We Are Small

Fair Warning: If you get existential dread, maybe not the story for you.

Purilla stared up at the ceiling of her room. She sank into the covers of her bed, feeling as though it might swallow her up.

The last few months… No, in a way, the last few years had all been awful. She could not say that her whole life was a waste or terrible, because she did have fond memories, plenty of them. But when had it all gone wrong?

She wasn't sure. Surely it hadn't started when she was born, that much was obvious. Then when?

Was it the Great Crusade, when the Emperor failed to vanquish the forces of darkness? Was it before that, in the Dark Age of Technology? Or even all the way back to the start of humanity?

Everything had been wrong for so long. She was usually better at avoiding thinking about it. If she thought about it for too long, the doubts started to set in and the dark thoughts followed. Such a thing was dangerous for anyone, much less a psyker.

"Would you like to talk about it?"

She turned her head slowly. She wasn't in her bed anymore, but a thought-construct of it within the Domain. A faceless man looked to her, or was he a man? She couldn't really tell.

"I…" Purilla began, before turning away. "It's too much…"

"What is?"

She cast him a sidelong glance. "Don't you already know?"

"It helps to say these things. Sometimes."

"It's…" She let out a long and pained sigh. "All of it. The Imperium. Chaos. Xenos. There's too much wrong with this galaxy."

"That isn't anything new."

"How…" Purilla started, then stopped. She tried to figure out what question she wanted to ask, tried to put the feelings inside her into words. "Its… There's a chasm, in my chest. Every time I think about… how we're going to survive in this galaxy, it grows. You're powerful, but…"

"Am I enough?"

She nodded and reached up to grab a pillow, wrapping her arms around it in a tight hug.

"Do you even know?" She asked, glancing at him.

"I do not," he said. "There are many ways that I could be defeated. And there are so many things that I do not know that could be threats to us."

She buried her face into the pillow, forcing her breathing to remain steady.

"I…" She breathed in deeply. "I feel… like everything is going to go wrong… Like its all going to end."

He was quiet for a moment. "I know the feeling," he said. She glanced up at him.

"W-…" She shuddered, taking in another deep breath. "H-how do you deal with it?"

He looked down at her and his face might have had consideration on it.

"Would you like to see something?" He asked suddenly, almost randomly. She stared at him, unshed tears in her eyes, each breath a rattled, choking gasp.

"W-what?" She asked, wondering if he was trying to distract her.

"It might help," he said, before warning, "or it might make things worse."

"I…" She paused, taking a deep breath. "I don't see how it can."

"Alright," he said with a nod. She didn't sink, but rose from the bed, as if pulled along by some invisible force.

She floated, up and up, out of the thought-construct of the governor's palace, and then out of the hive city altogether. She travelled upwards, past the atmosphere, into space beyond. She saw the tips of the spires that poked out of Monstrum's clouds, watched as they shrank as she was drawn further and further away until she could hold out her thumb and cover the whole planet from sight.

She saw Monstrum's star, burning gold and red and orange. She watched as it too shrank away into a dot of light that joined countless others.

She saw shadows moving through those stars, massive and titanic like deep-sea predators moving below the currents. She saw giants that swallowed those stars whole striding across the galaxy and she saw monsters that curled around them, made them wrong and unnatural. She saw rampaging wars that made those stars wink out.

"You're right," she said. "It didn't help."

Just wait.

She was drawn away faster and faster, until she saw the whole of the galaxy, just like she'd seen Monstrum, and then it too was just another glittering dot joined by countless others. Endless galaxies spread out across her vision, more than could be counted in a lifetime, but even these collections merged into the singular lights of superclusters that in turn shrank away.

Then… she stopped and she hung there and she thought she might have been in the center of the universe. There was nothing there, just emptiness, but it was not dark. The countless galaxies of countless superclusters shone like many-colored stars that glittered all around her.

She wasn't sure where Monstrum was anymore, she realized. Or even her own galaxy or even the supercluster it was a part of. Which of those lights was home? None, she realized. For light to have reached out so far, it would have had to travel countless billions of years. The light that reached her was older than humanity, older than any sentient race or maybe even life itself. Older than giants. Older than monsters.

So… do you still feel like it'll be the end of everything?