At last his fall ends.

His broken body plunges into an icy lake of dark water. It is deep and the fortunate angle of impact means he only breaks six of his ribs and not his spinal column. Freezing water enfolds him, pouring down his throat and into his lungs. He gags and coughs, the deep cold shocking him from the disorientation of his fall.

Autonomic responses take over. His throat seals his primary lungs off. Implanted breathing organs alongside his genhanced ones take over. They siphon what little air is left in them and shunt that oxygen directly to his brain. Electrochemical shocks throughout his body jolt him into life, self-induced fibrillation to get his limbs working again.

Hol Beloth thrashes uselessly. He has no buoyancy, his armour is dragging him down.

Legionary armour is airtight and therefore watertight, but his has been broken open and shattered. Water rushes to fill it and the weight is enormous. He struggles to fight its sucking ballast, but his body is too badly hurt, his soul too grievously broken.

Hol Beloth sinks deeper, a stream of bubbles spuming from his lips.

An arm plunges into the water and a clawed hand grips the broken edge of his pauldron. It is bestial and scaled. Yellowed talons score deep grooves in the ceramite as he is dragged back to the surface.

Hol Beloth is hauled onto a shore of debris and rubble, gasping for breath. He rolls and vomits twin lungfuls of water so cold it burns his throat. He retches until his body is empty of fluid, tasting blood and bile in his mouth. He feels the intramuscular sphincters of his airways switch as he shifts back to his regular breathing pattern.

Cold air has never tasted so good.

Steam rises from his body, his skin hot to the touch. His incredible physiology is repairing damage that should have killed him outright. That he is alive at all is a miracle, and he looks up to see just how far he has fallen. Dust fogs the air and a rain of debris tumbles into the cave from the jagged tear in its ceiling. Latticed steelwork from the collapsed starscraper webs the opening torn in the rock like crude stitches, and sparking lengths of high-tensile wire and data cabling dangle like jungle creepers.

The gloom makes it hard to judge the cave's dimensions, but it is not large. Perhaps a hundred metres at its widest. The water level of the lake is rising as more debris falls into it.

Maloq Kartho squats at the edge of the lake, impossibly unscathed by their fall. Icewater laps at his feet. Hol Beloth sees there is something wrong with the Dark Apostle. Darkness clings to the warrior, but it looks like there are too many joints in his legs.

Kartho turns his horned head and says, 'You live,' as though he is surprised.

'You destroyed my army,' says Hol Beloth.

Kartho nods. 'Rabble,' he says. 'Fodder. A meat price.'

'Why?'

'You had no need of them,' says Kartho. 'You have a higher purpose than marching at the head of debased mortals.'

'What purpose?' asks Hol Beloth, hating that he cannot hide his urgent desire.

The Dark Apostle cocks his head to one side, as though the answer is self-evident, but furnishes him with no reply. He looks towards the broken ceiling of the cave, expectant.

'And though the heavens rain fire upon the Bearers of the Truth, yet shall there be a greater boon given unto them,' says Kartho, pulling himself erect. He is taller now, his body swelling with vitality. The Dark Apostle is on the verge of something incredible, a trans-formation or an ascension. Darkness seethes within him, a dangerous energy only kept in check by a monumental effort of will.

The coming hours will either transform Kartho or destroy him.

Hol Beloth does not know which he would rather see.

XXXII.

Ventanus raises his sword in a two-handed block as Foedral Fell or whatever dark force is animating his body swings a toothed falchion in a diagonal cut. The force behind the blow is enormous. Energised sparks spray from the impact of the blades, and ozone stink fills his nostrils as the servos of his battle armour augment his strength. He rolls his wrists, letting the roaring teeth scrape down his power sword.

He sways aside from a blindingly swift return stroke and thrusts for Fell's groin. It is a good strike, powerful and well-aimed. The point lances the crimped joint between Fell's pelvis and thigh.

Ventanus twists, and wrenches the blade clear.

Black blood spills out. The stench is awful. The worst thing in the world. Even the filters of his helm cannot keep it out. He gags, retching dryly.

The blood stops flowing and Fell is not even slowed.

'You kill my kin,' says the Neverborn, a froth of disintegrating matter spilling over its lips.

Ventanus does not answer and attacks again.

They trade blows back and forth, and though his skill is the greater, the speed and strength of his opponent is phenomenal. Three times he avoids death by the narrowest margin. He hears his name called, but can't spare a moment's concentration to see who is shouting to him.

The sound of gunfire is a distant echo. The flash of mass-reactive detonations barely registers. He is in the middle of furious battle, but all he sees is the daemon creature trying to kill him. Fell still has the Octed staff piercing him, though it has snapped inside his body. Only the top half remains.

