The cellblock was a charnel house of Oak’s own creation. He tried not to look at the corpses of the dwarves as they walked through it. Ur-Namma and Geezer were not in any mood to inspect them, either. Everyone wanted to leave the dungeon behind them as soon as possible.

Oak’s lunch was attempting to escape from his stomach, and he was lightheaded. The wound on the side of his head had stopped bleeding, but it throbbed with a dull pain that made him clench his teeth together. The knife wound on his shoulder ached with every step, a trickle of blood making its way down his side.

Seven souls for two wounds did not seem like too bad of a deal on its face, but Oak felt like he had been run over by a warhorse, and that was only the beginning of his misfortunes.

What a shitty day, he thought and chuckled weakly. There is an understatement of the century. I need a new term to describe the depths of my failure. He felt like he was adrift at sea in a small dinghy with no port in sight. Utterly at the mercy of an uncaring ocean that would have liked nothing more than to drag him down to the depths.

The beast thought that was a marvelous idea, and it wanted to hold the rudder on the way down.

No. No more lies. I am doing it again. Describing the Butcher like it is an invader inside my mind. Like it is not a facet of myself I must face, and eliminate. No longer will I hold on to this falsehood and debase myself. Let it never be said that I am incapable of learning the lesson when it has been presented to me.

There was a sick sense of relief in finally facing who he was. Who he had always been under the self-deception.

No one else can have my mistakes. They have made me who I am.

To Oak’s immense relief, they quickly found stairs leading to the level above. Ur-Namma cursed like a sailor the entire way up the stairs, but Oak could tell that the elf was still relieved to get out of the dungeon. They reached a landing with another set of stairs continuing upwards towards the ground floor and a small hallway leading to the basement of the Imperial Library.

Nobody had any desire to explore the convoluted underground sections of the Library more than they had to, so he led Ur-Namma and Geezer upwards. The dog stayed at the rear, far away from him. That, more than anything else, gnawed at Oak’s heart. It wasn’t like he did not deserve it. He had been a second away from splitting Geezer’s skull.

I’m always sorry. And no matter how sorry I am, it never changes what I did. I’m a bastard and a half.

Just before they reached the ground floor, Oak signaled for the others to wait and sneaked ahead. He focused with every fiber of his being, but he could not hear any sign of dwarves close by. The Ears of Amdusias did not reveal anything or anyone waiting in the hall. Since there was no sign of an ambush, he went back and beckoned the others to join him.

Ur-Namma looked like he was utterly spent when he made it to the top of the stairs. Rivulets of sweat ran down the ancient elf’s face. “Can we find a place where we can sleep and rest? I know it’s dangerous to linger, but I can’t go on,” he said.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it. I need a good night’s sleep as well,” Oak whispered. “My head is killing me.”

“If you weren’t concussed after that dwarf slammed you in the head with a hammer, I would really question your parentage,” Ur-Namma quipped. “The fact your skull is not in pieces is frankly astonishing. Are you certain one of your ancestors is not an ogre, by any chance?”

“Pretty sure the old man would have mentioned something like that,” Oak muttered. He walked around the hall, carefully opening doors, and peeking inside.

Hmm. A storage locker won’t do.

Ur-Namma grinned. “You never know. People can be touchy about that sort of thing. Why, I once knew a man whose grandmother was an ogre. The poor guys' lower canines had more in common with tusks than human teeth, but the fellow never admitted the truth,” he said.

“Maybe the poor man was just dentitionally challenged,” Oak said, continuing his search..

“Oh my, the barbarian is using fancy words. Be careful, that skull of yours might already have a crack in it. If you strain your brain with all those syllables, it just might burst open.” Ur-Namma scoffed. “Leave the thinking to me. I am clearly more suited for it.”

“Considering the events of today, that is a statement even I won’t argue with,” Oak said. He opened a promising-looking door on the other side of the hall and looked inside. “I think I found our resting place. Based on the amount of dust on the floor, the dwarves haven’t had a use for this storage space in decades.”

“Thank God,” Ur-Namma said and shuffled inside. He promptly collapsed against a bookcase filled with rotting manuscripts. The resulting dust cloud caused a coughing fit, which left the elf gasping for breath and sprawling on the floor. Geezer sneezed with such force that his entire body shook from side to side.

Oak quickly shut the door and pressed his ear to it, listening for any signs of movement. Despite the danger, he could not help the grin that was rising on his face.

“Not a word, do you hear me?” Ur-Namma said. “Not a word.”

“My lips are sealed,” Oak replied, and since he could hear nothing creeping up on them to slit their throats, he started clearing some of the dust away.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The hardtack was dry enough without a layer of dust and grime covering it. When Oak was happy with their eating space, he unpacked food and drink for the three of them from his rucksack and handed it out to Geezer and Ur-Namma.

Apparently Geezer was not angry enough to refuse corned beef from Oak’s hand, but the hound swiftly snatched the salty treat from him, and settled down to eat in a corner of the room. All in all, Oak was just happy the dog was willing to come near him at all.

If someone almost murdered me in cold blood, it would take a bit of time for me to trust them again, if I ever would. So I have no right to complain, he thought. He would just have to work on it, little by little.

To get something else to think about, Oak prodded Ur-Namma for conversation, since the elf looked like he had breath in his lungs again. He loved stories about ages past and the elf had literally been there to see it with his own eyes.

