'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.

Leonid hurried over to where they stood and shouted, 'I thought it was supposed to be destroyed when the awls came out!'

'So did I,' replied Uriel as the Heart of Blood threw back its head and gave vent to a terrible roaring that overwhelmed the senses, not through its volume, but by the sheer sense of loss and fury that it contained. Its hunger pierced the wall of the dimensions and echoed across the vast gulf that separated universes.

Uriel and every living thing in the chamber fell to the ground, shaken to the very core of their being by the daemon's cry.

'What's it doing?' yelled Leonid.

'Emperor alone knows!' cried Pasanius.

Uriel picked himself up, his hands clamped to the side of his head in an effort to shut out the monstrous noise of the daemon's howl. Something in the tone of the long, ululating cry spoke to Uriel of things lost and things to be called back. He realised what it was as he saw a twisting blob of dark light appear in the air before the daemon.

'It is a cry of summoning…' he said.

Pasanius and Leonid looked strangely at him as the daemon's roar ceased and the fragile veil of reality pulled apart with a dreadful ripping sound, as of tearing meat. A black gouge in the walls separating realities opened, filling the air with sickening static, as though a million noxious flies had flown through from some vile, plague dimension.

Awful knowledge flooded Uriel as he stared into the portal opened in the fabric of the universe. He saw galaxies of billions upon billions of souls harvested and fed to the Lord of Skulls, the Blood God.

'Emperor's mercy,' wept Uriel as he felt each of these deaths lodge like a splinter in his heart. New life and new purpose had once filled these galaxies, but now all was death, slaughtered to sate the hunger of the Blood God… whose fell name was a dark presence staining the coppery wind that blew from the portal, a stench of deepest, darkest red, whose purpose was embodied in but a single rune and a legend of simple devotion: Blood for the Blood God… Khome… Khorne… Khorne…

A single shriek of dark and bloody kinship, a pact of hate and death. It echoed from the portal and grew to shake the dust from the ceiling. And there was an answering roar of bloody welcome, torn from the Heart of Blood's brazen throat.

Light blazed from the portal as an armoured giant, clad in burnished iron plates of ancient power armour stamped down into the chamber, the portal sealing shut behind it as it marched to stand before the Heart of Blood.

Taller than a Space Marine, its vile presence was unmistakable, its malice incalculable. White light, impure and corrupt, spilled like droplets of spoiled milk from beneath its horned helmet and its shoulder guards bore stained chevrons that marked the figure as an Iron Warrior.

The daemonic warrior carried a great, saw-toothed blade and a gold-chased pistol, both weapons redolent with the slaughter they had inflicted. Powerful and darkly magnificent, Uriel knew that this… thing was the most consummate killer imaginable.

Uriel caught a glimpse of a shambling shape limping towards the passageway that led from the cavern, recognising it as the vile creature, Sabatier. Barely had he registered its presence when the iron-armoured warrior snapped up its pistol and fired.

The bolt caught Sabatier high in the back, exploding through its chest and blasting a great crater in its body. Sabatier grunted and toppled over and Uriel felt sorry that it hadn't suffered more before it died.

'We can't fight both of them,' said Pasanius.

'No,' agreed Uriel, 'but maybe we will not have to. Look!'

The armoured figure dropped to its knees before the Heart of Blood, but Uriel could see that it was no simple a gesture of abasement. The daemonic Iron Warrior dropped its weapons and raised its arms, a blood-red glow spilling from every joint of its armour and bathing the Heart of Blood in its light.

'I return to you!' shouted a high voice from beneath the armoured warrior's helmet.

The Heart of Blood raised its arms, mimicking the warrior's pose and, piece-by-piece, the iron armour detached from the kneeling figure and floated through the air towards the massive daemon.

'Now what the hell's it doing?' said Leonid, barely keeping the terror from his voice.

'Oh no…' whispered Uriel as he remembered a tale he had been told not so long ago by Seraphys of the Blood Ravens in the mountains. A tale of how the Heart of Blood had forged for itself a suit of armour into which it had poured all of its malice, all of its hate and all of its cunning, a suit of armour so full of fury that even the blows of its enemies would strike them down.

Truly it was the avatar of Khorne, the Blood God's most favoured disciple of death.

Iron armour floated from the figure who now diminished as each piece deserted it. Though the Heart of Blood was larger by far than the armoured warrior, each piece somehow moulded itself to the daemon's form, darkening from the colour of iron to a dark and loathsome brass. Its greaves and breastplate clanged into place and, unbidden, the warrior's weapons leapt from the ground, writhing in midair to change from a pistol and sword to a moaning axe and snaking whip of rippling, studded leather.

Lastly, the iron helm was snatched by invisible hands from the warrior's head and placed upon the Heart of Blood's great, horned skull.

Where once had knelt a fearsome, armoured giant, there was now only a waif-like figure of a woman in a filthy and tattered sky-blue uniform of the Imperial Guard.