A leviathan.

Oak's mind was frozen in horror, but luckily his body acted without conscious thought. He grabbed Ur-Namma by the hand and called for Geezer to follow. Legs pumping against the cobbles in a frenzied beat, Oak turned right at the intersection and ran for his life. Escape was their only chance to survive.

Distance. We need distance, Oak thought, as he rushed away from the street the leviathan was barreling down in the Waking Dream. Ur-Namma shouted something, but he paid it no heed. They could converse later if they were both still alive. Alive and capable of conversing, that is. You could live for sometime, even with a purged mind after all.

Distance, or something, just as good. Cover.

A gap between buildings on the left side of the street shone in Oak's vision like a lighthouse, calling a ship in a stormy sea towards a safe harbor. As the churning of the Dream rose towards a crescendo, he threw himself and Ur-Namma into the small alleyway.

Oak felt every single sharp complaint issued by his poor ribs as he smashed down on the pavement and rolled on the uneven cobblestones. Geezer flashed past Oak on the edge of his vision and landed ahead of him and Ur-Namma inside the alley in a dead sprint. Good boy, he thought, before all the higher functions of his mind were flushed away, and the only thing he could do was to hold on to his sanity.

The leviathan passed them by.

It swam across the intersection, and continued its ponderous journey in the Waking Dream, down the street Oak, Geezer and Ur-Namma had fled from. It was unhurried and unassailable. More a force of nature than a beast.

In the shallows of the Waking Dream, a thing like it had no equal.

No part of the horror touched Oak's wards. No tentacle or feeler brushed him by accident, and even so, the only shield between him and the end of his consciousness trembled under the strain of the leviathans passing.

Time did not exist.

In that moment, only the pressure squeezing down upon his wards, and the tidal waves of memory washing over him, were real. He could not tell whether it took a heartbeat or a lifetime, but finally, it ended. The Unreal Sea calmed. The waves stilled, and unbelievably, serenity followed.

Oak shook his head and tried to clear his own thoughts. Like a tiny rowboat at the mercy of a furious ocean. That's what the experience had felt like. The leviathan had been massive. In another league entirely than the one Oak had run into after he had killed Gluk in the fighting pit, and destroyed the poltergeist.

It was a curious thing to be happy about anything related to encountering a leviathan, but he was very glad his first encounter had been with a smaller variant.

A labored breath passed through Oak's lungs. Another, and another. He no longer felt like he was teetering on the edge of the abyss, looking down on the perdition of his mind. It was such a visceral relief he gasped out loud, and his eyes welled with tears.

Still breathing. Still a master of my own thoughts.

"Everybody still alive and well?" Oak asked in a raspy voice.

Geezer had slumped to the ground when the leviathan had swum past, and now the dog was struggling back to his feet. It did not look easy, but he managed it. The hellhound swayed a little before he vomited out his dinner. Geezer retched until only bile dripped from his mouth onto the cobblestones.

By Oak's estimation, that counted as alive, but not well. All things considered, a fine outcome. Distractedly, he noticed a curious arrangement of skeletons leaning against the wall of the alley, right behind Geezer. A rat, in the fangs of a cat, which in turn was in the jaws of a skeleton belonging to some type of canine monster.

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There is always a bigger fish in the sea.

Ur-Namma was already back up on two legs. The elf was leaning against the wall of a wooden apartment building and though his face was pale, and he had a nasty looking purple bruise on his right cheek, he seemed otherwise alright.

"A most unpleasant turn of events," Ur-Namma said. "I am as well as one could be after such a close encounter with a Takla-ha-ma. We are lucky to be alive. The creature which just passed us by hunts in the deep waters of the Unreal Sea."

"That sure was something," Oak replied. "I imagine this is what it would feel like if someone beat my mind with a shovel."

Ur-Namma gave Oak a lopsided grin and gestured toward his face. "You look like it. Your nose is bleeding like a stuck pig."

"Aw shit." Oak groaned and wiped his nose with his sleeve. He stared at the large bloodstain in dismay, before he remembered what these clothes had been through in his time in Ma'aseh Merkavah. There was no saving this jacket, anyway. It was ripped to shreds, and it smelled of centipede guts. He would burn it at the earliest opportunity and get some new clothes to wear.

Something to look forward to.

Geezer looked absolutely miserable. "Come here, boy," Oak hollered, and beckoned the hellhound over. Geezer sat down next to him and pressed himself against Oak's side. He hugged the dog tight. Miraculously, they were both still alive.

"It's okay. You'll feel better in no time at all," Oak whispered to Geezer, and pressed his face in the hellhound's coarse fur. Geezer let out a sad little huff, and hid his face in Oak's armpit. "There, there. It's gone now."

From the corner of his eye, Oak could see Ur-Namma watching the two of them with a sympathetic look in his eyes. "Should we take a brief break here so you two can recover?" Ur-Namma asked. "We can afford it."

Oak was about to give the idea his blessing, when the sound of something running towards their position on the rooftops above killed that idea in the cradle.

"We have in-coming," he whispered, and stood up, drawing his falchion. "Rooftops on my right."

The clear ringing of steel whistled through the air. Ur-Namma had drawn his longsword. Geezer seemed put out by the end of the hug, but when he saw that Oak and Ur-Namma had drawn steel, the hellhound shook himself and got ready for a fight.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Oak thought. Let them come. Maybe killing something will make me feel better.

A giant spider jumped straight over the gap between buildings and vanished from view. Another one followed it. The third spider jumped down into the alley instead and landed right in front of Oak. He lifted his blade and prepared to cut the monster in two with a single swing.

It turned out to be unnecessary. Instead of charging towards him, the spider turned tail and ran away as fast as its long legs could carry it. The eight-legged abomination disappeared into the fog like it had never even existed.

Oak glanced at Ur-Namma, and mouthed, "What in the Hells?"

This was strange, even by the standards of the City of God. In Oak's experience, giant spiders tried to eat his face, not run away when they saw him. The last spiders he had encountered had been downright excited to dine on his corpse.

The sound of roof tiles shattering reached Oak's ears. Something heavy crashed down again and again, moving closer with every violent bang and crack. He realized it was jumping from building to building in single leaps, and his face fell. The spider had not run away from Oak. Something had been chasing it.

With a mighty crash, and the screeching sound of enormous claws searching for purchase on hardened clay, the pursuer of the spiders landed on the roof of a three-story apartment building bordering the narrow alley Oak, Geezer and Ur-Namma were sheltering in.

The Ears of Amdusias gave Oak a preview of what was to come, waves of sound painting a picture to his mind. A giant wolf's head, flanked by two smaller wolf heads at the ends of two thick tentacles. The beast slid into view over the alley, gigantic teeth gleaming in the gloom of the City of God.

Oak tried to swallow the lump in his throat and failed.

It was the chimera he and Geezer had sneaked around in their journey to free Ur-Namma from his imprisonment. Its fur was the gray color of a dark and cloudy sky, and it was the size of a small house. Drool dripped from between the chimera's many razor-sharp teeth and landed on the cobblestones not two paces from where Oak was standing.

The chimera was about to jump again when it froze. The beast sniffed the air and turned its gaze downwards. Three pairs of yellow eyes locked onto Oak, Geezer, and Ur-Namma. The monstrous wolf licked its lips and growled. The rumbling sound echoed in the alley, and it carried with it a promise of carnage.

Oak stared into the eyes of the chimera and cursed his luck. Into the fire indeed. As the old man used to say, when sorrows come, they come not singly. They are legion.

"Of course," Ur-Namma said in a resigned voice. "Another specter of the past, come to haunt me. My dear sister's pet chimera. Wonderful."

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