“A great way of escape,” muttered Rincewind, from his perch halfway up the wall. “You said it looks out over the Edge. Just step out, eh, and plunge through space and maybe freeze solid or hit some other world at incredible speeds or plunge wildly into the burning heart of a sun?”
“Worth a try,” said Twoflower. “Want a seaweed biscuit?”
“No!”
“When are you coming down?”
Rincewind snarled. This was partly in embarrassment. Garhartra’s spell had been the little-used and hard-to-master Atavarr’s Personal Gravitational Upset, the practical result of which was that until it wore off Rincewind’s body was convinced that “down” lay at ninety degrees to that direction normally accepted as of a downward persuasion by the majority of the Disc’s inhabitants. He was in fact standing on the wall.
Meanwhile the flung bottle hung supportless in the air a few yards away. In its case time had well, not actually been stopped, but had been slowed by several orders of magnitude, and its trajectory had so far occupied several hours and a couple of inches as far as Twoflower and Rincewind were concerned. The glass gleamed in the moonlight. Rincewind sighed and tried to make himself comfortable on the wall.
“Why don’t you ever worry?” he demanded petulantly. “Here we are, going to be sacrificed to some god or other in the morning, and you just sit there eating barnacle canapes.”
“I expect something will turn up,” said Twoflower.
“I mean, it’s not as if we know why we’re going to be killed,” the wizard went on.
You’d like to, would you?
“Did you say that?” asked Rincewind.
“Say what?”
Twoflower gave him a worried look.
“I’m Twoflower,” he said. “surely you remember?”
Rincewind put his head in his hands.
“It’s happened at last,” he moaned. “I’m going out of my mind.”
Good idea said the voice. It’s getting pretty crowded in here.
The spell pinning Rincewind to the wall vanished with a faint “pop.” He fell forward and landed in a heap on the floor.
Careful- you nearly squashed me.
Rincewind struggled to his elbows and reached into the pocket of his robe. When he withdrew his hand the green frog was sitting on it,
its eyes oddly luminous in the half-light.
“Yes?” said Rincewind.
Put me down on the floor and stand back.
The frog blinked.
The wizard did so, and dragged a bewildered Twoflower out of the way.
The room darkened. There was a windy, roaring sound. Streamers of green, purple and octarine cloud appeared out of nowhere and began to spiral rapidly towards the recumbent amphibian, shedding small bolts of lightning as they whirled. Soon the frog was lost in a golden haze which began to elongate upwards, filling the room with a warm yellow light. Within it was a darker, indistinct shape, which wavered and changed even as they watched. And all the time there was the high, brain-curdling whine of a huge magical field…
As suddenly as it had appeared, the magical tornado vanished. And there, occupying the space where the frog had been, was a frog.
“Fantastic,” said Rincewind.
The frog gazed at him reproachfully.
“Really amazing,” said Rincewind sourly. “A frog magically transformed into a frog. Wondrous.”