Jonas traced the runes down through the passageway in which both Meritia and Ptolemea had fallen. The script appeared to be identical to that on the first page of the Ascension tablet that he had found blocking the mouth of the entrance to the bizarre, tree-lined chamber.
He read them off as he walked down the tunnel, using his force staff to support his weight as he leaned down to read each one in turn: The banshee’s call shall wake the dead when dark portents wax nigh. Heed them as the counsel of a seer, or a father.
The final rune was carved into the last fossilized root, just before the tunnel opened out into the wide underground cavern, from which a blast of heat pushed up into the passageway. The subterranean cave must have been more than a hundred metres in diameter, and it was riddled with heavy shade and lines of darkness that seemed to pulse through cracks in the floor and the walls. The strange, glossy, indelible shadows that Jonas had seen in the corridors above were also in evidence down there, as though the outline of vaguely humanoid corpses had been burnt into the rock after a catastrophic explosion.
The scene was thrown into an eerie and bloody red by the light of the lava flows that coursed through deep channels in the ground, giving off jets of sulphurous smoke and hisses of steam at occasional intervals. The streams of molten rock turned, twisted, and meandered through the cavern, sweeping through intricate and intermingled patterns, as though designed by an artist with incredible understanding of tectonic currents and the geological movements of rock over impossible stretches of time.
With his glimmering force staff planted between his feet, Jonas swept his eyes over the incredible scene and his mind worked to draw connections between it, the eldar text on the walls, and the wraithbone tablet that they had unearthed in the foundations of an ancient, lost fortress monastery. For the moment, his concern for the bizarre explosion of darkness in the desert was forgotten in the scholar’s excitement over his new find.
Eventually, his eyes picked out some new details in the rough-cut walls. He wasn’t sure whether his eyes had become accustomed to the unusually shifting light in the cavern or whether the icons had just swum to the surface of the stone. Either way, the long curving wall was now clearly decorated with faintly glowing icons and runes, interspersed between the entranceways to subsidiary caves and small tributary tunnels. His intuition told him that these symbols had appeared in order to be read—much like the text on the wraithbone tablet.
Starting on the right hand side of the tunnel through which he had just descended, Jonas walked slowly around the perimeter of the cavern, studying each of the symbols in turn. Almost at once he realised that this was the same text as was inscribed on the second page of the Ascension tablet, and he was suddenly conscious that he was actually walking through the narrative told by the ancient eldar on this world.
By the time he had patrolled the entire circumference, Jonas had collected together a constellation of fragmentary meanings from the text that had been inscribed into the walls. There was something about the Chaos powers. There was talk of a thirst for warmth. And there appeared to be a reference to some kind of tomb. However, no matter how Jonas juggled the words, he could not find a grammatical subject. All of the phrases appeared to lack a subject, as though it were merely implied or assumed in the centre of them all. He got the distinct impression that the author of the text had presupposed a knowledge of the subject before any reader would have progressed this far.
Jonas retreated away from the walls, picking his way towards the centre of the cavern, stepping over streams of molten rock and jumping lava-filled cracks in the ground. Then, standing in the very centre of the chamber, balanced on an island of rock surrounded by the flow of lava, Jonas turned slowly on the spot, looking from one rune to the next, checking to see that he had not missed anything. As he turned, he was struck by a sudden realisation—the grammatical subject was implied at the centre of each phrase.
With a burst of light and power from his staff, Jonas pushed himself up off the ground, his feet lifting slowly as the bulk of the Space Marine librarian began to levitate up towards the stalactite ridden ceiling. He was a radiant, blue star in the dim, ruddiness of the subterranean cavern.
