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I’m suffering from an overdose of terror right now. I mean, when I’ve got over that then I’ll have time to be decently frightened of you.”
Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story.
Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality.
At about this time a hitherto unsuccessful fortune teller living on the other side of the block chanced to glance into her scrying bowl, gave a small scream and, within the hour, had sold her jewelry, various magical accoutrements, most of her clothes and almost all her other possessions that could not be conveniently carried on the fastest horse she could buy. The fact that later on, when her house collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humor.
When one foot is stuck in the Grey Miasma of H’rull it is much easier to step right in and sink rather than prolong the struggle. Rincewind let himself go.
The enormity of this lie was so great that its ripples did in fact spread out one of the lower astral planes as far as the Magical Quarter across the river, where it picked up tremendous velocity from the huge standing wave of power that always hovered there and bounced wildly across the Circle Sea.
“Inn-sewer-ants,”
In a city where public executions, duels, fights, magical feuds and strange events regularly punctuated the daily round the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection.
Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder—which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.
SOD YOU, THEN, Death said.
pausing only to extract the life from a passing mayfly, and one ninth of the lives from a cat cowering under the fish stall (all cats can see into the octarine)—Death
that gold also has its sort of magical field. Sort of financial wizardry. Echo-gnomics.” Rincewind giggled.
“What’s holding you?” he gasped. “N-nothing!” said Twoflower. “What’s happening?” “I’m being dragged into this pit, what do you think?” “Oh, Rincewind, I’m sorry—” “You’re sorry—”
Death, although exceptionally busy at all times, decided that He now had a hobby. There was something about the wizard that irked Him beyond measure. He didn’t keep appointments, for one thing.
“I suppose I should warn you,” he said, his voice hardly quavering at all, “that this is a magic sword.” Lio!rt let the red silk wrapping drop away into the gloom and flourished a jet-black blade. Runes glowed on its surface. “What a coincidence,” he said, and lunged.
“Die, then,” said the Loremaster, as kindly as he could manage.
But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
BUT AT LAST THE THOUGHT CAME TO ME THAT SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY?
