships also carried the very best warriors from Berossus's grand company. These warriors would lead the assault through the walls of the fortress and tear it down, stone by stone.
A gargantuan-mouthed tunnel led into the bedrock of the ramp, huge rails disappearing into the darkness and running to the very base of the mountain itself. Great mining machines had travelled through the tunnel and even now prepared to breach the underside of the fortress, burrowing into the very heart of Honsou's lair. Tens of thousands of soldiers waited in the sweating darkness of the tunnel to invade the fortress from below. The traitor, Obax Zakayo, had provided precise information regarding the best place to break into Khalan-Ghol and together with the frontal assault, Honsou's life could now be measured in hours.
Confident that this was to be the last battle, Berossus himself led the attack at the head of a pack of nearly a hundred blood-maddened dreadnoughts.
The final battle for Khalan-Ghol was about to begin.
'We cannot stop this attack,' said Onyx, watching as the Titans of Berossus began their inexorable advance up the ramp to the fortress. Though still many kilometres away from the top, the scale of their daemonic majesty was magnificent. 'Berossus will sweep us away in a storm of iron and blood.'
Honsou said nothing, the ghost of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He too watched the huge force coming to destroy them. Hundreds of screeching daemonic warriors spun and looped in the sky above phalanxes of weapon-morphing monsters whose flesh seethed and bubbled with mechaorganic circuitry. Scores of howling, spider-limbed daemon engines clanked and churned their way up the ramp, jetting noxious exhaust fumes, the hellish entities bound to their iron bodies eager for slaughter now that they were free of their cages.
Clad in his dented and battered power armour, with a reckless look of battle-hunger creasing his pale features, and sporting a gleaming silver bionic arm in place of the one his former master had gifted him with, Honsou seemed unfazed by their approaching doom.
Onyx was puzzled by this, but had long since realised that the inner workings of Khalan-Ghol's newest master were a mystery to him - the half-breed did not resemble or behave like any of the warsmiths he had served in his aeons of servitude to the masters of this fortress.
'You do not seem overly concerned,' continued Onyx.
'I'm not,' replied Honsou, turning from the cracked ramparts of the topmost bastions of the spire. A hot wind was blowing, tasting of ash and metal. Honsou took a deep breath, at last turning to face his champion.
'Berossus hasn't let me down this far,' said Honsou, staring out at the great tunnel that led into the ramp and, no doubt, beneath his fortress. 'And I hope he won't now. Not at the last.'
'I don't understand.'
'Don't worry, Onyx, I know your concern is for your own essence, not my life, but you don't need to understand. All you need to do is obey me.'
'I am yours to command.'
'Then trust me on this,' grinned Honsou, and looked down to the level below, where smoke and crackling lightning conspired to obscure his own Titans and the masterful works he had prepared for Berossus. He stared up into the featureless white sky and the sun that burned like a black hole above him. 'I have fought the Long War almost as long as Berossus and Toramino and have stratagems of my own.'
'For your sake, I hope so,' said Onyx. 'Even if we manage to stop this attack, there is still the matter of Lord Toramino. His army is yet to be blooded.'
Honsou glanced to the glow of fires and forges beyond those of Berossus's encampments, where Toramino waited, unseen and unknown. Here, at last, Onyx caught a flash of unease.
'He waits for Berossus to grind us and his own warriors to dust before marching in to take Khalan-Ghol and become lord of its ruins.'
'And how will we stop him?'
Honsou laughed. 'One problem at a time, Onyx, one problem at a time.'
The hateful sound of massed artillery fire was muted and distant, though Uriel knew it must be perilously close to be heard this far beneath the mountains. Dust drifted in lazy clouds from the tunnel roof, and fine pebbles skittered and danced upon the floor. The darkness was absolute, even his enhanced vision had difficulty piercing the gloom.
Heat filled the tunnel along with the hot, foetid stink of animals, though these were no animals. They were, or at least had once been, human.
Hundreds of the Unfleshed filed along the fearful passages beneath the mountains, their winding route taking them through echoing crystal chambers, disused manufactorum and up dizzyingly steep stone channels hacked into the rock. Their massive bodies filled the passageways as they led Uriel and the others back towards Khalan-Ghol.
They travelled through dark and secret ways under the mountains, forgotten by all save them, the hidden, abandoned culverts and the lost, forgotten passageways that led towards their fate.
Behind Uriel, Pasanius grunted with effort, his journey made all the harder by virtue of his limb's amputation, but wherever he had encountered difficulty, the Lord of the Unfleshed reached back and lifted him onwards.
The giant creature led the way through the darkness, his huge form easily filling the width of the passage, and were it not for his hunched shoulders and stooped head, he would surely have dashed his skull open on drooping stalactites.
The Lord of the Unfleshed marched with newfound purpose, his long, loping stride setting a fearsome pace through the secret mountain paths. Uriel winced with every step, his breath painful in his single functioning lung and the pain of his cracked collarbone and ribs stabbing into him without the balms of his armour's dispensers to dull them.