Warhammer 40,000 The Lost Primarch

joseph..Joseph...JOSEPH... His name... he hung onto it like a drowning man clings to floating wreckage. In a way, in an indescribable way he was drowning. Not in mortal terms of water filling lungs but in his mind. Joseph, was drowning in emotions and non-existent colors. His mind reeled at the sight... no not sight but presence. The presence of it in his mind. Somewhere he faintly knew that he was screaming. This thing, if it could be called that, scratched and teared at his fragile sanity. Then as suddenly as it had appeared it was gone. gone.

He woke with a start to the sound of his father trying to wake him and the sight of his teary eyed mother in the doorway. He took a second, less than a second, to calm his hearts and his mind. It had been another of the dreams that plagued him most of his nights.

He felt the fine sheet of sweat covering him as he sat up and rested his head into the palms of his hands. He breathed deeply before he finally addressed his worried parents.

"I'm okay," he lied.

His Father nodded knowing that Joseph had said that for his mother rather than say the harsher truth. She let out a sniffle before hurrying away to the kitchen to prepare breakfast as it was nearing the time to go into the fields. With a heavy sigh his father exited to get dressed and he was left to sit alone as the aftershocks of the nightmare came like they always did.

Slowly, he forced himself to get dressed in his heavily enlarged clothing. His heavily muscled form pushing against the seams. This didn't bother him anymore as his rapidly growing body never seemed to stop growing. That was also another oddity that he possessed, he was young enough to be a boy yet he was taller and stronger than anyone he knew and he was also mentally past where his age told him he should be. Stranger yet was that his parents were not biologically his and that he had been found in the dense forest several miles from the farm where he now resided. Joseph pushed these thoughts away and focused on the day ahead.

Breakfast was eaten in silence like it always was after Joseph had one of his night terrors. As soon as he was done he left to do his usual tasks in the crisp cold air of the morning. Joseph had taken care of the farm ever since he was physically able to do them. He would do these chores as some would call it, to give more time for his Father to hunt wild animals.

The wild animals were a major part of their life as it was one of the only sources of protein they had access to. Having Joseph also allowed his Father to get even more than they needed in which he would take the extra to sell to the distant town. Why didn't they have animals such as pigs or cows? The self pronounced king and his armies that passed through every few months would take all of the animals with them and all of the money and time spent on them would go to waste. Joseph's spare time was spent in the rotting barn where he tinkered with old rusty machines that there purposes were long forgotten.

His mother on the other hand would sow and clean the house most of the day. She was a caring woman who cared greatly for Joseph and loved him as if he were her own child. His father was rough and unforgiving when teaching or the few times when Joseph broke the rules.

He finished his chores quickly as he always did after night terrors so that he could spend more time tinkering and moving his mind into a type of meditation in which he could almost forget about the horrors that plagued his dreams. By the time he finished the hard laboring of the fields it was mid-day and the bright orange sun was burning high in the sky.

As he opened the old rotting doors he was met with the musty smell of moldy hay and feces. he smiled at the familiar smell and he walked over to the old wooden work shelf where his tools and creations lay in organized chaos. next to the shelf was the one piece that had not been here when his father had shown it to him. it was magnificent to him. the helmet lenses reflected the light coming from the open doors the armor was small compared to his bulk, obviously meant for a normal person. That was slowly changing, as he labored to lengthen plates and extend circuitry to fit his bulk. There was one major thing that kept him from finishing the armor that was materials. he had none of the well manufactured materials that the suit had been made out of so he had to make do with scrap metal and other things that he had been able to scavenge from the barn's darkest shadows.