Swirling waves, cold enough to burn, lapped against the vessel of Oak's mind. His dreamform crouched in the shallows of the Waking Dream, branches scraping the low ceiling of the Tafari headquarters. Two stingers curved over his shoulders, itching with the yearning to rend minds asunder. Kaarina's Horror, black like the shell of a beetle, drinking in the light. Cluster of Hatred, dark-red like the color of dried blood, saw-toothed and wriggling.

I am the Gallows Tree, leafless and spotted with drizzle. A wretched child of Autumn bending in the foul wind.

The prison's equivalent in the Dream looked bleak. Black blood seeped from the gaps between mortar and gray stone, and Oak spied echoes of enduring despair in the cells on his left. Countless people had dwindled behind those bars, their thoughts and feelings carving familiar and often repeated grooves to the Dream. The currents followed the paths of least resistance, forming loops of depression and anger from the suffering the slaves left behind.

Laughter and joy had rarely graced this place with their presence. The whip and the lash had driven them out not long after the last brick of this keep had been laid and the first chains had snapped shut.

Ur-Namma stood by him in the full splendor of his past. White robes covered his sleek form, and his silver locks danced in an ethereal wind. A vicious-looking glaive materialized in the elf's hand. The blade of the weapon was a void in unreality, cutting through the waves like a hot knife slices through butter.

"I will slip through the ceiling and look around. You take the stairs?" Ur-Namma whispered.

"Works for me."

While Ur-Namma hopped up and flowed through the cracks in the masonry, Oak advanced towards the stairs. He spared a glance at the two minds bobbing in the currents by the spot his body rested in the real world. Geezer and Sadia. The pair would be hard to find if you didn't already know they were there, but he couldn't help his worry.

We need to snuff that spook, and we need to do it quickly.

Oak crept up the stairs as sneakily as a tree could, roots gripping the crevices in the stonework with a featherlight touch. The currents of emotion around him roared and stilled between one moment and the next, thought-stuff spilling into the shallows from dying minds.

Ruptured ontologies coughing up their bile in the final moments of existence.

Baako and Onyeka were hard at work, snatching lives and offering them to the Reaper on a silver platter. Thanks to his familiarity with the siblings' wards, Oak could follow their ascent up the stairs for a scant few heartbeats, before the pair vanished among the waves of interfering emotion and flowing thought.

They really were like two lean rathounds having a field day, sprinting up the stairs with unrestrained glee and leaving the sliced-up corpses of slavers in their wake. Short swords, bucklers, and the ferocity to wield them to full effect were a nasty combination inside a cramped staircase.

Despite Oak's contempt for the banality of their trade, he felt almost sorry for the slavers. He didn't know what events in the Sakyi siblings' past had roused them to such fearless anger against the fleshtrade, but it was clear the pair could hold a grudge with the best of them.

They are poetry in motion. If I were a rat, I would hide in a hole and hope for the best.

Oak peeked over the lip of the second-floor landing, eyes peeled for the enemy spook. The ripples were stronger up here, extending outwards from the hallway leading back towards the front of the keep. He saw nothing, but that meant very little. In the Waking Dream, a man could hide in the shadow of a pebble, waiting for his moment to strike.

Right. Hesitation is death. Since he couldn't spot the spook outright, Oak did the next best thing. He sent his Scout flying down the hallway and sneaked after it, hoping to flush the bugger out. Their adversary was clearly inexperienced and might well lash out when confronted with a foreign memory construct.

If he did, Oak would snuff out the light of his mind, like one would put out a candle.

The raven followed his instructions well, like it always did. It flew from one side of the hallway to the other and back again as it advanced, flapping its tiny wings with some added flair. Nothing too obvious, but noisy enough that a paranoid and scared novice might notice.

And oh boy, did the enemy spook notice.

A statue made of wax burst through one of the many doorways lining ‌the hallway and swung a silvery axe at Oak's Scout. It wasn't a very good swing. The raven danced away from the blow with embarrassing ease and let out an incensed croak at the offending spook.

Ur-Namma was nowhere to be seen, which was a comfort. The elf could never have missed the enemy theurgist's clumsy attempt to destroy Oak's Scout, which meant that he waited in the wings, in case something went wrong.

It was nice to have an overwatch for once.

Oak pounced. He swam through the air and landed on the spook's back, roots and branches forming wicked claws and hooks, curving around the spook like the legs of an arachnid gripping hold of its twitching victim.

"Fuck!" the man shouted.

By Oak's vicious will, Kaarina's Horror and Cluster of Hatred reared back, and snapped down, sinking deep into the Tafari theurgist's chest. Wax parted, meager wards buckled under immense strain, and his trauma weapons sundered the mind beneath, spilling thought-stuff to the four winds.

He snatched two ghosts from the mutilated remains of the spook's mind and grinned to himself. This night just keeps getting better.

+ 2 Ghosts

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Something struck Oak's dreamform with the fury of a falling hill, and his wards screamed. "Fuck!" Spinning, weaving, dodging. Bright flashes of aftershocks arced through Oak's ontology. He had a giant spider on his back. The theurgist reared back to sink his fangs into the top of Oak's head, but he grabbed the spider in a bear hug and bore them down.

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Oak's stingers moved in a blur, but the conniving bastard had the advantage. The enemy had landed the first blow, and Oak's wards were a heartbeat away from total collapse. Scrambling, clawing, flailing. Black, gleaming fangs pressed down on Oak's side, seeking purchase as they smashed against the stone wall of the hallway in a tangle of limbs and branches. A bright flash of memory seeped through. A man tied down on a chair. Pliers and hot irons. Tortured groans and sizzling flesh.

