Anna's words pierced like cold steel needles through the awe and wonder inspired by the great vessel's magnificent Shell, laying a deeper, more unsettling possibility bare before them.
It protected those who had sealed it away, not the thing being protected. That simple shift in meaning carried a chilling logic. What sort of entity required a "shell" as large as a Gloriana-class Battleship, and of such extreme structural complexity, to isolate it?
Lorgar silently looked up at the enormous, hovering "container," its matte surface now seeming to radiate an intangible chill.
The burning light of discovering a priceless treasure had faded from his golden eyes, replaced by the gravity and calculation of someone facing an unknown threat.
As a Primarch and a Legion commander, he excelled at storming fortresses on the battlefield, weighing advantages and disadvantages in matters of governance, and inspiring others in matters of faith.
But confronted with this forbidden creation from the Dark Age of Technology, something utterly beyond his understanding, he felt a rare helplessness born of the limits of his knowledge quietly rise within him.
Tear it apart by force? The thought flashed through his mind for only an instant before he rejected it.
Quite apart from the possibility that this “Shell” was far tougher than he imagined, Anna's warning that it “protected those who had sealed it away” was enough to make him wary of acting.
Who knew whether forcibly cracking this "eggshell" would release a superweapon capable of instantly destroying an entire Star System, a source of catastrophe that could drag a whole star cluster into a warp rift, or something stranger still, something beyond description?
"Then what do we do now?" Lorgar finally asked.
He lowered his gaze and looked at Anna, leaving the decision to the only "expert" present who might