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!'

'We have no master save Lord Calgar and the Emperor,' said Uriel.

'Even now you play your games,' sighed Honsou. 'Well, no matter, it ends now.'

'Aye,' agreed Uriel, raising his sword before him. 'It ends with your death, traitor.'

'Perhaps, but you'll follow me into hell a heartbeat later.'

Uriel shook his head. 'You think that matters, amid all this? I will fight you and I will kill you. That will be enough for me.'

'Fight me?' said Honsou, spreading his arms to encompass his warriors. 'You think we're going to fight a duel? My warriors and I outnumber you ten to one! What makes you think I'd give you a chance to trade blows with me?'

The Iron Warriors aimed their weapons at them, knowing that blood was soon to be spilled here, but waiting for their master's command before unleashing death.

Pasanius leaned close to Uriel and said, 'You take the ten on the right and I'll take the ten on the left.'

Despite himself, Uriel chuckled and stood back to back with his oldest comrade.

'Courage and honour, my friend,' said Uriel.

'Courage and honour,' repeated Pasanius.

The two Ultramarines prepared to charge as the Iron Warriors cocked their bolters.

The Heart of Blood fell to its knees, the Omphalos Daemonium's billhook tearing into its warp-spawned flesh and opening a great gash in its body. Dark ichor spilled down its armour and its strength was fading: too long imprisoned within the depths of Khalan-Ghol had robbed it of much of its diabolical vigour and power. Another blow smashed into its chest, sending it hurling across the width of the chamber.

'Eternity awaits you!' roared the Omphalos Daemonium. 'An age trapped in fire will be nothing to torments you will suffer!'

Smoke and rubble fell in a constant rain from the walls, crashing anything exposed on the cavern floor.

'You cannot destroy me. I am the Heart of Blood!'

The Omphalos Daemonium ran towards it, fierce, vengeful hunger burning in its eyes. The Heart of Blood sprang to its feet and lashed out with its whip.

The blow struck its foe's head, drawing a bellow of pain and a spray of dark blood as it severed one of its gnarled antlers.

The Heart of Blood staggered away in the respite its lucky blow had gained, wading back into the lake of blood, feeling the invigorating fluid enter its immaterial flesh and new strength seep into its essence. But this was poor, stagnant blood, polluted with the taint of psychic energies and devoid of the hot, urgent nourishment it needed to defeat its foe.

As the Omphalos Daemonium came after it, memories thrashed and screamed in the Heart of Blood's skull, though it had not the faculties left to recall them. The lunacy that had consumed it during its incarceration had robbed it of any clarity of thought save that it needed blood, desired blood… craved blood!

A powerful vision of a great fortress swam across the fluid landscape of its memory - no, not its memory, the blood-soaked memories of the Avatar of Khorne, the creature the armour had become in its absence…

A battle alongside the Iron Warriors, a sorcerous foe in yellow armour - one of the corpse-god's followers - and a howling gale of gore that thundered like a hurricane and fed its spirit with unimaginable power.

Something in this memory was the key it needed to defeat its rival and drive the Omphalos Daemonium back to the fiery prison the Heart of Blood had confined it to for an age.

A single word penetrated the Heart of Blood's fug of amnesia and lunacy.

Bloodstorm…

The first bolt took Uriel low in the gut as he charged, tearing through the knotted mass of scar tissue that covered the wound dealt to him by the tyranid Norn Queen.

He was too close and the bolt was moving too quickly for it to detonate within him, but it exploded a fraction of a second after punching out through his lower back and peppered his flesh with searing fragments.

The second shattered on one of the few remaining portions of his armour, the hot shrapnel scoring upwards across his cheek, and the third blasted a chunk of his side to red ruin.

He staggered, but kept going, hacking his fiery-bladed sword through the neck of the Iron Warrior that had shot him. Pasanius was hit four times, his armour deflecting the majority of the impacts, but unable to save him completely.

The sergeant fell, dragging down the Iron Warrior before him and breaking his neck with a loud cracking noise.

Another round hit Uriel and he fell to the hard ground.

Bolter rounds filled the air. Uriel heard a cry of pain and surprise.

Yelling voices and more shots.

He tried to push himself to his feet, feeling sharp pain flare as he moved, and wondered why he was not dead.

Bellowing roars of hatred echoed from all around them, howls of furious anger and anguish. Even over the stench of blood and death that filled this place, Uriel could make out the stink of wet, raw flesh and realised what was happening.

Blood sprayed from a ragged stump of an Iron Warrior's neck and Uriel shouted in triumph as he saw the battered but unbowed form of the Lord of the Unfleshed hurl the grisly trophy to one side before leaping onto another Iron Warrior who fired wildly into the attacking monsters.

'Iron men die!' he roared as the surviving creatures of the Unfleshed fell upon Honsou's warriors.

The mohawked warrior shot down the fused twins, the white-hot blast of his gun obliterating the creature with a hiss of superheated air. Onyx nimbly dodged the brutal, clubbing blows of a pair of the Unfleshed, spinning around them and hamstringing them as he danced aside from their attacks.