The pyroclastic flow surged down the face of Krax-7, enveloping the towering shape of the monastery in voluminous clouds of ash in a matter of seconds. Tanthius paused, balancing his weight carefully on the damaged mechanical sinews of his armoured legs. As the cloud billowed out in the desert, finally swallowing the monastery and then the first lines of the Blood Ravens’ defences, including the figure of Corallis on the roof of one of the Land Raiders, Tanthius scanned the battlefield quickly, trying to assess what needed to be done before the visibility vanished.
Then the superheated cloud of ash and debris blasted through the theatre, lifting huge gusts of sand and blasting them out into the desert. For a few seconds, the whole scene went black, lost in the smoke and volcanic dust.
Even when the strong desert winds finally blew the ash away, thinning it into a fine mist, the battlefield was still cast in semi-darkness. The ash was caught in the atmosphere itself, obscuring the sun and rendering the planet’s surface an unearthly grey. But Tanthius could see the monastery once again, and beyond it he could clearly make out the streams of lava that poured down the sides of Krax-7.
The ground trembled with an aftershock, and Tanthius started to make his way back towards the last vestiges of the battle, half-dragging his damaged limbs as he went.
The ground bucked again, and the sand started to subside, slipping down into itself as though the desert were caving into some lost underground chambers. Tanthius swayed with the motion, pausing as huge cracks appeared in the mica glass up ahead of him. The whole scene seemed to shake and vibrate. Even the towering form of the monastery trembled, as though the entire tectonic plate was shifting.
Through the ashen atmosphere, Tanthius could see patches of intense, black smoke wafting up into the air, seeping out of cracks in the ground and then billowing out across the battlefield. As he watched one of them drift slowly over towards the ruined Razorback and the Tactical Marines of Sergeant Asherah, who were engaged in the final stages of a fire-fight with a dwindling contingent of eldar Aspect Warriors, an odd humming noise struck up in his ears.
Assuming that the noise was being generated by parts damaged during the fight with the exarch, Tanthius punched the side of his helmet to try and clear the interference. It made no difference and, after a moment, the noise grew louder.
As the smoke cloud approached his position, Tanthius could see that Asherah turned to face it, breaking off his fight with the eldar and turning his flamer against the cloud itself. One by one, the other Marines in his squad did the same thing, turning their backs on the eldar and spraying fire into the advancing cloud. For a few seconds, the eldar lowered their weapons and watched the Blood Ravens’ behaviour, but then they rapidly raised their guns again and opened fire. Although they were firing towards Asherah’s squad, Tanthius realised that they were not firing at them—hails of shuriken projectiles hissed past the sergeant’s position and zipped into the growing, dark cloud, sending up little sparks as the monomolecular projectiles struck pieces of flying metal.
The hum grew louder and more of the dark clouds seeped up from the desert as cracks started to appear all over the ground. Tanthius swept his eyes across the dim, misty battlefield and noticed that wherever the clouds appeared the Marines and eldar stopped fighting each other and turned their weapons on the clouds together. What was going on? He wasn’t close enough to see.
Even as he watched, he saw the cloud near Asherah billow and shift under the tirade of fire, but then it morphed around the impacts and reached out towards the sergeant, touching him with a shadowy tendril. The Marine flinched away from its touch, as though stung, but the tentacle of darkness followed after his movements as though attached to his gauntlet. And the tendril grew thicker, pulsing with darkness as more of the cloud flowed along its line and started to engulf Asherah’s hand, then his arm.
The Tactical squad hesitated, unwilling to fire on their sergeant, and in the lull the cloud engulfed him completely. The eldar were not so reticent, and they continued to unleash shuriken into the obscure form, forcing a couple of Marines to turn and threaten them with their bolters. For a few seconds, the armoured shape of the Marine thrashed against the cloud, lashing out with his weapons in almost random abandon. Then, quite suddenly, the thrashing stopped and Asherah slumped to the ground. A couple of moments later and his armour was rent asunder, and pieces of it went scurrying off across the sand before vanishing down into newly opened crevices. After little more than ten seconds, there was no trace of the sergeant left at all, and the cloud of tiny black fragments billowed up once again, heading for the other Marines in his squad.
