Behind them, Colonel Mikhail Leonid and Lieutenant Larana Utorian of the 383rd Jouran Dragoons held each other tight and waited for death.
Pasanius flinched as a huge cascade of rocks crashed down beside him, hurling him off balance and wreathing him in powdery dust. He coughed and shouted for Uriel as everything became obscured in banks of smoke. 'Here!' shouted Uriel, and Pasanius made his way towards the source of the shout.
He tripped on something on the ground and rolled, putting his arm down to push himself back to his feet and falling flat as he remembered that there was no arm to take his weight. He cursed himself for a fool, then saw what he had tripped over.
The gurgling form of Sabatier painfully pulled itself towards safety, its twisted, deformed body, dusty and covered in contusions. A great crater had been gouged in its back where the creature that had stepped through the portal had shot it, but Pasanius was not surprised to see that Sabatier still lived. After all, it had survived Vaanes snapping its neck like a dry branch.
Bone still protruded at its neck from that wound and Pasanius flipped the repulsive creature onto its back as it mewled in pain and fear.
'Not so proud now, are you?' said Pasanius.
'Leave Sabatier! He never did any harm!'
'No,' snarled Pasanius. 'He just gloated while my friends were butchered like animals!'
The huge sergeant knelt on Sabatier's chest, his weight alone cracking the hideous creature's ribs. A horrid gurgling burst from Sabatier's throat, but Pasanius felt no remorse for its suffering. It had stood and laughed as Space Marines were killed and for that Pasanius knew it had to die.
Keeping it pinned with his knee, he gripped Sabatier by the neck with his remaining hand and heaved.
The mutant's neck stretched and Pasanius heard the crack of splitting tendons before he wrenched Sabatier's head clean off. Sabatier's mouth still flapped, but no sound came out.
Pasanius had no idea whether he had killed Sabatier, but didn't care. To have struck back at it was enough. He stood and spat on the twitching body, stamping repeatedly on its altered limbs to crush the bones to powder before turning and hurling the mutant's head back towards the lake of blood.
If Sabatier could live through this, it would have nothing left of its body to return to.
'What was that?' said Uriel, emerging from the cloud of dust and beckoning him onwards towards the entrance to the tunnel.
'Nothing,' said Pasanius. 'Just some rubbish.'
Leonid stroked Larana Utorian's cheek, tears spilling down his face as the burning pain that had been his constant companion since he had been taken from Hydra Cordatus sent another spasm of hot fire into his belly. He knew that he did not have much time left - the cancers had devoured most of him already - and, looking at Larana Utorian, she did not have much time left to her either.
They were the last of the 383rd and the fact that they would die together gave him great comfort. He thought back to the men and women of his regiment and the last time he had fought beside them at the fall of the citadel. They had been magnificent.
Castellan Vauban, a courageous and honourable warrior. Piet Anders, Gunnar Tedeski and Morgan Kristan: his brother officers. And not forgetting Guardsman Hawke, the worst soldier in the regiment, whose unexpected depths of courage had very nearly saved them all.
They were all dead, and soon he and Larana Utorian would be with them again.
Colonel Leonid looked up, hearing a sibilant hissing, and drew a sharp intake of breath as he saw the two daemons stagger from the lake of blood. Both were ravaged and battered, their armours torn and rent by the mighty blows they laid upon one another. The violence of their struggle had devastated much of the cavern and portions of it continued to rain down in avalanches of rocks and rubble.
The Heart of Blood reeled from a terrible blow dune to it by the Omphalos Daemonium… the Slaughterman… Leonid was not even sure he understood the distinction between these two beings, or that he wanted to even if there was one.
The daemonic Iron Warrior hammered its long billhook against the Heart of Blood's unguarded flank and hurled it backwards into a giant pile of mortuary tables and swinging cadavers. Bodies and debris clattered down amid the ongoing destruction and Leonid saw the Slaughterman turn and cast its gaze around the chamber.
No, Ultramarines, you do not escape my vengeance so easily…
Leonid cried out as he heard its filthy, loathsome voice in his head.
The Sarcomata shall feast on your souls for all eternity!
Leonid saw the eight daemons that were the servants of the Slaughterman dissolve once more into their smoky aspects, swirling in the air for a moment before speeding after Uriel and Pasanius.
'No!' shouted Leonid in rage. 'You will not have them!'
The Sarcomata ignored him, too intent on their prey, until he remembered their hunger for corruption. Leonid pulled the frayed collar of his uniform jacket away from his skin, slashing the rusted edge of Larana Utorian's dogtags across a swollen, cancerous melanoma growing on the pulsing artery of his neck.
Polluted, dirty blood spilled down his skin, pooling in his collarbone and soaking his uniform jacket. He smelled its coppery, unclean stink and shouted, 'Over here, you daemon spawn! This is what you want, isn't it?'
Almost as soon as his polluted blood sprayed out, the smoky comets of the Sarcomata twisted in the air and sped towards him, scenting the malignancies devouring his body as the choicest sweetmeats.
Colonel Leonid slumped to his haunches and pulled Larana Utorian tight, reaching into his breast pocket and removing something round and flat.
'All dead, all dead, all dead, all dead…' whispered Larana Utorian.
'Yes,' agreed Leonid. 'We are.'
Red mist enfolded them, sickening and moist, then vanished in an instant, leaving the two Jourans surrounded by the cancer-hungry Sarcomata, their writhing-maggot touch stroking their swollen sicknesses.
The daemons bit and tore at their flesh and he cried out in pain.
For the briefest instant, his eyes met those of Larana Utorian, and he saw the last fragment of her mind reach out to him.
She smiled at him and nodded.
Leonid pressed the detonation stud of the grenade he had taken from the crushing machine next to Obax Zakayo, obliterating them and the Sarcomata in the white heat of a melta blast.
'No way out this way, Ventris,' said Honsou, gripping his axe and widening his stance ready for combat. The master of Khalan-Ghol and a score of Iron Warriors had emerged from the passageway just as the Ultra-marines had reached it, and Uriel saw that there was no way past them. The silver-eyed daemon-thing that had called itself Onyx stood apart from the Iron Warriors, its movements tentative.
An Iron Warrior with the brutal face of a killer and a mohawk stood next to it, a huge gun that resembled a bolter with an underslung melta pointed at the daemonic symbiote.
The cavern continued to rumble as the two daemons fought at its heart, but a stillness held sway here, as though the universe held its breath and awaited the outcome of this particular drama.
'It is over, Honsou,' said Uriel. 'Your fortress has fallen.'
'I can build another,' shrugged Honsou. 'This one wasn't really mine anyway.'
'True, but it's Toramino's now,' shouted Pasanius.
'Yes, or at least whatever his sorcerers and artillery leave of it once they have pounded it to rubble,' said Honsou.
The Iron Warrior pointed towards the ugly red skies overhead. 'Tell me though, is this your doing as well, or another of your master's sorceries?'
'My master?'
'Come on, Ventris!' laughed Honsou. 'The time for games is long past. Toramino!'