"But before I begin," he said, glancing back at me, "you claim the world outside changed. Yet you know the name of the dreaded Alhazreds. So the ancient families endured the many ages that passed. Then… which clan do you come from?"

'Oh, interesting. Should I lie?' I thought.

"Why assume you'd recognize it? It's been a thousand years."

"The ancient clans were pillars that supported the magic world for many years. They would not fall easily. You fought like a prodigy, and your knowledge of runes is that of someone taught magic from a young age. But most of all—" His mouth curled into a grin. "You're stalling, which means you know I'll recognize the name."

I clicked my tongue. Well, what now? People in the arcane world had strong reactions to the Alhazred name, but not always negative ones. He was a soul mage, so if he'd ever attended a sabbath, he would've sat in the Third Chamber—

"Alhazred."

The Butcher's face shifted.

It was hard to read the expressions on the thin corpse's brownish-grey face, but I would say: disbelief, then something akin to humor, and finally… relief? That was unusual. Relief was the last emotion people felt when they heard my family name.

"Hehehe, good. Perfect. You should be strong enough then," he half-whispered, more to himself than to me. "I tried looking for your ancestor once, Marwan, before building this place, you know. Couldn't find the man, sadly."

My father. I was surprised. He'd been busy trying to reach the Yith as mana thinned. No wonder he couldn't be found.

"Well," I said, "you found his bloodline."

"But… do you follow in your family's ways, or do you just bear the name?"

Another surprise. 'Was he asking about the abyssal magic? Why would he care about that?'

"I worship the same deities as my ancestors. If you can call that worship, that is."

"Good. Excellent." Another odd reaction. "That makes this easier. We can speak, as one monster to another."

"Why call me a monster?"

"Don't insult me." His tone went flat. "My family was there at the Battle of Atlas. They saw your ancestor's work."

He'd be surprised to learn that "ancestor" was my grandfather, but I let it pass.

"I'll sweeten the offer," he rasped. "Say yes, and I'll give you an answer to that weight you feel when you walk back to bed after a night of study. I'll help you with that tightness when you look someone in the eye and try to explain to them what they can't ever understand—that painful pause. I'll cure that for you."

I went still, locking my eyes with the Butcher.

"Why would you think I'd be interested?"

His smile only widened.

"My wife used to say there are as many versions of us as there are people who remember us—that for each dream, there is another you: a husband, a son, a stranger, a teacher. But men like you and me? We tend to turn up in people's nightmares." He kept my gaze, raising his head slightly. "You have the same eyes I saw in the mirror once, just… stranger?" He spoke the last word almost like a question, the soul of a wizard still curious.

Silence filled the room until I broke it. "Is this the part where you tell me to turn to the right path, go help the orphans, and save the weak?" I asked with raised eyebrows. "Spare me the clichés."

"Fuck no!" he immediately answered, breaking the solemn mood. "I wish I'd been the monster I became from the start. I wish I'd unleashed my abominations the first time those families looked at me wrong. If I'd had the power of my later years, I would've marched into their manors, taken Camila, and razed every last house that stood in my way. She would have understood, and if not… she'd at least be alive. Truly… alive..."

I nodded despite myself at the passionate words before bringing the discussion back on track. "So, why do all this?"

"To find someone who can help me." His gaze slid to the containers. "Did you see the murals at the entrance?"

I nodded at that.

"Then you know who they're about. I made them to remind myself what I am and why I'm here. But crossing that hall… it got harder every time." He exhaled, and some tension left the corpse's face. "You saw the first part of the story. I wasn't born to a grand line. My closest family wasn't even magical. We just had a book on soul magic and some journals left by an ancestor. But that was enough. I was a strange child, you know. Where other children feared monsters, I wanted to meet them. And finally, after my mother ran out of stories to entertain me, she gave me the book. And from it, I learned magic."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

His blind white eyes softened, fixed on a memory.

"Interested in its origin, I started searching for other family members, and it turned out I had relatives in England who could teach me more. And so I traveled there and was introduced to the secret world of the arcane. Oh, how amazing it felt to find out there were others like me. But very soon it turned out that my magic wasn't like the others'. The arts that I was most proficient at were soul manipulation, mutation, grafting... I found out that this branch of magic wasn't welcome among the old noble clans, especially those with ties to the church. I was alone again. You understand that, don't you?"

I frowned at the sudden question.

"What it's like—the loneliness that comes with fear and power."

I stayed silent, but he just smiled and nodded.

"But then she came. Camila—daughter of some high official, betrothed to some even higher official. It was love at first sight, and like in the fairy tales, we managed to defeat her betrothed and run away. All across the ocean to America to build a new life. With mana thinning, singularities were disappearing, and the land was becoming habitable once again. We built a home. Those few years were the best of my life. She was with child. But fate had different ideas." His jaw tightened. "I forsook my twisted magic for love, afraid she would fear me like others. But my lack of power came back to stab me in the back. One day, I returned to the sight of my house burning, with Camila inside. The bastard who did that was my own kin. He severed her soul and set the house ablaze using hellfire. I dived into the fire and pulled out her body, but the flames got to her before I did."

