For this dark time, we’ll simply refer to him as “the man.”

There are two reasons for doing so:

First, he fits the general and generally accepted description of an unmodified, male, human-model being-walking upright, having opposable thumbs and possessing the other typical characteristics of the profession; and second, because his name has been taken from him.

There is no reason to be more specific at this point.

In his right hand, the man bears the staff of his Master, and it guides him through the dark. It tugs him this way, that way. It burns his hand, his fingers, his opposing thumb if his foot strays a step from its ordained path.

When the man reaches a certain place within the darkness, he mounts seven steps to a stone dais and raps three times upon it with the staff.

Then there is light, dim and orange and crowded into corners. It shows the edges of the enormous, unfilled room.

He reverses the staff and screws it into a socket in the stone.

Had you ears in that room, you would hear a sound as of winged insects circling near you, withdrawing, returning.

Only the man hears it, though. There are over two thousand other people present, but they are all of them dead.

They come up out of the transparent rectangles which now appear in the floor, come up unbreathing, unblinking and horizontal, and they rest upon invisible catafalques at a height of two feet, and their garments and their skins are of all colors and their bodies of all ages. Now some have wings and some have tails, and some have horns and some long talons. Some have all of these things, and some have pieces of machinery built into them and some do not. Many others look like the man, unmodified.

The man wears yellow breeches and a sleeveless shirt of the same color. His belt and cloak are black. He stands beside his Master’s gleaming staff, and he regards the dead beneath him.