Right, Oak thought. He pulled out his cleaver and stepped forth to meet the pair of charging revenants.

Since projecting telekinetic force through his flames had worked wonders on the chimera, Oak gave it another try. He raised his left hand and pulped the leftward revenant's skull with a well-focused blast of fire.

Smoldering bone fragments peppered the back wall of the entrance hall. It was sublime. The undead fell over like a marionette whose strings had just been cut.

Another step forward. Hesitation is death. Oak leaned away from the revenant's claws and cut its head off with a single swing of his cleaver.

The head tumbled to the floor, and the revenant collapsed. A perversion of life hacked apart and made greater for it. The stillness of the corpse was a beautiful sight. It filled Oak with joy. The shadows of the entrance hall grew darker and his vision wavered. He could feel the Butcher's presence right behind him, leaning over his shoulder.

Ruin is our work, and our work is never over, the Butcher whispered. Can't you feel the blasphemous heartbeats of the meat behind you, desperately calling for the Slaughterman?

To Oak's unending shame, he could feel them. Every discordant beat. The red in the veins of Geezer and Ur-Namma called to him. He wanted to paint the walls with it. Oak shook his head and stumbled. He collided with a wall, and beat his fist against the wood until skin broke and blood stained the ancient planks.

To the Butcher, pain was an unheard voice. It whispered secrets and cajoled to greater carnage. To Oak, pain was just a signal sent by tortured flesh. Skin, muscle, and bone, all begged him to seize their punishment. The pain centered him. He experienced it unlike the Butcher ever could, and in so doing, he pushed the voice inside his head away.

The shadows grew less heavy. Oak's vision cleared, and he leaned against the bloodstained wall. His left hand smarted something fierce, but that felt like a small price to pay for keeping the Butcher at bay. I did not succumb, he thought, and could not help the laugh that escaped from his mouth. Tomorrow is a mystery beyond my sight, but today I am still the master of my own mind. I deny you, Ferryman of Death.

+ 2 Souls

+ 2 Fuel

Oak blinked away the notification from his infernal engine and focused his attention back towards the chimera prowling outside. While he had fought the revenants, and kept himself from surrendering to his own worst instincts, the beast had put out the flames clinging to its face.

The chimera paced in front of the doorway and long lines of drool dripped from its open mouth. Geezer stood over Ur-Namma's unmoving body and stared at the beast with visible apprehension.

Won't be long before that monster finds its courage again.

He stepped away from the wall and shook himself. Oak did not feel as out of it as he had felt when the Butcher had emerged, and taken control in the bowels of the Imperial Library, but the vestiges of mental fog still clung to him. Absent-mindedly, he stomped out the burning, pulped skull of the first revenant he had put down before he walked over to Geezer and Ur-Namma.

"How you doing, buddy?" Oak asked and gave Geezer a once-over. The hellhound looked scared, but otherwise okay. "I think it's a safe bet we don't want to be in this room when our large friend over there tries to squeeze himself through the front door again."

He was about to scoop Ur-Namma up from the floor when the elf opened his eyes. "A large number of poltergeists are closing in on us," Ur-Namma hissed. "Get moving!" With his message delivered, the elf closed his eyes again, and presumably dove back into the Waking Dream.

"Right," Oak said, and flung Ur-Namma's limp body over his shoulder. "Come on Geezer, stay close."

Since Oak had already sent the wraith of the Librarian to prowl the Dream, there was nothing more he could do to keep them all safe from the horrors of the Unreal Sea. He would just have to hope Ur-Namma and the Librarian could deal with a horde of poltergeists, while he and Geezer handled things here in the real world.

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Oak left the entrance hall and made his way through the house as quickly as he could. Geezer followed in his footsteps. He ignored the stairs leading to the second floor and rushed to the back of the house, where he found a small door leading to a back alley. He had no interest in taking this chase above the street level.

Playing tag on the rooftops with a giant chimera seemed like a complicated way to commit suicide compared to just escaping by an alleyway that was too narrow for the beast to fit inside of it.

