Part I - The Waves
Across the vast, star-scattered tapestry of the galaxy, there existed but a handful of beings whose very presence could stir the tides of dread, hope, anger, and pain. These emotions did not always arrive in neat procession, nor did they ever wear the same mask twice. It all depended on who whispered her name, and in what shadowed corner of the cosmos her presence was felt. To the Imperium, to the teeming trillions of humanity, she was the last, flickering beacon in a night grown perilous and cold. Her name was a prayer pressed between trembling lips, a desperate invocation uttered by those who clung to faith as a drowning soul clings to driftwood. They called her many things: the Princess Goddess, the Emperor's Daughter, the Holy Princess, the Grand Light, the Divine Saint among Saints. Each title was a crown of longing, a tapestry of hope and fear woven by those who believed, with the fervour of the lost, that she alone could turn the tide, that she alone might banish the encroaching darkness and birth a new dawn for mankind.
Who could fault them for believing as they did? No one—not even those who scoffed at divinity, who claimed to be immune to the seduction of hope. The hope Aurelia brought was not mere comfort for the weary heart; it was not simply warmth, nor the balm of a gentle embrace, nor the fleeting solace found in speeches and smiles. No, the Princess's hope was something fiercer—a living conflagration of righteous fury that swept across the galaxy, igniting wherever despair threatened to take root.
Her hope was a force unto itself, a luminous fire that surged through the veins of the Imperium, kindling courage in the darkest trenches and echoing in the laughter of soldiers who faced the abyss and smiled back. Aurelia had forged her hope into a weapon—one of countless shapes and sizes, a blade and a shield, a standard and a song. And it was a weapon that could be wielded by anyone who dared to place their faith in her, no matter how battered or broken they might be.
Aurelia understood precisely what she was shaping—or, perhaps more truthfully, what she was wielding. Faith, hope, divinity: prayers whispered on one million worlds, the collective yearning of untold trillions. All of it surged into the Immaterium, echoing and refracting upon itself, a symphony of belief that twisted and braided into something far greater than the sum of its mortal parts. If the masses of humanity chose to see her as a goddess, so be it. She would accept any tool, embrace any weapon, if it meant survival.
This had led to many bitter arguments with her father. The Emperor, architect of reason and secular vision, was far from pleased—he, who had once sought to banish gods from the minds of men, now found himself buoyed and bound by their prayers. Yet there was no stopping it, not anymore. Now restored in mind and soul, he felt it more keenly than ever: the weight of supplication and devotion pressing upon him from the Warp, the sheer, swollen mass of adulation—like a stomach distended from overindulgence.
He had little choice but to use this power, and so he did—Aurelia sharing the burden, feeding him the strength he needed to keep the Astronomican burning, to remain whole, to stand against the predations of the Four. That swollen, radiant tide of faith became a weapon turned upon the Chaos Gods, fueling resistance on every front, in every battle—metaphysical and material alike. In the end, pragmatism was all that mattered. They could not afford to lose this war.
It often led to moments of unexpected levity—Aurelia catching the whispers of her father, their connection closer now through the unique and intimate bond they shared. Sometimes, she would hear him muttering and grumbling like a cantankerous old man on his porch, reminiscing about the galaxy as it once was, lamenting what humanity had become, bemoaning every change for the worse, even sneering and scoffing at the Ecclesiarchy and their rituals. To Aurelia, it was deeply amusing to listen to the Emperor—once the stern, silent master of mankind—reduced to irritable complaints and nostalgic sighs. On such days, he reminded her more of Malcador than the Master of Mankind.
Yet there was another side to her return—one woven not with hope, but with dread, bitterness, and pain. For the traitor legions, her resurgence was no empty Imperial propaganda, no clever ruse to buoy loyalist faith. They felt her presence with a certainty that cut deeper than any blade. Across the Eye of Terror, in the shadowed corners of the galaxy, her light was a tidal wave—sweeping out from Terra, burning through the Warp, exposing every hidden scheme, unravelling every gambit. She was a force that could not be denied, a radiance that scorched their ambitions and scattered their plans, a living proof that the Imperium's hope was real—and their victory not assured.
