Feeling the filth Oak had accumulated during his stay in the City of God wash away felt absolutely divine. He stood naked under a stream of clear, pleasantly cool water dripping down from the foliage of the maple trees around him, and washed his hair.

  It was an utter mess.

  Cutting the hair off might have been easier than untangling it at this point, but he refused to give up. A man has to draw the line somewhere, and Oak would not give up his hair.

  Since they were in the grove, and clean water was available in significant quantities, he had washed Geezer as well. The hellhound had not been happy with him. Geezer was now sulking somewhere out of sight, like he always did after he got himself so dirty that Oak had to wrestle him to a bath.

  Back home, he usually carried the dog into the river, but beggars can’t be choosers. The stream of water had worked well enough.

  Oak did not step out from under the stream until the water pooling at his feet was as clear as the water flowing from the leafs above. Towels and washcloths were in short supply, so he had nothing to dry himself with, but he cared not.

  They would have to wait for their clothes to dry anyway, before they could leave the grove.

  Status.

  Oak’s infernal engine was a hungry machine. The new powers Ashmedai had granted to him had drained almost every bit of fuel he had scrounged up in the Imperial Library.

  No matter. Creation is filled with souls for me to reap.

  A comparatively dry patch of moss and grass next to the thick trunk of a gigantic maple tree looked inviting, so Oak settled down on this natural mattress and closed his eyes. Surely a little more rest would not hurt?

  A good soldier sleeps whenever possible.

  The gentle glow of the eternal summer sun caressing Oak’s face made spots of light dance on the insides of his closed eyelids. It was pleasantly warm. He was barely awake when Geezer laid down next to him. The hellhound inched his way right against Oak’s side and laid his head on his chest.

  In a matter of moments, they were both asleep, and the only sound breaking the tranquil silence of the grove was Geezer’s faint huffing.

  ***

  In Oak’s experience, it was always best to deliver bad news right away, and he figured a secret angel plot to let all sentient life on the continent be destroyed qualified.

  When the three of them broke their fast, he told Ur-Namma everything Ashmedai had revealed during their conversation. The elf was irritatingly unfazed as Oak told him that most of the Choirs might actively hinder their efforts to kill Yam-Nahar, since they wanted to use the dragon as an opportunity to burn Pairi-Daeza to the ground and start over.

  Ur-Namma listened to Oak’s tale without interruption. After Oak was finished, he requested they table the topic for now, and return to it at a later date. The elf wanted to properly think about the implications of the angels' plans before giving his thoughts on the matter, and Oak saw no reason to press the issue.

  He did not have all of his thoughts in order, either.

  “So, Ur-Namma,” Oak said and washed down a bite of hardtack. “Since we are changing the subject, I think it is time to talk about how we are going to get out of Ma’aseh Merkavah. You said you could find a way.”

  Ur-Namma swallowed a swig of water and nodded. “I did say so. Never fear, I do not boast of my abilities lightly. Finding a way out is well within my abilities,” he said. “It should not be too difficult unless we run into unexpected problems.”

  “How are you going to get us out of here?” Oak asked, furrowing his brows. “Escaping from inside a sphere of twisted space seems like a hard task to me.”

  Ur-Namma stretched towards Oak’s rucksack and snatched himself another piece of corned beef. “If I was anyone else but myself, you would be correct. Yam-Nahar’s forces must have ways to leave the sphere, but those routes are certainly well guarded and out of our reach,” Ur-Namma replied, and settled into a comfortable position, leaning against the trunk of a maple tree. “That will not matter. I was born before Mother had finished singing Creation into being. I was there to see the first sunrise crest over the eastern horizon.

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  “You must understand, Mother tended to her Garden from afar. Creation was never meant to withstand her presence,” Ur-Namma said. “That is why even small pieces of her corpse warp reality into shapes it should not take. I can feel the breaking of the natural order in the very marrow of my bones.”

  “I get it. You are as old as dirt,” Oak said. “How does that help us?”

