In full armour, Gabriel and Prathios stood side by side on the raised platform opposite the great arch, bathed in the blood-red light. They surveyed the combat that raged in all quarters of the arena with calm and dignified detachment, watching the eclectic mixture of techniques and styles during this first phase of the Blood Trials. This day was a free for all, designed principally to reduce the numbers of aspirants to a more manageable level. Prathios had explained the rules to all of them the day before: they were to arrive at dawn and they were not to leave until sunset; if any of them tried to leave while light still poured through the great arch, he would kill them himself. There was no gate or force field keeping them penned in, but so far not a single warrior had tried to escape the carnage through the wide-open archway.
In fact, Prathios had said nothing about what would be expected of the aspirants once they were within the confines of the amphitheatre. He had simply instructed them that they should not leave until sundown. Dawn had been seven hours earlier, and neither Prathios nor Gabriel had yet spoken a word to the battling warriors before them. All that Prathios had said on the previous day was that the aspirants should understand that very few of them, if any, would have what it took to be considered for the process of ascension into a Space Marine. That was the seed that he had implanted in their minds, and on this first day of the trials he could witness what potentials that seed contained.
Nothing had been said about combat, and, for the first thirty minutes or so after the dawn, nothing had happened. The aspirants had just stood there, bolt upright and proud, staring expectantly at Prathios and Gabriel. But when the two Blood Ravens said nothing, a murmured discontent gradually started to spread throughout the crowd. One or two of the bolder ones called up to the pedestal, voicing their impatience and wanting to know when the trials would start. Such actions seemed to germinate the seed as other warriors realised that the sole purpose of the trials was to reduce their numbers. As a hugely muscled, white-skinned man yelled up at Prathios, a blond-haired youth with dazzling green eyes sprang forward and drove a long-bladed dagger straight through his neck, transforming his angry cry into a gurgling death-rattle.
There had been an elongated moment of silence and shock as the huge man collapsed to the ground with blood pouring out of his ruptured arteries. He had died instantly—one down. Then, finally, after a few seconds of faltering comprehension, a burst of clarity erupted in the mind of another warrior—Prathios could identify the precise moment from the look of excitement that suddenly dawned on the man’s face. The short, bearded man swung his axe in a powerful arc straight into the stomach of the taller man standing next to him. It was an utterly arbitrary act—there was no particular reason why the short man should particularly hate the man next to him, he was simply the nearest person. Without pausing, the little man yanked his axe head out of the body and brought it round in a back swing towards the man on the other side of him.
And that was how it started. Since that moment, there had been nothing but combat and bloodshed for the entire day, some of it arbitrary and some of it political, spilling over from the animosities between the gangs and groupings from outside the arena. The numbers were finally being reduced.
Ad hoc groups and alliances had formed as some of the warriors realised that they would stand a better chance of survival if they stuck together. But such alliances quickly collapsed as the fighters realised that they had no real friends in the arena, only competitors; some were stabbed in the back by those whose backs they were defending. More often, the groups collapsed because better groups became possible and people defected, as the warriors began to get a sense of who the best fighters were and tried to team up with them. A strong group was already developing around the boy with the braided blond hair, who had made the first kill, and the squat, bearded man, who had made the second. This was how the first day of the trials usually developed.
Gabriel could not remember his own Blood Trial, but Prathios had told him many times of the legends about him. It was said that he grasped the significance of the first day instantly, and that he arrived in the auditorium already set on his path—and what a glorious path that turned out to be. His intuitive decisiveness had set him apart from his brethren then—and it continued to raise eyebrows and provoke attention even now.
It was rumoured that Gabriel had been one of the last of the aspirants to show up for the Blood Trials on Cyrene. When he had arrived in the arena, it was already bursting with warriors, each of whom was standing proudly and waiting for direction from the Blood Ravens chaplain. Gabriel had not even broken his stride, walking in through the great arch of the amphitheatre on Cyrene, which was even more majestic than the one on Rahe’s Paradise, drawing his sword and taking off the head of the first aspirant he came to, before breaking into a charge and hacking his way through the crowd towards the chaplain’s pedestal. By the time the young Gabriel had reached Prathios’ feet, he had already killed nearly a hundred of his fellow aspirants. Within minutes, a second figure emerged from the chaos and the two of them instantly struck an alliance, fighting side by side until the ground grew swampy with blood. On that day, Prathios had been forced to call a halt to the killing within an hour of dawn, fearing that there would be too few warriors left to guarantee that any of them would survive the traumas of the Implantation Chamber. As it turned out, only Gabriel and his ally, Isador Akios, eventually became Blood Ravens.
Today’s trials were not quite as dramatic as the one in the legend, and Gabriel suspected that even the one from the legend had not been as dramatic as it was subsequently made to sound. But there were enough strong warriors on Rahe’s Paradise to make Gabriel and Prathios confident that they would find some suitable neophytes from amongst them. In particular, the boy with the blond braids had caught their attention as an early hopeful. Despite being relatively slight of build and probably amongst the youngest of the warriors present, he moved with a delightful grace and ease, slipping past attacks and countering in the same movement. He had a strong, intuitive grasp of the way that the combat was unfolding, and was always to be found where the fighting was hardest and bloodiest.
