“Midden!” said Ridcully.
“Oh, I say,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, shocked.
The Dean and the Bursar crept forward, grabbed a gardener’s foot each, and pulled. Modo slid out of the heap.
“It’s eaten through his clothes!” said the Dean.
“But is he all right?”
“He’s still breathing,” said the Bursar.
“And if he’s lucky, he’s lost his sense of smell,” said the Dean.
The heap snapped at Ridcully’s hat. There was a glop. The point of the hat had vanished.
“Hey, there was still almost half a bottle in there!” Ridcully roared. The Senior Wrangler grabbed his arm.
“Come on, Archchancellor!”
The heap swiveled and lunged toward the Bursar.
The wizards backed away.
“It can’t be intelligent, can it?” said the Bursar.
“All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,” said the Dean.
“Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,” said the Archchancellor.
The heap came after them.
“I wouldn’t call that moving slowly,” said the Dean.
They looked expectantly at the Archchancellor.
“Run!”
Portly though most of the faculty were, they hit a fair turn of speed up the cloisters, fought one another through the door, slammed it behind them and leaned on it. Very soon afterward, there was a damp, heavy thud on the far side.
“We’re well out of that,” said the Bursar.
The Dean looked down.
“I think it’s coming through the door, Archchancellor,” he said, in a tiny voice.
“Don’t be daft, man, we’re all leanin’ on it.”
“I didn’t mean through, I mean…through…”
The Archchancellor sniffed.
“What’s burnin?”
“Your boots, Archchancellor,” said the Dean.
Ridcully looked down. A greenish-yellow puddle was spreading under the door. The wood was charring, the flagstones were hissing, and the leather soles of his boots were definitely in trouble. He could feel himself getting lower.
He fumbled with the laces, and then took a standing jump onto a dry flagstone.