“I have told you a bit of my life before I ended up in this city. Would you mind telling me about yours? What was it like to live in Ma’aseh Merkavah before the Doom?”

Ur-Namma swallowed his food down and nodded. “Why not? Though there is a millennia of history to share with you. I could speak for a day and a night and still leave you ignorant. Let me think about where I should begin,” he said.

The elf closed his eyes for a moment and thought in silence. When he began speaking, his voice was gentle and proud, like a father telling a tale of his son's exploits. “Ma’aseh Merkavah began as a settlement of the Tribe of Shara. Aoibheann and I took what remained of our tribe here after the death of the dragon Azidahaka and the downfall of the dwarves. I laid down the first foundation with my own hands.”

It was hard to imagine Ur-Namma doing menial labor, but Oak was willing to entertain the thought for the sake of the story. In his experience, royalty and hard work fit together like cats and dogs.

“Excuse me.” Ur-Namma coughed and took a sip of water. “Our settlement grew quickly. We were located next to a large river, so trade by ship was easy and convenient, and we provided a safe harbor from the perils of the age. The war against the dragons left behind a shattered continent filled with chaos. Chaos which me and my sister were quick to exploit, if I am being honest.

“I grew our army and conquered some of our weaker neighbors. My life during the birth of our empire was spent between campaigning and surveying the building of the city. My sister ruled with wisdom, and trade and blunder filled our coffers with treasure,” Ur-Namma said with evident pride.

That is a nice way of saying you killed a bunch of folk and stole their stuff. Well, I shouldn’t be too hard on the poor guy, glass houses and all that.

“Together we began a golden age that would last for centuries. During the height of the Empire, Ma’aseh Merkavah was a land of milk and honey for elves, men, and any other sentient race who wished to live in the greatest city in the world.” Ur-Namma boasted. “For example, ogres rarely settle in cities, but we had a sizable population living here. We even had a small commune of ratlings living in the city at one point in time.”

“Truly?” Oak asked. “Ratlings lived here?” The very idea was preposterous to him. Living next to ratlings was about as safe as living next to a ghoul nest.

Ur-Namma waved him off. “Yes. This was before they threw their lot in with Abaddon. After that, my only interaction with ratlings has happened on the battlefield. Many times, I rode to the aid of our northern allies to stop a horde in its tracks.”

“Well, not much has changed on that front,” Oak said. “We in the North rarely have trouble with the rats, since our western border is secured by a mountain range and a series of bogs, though once in a while a band of ratlings makes trouble. I have heard that Chadash Merkavah northwest of here deals with regular invasions, though.”

“Chadash Merkavah?” Ur-Namma asked.

“The name is quite telling, yes?” Oak asked. “Many call it the greatest city of this age. The people who fled from this place during the Doom founded it. Some elves settled there, but most headed further west, across the desert.”

“You will have to tell me more about this Chadash Merkava sometime,” Ur-Namma said. “It sounds…promising.”

Oak nodded. “I have never visited, but I would be glad to share what little I know.”

“I will hold you to that,” Ur-Namma replied. “For now, I will get back to my tale.

“As I said, life was good. I spent my days at court with my sister, challenged myself against the occasional monster that required my personal attention, and watched our city and tribe prosper,” Ur-Namma said. His eyes grew misty. “Aoibheann liked to play cards and board games with me. We would play late into the night at the top of the ziggurat and watch the stars.”

“Everything changed when God died.” The elf looked even older than usual and lowered his face in sorrow. “Aoibheann took the death of the Mother very hard. She withdrew to her quarters and her magic. When before she had walked among our people daily, now it was rare to see her leave the ziggurat.”

Every time Oak was reminded of the fact that Ur-Namma had been walking around when God was still alive, he felt a sense of wonder. To him, God had always been a figure of myth and legend. The Creator that had killed herself. Never a living divine.

What it must have been like. To know the Mother was there, always. Suddenly, Oak found himself glad he had been born after The Mother's death. Losing that certainty would have been horrific.

Ur-Namma lifted his gaze from the floor and looked at Oak. “I dealt with the death of God in my own way. The Wars of Faith began almost before God's corpse had grown cold. Twice I had to put an entire city to the sword to avoid outright civil war. I was on campaign for long stretches of time, away from my sister and her growing sorrow.”

“That I regret, most of all,” Ur-Namma said, shaking his head. “I felt like I was the only one who could put out the fires. Now I wish I had delegated more. I used to torture myself with the idea that if I had just been at Ma’aseh Merkavah more often, spent more time with her, I would have been able to keep Yam-Nahar from poisoning my sister's mind. It is useless, of course. There is no guarantee it would have made any difference. But for a long time I could not help myself.”

“If you could go back in time and do things differently, would you?” Oak asked.

“Thought about that yourself I take it?” Ur-Namma asked.

Oak nodded. “All too often.”

“In a heartbeat. But father time is as merciless as they come. There are no do overs. What is done is done, and it's no use crying over spilt milk,” Ur-Namma said. “One way or another, we all have to learn to live with our choices.”

The silence stretched, and Oak sensed story time was over. “Well, I haven’t learned to live with mine yet. But as you said, maybe a goodnight’s sleep will bring some perspective with it,” he said. “Do you mind taking the first watch if I go to sleep?”

“Not at all. I will wake you when it is time to switch. Sleep well, friend.”

A bundled up jacket made for a lousy pillow and a stone floor was no substitute for an actual bed, but Oak was out like a light the instant he closed his tired eyes.