“The name Dread Biter does not inspire confidence,” Oak said. The fact that Ur-Namma did not seem overly worried was the only reason he was not sprinting down the tunnel where they had come from.
“Oh, the worm is quite dreadful, believe me. This specimen is so big that it fills the entire tunnel. The good news is that we are looking at the worm's backside, so it can’t swallow us whole.” Ur-Namma shuffled his feet and stretched his hands towards the low ceiling. “The bad news is that there is no way we can waste time cutting our way through this monster. There is no telling how long it is. We are going to have to circle around it.”
Oak thought about it for a bit. “You know what? I have a really stupid idea, but it just might work,” he said.
“Go ahead, I’m all ears,” Ur-Namma said and Oak told him.
The elf had trouble holding back his smile, which Oak took as a good sign.
Diving back inside the Dream was not a pleasant experience, but it had to be done and so Oak did it. He clad himself in the sparrow's ghost and shot off, flying down the tunnel that was blocked by the giant worm in the real world, dodging spines that swayed in the currents of the Dream.
Oak flew along the tunnel for a time, all senses on alert and eyes peeled, searching through layers of the dream as he traveled. It took a while, but in the end he struck gold and found the Dread Biter’s head. More importantly, he found the worm’s mind and began the slow and arduous effort of slithering inside it.
Worms are very simple creatures. The monster had no wards to speak off and no proper sense of self, which actually made entering its mind harder and easier at the same time. Harder, because its memories were way more simplistic than Oak’s own and he had no ghost of a worm to draw memories from. Easier, because once he got inside, the worm couldn’t offer any real resistance, since it was so stupid.
He poked around for a long while, trying and failing to find a way inside until he brought a split second memory of moving down the tunnel with his eyes closed to the forefront and used it as a point of familiarity to slip inside the monster's mind. Oak was fuming. He had forgotten that worms did not have eyes and wasted a bunch of time.
Crossing the boundary between the Waking Dream and the Dread Biter’s mind was a strange experience. Suddenly, Oak swam in the dark, pathways of sensory input cutting through the absence of light and stretching back out of his sight. Sound and sensation traveled unhindered through the darkness.
Enacting the plan turned out to be pretty straightforward. Oak worked backwards from the worm's mouth, searching for a memory of eating. He swam along the pathways until signals of gnashing teeth and bursting sacks of flesh surrounded him.
It was like stealing candy from a baby. Oak snatched up a promising memory of the worm, eating something with a rich flavor and too many legs for it to be anything pleasant. He took this morsel back to the worm’s mouth and started lightly swiping the memory through the pathways of sensation inside the worm’s mouth.
Like holding a carrot on a stick for a particularly stubborn donkey, Oak drove the worm down the tunnel, crushing everything that stood in its path.
***
“I swear, at one point that thing ran out of monsters to eat since everything with even a single thought bouncing around in its skull had vacated the area, and it started chewing on the walls,” Oak said, giddy with excitement.
“I have to admit, this plan of yours worked a lot better than I thought it would,” Ur-Namma said. The elf was staring at the flattened corpse of some now unrecognizable giant insect with a frown on his face. “I can’t even tell if that is one monster or many smaller ones pulped together.”
“I know,” Oak said with a broad smile on his face. “Isn’t it great?”
Geezer sniffed the smeared mass of chitin and flesh. The hound decided to lick it with great enthusiasm.
“Disgusting,” Ur-Namma said. “To think I let that dog lick my face.”
Geezer showed no signs of being bothered by the elf’s comments and continued to lick the pile of chitin and unrecognizable goop. His tail was wagging in time with the movements of his tongue.
“As much as I hate to stop your fun Geezer, you really should not do that,” Oak said and pulled the dog away from the smeared insect. “We don’t have a clue where that thing has been. Or if it's poisonous.”
With great reluctance, Geezer relented and left the insect behind.
They continued walking along the tunnel. Ur-Namma was pushing himself hard. The elf tried to lean on Oak as little as possible and put his spindly legs to work, stumbling on the uneven floor. Geezer padded ahead of them and found another smeared monster.
As the sound of licking started again, Oak groaned. This is going to be a long walk, huh?
The walk was more than long. It was an exercise in frustration. Oak could not imagine what it would have been like to traverse the sewers without the Boon of Darkvision. Walking in utter darkness, fumbling your way around while the weight of the city hung above you. He shivered and pushed all thoughts of the tonnes and tonnes of rock and stone above him away. There was no need to incite his own fears.
Ur-Namma spent quite a lot of time looking at the walls of the tunnel as they walked. The elf was so occupied with the walls that if Oak had not caught him, he would have face planted on the floor of the sewer.
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“I don’t think your stick thin wrists are going to catch you if you fall on your face. Mind telling me what is so interesting about some old bricks?” Oak asked as he hauled Ur-Namma back to his feet.
“It is not the walls I am interested in.” Ur-Namma huffed. “There are scratches and grooves that look like letters carved on the walls, but the worm's passing has ground down the surface of the bricks.”
“So you are staring at carvings you can’t read?” Oak asked, with a puzzled look on his face.
