Aedan beat his radiant wings harder, slicing through the salty coastal wind as the endless dunes of Nehekhara shrank behind him. The smoking crater he had left in the desert was already a distant speck. He refused to look back, literally and metaphorically. The Imperium of Man did not dwell on the past mistakes. Neither would he.
Below, the terrain slowly transformed. Golden dead sand gave way to jagged black cliffs and a restless grey sea. The air tasted of brine and something that might have been freedom, but Aedan felt none of it. He flew north for hours that soon became days that soon became weeks. The monotony ground against his nerves like a rusty chainsword.
"This sucks," he muttered, voice swallowed by the wind. "I wanted golden skeletal daddy to die for. I wanted battles with choirs of exploding boltgun rounds raining on blue commie xenos and titanic apocalyptic naval combat. Instead I get… this shit. By the God-Emperor, I hate the Old World."
Deep down he knew that wasn't entirely fair. Warhammer Fantasy had its moments of undeniable glory, the thunderous charge of Bretonnian knights into endless undead hordes, the desperate last stands of a suicidal Dwarf and a college-drop out turned warrior-poet dragged across the world to slay monsters. There was a richness to the setting that a lonely, cat-allergic nerd could fall in love with time and time again.
Until the End Times came. That was when everything went wrong. Every plotline, every beloved faction, every hard-earned victory, all of it curb-stomped for cheap shock value. Gods treating the world like a disposable chessboard. Total annihilation wrapped in bad writing. That massacre of the fantasy lore was why Aedan had turned his screaming autistic face towards Warhammer 40,000 instead of Warhammer Fantasy. At least in the grim darkness of the far future there were starships, Titans, and the faint, spiteful hope that humanity could delay the inevitable one more day. In case that they were not spiteful enough and the planet fell, well the next planet could learn to be even more petty in their need for survival.
Yet, here in the old world? Everything was just waiting to die. No one knew it yet, but soon the entire world would erupt into flames and terrible storytelling.
Aedan glanced at the force sword gripped in his hand. The Doom of Any Who Stand In My Way hummed faintly, almost sympathetically, offering a soothing thrum of warp energy.
"Yeah, you feel it too, huh?" he said, patting the blade. "We're both overkill in the wrong setting. You and me, Sword of Doom, we will find a way out of here and into the Warhammer 40k universe."
The coastline stretched endlessly ahead: rocky cliffs, crashing waves, and the occasional suspicious cave that probably housed smugglers, pirates, or worse. Aedan angled slightly inland, skimming over river valleys and thickening forests, always heading north. Somewhere ahead lay the Border Princes, that messy patchwork of petty kingdoms, bandits, and opportunistic mercenaries. An entire adventures worth of epic tales that Aedan could do.... yet at this moment... he felt bored. Soul-crushingly, mind-numbingly bored.
Flying over a dying world in master-crafted carapace armor while flapping angelic biomancy induced wings was not the power fantasy he had signed up for. So he entertained himself the only way he knew how: by spiraling into increasingly deranged long-term plans.
"Okay, Sword of Doom," he muttered aloud, grinning like a madman as the wind whipped through his hair. "Our victory conditions are simple. Get off this rock and reach the Imperium of Man. So I have devised a Tzentichan level plan to see us succeed at this. Step one: gather cool shit and resources. Step two: fund an expedition to Lustria, because I'm not flying across an ocean non-stop, my wings are starting to spasm just from flying half way to the Border Princes. Anyway Step three: reach Lustria safely and find a friendly Lizardman. Those scaly bastards have Old One tech hidden away in the star-vaults of their temple-cities. Maybe one of those vaults have a fully functioning voidship. Step four: seduce said sexy Lizardman into teaching me how to pilot said voidship. Step five: blast off to the Imperium and achieve the dream of dying gloriously for the God-Emperor… or saving His Imperium. Step six: be the amazing overpowered sanctioned psyker I am, get promoted straight to Rogue Trader, acquire a personal fleet, and then come back here to Exterminatus this doomed planet before the End Times can ruin it."
