Soul Wars

Chapter six Nadir

The taste of victory was not so sweet as Calys Eltain recalled. The Liberator-Prime sat on a toppled pillar, staring at the gryph-hound that lay listlessly beside her. Calys reached down, and Grip pulled back, out of reach, growling softly. Calys retracted her hand. ‘I am angry as well,’ she said softly. There was no telling whether the beast understood her or not. ‘He seemed to be a good leader. A good warrior. That he is not here now is a… mistake.’

Warriors died. That was their purpose. To die, so that another might not. That was why the Stormcasts were reforged – so that they might die as many times as was necessary, until the war was won. She took a grim satisfaction from the thought. Only Sigmar’s chosen had the will to endure such torment.

But it had gone wrong.

She had been ready to die again. Pharus had saved her, at the cost of himself. A debt she would do her best to repay, when he returned. If he returned. Sometimes it took longer than it ought. Some souls could not be reforged in days, or even months. They took years. Some were lost on their way back to Azyr, drawn to the edges of the realms, where the raw stuff of magic gnawed at the borders of existence.

She feared that whatever disaster had gripped Glymmsforge was not limited to Shyish. She felt it, deep in her bones – a sense of something wrong. As if the fundamental alignment of the realms had been thrown off somehow.

‘What was it?’ she muttered.

‘A cataclysm,’ a deep voice intoned. ‘One unlike any this realm, or any other, has ever weathered before.’

Calys looked up. Lord-Relictor Dathus stood nearby, watching her. He had his skull-faced helm under one arm, and his black mortis armour was covered in ash and other, less identifiable substances. ‘You did well, Calys Eltain. Took command, when it was needed, and held the line. Such qualities are much sought after.’

‘My thanks, my lord. But I did only what was necessary.’

The lord-relictor of the Gravewalkers nodded. ‘Yes. But you recognised what that was, at the time. Few warriors do.’ He came and sat beside her. ‘He requested that you be sent down here, you know. He asked for your cohort, specifically.’

Calys blinked. She hadn’t known. ‘Why?’

Dathus looked away. ‘Who can say? Pharus could be ridiculously cryptic when he put his mind to it. It was one of two reasons he was stationed here, in the dark.’

‘And what was the other?’

‘He was a brave warrior.’

Calys looked away. ‘He liked apples.’ She didn’t know why she said it, but it seemed appropriate.

Dathus looked away. Somewhere, in the dark, bells were ringing. ‘The aftershocks of the cataclysm have faded, but the dead are still in uproar, still stalking the lightless avenues. It will take many weeks to lay them all to rest.’

‘Then it was necromancy?’

Dathus frowned. ‘Some are calling it a necroquake. As good a term as any.’ He looked at her, his face expressionless. ‘Lord-Celestant Lynos has agreed that it is best that I take command down here for the duration of the current crisis. I have spoken to Briaeus and the others. Now I come to you.’ He studied her. ‘You have only recently come down here. If you wish your cohort to be rotated out, I feel it only fair to give you the opportunity.’

Calys glanced down at Grip. Then she shook her head. There was no need to consult with her cohort. Tamacus and the others would follow her lead. ‘No. We will stay.’

‘Good.’ Dathus did not sound as if he had doubted that she would. He leaned on his staff and stared out into the dark ruins. ‘The aether is in uproar. The winds of magic blow strong, even down here. The gate of every tomb rattles, and the shadows are full of faces. We will need to be wary, in the coming weeks and months.’

Calys looked around, though there was nothing to see. ‘It sounds as if Nagash has declared war on Azyr.’ Calys glanced at the lord-relictor.

Dathus laughed harshly. ‘He did that long ago, sister. This is just a renewal of hostilities.’ He lifted his staff. ‘Azyr and Shyish. Apex and nadir. The Heavens are potential writ large. They stir the soul and feed the soil. They bring light to the darkness and cast long shadows. All things are possible, if one but looks to the stars.’ He gestured to the roof of the cavern. ‘But in Death, potential ends. It damps the fires of creation and brings silence to all places.’

