A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 27: Slayer of Monsters

"I see the darkness that festers in the heart of the Empyrean. It is the sin of an elder race, one that others would call a god. It is ravenous, and it would see the death of hope and all that is virtuous."

"And I will give it the abortion it so richly deserves."
-High Marshal Kathicia Jorenn, M23. 310.

There was a girl born in a city of mages.

She is fortunate to be born there, for her gifts were mighty indeed. If not for the guidance of those around her, she would have burnt herself to ash under the weight of her own strength, or consigned to another far more abhorrent ending. The galaxy is not kind to those who are Empyrean-touched, and there are worse fates than death.

Her power blossoms and blossoms, until it is a raging inferno barely constrained with her mind. She raises cities and shatters mountains. Her people are wise, however, and teach her to restrain it, regulate it with wards and words and script.

She saw with her second sight the darkness that besieged mankind, both within and without. Unkindness, poverty, cruelty, oppression- perhaps her gift is a curse, for in her dreams she can see those countless crimes across the stars, and few are as gifted as she. And so she grew restless, for in her burned the need to do something, anything, about this injustice.

And so the girl left her home behind and took to the stars, to try and make everything better.

M24. 314.

Aomkarne

It is always silent on Aomkarne.

In the time before the Great Sundering, it had been one of the great repositories of knowledge for the Empire of Ten Million Suns- a library of such complexity and content that the entire planet had been converted into an ecumenopolis dedicated to the display of arcane lore as much as its storage. Entire frescoes the sizes of mountains that displayed the sagas of the gods stood side by side with spiraling towers of wraithbone that hosted countless tomes of sorcery. Many an Aeldari had come to Aomkarne seeking some scrap of obscure mythos, and would emerge from its depths many cycles later, having gained much more than what they originally sought, for such was the allure of the mysteries that Aomkarne held.

Then after the Great Sundering, as the faith of the Aeldari was shattered, the tendrils of the Primordial Annihilator long held at bay by the mighty working of Caledor the Dragontamer came to exploit that weakness. Chief of those was the Unborn God, but its peers still found purchase. And so nine Eldar lords, their minds ensnared by the workings of Tzeentch, Architect of Fate, claimed Aomkarne for themselves during that turbulent time.

Together, using the technologies and sorceries of the Aeldari Empire, they dragged Aomkarne out of its original star system to the deep void of space, far away from any celestial body. They used great workings to shroud the planet from the rest of their kin, erasing all memory of the ecumenopolis both from memory and record.

And yet those wards, for all their strength, could not stop one of the greatest champions of a younger race that now sought to drag the Aeldari down from their throne. Ancient defenses that had stood since the Great Sundering cracked apart as someone forced their way through, not by craft or guile but with sheer power.

A scar of colorless light manifested in the skies of Aomkarne, and a single figure came through, slowly descending towards the earth.

She was tall- taller than a Solar Operator by more than a few feet. The burnished bronze warplate she wore was of an antiquated design, bequeathed to her by long-dead forgemasters and retained out of sentimentality. Unlike the various battlesuits that the Psykana Militant used, this armor was unadorned to the point of extraordinary; no scripts or wards marked its surface. The psyker wore no helm, and a mane of brilliant crimson hair flared out behind her. and in her hands was the war mace that men and machine called Astrahkhan, six-flanged and burning with cold blue light, imbued with technologies that had originally hailed from the world of Zayth.