The Last Dream

Camelous had sat in a meeting. He was the absentee ruler of Lucius. He was not a fabricator general or a servant of Mars, yet he had been elected to rule a forgeworld. He could rule, but the intricacies of running the forgeworld eluded him.  He had decided to let the masters of Lucius run the daily business. He decided the overall directions and he had tried to become something the Lucians could rally behind, and they had. But he was no master of technology like Shaaa. Shaaa spent much time micromanaging the world of Graphina, but even then, his machinemaster brother simply did not have enough hours a day to spend on Graphina.

And Lucius was not Graphina. Where his brother’s forgeworld concerned itself with the supply for the Star Guardians – a pocket forgeworld, Camelous had heard it called by a Magos, something he imagined as the kind of thing that made sense to a member of the Mechanicum.

Lucius WAS different. Not only a jewel but enormous, mindboggling to a mortal man. A forgeworld second to Mars. With virtually unlimited energy available and with the support of the Imperium’s resources. The first thing Camelous had decided to do with his rulership was to expand production facilities. His ‘prestige project’ as was tradition with a new ruler, had been new titan facilities and increasing the production of titans – something that had started to come into fruition now.

But that had not been the end. Lucius had continued to expand. That had only further increased when Shaaa had been named Praetorian, much of Mars' recources now went to the construction of Terra's defences. Shaaa had ordered the orbital shipyards of Lucius to be further expanded and colossal new ships created there to make up for Mars' new deficits. Some were nearing completion now.

Camelous had closed his eyes. He had always had an understanding of scale beyond the natural. He had peered into enough minds that he knew that once numbers grew high enough, they become abstract. But not to him. All the listed items created were real to him. A trillion bolt rounds was not a number to him. He could imagine every single one lined up. Sounded like an incredible gift. But it was his secret curse. Another curse of his immaterial nature. It did nothing for him. There was nothing he could use it for. Where other brothers could estimate productions outputs to perfection, Camelous had little ability in comparison, and his ‘gift’ refused to be used for anything, it was simply an awareness. But it did bring pain. A million people killed in orbital bombardment, weren’t statistics to him. Every single life was real. Every life lost, every estimated civilian casualty, every auxillery soldier was real to him. Cameous might life in a haze between the future and the present, but his past was with him all the time. He had assumed it was his close bond with the immaterium that made it like this, in the immaterium such things often didn’t exist as distinct and so neither did it in him.

But lately there has been a pressure, an overbearing unease in him that evaded all scrutiny. And it had grown and grown. Like a weight pressing down on the Primarch. He felt that every step had been heavier than the last, but this was different.

He had hoped for relief when he entered his flagship, but it did not bring him any. When he had walked through the corridors, a vision hit him.

*He stood on an endless plain of grass under a blue sky with weak clouds.*

*Graves all that marked the land.*

*Stretching into a horizon such that they were all visible, impossible as only it could be seen in the warp.*

*So many graves.*

*Only distant flags to mark them, waving in ethereal winds.*

*All of humanity could lie there.*

*Something came to stand next to him.*

*A winged Angel.*

*“All of your children” she said, her voice sombre.*

*“Save them father."*

*Camelous had never met her. But he had seen this angel in a dream once before and had a statue made of her.*

*When Camelous sensed the being, he lashed out his emotional fury and anger willing it away. Even without using psychic powers Primarchs had strong will, and Camelous was will incarnate, even psychic powers and mental assaults bended around him, and this intrusion into his mind was anything but welcome.*

*She simply raised her arms towards him and closed her arms as to embrace him. The Primarch’s fury didn’t faze her, she smiled as if getting a gentle caress from a long-lost parent.*

Then the vision was gone. He stood in the corridor, his sons kneeling around where he stood, bolters pointed in all direction, reacting to their father’s sudden outburst.

Camelous felt a knot in his chest, everything told him that he stood on the on the edge of a choice. One that would decide the fate of humanity. Camelous’ mind struggled against the feeling. He never believed in fate and such a thing was absurd and arrogant in the extreme. One man couldn’t decide the fate of humanity. Only the Emperor would be able to do such a thing. The feeling remained.

When Camelous lay in his bed he felt tired. Camelous never slept, he knew some of his brother did on occasion. But Camelous had never slept. He never fell sleep. He had been in a dreamless coma due to injuries and that had been all. He hoped against hope that he would find peace.

Sleep eluded him. He was left with a feeling of a great and terrible choice he would have to make. A moment where he stood on the flagship of the mightiest ship in the galaxy as a vanguard and on a small cruiser facing the same behemoth.

Holding fate in his hand.

He knew he would have to find answers, in spite of the growing warpstorms.

What Camelous did not see. What couldn’t be seen was that his choice might yet be cut short, a danger lurked, which threatened to end any decision with his life. At war with itself and with such an alien clarity that it was beyond even Camelous’ understanding. Maybe it was a good thing that he now had a forge world to call his own.