I frowned at that. I was seeing more and more where this was going as I glanced at the cylindrical container.

"I lost my child and nearly lost her. So I took up my magic once again and dived into its most disturbing aspects. I crafted mutants—crawling, squirming abominations of human flesh—and then set them upon those I once considered family. I massacred all of those houses, but for all my power, I couldn't heal her. Once the massacre was done, I came back trying to cure her. I froze her flesh, contained her soul. Medicine, magic, all of it—nothing! Rebuilding her was beyond me. Mana thinned. Still, I climbed, ascended again, learned, failed, all of it only to find more despair. At last, I sealed her spark to keep the soul from drifting. But I realized that the world without mana wouldn't let me continue. So I built this tomb…" he said, looking around.

"You want me to cure your wife," I said.

I thought he would shout another firm "Correct," but instead he looked at me with sad, tired eyes. "No," he whispered weakly. "I want you to kill her."

"What?"

"I… I was selfish. I…" He let the words settle. When he spoke again, his voice was low and even. "I built this tomb. I devised that spell. I did all of it in my madness. Once this place was done, I started designing the tests—but I was sloppy. The sons and daughters of those I'd destroyed gathered for revenge. They caught me outside the gate. I shattered my rings to kill them."

Pieces fell into place. So that's how the mutations could cast magic. They also shattered their rings in the battle. Magic flooded their souls, and he used the Hook to rip them apart. The weapon stored their damaged souls with all the magic that filled them. That's how they cast the spells. No wonder I didn't understand the flow of magic.

I pushed the realization aside and met his eyes.

"And so," he continued, "I crawled back to the throne, knowing I would never finish my work. I almost ended my life. I was supposed to work until the last drop of mana and seal myself only then. But now I couldn't finish all of the tests. I just had the golem and enough magic for one more complete cycle of spells. I sat upon my throne, wallowing in despair. Do you know what pulled me out?"

I let the silence hang in the air.

"Sally," he breathed. "Our dog. My beloved friend and a companion whom both Camila and I loved deeply. I forgot about her—in my madness, I forgot about the creature that loved me unconditionally, a creature we both raised like a child before we had one of our own. But when I looked at her—" His hand reached down the side of the throne as if to touch a head that wasn't there, then curled into a fist. "Her muzzle was almost all white, and she was limping. I… I didn't know why she was limping. I don't know how long I left her to wander this place while I made abomination after abomination."

The man breathed.

"And I realized it. In my madness, in my rush to fix what I broke, I forgot what was important. I promised Camila I wouldn't be a monster. I broke it. I kept her body alive with hellfire wounds and called it love. The truth was simple. There was no cure. Not for a soul cut clean away—no matter how I stitched flesh or studied the undead. All I did was stretch her suffering."

His gaze moved to the nearest cylinder.

"So the second container—is it the dog?" I asked, looking at it.

"The dog? No." He shook his head. A cruel smile bloomed on his face for a second. "That's something else. The dog… But once I admitted I couldn't save Camila, I also realized that there was one creature I could still help. So I used up all of the magic still within me to create my masterpiece."

He looked to the side where the cluttered laboratory table was. I followed his gaze and noticed that there was one spot where all the stuff had been bulldozed to the side. There, two boxes stood.

"So." He looked back at me. "Here is my first offer—and payment in advance. Power and inhumanity won't cure the loneliness, but there are ways to live with it. I had many years to ponder. So here is my advice. If you want relief from that isolation, from being the only one who sees what you see, and most of all, comprehends what you see…"

He paused, letting his words hang in the air. I tried to pretend I was not that interested, but on the inside, I was hanging on to what he'd say. I couldn't lie about that to myself.

"Get a dog."

"…What?"

"Get a dog," he repeated, solemn as scripture. "That's the cure."

I stood there frozen for a second at the absurdity of that answer. "The loneliness of a monster, the lack of understanding from secrets so deep only a few can see them, and the solution is… a dog?"

"Yes."

Was he making fun of me? But his face looked grave. And then I caught it. He said it was both advice and an offer.

"Why does it sound like a sales pitch?"

And he smiled even wider.

"Because it is a sales pitch," said the Butcher. "Don't overthink it."

"Don't overthink an essential part of my entire life?" I asked, doubtful.

"Yes... Life's a fucked-up thing, you know? Only easy to figure out when you're not wasting it on trying to figure it out." He smiled. "Take the advice of a man who had a thousand years to ponder. And get a dog."

I opened my mouth to argue, but finally closed it again, not knowing what to say.

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