Of course, her radiance did not halt the Long War—nothing short of the galaxy's end could do that—but it forced the traitors to rethink, to hesitate, to adapt in ways they had not planned.
Many systems that should have been consumed by the Great Rift endured against all odds. Worlds that, by the logic of the Dark Gods, were to be staging grounds for the traitors' latest incursions instead became bulwarks—fortress worlds bristling with renewed defences, their garrisons inspired and unyielding. The destruction of Cadia and the sundering of reality had been a triumph for Abaddon, a wound in the heart of the Imperium that would never truly heal. Under other circumstances, he would have pressed his advantage; not even Guilliman's return would have deterred his ambition. But against the Princess, it was different.
Aurelia's mere presence rendered lesser daemons impotent. Drawn too close to the Segmentum Solar, they were scoured from existence, unable even to bear the sight of her light. Only the mightiest of Warp entities—Daemon Princes, Greater Daemons—could endure her, and even they found her radiance like wading through a mire of fire and mudd, every step a struggle, every invocation of the Warp smothered by her will. Or requiring more time and preparation than it would've normally taken.
Penetrating the Princess's light was not impossible, but it demanded desperate measures and unprecedented cunning. The forces of Chaos, for all their madness, recognised a true threat when they saw one. Thus, across the Eye of Terror and beyond, new plots unfolded—schemes to snuff out her light, to bind or isolate her, to buy themselves time in the shadows.
That was why the forces of Chaos shifted their focus to worlds such as Voltikron III, Daikeos, Amontep III, Vellung, and, most infamously, Armageddon. Their strategy was transparent—if they could replicate the cataclysmic blow dealt at Cadia, if they could shatter these linchpin worlds, they might cripple Aurelia's light and unravel the hope she had kindled. But those were not the only targets. Two planets, in particular, carried a significance beyond mere strategic value: Gathalamor and Agripinaa.
Agripinaa, a mighty Forge World, was once the lifeline for the Cadian Gate and the broader Segmentum Obscurus. Its manufactories and forges fed the war effort, its fleets and engines holding back the tides of the Eye of Terror. Should Agripinaa fall, the outer sectors of the Segmentum Solar would lie exposed, ripe for Chaos invasion and pillage. Gathalamor, on the other hand, was a world of faith and fortitude—a shield, much like Armageddon, whose loss would rip open a corridor straight to Terra herself. Its fall would be more than a tactical disaster; it would be a wound in the soul of the Imperium, a breach that could spill ruin to the very Throneworld.
Recognising the gravity of the threat, Dorn and Guilliman devised a two-pronged response—a manoeuvre that sought to stop Chaos from taking hold in the Imperium's most important sectors. Guilliman, the Avenging Son, would take the spearhead of the Indomitus Crusade to Gathalamor, seeking to reclaim the planet and restore the link between Necromunda, the Segmentum Tempestus, and Terra's radiant beacon. Meanwhile, Dorn, the Praetorian, would marshal secondary fleets to fortify the Agripinaa System, Olaedros System and Trove System, determined that the forges would not be silenced by the howls of the Warp.
And if the reports from the front lines were to be believed, which Aurelia knew they were, the Iron Warriors and Perturabo themselves had seized upon this moment. The resurrection of Rogal Dorn was a clarion call, stirring old rivalries and ancient grudges; the Iron Cage and the Siege of Terra were not forgotten, least of all by their architects. Perturabo and his sons had waited millennia for this reckoning—and Dorn had not forgotten either.
The coming battles for Armageddon, Gathalamor, and Agripinaa would be crucibles—among the first true tests of the Indomitus Crusade, each one a struggle upon which the fate of the Imperium might hinge.
And upon Terra, beneath the reborn sky, the Princess set her will to a different war: the forging of a new path for humanity, one that would break the shackles of the Warp, and lead her people toward a future beyond fear.
Aurelia was on Terra, yet not truly of it. Her body—flesh and bone, golden and mortal—remained in the heart of the Imperial Palace, but her mind, her essence, roamed far beyond. Here, in the Basilica Liminalis—a cathedral of paradox and possibility, woven from the fabric of the universe and the memory of gods—she could unshackle her true self. Here, she was boundless and infinite, her being unfurled like a star's corona, safe from the risk of annihilating all mortal life around her. The Basilica was a sanctuary and crucible both—a place of endless waterfalls cascading down the sides of universes and realities, of pools that shimmered with the reflections of other galaxies, other times, other dreams.