Aedan laughed, the sound wild and hollow against the roar of the sea. "It's completely insane. I know it is. But that's all I've got. Thankfully as an Alpha-Plus psyker with dimensional storage, biomancy, and an overwhelming urge to purge xenos, thats all I need to make my dreams a reality."
Aedan spent many days talking to his sword like a doped up crackhead, refining the plan until even his sleep-deprived mind started protesting. He rested only when necessary, nesting in hidden cliff overhangs or remote caves, always moving north along the coastline. The Badlands lived up to their reputation, for it was filled with cracked earth, thorny scrub, and far too many greenskin warbands roaming like angry fire ants. For once in his life, Aedan chose the smart option and avoided them all.
Soon the coastline curved eastward. The air grew cooler, thick with the scent of salt and smoke. Aedan finally slowed, searching for a safe place to land and rest his aching wings. That was when he saw where all the smoke was coming from.
Far below, from both the bay in the Black Gulf and the land mass leading to the border lands, an entire orc warhost had descended towards the edge like a green tide. Crude banners flapped in the wind, some displaying tusk like teeth, others big green fists, and ships out in the bay displayed crude shark motifs. Rickety black-hulled ships blockaded the harbor while siege engines built from spite and stolen lumber rolled toward the walls of a soaring mountain fortress.
It didn't take long for Aedan to recognize the target, his memory regarding the lore of the old world had been awakened at the sight of the coastal Dwarven Fortress. Barak Varr, the great Dwarf sea-hold carved into the mountainside. Towering stone ramparts, cannon batteries, and fortified docks tunneled extended out deep from the cliff side. Dwarven banners still flew, but the defenders looked strained, fighting at half strength. The reason became clear when observing the Orc battle lines, as it seems the infamous greenskins had gotten smarter than Aedan remembered regarding the Orcs. Clusters of dwarven civilians and warriors were being held at axe-point by grinning orcs and goblins, living shields to blunt the Dwarf artillery, causing kin of the captured to hold off blasting the Orcs into a fine green paste. The more Aedan observed the more it became clear this was not the standard version of what he expected of a wild Waaagh! style siege. It was a calculated, the orcs had learned just enough tactics to make things ugly for the dwarven defenders. Most likely meaning the Orcs had a very competent warboss or the warboss had a very competent advisor guiding him. Either case it did not look good for the defenders of Barak Varr.
Aedan hovered behind a jagged rock spire, studying the scene through his Imperial Guard-issue magnoculars before tucking them back into his dimensional storage.
"Oh, fantastic," he muttered. "Greenskins using decent tactics and living shields, while also blockading the dwarf hold with both a land and naval siege. This is almost what I wanted from 40k… Maybe I could flex some terror tactics here."
His first instinct was glorious: dive in wings blazing, force sword screaming, full khornate murder-hobo mode. But then reality intruded. Dwarfs were famously grudge-holding little bastards. Accidentally killing their families while "helping" would earn him a grudge that lasted until the heat death of the universe. No amount of apologies would fix that.
"Nope," Aedan decided. "I do not need angry little people trying to kill me for the next trillion years. Better to save the Dwarfs. Become a hero. Earn some favors… maybe even a boat ride toward Lustria."
Just as the heroic plan formed, exhaustion crashed over him like a tidal wave. The near month of near-constant flight, interrupted only by a cave nap ruined by feral orcs who thought he'd make excellent fried chicken had left Aedan hollow. His back burned so badly he had already dismissed the biomancy wings to ease the pain. His mind felt like overcooked grox. Jumping into a siege right now would be sloppy. And sloppy could kill even an overpowered idiot this far from the Emperor's light.
"Nope. Not now. Sleep first. ~Yawn~ Then I save little people and commit war crimes." Aedan scanned the cliffs until he found a deep, shadowed overhang high above the chaos, perfectly hidden from both orc and Dwarf eyes, masked by wind and stone. He reached the hidey hole in no time, pulled a pillow and blanket from his dimensional storage, and curled up in the nook. With a casual flick of will he wove a thin psychic alarm around his position. Anything larger than a rat coming within thirty meters would jolt him awake. As the distant sounds of battle echoed up from below, Aedan closed his eyes and muttered with all the dramatic exhaustion of a tired fanboy:
"Sleep now. Terror tactics later."