A pervasive sense of wrongness intruded into Oak’s dreams, but he clung to the sweet absence of remembrance for as long as he could. The waking world would greet him soon enough, and he had no desire to speed things along.

Finally, the whine of a dog in distress dragged Oak to wakefulness, and he opened his eyes. Sunlight blinded him, and he sat up in a confused daze, snatching Geezer into his lap. The dog was shaking and that realization finally shook the cobwebs from Oak’s brain.

“Fuck me,” Oak whispered.

He was sitting in an old, tranquil maple forest. Warm sunlight streamed down from the gaps in the foliage, and a pleasant wind caressed his frame. The air smelled of fresh rain. Little droplets of water were dripping onto him from above, cascading from one leaf to the next like little rivers, and finally taking the plunge to the forest floor.

Distractedly, Oak noted that the wound he had sliced into his forearm had vanished. There wasn’t even a scar. The temperature was pleasant, and the grass he was sitting on was so comfortable it felt unreal. Oak began petting Geezer to calm the shaking dog down and tried to take stock of the extremely confusing situation he found himself in.

They were clearly in a magical forest of some kind because no normal place in Creation was this beautiful. Last he had checked they had both been in Spoke, most likely minutes away from Shaw’s carls busting down the church's door and splitting their skulls. Geezer started licking his face and Oak let him, since the slobber on his cheeks did not seem like an issue of great importance at the moment.

“Fuck me,” Oak whispered again. Ashmedai had really outdone himself this time. He stared at nothing at all and listened to the leaves rustling in the wind.

After an indeterminate amount of time had passed, Oak stood up and started walking about, touching trees, and feeling the texture of bark and vegetation with his hands. Following a session of tree hugging, Oak convinced himself of the fact that he was very much not hallucinating.

Geezer had by now recovered from the sudden shock of finding himself in an unfamiliar forest, and after peeing on a nearby root, he sat next to Oak, wagging his tail excitedly. Oak was not as carefree. Even though things had turned out amazingly well considering their prior circumstances, something was bothering Oak, like a thought at the tip of his tongue that he just could not catch.

All right. Things are extremely weird at the moment, so take stock of your situation, and then do something about it. You're still breathing, and as the old man used to say, as long as you're breathing you can still ruin someone's day, Oak thought and got to work.

This situation was too far outside of Oak’s frame of reference for him to even begin to guess what was happening, and sitting around would solve nothing, or so he thought. At the very least, he would need to secure some water, and even a modicum of an understanding of where he currently was. Luckily, it seemed like it had just rained. There should be water available somewhere around here, wherever here really was, even if he and Geezer could not find a stream or a body of water straight away.

Food was a bigger problem, but if Oak had to, he could go without for days on end. He still had the sword and shield he had taken from the men he had killed, and being armed made him feel a lot better about his situation. Oak picked a direction and started walking, since standing still was just going to make him anxious.

Oak did not have to walk far. The maple forest ended suddenly, and the impossibility of what he was looking at stopped him in his tracks. It felt like the world had been cut with a knife. Right in front of him, the forest ended and a giant workshop began. Old and rusted smelters stood tall, casting long shadows over broken assembly lines and massive piping that went this way and that, creating a labyrinthian beast of metal.

The forges and chimneys of this rusted cathedral of industry reached towards the heavens and vanished into shadow. Such tools would have made even the dwarves of old proud. The thought made Oak sad, and he placed his right fist over his heart, sparing a quick prayer for their souls.

Oak brought his gaze back down and let out a shaky breath. His eyes caught movement. Something insectile climbed out of the shadows under a large assembly line, and just as quickly vanished back into the darkness of the workshop. Oak was not sure, but it might have been the size of a wolf or a large dog. Whatever it was, it did not look friendly. Geezer took one look at it and ran like the coward he was.

Oak considered his options and made a tactical retreat to the welcoming embrace of the forest. He walked after Geezer slowly and glanced behind himself often, to make sure nothing was following him. In his current situation, panicking and getting hasty could cost him dearly.

“Fuck me twice over,” Oak whispered while he walked. He was no longer as impressed with Ashmedai, though he did not say that part out loud.

***

Oak stared at his sword. “Geezer, if I die and you somehow make it out of this place, be sure to tell everyone I died heroically, and don’t mention the fact that I am a bloody moron,” Oak said and tried to find comfort in the solid grip of his blade.

Walking out to meet the thing skulking in the darkness seemed like a terrible idea, but at the moment Oak could not see any other options. That did not mean he would not look for them. Even though Oak was better at bashing things than thinking through them, he was not going to just run out of the forest swinging if he did not have to.

Now that they had left the immediate threat behind, Geezer lied on his back in the grass and rubbed his gray fur against the wet forest floor, flopping his legs in the air like the spaz he was.

“Come along Geezer, we have work to do,” Oak said. The dog barked and followed on his heels.

First, Oak took a gander around the edge of the forest to scout the perimeter, and get an idea about the size of the forested area. The maple forest turned out to be fairly small, and the strange and hostile looking workshop circled it on all sides. He had hoped he could find an easy way out without having to face the darkness and the thing lurking in it, but luck was not with him.

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All around the grove rusted piping covered the walls of the complex, and behemoths of metal rose from the shadows, covered in gears and valves, the purpose of which he could only guess at. The corpses of machines littered the floor, strewn about like the discarded toys of a giant.

It did not take long for him and Geezer to circle the entire maple grove, and as he walked, Oak realized what had been increasingly bothering him. It was so very silent. Now that Geezer was not constantly making loud noises, the only sounds he heard were his own footsteps, the quiet tapping of Geezer's paws and the beating of his own heart pulsing in his ears. Even the aftermath of fresh rain dripping from the leaves above him made no noise at all.

