Oak had officially recovered from his brush with starvation. He was ready and willing to complain about food once more.

“How is it even possible to make something edible as dry as this hardtack? I mean, really?” Oak asked.

“Though I agree this is no courtly feast, I can’t complain,” Ur-Namma said. “I went three hundred years without a bite to eat. I shan’t say a bad word about food for the next three centuries if I can help it.”

Geezer ate his salted pork without complaint, so that left Oak as the odd one out. He pointed at Ur-Namma with his half-eaten piece of hardtack and said, “You will come to your senses, you’ll see. A week more of eating this crap and you will be complaining about the state of our meals like a fresh recruit.”

Ur-Namma scoffed. “A general does not complain like a common soldier. He must set an example for his troops,” the elf said. “And before you ask, I consider myself above you in the chain of command, savage.”

“Am I to understand that I fulfill the rigorous standards of the armies of the Old Empire? I must, after all, if I am part of the chain of command, right?” Oak asked. “Truly I’m honored.”

Ur-Namma looked at Oak with a wily grin on his face and said, “Well, if you just let me shave that beard of yours…”

“Don’t you dare, Elf,” Oak said. “You are just jealous you can’t grow a beard in the first place and hide that thing you call a jaw.”

Ur-Namma showed his pointed, needle-like teeth.

Oak lifted his hands in surrender. “Let’s just call it even, shall we? I have the better beard and you have the better chewing equipment,” he said. “By the Chariot, how do you not bite your tongue off every time you eat something?”

The elf did not respond with words. He just clicked his teeth together a few times and hissed.

God had some weird ideas bouncing around her skull when she made elves.

“Right. So that’s that. Let’s talk about something else. How about the weather?” Oak asked.

***

The hall outside was quiet and deserted. Oak, Ur-Namma and Geezer crept out of the storage room, and Oak closed the door behind them so anyone or anything passing through would not notice they had been here. The honor of taking point fell once again on his shoulders. He sneaked out of the hall and into the hallways of the Imperial Library, ears perked and eyes peeled for trouble.

Geezer and Ur-Namma followed like his two shadows.

As they walked along a dark hallway lined with wall hangings and paintings of different elves and men, Oak felt a barely noticeable chill in the Waking Dream around him. Something was different here, and it had changed recently. He had not felt this the day before.

“You feel that?” Oak whispered to Ur-Namma.

The elf nodded and, thanks to the Boon of Darkvision, Oak saw the gesture. It was funny how quickly being extraordinary just became ordinary.

“The feeling is so faint, I can’t tell what it is. Maybe something passed through here?” Ur-Namma whispered.

“Maybe. Hope we don’t run into it,” Oak whispered back.

The vault they were looking for was located in one of the many towers of the library, in a reading room which Empress Aoibheann, Ur-Namma’s sister, had reserved for her own use. As Ur-Namma had explained it, they would have to go to the main hall of the library and take the stairs until they reached the top floor and could enter the tower.

Oak was just about to turn a corner into another hallway, when sounds from his left painted an image to his mind. A procession of walking books was making its way towards them, tiny legs beating the floor in a steady rhythm. He stopped Ur-Namma and Geezer from turning the corner and quickly led everyone to an alcove they had just passed.

The space was not meant for two people and a dog, but somehow they made it work. Oak could see a tiny sliver of the hallway ahead from their hiding place and he watched with bated breath as the books walked past the hallway they were hiding in.

There were small booklets, giant tomes and everything between, all patrolling the halls with their tiny chicken legs. The one at the front had a thick leather spine, and its long tongue was dragging on the floor, leaving a trail of slobber in its wake.

Oak shook his head in amazement. I can forget ever mentioning this adventure. Nobody back home is ever going to believe this, he thought. I never thought I would say this, but John Cutter and every other incurious stuffy bastard near Spoke was right. The elves are bloody barmy. People who read too much were a bit suspicious by Oak’s estimation anyway, and this seemed like proof to him that his intuition had been correct.

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Walking books. What next? If there is a flying pig in this city, I am surely going to run into it.

They waited until all sounds of the marching books had faded before they continued onwards.

“But really, though? Walking books?” Oak asked.

“Think of it this way. There is no need to carry them around when the things can just follow you on their own two feet,” Ur-Namma answered defensively. “Quite a practical invention, in my opinion.”

“You can’t be serious,” Oak said.