She stood before the greatest of these pools, its surface rippling with the image of the Milky Way—her home. Beautiful, scarred, and heartbreakingly broken. The galaxy sprawled across the water's skin, a living map of light and shadow, hope and agony.
From this vantage, Aurelia could see the Great Rift in all its ruinous glory: the Cicatrix Maledictum, a ragged wound in the very fabric of the Materium, bleeding the nightmares of the Immaterium into reality. It twisted and writhed, a cancerous tide devouring all it touched, its edges gnawed on by the hunger of warp-spawned horrors. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her, that if not for her own intervention—her will and power pressed like a dam against that tide—the wound would have grown wider still, swallowing hope itself.
"Look at it," she breathed, voice echoing through the infinite nave. "Twisting, writhing—an overfed parasite festering on an open wound." The Rift pulsed with laughter and hissing, a cacophony of daemonic voices slithering through the warp's membrane.
A plague on our garden. Pests. Helminths. Parasites.
The voice that answered came not from the galaxy, but from a pool across from her—Vesh-Kael, the C'tan fragment, now swollen and resplendent, its crystalline bulk shimmering with stolen starlight. Once, the C'tan had been broken by the Necrons, shattered into shards and imprisoned. But Aurelia had fed this one—given it fragments of energy, memory, freedom. It had grown, become more of itself, and its presence was now unmistakable, a star's malice in reptilian form.
Vesh-Kael was not a friend. None of the C'tan shards within her was. They were tenants—dangerous, proud, and cunning—yet, for now, content to dwell in the palace she had built inside her soul. Og'dríada and Hsiagn'la's lingered in their own corners of her inner cosmos, careful not to provoke their host. Perhaps it was because they, too, knew something of what it was to be the raw stuff of the universe—a force, a mind, a hunger given shape. Once, the C'tan had been star-eaters, cosmic predators, until the Necrons had forged them into prisons of living metal.
Aurelia could not help but sense a kinship, strange and cold, between herself and these gods-that-were. She, too, was something primordial—a spark from the heart of creation, given flesh and purpose, shaped to walk among mortals. She was, in her way, a living paradox: as much a force of nature as a woman, as much a memory of the stars as a daughter of Terra.
And so it was oddly comforting, this company of fallen star vampires—beings who remembered, as she did, what it was to be part of the universe in its most elemental form. It was a strange fellowship, a cosmic joke she shared only with herself.
"There's too much chaos now," Aurelia murmured, her gaze fixed on the roiling cosmic pool where galaxies spun and writhed. "The galaxy is being devoured, piece by piece. The Immaterium seeps through every crack, and if I'm honest, I doubt even the wisest truly understand the horrors that slumber in its depths. There are places in the Warp that even the Chaos Gods will not look—gates that lead to something far older, far more ravenous." She sighed, idly trailing her finger across the galactic surface, nudging a tendril of a Hive Fleet into a waiting sun. The gesture was almost casual: the swatting of one fly among a million.
A cancer born of thought, of hunger, of mortal dreams and fears, Og'dríada intoned, her voice a shimmering hiss echoing through the Basilica's vaults. Her form, radiant and strange, hovered above her pool—a moth-angel, her wings dusted with the powder of dead stars, beauty shaped only to better lure and consume. Now the Immaterium burns, eaten from within by what mortals have wrought. Insult upon insult.
We should have sealed the Immaterium when it was still within our reach, Og'dríada continued, her wings beating softly as she devoured the starlight Aurelia left behind, plucking them from the void like fruit from a tree.
Aza'gorod grew too proud. The fool! Mephet'ran and he both danced to the masked pretender's tune, Vesh-Kael spat, circling his pond, his crystalline, reptilian-like body shimmering with cold menace. Cegorach played them all—fed their pride until it choked them.
Aurelia hummed at that, recognising the truth in Vesh-Kael's words. The Laughing God had indeed nudged the star gods toward infighting, exploiting their arrogance while the Necrons forged their chains. Poetic, she thought, in a way only cosmic tragedy could be.