“Is he a psyker, Prathios?” asked Gabriel, using the vox link inside their helmets.
“I cannot tell, Gabriel, but he does show evidence of foreknowledge—moving away from blows before they are landed, even when they are struck from behind or from blind spots. His awareness seems considerable,” mused the chaplain.
“And the others follow his lead. That is unusual charisma in one so young,” added Gabriel, impressed. There was something familiar about the boy’s face, but he wasn’t sure what it was.
“There are others who seem to have similar abilities today, including that one,” nodded Prathios, indicating the short man with the beard. “If these aspirants do have latent psychic powers, then there would appear to be an unusually high number of them in this group. We will have to inform Jonas and Ikarus; a librarian must assess psychic potentials—”
Prathios broke off as Gabriel vaulted down from the pedestal and charged into the fray. He scanned the scene carefully, trying to work out what had triggered the action in his captain. For a horrifying moment, he feared that Gabriel had finally lost his sanity to bloodlust.
The aspirants were still fighting, hacking and swiping with their no-longer shining blades. But there was something different in the scene. If anything, more of the warriors were falling than before. Looking more closely, Prathios realised that some were collapsing to the ground even before they were struck down by fellow aspirants. Straining his eyes, Prathios saw a heavy-set, pale-skinned man suddenly drop to his knees, dropping his long, curving sword into the blood-drenched sand before him. As he fell onto his face, Prathios could see a spread of tiny exit wounds on the man’s back.
Gabriel had his bolter drawn and was standing in the middle of the arena, on the edge of the deep, smoking ravine that bisected the amphitheatre. A circle of space had opened up around him as the aspirants fought
to keep out of the Marine’s way, while Gabriel tracked his gun through the crowd, searching for something.
After a few seconds, a slight figure came charging out of the crowd with a long-bladed dagger brandished in his left hand. His blond braids fluttered out behind him and his green eyes flashed with intensity. Gabriel ignored the courageous boy as he closed and then leapt forward, driving his dagger into the armoured plate on the Marine’s back. The blade snapped like ice against the ancient armour and, following through, the boy crashed into Gabriel’s legs. With an irritated backhand, Gabriel swatted the boy across his face, knocking him unconscious immediately. The captain made a brief mental note to commend the boy’s spirit.
Gradually, the rest of the battling aspirants stopped fighting, turning to see what the Blood Ravens captain was doing in amongst them. He stood in a ring of clarity with his bolter raised, sweeping it around the perimeter of the arena, with the blond boy unconscious at his feet. In the lull, Prathios jumped down from the pedestal, his own bolter drawn in one hand while the Crozius Arcanum was still held in the other.
“What is it, captain?” he asked.
“They are here,” muttered Gabriel, his voice taut with concentration.
“Who—” began Prathios, but he was cut off by an abrupt burst of fire from Gabriel’s bolter. The shells flashed out to the edge of the arena and impacted against the great stone walls, chipping out fragments of masonry and causing the aspirants to scatter.
Prathios stared after the apparently arbitrary shots and then turned to his captain, his voice rich with concern: “Gabriel, there is nothing there.”
“Blow the sulphur cloud,” said Gabriel, ignoring Prathios’ words.
As he spoke, a scream arose from the crowd of aspirants and then was cut off. Turning, Gabriel and Prathios saw the short, bearded man slump forward onto his face in the dirt, his back riddled with tiny wounds.
“Prathios, do it now!” barked Gabriel.
The chaplain unclipped a grenade from his belt and lobbed it into the smoking ravine behind them. It fell only a few metres before the heat from the lava below caused it to detonate. As it exploded, a great cloud of sulphurous gas erupted from the crevice and wafted out over the arena, rapidly filling the amphitheatre with choking fumes. In a few seconds, most of the aspirants had lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.
Almost immediately, Gabriel opened fire with his bolter, spraying shells out into the mist with unchecked ferocity, dragging his fire around in a circle at about chest height, now that the aspirants were all lying down. Staring out into the sulphurous fog, Prathios finally caught his first glimpse of Gabriel’s targets—slight, slender figures darting through the cloud, visible only as distortions in the mist. Instantly, Prathios opened up with his own bolter, tracking his fire in the same direction as Gabriel, but facing in the opposite direction.
The darting figures in the cloud started to flicker and materialise more solidly, as though the noxious gas was somehow degrading or interfering with their camouflage. As the targets crystallised, the two Marines stopped their fire spray and placed their shots more carefully, but by now the enemy was in retreat. The fleet figures clearly had no intention of engaging in a fire fight and they were dashing for the archway.
“Nobody leaves until the sun sets,” murmured Prathios, unleashing a volley of bolter fire in the wake of the retreating assailants. He clipped the leg of one of the figures, causing it to stumble and trip as its comrades rushed on without it.
