The Return

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The Return is the 12th short story in Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe. Written by Kevin Grace, this story follows a Sangheili Ship Master as he travels back to the human colony world Kholo. This story takes place after the events of Halo 3 in which the Sangheili are no longer serving the San 'Shyuum.

Plot

Set six years after the end of The Human-Covenant War, a Sangheili Shipmaster returns to the glassed colony of Kholo in order to find forgiveness for his sins. He lonely ventures through the remains of the colony occasionally remembering the glorious days of when he interrogated a human pilot and glassed the colony and the sadder days of the Covenant Civil War.

He experiences flashbacks where he showed his loyalty to the Prophet of Conviction by glassing Kholo. During the glassing, the Shipmaster successfully drew the Covenant glyph representing "faith" on the surface of the planet. Years later, when the Jiralhanae betrayed the Sangheili over High Charity, the Shipmaster confronted the ever-ready Conviction, and successfully disarmed him. The Shipmaster exposed the Prophet's deception and killed him all in front of his crew.

Present day, after several days of searching, he discovers Jackal pirates fighting human survivors. After killing the Jackals he finds a lone Human survivor. Realizing the survivor would soon be dead, the Shipmaster leaves him and continues looking around the base. Soon, he finds photos of humans pestering with Forerunner technology. Realizing this could be what he was looking for, he returns to the human survivor and calls for help.

Trivia

• The Return follows a unique writing style in which as the Shipmaster recalls past experiences, the text turns to italics to indicate a shift to a previous time period.
• The Return was adapted into a motion comic series, in the same vein as Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian, with Part One released on April 3, 2010 and ended on April 24, 2010.
• The ending of the motion comic series differs from the short story. In the short story, the Shipmaster finds articles about Forerunner artifacts and finds the human is still alive and signals for medical help. In the animated version, the Shipmaster finds that the humans have captured a Monitor and plans on finding it, even if it means torturing the human.