CONCLUSION EPILOGUE

The chilled airlessness of space was a welcome sensation to the nigh-immortal Galactus as he felt himself floating within the starry darkness of a void which he had called "home" for the entire existence of the current cosmos.

Once again...Galactus lived. Unfortunately, once again...Galactus hungered.

"Great Galactus," said a smaller voice, though filled with a majesty all its own, from nearby the massive force of nature who turned his huge head in its direction. "I have come to lead you to your worldship."

Galactus wasn't at all surprised to see...

"The Silver Surfer! Of all those who have been my herald, only you have truly understood such as I! So, of course, only you would come to take me...home!"

The small, gleaming figure on the space-time traveling board swooped effortlessly toward his former master so easily that one would believe him to have been born to it...rather than granted such a cosmos-spanning boon by Galactus himself.

"Come, mighty Galactus, we have far to travel...even tunneling through space-time...before reaching your worldship on the far side of the universe," the Silver Surfer said with a smile that gleamed as brightly as his skin, while gesturing toward the massive being about whom he streaked like a human surfer cresting some perfect wave.

"Lead the way, my second herald," Galactus said in his own cosmically booming voice, "somehow I do not believe I shall mind the voyage!"

Both relying upon the power cosmic, the two figures, one small on a gleaming board that allowed him to effortlessly spin and loop, the other a small mountain which moved, a swirling wormhole, cutting through space-and-time, formed to allow them safe, swift passage.

And, somewhere in another realm, Death conceded the shocking fact that, this once...she had lost.

END