A Light Not Extinguished

Forging

The hammer came down.

Adamantium, hundred-folded. Power circuits from the secret forges of Alpha Centauri, giving it the strength to smash through the thickest shields. A psy-matrix fresh from the arcane smiths of Venus that would let a user channel their own psychic might through the weapon it was set in. Most remarkable was the hundreds of stabilized nano-rifits etched on the head of the mace that would burst apart on contact, artifice practiced only by the tech-lords of Zayth. Alone it was a fine weapon already, able to slay both daemon and man with ease.

But it needed to be more. And so she was here, in this realm where her powers were greater than they ever could be in the material plane. The hammer wasn't real. Neither were the anvil, or the furnace. It was imagination combined with willpower, as were most things in this nightmare reality.

It is not safe here. Never was, ever since the First War ravaged the galaxy and poisoned the Warp eternally with its echoes. The Gods have already noticed her even in their slumber, cancers of sentience that they were.

"You will burn, witchling." A scarlet king clothed in hate promised her. "Your blood will water the fields outside the citadel for aeons to come."

"I can bring you unimaginable knowledge." The hundred-headed bird wreathed in a cloak of azure parchment inked with runes promised her. "You do not need this. Swear your allegiance to me, and my knowledge shall bring you the salvation I seek."

"Your empire will fall, as with all those before it." The rotting husk of a carcass boomed, flies buzzing from its mouth with every word. "You cannot escape the cycle. You are but one, fated to drown underneath the march of history. Let it go, and submit to the inevitable."

She ignored them all, reaching for the shard of blackstone at her hip. Slowly, painstakingly, she begins to carve runes on the surface of the mace with it, in the ancient language of Prospero. Words of power and enchantment, of banishment and warding. The shard is little more than a stub when she is finished, and she let it break apart into dust.

She has stoked their wrath now, and she knows it. Already she can hear the howls of their slaves in the distance, the innumerable hordes and the daemon lords that lead them. The hammer came down again, and sparks of dreams flew.

"False strength is all you can give me." She snarled. "My conviction is beyond that." She reached into her stomach, and pulled. There was a sick tearing sound, and pain. So much pain. Her hand came away bloody, something shining and wriggling and beating in her palm. It was her, a part of her very being. A soul-shard that she had tore off herself.

She pressed it to the weapon, letting it infuse with the mace that was glowing white-hot. With this, a connection had been forged— it was part of her now, much like a limb or an organ, an extension of her will instead of a physical object. "My conviction is a promise. That even in the face of insurmountable adversity, the world will be a better place because of me. Do you hear me, foul beasts who call themselves gods?"

And then they were upon her with all their fangs and curses and talons, and her soul strained under the assault, a lone beacon against the seething darkness. This entire endeavour had already been madness from the very start, attempting to forge a weapon in their own domain. Any lesser psyker would already have chosen the sensible path and fled.

But she is not lesser. And she will not give in until the job is done.

She slit her wrists, letting dark red blood douse the white-hot weapon in place of water.. Here it is more than just fluid- it is the vitae of a demigod, rich in arcane power. The baying of the hordes redoubled, urged on by the will of their fell gods to slay her before she could finish her artifice.

Slowly, the metal of the mace went from white to red, then finally back to silver. She grasped it by the handle, raising it into the air. The weapon that men would come to call Astrahkhan exploded with eldritch light, and the beasts of the Warp recoiled from it.

She spat to the side. "Your Three will never become Four. Even if I have to burn out my soul, even if it kills me, I will bring the galaxy one step closer to salvation. So I swear." Here and now, in the Warp where convictions could be made flesh, the complete oath wound itself tightly around the mace, giving it purpose. A metaphysical edge.

The wounds on her wrist healed as her eyes flared cobalt blue. Power flowed freely into the newborn weapon as she drew the Immaterium into a vortex with it as a focal point, raising it above her head.

The weakest daemons fled, knowing they would be nothing more than fodder in face of this assault. The strongest of them, the lords and kings of the Courts of Chaos lunged forth, knowing that they had but one chance to extinguish the light of this terrible weapon.

[Horizon Breaker]

The mace came down, and the tides of the Warp moved with it. A churning whirlpool, dragging all those caught in it and sending them below to the unseen depths, beyond even the layers where the Gods themselves lay asleep dreaming and into the places where the light of sentient thought never shone, where grand leviathans of the most primordial concepts were quick to devour the intruders.

She whirled the mace in her hands amidst the sudden silence in the wake of her attack, testing its weight. It was perfect.

"Yes." The High Marshal of the Psykana Miliant murmured as the weapon thrummed in her hands. "This does suit me very much."