Watching Qin Mo's projection vanish, Guilliman slowly let out a breath, then drew in a deep one. His expression hardened, and his heart grew incomparably heavy.
Guilliman did not need to kill some formidable enemy, nor did he need to face a terrifying adversary just yet, but what lay ahead was still a bitter struggle for him.
As he had told Qin Mo, he had to haggle with the High Lords of Terra over the coming war.
Mentally, it was undoubtedly a hard battle.
What had to be done had to be done. Guilliman neither avoided nor hesitated. As he left the room, he ordered the Champion Guards outside to transmit a message to Terra, summoning the High Lords to an emergency meeting.
Normally, this process was complicated and lengthy. Due to the limitations of faster-than-light communication, interstellar messages relied heavily on Astropaths, but those riddle-speakers playing charades in the Warp were terrifyingly inefficient.
But things were different now.
The Imperium no longer needed astropathic messages to relay information, because faster-than-light courier ships traveling back and forth were more reliable than Warp communications in most circumstances.
Furthermore, when the Golden Crusade ended, Talon had not dissolved its alliance with the Imperium. Instead, it extended the alliance for another one hundred and twenty years, guarding against possible retaliation by enemies from the material universe after the Golden Crusade.
The renewed alliance was still in effect, so the Imperium could use several faster-than-light communication routes within Talon's communications network for extremely long-range transmissions.
Whenever Guilliman convened an emergency meeting remotely rather than traveling to Terra himself, it was because of those communication routes.
This time was naturally no exception.
When Guilliman entered a hall within the Fortress-Monastery, one specifically used for remote meetings with Primarchs and Imperial high officials who were not