As the Omphalos Daemonium came after it, memories thrashed and screamed in the Heart of Blood's skull, though it had not the faculties left to recall them. The lunacy that had consumed it during its incarceration had robbed it of any clarity of thought save that it needed blood, desired blood… craved blood!
A powerful vision of a great fortress swam across the fluid landscape of its memory - no, not its memory, the blood-soaked memories of the Avatar of Khorne, the creature the armour had become in its absence…
A battle alongside the Iron Warriors, a sorcerous foe in yellow armour - one of the corpse-god's followers - and a howling gale of gore that thundered like a hurricane and fed its spirit with unimaginable power.
Something in this memory was the key it needed to defeat its rival and drive the Omphalos Daemonium back to the fiery prison the Heart of Blood had confined it to for an age.
A single word penetrated the Heart of Blood's fug of amnesia and lunacy.
Bloodstorm…
The first bolt took Uriel low in the gut as he charged, tearing through the knotted mass of scar tissue that covered the wound dealt to him by the tyranid Norn Queen.
He was too close and the bolt was moving too quickly for it to detonate within him, but it exploded a fraction of a second after punching out through his lower back and peppered his flesh with searing fragments.
The second shattered on one of the few remaining portions of his armour, the hot shrapnel scoring upwards across his cheek, and the third blasted a chunk of his side to red ruin.
He staggered, but kept going, hacking his fiery-bladed sword through the neck of the Iron Warrior that had shot him. Pasanius was hit four times, his armour deflecting the majority of the impacts, but unable to save him completely.
The sergeant fell, dragging down the Iron Warrior before him and breaking his neck with a loud cracking noise.
Another round hit Uriel and he fell to the hard ground.
Bolter rounds filled the air. Uriel heard a cry of pain and surprise.
Yelling voices and more shots.
He tried to push himself to his feet, feeling sharp pain flare as he moved, and wondered why he was not dead.
Bellowing roars of hatred echoed from all around them, howls of furious anger and anguish. Even over the stench of blood and death that filled this place, Uriel could make out the stink of wet, raw flesh and realised what was happening.
Blood sprayed from a ragged stump of an Iron Warrior's neck and Uriel shouted in triumph as he saw the battered but unbowed form of the Lord of the Unfleshed hurl the grisly trophy to one side before leaping onto another Iron Warrior who fired wildly into the attacking monsters.
'Iron men die!' he roared as the surviving creatures of the Unfleshed fell upon Honsou's warriors.
The mohawked warrior shot down the fused twins, the white-hot blast of his gun obliterating the creature with a hiss of superheated air. Onyx nimbly dodged the brutal, clubbing blows of a pair of the Unfleshed, spinning around them and hamstringing them as he danced aside from their attacks.
Uriel saw Honsou retreat from the attack of the Unfleshed, and rolled onto his side, dragging his bolter around.
He realised how much he missed the ministrations of his armour as the pain from the burning fragments of the bolter shell stabbed into his back. Pasanius lay atop a dead Iron Warrior, two large exit wounds blasted through his back.
'Pasanius!' called Uriel.
His sergeant turned his head, and Uriel saw his face was deathly pale, his cheeks ashen and sunken.
'Don't you dare die on me, sergeant!' shouted Uriel, putting down his sword and bringing his bolter to a firing position.
'Aye, captain,' said Pasanius, weakly.
Smoke and the thrashing combatants conspired to obscure Uriel's aim, but eventually he was able to draw a bead on Honsou.
'Now you die, traitor!' whispered Uriel as he squeezed the trigger and a crash of rubble and smoke exploded beside him.
But in the instant before he lost sight of Honsou, he had seen the master of Khalan-Ghol pitched backwards, his helmet spraying ceramite fragments and an arc of crimson.
Bloodstorm…
The two daemons faced each other in the depths of the lake of blood, their shared hatred a physical thing between them. Swirling eddies of power gusted around them, the energies both had expended in their battle having drained them almost to the point of extinction.
There were no more words to be said. What could two beings that had been enemies since the dawn of time have to say to each other at this moment?
Words were now only for mortals and those with a future to remember them.
The Omphalos Daemonium had prepared for this moment ever since it had been freed by the random actions of two mortals, and its strength was by far the greater.
But the Heart of Blood and the Avatar of Khorne were once again the same creature, and the blasted armour had feasted on the death of an entire galaxy of souls. Both daemons were evenly matched, but none could yet see the other destroyed.
Bloodstorm…
The Heart of Blood spread wide its arms and gave vent to a shout of hatred that parted the vital fluid of the lake and sent a tidal wave of blood spilling outwards from its centre. A rippling whirlwind of raw, red hunger swept from the Heart of Blood's armour, spreading throughout the chamber like the pressure wave of an explosion.
A lashing storm of hate-fuelled energy roared around the ruined domain of the Savage Morticians, lashing like a blind, insensate monster and driving the Omphalos Daemonium back from the Heart of Blood with its unstoppable power.
The bloodstorm enfolded the few, cowering mutants that had hidden beneath the shattered machines and rubble of the chamber. It scythed through their flesh and blew them apart.
The bloodstorm tore into the mutilated ruin of Obax Zakayo, finally ending his suffering in an explosion of red bone.
The bloodstorm streaked past the fleshy wombs of the daemonculaba and, one by one, they exploded like great fleshy balloons filled with blood.
The bloodstorm hurtled around the circumference of the chamber, an ocean of blood swept up in the etheric whirlwind as it howled back to the Heart of Blood at its epicentre.
The mighty daemon swelled to monstrous proportions, its armour and weapons blazing with barely-contained power as it sought to master the energies ripped from the ocean of ripe blood it had just feasted upon.
Now it was ready.
Now all things would end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Howling red winds swept through the Halls of the Savage Morticians, the harsh metallic reek of blood catching in the back of Uriel's throat. He rolled onto his side and scooped up his sword as the fury of the hurricane scouring the air swirled around them, tearing at their flesh with harsh lashes.
The Iron Warriors dived for cover as the etheric whirlwind tore through the cavern and the Unfleshed were hurled from their feet by its power. The desperate battle broke apart as the combatants found shelter or held onto giant boulders to prevent themselves from being swept away.
Uriel gasped as the very life was leeched from him, feeling as powerless as one of the weakling newborns left to die on the mountains of Macragge. But at the edge of the cavern the power of the bloodstorm was at its weakest and they were spared the horrors of those closer to the Heart of Blood.
Pasanius grunted in pain and Uriel watched as the dotted blood on his back liquefied and was snatched into the air by the vampiric storm. His own wounds ran freely as they fed the terrible daemon at the heart of the chamber.