A blade made of the void sank into the spider's head, and the enemy's wards shattered, leaving the mind beneath to its ruin. The attack on Oak's own wards seized. He threw the already disintegrating spider off of himself and scrambled away from the dead theurgist, breathing hard.

"Nice save," Oak said and glanced up at Ur-Namma. He tried his best to calm his frantic breathing, but his body and mind refused to settle, still convinced they were in a fight to the death.

Fucking Hell.

"I am glad to be of assistance, my friend." Ur-Namma kept his gaze on their surroundings. They had cleared the ambush, but one could never be too careful. "Our foe was ruthless. They used their bumbling and inexperienced fellow as a diversion."

"Is that admiration I spy in your voice?"

Ur-Namma huffed. "Merely an observation, Northerner. Nothing more."

"Right. And I'm the Queen of Mashkan-shapir."

"Do you want to be?" Ur-Namma lifted an eyebrow and tapped his jaw with his long, thin fingers. "I didn't know you had royal aspirations. I'm sure with enough time, we could arrange a comparable position for you, or just conquer this city outright."

"Fuck off, knife-ear," Oak said, but he couldn't help the smile that graced his face.

***

When Oak returned to the waking world, he found Sadia and Geezer standing over him, brows furrowed in concern.

"What?" he asked, looking back and forth between the spellsinger and the hellhound.

"You started convulsing. We thought you were going to die," Sadia said and poked his forehead. "You promised not to die on me, remember?"

Geezer nodded. "WE DID PROMISE."

"Well, as you can tell, I am still among the living," Oak replied and got back to his feet. "You can thank Ur-Namma for that; the elf saved my ass."

Sadia grinned and turned to Ur-Namma. "Thank you for looking after Oak's ass."

"Don't mention it." Ur-Namma cackled and walked up the stairs leading to the second floor of the prison.

Oak sighed and shook his head. "You are both insufferable, you know that, girl?"

"What could you possibly mean, dear Oak?" Sadia asked and tried to look innocent. She failed completely.

"Now, don't get smart with me, young lady. I used to be a dumb teenager, so if it comes down to it, I can always lean on experience to secure my victory," Oak replied. His nose felt strange, so he wiped it on his sleeve. The result was a large bloodstain. "Fuck! My nose is bleeding!"

"I COULD LICK IT CLEAN," Geezer said without a hint of insincerity in his big red eyes.

"I mean–no, what am I thinking? Absolutely not." Oak shook his head. "Thank you for the offer, Geezer, but no."

"How about a tissue?" Sadia asked. The little spellsinger rummaged through the pockets of her robes and produced a square of white cloth, offering it to Oak.

"I would love a tissue, thank you," Oak replied and took the offered square of fabric. He blew his nose into it, folded the resulting mess inside the tissue and wiped the aftermath clean. "Erm–Do you want it back?"

Sadia looked at the ruined tissue, closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose. "You can keep it. Consider it a gift."

"Right." Oak put the bloody cloth in his pocket and scratched the back of his head, unsure how to continue the conversation. "We should probably join the others. There is a battle going on, I think?"

"Oh, definitely." Sadia straightened her robes and followed Oak up the stairs. Geezer trotted by the girl's side, wagging his tail. "Though I must say that it didn't look like Yakubu or the Sakyi siblings needed much help."

"They are an enthusiastic bunch, aren't they?"

"Not the words I would use, but I digress."

There were a lot of corpses on the stairs in various states of dismemberment and mutilation. Oak had to drag some out of the way so they could get past. Rolling your ankle because you slipped on a corpse and fell down the stairs was of course hilarious when it happened to other people, but Oak didn't fancy trying it himself.

In his distinguished opinion, much of the humor was lost when you yourself became the subject of misfortune.

Geezer snacked on some ears and fingers on the way up, which both Oak and Sadia studiously ignored. If the hellhound wanted to eat a slaver or two, Oak didn't care one way or the other, but he didn't want to have a conversation about it. He imagined Sadia felt the same way.

What could I even say? It is not a big deal, because he only eats bad people? Now that I think of it, that exact logic did work for the werewolf. Still, let's shelve that for the moment.

When they reached the second floor, Oak, Sadia and Geezer immediately ran into Ur-Namma. The ancient elf knelt on top of a weathered slaver, dagger poised over the poor sod's hammering heart. Lines of blood flowed from the slaver's arms and legs, where Ur-Namma had sliced his tendons, staining the stone floor. The chest of the slaver's gambeson was a ripped open ruin and the point of the elf's dagger teased the soft skin beneath.

"Seize your twitching prey, and rejoice," Ur-Namma hissed. "You are not fit to be an enemy of mine, but you still have a purpose. By Enten and Ziusudra, my teeth long for your heart."

The man screamed, and Ur-Namma just chuckled.

Yakubu stood in the middle of the hallway, covered in blood and oblivious to the surrounding carnage. He barely acknowledged Oak and Sadia's presence.

"Itoro!" The bronze slab of a man roared. "Itoro!"

A dozen hoarse voices shouted back, but none of them belonged to Yakubu's young son. The cacophony lasted a good while, but one by one, the slaves housed on the second floor fell quiet. In the ensuing silence, Yakubu's labored breathing was as loud as a scream of despair. Oak could see the hope draining from his friend in real time.

But then, right when Yakubu's shoulders sagged, a faint sound echoed down the staircase behind them from the floor above. It was more of a croak than anything else, and Oak had trouble making out the words at first, but with every repetition the voice grew in strength.

"Father…Father…Father."

Yakubu turned on his heels so fast he barely kept his feet and charged up the stairs, bloody sword in hand and shield raised.

Oak called upon the flame raging inside his soul and followed.

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