Geezer was about to take a bite out of Alasie’s corpse when Oak pulled him away from the fallen dwarf.

“No Geezer, we will not defile the corpse of a dwarf,” he said.

At least not on purpose. Accidents happen to everyone.

“He is right, mutt,” Ur-Namma said, and knelt next to the corpse.

The hellhound looked at them both quizzically. Oak knelt and examined Alasie’s corpse. In death, the female dwarf seemed small and frail. A body ravaged by hunger and littered with scars. Now that the madness had left her, she looked almost relieved as she lay there on the library’s stone floor in a pool of blood.

“It is likely no dwarf alive today has lived even a single moment without the curse of Azidahaka flowing through their veins. May Alasie find rest in whatever Heaven or Hell has claim to her soul,” Ur-Namma said and closed the corpse's eyes. “Go with grace, dear dwarf. You are a daughter of heroes.”

The futility of it all weighed on Oak as he stared at Alasie’s ruined face. She never had a chance. An entire life ruined long before she was even born, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. He was surprised to find how much it offended him.

Oak had always had a choice, while the dwarves had none.

What a horrible fate. Never any choices. Only the tyranny of consequences and the weight of history written by the hands of others.

It made him shiver.

Ur-Namma stood back up, knees creaking like rusty hinges. “We should keep moving. It is only a matter of—”

A frigid cold spread through the Waking Dream around them, and Ur-Namma stumbled. “Dive. Now!” the elf hissed, and dove to the Dream. Oak followed in his wake.

Diving to the Dream always felt like breaching the icy surface of a lake in the middle of winter. This dive felt colder still. Oak gasped for breath as the freezing currents of the Unreal Sea caressed his form. Unblinking eyeballs lined every surface of the library’s twin in the Dream, and pages from books had been nailed to the walls, each nail blinding an eye and dripping with black fluid. Paper fluttered in the air.

If Oak felt the entry to the Dream in his bones, Ur-Namma seemed to feel it in his very soul. The elf screamed when the echoes of pain and suffering tried to shred him to pieces.

“My subjects.” He cried. “Oh God in Heaven.”

Oak turned towards the elf and was taken aback by Ur-Namma’s dream form. Here, the old elf was as he should be. A sleek, muscular warrior dressed in elegant white robes with long silver hair and glowing eyes. The strength of his soul permeated the very air around him, pushing back the unrelenting cold. Oak felt a touch of warmth just from standing in his presence.

In front of them stood a figure who looked a lot like Ur-Namma and yet was utterly alien in its nature. It had the visage of a pale elf, but unlike the general, this elf radiated a cold that brought with it memories of the deepest winters and howling snowstorms. The elf wore full-plate and brandished a spear. Ur-Namma gathered himself and faced their adversary.

“A wraith of a Librarian,” Ur-Namma said. “I should have known.”

Oak felt doubt creeping in the back of his mind. “How fucked are we?” he asked.

Ur-Namma grinned, but the expression felt forced. “In normal circumstances, you would be very dead indeed. But alas, I am here.”

The wraith readied itself for a charge, when Ur-Namma’s voice boomed in the Dream, shaking the walls of the library.

“How dare you strike your sovereign! Stand down your arms, Librarian. Even in death, you owe me your allegiance,” said Ur-Namma of the Tribe of Shara, and the wraith stopped in its tracks.

The wraith knelt in reverence and spoke with a voice filled with awe: “My general. Forgive me. I did not see you for who you were.”

“Rise Librarian. No harm was done, and all is forgiven. I have questions for you,” Ur-Namma said. “Are the upper levels of the Imperial Library secure?”

The Librarian seemed confused. “They must be? Or…or maybe not. I don’t remember,” the wraith said.

“No matter. You have done well. Stand at attention and wait for my orders, Librarian,” Ur-Namma said and turned to Oak. “Do you want him?”

“Back up a bit. What the fuck is a wraith?” Oak asked.

Ur-Namma sighed. “It is an unnaturally powerful ghost, which has kept itself together and accumulated some level of strength. They come into being when a theurgist dives the Dream and can’t find their way back to their own body for one reason or another,” he said and gestured towards the wraith. “So, want him or not? He could be very useful since you could let him out to watch over you when you don’t need him to power your wards.”

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“Sure. How do you want to do this?” Oak asked. His wards had taken a beating during his time in Ma’aseh Merkavah and getting some replenishment sounded great.

“Wait a moment,” Ur-Namma said and addressed the wraith once more: “Librarian. My friend here will take you with us. The Empire needs your strength. Do not resist him.”

“As you wish, general,” the Librarian said and stood still while Oak approached.

Oak grasped the Librarian's icy shoulder and absorbed the wraith. In no time at all, the wraith had passed inside his mind and vanished from the Waking Dream. Oak quickly slotted him in to power his wards and sighed in relief. It felt nice to not have to rely on a single ghost to shield his mind.

+ 1 Ghost

“Let’s get out of here,” Ur-Namma’s dream form said, before the elf vanished.

