One said, You haven’t heard the last of this.
They vanished.
Death brushed a speck of ash off his robe, and then planted his feet squarely on the mountaintop. He raised the scythe over his head in both hands, and summoned up all the lesser Deaths that had arisen in his absence.
After a while they streamed up the mountain in a faint black wave.
They flowed together like dark mercury.
It went on for a long time and then stopped.
Death lowered the scythe, and examined himself. Yes, all there. Once again, he was the Death, containing all the deaths of the world. Except for—
For a moment he hesitated. There was one tiny area of emptiness somewhere, some fragment of his soul, something unaccounted for…
He couldn’t be quite certain what it was.
He shrugged. Doubtless he’d find out. In the meantime, there was a lot of work to be done…
He rode away.
Far off, in his den under the barn, the Death of Rats relaxed his determined grip on a beam.
Windle Poons brought both feet down heavily on a tentacle snaking out from under the tiles, and lurched off through the steam. A slab of marble smashed down, showering him with fragments. Then he kicked the wall, savagely.
There was very probably no way out now, he realized, and even if there was he couldn’t find it. Anyway, he was already inside the thing. It was shaking its own walls down in an effort to get at him. At least he could give it a really bad case of indigestion.
He headed toward an orifice that had once been the entrance to a wide passage, and dived awkwardly through it just before it snapped shut. Silver fire crackled over the walls. There was so much life here it couldn’t be contained.
There were a few trolleys still here, skittering madly across the shaking floor, as lost as Windle.
He set off along another likely-looking corridor, although most corridors he’d been down in the last one hundred and thirty years hadn’t pulsated and dripped so much.
Another tentacle thrust through the wall and tripped him up.
Of course, it couldn’t kill him. But it could make him bodiless. Like old One-Man-Bucket. A fate worse than death, probably.
He pulled himself up. The ceiling bounced down on him, flattening him against the floor.
He counted under his breath and scampered forward. Steam washed over him.
He slipped again, and thrust out his hands.
He could feel himself losing control. There were too many things too operate. Never mind the spleen, just keeping heart and lungs going was taking too much effort…
“Topiary!”
“What the heck do you mean?”
“Topiary! Get it? Yo!”
“Oook!”
Windle looked up through foggy eyes.
Ah. Obviously he was losing control of his brain, too.
A trolley came sideways out of the steam with shadowy figures clinging onto its sides. One hairy arm and one arm that was barely an arm anymore reached down, picked him up bodily and dumped him into the basket. Four tiny wheels skidded on the floor, the trolley bounced off the wall, and then it righted itself and rattled away.