Onward he rode through the emptied streets of Flax, alone but for the company of his brooding mount and the ignudi returned to scavenge once more. Hoping to shake the black mood fallen on him, he turned his attention to the Lilliputian elfemales, and, watching them dance and flit about in the dusty air before him—how ecstatic they were by this chance to plunder freely!—felt his spirits gradually rise until a thin smile touched his lips behind the mask’s grim countenance.
“Ghastly pig!”
He turned his head slightly, rolling his eyes upward within the now shadowed eyeholes of his mask, to see a grotesquely obese woman leaning precariously from a second-story window. She was holding a plump, red tomato in one hand, and as he watched, she c****d back a beefy arm and sent the bulb hurling towa
