Before the Canoness could go further, a pair of Crusaders from the convent-bastion’s outer wall arrived at the sanctum’s force-shielded doorway.

Both had removed their helmets in the presence of their holy mistress. There was news from the battlefront. From their expressions, it wasn’t good.

The chains tightened around the sorcerer’s torso, forcing him awake. The iron links burned white-hot and sent needles of agony across his bare flesh where his power armour had been removed. Were it not for his enhanced constitution, he’d be dead.

Dreghgor knew that, just as he knew how far he could push his captive. The warlord of the Red Rage was a tyrant and a butcher but he was also wise. Khorne loathed magic, as did he. The collar of black iron around Dreghgor’s neck was inimical to sorcery, but he was not beyond using sorcerers as a tool to further his own ends.

The bitch-maidens of the False Emperor held his warrior legions at bay. No matter how many he threw against their defences, the spiteful whores would not break. Dreghgor knew what lay within their disgusting temple; the sorcerer had scryed its presence after the knives had gone in. Khorne wanted it. Dreghgor would not fail his master, who had seen fit to grant him an armada of ships to bring forth a bloody reign upon the sub-sector. Seven worlds already burned in the wake of his red crusade. He only needed one more… The Eye of the Gods was upon him. He felt it like razorblades under his changed skin.

From the burned-out shell of a shrine, Hagtah Dreghgor had fashioned an arena. The remains of its millennia-old reliquaries were scattered about the bloodied floor like carrion bones. Priceless relic-statues lay broken and beheaded on a carpet of stained-glass fragments. The blood of innocents anointed the shrine’s walls from where they hung impaled on hell-barbs. A Chaos star delineated the battlefield with a freshly flensed skull at each of its eight points.

Two of Dreghgor’s champions clashed within it, chainblade to chainblade. They wore sanguine power armour, chased with brass. Reinforced ribbing between the armour’s plates was as black as sackcloth, and each donned a skull-faced battle-helm in honour of their bloody god.

Dreghgor’s own helm was fashioned into the visage of a snarling hound, a dark iron echo of one of his master’s many forms, and had a single brass horn jutting from its left temple. His armour, scarred from numerous battles, was riddled with studs and barbs. Chains bearing eight skulls from his finest kills hung from plate to plate. He’d scrimshawed marks to represent the lesser ‘achievements’. The tallies resembled little more than deranged scratches, there were so many of them. Rib bones were engineered into his vambraces. Alien teeth turned his gauntlets into spiked fists.

Slayer Lord, Ender of Lives – just two of Dreghgor’s well-earned honorifics.