Turning in confusion, Tanthius could see similar scenes unfolding all over the battlefield. Blood Ravens and eldar were both being picked apart by these dark, buzzing clouds of what now appeared to be insects of some kind.
As Krax-7 continued to erupt, the ground continued to shake, and more and more of these swarms were emerging from the cracks and crevices that were opening up all over the battlefield, darkening the already ashen sky. But there were other shapes emerging from the ground now—humanoid shapes clambering out of holes and pulling each other up out of weeping gashes in the sand. In the dim, foggy light, it took Tanthius a couple of seconds to recognise the profile of Caleb emerging from the ground in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by a small group of human warriors.
However, Caleb’s warband was not the only group of figures emerging from the depths. Here and there, as lava began to bubble up through the gashes in the earth, Tanthius could make out odd, inhuman, skeletal figures rising out of the sand, climbing out of the streams of molten rock as through they were water. The sinister creatures carried long barrelled weapons, the likes of which Tanthius had never seen before.
The eldar in the field seemed to recognise the dark, sinister warriors immediately, and they all turned their weapons on the newcomers, leaving the Blood Ravens to deal with the swarms of scarab beetles that still drifted through the air. But the eldar shurikens just bounced harmlessly off the mysterious warriors, ricocheting in little metallic sparks, as though their skeletal forms were composed entirely of some kind of metal.
Slowly and deliberately, one of the metal skeletons lifted its own weapon and pointed it at a white and emerald eldar Guardian. A stream of glittering darkness flashed out of the barrel and crashed into the elegant alien as it struggled to move aside, catching it in its ribs. The stream instantly spread out, creeping and flowing all over the eldar warrior, coating it completely in a shimmering, silver darkness in less than a second. A fraction of a second later, the darkness blinked and evaporated into the air, leaving the flickering image of an atrophied and decomposed eldar where the Guardian had been. The image flickered and then vanished, leaving nothing of the alien at all.
Tanthius lumbered into a run, dragging his damaged limbs across the trembling, lava-riddled, smoke-enshrouded battlefield. In the distance, he could see the Blood Ravens’ monastery rocking and cracking as the movements in the ground became more violent. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was certain that the Blood Ravens should get off Rahe’s Paradise as quickly as possible. He had never before seen warriors that could climb imperviously out of magma and resist eldar fire as though it were nothing, and he had certainly never seen weapons that could vaporise an eldar Guardian in less than a second. Whatever was ascending out of the bowels of the planet, Tanthius had a very bad feeling about it.
Despite his natural instincts and his horror, Gabriel knelt down at Macha’s side. The wound in the farseer’s abdomen was bleeding copiously, and it looked as though she would die from loss of blood. All around him, Gabriel could hear the fury of the fire-fight between the Celestian Sisters, Jonas and the eldar, but he paid it no mind. The ground was trembling violently and great wafts of sulphurous gas were billowing out of the huge fissure that rent the arena in two. Lava was beginning to bubble to the surface, and very soon the amphitheatre would be little more than a pool of molten rock.
Gabriel. The thought was weak and tremulous. Gabriel could sense the effort being put into formulating thoughts that he could understand.
Gabriel, it is shifting. The Yngir lord is awaking. Can you not feel it? Look at the signs, Gabriel, look at the progeny. The living dead, the thirsting ones, the forever damned are walking in the desert once more. You have… we have failed, Gabriel.
The thoughts faded into silence, and Gabriel looked deeply into the wounded farseer’s eyes, seeing the emerald flames flicker on the point of extinction. His own eyes flicked to the pale, beautiful face of Ptolemea, who was laying in the sand next to Macha, her own dagger still protruding from her chest. There was a confused sadness in his heart—he had not trusted the young Sister of the Lost Rosetta, but he had become sure that they understood each other. As for Macha, Gabriel was neither sure that he understood her nor that he ever could.
