Oak’s feet were cold.

He blinked his eyes open and looked around. The rock he was sitting on was damp and rough, untouched by human hands. Sunlight streamed from somewhere behind him and shimmered on the walls of the cavern, casting his shadow across the coarse rock.

It was not the only shadow cast upon the wall. There was another shadow, just like his own, and between the black lines of shade, bathed in sunlight, was a pit. It was filled with corpses.

This feels like a dream.

Slowly, Oak followed the shadow to its source with his gaze. He gasped. The Butcher was sitting on a rock and sharpening a blade. Blood dripped from his hands onto the floor. Facing the Butcher like this was a disquieting experience. He was a perfect copy of Oak in every way. The same huge frame, the same dirty blonde hair and beard. A nose which had been broken more times than he could count and a face lined with scars. And yet he was completely different.

It was the posture and the eyes that truly set them apart. While Oak sat there clenching his shoulders, the Butcher lounged, filled with relaxed confidence. An insane delight shone in the Butcher’s eyes as the madman stared at him.

For a reason that Oak could not explain, it felt like all of him was laid bare under the Butcher’s gaze. Like there was no secret that could be withheld from the Butcher’s sight.

“I hope this will not happen every night from here on out. It would ruin my beauty sleep,” Oak said.

“Don’t you worry. This won’t become a common occurrence,” The Butcher drawled.

“What is this place?” Oak asked. Why am I here?

The Butcher shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you think?” he said. It felt like a lie.

Oak looked around and pondered the question. He tried to turn around to see where the light was coming from, but found himself unable to do so. Something was stopping him, holding him back from facing the light.

“Seems like a cave to me. Why can’t I turn around?” Oak asked. “What is out there, outside the cave?”

The Butcher gave him a lopsided grin. “The truth.”

“Bloody useful. If it's your truth, I want nothing to do with it. Truth can cut worse than any blade,” Oak muttered. He examined the pit in the middle of the cavern. There were corpses of dwarves at the top of the pile.

“We need to have a talk, you and I,” the Butcher said. “I want to add more meat to that pit.”

A sick feeling between disgust and fascination was crawling around in Oak’s stomach. “How deep is it?” he asked, even though in his heart he could already guess the answer.

“As deep as it needs to be. We are the Ferryman of Death, and our work is never done.” The Butcher growled. “Not ever.”

Maggots and flies swarmed in the pile of dead flesh. Oak stared at the corpses, unable to turn away from them. “Fine. I admit it. The pile must grow. I want to keep filling that pit. Stacking corpses upon corpses. But I will do it on my own terms,” he said, and wrenched his gaze from the pit and its unnatural allure so he could look the Butcher in the eye.

The Butcher scoffed. “What terms will you negotiate with yourself, Slaughterman? We are nature taking its course. We are the forest fire and the avalanche. You would stop your own bloodstained hand?” he asked.

“I would stop you,” Oak said and found he actually meant it.

The Butcher threw his head back and laughed with delight. “There is not a drop of blood I would not spill. An ocean of red would not satisfy me. It is my calling to cull the herd.”

The way he said it made it seem like it was both a truth and a lie at the same time, but for the life of him, Oak could not figure out what he was missing.

“I know,” Oak said. It seemed fair to lie if the Butcher was lying.

The Butcher shook his head. He looked amused. “No, you don’t.”

Oak was getting frustrated. He was out of balance and on the back foot. Not a set of circumstances he often found himself in. “Are you reading my mind?”

The Butcher ignored Oak’s question and answered with one of his own. “When a man beats himself, what is he left with?”

Oak shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t the foggiest. You tell me.”

“A black eye and torn knuckles,” The Butcher said.

Something about the joke made Oak feel cold all over. Like his mind could not grasp the meaning in the words, but his body could. The cave felt colder than a heartbeat ago. Oak’s knuckles ached.

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“Shut the fuck up,” Oak said. “You worthless piece of shit.”

“Hear, hear,” the Butcher replied.

Blood was thundering in Oak’s ears, and he scrambled to his feet. No matter what, he was done running from his mistakes. Before he even realized it, he had crossed the distance between himself and the Butcher, and he was lying on top of the facet of his own ego, raining punches on the Butcher's face.

No matter how hard he punched, the Butcher never stopped smiling. When Oak finally stopped and staggered backwards, the Butcher's face was a grinning ruin.

“What did I tell you?” the Butcher asked and stood up.

Oak fell on his ass, facing the pit. His knuckles were torn and his own face felt like the Butcher’s face looked. The anger had spilled out of him and left only hollowness behind it. So much effort wasted, just to show what a fool he truly was. A common occurrence.