He tapped the side of his head. ‘I hear him, in the hollows of my soul. Like a great bell, tolling the end of all days. He wishes to recast us all in his image and make all souls one with his own. He will devour us, wholly and utterly, if we let him.’

Calys ran a hand through her hair. ‘Is the city safe?’.

‘For the moment, and so long as we keep watch over the Ten Thousand Tombs,’ the lord-relictor said. ‘Do you know what lies within them?’

Calys shook her head. ‘Rumours, only.’

‘An army. A legion of the dead, sealed away against the day of Nagash’s return, many centuries ago.’ He smiled coldly. ‘But we found them first and ensured that they would never awaken. Not while the Anvils of the Heldenhammer stood watch here, in the dark. That was Pharus’ task, and one he relished.’

‘And now?’

‘It will be mine, until a suitable replacement can be found.’ He studied her for a moment. He looked as if he wished to say something, but the sudden clangour of bells interrupted him. He sighed and got to his feet. ‘Another empty tomb has been found. Another black soul, loose in these catacombs.’

Calys made to follow him, but Dathus waved her back. ‘No. Briaeus and I will deal with it. You will see to the evacuation of the wounded. We will speak more later.’ He turned, eyes narrowed. ‘I fear that the cataclysm was but a prelude to something worse. Keep your sword close, Calys Eltain.’ His words echoed after him as he strode away. She watched him go and then looked down at Grip.

‘What was it Pharus said? An adventure every day?’

The gryph-hound yawned. Calys snorted. She needed to rejoin her cohort and resume her duties. She looked up. The dark seemed to stretch out in all directions and swallow every sound. An eternal void. She lost herself in it for a few moments. Or perhaps longer. Then, she heard Grip growl. She blinked and shook herself.

A cat was watching her. No, more than one. They prowled among the tombs, tails lashing. Thinking of Dathus’ instructions, she suddenly recalled the child – Elya – and wondered whether she had managed to escape the catacombs. Ordinarily, the child would have slipped her mind entirely. What mattered one child, in such devastation?

Yet… the girl had been important to Pharus. And something about her puzzled Calys. There were hundreds of urchins like her roaming the streets above. So why did this one feel… important?

She shook her head, annoyed. Ever since the wraith had touched her, she had been plagued by wisps of memory. Nothing solid, just snatches of a song that might have been a lullaby, the feel of a small hand in hers; frustrating glimpses of a forgotten time. She looked down at the cats. ‘Well? What do you want?’

The cats scampered away. She followed them. They led her along winding paths, through a field of fallen pillars and crushed tombs. She heard the voices of her fellow warriors, echoing through the ruin. A crowd of Stormcasts and several mortal priests were gathered around a small, angry shape. ‘Where is he? Where did he go?’ Elya screamed, pounding small fists against a hapless Stormcast’s armour. The warrior held his arms a safe distance from the child, perhaps worried about accidentally injuring her. ‘Bring him back!’

The cats scattered into the dark as one of the priests noticed her arrival and bowed low, making way. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.

A Liberator looked at her. One of the ones who had arrived with Dathus. ‘The child – she somehow got past the traps. Our orders–’

‘Our orders are to ward against the dead. Not the living. Let her go.’

‘But–’

Elya squirmed out of her captor’s grip and darted towards Calys. ‘Where is he?’ she cried. ‘Why isn’t he here?’

Calys sank down to one knee, and the child rushed into her unprepared arms. Instinctively, the Liberator-Prime caught and held her. The child felt fragile in her grip, like a thing of spun glass, and small. So small. Murmuring soothingly, she smoothed the girl’s tangled hair. The torn edges of her memory fluttered again across her mind’s eye. It was as if she had lived this moment before, many times. Calys wondered if somewhere in Shyish there were children with her eyes. And if so, did they remember her at all? She pushed the thought aside. ‘Why are you here, Elya? It is not safe.’

‘Where is he?’ Elya glared up at her, on the cusp of panic. She seemed to realise for the first time who she was speaking to. Tear tracks cut through the mask of filth that covered her thin features as she tried to free herself from Calys’ grip. Uncertain, Calys released her. The child backed away, features sharp with fear and fatigue.