The souls of the Reapers, Gabriel. Thousands of them. They have breached Lsathranil’s Shield and the Yngir will ascend to consume us. You have released them. They shall be the harbingers of the dark fate, and the galaxy shall run red as the blood of Eldanesh.
“What must we do?” asked Gabriel, whispering his heretical thoughts in to the beautiful farseer’s ear. As he spoke, a thunderous crack split the arena along a new axis and a burst of red lava spurted out of the ground like a fountain. At the same time, a river of molten rock flowing down from the peak of Krax-7 breached the wall of the amphitheatre and spilt into the arena.
“We must leave this place,” he said, scooping the farseer into his arms and turning to face Jonas.
“Jonas, we must leave. Sisters—stand down. I know that you can understand me,” he continued, turning to the warlocks from Macha’s retinue—they had stopped fighting as soon as Gabriel had picked up their farseer. “And you know that I am right. We must leave this place, now.”
Druinir glared at Gabriel, his eyes burning with revulsion and hatred and his fingers still crackling with blue light. As he stared, the looming monastery behind them shuddered and then the second tower collapsed. The ground started to buckle and shake as though something massive were pushing up from underneath. Lava burst out from new cracks and holes that opened up all over the arena.
The warlock nodded, and the other eldar lowered their weapons.
Gabriel returned the nod then turned sharply to his librarian. “Jonas—which is the quickest way to the Thunderhawks? We need to get off the planet and deal with it from space. Sound the retreat.” As he spoke, Gabriel watched the remaining Celestians gather up the body of Ptolemea.
When he turned back to the eldar, he found Druinir standing directly behind him, staring fiercely into his face. I will take the farseer. There was a hostile pause. Thank you, Blood Raven.
“What in the name of the Great Father was that?” bellowed Kohath, turning rapidly away from the main view screen and shouting his demand to his command crew. “Well? What the hell was it?”
Together with the charging Rage of Erudition, the Ravenous Spirit had destroyed the jet-black eldar cruiser, but it had exploded in a completely unexpected way, sending rings of warp energy lashing out through the system and raining down into the atmosphere of Rahe’s Paradise. Immediately afterwards, the shimmering wraithship onto which Kohath had turned all of his guns had suddenly flickered and then flashed away, darting through the neighbouring space like an agile bird of prey, avoiding an entire salvo of torpedoes from the Spirit. Simultaneously, the Ghost Dragon that had been inflicting such heavy damage on the engine blocks at the rear of the Spirit suddenly disengaged.
For a moment, everything was quiet.
“Sergeant Kohath—what in the Emperor’s name is going on?” The face of Saulh resolved itself onto the view screen as the Rage of Erudition pulled into formation next to the Spirit.
“I have no idea, Saulh, but we’re working on it,” said Kohath gruffly, surveying his crew expectantly. “Well?” he prompted. “Anyone?”
There was no reply. Loren and Krayem exchanged glances with each other and then looked down at their terminals.
“Sergeant—” began the familiar but still nameless serf. “I think that you should take a look at the planet.”
“Bring it up,” sighed Kohath, shaking his head in disappointment and turning back to the view screen. Saulh’s face rippled and then vanished, to be replaced by the ruddy image of Rahe’s Paradise. It filled the screen with a deep, blood red. A plume of black had erupted around a constellation of volcanoes on the equator, but it looked like little more than a normal, albeit rather large eruption.
“Well?” challenged Kohath, unimpressed. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
The image on the screen chimed, shifted and zoomed, as though pulling a section of the planet closer to the Ravenous Spirit. It showed a close-up of the quadrant near the foothills of the volcanic mountains, where the Blood Ravens’ monastery was based. He waited for the image-systems to filter out the ash-clouds in the atmosphere. For a moment, Kohath thought that the sensors were malfunctioning and he impatiently made some manual adjustments to resolve the clouds and interference patterns. But then it gradually dawned on him that the clouds were what he was supposed to be looking at.
“By the throne…” he murmured, watching the shimmering shadows spill out over the landscape around the location of the monastery. It was certainly true that Krax-7 was the volcano that had erupted, but he had never seen anything like this before.