  Ur-Namma wagged his long pointer finger in Oak’s direction. “Such impatience. I’m getting to the point, northerner,” he said. “Divine flesh has twisted space around itself, but Creation yearns to return to its intended state. Folds of space come into being all the time around the city, and I can sense where they are. We can pass through one of them to get outside of the sphere.”

  Oak was elated, though he had his doubts. He could not wait to walk under the open sky again. “What do these folds in space look like?” he asked.

  “To your eyes? Nothing at all,” Ur-Namma replied. “You will have to trust my senses. The hard part will be finding a fold that will take us close to the ground on the other side. It wouldn't do, to go through all of this trouble only to end up halfway up the side of the sphere, and plummet to our deaths during the final stretch of our escape.”

  A shiver traveled down Oak’s spine. “We definitely want to avoid that,” he said. “During my time here, I have come to the conclusion that I despise heights.”

  Ur-Namma graced him with a smile that showed way too many needle-sharp teeth. “Temper your fear, young Warlock,” he said. “Everything thus far has been a small hill compared to the mountains we will have to climb, if we wish to succeed.”

  “Temper your metaphors, skeleton,” Oak muttered. “My fear is my own, and none can part me from it.”

  “You know, before the Doom, I could have put you to death for such insolence.” Ur-Namma sighed wistfully. “Those were better days.”

  Oak stared at the elf. He didn’t know how the bastard managed it, but Ur-Namma was so affable that it was easy to forget who he really was, before he inevitably blurted out something that made Oak grind his teeth together.

  “Sometimes you say things that make me doubt the wisdom of ever letting you out of that stone,” Oak said. “You really need to control yourself when we get out of here.”

  “You have nothing to worry about, my friend,” Ur-Namma said. “Control is my middle name.”

  Suspicion filled Oak’s mind. “Do you even have a middle name?” he asked.

  “Of course I do,” Ur-Namma said.

  “Are you lying poorly on purpose just to annoy me?”

  The elf winked at him.

  ***

  The cobblestones of Ma’aseh Merkavah felt familiar under Oak’s boots. That was a scary thought in and of itself.

  The three of them had finished breaking their fast with no real hurry, before setting out from the safety of the grove. A place where you did not have to sleep one eye open was a rare thing in the City of God, and they all had enjoyed the relative comfort of not needing to be on their guard at all times.

  For the first time, Ur-Namma was at the head of their little formation. The elf was leading Oak and Geezer towards a fold in space that felt ‘suitable’ for their purposes. When Oak had asked what that meant, the old general had just grumbled and kept walking.

  Saying the elf can be ornery sometimes is such an understatement, Oak thought. He followed Ur-Namma anyway, since the chances of him finding a way out of the city by himself were practically zero.

  The street they were walking on was lined with little villas and manors, perfect for the merchant class that did not have the wealth of nobles, but liked to pretend they lived in palaces. Land must have been expensive here in the city’s heyday, and yet every manor had a yard full of dead trees surrounding it.

  This had been the type of place where every household had at least a couple of servants. And a gardener.

  Looking at the neighborhood as a whole gave Oak the impression that every family on the street had been in a competition to see who was the biggest numbskull of them all. The metrics were the height of your fence and the width of your porch. Extra points had surely been awarded if the family children thought the nanny was their mother for the first four or five years of their lives.

  It was revolting. Not an honest cabin in sight.

  Geezer peed on a gaudy wrought-iron gate with spikes at the top to keep unwanted guests on the outside. Oak grinned. He hoped the ugly monstrosity rusted. There was something insecure about putting up a fence with spikes to guard you from your fellow man that rubbed him the wrong way.

  Building such a thing shouted out loud and clear that you thought you needed it. Or, even worse, wished you were important enough to concern yourself with such fears.

  Oak would have liked to travel backwards in time to question the owners of these fences. Is this not your homeland? Are these not your people? What cowardice lingers in your heart? In the Northlands, a man trusted in his own strength to safeguard his home. Building a wall around your house to keep your neighbors at bay would have been the height of weakness, and useless to boot.