Oak did not linger in the Dream either, and dove out. Geezer was waiting for them in the real world, looking at their fallen forms with worry. The hellhound kept poking them with his snout until Oak and Ur-Namma convinced the dog of their continued wellbeing.

To be fair to Geezer, suddenly collapsing was usually not healthy behavior.

As fast as they could, Oak,Geezer and Ur-Namma retrieved Oak’s rucksack from behind the counter where the battle had started and made their way to the stairs.

In the towering heights of the Imperial Library, Aiobheann’s vault awaited them.

***

“I don’t mean to insult you or the fine people who built this place. I am just saying you could have told me the ceiling was enchanted to sprinkle water on every open flame in the library,” Oak said, as he climbed up the stairs. “Especially when the only offensive power I have at my disposal is to conjure flames.”

“I forgot. When I realized what had happened, I almost fell over again from sheer amusement,” Ur-Namma responded.

“At least someone is having fun. You can be a right bastard, you know that, right?” Oak whispered.

“Do I ever,” Ur-Namma said and his smile showed way too many needle-sharp teeth.

“Please put away that toothy abomination,” Oak pleaded. “I already have nightmares, thank you very much.”

“I don’t understand why you are so surprised, anyway. It makes perfect sense to protect a body of knowledge as vast as this library against a fire,” Ur-Namma said.

“Easy for you to say. I have never even been inside a library before,” Oak whispered before he could stop himself.

“Oh, is our itty bitty barbarian uneducated,” Ur-Namma teased. “I could not have guessed.”

“Why did I say that out loud?” Oak said and rubbed his face in irritation.

They arrived on the second floor, and Oak’s hopes of a quick ascent to the top floor dashed. The stairs leading to the third floor were blocked with furniture, stone blocks, and random debris. There was no way they would ever get through that.

Oak poked his head out of the staircase, searching for danger. What he found was much stranger than he had expected. It seemed like the entire second floor of the Imperial Library had been transformed into a mushroom farm. Every single bookshelf Oak could see had been converted to a growing platform for some type of brownish green mushroom.

Ur-Namma seemed as taken aback as Oak when he laid eyes on the dwarves' agricultural operation. “Well. Now we know what they have been eating,” the elf said, shaking his head in dismay. “All the books housed here are assuredly lost.”

A section of the ceiling in the very back of the hall glowed and a splatter of rain fell down out of sight. “Seems like we don’t have to guess where they got the water to grow all of this, huh,” Oak whispered. “Good job with the enchanted ceiling, ay?”

“Oh, shut up,” Ur-Namma said. “If I remember correctly, there should be another staircase on the other side. I don’t fancy the idea of crossing the entire floor, but I don’t think we have a choice.”

Since neither Oak nor Ur-Namma could see any other way forward, the three of them ventured inside the dwarven mushroom farm.

The air was more humid on the second floor than it had been on the first, which seemed counterintuitive to Oak. Shouldn’t moisture flow downwards? That’s how he had always understood things. Nevertheless, due to no doubt some dwarven fuckery, the second floor was a wet and misty paradise for mushrooms and mold, while the floor below was a perfectly dry and functional library.

They had walked among the mushrooms for maybe ten heartbeats, and Oak already hated it all with a passion. The stone floor was clammy and with every step, a layer of slime and mold clung to his boots, dragging his feet downwards. He was not the only one having second thoughts. Geezer was staring at the bottom of his right front paw with a look of visible disgust on his doggy face.

“I have slime between my toes.” Ur-Namma wailed in a low voice. “If I fall over, will you just kill me, please?”

Oak instantly felt a little better. “I forgot you were wearing sandals,” he whispered.

“I would like to forget that as well,” Ur-Namma replied. The elf walked with exaggerated care, trying to make sure he would not have to lean on anything for support.

A series of thumps sounded up ahead and a bit to the right of their current position, barely outside of the range of Oak’s magical echolocation. “Do you hear that?” he whispered to Ur-Namma.

The elf nodded. “Describe it, when you can sense it,” he said and drew his longsword.

The thumps got closer and closer until Oak could make out a hazy image. By the Chariot. What is that thing?

He leaned close to Ur-Namma and whispered: “It’s about as tall as two men put together and shaped a bit like an ogre. The head looks like a mushroom cap. I feel silly saying this, but it is a giant mushroom man.”

Ur-Namma nodded. “Peculiar. I was never very interested in dwarven mushroom farming, so I do not know if this is normal or not. I suggest we try to avoid it.”

“Fine by me,” Oak whispered.

They walked to the end of the row they were on and turned left, trying to get some distance from the mushroom man ahead of them so they could sneak past it. The hallway between the corridors of shelves was cloaked in fog and mist, obstructing sight and sound. The world felt muted here, like things were much farther away than they really were.

Oak led Ur-Namma and Geezer past five corridors of bookshelves before he took a right turn and instantly ran into another mushroom man, which had been sitting still against a bookshelf.

No sound from Oak or his companions had reached this blind-spot with enough strength to bounce back to him, and the mushroom man himself had made no sound at all, which meant there had been nothing to hear.

Well, shit, Oak thought, and reflexively set the mushroom monster on fire.