He lay rigid on the bunk, sweating. The green army blanket which had been wrapped about him lay discarded on the floor. His eyelids twitched, his mind seeing beyond the room, into... ...into the chasm. He stood above it, suspended over the void. The blackness spread beneath him, as familiar as an old lover. The rocks around the edges were the same, but the things around them were not. They grew a little more every time Harald dreamed, as if time were passing within his subconscious. Shapes began to climb over the rocks then, and within seconds, he could see that each shape was—had been—a person. Like the tendrils, they were red instead of black, exposed muscle tissue visible as they crawled to the edge. Even without their skin, he could see faces he knew. He saw his men, his soldiers. He saw his brother Burt and his father. He saw Heinrich, his dead friend from The Adalgisa. The captain looked up at Harald as he crested the edge, and he smiled. It was ghastly: a ghoul's grin to match a ghoul's figure.