Gabriel was already running, pounding across the arena towards the fleeing foes, clicking off rounds from his bolter as he ran. He reached the stumbling enemy just as it regained its balance and composure. Without breaking his stride, Gabriel launched himself into a dive, crashing into the back of the figure and flattening it to the ground, driving his combat knife down through the humanoid’s shoulder, pinning it down.
You know not what you do, human. The thought jabbed into Gabriel’s mind like a hot poker, making him snap his neck up and stare after the rest of the attackers. One of them had stopped running and turned to face him. A long, dirty cameleoline cloak billowed in the wisps of sulphur behind it, and the lower half of its face was covered by a tightly bound scarf, but its emerald eyes burned brightly, seeming to draw Gabriel towards them in hypnotic spirals.
Gabriel had heard those words before; the eldar witch on Tartarus had forced them into his head in an attempt to compromise his intent. He would not listen to them again.
A volley of bolter fire streaked past Gabriel’s head as Prathios came pounding up behind him, and the eldar ranger finally broke eye contact and disappeared out of the archway, leaving Gabriel and Prathios with their wounded prisoner pressed into the blood-drenched sand.
CHAPTER SIX: PETRIFICATION
The sleek shape of the twin-finned Vampire Raider was bathed in red flames as it scythed its way through the upper atmosphere. Its broad, forward-sweeping wings sliced through the mesosphere and plunged into the gaseous resistance of the stratosphere, submerging the streaking vessel in furious waves of fire.
As the fireball burst through into the troposphere, revealing the slick black of the vessel’s armour, a long hatch jettisoned from the underside of its fuselage and a slender missile-emplacement dropped into place. Immediately, the barrel flared and a rocket roared down towards the distant mountains below.
After a few seconds, the hypersonic missiles punched into the snowy peak of one of the largest mountains, instantly vaporising the ice and the glacial permafrost, sending avalanches of snow and abrupt waves of water crashing down the mountainside. The missiles drove their way down into the substance of the mountain, clearing a wide impact crater and blowing clouds of dust and debris into the air. Then, just as the avalanche seemed to stop and the dust started to settle, the warheads detonated in the molten core of the volcano.
The explosion caused the mountain to convulse, shrugging off its surface layer of snow and rocky debris. Then the peak trembled and cracked, as the pressure forced the molten lava out into streams that hissed and steamed through the icy heights, blending with the plumes of sulphurous gases into a towering cumulonimbus. Finally, the pressure was too great to be vented by the little lacerations in the mountainside and the whole peak blew clear of the mountain, blasting immense chunks of rock and spraying magma for kilometres in every direction.
Still descending rapidly towards the desert, the black Vampire Raider rolled in a tight corkscrew, signalling its success to the second Raider that was just emerging from the inferno of the lower atmosphere, its green and white colouring making it appear to shimmer amongst the flames.
The second Raider flicked its wings in acknowledgement as it burst out of the troposphere and dove down in pursuit of the first, spiralling gently as though indifferent to the intractable pull of gravity.
Strapped into the pilot’s seat of the black Vampire Raider, Laeresh was confident that the eruption would cover their descent into the desert. He had very little faith in the efficacy of mon-keigh technology; the strike cruiser that he had almost crippled in orbit had merely served to confirm his preconceptions. A huge volcanic eruption would certainly register on the primitive instruments of the humans, but he was sure that the signal would swamp the fleet, delicate signatures of the two Vampires. The mon-keigh would simply assume that it was a natural event, or even that a freak meteor had struck the volcano. He knew that they had been confused by stories of natural disasters on that planet before.
He rolled the Vampire over and tipped its nose towards the desert, accelerating vertically through the sound barrier before pulling up less than a metre from the ground, hammering the sonic boom into the sand and blasting out an impact crater. He angled his bird out into the deep desert, leaving the mountains diminishing behind him. He loved to fly and he nearly always insisted that he should pilot his own craft, despite the fact that his Aspect Warriors would always try to insist that their exarch should remain secure in the transportation hold until t
ouchdown.
In a manoeuvre that would have killed a mon-keigh in one of their primitive flyers, Laeresh hit the gravitic-repellers and brought the craft to a dead halt in less than a second. The extreme g-forces that should have instantly killed all of the eldar onboard were spontaneously nullified by the gravity stabilisers in the Vampire’s occupied compartments. Laeresh had used this manoeuvre against the ignorant humans and retarded orks on many occasions, watching them overshoot his position by kilometres as their primitive craft struggled to decelerate slowly enough to keep their pilots alive. The eldar had been making use of anti-gravitic technologies for millennia and Laeresh was constantly shocked that the younger races had still not worked it out.
Slowly, Laeresh brought his stationary, hovering bird down onto the desert, resting it delicately on the blades of the wing-edges. The sand that blew through the air outside his cockpit was the product of a desert wind, or perhaps it was still the remnants of the sonic crater he had blown out of the ground, but it certainly had nothing to do with his landing—hardly a single grain of sand was disturbed as the elegant, black Vampire Raider touched down.
[Dawn of War 02] - Ascension Page 12