Several more standard days passed.
Deep within the Imperial Palace's grand halls, vast enough to accommodate the movements of stars, and its intricate corridors, a rare and weighty sense of "wholeness" slowly began to gather.
Of course, it was not true wholeness. Two chairs were destined to remain empty, like nerves that still ached beneath healed scars.
But compared with the usual state of affairs since the Great Crusade began, with the brothers scattered across the Sea of Stars on unending campaigns, this gathering was exceedingly rare.
The last assembly of Primarchs on such a scale had been before the Battle of Ullanor.
At that meeting, the atmosphere had been tense and rife with maneuvering, its central issue an unresolved burden.
The selection of a Warmaster.
Back then, rivalries both open and concealed, clashes of ideals, and differing understandings of responsibility and glory had seethed beneath the Emperor's unseen gaze.
Now, nearly a standard year later, everything had changed.
The fires of war on Ullanor had died out, and the Ork Empire's massive "WAAAGH!!!" had temporarily collapsed after grievous losses. The glory of victory and the lessons written in blood were etched into every participant's memory.
More importantly, the question the Emperor had raised at the previous meeting without settling it there and then seemed, after Ullanor's trials of blood and fire, the rescue, and the repercussions of the many events that followed, to have finally reached the point where a definitive decision was unavoidable.
That question, hanging over the Imperium's future like the sword of Damocles, was this:
Who was qualified, and possessed sufficient ability and prestige, to serve as "Warmaster"—the supreme military commander who would lead all the Legions and coordinate humanity's entire great crusading endeavor?
Now, in a hall within the Imperial Palace reserved for internal meetings