The Cross towered there, white-hot flames burning quietly upon it, no longer raging, yet imbued with an eternal majesty.
The chains stretched taut, giving off faint metallic scrapes, their ends embedded deep in the suspended captive's shell of mingled psychic energy and matter.
Saladin hung there, his shattered armour and scorched flesh twitching faintly within the Flame Force Field.
His head drooped, his tangled black curls plastered to his brow by sweat and blood, obscuring part of his contorted face.
Yet his eyes, which had once burned with ambition and fanaticism, now held only the ashes of utter defeat, with an almost insane obstinacy flickering deep within.
He struggled to lift his eyelids, his gaze piercing the dancing flames and the faint distortions rising from his own burning psychic energy, fixing relentlessly on the figure below.
His voice was no longer a psychic roar resonating through the sand, but words forced from a hoarse, ruined throat, dry and weak, yet still carrying a bone-deep hatred and a barely perceptible yearning for an end.
"Kill me... Lorgar..."
"Kill me... now... give me... an end..."
The wind swept over the deathly silent Sea of Sand, stirring pale, cold dust.
The dark golden grains that had once churned ceaselessly, embodying Saladin's will, now carpeted the ground like truly dead matter, devoid of life.
Only the burning light of the Cross cast wavering shadows across this desolate "tomb."
Lorgar stood with his back to the Cross, seemingly deaf to Saladin's whispered pleas for death.
He did not even glance back at the prisoner suspended high above.
All his attention seemed focused on the ground beneath his feet and the things gripped in his hands.
The blade's light had now gone out completely, returning it to its natural metallic colour. Lorgar used it as a