Imbeciles! All of them! We should have scoured their Webway lairs, shattered their sanctuaries, consumed every last one! Hsiagn'la's hissed, her endless body coiling in her own pool, her hunger as boundless as the darkness between stars. Aurelia often found Hsiagn'la's the most direct—driven by resentment and the pure, primal urge to consume.
"Seal it?" Aurelia echoed, her voice soft but curious as she turned to the gathered shards. Their forms, each uniquely monstrous and magnificent, did not unsettle her—she had seen worse, and was, in her own way, kin to such cosmic power. "You sought to seal the Warp itself?"
The Warp rejected us, Vesh-Kael replied, his form shifting, never quite leaving his pond—never entirely free. It was the one force that could wound us. We tried to lock it away. The Great Warding… But it was never finished.
Realisation flickered in Aurelia's eyes. "The Blackstone Pylons… I saw them in visions of the War in Heaven and thought their purpose was to disrupt the Old Ones—and the Aeldari. But you meant to shut the Warp away entirely…"
The C'tan fragments regarded her in silence, the truth of cosmic ages shimmering in their alien eyes. And behind it all, the Rift writhed, the wound unhealed, a reminder that even the greatest works of gods could fail and fester.
"I see now," Aurelia whispered, her gaze lingering on the swirling reflection of the galaxy. Her words were soft, but in the Basilica Liminalis, every whisper was a ripple across eternity.
You still wish to birth this new dimension for your… humans? Vesh-Kael's voice slithered through the ether, vibrating with both curiosity and ancient suspicion.
"Yes," Aurelia replied, her eyes tracing the tangled currents of the Webway and the storm-torn scars of the Immaterium. "But the problem isn't creation—strangely enough. I have the power, and the lore of the Old Ones endures in my memory. No, the real challenge is the foundation. The galaxy is fractured, reality unstable. To build a new dimension without anchoring it on something stronger would be like laying a road over a swamp—everything would sink or break apart with time. I need a firmer bedrock, something that will endure when all else fails."
She gestured over the galactic pool, watching as the Webway manifested as a lattice of tunnels, shimmering between realspace and the Warp—a labyrinth, not a true escape. Even the Webway suffered Warp incursions, its labyrinthine passages patching and healing themselves, but always vulnerable. Aurelia's vision was not to repeat the mistakes of the Old Ones—not to hide between layers, but to transcend them completely.
"I want to build it like a bridge," she mused, "a highway suspended far above the Warp, not tunnels threading through it. A realm so far removed from the Immaterium that its tides cannot touch it."
You desire it to be cut off from the Warp, from the ocean of souls… but then how would mortals use it to travel, if not between realspace and the Immaterium? Og'dríada asked, her voice a venomous melody, wings pulsing with pale light.
"Not between," Aurelia answered. "Above. A place of pure order, a stratum so far from the Warp that no echo of the sea of souls can reach it. It would be like oil atop water—untouchable, unmixable. But to build it, I need a foundation unlike any before: something to hold back the tides, to keep this new realm unsullied."
She gazed at the empty pond beside the mirrored Milky Way, imagining the first sparks and flows of her new dimension—a blank canvas soon to be filled.
And… you believe the Blackstone pylons could aid you in this act of creation? Hsiagn'la's asked, her serpentine body coiling with intrigue rather than hunger, for once.
"Not exactly the pylons themselves," Aurelia admitted, fingers trailing light across the pool. "I will need more pylons to seal the Rift, yes. But for this new dimension, I need something like them—a defence, a bulwark, a lattice of order and negation, to keep my creation safe. I cannot sustain it by my own will forever. My brothers taught me the necessity of foundations: Dorn, Ferrus, Vulkan, Perturabo. If you want eternity, you must build for it."
Vesh-Kael's next words came as a hissed suggestion, almost conspiratorial: For that… you should seek Mag'ladroth. The Void Dragon. He alone can give you the knowledge and power you need.
Aurelia considered this. "The Void Dragon… Mag'ladroth is on Mars now, or at least, the largest shard of him is." She weighed the notion, recalling the legends and the secrets buried beneath the red sands—how the Mechanicum revered the Dragon, how its knowledge of technology and Blackstone surpassed even the other C'tan. "If I bring him here, you'll have to share space with him."
