Beacons in The Dark

Chapter 46 - I Am Not Lost

"Upon this world we stand united." - Crolean Prayer

Anrus stood in the great Imperial hall, on a yellow jade seat to the right hand of the Emperor’s throne - Warden of the Imperium, he was called, and the weight of it felt like it was going to crush him.

Some old Loreseeker, a long time ago, told him part of a tale that she had recovered from a datadrive of a lost ship - about a creature that was forced to hold a world upon its shoulders for some crime it had committed.

Anrus Anree had committed no crime and a piece of the universe was being crushed down upon his shoulders, he had begun to walk stoop legged and back bent, his age creeping up on him like the heady vines that crawled up the trunks of the trees in the Emperor’s forests.

How could he do it? Anrus wondered to himself - some people called the Emperor an It, but Anree was one of the few people who knew his history, of the shipmerger with a human body; it still gave him the shudders to think of an artificial intelligence doing that to a person, even though it was for mutual gain; the thought of losing your humanity while gaining something else made him frown.

“But is he less human?” he wondered to himself, sitting in the great hall - he had scheduled no audiences today, the Galvanizer’s and the bulk of the Holy Armada were patrolling the outer edges of the Imperium, like dog’s sniffing at its master’s fence, guarding against the outside dangers.

So there was the man left alone with his thoughts, sitting atop a sphere of influence of unimaginable size. Sometimes he felt like a monster, and would sometimes turn a disgusted eye towards the Emperor when he would order the eradication of a planet and its occupants.

How could someone do that - to take that burden upon themselves, the murder of billions of living, sentient beings, some of which had done no wrong. When he asked the Emperor of such things, the flowing chromium face would render itself into a saturnine face of restrained pain and they would speak long of sacrifice and hard decisions. The words good and evil often passed between the lips of both of them, sometimes voices rising in agitation or anger, even the Emperor. 

Anrus Anree did not hold the position he did because he would kowtow to every whim, he was originally from the fringe planets, a major commander of a rebel force known for their subversive and destructive actions against the Autonomous Emperor.

Despite what may have been thought, instead of executing Anree after capturing him, he made of him an advisor, and had actually left the reigns in the man’s control.

What was the Emperor planning?