Lorgar reacted the instant he heard that psychic voice.
It pierced the vacuum, pierced the warship's armor, pierced layer upon layer of interference and noise, slipping into his senses like an invisible viper.
This was no ordinary fluctuation of psychic energy. It was older, more obscure, carrying a fetid presence that seemed to rise from the bottom of an abyss.
Lorgar had thought this realm was merely a lost human regime steeped in superstition and feudalism, a pitiful remnant that had been cut off during Old Night and gradually degenerated into a theocratic slave society.
He had seen far too many worlds like it. During the Imperium's Great Crusade, countless such lost colonies had been rediscovered. Some had regressed to primitive slash-and-burn agriculture, while others had developed warped social structures built around cruelty and oppression.
But he had never expected a realm like this to possess something of this kind.
A more systematic way of wielding psychic energy, seemingly rooted in some ancient tradition.
The resonance of those bones, the whispers of the dead, the power that animated corpses through blood and Ritual.
This was certainly not a technique that this isolated, degenerate theocracy could have developed on its own.
Its origins had to lie somewhere farther away, in a more ancient age.
Lorgar had to get to the bottom of it.
BOOM!!!
Lorgar's body crashed through the battered hull of the enemy warship like a golden meteor, passing through corridors and compartments consumed by flames, through collapsing structures and flying debris, before slamming into the floor of the Bridge.
A shock wave spread outward from him, flinging aside the surrounding tables, chairs, instruments, and scattered bones, leaving a web of radiating cracks in the floor.
The golden flames behind him slowly drew inward. The radiance of his six wings