The three C'tan reacted instantly, hissing and writhing, their forms rippling with old rivalries and ancient grudges. Even now, they could barely tolerate one another's presence; the prospect of Mag'ladroth's arrival filled the Basilica with tension, as if a storm were gathering.
Aurelia allowed herself a small, private smile. She would endure their squabbling and their pride for the sake of humanity's future. After all, the price of creation was—and always would be—endless negotiation with gods and monsters alike.
Part II - Technologies lost, found and new
The technologies of the Imperium had always been a curious menagerie—each invention laced with the peculiar humours and temperaments of those who wrought them. Ferrus Manus, her iron-handed brother, had once told her as much, hammering out new weapons or arcane devices in the fires of his forges. "Every tool and weapon bears its creator's soul," he would say, sparks dancing in his silver eyes. It was a lesson Aurelia only truly understood during the Great Crusade, as she herself began to shape technologies—realising that humanity, in its endless ingenuity and madness, imprinted pieces of itself into every weapon of war, every engine of destruction. She had seen devices so baroque, so excessive or horrifying, that she sometimes wondered whether such things were forged out of necessity, or simply to satisfy some vain urge to create the monstrous.
Now, in the deep vaults beneath the Golden Tower, Aurelia walked through her personal laboratory—a cathedral of invention and forbidden progress, grown vast and labyrinthine over the past year. It was a place that, in centuries past, the Mechanicum would have condemned as a den of heresy. Here, she was surrounded by the most advanced and arcane technologies the Imperium had ever seen—or dared to imagine. She was not one to do things by halves. The forges below the Tower thrummed with life, the air thick with the scent of machine oil, ozone, and the faint tang of burning incense.
She oversaw many projects at once: the painstaking fabrication of new components for the Golden Throne—pieces already being installed by Magos Dominus Hestor Phallax, one of the rare few who could grasp both the intricacies of the ancient device and the xenotech woven into it. The process was proceeding with a precision she found pleasing—neither rushed nor languid, but perfectly on schedule.
Yet Aurelia's mind was rarely satisfied with a single thread of work. As she prepared technologies for the Indomitus Crusade, she also entertained the ideas and ambitions of the Magi who served under her. Most of their proposals were mere refinements or incremental advances. But occasionally, one would present something so audacious, so ill-advised, that it captured her attention entirely.
Such was the case now.
"You intend to use Bloodtide against the Tyranids," Aurelia said, her voice flat, bordering on incredulity as she regarded Magos Biologis Dominus Malthus Crucible. His form bristled with mechadendrites and medical augmetics, his red-robed frame almost quivering in anticipation.
"Indeed, your highness," he replied, vox-layers overlapping in a chorus as his lenses glowed with enthusiasm. "With appropriate modification, the Bloodtide can be engineered to target Tyranid biomatter—flesh, nervous tissue, even synaptic links. A tailored plague, designed to scour a Hive Fleet to the bone."
Aurelia regarded him for a long moment, a wry smile playing on her lips. Reckless, dangerous, and utterly without precedent. Just the sort of madness that might, in this age, tip the balance between victory and annihilation.
"Proceed," she said at last, the spark of Ferrus's old wisdom flickering in her mind. "Let us see if human audacity can outdo the great devour."
Aurelia's smile lingered as Archmagos Agnetha-IX Vhos swept into the laboratory, a data-slate clutched in her bionic hand. "My Princess," Vhos intoned, voice modulated with a reverent mechanical chime. "Might I inquire as to why the Black Mass Array was never completed?"
Aurelia arched an eyebrow, memory sparking at the name. The Black Mass Array—just as ominous as it sounded. A conceptual weapon, an immense laser capable of channelling energies akin to those of a newborn black hole, spewed forth as a searing, plasma-laced beam. "Ah, you've found my old notes on that. Truthfully, I never finished it; time was never my ally," Aurelia replied. "The main issue was portability. The energy draw was immense. Mounting it on a battleship would require diverting all reactor output from the macrocannons and even the void shields. I had a few designs to solve that, but the Crusade moved too quickly—and I ran out of time."