‘You mean the lord-castellant?’ None of the other Stormcasts would meet her gaze, as she looked around helplessly. ‘He… I… Child, he is…’

Elya stiffened. ‘He’s gone, isn’t he?’ she said, in a voice old beyond her years. ‘The nicksouls got him. He said they wouldn’t, but they did. The way they got my mother.’

Calys nodded and pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart still hurt, where the wraith had touched it. ‘Yes.’

The child’s eyes were dry, as if she had cried all the tears in her. ‘Father says you come back, when you die. Like Mother.’

Something in the way she said it caused Calys’ heart to spasm. ‘No. We do not come back the way… the way your mother did. But sometimes we do come back.’

‘Will he come back?’

‘If Sigmar wills it.’

‘Will I come back, when I die?’

‘I…’ Calys trailed off. How did one answer such a question? Instead, she opted to avoid it entirely. ‘Your father will be worried. It is still dangerous on the streets. You must go home.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Someone will take you home.’ Then, a moment later, ‘I will take you home.’

The child frowned. ‘You don’t know where I live.’ It almost sounded like a question.

‘You will show me.’

‘Liberator-Prime?’ one of the other Stormcasts said. ‘Shall we accompany you?’

For a moment, Calys imagined a cohort of Stormcasts, tromping through an embattled city to deliver a child back to her father. She shook her head, smiling slightly. ‘No. Stay here. Hold position and continue repairing the defences. I will see her safely home.’ She paused, searching for a rationalisation they would understand. That she understood. ‘It is my duty to evacuate those who need it.’ She looked down at Elya. ‘Come, little sister. It is past time for all children to be asleep.’ She would find Tamacus and the others, and see to beginning the evacuation.

Elya looked up at her. ‘They say Elder Bones takes you when you die. Did he get Pharus?’

Calys felt a chill at the girl’s words. Elder Bones was the name some in Glymmsforge used for Nagash. ‘No,’ she said hurriedly. ‘No, he didn’t.’

And she hoped and prayed that it was so.

In the darkness of Shyish, Nagash looked upon his works and found them good. He stood, rising to his full height, shards of shadeglass falling from his shoulders. He heard the Ruinous Powers howling in fury as a cataclysm not of their making rippled out across the Mortal Realms. He drew some small satisfaction from their impotent rage, even as his own frustration boiled over.

‘It was imperfectly done,’ he intoned. He looked down. Arkhan the Black met his gaze. The Mortarch held an orruk skull in his hand. They stood in the ruins of Nagashizzar, among heaps and mounds of smouldering greenskin bones. Deathrattle work gangs numbering in the thousands laboured in silence to clear the avenues and rebuild what had been destroyed. Arkhan tossed the skull over his shoulder.

‘I have always been of a mind that success should be judged only on its occurrence,’ he said, his voice a hollow imitation of his master’s. ‘That it was done is enough, surely.’

‘Perhaps.’ Nagash looked up. His mind was measureless, a cosmic instrument of many parts. At any one time only small slivers of his true consciousness were active – facets of himself, moulded to conduct particular errands, while the bulk of his attentions were bent to more important matters.

Idly, his awareness passed across these lesser selves, following the amethyst threads that connected them all back to him. He listened as Bal-Nagash, the Black Child, soothed the final moments of a plague-touched mother and her infant, singing to them in a high, sweet voice. He watched as Nagash-Morr, the Reaper-King, manifested upon a battlefield in some forgotten corner of Shyish, wielding scythe-blade in defence of the living and the dead alike. There were darker aspects as well. Things of broken fury and madness, who reaped a steady toll of souls for his eternal legions.

All were him. All were one, whatever their name. Like Arkhan, they spoke with Nagash’s voice and acted on his design. And like Arkhan, they would grow stronger, thanks to the completion of his design. They – and he – would wax in might, until the realms bent beneath their weight. Until even the farthest stars dimmed and far worlds went silent.

