A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 33: The Hero and the Hierodule

The world will burn for what it did to me."
-Hekatii of the Inquisitors, post-Sundering.

They met in midair, sending kinetic shockwaves across the landscape. Their eyes met, radiant blue against crimson red, and Kathicia saw something as monstrous as it was pitiful.

+You came here to die.+ Hekatii hissed as their weapons ground against each other, sparks flying. The Aeldari's ruined helm burst into flames and disappeared. +Your death will be slow, human.+

+No.+ Kathicia calmly replied. +I'm here to free you, Hekatii. Even if you don't want it.+

Hekatii's dull crystal eyes sparked with bloody lightning, illuminating the black veins within. +I DO NOT NEED SAVING!+ Crystalline muscles bulged, and inch by inch Kathicia was forced back. +YOUR PRESUMPTION—+

Kathicia kneed her in the stomach and sent her flying down, cracking the continental plate underneath and flinging her deep below the planet's crust. The High Marshal took a moment to compose herself. This was a strong foe— perhaps the strongest that she had ever faced. She cannot afford to hold back. Will not hold back. Already the chasm in the ground formed from Hekatii's crash was glowing a deep dark red.

Kathicia preemptively willed a telekine shield into existence, just in time to catch Hekatii's counterattack face-on. Pure, raw power slammed into the High Marshal, cracking the shield and smacking her back into the clouds.

Hekatii rose steadily through the hole she had made in her passing with speeds that could be comfortably compared to aircraft. Below her feet was a dais, and her fingers were deftly manipulating a set of runestones. If the human wanted a proper duel between sorcerers, then by all means she would have it. The sunlight itself warped, each ray becoming a burning sharp needle that swerved to pierce the High Marshal as shadow fell across the landscape in the absence of light.

Kathicia thrust out a hand, wrapping herself in a cocoon of shadow that devoured all light, the sunlight disappearing harmlessly into it. As she dispelled the cocoon, Kathicia raised her mace to the sky, and more lightning fell down from the sky, enough to cover the earth and focused only on Hekatii.

But the Aeldari was prepared this time. Hekatii brandished her scythes, making a dragging motion with one of them. The lightning twisted, circling around Hekatii instead and forming a vortex. She flicked her wrist, and the vortex concentrated itself into the form of a great serpent, roaring through the air. Kathicia made to raise a barrier of stone, but Hekatii clenched her fist and shattered it. The serpent struck the human, and her scream was music to Hekatii's ears. The High Marshal's body was aflame as she plummeted down to the earth, her armor scorched and melted. Hekatii tapped a runestone, and a multitude of crystal shards emerged behind her, each one the size of an Aeldari corvette and crackling with Chaotic power, and sent them flying at the downed human.

The falling Marshal stretched an arm out, pointing it at Hektaii while her hand mimicked the shape of a gun. In less than the time it took to blink, an immense vacuum manifested in the front of her index finger, stripping away the very atmosphere of the planet and revealing the starry black void above.

+Bang.+ Kathicia whispered.

The resulting airblast shattered every piece of crystal and blew away Hekatii's runestones, the razor-sharp winds carving a thousand cuts on her exposed face as the impact sent her flying through an entire mountain range before eventually crashing into the middle of a vast valley. Hekatii snarled, stumbling to her feet as she grabbed her dislocated left arm and set it back into place, before picking a splinter of crystal from her face and throwing it deep into the ground, a word of power leaving her lips.