Half an hour later.
"I'm very sorry, sir. Rena didn't mean it. She's just-she's a good girl, but a little too outspoken. Please accept my apologies."
Lion El'Jonson was no longer at the edge of the forest.
He stopped walking. The enormous Knight had long since halted before him, standing silently on the overturned black loam like an ancient armored giant at rest.
The Knight's cockpit opened, and an agile figure leaped down.
She was a female knight.
She landed with crisp, efficient movements born of long training.
Then she immediately clamped one hand firmly onto the reckless girl's head while inclining her own body slightly in apology to Lion El'Jonson.
The girl shrank under her hand, muttering things like, "Coming out of a forest makes him a wild man, doesn't it?" But when the knight increased the pressure, she quickly fell silent.
Lion El'Jonson turned his gaze toward the knight.
"Where is this place?"
Lion El'Jonson asked.
At that moment, his memories returned like a rising tide.
A planet breaking apart, a winged blade, a monstrous beast with bat wings, fangs, and sharp teeth lunging at him, a figure blazing with golden light, and a planet that had died at his command.
His mind was in turmoil, prompting the primarch famed for warfare to blurt out a rather foolish question-one that might even expose his origins.
Sure enough, the knight immediately gave him a puzzled look.
"This is the Imperial World of Kadison, in the Caliban Sector of Segmentum Obscurus. If you don't even know that, how did you get here?"
Caliban.
A bolt of lightning seemed to flash through Lion El'Jonson's consciousness.
That was his homeworld, the place of his birth.
But-
The knight examined the towering, uninvited visitor carefully.
Earlier, seated in her Knight's cockpit, she had