He gazed at the sky and saw that it was filled with souls. A thousand – a million – more, innumerable, all spinning, falling, screaming. A flood of souls, descending together in an unceasing tide, drawn down by an irresistible force: him. No longer would they resist his call. No longer would other realms take what Shyish was owed.

To mortals, the changes he had enacted would be all but imperceptible. Their minds were not capable of processing such a dramatic metaphysical shift without help. Some would have an inkling of what had occurred. But they would not know for certain.

To Nagash, however, the change was obvious. Where once the realm had stretched like an endless field of wheat, awaiting the scythe, now it was a whirlpool. A maelstrom of lands and lives, stretching down, down to Nagashizzar and the Black Pyramid. An abyss deeper than time, where even death might die.

‘Look, Arkhan… A void is gnawing at the sky. An absence – an unlight. The circle of time is broken all out of joint, and the sun has become as a black tunnel. The sky becomes an inverted mockery of itself – a shadeglass reflection.’ Nagash reached upwards, as if to touch the sun. ‘I have made it so. I have willed it. This realm is mine. It is me. Sigmar might be the stars, but I am the darkness that stretches between them. All things recede into me, as motes of light dwindle in the black.’ He looked down at Arkhan. ‘I have come into my inheritance at last.’

‘You have cracked open the skies, master. Not just here. The other gods–’

‘There are no other gods before me, my servant. Merely falsehoods, masquerading as divinity. Life, destruction, light, shadow… What are these things but preludes to the inevitable? I am become the totality of existence. And I will cast my light upon all these realms.’ He lowered his hand. ‘I have bent the world, my servant, and made it a shape more to my liking.’

‘You have made it a nadir,’ Arkhan said softly. The Mortarch looked around in what might have been wonder, or perhaps awe. ‘We are truly the lowest point of the Mortal Realms now. The bottom of a well of bones.’

‘Yes.’

Nagash thrust aside a shattered pillar with less effort than a man might have used to swat a fly. He felt swollen – bloated – with the energies he’d called up. They would fade, in time, but for the moment, he was supreme. It was just as well that the Howlers in the Wastes had fled back to their own realms. He might have been tempted to match his newfound strength against theirs in a battle that surely would have compounded the cataclysm.

‘Was this destruction what you intended, my lord?’

‘No. The transformation was to have been silent. The false gods would have been none the wiser, if my formulas had not been altered by the presence of intruders. Now, as you said, they will see and know what I have done.’

‘Given what has been unleashed I should hope so. Otherwise they are blind.’

Nagash looked down at his Mortarch. ‘Humour?’

Arkhan looked up. ‘It seemed appropriate, given the situation.’

Nagash studied him for a moment. ‘Very well.’ He looked up. ‘The outer wave of the cataclysm will have reached even the outermost edge of Azyr by now. Sigmar will know what I have done.’

‘You sound pleased.’

‘I am. Despite my earlier intentions, I find that I wish him to know. I want the betrayer to see that I am at last supreme, in my realm. He is a fleck of starlight, an echo of thunder, but I am Shyish itself. I am death, and death’s shadow. All things come to me eventually. Even gods.’ He turned, staring across the wastes. ‘But for now, I will be content in retaking my realm at last. The squatters will be driven from the temples, and the last underworlds bound to my will.’

‘They will try to stop you.’

‘Let them. Let Sigmar himself come and meet me in battle once more.’ Nagash snatched up a block of shadeglass and tore it in two. He cast the pieces aside. ‘I will break him. I will snuff the stars themselves, if I wish. The God-King will not stand against me.’

‘It is not Sigmar that concerns me, my lord.’

Nagash drew himself to his full height. ‘Sigmar is the only concern. The Ruinous Powers are but vermin, clustered at the threshold of my realm. I will deal with them as and when they choose to pit their wiles against mine. But Sigmar…’ Nagash touched his skull. He remembered things, sometimes. Events that had not happened, or rather, had happened to another him, in another turn of the universal wheel.

