by Dan Abnett
It was a cinder by the time we left. No contact with the saruthi race was ever made again.
And the tainted, glowing light of the Necroteuch was extinguished forever.
EPILOGUE
At Pamophrey.
At Pamophrey, we rested.
Forty weeks of voyage through the immaterium had dulled our sense of victory. The fleet dispersed at Thracian Primaris and the last 1 saw of Sergeant Jeruss was a waving hand across a smoky, beery bar.
I rented a villa out by the Sound at Pamophrey. Midas slept most of the day, and whiled away the night in games of regicide with Aemos and Fischig. Bequin bathed in the sun, and swam in the breakers.
I sat out on the salt-whipped stoop and watched over the beach like a god who has forgotten his creations.
Great labours still awaited us. Reports to be made, interviews and debrief-ings to be attended. Lord Rorken had called for a tribunal of enquiry, and the High Lords of Terra were awaiting a full account of the matter. Months of paperwork, hearings and evidential audits lay ahead. The identity of the force behind Molitor and his daemonhost remained a mystery, and though Lord Rorken was as anxious as myself to find an answer, I doubted any would readily emerge. The question might fester and stagnate, unanswered, in the slow, unwieldy bureaucracy of the Inquisition for years.
I would not allow that. As soon as I was free to engage upon another case, I would dedicate myself to finding Cherubael's master. The beloved rule of man had come close to great calamity thanks to his scheming.
I would not forget the saruthi. They were an object lesson - if any were truly needed - of how an entire, advanced culture might be consumed by Chaos.
* * *
Seabirds looped in the gusting tide wind. The breakers crashed. The blank-eyed man still haunted my dreams. After-echoes or ripples of the future? I would have to wait and see.