That marked the end of their discussion because Ur-Namma started muttering about northern savages and refused to elaborate further when Oak tried to guide the conversation back to the carvings.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Oak, Geezer and Ur-Namma reached their destination. Oak would have walked right past it if he was traveling in the sewers by himself, but Ur-Namma pointed out a small alcove in the tunnel's wall.
Inside the alcove was a worn down door which swung open after a bit of pulling. A whiff of stale air and dust welcomed Oak as he stepped through the doorway. A steep, dilapidated staircase led from the small room to the upper levels.
Oak poked his head out of the room. “I found some stairs.”
“Somehow, I would be happier if you had found a monster,” Ur-Namma said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Watching the elf bang his shins on the stairs was pretty funny, at least by Oak’s standards, but in the end, Ur-Namma climbed up with a bit of help. After Oak opened another door, the three of them found themselves inside a narrow hallway. The lanterns on the walls had gone out long ago, and the air smelled of rot and old parchment.
“Welcome to the dungeons of the Imperial Library,” said Ur-Namma. “Get your weapons out, Oak, and please take point. I will manage without help for a bit.”
Oak shuffled past Geezer and Ur-Namma so he would be first in line and pulled out his short sword and cleaver. “Why does a library need a dungeon?” he asked.
“Some of the books are unruly. If they have survived the test of time, you’ll see,” Ur-Namma replied.
It did not take long for Oak to understand the need for a dungeon. Some twists and turns later, the hallway opened into what he could only describe as a very long and wide cellblock. The left wall of the block was a series of small cells in two rows on top of each other, each cell housing at least one cantankerous piece of literature.
The tomes were quite large and when Oak, Geezer and Ur-Namma walked past, the ones that were still capable of movement charged the bars of their cells, thrashing against the metal. Some of them had little legs and other, stranger appendages.
Geezer took one look at the occupants of the cells and hid behind Oak’s legs.
“Those books have a lot more teeth than any books I have ever seen,” Oak said and stared at one of the tomes which was trying to reach him with a tongue that was over three feet long.
I am beginning to suspect that the word librarian means something very different to Ur-Namma than it does to me. Let’s put that thought to the test.
“Humor me, would you Ur-Namma? How did the librarians dress?”
“The ones I knew preferred full-plate,” Ur-Namma said distractedly.
The elf had his back towards the cells and he was leaning against a support column in the middle of the block, looking at the spot where the opposing wall met the ceiling. There were fairly large holes in the ceiling, right next to the wall. It looked like something had shaped the stone and created shafts which most likely connected this level to the one above it.
I knew it, Oak thought triumphantly. Though if I had to take care of these books, I would want some armor. And a pair of really good gloves.
Since Ur-Namma was looking at the holes in the ceiling so intently, Oak inspected the shafts as well. They looked strange. Almost like someone had molded the stone like wet clay to form them. Oak squinted. Are there handprints on the stone or am I dreaming?
“Why would anyone make holes through the floor like that?” he asked.
Ur-Namma was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he eventually said, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “I don’t know, and it bothers me.”
“Right. Well, we will not figure it out by just looking at the holes, so how about we continue onwards? We might find an explanation on one of the floors above us,” Oak said.
Ur-Namma nodded and, after giving the holes one last look, the elf started shuffling onwards with a careful gait. Oak offered a shoulder for him to lean on and Ur-Namma accepted with a whispered thank you.
The dungeon was massive, but there was light at the end of the tunnel. Quite literally, in fact, since Oak could see a corner in the distance and a reflection of light on the dungeon wall shining from beyond their sight. They headed towards it.
Many of the books down in the dungeon had rotted away, but every once in a while a book would charge against the bars of its cell, causing a giant racket that echoed down the hall and startled man, elf and hellhound in equal measure, eliciting a string of curses from Oak and Ur-Namma. As they walked, the hint of light got closer and closer until finally they reached the corner.
Since Oak could sense no signs of danger, he peaked around the corner. The rows of cells continued and so did the holes in the ceiling, but there was one difference. There were a couple working magical lanterns on this block.
Light brought a welcome reprieve from the oppressive darkness they had been traveling through, and they stopped to take a drink of water and gather themselves under one of the working lanterns. Ur-Namma was taking a drink, when suddenly the flask dropped from his fingers.
“Oak.” Ur-Namma croaked, and his tone of voice revealed a barely restrained panic.
The hairs on the back of Oak’s neck stood on end. He had never heard such fear in Ur-Namma’s voice. The elf had been flippant when the revenant had attacked them, but there was no sign of that Ur-Namma now.
“What is it?” Oak whispered and clutched his blades.
Ur-Namma was staring at runes that had been carved into the wall of the dungeon. The elf pointed at them with a shaking hand. “Those are dwarven runes.”
The elf turned away from the wall and breathed hard, locking eyes with Oak. In a blink of an eye, the panic was gone, and only Ur-Namma’s iron will remained. The lantern painted shadows on Ur-Namma’s skeletal face and the elf loomed like a visage of the reaper himself, skin pulled tight over the bones.
“There are dwarves in the Imperial Library,” the general of the Old Empire said and gripped the handle of his longsword. “We must run.”