In his mind’s eye, he saw a flash of gold and felt the impact – a hammer, wielded by one who was not yet a god, but would be. He felt his skull shiver to fragments and his spirit fly free, seeking escape from the reverberations of that terrible blow. He heard a voice then. The same voice he had heard at the dawn of the Age of Myth, when he had been freed from his mountain-cairn. A hand, blazing like the heart of a star, had plucked him from his cage of eternal night. The one who had freed him, fought beside him… betrayed him.

‘Sigmar is the only concern,’ Nagash said, again. ‘I will cast down the stars and reduce the sun to a cinder. I will topple his golden towers and make of his people a feast for crows and jackals. This, I command.’

Arkhan hesitated. Then, he bowed his head. ‘And as you command, it must be, my lord. Nagash is all, and all are one in him.’

‘Yes. It is good that you remember this, my servant.’

Arkhan looked at him. ‘Humour, my lord?’

‘No. A statement of fact.’ Nagash looked up, as something drew his attentions. The sky above was in constant flux, rippling and twisting as it became used to its new shape. Light pierced this fluttering shroud at a hundred points – souls, some of them, being drawn down into Shyish. But one of them was different. Stronger.

The fiery comet screamed as it fell through the sea of stars. Caught up in the glacial echoes of the cataclysm, it tumbled faster and faster, burning itself a path through the spaces between realms. It blazed with cold fire as it tore through the purple-black skies. It spun in all directions at once, its crackling form twisting and bending with the celestial wind.

As Nagash watched, the firmament seemed to fold around it, twisting and spinning, stars stretching across the curve, becoming scars of light. It tumbled down through the tunnel of worlds and stars, falling faster and faster, until its very shape seemed to stretch across vast distances, and its screams became a sonorous drone.

He could hear its voice now, and taste the echoes of its memories. He even knew its name. Intrigued, he rose up to meet the thing, as it fell screaming through the void. Nagash expanded as he rose, until he filled the sky. He lifted his hands, cupping them beneath the shimmering comet to catch it. As it tumbled into his grasp, he closed his hands about it and peered into its soul. ‘Ah. What a curious thing you are. Fury, with no form to contain it.’

The lightning-gheist had no shape, no true awareness save that it was in pain, from which there was no respite. The broken shards of its memory would bite into its limited consciousness, briefly flashing into perspective before being torn away. These shards became explosions of colour and sensation, and brought a new type of agony. Its screams redoubled in ferocity as it boiled in his grip, lashing out with claws of lightning.

It reeked of Azyr, and of Shyish as well. He knew a reforged soul when he held one. But never had he beheld one in such a state of flux. ‘You stink of the stars, little thing,’ he intoned, reaching out as if to caress the crackling mass. ‘You smell of clear waters and lightning. Are you a new thing under the moon, or something familiar in a new shape?’

Lightning crashed against his talons as the soul tried to squirm free. It was mad and blind, unable to perceive the nature of the being that held it. Slowly, idly, Nagash sank his claws into it and pulled it apart, strand by crackling strand. He unwound it like a knot of thread, studying each strand for some sign of its identity – its original identity, before Sigmar had twisted it into a shape of his choosing.

‘Ah,’ he said finally. ‘Look, Arkhan – a prodigal soul has returned. One born of Shyish and stolen by Azyr. How strong it is. What a warrior it might have made for my armies, in times past.’ Nagash pulled his hands apart, stretching the soul between them. Its screams rose in pitch as its essence was drawn taut.

‘Perhaps it might still make one, my lord.’

‘And why would I waste my strength on such a deed, Arkhan?’ Nagash asked. Some part of him was genuinely curious. It was not often that Arkhan made such suggestions.

‘Fate, my lord. You are its epitome – the ultimate and untimely. Is this, then, not your will? Such a gift, here, now?’ Arkhan stretched up a hand, as if to touch the crackling, shrieking thing. ‘A portent of things to come. You are superior. What better way to show it than to undo what Sigmar has done?’

Nagash cocked his head. He studied Arkhan for long moments, considering. If such a suggestion had come from one of his other servants – Neferata, for instance, or Mannfred – he would have questioned the motives behind it. But this was Arkhan. Arkhan lacked even the illusion of free will – he was but the echo of his master and thought nothing, save that some part of Nagash had thought it first.