This entire place was deeply unnatural and the faster he got out of here, the better, Oak thought, as his mind turned to the thing lurking in the darkness. He had been consciously avoiding thinking about it, but now that the moment of facing the monster was coming closer, his imagination started conjuring different horrors, each more terrible, insectoid and filled with spikes and hungry maws than the one before it. He had not gotten a good look at it, so his mind filled in the blanks.

A shadow moved suddenly right at the edge of his vision, startling Oak out of his scared musings. When he turned, the thing had vanished again into the darkness of the labyrinthian workshop. A shudder climbed up Oak’s back. It was stalking him. Better to get to it while I still have my courage, Oak thought, and let out a dejected sigh.

Oak quickly found out that planning what he was going to do and actually doing it were two very different things. He could feel his steps slowing as he approached the edge of the forest. Oak stopped at the border between forest and workshop, and stared into the oppressive darkness.

“You stay right here Geezer,” Oak said as he leaned down to scratch the dog behind the ears. Geezer whined and licked his hand. “Don’t worry little fella, I have courage for the both of us,” Oak lied as he walked into the darkness, shield ready and sword in hand.

Why didn’t I take a piss before doing this? Oak asked himself immediately after his boots touched the cool metal of the workshop floor. Apparently, fear of imminent death really gave him a need to go and relieve his bladder.

Stepping through the boundary was a major shock to Oak’s senses. The temperature dropped immediately, and the sounds of the workshop assaulted his ears. It probably was not truly that loud, but the time spent in the utter silence of the maple grove had made his ears sensitive. Chains swung in the cold wind and rattled against each other. Steam hissed, and the smell of wet rust and oil filled the air.

Goosebumps raced across Oak’s skin, and he gripped his sword in a white knuckled grip, cold sweat dripping down his back. He walked past piles of scrap metal and headed towards the large assembly line the monster had originally been hiding under. Straining his hearing to its limits, Oak desperately tried to make out where the thing he had seen might be skulking.

All the while, he felt it. The ugly sensation of eyes filled with hungry malice watching him from the darkness. On his left was a large vat twice his height and Oak put his back to it, making sure nothing could sneak up on him. Then he waited.

The sound of insectoid feet scuttling in the dark reached Oak’s ears. It was all he could do to keep his breathing steady as the beast circled him. He could not see it, but he could hear it bumping into tiny pieces of metal and rattling chains that hung from the ceiling. In the corner of his vision, he could briefly see a black shape moving low to the ground as it vanished once more into the darkness.

Oak did not take the bait and chase after it. It did not take long before the monster grew tired of waiting and it charged out of the darkness, lunging towards Oak’s face. It was a disgusting cross of a cockroach and a giant centipede the size of a fully grown shepherd dog. Its mandibles stretched wide as it flew through the air, rows of tiny legs twitching, dripping with a strange ichor.

What Oak did in response was not pretty, but it got the job done. He roared and met its lunge with a chop of his sword. The monster let out a horrid screech as Oak cut into it and pummeled it out of the air, straight into a pile of metal garbage. He did not give the centipede a chance to recover and bounced on it, stabbing his sword through the creature's chitin plated stomach.

The stench of the fluid gushing out of the strange centipede monster was revolting. The abomination attempted to right itself and have another try at biting Oak’s face off, but he responded by stomping the thing's head section until sickening cracks heralded the breaking of the monster's exoskeleton.

Breathing heavily, Oak took a step back and gagged. The thing was just that disgusting, and the stench of its innards resembled the smell of meat that had been left to rot in the sun. Just my luck, a bloody giant centipede, Oak thought and wiped his mouth. He staggered back to the monster and poked it with his sword twice to make sure it was actually dead. Then he turned it over.

Oak looked at the impossible crime against nature with a sense of fascinated disgust. It was truly revolting. Horrible, but it was impossible to look away from its mandibles, wriggling little legs and wings hiding under the chitin plates on its back. The thing had wings on its back, Oak thought with a sense of growing alarm. Wings.

Oak looked up slowly. There were eyes on the ceiling. So, so many of them. He started running like the Seraphim themselves were on his tail and a tide of chitin and hungry maws followed. He ran towards the maple grove faster than he had ever run before, legs pumping and lungs burning.

A centipede brushed Oak’s shoulder with its mandibles and he dove towards the boundary, rolling over it into the grove and the safety of sunlight. The sounds of the workshop floor disappeared, and a pleasant warmth surrounded him. Despite the centipede's ravenous nature, the wave of chitin behind him did not dare to cross the boundary. The flying monsters banked away from the light and receded back into the darkness.

Oak scrambled away from the boundary, heartbeat thundering in his ears. He could not get enough air.

In and out. In and out. Still breathing.

He tried to calm himself, but even the unnatural warmth of the grove could not banish the chill of the grave from his bones. That had been too close. Way too close.

If Oak had to guess, Geezer had most likely made the wise decision to escape to the middle of the grove. Trusting the dog's cowardice rarely led him astray, so he got up and followed suit, after his legs no longer felt like jelly. Any confidence he had been harboring about their survival had suffered a bit of a setback.

The sight of a gray tail sticking out from behind the trunk of a maple tree gave Oak a hint of Geezer’s whereabouts. The dog was in hiding. Obviously, he was no master of stealth, but at least the goofball had tried.

“Geezer, based on recent events you are certainly the brains of this operation,” Oak said as he flopped down on the wet grass and tried to think of anything else than giant centipedes and the buzzing of wings. “By the Chariot Geezer, by the bloody Chariot.”