บททั้งหมดของ How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis : บทที่ 211 - บทที่ 220

The elf’s giant head tilted slowly and the rolling mist forming its eyebrows slid closer together. “You want to surrender?” The voice blew my hair back. “We haven’t fought yet.”“No, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. You obviously have the advantage. Even if we find a way to win, thousands will die, and then some idiot will take control for a bit, and there’ll be more wars and more fucking about as one person tries to wrest power from another. Better to let you be in charge and opt for a little stability.”The head drifted closer to me, all of it moving at once but not all at the same speed, which gave the face a strange, shuddering quality. I wanted to back away, but I held my position. I could have quite easily dived into the slightly open mouth.“What kind of hero are you?” she asked.A fair question.Obviously, not many people are going to think it’s a good idea to let Sauron take over Middle-earth. He’s evil, he’s got the Nazgul pulling ques

It was a relief to see the girls still alive and seemingly unhurt. Of course, they could be set on fire at any moment, but then you couldn’t expect everything to go your way. I certainly couldn’t.We were hidden behind trees on a rise overlooking the village which consisted of at least a couple of dozen buildings. It was quite a pretty setting for burning people to death. People had gathered around the three stakes to which Jenny, Claire and Flossie were bound. There were thirty or forty people sat on the grass like they were at a summer festival, relaxed, at the back, trying to work out if it was Iggy Pop or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on the main stage.And then there were the armed guards. Their clothes were more formal, matching in colour and style. They had weapons, although it was hard to tell if they were well-used and stained with dried blood, or made from old tin pots beaten into the approximate shape of the real thing.Even though they had weapons, they di

It was the age old story, the band of brave adventurers off to rescue the fair maidens in peril. The stuff of classic fairy tales.This particular version had some slight variations from the traditional tropes, though.The reluctant hero wasn’t usually as reluctant as I was, for a start. And the adventurers who set forth tended to have some kind of a chance of being victorious. Joshaya was like the guy in the Magnificent Seven going around collecting an assortment of sharpshooters and cutthroats, only all of them were out when he called, so he had to take us.“What do you know about the priestess and her powers?” I asked.“Not much,” said Joshaya. “There’s seven of them, and they’ll kill you first chance they get. About all you need to know.”“Do you have a plan?”“Kill them first.”“How?”He shrugged. “See when we get there. Never tried this before.”Very reassuring.“This is your fault,” I said to Maurice.“

The morning was spent fishing. Not for fish, though. The frogmen gathered around the edge of the lake, their Frogfather squatting in the middle paying them no mind, and waded through the muddy banks and rushes. They foraged around for slugs and bugs and various slimy critters which they collected in wicker baskets.These weren’t small, garden-variety bugs. The slugs were the size of your arm. The other creatures weren’t tiny, either. They were all things you would run from your house screaming if you found them in your shower.When all the baskets were full, the Elder gave the order (to be more accurate, he waved everyone away with an irritated grimace), and they lined up in two rows to form a path from the lake to the jungle.They raised their baskets of wriggling unpleasantness and made hooting noises.Pogo’s eyes swivelled in their sockets to look at them. The tip of his tongue slid across his endless lips and shot out from the corner of his mouth, but th

Despite ragging on the girls for the stupidity of their actions, I wasn’t completely oblivious to why they’d put me in this position. Whatever Claire had seen or Jenny had felt, it was obvious to them that we had to be separated, and quickly.I don’t know why, or how they thought we’d react — maybe they didn’t have time — but they wouldn’t have done what they did if it wasn’t the only choice they had.That doesn’t mean it wasn’t retarded, but you can’t blame them for that (or you’d never be able to stop). I had to figure out what to do, regardless of the restrictions. And if I failed, I wanted my epitaph to read: This was your fault. It didn’t matter who read it, they’d know I was right.I spent the next couple of days staring at the blueprint of the castle drawn in the sand. I would throw out a question to the forest every now and again, and occasionally I would get an answer. Life in a fantasy world was a million different types of crazy, plus talking trees. You