Looking down from his new vantage point, Jonas smiled as the text was revealed to him in its full glory. The wide, circular stone floor of the cavern was run through with lines and cracks, each flooded with streams and rivers of glowing, molten rock. But these were no random or naturally occurring lines—they were the product of incredible artifice, carved into the very crust of the planet many millennia before. Hanging in a sphere of psychic brilliance, Jonas stared down at the exquisite splendour of the giant rune that was cut into the cavern’s floor. It was simply breathtaking in its beauty: the gentle curves of its cursive strokes were accentuated by the steady, graceful flow of the lava; where angles cracked and jutted through the pattern, the lava roiled and broke in thick waves, giving the sharpness a real air of violence and power. The runic character seemed to live in the very bowels of the planet, giving expression to something ancient and forgotten in the geological past.
Yngir, thought Jonas, unsure of the correct sounding.
“Yngir,” he whispered, trying out the unfamiliar syllables while his mind raced to put a meaning to the sounds. As he spoke, the ground started to tremble and shudder. The movements were slight at first, but they rapidly gathered momentum, shaking the entire cavern in growing violence. The stalactites above him juddered and then cracked, crashing down against his armour and then spiking down into the molten inferno below. At the same time, the runnels in the ground started to glow with spluttering energy, and pulses of blue light coruscated over the floor.
A thunderous crack shot through the chamber, suddenly rending the floor in two, splitting the huge rune in the middle. As the two sides of the floor started to crumble, collapse and to retreat back into the walls around the perimeter of the chamber, the streams of lava broke over the edges and started to cascade down into the widening chasm like burning, molten waterfalls.
After a few seconds, a wide space had opened up in the middle of the cavern, flanked on two sides by rains of lava that tumbled and flowed down into it, pooling into shallow reservoirs of fire and molten stone. In between the flaming pools, at the bottom of the abrupt chasm, Jonas could see the shimmering shape of a radiant black pyramid. On each of its four faces, it was covered in webs of tiny silver hieroglyphs, the like of which Jonas had never seen before.
Slowly, and with a considerable effort of will, Jonas lowered himself down into the chasm, his force staff pouring power out beneath him to support his substantial weight. He landed firmly on the freshly exposed floor of the cavern, and immediately he stooped down to inspect the new artefact that had been uncovered.
Despite himself, Jonas gasped in awe as he stared into the spiralling infinities that seemed to open up within the shimmering blackness of the waist-high pyramid. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. Even wraithbone seemed pallid and dull in comparison with the unearthly effervescence and profound lustre of this material. It seemed to contain an entire universe of its own. And the little silver hieroglyphs were alien beyond his experience—little more than bizarre pictograms, illuminated with a complicated array of boxes, circles and painstakingly constructed curves. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, and he was certain that this object was beyond even the artifice of the ancient eldar.
CHAPTER NINE: CONSECRATION
The door jolted and a crack of light seeped in around the edges, making Ptolemea squint as her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. There was a pause and then the door was pushed open, silhouetting the massive form of a Space Marine in the dazzling light. Curled into the corner of the cell, Ptolemea turned her face away from the light, holding her hand out in front of her as a shield.
“Sister Ptolemea of the Order of the Lost Rosetta, I have come to hear your confession,” said Prathios, stooping under the lintel and entering the little chamber. He looked aro
und the small room, absorbing the dark, damp, cramped squalor of it; Jonas had done a good job of replicating the conditions of an underground dungeon—even the narrow slit of a window near the ceiling gave the impression that the rest of the cell was below water-level.
As the door clanged shut behind the chaplain, closing out the brightness, Ptolemea looked up at his imposing shape—he nearly filled the cell all by himself.
“Confession?” she smiled, feeling a slight pulse of hysteria in her voice. In truth, she had resolved to confess everything. Sitting there alone in the dark, listening to the rhythmical scraping of the eldar in the adjoining cell, watching the flickering images of trees, jungles and death spiral through her mind, she had been determined to cleanse her soul by confessing her taint to the authorities. She had thought ahead to her eventual execution as wistfully as one anticipates the return of a lost lover.