And his suggestion was one Nagash had contemplated at length, since the first moment he had realised what Sigmar had done. Sigmar the Usurper, who had taken the souls of the rightfully dead and made them over into something impossible.

Sigmar, whose work Nagash would now undo.

‘You are correct, my servant. Let us begin as we mean to go on.’ Nagash looked down at the struggling thing in his grip. ‘First, we must strip away all falsehood.’ Nagash spread his talons, stretching the struggling soul even more taut between them. He could see the true soul within, the seed of substance from which this shape had grown.

The Stormcasts were not possessed of mortal souls – instead, something of the divine was grafted to them. A bit of the eternal tempest, nestled within them and growing ever stronger, over time. As Nagash did, so too did Sigmar – hollowing out his worshippers, so that something of him might flourish within them. Whether he admitted it or not.

Nagash could not pluck that mote of celestial power loose, no matter how much he might wish to. It was inextricably intertwined with the essence of the soul. To rip it loose would be to destroy the soul and render it useless. In a way, the Stormcasts were as much a part of Sigmar as the Mortarchs were a part of Nagash. Thus did the God-King seek to protect what he claimed, whether it was rightfully his or not.

He could almost admire such tenacity. Whatever else, Sigmar was strong, and Nagash had always respected strength, even though he sought to humble it. But strength alone was not enough. Not now. Nagash was beyond strength. Beyond tenacity. He was the inevitable, and the inevitable could not be denied, even by gods.

Jaws wide, he shrieked at the stars, and in the sound was the creak of uncounted crypts and the rustle of leather wings. Then, with a roar, he tore the crackling shape in two. Husks of tattered lightning wrapped themselves about his forearms as something pallid and lacking substance sluiced to the ground from within them. The lightning coiled and spat like a thing alive, even as it faded away into nothing.

Arkhan knelt beside the hazy shape. He thrust a hand into its centre and rose, dragging it with him, as if it weighed no more than smoke. It was the barest intimation of a human shape, and its misty substance pulsed and roiled. ‘Even shorn of the lightning, it still persists, my lord.’

‘Not all of it. A spark yet remains within it – a spark I will fan into a fire of my shaping.’ Nagash took hold of the shape and gestured, casting strands of its substance into the air. In moments, the shape was reduced to scattered skeins of soul-stuff, which curled and twisted slowly on the air. Nagash studied them for a moment. ‘Now, we begin.’

And slowly, artfully, he began to weave it together once more.

Pharus Thaum stood alone. The air sparked with lightning, and a flat, grey haze hung over everything, hiding the sky as well as the ground. Something shifted beneath his feet, as he took an uncertain step. He wore unfamiliar armour, and the broken sword he held in his aching hand was of an archaic design. He looked down at his breastplate, with its crowned skull and comet markings. ‘What is this?’ he croaked. ‘Where am I?’ Somewhere far above him, something that might have been a carrion bird mocked his question. He looked up and saw only grey clouds, rolling across a colourless horizon. For a moment, those clouds seemed to twist into a shape he half recalled, before they drifted apart.

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?’

Pharus sank to his knees. ‘Nagash,’ he croaked.

‘Yes. I am Nagash. I am the end of all flesh.’ Each word was a hammer blow. The bones that made up the ground rattled with his laughter. ‘And I am your lord and master, little spirit. Whatever your name, you belong to me. Sigmar has given up all claim to you. Bow, and be born anew.’

‘No.’ Pharus turned away, the word like ash on his lips. The mist swirled about him, hemming him in. He could no longer see the faces, but he could hear their cries. He wanted to weep, but tears did not come. Nagash’s face seemed to leer at him from every direction.

‘Yes. Sigmar has cast you aside. And now, in my benevolence, I take you up. Bow, little spirit. Bow, and rejoin those you love.’

