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Several transportation craft were destroyed as they sought to dock with the Infidus Diabolus and the powerful strike cruiser took damage from incoming torpedoes fired from an Imperial Dictator class warship.

The Host had suffered heavy casualties and many of the holy suits of armour worn by the Anointed had been lost in the xenos pyramid. The revered religious leader of the Host had fallen, and long would be the requiem services dedicated to his honour. The First Acolyte, mourning the loss of his master and spiritual guide, would lead these ceremonies of lamentation and grievance.

The Infidus Diabolus returned to the roiling seas of the Ether, forging a path towards the Eye of Terror and Sicarus, the world claimed by the Daemon-Primarch Lorgar, and the religious seat of the Council of Apostles. There Marduk would face trial, to prove his worth to be embraced into the fold and become a true Dark Apostle of the Word.

EPILOGUE

The twitching magos was held against the back wall of the cell, deep within the Infidus Diabolus. His legs had been sheared off above the knees, and he hung suspended by dozens of chains. His wasted arms, covered with cancers and black malignancies, were outstretched and clamped with spiked manacles attached to further chains. Those arms had not been moved or utilised for centuries, and they were little more than canker ridden, skin-covered bones. They had broken as they had been pulled away from their position across the magos's chest, where they had been held unmoving for countless centuries.

Marduk moved beneath the sole, flickering glow-globe that buzzed overhead. The entire left side of his face was covered in augmetics and the skin around these bionics was puckered and a deathly shade of blue. His left eye was an angry, lidless, red orb, the pupil slender and slitted like a cat's. He had rejected the bionic eye replacements that the Chirumeks had offered, instead demanding this daemonic flesh hybrid, and he was pleased with the chirurgeons' efforts.

The sparking stubs of four mechanical servo-arms flailed spasmodically from the priest's shoulders and the remnants of mechadendrites quivered. Most had been ripped from the magos's spine and those that remained were little more than shorn off, useless protuberances. The haemoncolyte that had been attached by umbilical tubes to the machine priest had been severed from him and its repulsive, diminutive form opened up by the chirurgeons for study. It had squirmed as their knives had cut into its cankerous flesh. Large bell jars filled with viscous liquid protruded from the hunched back of the magos, though several of them had been smashed open, leaking pungent green-blue liquid, and sparking electricity flashed from within them occasionally. The contents of the jars had been placed under close scrutiny to try to tease the secrets from the preserved, ancient brains.

The red robes of the magos had been stripped from his mechanical body, and without its all concealing hood, the priest's head was exposed. Little human flesh remained of its face, and what existed was corpse pale and twitched uncontrollably. Tubes and pipes fed via thick needles had been shoved into his exposed flesh, pumping him with serums and foul secretions. 'It would seem that it has some kind of protective field generator around it,' Kol Badar had explained when the magos had first been discovered amongst the wreckage of the crashed airship.

'I would presume that this is what enabled it to survive the crash,' he had said. 'Allow me to demonstrate.'

The Coryphaus had fired a burst of fire from his combi-bolter towards the magos and an energy bubble surrounding the priest of the Machine-God shimmered as it absorbed the momentum from the incoming bolt-rounds, slowing them enough for them to fall harmlessly at the magos's feet.

But this device did not protect him any longer. No, the device had been prised from his flesh and the Chirumeks of the Host were even now examining its workings. Marduk could do whatever he wanted to the magos, who now had no defence.

'Greetings Magos Darioq.'

'I will not aid you Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion of Astartes, genetic descendant of the traitor Primarch Lorgar. My systems are failing. This flesh unit is dying and I shall soon become one with Deus Machina.'

'You will aid me, and you will not be granted release. Yes, your flesh is dying since we removed your filthy dwarf clone, but soon you will be… changed. A daemon essence is being nurtured especially for you: you should feel privileged. Soon it will merge with you. Daemon, human and machine will become one within you. You will become that which your order loathes.'

Marduk smiled, the buzzing glow-globe lighting his face daemonically.