Two warriors in cobalt-blue and gold appear beside Ventanus. One has a face of broken porcelain and flesh, the other is in the battle colours of a Fourth Company captain. He knows them and loves them as brothers. Eikos Lamiad fights with economical grace, Lyros Sydance with vengeful fury. His brother captain was always a man given to passionate rages, most of which needed tempering, but Ventanus is grateful for this one.

To face a single Ultramarine is daunting. Three is certain death.

Foedral Fell laughs in their faces. His falchion is a blur, blocking, parrying and attacking with a speed that should be impossible. Liquid black fire leaps along the length of his blade and where it touches it burns Legion plate like dry wood.

'The Saviour, the Lancer and the Cripple...' giggles Fell, spinning and slamming an elbow into Lamiad's cheek. Facial plates crack further. 'The warp knows you...'

'Bastard!' cries Sydance, lunging forward. His sword cuts down through Fell's left arm. A spray of the foul blood washes out, along with a host of wriggling things, segmented and waving like worms. Corpse feeders. Sydance gags on the stench and Fell's falchion sweeps up to take his head.

Ventanus blocks the blow and hammers his boot into Fell's gut. The Word Bearer staggers under the force of it, the bladed finials of the staff reflecting the light of gunfire. Something fast moving and powerful strikes it a rogue shell or a ricochet.

The daemonic face behind Fell's eyes shudders. Pain wracks its body and a gout of boiling black fluid jets from its mouth. It staggers and Ventanus sees his opening. He spins inside Fell's guard and rams his sword through his breastplate.

Lightning streams the length of the blade as it punches through ceramite, flesh, bone and the stuff of night. The tip breaks through the backplate of Fell's armour, but the metal of the blade has aged a thousand years.

Silvered steel is now corroded rust that flakes to ash within moments of exposure to the real world.

A pistoning fist slams Ventanus back as he hears his name being shouted again. He hits the ground hard and tries to rise. Something is holding him down.

Eikos Lamiad, his face a horror of ruined flesh where his mask has been shattered, has him pinned to the ground.

'Tetrarch!' shouts Ventanus. 'What'

Lamiad shakes his head as a towering shadow falls over them.

A giant in tar-slicked ceramite. A titan who fell from the skies and lived to tell of it. One arm is a crushing fist, the other a colossal cannon of spinning barrels. A hurricane of fire roars from its muzzles. Hundreds of shells expend in moments.

Foedral Fell's body explodes.

The assault cannon's fire is relentless. Unforgiving.

Its aim never wavers and the wretched matter of the Neverborn is atomised.

'You will not. Harm. Him,' says Telemechrus the Contemptor.

XXXIII.

Maloq Kartho squats by the water's edge. Waiting.

Time passes, but without his helmet Hol Beloth has no way to accurately measure it. Hours two, maybe three. He drifts in and out of consciousness as his body diverts energy from his thought processes to healing.

There is no change in the light.

They have survived a fall that ought to have killed them instantly, which tells Hol Beloth that the Dark Apostle still has an endgame in mind. Yet they have wasted time in this cave doing nothing. If there is mayhem to be made, then Hol Beloth wishes to be about it.

Determined to take action, he looks for a way out.

Fifty metres to his left, a wide fissure in the walls leads deeper into the rock. Something metallic gleams on the ground next to the opening.

Hol Beloth forces himself upright. Pain from numerous fractures shoots up his legs. He forces it down as he limps around the edge of the lake to the fissure. Stagnant air wafts from the opening. He takes a long breath, his neuroglottis picking out chemical traces of welded steel and setting permacrete.

He squats at the opening and lifts the gleaming object from the ground, turning it around in his hands like a precious relic.

It is a cartographae drone, a bulbous cylinder equipped with a repulsor field and numerous auspex arrays. Its power cells are virtually exhausted and its calliper limbs twitch like the feelers of a dying insect. A blinking red gemlight on its frontal lobe tells Hol Beloth that it is trying and failing to link back to its control station. A Techmarine could easily repair it, but he has no skill with machines.

It takes a moment for Hol Beloth to realise the significance of this find.

He turns as booming splashes, like boulders falling into the lake, fill the cave with spray. Maloq Kartho rises on his oddly-jointed legs. He wipes cold water from his face as more huge objects splash down into the water from above. The surface of the lake churns and slaps the rock. A trail of bubbles moves towards to the shore.

Hol Beloth watches as Eriesh Kigal and his Terminators rise from the dark waters like drowned sailors returned to unnatural life. Water pours from the battered plates of their armour and as each one reaches the Dark Apostle, he is anointed with three crosswise slashes across his breastplate. Without knowing how, Hol Beloth senses a significance to the thrice clawed mark.

Then a bloated shape of hard red metal emerges from the water, a leviathan of the deeps. The Dreadnought Zu Gunara. Its casket drips black water and what look like molten scads of metal that are running in rivulets from its armoured flanks. It is as though the Dreadnought is melting, as though the void-dark within is consuming the matter containing its substance.