‘No,’ Pharus said, but the denial sounded weak. He heard the sound of wings again and felt the world quake. Something circled the spiked trees, and the screams grew louder. Or perhaps there were more of them now. Were those whom he’d left behind among them? He staggered, trying to reach the trees, but they receded further from him with every step, and the red rain fell thick and stinking upon him. He could barely see for the blood.

‘Do you deny the truth of your own eyes, then? Look. See. Memories are wounds in the psyche, little spirit. They leave deep scars and tell stories, if one but has the wit to see and listen. Look. Look.’

A massive hand, as cold as the grave, encircled his head, forcing him to look. Sigmar’s face, as vast as the open sky, was staring down at him, from some impossible distance. Those great eyes, as cold as the arctic wind, met his own, and Pharus felt himself shrivel beneath them. Sigmar had judged him and found him wanting. That was why he had been cast down. Wasn’t it?

‘Sigmar is not just,’ Nagash intoned. ‘Sigmar is a deceiver. Treacherous and cruel. He takes what he wishes and leaves nothing but ash in his wake. Do you see?’

Pharus remembered it all, now. He could still feel the fire of the Anvil, burning his soul clean. It had eaten away at all that he had been, from his last moment to his first, and he’d thought it might consume him entirely. He’d burned and become something else. Burning and becoming, over and over again. The pain had been too great, and when the world had begun to shake, he’d ripped himself from the flames, unable to bear them any longer.

‘Because they were changing you into something you were not. They were burning away all that you had been, and changing it into something… simpler. Easier to grasp. A tool. A lie.’ Nagash’s grip tightened, and Pharus squirmed, instinctively trying to free himself.

‘No,’ he said, his voice sounding high and frightened to his ears. ‘No. That’s not right. That’s not what happened.’

‘But it is. Look. Look close. See the betrayal.’

The mist swirled, and for a moment, he was elsewhere – a great chamber, which echoed with the screams of the newly born and the heat of creation’s fire. The pillars of heaven shook as abominable thunder sounded in the dark. Figures, clad in gleaming war-plate – they had tried to stop him, to thrust him back into the fire.

Pain…

Thunder coursing through him…

The feeling of armour crumpling beneath his fists, the sound of their screams…

He’d crushed them and cast them down. He felt no pleasure at this, only shame. Why could they not see that he did not wish to go? Why did they not understand his agony? Why could he not make them understand?

I name thee Pharus Thaum, the warrior cried, as he cast his lightning…

More pain, so much pain…

He felt again the panic – the nauseating fear – the pain – as he lurched for freedom. Away from the storm, the pain.

‘The stars, the tempest, they called out to you, though you did not know how or why, only that you must reach them and find an end to pain,’ Nagash said. ‘But it was not the stars you heard. It was me. It was my voice, tolling you down to where you were always meant to be. You were born in this realm, as all living things are born only to die. And you recognised that truth, in your torment.’

‘No,’ Pharus said, his voice barely a whisper. Nagash’s grip tightened.

‘Yes,’ Nagash said. ‘You sought to find peace in the dark of creation’s light. Was that not your right? Did you not deserve it – you served and fought and died, and now only desired peace. Silence. Oblivion. Not to burn and become someone new, someone else.

‘But they would not stop. Again and again, they tried to drag you back. They took those you loved from you, and then, when that was not enough, they sought to take all memory of them. To leave you empty, save for the storm.’

Pharus twisted, feeling again the agony that grew with every passing moment. He could not think – could not see, could not feel anything save pain – and then… and then…‘Sigmar,’ he said, half pleading. He reached out, stretching a hand that burned and smoked. Reaching towards Sigmar. Rising above him, a mountain walked. A titan made from starlight, in whose voice echoed the litany of war.

Sigmar, looking down at him, his eyes… sad?

‘No,’ Nagash whispered. ‘Disappointed. A craftsman, briefly examining a broken tool, before casting it aside.’

‘No,’ Pharus said. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘But he did. Sigmar saw you, saw your pain and looked away.’ Nagash laughed, and the sound tore strips from Pharus’ soul. ‘Why did he look away? Had you not served him?’