“Confession of what, Marine?” she asked, her delicate lips pursed. Almost as soon as Prathios had opened the door, she had changed her mind about confessing to anything. There was still a chance, a slim and almost invisible chance, that the Blood Ravens were not aware of her visions. Although she realised that this was a virtually impossible hope, she also realised that when faced with the prospect of her death she would clutch at any flickering hope of life, even if that meant denying her own nature. She was no warrior, and she mocked herself for trying to behave like one.
“We are the Adeptus Astartes, Sister,” began Prathios, misunderstanding her resistance. “And this is a time of war. We have no need for the Adeptus Arbites here, and there is no call for the Inquisition—we may dispense our own justice.”
Ptolemea wrapped her arms around her knees and looked up at the chaplain, studying his proud gait and his earnest manner. “I do not question your authority, Blood Raven. I question your judgment. To what do you expect me to confess? I have heard no charges against me—can you not do even this courtesy to a fellow servant of the Emperor?”
“Your crimes are written in your soul, Sister,” said Prathios. “There should be no need for you to hear them with your ears as well.”
“Indulge me,” whispered Ptolemea, leaning forward over her knees and breathing the words with an amused smile. She was not going to give anything away without at least the show of a fight—she may be insane, but she wasn’t an idiot.
“You are charged with the assassination of a loyal and devoted servant of the Imperium and with the attempt to disrupt the execution of a Blood Ravens mission on Rahe’s Paradise. We have been unable to raise Bethle II to confirm the real reasons for your presence here, but we suspect that you are acting for personal reasons, and we are sure that, whether this is true or not, it would be confirmed by your convent.” Prathios stared down at the young woman in the cell and watched her eyes widen in shock as he spoke. She seemed to be relieved.
“I’m afraid that I cannot confess to these charges, chaplain,” she said, leaning back against the wall. “I have done no such thing. I would be more than willing to confess to something that was true. To confess to anything else would simply be a lie—and that too would be a crime.” She smiled again, a relaxed and satisfied smile that made Prathios uneasy.
“Do you not wish to know who it was that you are charged with killing?” asked Prathios carefully, watching the pale, beautiful face of Ptolemea as she closed her dark eyes with a new calm.
“Very well, tell me.”
“Sister Senioris Meritia, of the Order of the Lost Rosetta,” said Prathios with slow deliberation.
Ptolemea’s eyes flashed open immediately. “What?” she said, scrambling to her feet. “What? But I just saw her in her chamber. She was still unconscious…” her voice trailed off as her mind raced back to the scene. She could still see the flickering eye movements of the older Sister, and could clearly remember the dawning of solidarity that had accompanied her suspicions that the older woman was suffering from the same dreams as her. Despite all the suspicions about Meritia’s betrayal that had cycled through her mind since being thrown into that cell, Ptolemea felt the loss of her Sister.
Chaplain Prathios watched the complicated emotions dance over Ptolemea’s elegant features. She looked genuinely surprised to hear the news. “What were you doing in her chamber?”
Snapping out of her reverie, Ptolemea’s eyes fixed on those of Prathios. “I was checking to see that she was all right. I was… worried about her.” She paused, unsure about whether to go on. “We… we seemed to have more in common than I realised.”
Prathios said nothing, sensing that there was something further that the young Sister wanted to say.
“She killed herself,” stated Ptolemea, vocalising her conclusion but not her chain of thought. Her certainty was written clearly on her face as she stared into space.
“Why should I believe that?” asked Prathios reasonably, although his intuition told him that she was telling the truth.
“Because it is the only possible answer,” replied Ptolemea, meeting his eyes once again.
“Why would she kill herself, Sister?” paraphrased Prathios, needing something more.
“Why would I kill her?”
“You tell me.”
“You don’t understand: Meritia was suffering. She was afflicted by… she was suffering from nightmares.”
“What sort of nightmares?” prompted Prathios, wanting to keep the momentum going.
