A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 26: Ennui

He stood in the ruins of a galaxy broken. The gods were dead by his own hand. The ancient ones were all devoured. An unthinkable number of planets laid to waste, the world turned into a cosmic battleground. It was over. Truly over.

Szarekh, last and greatest of the Silent Kings would weep, if he had tears to give.

An Overlord of the Nihilakh Dynasty approached him, sinking to one knee in answer to his summons. "You have need of my services, Your Majesty?"

Yes I do, Trazyn. He signed. I charge you with safeguarding our race's history, now and forevermore. We have lost too much, sacrificed too much. I will not see the last pieces of our memory lost to time. I have chosen you to carry out this task, because I know that you are not driven by petty ambition but passion, and that is why you will not falter in your duty.

The Overlord's face was carefully devoid of emotion. "Will that be all, Your Majesty?"

Even through the mask, the Silent King could see the bitterness and rage that simmered. And he knew that he deserved every single iota of it.

It is. He turned to depart, towards the great barge that would take him beyond the galaxy, in penance for his insurmountable crimes. I do not expect forgiveness. I do not expect mercy. But know that... know that I am truly sorry for what my hubris has wrought.
-Last decree of the Silent King.

M24. 314.

Heldax System, Kath-Vemedas

"Antithesis!" The spawn of the Warp screamed. "Shadowbreaker! You will know no succour, Antithesis, and that cage of steel will be your grave-"

Almost gently, a palm reached out, a single finger touching the forehead of the daemon. It shrieked, scales breaking into dust as the fabric of its soul burnt away into nothing. The abomination clothed in cold metal pondered the coal-black sky above, and tutted.

"Binding empyrean entities at your age?" Lukaen Emrys asked the young Aeldari child that cowered before him. "Quite impressive. Completely useless against me, of course, but impressive nonetheless." They were standing in what other species would have called a charnel house, and what Aeldari would call a perfectly normal nursery; a specimen of some unknown xenos species lay half-dissected on a table, while various toys lay scattered around the room. The child's playmates were all dead, heads blown off by adrathic beams when he had strode into the room.

"My father will visit a thousand torments upon you, barbarian monster!" The child shouted at him. She averted her eyes from his figure; being in the presence of a Blank such as him, even highly suppressed, was already painful enough without looking at one. "When my father comes back, he will-"

"Your father is currently splattered on the garden walls." Lukaen interrupted her. "I threw him, by the way." He added, almost as an afterthought. "It was a nice throw." Indeed, the vine-coated walls below were richly painted with a layer of pulped bones and blood, the thirsty plants drinking it greedily as they were designed to. The Blank had thrown his assailants at the wall one by one in some sort of macabre joke whose humour was only known to him.

"You bastard!" The child grabbed an elegant scalpel still stuck in the bowels of the dead specimen, and rushed him. The implement bounced useless off the synthetic body's energy shielding, again and again. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"

The Blank considered the scrap of a girl that was now attempting to kill him with what to him was the equivalent of a toothpick. Briefly, he wondered how he should kill her. A twist of the neck, perhaps. A fist through the heart. Or just simply crushing her spirit under the inexorable presence of his own twisted soul.