Scoundrels' Jig (The Chronicles of Eridia)
Page 39
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John Grommet was still waiting for inspiration or luck to strike when he heard the faint scuff of footsteps off to his left. He looked over and saw a grotesque dwarfish female creature scurrying from boulder to boulder. She seemed to be angling toward the decapitated corpse of the young man who had gotten killed first, but doing so in such a way that the robot wouldn’t see her.
She had to be a gorgim. But what was she doing here, outside of Umperskap?
Then he gasped. Maybe this was what he had been hoping for. Maybe this creepy little gorgim was the stroke of good luck he needed. Maybe she would distract the robot long enough for him to sneak inside the building and grab the gold.
As an eager smile started to form on his lips, he detected the movement of something large and green out of the corner of his left eye and turned to look.
A ten-foot-tall reptilian monster was stalking toward him, its red eyes glowing like embers, its long thick tail swishing back and forth.
John held up his hands, palms out, and made pushing movements toward the monster, as if to ward it off. Instead it kept coming. As it got closer, he could hear the click of the claws at the ends of its toes as they struck the stony ground.
He started backing up. His back thumped against the boulder he had been hiding behind, so he edged frantically to the right, maneuvering around the rock, his eyes never wavering from the hulking reptilian beast.
“P-please,” John whined. “I-I—”
The monster’s eyes narrowed and its lips curled away from its mouth, revealing two lines of fangs the size of arrowheads. A growl rumbled deep in its throat.
The monster raised its hands at him, its fat fingers hooked into claws. With a snarl, it raked its talons through the air, as if demonstrating to John what it would do to him when it caught him.
“Yaaahhhh!” John shrieked. He whirled around and ran as fast as he could.
It was only after he had run blindly for about thirty feet that he realized he was running straight toward the robot.
And it was only after he realized this that he noticed that the robot was no longer standing in front of the door. He didn’t see it anywhere. Where the heck had it gone?
Oh, wait. It had jumped earlier, hadn’t it?
The robot landed ten feet in front of him, its right buzz-saw already shooting toward him like a rocket.
“Don’t!” John cried. “I—”
He had meant to say, “I mean you no harm,” but he wasn’t able to finish the sentence on account of his head getting cut off.
As his head tumbled toward the ground, he had one final, blurring image of his own backside as his body collapsed, and his final thought was a prayer to the Twelve, asking them to please, please, please, look after his dear, saintly mother. [5]