'What reasons?'

Honsou did not answer at first, but snapped his fingers and indicated that one of the hissing, dark surgeons approach. A tall beast with wide, bladed legs and clicking hydraulic claws for arms stooped to face him, its gleaming jaws centimetres from Honsou.

'You put Ventris in the daemonculaba?' he asked.

'Yes. Stitched him in. Into the womb with the others. He should not be alive.'

'No,' agreed Honsou. 'He very definitely should not. Show me.'

'Show master of Khalan-Ghol what?' hissed the Savage Mortician.

'Show me where you implanted him,' ordered Honsou. 'Now.'

The creature nodded and reared up to its full height, stalking off between the barrels of viscera and blood towards the nearest ramp that led to the gantries of the daemonculaba. Honsou and Obax Zakayo followed, noting with interest some of the more cruel and unusual experiments in pain that were being carried out in the quest for deathly knowledge.

'With all due respect, my lord,' began Obax Zakayo. 'Is it wise to concern yourself with a fate of a few renegades? The armies of Lord Berossus are at the gates of Khalan-Ghol.'

'And?'

'And they are within days at most of breaching the walls…'

'Berossus will not get in, I have plans for him.'

'Any you want to share?'

'Not with you, no,' said Honsou as they reached the top of the ramp. 'Understand this, Obax Zakayo, you are my servant, a mere functionary, and nothing more. You served a master who had forgotten why we fight the Long War, a master who had allowed the bitter fires of the False Emperor's treachery to smoulder instead of burning brightly in his breast. Have you forgotten how our Legion was almost destroyed piece by piece by his uncaring, unthinking betrayals? Have you forgotten how he allowed us to stagnate and become little more than gaolers? The False Emperor drove us to this fate, condemning us to suffer an eternity of torment in the Eye, and while Forrix forgot that, I did not.'

'I only meant—' began Obax Zakayo.

'I know what you meant,' snapped Honsou, making his way along the gantry past the heaving masses of flesh that rippled in agony with new life. 'You think I don't know of your entreaties to Toramino and Berossus? You have betrayed me, Obax Zakayo. I know everything.'

Obax Zakayo opened his mouth to protest, but Honsou turned and shook his head. 'You can say nothing. I don't blame you. You saw an opportunity and you took it. But to think that someone like you could outwit me… please!'

The servo claws hunched at Obax Zakayo's shoulders reared up, snapping like the jaws of evil, mechanical snakes, and the giant Iron Warrior gripped his toothed axe tightly.

Honsou smiled and again shook his head as a pair of Savage Morticians loomed behind Obax Zakayo. The axe was snatched from his hands and broken like a twig as bronze claws snapped shut on his limbs and crackling, piston driven pincers cut the mechanised arms from his back.

'No!' shouted Obax Zakayo as he was lifted from his feet. 'I know things you need to know!'

'I don't think so,' said Honsou. 'Toramino is not so stupid as to trust you with anything of importance.'

Honsou nodded to the Savage Mortician and said, 'Do with him as you will.'

He turned away as Obax Zakayo screamed curses upon his name and was carried away by the Savage Morticians to his no doubt bloody fate. Honsou had not been surprised by Obax Zakayo's treachery: indeed it had proven to be extremely useful. Soon Berossus and Toramino would learn the price for trusting such a poor traitor.

Putting Obax Zakayo from his mind he walked along the grilled gantry to where a wheezing mass of blubbery, torn flesh was being prodded and cut further by the creature that had led him here. The pain-filled features of the daemonculaba stared at him in mute horror, its glassy eyes rolling in unspeakable pain. Honsou ignored its suffering and leant down to examine its torn belly, where recently sutured flesh had been rudely torn open.

'From the inside…' noted Honsou. 'He climbed out himself.'

The Savage Mortician bobbed its head, though Honsou could clearly see its confusion at such a thing.

'How could Ventris have done this?' asked Honsou.

'Not knowing. Daemonculaba tasted him, fed him soporifics. Should not have happened,' rasped the Mortician.

'And yet it did,' mused Honsou, pulling back the greasy folds of flesh from the daemonculaba's ruptured belly. The slippery innards of the great beast heaved and shuddered at his touch and Honsou drew back as the creature went into a violent seizure, its entire frame shuddering. Though it had no voice to call its own, a high, keening wail ripped from its ruined throat and a flood of gore gushed from the open wound.

'What's happening to it?' demanded Honsou.

'Womb ready to expel its issue,' explained the moribund surgeon.

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.