It still carries the weapon stolen from CV427/Praxor, its bio-hazard symbol like a beacon of hope in the gloom of the cave.

'And the devourer of life shall be borne into the belly of the Beast,' says Kartho, turning to Hol Beloth. The Dark Apostle gestures to the fissure in the rock where Hol Beloth found the damaged drone. A forked tongue of corrugated flesh licks jagged teeth. Hol Beloth knows the Dark Apostle tastes what he has tasted.

Turned earth, blasted rock. Construction.

A way in.

'The Unveiled One shall open the way,' says Kartho, 'and he that was lost shall lead the faithful to the slaughter.'

Hol Beloth holds up the cartographae drone. Purpose fills him and he throws the machine out into the water. It drops into the darkness, the red gemlight fading as it sinks to the bottom of the lake. He looks back at the fissure that leads to the heart of enemy's lair.

'The belly of the beast?' says Hol Beloth, the pain of his many wounds forgotten.

'We are the blade that opens it,' promises Maloq Kartho.

XXXIV.

Subiaco cannot escape the grip of his nightmare.

He is awake. He knows this, but wishes he were not.

His nightmare has followed him into the waking world.

His wife's face, the skin ruddy and gracefully aged, is crumbling parchment, flaking and diseased. Even his children, youngsters barely of age to stand in the Youth Auxilia, bear the scars of time's assault.

He flees his hab, barely dressed, and sees that everything he has feared has come to pass. Beyond the walls of the Ultimus, the billions of tonnes of rock that keeps them safe is no more than a paper-thin veneer of flaking ash and wire, a structure so fragile he cannot bear to look at it or the unimaginable, ocean-dark presences uncoiling behind it.

The planet shifts and creaks as void-born gales strip the world's substance away with every breath. Subiaco screams, but his words are snatched away by cold winds whose origin has no place and no time. Thousands upon thousands of faces surround him, but he sees them for what they truly are: rotting puppets that degenerate with every passing second. A multitude that does not know how close their death really is.

Tap, tap, tap...

Subiaco hears the polished steel talons of the beasts once again. They have broken the walls of sleep and are coming for him. The ragged, cloth-tear sound of dread claws being ripped through dimensions grates down his spine and he breaks into a run.

Wounded faces turn and question him. Their words are gurgling death rattles. He pushes past them all, knocking many to the ground. Wet claws and lamprey-like mouths press up from the ground, sensing the nearness of prey. Nobody sees them, and Subiaco's warnings fall upon deaf ears.

Subiaco runs, down into the deeps, away from the masses of the dead-in-waiting.

He runs past the places he has worked since finding sanctuary in Arcology X. He runs until the acid burns in his limbs and his lungs fill with bile. The hunting beasts are close. He feels their nearness. He dares not look back. The very sight of them will paralyse him, and there is only one escape.

He hears voices behind him and ignores them.

At last he reaches his salvation, the cyclopean gate with the Clockwork Angel puzzle sealing it shut. He is almost hysterical with relief. There are giants here, warriors whose bodies are just as rotten as those above, but which are locked in an eternal battle with the forces that drive their flesh to its doom.

Subiaco ignores them. They are just as dead as the thousands of people above.

Tap, tap, tap...

He has no time. None.

Subiaco climbs to the Clockwork Angel, and it seems that its wings reach out to enfold him. He hears his name barked in the booming tones of a being whose physiology has been so altered and enhanced that it barely qualifies as human.

The authority and warning are unmistakable, but he is too far gone to stop now.

He punches the solution to the age-old riddle of the Clockwork Angel into the ornate keyboard of brass and jet. The mechanisms of the door break apart as command codes of the Ingenium are accepted by the locking seal. Resonant harmonic frequencies blast through the permacrete, turning it to powder in the blink of an eye.

A falling curtain of dissolving permacrete is the last thing he sees as his chest cavity detonates explosively in a fan of shattered bone.

Sergeant Ankrion's mass-reactive kills Ingenium Subiaco instantly.

His body falls from the platform before the locking seal as whetted chainfists, lightning claws and thunder hammers tear through from the other side.

XXXV.

Eriesh Kigal kills the first Ultramarine with a spray of bolts from his combi-weapon. He kills the next one too. His warriors fan out around him. Those with guns fill the space with explosive bolts. Ricochets and splintered rock fly through the air. Answering gunfire spanks from the massive plates of their Terminator armour. Las-rounds are ineffective and mass-reactives only marginally less so.

Hol Beloth has only his sword and wades into the fight like one of Angron's gladiators. Aside from a few Ultramarines who are even now falling back, there is little sport to be had here. His blade is wet and red, but it is the thin blood of mortals. It drips from his blade as Maloq Kartho squeezes his growing bulk through the hole torn in the shuttering that sealed this tunnel off from the underground lake.

Zu Gunara comes next, still carrying the world-killer in his mechanised arms.

Word of their coming will already be racing to the heart of this arcology.