Moving Pictures (Discworld 10)

. . . and became aware of another figure, ridiculously small, erupting from the stairwell.

Victor unslung the pike from his back. What did you do now? When you were dealing with humans you had options. You could say 'Hey, put down that ape and come on out with your feelers up.' You could . . .

A claw-tipped tentacle as thick as his arm slammed down on the stones, cracking them.

He leapt backwards and brought the pike around in a backhanded swipe that drew a deep yellow slash in the Thing's hide. It howled and shuffled around with unpleasant speed to flail more tentacles at him.

Shape, thought Victor. They've got no real shape in this world. It has to spend too much time holding itself together. The more it has to concentrate on me, the less it can concentrate on not falling to bits.

An assortment of mismatched eyes extended from various bits of the Thing.

As they focused on Victor they crinkled with angry bloodshot veins.

OK, he thought. I've got its attention. Now what?

He stabbed at a snapping claw and jumped with his knees up under his chin when a mercifully unidentifiable pseudopod tried to chop his legs from under him.

Another tentacle snaked out.

An arrow passed through it with the same effect as a steel pellet shooting through a sock filled with custard. The Thing screeched.

The broomstick barrelled over the top of the tower, with the Archchancellor feverishly reloading.

Victor heard a distant, 'If it bleeds, we can kill it!' followed by 'What do you mean, we?'

Victor pressed forward, hacking at anything that looked vulnerable. The creature changed form, trying to thicken its hide or grow a carapace wherever the pike fell, but it wasn't fast enough. They're right. It can be killed, Victor thought. It may take all day, but it's not invincible -. . .

And then there was Ginger in front of him, her expression filled with pain and shock.

He hesitated.

An arrow thudded into what might have been its body.

'Tally ho! Take us round again, Bursar!'

The image dissolved. The Thing screeched, threw the Librarian aside like a doll, and lurched at Victor with all tentacles at full stretch. One of them knocked him over, three others dragged the pike from his hands, and then the Thing was rearing up, like a leech, raising the iron pike to knock its tormentors out of the sky.

Victor raised himself up on his elbows and concentrated.

Just real for long enough.

The lightning bolt outlined the Thing in blue-and-white light. After the thunderclap the creature swayed drunkenly, with little tendrils of electricity coruscating across it and making whizzing noises. A few limbs were smoking.

It was trying to hold itself together against the forces roaring around inside its body. It skewed wildly across the stone, making odd little mewling noises, and then, with one good eye glaring balefully at Victor, stepped off into space.

Victor pushed himself up on his hands and knees and dragged himself to the edge.

Even on the way down the Thing wasn't giving up. It was trying frantic evolutions of feather and hide and membranes in an attempt to find something that would survive the fall -

Time slowed. The air took on a purple haze. Death swung his scythe.

YOU BELONG DEAD, he said.

- and then there was a sound like wet laundry hitting a wall and, it turned out, the only thing that could survive the fall was a corpse.

The crowd moved closer in the pouring rain.

Now that all the control was gone the Thing was dissolving into its component molecules, that were washing into the gutters and down to the river and out into the cold depths of the sea.