Archmagos Vhos regarded the data-slate as if it were a sacred relic, her optics flickering with want. Despite her imposing frame, bristling with Ryza-forged plasma coils and sacred symbols, she looked almost childlike in her anticipation.
"My highness… may I have it?" she asked, her tone nearly pleading.
Aurelia's curiosity was piqued. "And what exactly do you intend to do with it, Vhos?"
Vhos's vox emitted a sound suspiciously close to an excited giggle. "Magos Severian Kaspel-Theta and I are refining the holy Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought. We discussed how such a weapon—divine, designed by the Daughter of the Omnissiah herself—would be the ultimate armament for one of our blessed warriors."
Aurelia stifled a laugh. "So, instead of a standard Ryza-pattern plasma cannon, you wish to mount a black hole cannon on a Contemptor Dreadnought?"
Vhos nodded, her augmetic head bobbing, eyes glittering with fervour. "It would be glorious!"
Aurelia shook her head, still grinning, as she summoned a servo-skull. The tiny construct hovered over, bearing another data-slate. "Here. This should help you scale down the array—at least enough to avoid vaporising the entire testing range. And use bay twelve for trials. I don't want to explain another crater to the Custodes."
"Oh, most blessed daughter of the Omnissiah! May the Machine God smile upon you!" Vhos exclaimed, her circuits nearly singing with joy as she hurried away, leaving Aurelia in amused disbelief at the ever-creative madness of Imperial science.
"Aurelia's lips curled in amusement as she watched Archmagos Vhos hurry away, still aglow with the thrill of invention. "Tech-priests," she murmured, "never cease to amaze me. Not even after ten thousand years." She was still smiling when a servitor approached, its pallid face void of anything resembling life. She recognised the routine: a priority transmission was being routed through—using a technology so advanced, only a handful of vessels in the entire Imperium could communicate in this manner.
She nodded, following the servitor through vaulted corridors into a chamber dominated by a massive, brutalist hololithic table. Unlike the elegance of the Emerald Throne Room, this place was all raw function—cables as thick as a man's arm, projectors and logic engines crowding the walls, the air thick with the hum of energy and ozone. It was a war room for a new age: obscene in scale, but perfectly suited to her needs.
With a flicker and a surge of data-static, the figure of Belisarius Cawl resolved above the table, his image immense and shifting, too vast and baroque to ever be truly contained by the device. He was aboard the Zar-Quaesitor, his colossal flagship, mobile forge world, and research sanctuary.
"Ah, my beloved Belisarius Cawl," Aurelia greeted him with a wry smile. "For a moment, I thought you'd forgotten me."
Cawl attempted a bow—a gesture made comical by the sheer mass of his mechanical body, which creaked and whirred in protest. "Apologies, my princess," he intoned, his vox-emitter layering a note of genuine warmth beneath the metallic resonance. "The demands of the Indomitus Crusade have claimed much of my focus. Fleet Primus is nearly at Gathalamor, and there is always more to do."
Aurelia's eyes sparkled with mirth. She had always enjoyed her time with Cawl, and the feeling was mutual. Where Guilliman was too rigid, Dorn too severe, Cawl found in the Princess-regent a mind as bold and boundless as his own. Here was a peer—someone who viewed technology as a living thing, worthy of awe and reverence, not just obedience or exploitation. They had worked together on projects that would have scandalised half the Mechanicus, but Cawl relished the challenge. He even fancied himself the Omnissiah's conduit, though Aurelia's own presence made that claim ring somewhat hollow.
Their partnership had yielded wonders: Aurelia had given him fragments of lost STCs, secrets of Blackstone, Necron arcana, and the means to push the Crusade to heights undreamt of by even the most radical Magi. In return, Cawl had become her most innovative—and most loyal—collaborator.
"So," Aurelia continued, settling into her chair, "what have you discovered?"
Cawl's image shifted, and a sector map flared into being over the table—an intricate lattice of star systems, data streams, and Necron glyphs. "The Nephilim Sector, my princess. As you know, it contains the largest concentration of Necron pylon arrays in the Ultima Segmentum. It will soon be a major front in the Crusade."
