#i hope cuddy has hte time of his ghost life and a truly epic adventure where the information comes in as useful as the gun and axe

[tanoraqui]

2 extra bits for Men at Arms

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“Whatever you do, don’t touch it!” Vimes warned.

“Why not? It’s only a device,” said Carrot. He picked up the gonne by the barrel, regarded it for a moment, and

somewhere in the darkness, a monster coiled, made of smoked and blood and the smell of oiled metal. The gonne whispered, “Hold me. Keep me. Kill for me.”

“No,” said the figure it surrounded in the darkness--who was golden, who was incandescent, who was a King. 

“I can give you everything. I can help you make the world right.”

“You brought destruction to my city. You killed innocents people for fun. You nearly made my Captain dishonor his badge.” 

The gonne screamed as the king blazed brighter with each word, tearing the darkness to shreds and

then smashed it against the wall. Bits of a pinwheel rolled away.

“One of a kind,” he said. “One of a kind is always special, my father used to say. Let’s be going.”

- - 

Walking the world as a vengeful spirit was, it turned out, incredible boring. Perhaps because Cuddy was not walking the world so much as the edge of this vast black desert, stretching out beneath a moonless sky. He could have started walking across it. The more not-time passed, the more he wanted to. Felt that he had to, that it was the right thing. But one of the things even dwarves know dwarves are known for is their stubbornness, so he stayed right where he was. He couldn’t go back, but he wouldn’t go forward. Not quite yet.

Death hadn’t seemed concerned about this vow. He had simply said, “MANY DO NOT, IMMEDIATELY. PARTICULARLY DWARVES. TAKE YOUR TIME.”

It was very difficult, actually, to tell time in this place. So Cuddy wasn’t sure whether it had been a couple hours or a couple days or maybe a couple centuries when, finally, three objects fell out of the sky. They were a little ghostly at first, but solidified in time to land at his feet.

This was not entirely unexpected, in that he had definitely been waiting for the axe - his axe, refurbished and sharpened and better than new. Cuddy scooped it up with a glad cry, and then used it to poke one of the other objects - a device that looked like a long tube attached to a crossbow trigger, which he had seen a flash of in a dark alley and a careful sketch of in a notebook.

The gonne did not explode. It did sag a little, as though it had been broken and then put together again but not quite properly.

Axe ready to strike, as though this was a snake rather than a mechanical weapon, Cuddy bent down and poked it with his finger this time.

The gonne sagged a little further. It did not speak. It did not aim itself.

(It turns out that even a terrible weapon that should never have been is not quite powerful enough, not quite a self enough, to have a ghost. This is incredibly much for the best.)

Cuddy left it for the moment and poked at the satchel - just as hesitantly, just in case. It was a completely ordinary satchel. The papers inside were less ordinary, and he ended up sitting down on the black sand to read them all, and think a little harder about the events of the last few days of his life, and what might have happened afterwards.

Then he went back to the gonne hand with a few knocks from the travel hammer and tongs in his pocket, had it good as new. There was enough of it left for him to set it against his shoulder without thinking, aim it at the sky, and cock it with a very satisfying click. Cuddy grinned.

Then he made sure his axe was secure on his back, and slung the satchel over one shoulder to boot. Information could be a terrifically valuable weapon. 

“All right, any demons and devils that are probably not out there!” shouted Constable Cuddy (promotion made official posthumously, though he didn’t know it.) He made that satisfying click again, and started out across the desert. “Go ahead, make my day!”