He looked around. The echo of old pain lanced through him. Not just physical, though there was that as well. His joints ached, as if he had been fighting for days. His skin felt raw, and his throat was dry. Through the haze, he saw what might have been great walls of wood or stone, as if there were a city somewhere in the distance.
Pharus knew he should recognise it. A name danced on the tip of his tongue. He felt as if he knew this place… as if he had lived this moment before. What was its name?
He took a step towards the distant walls, and heard a clatter. The ground shifted beneath his feet. The mist dispersed, for just a moment. He froze. The ground was covered in bones. He hesitated. No. Not covered. He was standing on a hill composed of skulls and femurs, of snapped ribs and broken spines. Everywhere he looked, great white dunes rose in silent undulation: a desert of the dead.
His stomach lurched, and the sword slipped from his hand. As it struck the bones, the air throbbed with the reverberation of an unseen bell. A great wailing rose from all around him, like the din of startled birds. But no birds had ever made a sound such as this. It pierced his ears and raced through him, driving out all thought. The world began to spin, and his stomach with it, as the din rose to painful volume. Pharus clapped his hands over his ears and sank down. Everything shook. He heard the bones rattling, as if something huge were moving beneath them, circling him with slow, lethal interest. The mist thinned, and he saw what might have been the trunks of immense trees, rising from amid the bones.
From above, he heard screams – not the cries of birds, but human voices, stretched in unknowable agonies. They echoed thinly, trickling down from impossible heights. He climbed awkwardly to his feet and took a step towards them, not wanting to see, but needing to. The mist swirled about the heights, momentarily revealing the great spiked branches that jutted from the trunks at impossible angles. And on those branches…
Pharus looked away. But he could not block out the screams. A long shadow, as of great wings, swept over him, and the air boomed with the thunder of their passing. He did not look up, even as bones were cast about to slam into him. Even as a red rain began to fall, staining white bones pink.
‘Do you hear them, Pharus Thaum?’
The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. A deep, basso rumble that shook him to his marrow. A sepulchral voice, harsh and grating. Pharus shook his head. ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
‘You are where all men eventually must go,’ the voice continued. ‘You are in the nadir, where all things settle.’ There were shapes in the mist now, horrid, moving things that he could not identify. Stick-legged and jackal-eared, they prowled among the bones, and he turned, trying to keep them in sight. They never came close enough to see clearly, for which he was grateful, but he could hear their hungry, eager panting. Bones cracked between long teeth, and blunted nails pried open runnels of marrow.
‘You are where jackals prowl and beetles scurry. Where bats roost and rats nest. This is the cremation ground, the black hour, the final moment. A place both merciless and of infinite mercy.’
Overhead, things that were not birds swooped and spun in a macabre dance, riding a grave-wind. They dived down through the red rain, as if luxuriating in it. Sometimes, they swooped close, and he thought he glimpsed pale faces set atop leathery bat-like forms. They cackled, circling him, and trilled hungrily as he tried to find some route of escape.
‘Here, the flesh of reason is eaten and the marrow sucked from its bones. Here, only the night wind stirs, and all that there is to see is the abyss between stars. Rejoice, little soul, for you have at last reached that point where all fear dies and true understanding begins. Rejoice, and be welcome.’
Pharus felt something catch hold of him. Fingers like meat hooks fastened upon him and spun him about. A lean figure coalesced out of the mist before him. A tall man, taller than any Pharus had ever seen. Built spare, and dark, with lean features. He was clad in ornate robes of an unfamiliar style, and his head was shaved to the quick. The man released Pharus and spread his arms. Pharus backed away, his shoulder at once frozen to numbness and burning with pain. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded, his voice a shrill rasp.
‘I am he to whom all men must eventually kneel. I am the end of all things.’ The newcomer smiled, but there was no warmth in it. No light. His voice resonated through Pharus, shaking him to his core. The man looked up. Red rain stained his face and robes, but he seemed heedless of it. ‘Do you hear them? I think they scream your name.’
‘That is not my name,’ Pharus said. His heart spasmed in his chest. What was his name? Not Pharus. Why did he think his name was Pharus? He’d had a different name once, hadn’t he? He shook his head again, trying to clear it. As if amused by his confusion, the swooping shapes cackled again, and he heard the throaty, growling chuckles of the unseen carrion-eaters. The tall man’s smile widened, becoming almost a rictus.
‘It is the name of the man you were. A forgotten name for a forgotten life. And those who scream it were known to him. The detritus of a wasted moment. You were taken, and they paid the price. Look.’ The man gestured, extending a brown hand to the mist. It roiled and cleared, and the rain slackened, revealing what had heretofore been hidden. Unwilling, but unable to stop himself, Pharus looked.
He could see their faces, or the echoes of such. Faint, and growing fainter with every moment that passed. Like a tapestry tossed into a fire, the edges of his memories blackened and shrank. He remembered a battle and a sound like a vast gate, swinging shut. He remembered the smell of burning flesh and the yelping howls of cannibal tribesmen. But mostly, he remembered the soft sound of a woman weeping, and a child, crying in fear. He wanted to speak to them, to beg their forgiveness, though he did not know why.
‘Look upon the faces of those you abandoned. Seek their forgiveness.’
‘No. That’s not true. I did not abandon them.’ But as he said it, he knew it to be a lie. Perhaps he had not meant to. Perhaps he’d had no choice. But he’d left them, and his last memory of them was of screaming. Oh, how they had screamed, and he had screamed as well, but his cries and theirs had been drowned out by thunder. By that treacherous thunder. His groping fingers found the sigil on his breastplate and traced the fiery silhouette of the comet, with its twin tails. ‘Sigmar…’ He had prayed for deliverance, and the god had heard him and answered. But not in the way he had wished.
‘Yes. Sigmar did this to you. Do you see it now?’
Pharus flung out a hand as if to push the words away. ‘No.’ He saw the hilt of his broken sword, rising above the bones. He tore it free and turned, anger giving him strength. The tall man spoke lies. They had to be lies, else the truth would tear the heart from him. ‘No. Who are you? Name yourself!’
‘You know my name. All men know it. It is the first name you learn and the last you speak. I am your fellow traveller, accompanying each of you, from cradle to grave.’ The lean face split in a rictus smile – a slash of bone-white through the brown. ‘Say my name, man. Call out to me, as you called out to him, and I will give them back to you. That is in my power. That is your due. I am a just god. But speak my name, and you shall see them again.’
The man drew close, ignoring the blade. As he walked, he swelled in size, until his shadow swallowed Pharus whole. Flesh drew taut beneath robes gone suddenly ragged, and tore, exposing bone. ‘Speak it, Pharus Thaum. Recognise me, and rejoice.’ Long fingers plucked papery skin away, exposing the skull beneath the mask. Eyes like beacons fixed on Pharus, and the sword grew impossibly heavy in his hand. ‘My name, in the tongue of the first men, means nothing. Absence. Null. I am nothing, and I am everything. Do you know me now, man? Will you call out to me, as all men must?’