  Static defenses only ever delayed the enemy. If someone wanted to raid his home and Oak was not present to put a stop to it, what good was a fence? If he was home, the fence served no purpose because killing folk was the better option.

  Death could not be circumvented with a ladder.

  Ur-Namma stopped mid stride. He lifted a lean arm and pointed up and into the distance, slightly to the right. “Can you see that church up the side of the sphere?” the elf asked in a quiet voice. “It’s a fair bit above the fog covering the streets.”

  Oak squinted in the direction the elf was pointing. “Just about, I think. What of it?” he asked.

  “There is a fold in space hanging past the point of the church’s bell tower,” Ur-Namma said. “Luckily, our destination is not so far as to be in the outer edges of the city, but if the first fold we try is not suitable, that church will be our second option.”

  “Really?” Oak whispered. “You are going to make me climb up the side of the sphere again?”

  Ur-Namma waved away Oak’s concerns. “Hold your horses, my friend. There is no reason to think the fold I’m leading us towards won’t be perfect for our needs,” the elf said. “But it is good to have a back-up plan, in case fate intervenes.”

  “You mean if things go to shit?” Oak asked. In his experience, that was a given.

  “You could produce tears from a stone with your words alone, Oak,” Ur-Namma said and started walking again. “It lifts my spirits to know that the new generations have such a fine command of language.”

  Oak snorted. “I was thinking you are an ornery bastard earlier, but now you are getting bad enough that I feel like voicing the thought is justified,” he said.

  “The search for justification is the realm of lesser creatures,” Ur-Namma replied without missing a beat. “Bend Creation to your liking and make your own meaning, or die in the attempt. That is the only creed I recognize.”

  Oak scratched his unkempt beard and stared at the elf. “Has anyone ever told you that you are an uncompromising fellow?” he asked.

  The only answer he received was the faint sound of Ur-Namma’s fading footsteps, before the elf turned a corner and vanished from view.

  “Mark my words Geezer, that old codger is going to insult someone, and get us all killed when we get out of here,” Oak said.

  Geezer ignored Oak’s musings and jogged after Ur-Namma. Oak picked up the pace and followed along. It wouldn’t do to be left behind.

  ***

  The monument at the center of the square was massive. It was a gigantic cube of red granite covered in bronze plaques. Oak had asked Ur-Namma about them, and apparently each plaque contained the name of a soldier who had fallen in the Empire’s wars. It was a sobering sight. Based on the number of plaques, wars had not been in short supply.

  How in the hells did they transport that gigantic block of stone into the city? If these buildings and streets were not built around that thing, the amount of effort involved boggles the mind.

  The elf was leading Oak and Geezer around the square, and they were currently walking under a tall bridge. Walking straight through the middle would have left them exposed from all directions, so here they were, walking among piles of trash and the support columns holding the bridge in the air above their heads.

  The possibility of having to climb up the side of the sphere for the second time refused to leave Oak alone. It haunted his mind, always surfacing just when he managed to distract himself, and forget what might lay ahead.

  If I need to clamber up that cliff face of a slope again, I’m going to lose it. The memory of almost falling to his death and hanging from a lamppost over the city brought the taste of bile with it. By the Chariot.

  Anything else would do. He opened his mouth to argue for another back-up plan, when Ur-Namma slapped a hand over his lips.

  Oak was about to protest when he heard it. Heavy footsteps, getting closer to their position. He followed Ur-Namma’s lead and pressed himself against a nearby bridge column. The closer the steps came, the heavier they felt, until the very earth shook with every ponderous stomp of enormous feet against the streets.

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then a thunderous crash.

  Two absolutely massive, trouser clad legs descended into view over the side of the bridge, and a piece of railing preceded them, clattering down to the square. Despite the spectacle, Oak’s senses were able to focus on a frightening detail. The being sitting above them was so large that every breath they took resulted in a low rumble. He could feel the resonance traveling through his own chest.

  Oak swallowed, and gave Ur-Namma a questioning look.

  “A giant,” Ur-Namma mouthed silently.

  An actual giant. Fantastic. Just what this day needed.

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