“I am and I won’t be convinced otherwise,” Ur-Namma replied. There was a strange tone to his voice, like his heart was not fully in what he was saying.

“Wait a moment. Don’t tell me your sister came up with this nonsense.” Oak groaned. There was no way Ur-Namma would defend something this moronic unless he had a soft spot for the person who came up with the idea.

“Of course not,” Ur-Namma said. Oak could tell the elf was lying. “I have no idea where you got that idea, but it is not true.”

“Sure, sure. Everything is starting to make more sense now. Did she, by chance, keep a pet chimera around the palace?” Oak asked. “Because I told you about that wolf-thing I saw in the city and your face did a funny twitch.”

“I refuse to entertain your delusions,” Ur-Namma said and looked away.

Bullseye, Oak thought. The grin stayed on his face all the way to the entrance of the library.

Like all things in the capital of the Old Empire, the main hall of the Imperial Library was massive. Book shelves as tall as three men combined went on and on in neat rows for what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of feet under the high ceiling hanging above this cathedral to literature and scholarship.

You could have easily fit the fields of multiple families in the building's place and still had room left over, Oak thought, as he gawked at the collection of knowledge. Books walked between the rows and jumped around on top of the shelves without a care in the world. The only sound he could hear was the tapping of small feet.

“Is the second floor just like this one?” Oak asked. He had trouble imagining the amount of books held in the library. Hell, just trying to comprehend the amount of books housed on this floor alone was making his head spin.

“Yes. So are floors three, four and five,” Ur-Namma whispered. The elf seemed to enjoy Oak’s amazement.

The stairs to the second floor connected to the wall on their left, close to the middle point of the library hall. Lucky for them, since the entire rightmost wall was dotted with tall glass windows all the way from floor to ceiling, and Oak could see glimpses of tiny spots of light shining in the gloom of Ma’aseh Merkavah. Magical lanterns burned brighter in the center of the city, chasing away the shadows.

Oak, Ur-Namma, and Geezer did not venture among the shelves. Instead, they circled around the exterior, walking towards the staircase that would take them upwards.

They passed a counter where librarians had probably stood in centuries past, ready to help scholars and mages with all of their needs related to research or literature. Oak found the fact there was a full-face helmet and a pair of metal gauntlets on the countertop endlessly funny.

A different type of work uniform indeed.

As Oak turned his gaze away from the counter, he froze. In the darkness, between the shelves on his right, lay a gigantic tome. He would have never seen it without Darkvision. Oak raised his hand and signaled for the others to stop. The tome was the size of a cow and it had thick chicken legs hidden under its bulk. Rows of sharp teeth covered the edges of its cover. He could not be sure, but he had a feeling the book had noticed them.

Even worse, waves of incoming sound warned Oak of another threat quickly closing in on their position. A figure that was surely a dwarf was leaping between bookshelves, crossing row after row with practiced grace.

“A giant book on our right. A dwarf on top of the shelves,” Oak whispered and signaled for Geezer to circle around from behind. The hellhound stalked into the darkness and vanished between the shelves.

Ur-Namma nodded and moved backwards, pressing his back against a shelf. The elf drew his longsword and kissed the blade. As silently as he could, Oak took off his rucksack and placed it behind the counter. They would be in deep trouble if all their food and water got destroyed in a fight.

It was time to kick some ass. Oak cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. If he could help it, he would kill the dwarf first. Even though the book looked like trouble, nothing thus far had come as close to killing him as the dwarves. If the one who struck him unconscious had finished the job, that would have been it for him.

With a plan of action in mind, Oak sprinted at a bookshelf and jumped, getting a hold of the top of the shelf. He pulled himself up and drew his falchion. That was all he managed before the dwarf the Ears of Amdusias had warned him of leveled a flute in his direction and played a ringing note from it.

A wave of translucent magic struck Oak in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer and he went flying, tumbling head over heels back to the floor below. The impact with the stone tiles was not gentle.

Once the stars had cleared from his eyes, Oak stood back up and took stock of his situation.

The giant book had stood up and even though the massive piece of surely very important literature had no visible eyes, Oak could tell the fucker was staring right at him.

The dwarf walked into view on top of the shelf she had thrown him down from, flute held loosely at her side. She had long hair and her face was a ruin of scars. Something had gnawed her nose off at some point.

“Well, well. What a delightful surprise.” The dwarf rasped. “I am called Alasie. I like my humans tenderized and medium rare.”