'383rd!' exclaimed Leonid.

'What?'

'That jacket,' pointed Leonid. 'It's the uniform of my regiment!'

'It can't be,' said Uriel. 'Here?'

'I know my own regiment, damn it,' snapped Leonid. 'I'm going to get her!'

'Don't be a fool,' said Pasanius, gripping Leonid's jacket.

'No!' protested Leonid, struggling in the sergeant's grip. 'Don't you understand? Along with me, she's probably the last survivor of the 383rd! I have to go!'

'You'll die,' said Uriel.

'So? I'm dying anyway,' shouted Leonid. 'And if I have to end my days here, I want it to be with a fellow Jouran. Remember your words, Uriel! We all die bloody, all we get to do is choose where and when!'

Uriel nodded, now understanding Leonid's desperation, and said, 'Let him go.'

Pasanius released his grip on Leonid, and they watched as he ran towards the swaying woman, gathering her up in his arms as another set of thick, curling, bronze-tipped horns ripped through the metal of the daemon's helmet. The Heart of Blood's eyes shone with renewed purpose and awareness as it lifted its head and sniffed the air, grinning with terrible appetite.

'Psykers…' it roared, turning towards the upright iron sarcophagi that surrounded the lake of blood.

The iron-meshed cage sped downwards into the depths of Khalan-Ghol, ancient mechanisms and sorcerous artifice combining to make the journey as quick as possible, oily sheets of beaten iron slicing past at tremendous speed. But Honsou knew it was still not fast enough. The mystical barrier protecting his fortress was still holding firm against Toramino's sorcerers, but it wouldn't last much longer unless they could somehow re-imprison the Heart of Blood.

He and his chosen warriors, deadly killers loyal only to him, journeyed into the depths of the fortress, ready to kill whatever they encountered. Onyx stood backed into the corner of the speeding elevator cage, his silver eyes and veins dulled and sluggish in his features.

'What's the matter with you?' snapped Honsou as the daemonic symbiote moaned.

'The Heart of Blood is powerful…' hissed Onyx.

'And?'

'It could snuff out my essence in the blink of an eye,' snarled Onyx, his dead eyes shining with murderous lustre. 'And if it commanded me, I could not resist its imperatives.'

'You mean it could turn you against me?' asked Honsou.

'Yes,' nodded Onyx. 'It knows my true name.'

Honsou turned to Cadaras Grendel and said, 'If this creature so much as makes a move towards me, kill it.'

'Understood,' said the mohawked Iron Warrior, his scarred features alight with relish at the thought. 'I never killed one that's possessed before.'

Honsou looked down through the grilled floor of the cage, seeing only a dimly glowing shaft roaring upwards. Its end was lost to perspective, but as he watched, the dark square of the tunnel's base rushed up to meet them.

With a gut-wrenching sensation of nausea, the iron cage slowed and ground to a halt with a shriek of ancient metal. The grilled door squealed open, but before Honsou could step through, he was knocked from his feet by a tremendous impact and felt the crash of falling masonry from far away, accompanied by the distant boom of massed artillery.

'What the hell?' he roared, climbing to his knees as he heard the clang of metal on stone, and an approaching, crashing din.

Onyx dropped to his knees, screaming in pain and clutching his head with his dead-fleshed hands.

'The barrier is down!' he yelled. 'Gods of Chaos, the barrier is down!'

Honsou pulled himself to his feet and looked up as he pinpointed the source of the approaching noise.

'Out of the elevator!' he shouted, diving and rolling into the tunnel as he saw thousands of tonnes of rubble plummeting down the shaft. His warriors moved quickly, but some not quickly enough, as a torrent of massive chunks of stone and rockcrete hammered into the base of the shaft and crushed the elevator cage flat. Roiling banks of choking dust and smoke billowed from the wreckage.

The impact and deafening noise disoriented Honsou, but he quickly gained his feet, seeing that nearly half his warriors were missing, crushed beneath the deadly rain of debris.

Onyx stood unsteadily before him, the threatening form of Cadaras Grendel close by.

'If the barrier is down—' began Grendel

'Then that means Toramino is attacking!' finished Honsou.

Just saying the words gave Honsou a curious sense of reckless abandonment as he realised that this was probably the end. There was no way Khalan-Ghol could stand against Toramino's army and he had no more stratagems left to employ.

There was nothing left but vengeance for hate's sake and malice for the sake of spite.

If that was all he had left, then so be it.

It would be enough.

Uriel pulled Leonid into the scant cover offered by one of the corpse bulldozers and helped him get the muttering woman he had dragged to safety into a seated position. Tears of joy streaked the colonel's face and he kept repeating the name of his regiment over and over again.

'Come on, hurry,' urged Uriel, desperate to keep Leonid out of the way of the Heart of Blood's murderous rampage. The mighty, armoured daemon was making sport in the centre of the lake of blood, ripping gold-robed sorcerers from their exsanguination coffins, toying with them in numerous terrible ways before slaughtering them with its axe or powerful, fanged maw.

It waded through the blood, letting the terrified magickers tear themselves to pieces as they desperately fought to free themselves from their coffins. Not one amongst them survived the daemon's predatory malice and it inhaled their deaths like a fine wine.

'Psykers!' it bellowed. 'The food of the gods!'

Uriel returned his attention to the wan, lean-faced woman Leonid had rescued from the clutches of the daemonic armour. Her hair was long, lank and falling out in patches, while her features spoke of horrors endured and a mind on the very brink of sanity.

'All dead, all dead, all dead, all dead…' she repeated, over and over.

'Who is she?' asked Pasanius.

Leonid fished out rusted dogtags from beneath her uniform jacket and turned them over to examine them in the chamber's dim light.

'Her name is Lieutenant Larana Utorian of the 383rd Jouran Dragoons,' he said proudly.

'Do you know her?'

Leonid shook his head. 'No, I don't. Her tags say she was part of Tedeski's lot in Battalion A and he didn't like other officers mingling with his soldiers. He was old school you see.'

'How in the Emperor's name did she end up here?'

'I don't know,' wept Leonid, holding her in a tight embrace. 'Perhaps the God-Emperor didn't want me to die alone without someone from the old homeworld next to me.'

Uriel nodded and locked eyes with Pasanius as he gripped his sword hilt tightly. 'Aye, perhaps you're right, my friend. If a man has to die, it should be with his friends.'

The dead, white sky burned with magickal energies, whipping plumes of blue fire shooting up into the heavens from the geomantic towers Toramino's sorcerers had constructed around Khalan-Ghol. Monstrously powerful energies had been unleashed, and now that the eternal barrier that had kept Honsou's fortress safe from the fell powers of the warp was no more, it suffered terribly under the immaterial assault.

Black lightning speared from the cloudless sky, blasting colossal slabs of rock from the mountain and fearsome red storms of bruised, weeping clouds hammered the few remaining towers and bastions with mutating rains that dissolved fortifications which had stood invincible for ten thousand years.

Great, ravening beasts of the warp swooped and dived around the high reaches of the fortress, tearing apart the flying creatures that circled the topmost towers, and a fog of magickal energies enveloped the redoubts and bunkers that Honsou had only recently rebuilt in the wake of his victory over Lord Berossus.