The chimera roared, and a heartbeat later, the entire house shook. Dust fell down from the ceiling, and shelves and paintings dropped from the walls. It sounded like the beast had burst through the front of the house. Oak ignored the mayhem behind himself and forced the door open. A couple of firm kicks were all it took. He had to bend almost double to fit through the doorway with Ur-Namma on his shoulder, but in the end he squeezed past the door frame.

It would not take long for the chimera to realize they had left the building, but at this point, Oak would take every minor advantage he could get, and be happy for it, no matter how tiny it was. Every old fart back in the Northlands always grumbled about the importance of appreciating the little things in life. Maybe they had a point.

Still breathing, Oak told himself, as he ran side by side with Geezer down the alleyway.

***

They had been running from one alley to the next like a pair of headless chickens for some time, and Oak no longer had any sense of direction. In other words, he was lost.

The sound of shattering clay echoed somewhere behind him. The chimera followed them on the rooftops, since the back alleys were too narrow for its colossal frame.

Ur-Namma twitched occasionally on Oak's shoulder. The elf was sweating like a laborer working in the summer sun, and Oak could sense the ripples caused by his battle in the Unreal Sea. A frigid cold bloomed on his right, a telltale sign that the wraith of the Librarian had just spilled the innards of another poltergeist.

The horrors were getting closer and closer before Ur-Namma and the Librarian destroyed them.

Something tapped Oak's wards lightly, and he almost tripped over his own feet in terror, before he realized no poltergeist would ever do such a thing. Another light tap on the same spot made him understand what was happening. Ur-Namma had deduced he did not know where he was going, and the elf was giving him directions.

"Well done, knife-ear," Oak muttered. He had gotten off course, and he would need to turn left at the end of the alley, if he wanted to get back on track towards the fold in space. The spatial anomaly was their best hope of getting out of this cursed city, and Oak prayed it would not vanish before they reached it.

On second thought, maybe we should take a left before the end of the alley. No, even better. We pretend we are going right.

He slowed down and signaled for Geezer to do the same. Not every building had a backdoor leading to the alley, but enough of them did for there to be some options. Time was of the essence, so Oak chose the first open door with claw marks on it. If he was lucky, the monster who made those marks was still around.

Oak pulled the broken remnants of the door wide open and glanced inside. Bones of rodents and other animals, the nature of which he could only guess at, littered the floor between the large shelves that took most of the space inside the room. It had clearly been the storage space of a shop of some kind.

There were claw marks everywhere, and it smelled of rotting meat and feces. Ghouls. I'm sure of it. Perfect. There was no sign of movement, so he stepped inside.

Without a sound, Oak lowered Ur-Namma on the dirty floor, and left the elf leaning against the wall next to the doorway. The rucksack and its precious cargo went next to the elf. He would not let the rituals get damaged in a fight if he could help it.

"Stay. Guard him," Oak whispered to Geezer, and pointed at the elf. Geezer followed his command and sat down next to Ur-Namma. The dog was used to guarding Oak when he dove into the Waking Dream. He could trust Geezer to stay put, even if a fight broke out.

The handles of his blades felt solid and reliable in Oak's grip, like the very bones of the earth itself. He pulled the cleaver and the short sword free from their sheaths and took a deep breath. He could hear sounds of movement further in the shop. Ghouls scuttling about.

A loud crash above told Oak everything he needed to know. The chimera had caught up with them. It was time to confuse the beast a little.

The ghouls had fallen silent when the chimera landed on the roof. Oak sneaked across the storage room, to the empty doorway leading into the front of the shop, and poked his head around the doorframe. All the shutters were closed, which meant that even the faint light suffusing the gloom of Ma'aseh Merkavah was kept at bay.

If Oak did not have his Boon of Darkvision, he would have had trouble seeing his own hands.

As it stood, he could easily make out a trio of ghouls standing among smashed shelves and displays. It was a sorry sight. Father Time had done his worst, and the ghouls had finished the job. The monsters stared at the ceiling, and they seemed uncertain. He could sympathize. It wasn't every day a giant chimera landed on the roof of your lair.

Without further delay, Oak charged out of the storage room, right towards the ghouls. There was a wild joy in his heart, and a mad laugh bubbled from his lips.

I am a sorrow, dear ghouls. And I have come.

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