A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 5: A Stranger in a Strange Land

"I have transcended the steps of eternity and strode back through the gates of the underworld. Many before me have failed, but I alone have conquered death in my hubris!"
-Human scientist Corvin Kayne, after the first successful trial run of the highly restricted technology known as the Lazarus Project , with himself as the test subject.

***

M24, 198

Kanshabai System, Varchii

Truly, calling Varchii a planet would be stretching the truth. Orbiting a red dwarf, the planet-sized sphere was a space-time anomaly in itself, gravity and time being ever-changing variables rather than constants. Bathed in dim red light, to an observer Varchii would appear as a globe of pure darkness streaked with bands of grey clouds, with the surrounding space twisted and warped, shot through with exotic colours that are usually seen in nebulas. Fitting, for a homeworld of a race whose very existence played havoc with the laws of physics. The Hrud have lived on this planet long before mankind walked the stars, and so it has been for millions of years.

In the Warp, a lone figure of searing light pushed his way through the turbulent tides of the Immaterium. Without the protection of a Gellar Field, even the most augmented human would suffer a fate worse than death in a matter of seconds. But this was no mere man. With scorching flames he incinerated the predators that sought to maim him, claws of crystallized order cleaving a path through the hordes of daemons that hated him and were hated in return.

Ripping apart a thousand-faced spectre with hands of aetheric lightning, a mountainous finger comprised of white-hot icicles reached out, drawing a perfect circle of mercury-tinged lilac. It shimmered, forming a gateway into a strange land not meant for humans to walk.

Cloaking himself so as to be invisible to even the keenest eye, Adam stepped through the gateway, the portal sealing shut behind without leaving a trace. Trading one realm of impossibility for another, the laws of time were ill-defined on Varchii, entropy running rampant. Already he could feel his flesh withering and regenerating, decay clashing with immortality. He had appeared on the top of a mountain overlooking the great city of Alakesh- exactly as he had intended.

Shrouded from mortal sight, the Perpetual silently leaped into the sky, polycalestrene wings extending from the back of his warsuit like some great bird of prey as he glided to his destination. The city below him was a literal shifting mosaic; buildings crumbled like sand, only to be reassembled in the blink of an eye. In some places it was as if everything was submerged in thick gel, the current of time being held back, while in other places it flowed like a pressure hose. Most of the city, or juunlak in Hrud tongue, was made out of glassy blue stone, with crisscrossing tunnels linking them together. Normally the Hrud lived underground, but on Varchii the light from its sun was so dim that they could live on its surface.

Thousands of Hrud milled around in the streets below. It was night now, when they were most active. As Adam slowly descended, strange smells wafted up- cooked mushroom steaks sold by vendors on the streets, where the mushrooms themselves bloomed into life and rotted into dust within minutes on racks, and other, stranger foods. Black-eyed with long, spindly limbs and wearing mottled cloaks of silk-like cloth, families of Hrud chittered in their alien language, some of them eating while others traded goods with their neighbours.

Unseen and unheard, the Alpha-Plus psyker slipped past the gates of a short, square building. In a place where reality was malleable this one was oddly concrete, its foundations unmoved by entropy. Down he went on spiraling staircases of distorted space that extended miles underground, until he reached his destination- the great library of Alakesh. The Hrud were famed for their stringent record-keeping, and this place held the knowledge accumulated by thousands of generations of one of the oldest Hrud raheeds, or Clan-nations.