"Hive Cities were housing constructs used by various human interstellar states from M21 to M22. Like the isotropic fuel rods that powered them, they were cheap and easily built- except that they were inherently inhumane. Hive Cities were often used by nations with extremely poor population controls and few planets, and living conditions documented within them are described as hellish, with the inhabitants suffering from severe malnutrition and overcrowding, where one could live their life without ever seeing the sun. These ecumenopolises were ultimately abolished with the forming of the Federation, alongside significant development in terraforming technology that expanded the number of human-habitable worlds greatly."
-Ancient Cities of Mankind, circa M23.
M24. 312.
Kamai Sector, Exymon System, Ichikai
The Powers of the Warp are terrible things, bloated majesties of darkness and ruin. One cannot escape unscathed, even when on the receiving end of just a fraction of their attention while asleep.
Essana Sagami saw terrible things that day, the tides of the Warp ripping through the various protections that were supposed to shield her in her scrying. And now, she continues to see them, for knowledge in this universe is a terrible burden to bear.
She is standing on an endless plain of darkling stars, as the galaxy turns in front of her. She stretched a hand out, and the stars swirl around it as they shattersinto a thousand fragments of incense smoke. The smoke diffused into her skin, and she saw.
A silver wyrm bursting out of a red planet like a hatchling from an egg, as the king that sits astride the world rises to meet it in battle.
The master of folly and rubric, reaching for the hand of a twice-living brother.
A hundred blades once wielded by a hundred-handed god, scattered to the reaches of the universe-
"Look away," A ghostly voice whispered. "They are but shadows of a world that might yet be. You are not here for them."
A man, no, something less than a man stood beside her. Gnarled and wretched, it is a hunchbacked old man, wearing a golden mask that forever sings into the dark.
"Who are you?" She shouted back.
"I am the last breath of a dying god. I am the melody that the children of Terra seek guidance from. I am Imperious." The wretch said. "Gaze upon the beginning of the end, Essana Sagami."
And she saw it.
Oddly familiar buildings, broken down into whirling storms of non-existent colors. A great maw expanding out from a broken star. The veil between her reality and the next one shattered, never to be put back together again.
A tree falling down in a forest with no name, bringing everything else down with it.
"The time is here." Imperious whispered. "The time is now."
Then a hand grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around to face a looming cyclops, its one eye shining with terrible light. "Wake up, Essana!" It screamed. "Wake up!"
But she cannot, mesmerized by the swirling images before her. Men and women fighting off carrion vultures that seek the delectable flesh hidden in hulls of metal. A soldier and his charge, walking the hidden paths to find withered crones. Five princes, waiting in their tombs for the command of their creator-
The cyclops imposed itself in front of her, the eye opening up to encompass everything in her sight. She stumbled back, as the eye swallowed her whole, spitting her out back into a familiar place.
YOU ARE READING
A Light Not Extinguished
Action[40k DAOT What-if Fic] We all know the story. The Men of Iron rebel, humanity degrades into barbarism during the Age of Strife, Slaanesh is born through the depravity of the Aeldari Empire, the Imperium rises and falls and the galaxy burns in strife...