"Yes. I'm aware the region is overrun with Necron worlds—and that it's too dangerous for us to seize their pylons outright. Mining Blackstone in the outer Tempestus colonies is safer, if slower. I'd rather not destabilise the sector with reckless assaults, especially with what's coming."
"Indeed, my princess. But your vision for a new human Webway cannot ignore the potential of these pylons. Building our own is possible—and we will—but the originals offer a stability we cannot yet replicate. I propose we do not simply abandon the Necron arrays."
He manipulated the hololith, and the Segmentum Solar blazed to life. "Consider this: if we were to install an array of Blackstone pylons throughout the Solar System itself, it would provide the ideal foundation for your dimensional project. It would create a zone where the Warp's influence is not merely diminished, but eliminated."
Aurelia's eyes widened, her interest piqued. "You want to blanket the heart of the Imperium with a Blackstone lattice?"
"Precisely, my princess. With you as a living catalyst suppressing the Warp, and the pylons amplifying that effect, we could forge a foundation so stable that your new dimension—your highway above the Warp—would have the perfect anchor. It would be the greatest bulwark humanity has ever known."
Cawl's excitement was unmistakable, and Aurelia found herself swept along in it. A power base, a citadel at the heart of the void, from which to launch her vision. The prospect was daunting, but exhilarating—a feat worthy of the Daughter of the Omnissiah and her most audacious ally.
"I see, it's a sound idea," Aurelia mused, her tone carrying both intrigue and caution. "But acquiring Necron pylons won't be easy. The dynasties will not simply permit their removal. They guard such relics with the jealousy of old gods."
Cawl's optics flickered in what could only be described as wounded pride. "Nonsense, my Princess. I have already devised several strategies and technologies to… acquire them. Subtlety and subterfuge are not beyond me. Nor are negotiations, when necessary."
Aurelia smiled faintly, knowing full well the lengths to which Cawl would go. "I have no doubt. Still, my project will require more than just a foundation. To truly create this new dimension—something above the Immaterium—the pylons are just the beginning. I need a means of passage. Gates, like the Webway, but without its flaws. The old gates were easily compromised, broken open by the Emperor, by xenos, by the ambitious and the damned. I want a mechanism that is incorruptible—a lock keyed only to humanity, to the Imperium."
Cawl's voice buzzed with anticipation. "Have you considered using a—"
"No AI, Cawl. We don't need another Men of Iron catastrophe," Aurelia cut in, half-sighing.
But Cawl shook his head. "Not an abominable intelligence, my Princess. I refer to the Astronomicon."
Aurelia's brows knit in thought. "The Astronomicon?"
"Indeed. What if we could link the Astronomicon's light to this new realm? Navigators have always used their beacon as a guide—what if, instead of plunging into the Warp, they followed its light directly into the new dimension? It could solve so many ancient problems."
Aurelia fell silent, mind racing. "That… could work. Linking the Astronomicon's light to the new dimension would be difficult, but not impossible. Still, the question remains—how to power it? I have no desire to be its sole battery, nor to see my father forever chained to the Throne."
She trailed into silence, haunted by the memory of what might have been—the Emperor, broken and hollow, transformed into the Dark King, the fifth god of Chaos. Only her intervention, her healing, had spared the galaxy that fate.
"The Dark King…" she whispered, almost trembling at the shadow of that future.
"My Princess?" Cawl inquired, concern in his vox.
"Nothing, Cawl. Just thinking aloud," Aurelia replied, regaining her composure. "Your idea is sound—linking the Astronomicon to the new dimension, granting Navigators safe passage. It would be revolutionary. And I think I can come up with a new way to power the Golden Throne."
"That's the essence of it," Cawl replied, "but naturally, the implementation will be far more complex."
Aurelia chuckled, the sound rich with irony. "Of course. It will require the combined effort of my father and me, and much tinkering besides. But first, the pylons. We must make the Segmentum Solar a true zone of silence—a bastion free from the Warp's taint."
"One more question, my Princess," Cawl asked, optics glimmering with curiosity. "What will you name this project?"
Aurelia leaned back, considering. Names had power, and to name something was to give it life. At length, she spoke, her voice soft but certain:
"I call it the Etherway Project."