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Back The Magos Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Suggested Reading Order
  2. Title Page
  3. Warhammer 40,000
  4. Introduction
  5. PESTILENCE
  6. MASTER IMUS’ TRANSGRESSION
  7. REGIA OCCULTA
  8. MISSING IN ACTION
  9. BACKCLOTH FOR A CROWN ADDITIONAL
  10. THE STRANGE DEMISE OF TITUS ENDOR
  11. THE CURIOSITY
  12. PLAYING PATIENCE
  13. THORN WISHES TALON
  14. GARDENS OF TYCHO
  15. THE KEELER IMAGE
  16. PERIHELION
  17. THE MAGOS
  18. One
  19. Two
  20. Three
  21. Four
  22. Five
  23. Six
  24. Seven
  25. Eight
  26. Nine
  27. Ten
  28. Eleven
  29. Twelve
  30. Thirteen
  31. Fourteen
  32. Fifteen
  33. Sixteen
  34. Seventeen
  35. Eighteen
  36. Nineteen
  37. Twenty
  38. Twenty-One
  39. Twenty-Two
  40. Twenty-Three
  41. Twenty-Four
  42. Twenty-Five
  43. Twenty-Six
  44. Twenty-Seven
  45. Twenty-Eight
  46. Twenty-Nine
  47. Thirty
  48. Chronology
  49. About the Author
  50. A Black Library Publication
  51. Cover

‘Third shelf up, above the workbench,’ he stammered. ‘The green bottle. I needed tincture of mercury, years ago, years ago, and an old woman in one of the villages gave it to me and said it would do as well. I use it all the time now. The emulsions it mixes are perfect. My work has never been better.’

He looked down at the grass, shaking and horrified.

‘I should have realised,’ he muttered. ‘I should have realised. No matter how much I used, the bottle never emptied.’

‘Third shelf up?’ I confirmed.

‘I’ll show you,’ he said, and sprang to the trailer, clambering in through the hole I had smashed.

‘Bakunin! No!’

I followed him inside, tumbling back into the jumble of landscapes and the maelstrom of screaming ghosts. Just for a moment, a brief moment, I saw Aen Froigre amongst them.

Then I was falling through another wedding, a hunting scene, a stockman’s meeting, a farrier’s smithy, the castle of Elempite by moonlight, a cattle market, a–

I heard Bakunin scream.

I deflected three more deadly hololith plates, and slashed through the thicket of howling ghosts. Spectral, as if it wasn’t there, I saw the workbench and the shelves. The green bottle, glowing internally with jade fire. I raised Barbarisater and smashed the bottle with the edge of the shivering blade.

The explosion shredded the inner partition wall and lurched the trailer onto its side. Dazed, I lay on the splintered wall, sprawled amongst the debris of glass and wood.

The screaming stopped.

Someone had called the local Arbites. They moved through the crowds of onlookers as the last of the rain fell and the skies began to clear.

I showed them my credentials, and told them to keep the crowd back while I finished my work. The trailer was already burning, and Alizebeth and I threw the last few hololith prints into the flames.

The pictures were fading now. Superimposed on each one, every portrait, every landscape, every miniature, was a ghost exposure. An after-image.

Bakunin, screaming his last scream forever.

THE STRANGE DEMISE OF TITUS ENDOR

THE STRANGE DEMISE OF TITUS ENDOR

The city was a hollow, failing place that was trying to turn its fortunes around, so it was apt that Titus Endor should wash up there. He’d long since lost the lustre that had made him one of the ordo’s rising stars. Like a counterfeit coin, his value had been exposed as short weight. None of it had been his fault, just circumstances.

Titus Endor took another drink, and reflected that life could be worse.