Uriel saw Honsou retreat from the attack of the Unfleshed, and rolled onto his side, dragging his bolter around.

He realised how much he missed the ministrations of his armour as the pain from the burning fragments of the bolter shell stabbed into his back. Pasanius lay atop a dead Iron Warrior, two large exit wounds blasted through his back.

'Pasanius!' called Uriel.

His sergeant turned his head, and Uriel saw his face was deathly pale, his cheeks ashen and sunken.

'Don't you dare die on me, sergeant!' shouted Uriel, putting down his sword and bringing his bolter to a firing position.

'Aye, captain,' said Pasanius, weakly.

Smoke and the thrashing combatants conspired to obscure Uriel's aim, but eventually he was able to draw a bead on Honsou.

'Now you die, traitor!' whispered Uriel as he squeezed the trigger and a crash of rubble and smoke exploded beside him.

But in the instant before he lost sight of Honsou, he had seen the master of Khalan-Ghol pitched backwards, his helmet spraying ceramite fragments and an arc of crimson.

Bloodstorm…

The two daemons faced each other in the depths of the lake of blood, their shared hatred a physical thing between them. Swirling eddies of power gusted around them, the energies both had expended in their battle having drained them almost to the point of extinction.

There were no more words to be said. What could two beings that had been enemies since the dawn of time have to say to each other at this moment?

Words were now only for mortals and those with a future to remember them.

The Omphalos Daemonium had prepared for this moment ever since it had been freed by the random actions of two mortals, and its strength was by far the greater.

But the Heart of Blood and the Avatar of Khorne were once again the same creature, and the blasted armour had feasted on the death of an entire galaxy of souls. Both daemons were evenly matched, but none could yet see the other destroyed.

Bloodstorm…

The Heart of Blood spread wide its arms and gave vent to a shout of hatred that parted the vital fluid of the lake and sent a tidal wave of blood spilling outwards from its centre. A rippling whirlwind of raw, red hunger swept from the Heart of Blood's armour, spreading throughout the chamber like the pressure wave of an explosion.

A lashing storm of hate-fuelled energy roared around the ruined domain of the Savage Morticians, lashing like a blind, insensate monster and driving the Omphalos Daemonium back from the Heart of Blood with its unstoppable power.

The bloodstorm enfolded the few, cowering mutants that had hidden beneath the shattered machines and rubble of the chamber. It scythed through their flesh and blew them apart.

The bloodstorm tore into the mutilated ruin of Obax Zakayo, finally ending his suffering in an explosion of red bone.

The bloodstorm streaked past the fleshy wombs of the daemonculaba and, one by one, they exploded like great fleshy balloons filled with blood.

The bloodstorm hurtled around the circumference of the chamber, an ocean of blood swept up in the etheric whirlwind as it howled back to the Heart of Blood at its epicentre.

The mighty daemon swelled to monstrous proportions, its armour and weapons blazing with barely-contained power as it sought to master the energies ripped from the ocean of ripe blood it had just feasted upon.

Now it was ready.

Now all things would end.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Howling red winds swept through the Halls of the Savage Morticians, the harsh metallic reek of blood catching in the back of Uriel's throat. He rolled onto his side and scooped up his sword as the fury of the hurricane scouring the air swirled around them, tearing at their flesh with harsh lashes.

The Iron Warriors dived for cover as the etheric whirlwind tore through the cavern and the Unfleshed were hurled from their feet by its power. The desperate battle broke apart as the combatants found shelter or held onto giant boulders to prevent themselves from being swept away.

Uriel gasped as the very life was leeched from him, feeling as powerless as one of the weakling newborns left to die on the mountains of Macragge. But at the edge of the cavern the power of the bloodstorm was at its weakest and they were spared the horrors of those closer to the Heart of Blood.

Pasanius grunted in pain and Uriel watched as the dotted blood on his back liquefied and was snatched into the air by the vampiric storm. His own wounds ran freely as they fed the terrible daemon at the heart of the chamber.

'Not like this…' he hissed. 'Not like this!'

Then, it was gone - the sudden silence unnerving after the tempestuous violence of the diabolical storm. Uriel pushed himself to his knees, grimacing in pain as those around him began to recover from the hellish experience.

The Unfleshed howled in pain. Without the protection of skin to save them from the worst effects of the bloodstorm, their bodies looked wasted and gaunt, pale and anaemic.

Uriel used a fallen surgical table to pull himself to his feet, the pain from his gunshot wounds and cracked bones sharp and biting. His enhanced metabolism had clotted the blood and already formed scar tissue over the wounds, but he was still terribly injured.

'Come on,' he urged Pasanius. 'There's no way out here. We have to find another way.'

'I don't know that I can,' said Pasanius, but Uriel did not give him a chance to argue further, pulling the sergeant upright over his groans of pain. Eventually, Pasanius nodded slowly and said, 'All right, all right, you're worse than Apothecary Selenus.'

Painfully, Pasanius sat himself against a pile of rubble, freshly-dotted blood gummed on his chest from multiple bolter wounds.

The sounds of the battle raging in the centre of the chamber continued to echo, but there was a renewed fury to the roars and clash of weapons. As the bloodstorm abated, Uriel heard savage laughter, brazen and malicious, and felt a sick sensation in his bones as his soul recoiled from its evil.

Through the swirling dust and cascades of rock, Uriel saw the furious climax of the two daemons' battle, the sight of such incredible power taking his breath away. The Heart of Blood towered above the Omphalos Daemonium now, swollen to three times its size, and its sheer physicality was like nothing he had ever seen before.

Even the Bringer of Darkness had not awed him as much with its dark majesty. Its nightmarish presence had filled his thoughts with tormented visions of his own darkness, but this…

This was something else entirely.

Where the Heart of Blood walked, death followed. A red mist came in its wake, a bloody veil that glistened with wetness, and its weapons clove the air with every stroke, leaving dark trails that split the very world open. The daemonic Iron Warrior fell back before it, battered and broken, the armour torn from its body and its wounds spewing ichor from every cut.

Each mighty blow of the Heart of Blood forced it to retreat, its parries growing more clumsy with each backwards step it took. It desperately fell back towards the hissing daemon engine that had brought it here, its screaming stacks billowing shrill screams of anguish.

But the Heart of Blood was not to be cheated of victory and its whip lashed out, snapping around the armoured daemon's arm and tearing it off in a fountain of black blood. The Omphalos Daemonium fell to its knees and bellowed in angry defiance, but it was in vain as the Heart of Blood stepped close and hammered its axe down against its shoulder, cleaving its head from its body with one mighty blow.

The armoured daemon collapsed, a flood of gore spilling from the mortal wound and the Heart of Blood raised its weapons to the heavens with an ear-splitting roar of triumph to the Blood God that shook the very walls of the chamber.