[Some sacrifices were inevitable.]
Lorgar said flatly. His face was lit by some strange light—not from the High Heavens, but from the imprisoned Shards of the Star God.
Ever since Guilliman had stolen a spark of the physical world from the underground labyrinths of Mars, where the False Emperor had imprisoned the Void Dragon, he had realized that the existence of the Shards of the Star God would only weaken the Warp. He built prisons similar to the Martian labyrinth, then spent ten thousand years hunting down and imprisoning the Shards of the Star God one by one.
Of course, that excluded the Outsider beyond the galaxy.
Guilliman had originally believed that those Shards of the Star God could only remain imprisoned in his Imperium until they completely perished.
But now, it seemed they had another use.
Five Gloriana-class warships sailed onward. The army under his command had already dwindled considerably from its original strength. Ambushing Trazyn the Infinite was no easy feat, even when all of the Infinite One's attention was focused on the Outsider.
And this fleet's target was the Outsider as well.
Guilliman's true objective had never been the childish front lines where he fought the other Imperial Primarchs. That had merely been a smokescreen to confuse the Imperium—Lorgar, the loyal subject he truly trusted, was the core of the plan.
While the other Imperial Primarchs were held back, Lorgar had been ordered by Guilliman to cast the Shards of the Star God, already driven mad by their imprisonment within the Chaos Empire, toward the Outsider. They would enrage it further, drive it deeper into madness, and then lure it near that being.
But Guilliman had not expected the Necrons to withdraw and defect so quickly, nor to commit their entire race to fighting the Outsider.
Thus,