09/01/2025 Snippet, IRONGHOSTS Part 2.

Back to this nonsense. First part here.

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Nat should have died in the first five seconds, with Oxman joining him at best a minute later. The golem that instantly turned on them instantly turned on them, spinning with a speed that two humans still staggering from their jump couldn’t hope to match. The sword that served it as a hand might have been dull, but it flickered through the air with a speed that made sharpness pointless. A man dies as surely from a ruptured gut as a sliced one, and good deal more slowly.

They lived at first because the second golem moved just as swiftly, its own sword blurring in a vicious arc that smashed against its foe’s suddenly-vulnerable leg. The first golem staggered and crashed in a cloud of dirt and concrete dust, the tip of its blade missing Nat by a good six inches. He would later tell himself that there had been plenty of space between his gut and his death. Absolutely. No need to dwell on the topic at all.

That was later. Right now he was suddenly being grabbed and pulled along by Oxman, an utterly superfluous “MOVE!” ringing in one ear. Nat needed no persuasion. Moving was the right answer. Where to move to could wait a minute; ‘away’ would do in a pinch.

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