Epilogue

Grey ships were sailing through the storm with no land in sight. The eerie glowing auras of the crew stuck between life and death still irked the sorcerer though he had travelled aboard his legion-brother's ghost ship for many times, fleeing from another bothersome detractors.

Ashur-Kai had never been cheerful even in the merry days on Earth. A sickly albino boy kept alive by his powerful mind had grown into a man, but his cautious demeanour hadn't changed after the double change of colours. Be it the Despoiler's black or the spectral grey, he used his ability to retreat from the mess and noise of the world gone nuts. The same child on the strand listening to the whispers of seashells. Able to drift with the current, avoiding rough edges and hidden rocks with his mere sixth sense.

He barely said a word to the sorcerer's stories when they sat on the bridge looking at the changing landscapes of the warp outside of the oculus.

'You say it's irrelevant like always,' the sorcerer said with a smile, 'but I'm puzzled by more and more encounters with the thing. People with marks in the ranks of the Guard, the Inquisition.'

'I won't.' Ashur-Kai preferred voiceless speech, and even his psychic whisper was feeble like rustling leaves. 'I've seen them. Their traces. I felt it come closer when we left the Eye for the first venture.'

'I know I should stop digging deeper but you know my blood damn admiration of all things curious. Let me make up my mind where we should go next. It's just glorious to have a childhood friend around a hundred centuries after you had left your homeworld. Our modern Imperium peers cannot afford it.'

Ashur-Kai shook his head. 'Sorry to disappoint you. I'm coming back to the Vengeful Spirit.'

'You know, I've always been ironical about Ezekyle's big dream. A dog with a bone.'

'He's got too far to get off the train. Things are changing right now. I see it, you see it. Go on searching for more omens and signs.'

The sorcerer took a turquoise pendant shaped like a gull out of his pouch. 'That's what's left of my ship.'

A spark of distress in Ashur-Kai's cold aura. 'And he's...'

'I've managed to hide him in the most arcane of my warp shelters. So we're still four.'

'Out of five. Five cherished kids from a wealthy ex-empire who had left their gardens and strands for the cold void and tainted aether.'

When the grey fleet entered the fickle tides of the Eye beyond the Cadian Gate, the sorcerer's hearts skipped a beat. The Despoiler had surpassed all his previous ambitions. The greatest armada since the majestic days of the Crusade had gathered around the ominous flagship of black and gold. Mixed colours of all the exiled legions who had sworn to follow the desperate orphan who promised them a better life. Promised them life, he'd better say, as the Eye itself was boiling with hunger and wrath as of to expel or devour its mortal squatters.

When they were going to say goodbye, another warrior appeared on the bridge. Dressed in the black of Abaddon's army, he wore intricate pieces of augmetics.

'I hope you'll befriend my successor,' said Ashur-Kai, donning his old Black Legion helmet. 'He's from Earth, like us.'

'Another scion of the Achaemenids.' The warrior's metallic voice was famous to the sorcerer, as well as his grumpy aura.

'Oh my, I'm already fed up with the Fourth,' he chuckled but shook the former Fleetmaster's gauntlet.

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