“Dangerous nightmares. Like visions. They racked her with pain and with guilt, making her wake in cold sweats, screaming. They literally turned her grey,” realised Ptolemea as she spoke. “I… she didn’t understand them, and thought that they were signs of taint.”
“And were they?”
“No! No, don’t you see? She killed herself out of fear. She was scared that she was becoming something hideous and monstrous. She was afraid that something had got inside her soul and ruined her purity. But she killed herself!” Ptolemea was almost shouting now, as though carried along by the impassioned logic of her thoughts. “She killed herself and that proves that she was still pure! She killed herself to save her soul for the Emperor—she killed herself because she thought that she was becoming everything she despised… she killed herself because she was still a pristine servant of the Emperor.”
“Why should I believe this?” asked Prathios, impressed by Ptolemea’s passion but aware of his responsibility to discover evidence and truth. “How do I know that you didn’t kill her because you suspected her of taint?”
“You’re right,” answered Ptolemea, her self-knowledge falling into place. “I would have killed her. I even thought about it. I did. I thought about turning her over to the Sisterhood on Bethle II, or even to the inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. And in the end she saved me the trouble and killed herself—don’t you see?”
“You do not persuade, Sister,” countered Prathios. The story was plausible, but she had given him no reason to believe her. Passion is not an argument in itself. “Give me a reason to believe you.”
Ptolemea sighed and looked up into the chaplain’s eyes, holding his gaze calmly. “It seems that I must give you my confession after all,” she said. “I know of what I speak because… I have been suffering these same visions since I arrived on Rahe’s Paradise.”
Prathios said nothing. After a few seconds he nodded and turned away, pulling open the cell door and leaving without a word. He believed her. If there was a charge more serious than murdering a fellow servant of the Emperor, it was that of being tainted by the unclean and treacherous powers of daemons or aliens. Ptolemea’s confession made no sense unless it was true. Whether or not her visions were actually signs of taint was an entirely different question, and it was not something that a Space Marine chaplain was able to judge by himself, although his intuition told him that her unforced confession was in itself evidence that her soul was pure.
Gabriel gazed around the stiflingly hot and impressively wide, subterranean cavern, amazed by what Jo
nas had uncovered beneath the foundations of the lost monastery. The walls were aglow with eldar runes, which he could not read, and riddled with the entrances to tunnels and caves. There must be an entire network of tunnels reaching out into the desert and up into the mountains. He had thought that the only navigable route was between the great amphitheatre and the Blood Ravens’ monastery. It was now clear that he was wrong.
There was a narrow ridge running all the way around the edge of the cavern, providing a ledge from which there was access to each of the tributary tunnels. In the centre, the floor just dropped away down into a sheer and wide pit. The walls were covered in cascades of molten rock, which fell from runnels and cracks in the ridge on which Gabriel stood, collecting into pools of burning light down in the pit.
Looking down towards the base of the pit, Gabriel could see the shimmering, angular form of a black pyramid in the centre. Next to it, slumped on the ground, was the shape of a fallen Marine, face down on the stone floor.
“Jonas!” cried Gabriel, realising immediately who it must be. He launched himself off the ridge in front of the bizarre, root-entangled tunnel that led down from the monastery, vaulting down into the pit and thumping into the rocky ground, landing into an alert crouch.
Rising to his feet, Gabriel surveyed his surroundings, conscious that Jonas must have suffered from some kind of attack and aware that his assailants may still be around. The walls of the pit were bathed in fire and trickles of lava, and Gabriel could not see what was hidden in the recesses beyond. It seemed logical to him that there would be caves and tunnels down there, just as there were around the ridge above, but he could see no sign of them through the molten waterfalls.
Cautiously, he stepped over towards Jonas, taking note of the mysterious, alien-looking pyramid-artefact that the librarian must have been examining. Jonas was lying on his front, with his force staff still clutched in one hand. He was unconscious, but he was breathing.
[Dawn of War 02] - Ascension Page 20