“Saulh, are you getting this?”
“Yes, sergeant. What’s going on down there?” crackled the voice of Saulh over the vox.
“Sergeant Kohath,” said Loren, reluctant to interrupt but sure that he had some important news.
“Yes?” snapped Kohath, pulling his eyes away from the mysterious events on the planet.
“There appear to be some vessels launching from the surface.”
“What sort of vessels?” asked Kohath, suspicious.
There was a pause. “All sorts of vessels, sergeant. Captain Angelos’ Thunderhawk appears to be amongst them, but there are also some eldar signatures—perhaps Vampire Raiders—and there are also…” he trailed off.
“Yes?”
“There are also some signatures that I have never seen before. They are moving faster than any of ours. Faster even than the eldar Vampires.”
“Where?” demanded Kohath. “Where are these vessels launching?”
“That’s just it, sergeant, they’re everywhere. It’s as though they’re spilling out of the planet itself. Some of them are already breaking out of the atmosphere.”
The image on the view screen snowed into nonsense and then resolved itself again, showing a section of the upper atmosphere. The eldar wraithship and the Ghost Dragon were just visible on the edge of the screen, and they were streaking towards its centre with their remaining Shadowhunter escorts in tow. Little bursts of light started to spark in the atmosphere as lightning-fast vessels burst out of it. No sooner were they birthed into space than the eldar opened fire at them, lashing out with tirades of torpedoes and las-fire, dousing the planet’s atmosphere in flames. But the little silvery-black gunships flashed through the fire as though impermeable to it. Then, after only a few seconds, they returned fire.
“By the throne…” gasped Kohath as he saw the kind of damage that the little ships could do.
From the control room of his Thunderhawk, Gabriel watched the sleek shape of the eldar Vampire Raider bank and then flash up into the atmosphere. It was out of sight in a matter of seconds, carrying Macha and her warlocks back up to their cruiser in orbit.
“Kohath. Sergeant Kohath,” repeated Gabriel, punching his fist down into the terminal next to the vox-array. “Emperor damn it, Kohath. Where the hell are you?”
“Perhaps the vox will work when we break the cloud layer?” offered Corallis.
“Perhaps,” replied Gabriel, unconvinced. He strained his eyes back down to the surface of the planet. All of the surviving Blood Ravens had bee
n brought on board the Thunderhawks and now there was little trace of their presence on the surface of the planet at all. Instead, the desert was awash with lava, sulphurous gases and rolling pyroclastic surges. Partially hidden in the smoky darkness were swarms of little scarab beetles, which seemed intent on dismantling any mechanical device that they came across, be it of Imperial or eldar origin. The mysterious, metallic, skeletal warriors stalked the desert like the undead, but all of their prey was dead or gone already.
“And we thought that it was a meteor strike that wiped out the forests,” murmured Jonas, shaking his head in disbelief. “All this time, a necron catacomb was hidden under our very noses. How could we have been so blind, Gabriel?”
As the librarian spoke, a thunderous noise cracked through the atmosphere, pulling everyone’s attention down to the diminishing form of the crumbling monastery-outpost. As they watched, the monastery itself seemed to heave and lift. The ground around it cracked and splintered, and the once-magnificent black edifice lurched up into the air, sending huge chunks of masonry and sections of towers scattering out into the desert. Then a great explosion of darkness erupted in the heart of the monastery, blasting its remaining walls into streams of vapour as a shimmering black shape emerged from within.
The levitating craft was shaped like a crescent, with a series of little pyramidal structures running around its rim. In the very centre was a larger pyramid—presumably housing the control decks. It eased slowly into the air, as debris rained down from its edges, crashing back into the craterous ruins of the Blood Ravens’ facility and into the desert.
“Get us back to the Ravenous Spirit,” said Gabriel calmly. “We are going to need some bigger guns than we have here.”
With that, the Thunderhawk angled steeply and then roared up into the stratosphere, tracing the wispy contrail left by the speedy exit of the Vampire Raider.
[Dawn of War 02] - Ascension Page 31