Uriel roared in pain and frustration as he kept on pulling.
And suddenly he felt give…
Yelling in triumph, the two Ultramarines pulled even harder, feeling tendons tear in their shoulders and arms, but pushing their bodies to the limits of power.
Without warning, the awl-chain tore loose and Uriel saw a flaring spurt of white fire as the silver spike ripped free of the ancient daemon's flesh.
The red-scaled creature dropped, silver-white flashes exploding against its body where its falling weight tore the other two silver awls from its body.
It landed in the lake of blood with an enormous splash, sending a tidal wave of crimson spilling throughout the chamber. It vanished beneath the churning surface of the lake and Uriel felt a prescient sense of inevitability seize him as he watched the hissing red pool.
'We did it!' shouted Pasanius.
'Yes,' agreed Uriel, watching as the surface of the lake parted and the massive daemon reared up to its full height, arc lightning playing about its lustrous, scarlet flesh, 'I am beginning to wonder if we should have.'
High up in the tower of iron, Onyx cried out as though struck and dropped to his knees, clutching his head as his soulless silver eyes blazed with sudden awareness. Honsou saw the movement and looked up, irritated at having his battle-planning with Cadaras Grendel interrupted.
Then he saw the look of alarm on Onyx's face.
'What is it?' he demanded.
'The Heart of Blood!' hissed the daemonic symbiote.
'What about it?'
'It's free…' said Onyx.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Heart of Blood threw back its horned skull and roared in lunatic pain, its bellow of rage and madness filling the chamber at a pitch that pierced the soul and drew screams of primal fear from almost every living thing within it. The lake of blood boiled where it stood and its eyes burned with white fire that blazed with ancient malice.
Its shaggy, horned head twisted as it surveyed its surroundings, as though seeing them for the first time, and its bloated body threw off great bolts of dark lightning that exploded with red fire.
The Heart of Blood's flesh was scaled and thick tufts of shaggy, matted hair ran down the length of its spine. The great wounds on its back, where the Savage Morticians had removed its wings, smoked with a liquid, red bloom, like a cloud of ink released underwater.
Its chest heaved violently, the thudding echoes of its heartbeat filling the chamber as it ripped away the pulsing red tube that pierced its chest and fed it the tainted blood of psykers. The flood of vital fluid gushed into the lake.
'Guilliman preserve us!' breathed Pasanius as the daemon stepped forwards, striding purposefully to the shore, the spark of its hoofed feet on the lakebed throwing up gouts of flaming blood.
'A daemon,' said Uriel. 'One of the fell princes of Chaos…'
'What do we do?' said Pasanius.
Uriel drew his sword as the huge daemon reached the edge of the lake of blood and reared up to its full height.
'We ready our souls for the end,' he said simply.
Honsou watched the sky around his fortress burn with an actinic blue light. Hundreds of pillars of pellucid blue flame surrounded Khalan-Ghol, spearing kilometres upwards from the plain below, like oil-wells gushing with precious fuel. The azure fire seethed and Honsou could see living nightmares swirling within the flames, the dreadful power and malice of the warp contained within them.
'What's happening?' he demanded.
'The towers!' said Onyx.
'Towers? What towers?'
'The ones we saw when we made that sortie into Berossus's camp,' said Onyx. 'Tall, baroque towers of iron that were saturated with psychic energy. You remember?'
Honsou nodded, recalling the unsettling sight of their arcane geometries and the chanting groups of gold-robed figures who danced around them, anointing them with the blood of sacrifices. He had put them from his mind after the raid, confident that the power of the Heart of Blood could resist their magicks.
He rounded on Onyx, raising his axe and saying, 'You told me that no sorcerous powers could defeat the Heart of Blood!'
'And none can, but it is free now and not bound to Khalan-Ghol any more.'
'We are defenceless?' asked Cadaras Grendel.
Onyx shook his head. 'No. The fortress's own sorcerers can maintain the barrier for a while, but without the power of the Heart of Blood, it is only a matter of time until Toramino's magicks break through and destroy us.'
'Blood of Chaos!' swore Honsou, heading for the great doors that led from his inner sanctum and waving his chosen warriors to follow him. 'How could the daemon get free?'
'The warsmith bound the Heart of Blood with three defiled awls, and it could only be freed if someone were to remove them.'
'But who would dare risk such a thing?'
Honsou pulled up short as Onyx said, 'Ventris and his warrior band?'
'Of course!' snapped Honsou. 'I should have known Toramino would never have stooped so low as to employ renegades just to fight for him. He and Ventris must have planned this whole thing! Free the Heart of Blood and then destroy us with sorcery. I'll have those bastards' entrails fed a piece at a time to the Exuviae.'
'Then Toramino never intended to blood his army here!' snarled Cadaras Grendel.
'No,' agreed Onyx. 'It would seem not.'
'How long do we have before the barrier falls?' demanded Honsou, setting off into the darkness of the tower of iron and towards the Halls of die Savage Morticians.
His warriors followed him, bolters and swords at the ready.
'I do not know for sure,' admitted Onyx, 'but it will not be long.'
'Then we'd better hurry!' said Honsou. 'I want to kill Ventris before Toramino brings Khalan-Ghol to ruin!'
Uriel dropped to the gantry that ran the circumference of the chamber, thumbing the activation rune on his sword's hilt and slashing its bright blade through the air. Pasanius landed beside him and together they hurriedly made their way to the chamber's floor as the Heart of Blood stepped from the lake, red liquid running from its crimson body in grisly runnels.
It towered above them, fully four or five metres tall, its powerfully muscled physique running with hot streamers of light that snaked beneath its flesh like fiery veins. It looked down on the bloody ground before it - at the corpses of the Unfleshed, the Savage Morticians and their servants - and a bloody leer split its bestial face. The surviving mutants fled before its terrifying power and even those Savage Morticians the Unfleshed had not killed backed away from this diabolical presence in their midst.
Only the Unfleshed stood their ground, too ignorant of the horrifying power of a daemon prince to fear it. Though they felt its abominable power, they had no concept of the threat it represented.
The Lord of the Unfleshed stood before the mighty daemon, his chest puffed out in challenge, and it regarded him with as much interest as a man might notice an ant. The Lord of the Unfleshed roared and charged the daemon, but before he could so much as land a blow, the Heart of Blood swatted him aside with a casual flick of its scaled arm.
The monstrous leader of the Unfleshed smashed into the side of the cavern with a bone-crunching thud and Uriel knew that the force of the impact must have shattered every bone in his body.
Seeing their leader so easily defeated, the Unfleshed howled and scattered before the horrendous daemon, seeking shelter in the dark nooks and crannies of the deathly cavern.
Uriel and Pasanius watched as the Heart of Blood turned from the fleeing Unfleshed, the tremendous booming of its vital organ diminishing now that sor-cerous magicks were no longer pouring into it. Uriel felt his senses becoming sharper, the smothering numbness lifted now that the daemon was free.