31 Delayed Judgment (IV, Mirror Forest, 8k)

After the horn successfully carried his words across, Lion El'Jonson had an instinct—they would come.

His reason told him this was unlikely. No commander of sound mind would ever indulge him by leading a fleet into a trap of their own accord, unless he was an idiot with no normal people around him.

What was more, this was Thousand Eyes, a Chaos warband made up of Fallen.

Considering what they had done so far, the leader of Thousand Eyes was unlikely to be an ordinary warrior. This warband had escaped encirclement and suppression several times in the past, then vanished without a trace, only to reappear decades later on the fringe of some star system to raid and harass it.

That meant Thousand Eyes knew exactly how much truth and falsehood lay in his words. Especially the parts concerning honor.

Lion El'Jonson began absentmindedly rubbing the grip of the Dionysian Spear with his fingers, earning a burst of protest from Leman Russ. He ignored it and continued to stare intently at the holographic display before him.

The entire Kamas system had been condensed onto the tactical table as a miniature projection, displayed to the primarch from over a dozen different angles, while analysis results scrolled beside it.

Both the visuals and the results were firsthand information relayed from the fleets lying in ambush. The delay was not especially severe, but real-time transmission remained impossible.

Still, it was enough.

Lion El'Jonson was fairly tolerant when it came to technology. Information was the lifeblood of war, that much was true, but at the Imperium's level of technology, that lifeblood could only be slow, cumbersome, and foul.

One thing, however, was certain: from every angle, Kamas appeared utterly calm, without the slightest anomaly. The Mandeville Point within the system was even more tightly