The Butcher walked up to Oak and crouched down to eye level with him. “There is not a drop of blood I would not spill,” he repeated.

In the Butcher’s eyes, Oak saw the ideal of the Charnel Pit. A chasm filled with corpse-flesh, without end or beginning. His breath quickened and his hands shook. Whether they shook from fright or excitement, Oak could not tell. Bloody hands took hold of Oak’s shoulders and lifted.

He found himself in the air, held aloft by a grip as unyielding as a steel bar.

Laughing in delight, the Butcher threw Oak into the pit. The corpses made way for him and Oak fell into darkness. He screamed and clawed for a handhold, desperate to stop his fall without success. Every time he arrested his descent by gripping onto a cold and slimy hand or a rotten leg, the corpse shook him off and pushed him downwards.

Mocking faces leered at Oak as he fell through a tunnel made of cadavers, each second more horrifying than the last. The tunnel of flesh grew narrower and narrower until the corpses were crushing Oak between them and forcing the air from his lungs. He gasped and croaked for air, but there was no room to breathe.

Maggots and flies crawled on Oak’s face and he screamed without a voice as dead meat held him tight in its cold embrace.

***

Oak sprang up to a sitting position, covered in cold sweat. “By the dead,” he muttered and breathed hard, hands traveling around his body, searching for imagined maggots and flies. He was on the floor of the storage room inside the Imperial Library. It was not real. A dream. Just a dream. Oak hugged himself and shuddered.

“Everything alright?” Ur-Namma asked.

“Yeah,” Oak said. “Just a nightmare.”

“Ah. I imagine you have no desire to go back to sleep?” Ur-Namma asked.

Oak shook his head.

“In that case, I will retire for the night. Wake me up when it feels appropriate to do so. Or if the dwarves find us. If I have to die, I would do it with a blade in my hand,” the elf said and laid down on the floor. He used his sandals and the harness Oak had made of torn curtains as a pillow, and in no time at all, Ur-Namma was fast asleep.

The elf looked strange when he was not awake. He always had an intensity to him, but now it was absent and he just looked old. Oak found it a bit unsettling. It was not how he saw Ur-Namma in his mind’s eye.

“Right,” Oak said to himself. He could not get the Butcher’s laughter out of his head. “Fuck all that.”

Geezer stirred in the corner of the room. The hellhound lifted his head from the floor and looked at Oak quizzically.

“Hello buddy,” Oak said. “Been a rough night so far.”

Geezer turned away and went back to sleep.

Oak sighed and looked at the ceiling. Fuck everything. While he tried to find a comfortable sitting position, the knife wound on his shoulder started aching. Fuck every fucking thing. At least the wound was not bleeding anymore.

It was a long night. Oak kept watch, ears perked for anything moving in the halls outside the little storage room they had holed up in, but nothing disturbed their rest. He was bored to tears, but at least he had no trouble staying awake. The nightmare had seen to that.

He decided to check up on his infernal engine to pass the time.

Trying to feel his own soul still felt strange, like trying to turn his eyes backwards to view his own brain, but Oak managed it once again, and found himself viewing the bright, three layered opaque ball of solid flame.

The spiral of black, gleaming metal flowing back into itself at the center of his being had gained seven more souls since he had last looked at it. The gears turned, ontological fuel flowed, and the furnace burned with ever more intense flames.

Behind the engine and powered by its infernal glow, were his boons. Pyromancy, the Ears of Amdusias and Demonic constitution, now joined by a boon from the Branch of Ipos. Darkvision.

Oak looked at the fount of his power and tried to imagine the future. It was quite hard to see what choices would serve him best in the days ahead. He just did not have experience in fighting with magical abilities or utilizing so many different domains of existence. Nor the breadth of understanding required to see what was possible.

What he had was the good sense to ask for help.

Ur-Namma had been part of battles that shook the foundations of the earth under their feet. The elf should be able to give him some guidance when it came time to choose another boon. Those seven dwarves had been worth a lot. Oak had a feeling he might be able to afford two extra boons by the time they escaped Ma’aseh Merkavah, and he had to make them count.

Even more than advice with his next couple of choices, Oak needed a long-term plan. He would need both versatility and depth of power. It will be a hard balance to strike, he thought. But Ashmedai will help, and I think he was right. I must build a tower which fits my own strengths, and covers my worst weaknesses. It has to be a reflection of me or it will fail.

Watching the souls circle through his engine was hypnotic, but Oak had to bring himself back to the present. It would not do for him to slack too much while on guard duty, after all. He blinked the afterimages of the furnace from his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Soon it would be time to wake up Ur-Namma and Geezer.

Another morning, another breakfast. Hardtack, salt-cured meat, or both at once? What a world.