‘I… I…’ Pharus tried to find the words but could not. The question filled him.

‘You were no longer of use, and so you were cast aside,’ Nagash said. ‘The fate of all useless things, in his realm. But you have use yet, Pharus Thaum. I will remake you. I will cast you into fires of unlight and forge a weapon from your tattered shroud. If you but bow to me, I will give you back what you have lost.’

Nagash released him, and Pharus fell onto his hands and knees among the bones. Broken skulls stared up at him, witch-light dancing in their sockets. Again, he heard screams and smelled smoke. His limbs trembled, as he felt the hammer-stroke of his final blow, as the city – his city – burned. What was its name? Why couldn’t he remember? Why couldn’t he remember anything about the time before the fire and the Anvil?

‘Why can’t I see their faces?’ he croaked.

The skulls spoke with Nagash’s voice. ‘The memory was stolen. Sigmar stripped it from you, as he snatched you away from the predestined end of your story. He took of you what he needed and cast the rest aside.’ The bones began to shift and roll beneath him. He staggered upright, trying to find stable footing. His legs sank into the clattering, churning mass, and something sharp dug into his calves. He screamed – or thought he did – and clawed at the bones, trying to haul himself free.

Pharus looked up and stretched a bloody hand to the starlit expanse now visible above. ‘Sigmar, help me,’ he begged. Sigmar gazed down at him. His eyes were not cold now, but hot. They had swelled to encompass suns, and their glare beat down on him, burning him as the Anvil had done. Sigmar spoke, but Pharus could not understand the words – it came as the roaring of a tempest, driving him flat, deeper into the churning maelstrom of bones. Fleshless hands tore at him, clinging to his limbs, dragging him down.

‘He denies you, Pharus Thaum. You are a useless thing.’

‘That’s not my name!’ Pharus tore himself free and lashed out at his captors, until his knuckles were bloody and exhaustion gripped him. He clambered free and started to wade away from the voices, the thunder and the churning. He had to escape. To get away. To… to… what? A carrion bird flapped alongside him, easily keeping pace. It cocked one black eye at him.

‘It is the only name you have now,’ the bird croaked. ‘The name he gave you. The name on your tomb. Embrace it, and I will give it meaning. Bow, little spirit, and you will have justice. That is my oath to you. Bow, and I will give back all that he has taken.’

Crude stones erupted from beneath the bones, and Pharus staggered back. They rose all around him, like the bars of a cage. He spun, and the black echo of him, trapped in the flat panes of the stones, spun with him. The reflection changed as it moved through the stones, shedding its mortality to become a hulking engine of divine wrath. ‘No,’ he begged. ‘No, do not make me, please.’

‘It is inevitable,’ the carrion bird cawed, from its perch atop one of the stones. ‘Rejoice, for you have found true purpose. All are one in Nagash, and Nagash is all. Bow, Pharus Thaum, and find new meaning.’

Pharus backed away as a massive gauntlet, the colour of midnight, emerged from the stone. The rest of the armoured figure followed, lurching across the bones that cracked and crumbled beneath its tread. As it reached for him, it seemed to lose all cohesion, becoming a tarry mass. Pharus twisted away from it, but the bubbling substances splattered across him. It burned, and he screamed. He tore at his own flesh, trying to scrape away the steaming tar. But his desperate movements only spread the substance.

‘Bow, and become greater than that which was lost. Bow, and see again the faces of the forgotten. Bow, and justice will be yours.’

Pharus sank to his knees, still screaming. He tipped forwards, abasing himself, as the pain ate away at him. He screamed their names, though he thought he had forgotten them, and heard them crying out in welcome. Or perhaps mourning. Nagash’s voice filled him like cold fire, burning him inside as he was burned out.

‘Yes. We shall have justice for the wrongs done to us, you and I. This is my will, and so shall it be. Now sleep, and be made whole.’

Pharus felt the ground beneath him begin to rise. The stones – no, not stones, he saw now, but the tips of great black talons – drew close, folding over him, entombing him. He was caught fast, burning and screaming, as he had been on the Anvil.

Burning, and becoming.