Now this was not as distressing to Sophie as might be thought. She knew that there was something strange afoot that day in the woods; and that this something strange was capable of eating bullets was, if not entirely predictable, at least entirely unsurprising.
Which was not to say that it did not bode ill - no, it very much did that. Sophie carried nothing not necessary to her work as an office admin assistant, and the gun was very much the deadliest weapon in her purse’s confines. (At least, if one discounted the ice pick.)
Snaggle turned his head to the side, spitting the bullet onto the slats of the bridge, and gave her a wink. Then he reached into an inner pocket and removed a chain of interlinked objects whose identity Sophie knew nothing of and whose nature was all too clear as Snaggle swung them like a whip, the object at the very end of the line bursting in a spatter of sparks and smoke.
Undaunted, Sophie ducked under the first swing of the incendiary whip, then blocked a second by throwing a deadly spare tube of lip gloss at it, causing the bomb to blow up in midair.
“As much as I appreciate your efforts, miss,” the knight called, as he brought his sword in from the side, striking at Tooth’s ribs. The latter tried to block the blade, but the knight’s sword flickered with a glowing light, and with a burst of power the rotund Fellow went flying. “I’m afraid these two blackguards are quite beyond you. No worries, then; run, and I’ll hold them off.”
Sophie pursed her lips in annoyance, but had to agree the knight had a point. Snaggle drew his whip up for another blow, poised to strike; and the slight delay this gave her was sufficient for her to hit him in the eyes with her bag of sand that she had been carrying about in her pocket for just such an occasion.
Snaggle wheeled back, cursing. Sophie needed no more of an invitation; she booked it, dashing away from the brawl, slipping and sliding as she ran over the slats of the bridge.
“Godspeed,” the knight called out cheerfully, as he performed a move that could have been either a form of martial arts or of ballet, “I’ll see you on Tuesday.”
Sophie didn’t bother pointing out that it was Wednesday and that the knight was planning a week in ahead; she just ran, demonstrating that she too was a worthy successor to Squire Kugel, swiftest of feet in all Lokshen.
“Pweh,” spit Snaggle, clearing the sand out of his eyes, and went to go after her, only to get slammed with a diving clothesline by the knight’s horse. It held the struggling Fellow on the ground, giving Sophie time to escape.
Much to the admin assistant’s surprise, it took only turning a single corner for her to find her way out of the otherworld and back into the comfy, cosy world of her everyday life.
The sun was once more shining, the sky was, well, not quite clear of clouds - it was the rainy season, after all - and the palms and the mahogany grew normally, unperturbed by any strange shapes or fell formations.
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In fact, if there weren’t a gaping hole in the ground where Gonzorbo’s should have been - one littered with blasphemous patterns, carved in red ink in the foundations - there’d have been no sign of anything unusual having occurred at all.
This left Sophie in something of a pretty pickle. There was nothing much to do here - she couldn't very well go to her place of work when it had been abducted and taken to a world of waters and wilds (particularly as none of her employers had been there, and thus there was no one to pay her for her labour) - and, even if she could, it seemed to her rather unwise to wait and see if either of that Very Strange pair might try to follow her. The question remained, then, Where ought she to go?
She thought.
She thought some more.
She thought yet further - but very fast, lest it turn out that the knight wouldn't be seeing her on Tuesday because his erstwhile acquaintances would be seeing her a great deal sooner - and then she made a decision.
“And then,” in the immortal words of the Poet of Maldon, “she did what she should not have done” - she went home.
Had there been any of the Highly Attentive Readers present, Readers who had paid Careful Consideration to my words, they could have warned her away from this disastrous course; but alas, none of them were there, and it was only Sophie who made up her mind that fateful day.
And she made up her mind to go back home.
She went back the way she came - this time, taking a less meandering and far more efficient route - until she found the old mossy stone with which she'd started her morning stroll. There she caught the 367 back from Cacktucket to Wheridigg Bend, dismounting without a sound and hurrying back to her house.
The latter was a small, rather old, and slowly decomposing structure nestled deep in the woods off the road, not far from the city but removed from any human habitation. Sophie’s heart thudded once as she saw it - whether from relief at its presence or an erasure of concern, she knew not - and she hurried toward it, strangely keen to get out from under the open skies.
The Highly Attentive Readers gulped. Well they remembered a certain remark, offered by chance, which boded ill for the health of our lovable Rogue Admin Assistant.
I draw our attention back, back, long ago - which is to say, a couple pages earlier - when one Very Strange Fellow by the name of ‘Snaggle’ pushed the button on his detonator, determined to erase Sophie from this good earth, only to stand still in frustration as his bomb failed to, as it were, bomb the poor lass.
As he pressed the button again and again, rage and frustration writ plain upon his face, the Highly Attentive Reader may remember that he said the following line:
“Of all the- that should have reduced her house and its surroundings to charcoal.”
Alas and alack! Snaggle was too busy being swanky and fantabulous to be precise in his definitions - a lesson, perhaps, to all those who would be stylish; without accuracy, there is no efficacy.
Gonzorbo’s, after all, was no house, and certainly not hers; no, hers was before her, and it was only now, as she approached the door, that the logical conditions Snaggle laid down upon his bomb were completed - Sophie was near her house. He had engaged in ostensive reasoning; and, with that act of A Posteriori Necessity, the building exploded.
He had engaged in ostensive reasoning, and with that act of A Posteriori Necessity, the building exploded.
There was a half moment’s delay as the explosion caught up with her, and then Sophie was erased from this good earth.