Reaper Man

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.
    Windle was only vaguely aware of voices.
    “Off you go, Dean. I know you’ve been looking forward to it.” That was the Archchancellor.
    “Yo!”
    “You’ll kill it totally? I don’t think we want it ending up at the Fresh Start Club. I don’t think it’s a joiner.” That was Reg Shoe.
    “Oook.” That was the Librarian.
    “Don’t you worry, Windle. The Dean is going to do something military, apparently,” said Ridcully.
    “Yo! Hut!”
    “Oh, good grief.”
    Windle saw the Dean’s hand float past with something glittering in it.
    “What are you going to use?” said Ridcully, as the trolley rocketed through the steam. “The Seismic Reorganizer, the Attractive Point or the Incendiary Surprise?”
    “Yo,” said the Dean, with satisfaction.
    “What, all three at once?”
    “Yo!”
    “That’s going a bit far, isn’t it? And incidentally, if you say ‘yo’ one more time, Dean, I will personally have you thrown out of the University, pursued to the rim of the world by the finest demons that thaumaturgy can conjure up, torn into extremely small pieces, minced, turned into a mixture reminiscent of steak tartare, and turned out into a dog bowl.”
    “Y—” The Dean caught Ridcully’s eyes. “Yes. Yes? Oh, go on, Archchancellor. What’s the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can’t blow something up? Please? I’ve got them all ready. You know how it upsets the inventory if you don’t use them after you’ve got them ready—”
    The trolley whirred up a trembling slope and cornered on two wheels.
    “Oh, all right,” said Ridcully. “If it means that much to you.”
    “Y—sorry.”
    The Dean started to mutter urgently under his breath, and then screamed.
    “I’ve gone blind!”
    “Your bonsai bandage has slipped over your eyes, Dean.”
    Windle groaned.
    “How are you feeling, brother Poons?” Reg Shoe’s ravaged features occluded Windle’s view.
    “Oh, you know,” said Windle. “Could be better, could be worse.”
    The trolley ricocheted off a wall and jerked away in another direction.
    “How are those spells coming along, Dean?” said Ridcully, through gritted teeth. “I’m having real difficulties controlling this thing.”
    The Dean muttered a few more words, and then waved his hands dramatically. Octarine flame spurted from his fingertips and earthed itself somewhere in the mists.
    “Yee-haw!” he crowed.
    “Dean?”
    “Yes, Archchancellor?”
    “The comment I made recently about the Y-word…”
    “Yes? Yes?”
    “You can definitely include Yee-haw, too.”
    The Dean hung his head.
    “Oh. Yes, Archchancellor.”
    “And why hasn’t everythin’ gone boom?”
    “I put a slight delay on it, Archchancellor. I thought perhaps we ought to get out before things happened.”
    “Good thinking, that man.”
    “Soon have you out, Windle,” said Reg Shoe. “We don’t leave our people in there. Isn’t this—”
    And then the floor erupted ahead of them.
    And then, behind them.
    The thing that arose from the shattered tiles was either formless or many forms at once. It writhed angrily, snapping its tubing at them.
    The