Rip drew one of the heavy Webleys and aimed carefully at the charging mud golem, looking for its center mass.

Unlike previous rounds, the enhanced bullet ripped all the way through its body, splattering dirty muck out the back.

But the golem did not stop.

Rip raised an eyebrow and pulled the hammer back once more. He crouched in his shooter’s stance as the thing came closer. This time he aimed for its face, right at the gaping hole of a mouth.

Blam!

A slimy cloud of sludge blew out the back of its head, but still the monster charged.

“Well, I don’t know where the core is. It’s not in the chest, and it’s not in the head, evidently.”

He reached inside his wallet and pulled out one of the grappling guns Dame Anderson had given them. He looked up, aiming for the girders around an open window high above, and fired.

The grappling hook soared upward, sailing outside for a moment before curving back down and finding purchase on a steel girder. Rip flicked a switch and the reel kicked in, winding up and taking him with it.

He levitated out of the way just as the garden golem arrived, swishing muddy arms in the air where he had been standing a second before.

Rip flicked a switch and the reel stopped, holding him steady about 20 feet up. The golem looked to its left and right, confused.

“Shall we try dynamite again?” Chance whispered from behind a tree.

Blair said, “Not while Ripley’s hanging directly over him!”

“There’s gotta be a way to kill this thing,” Rip said from his perch above the golem’s head.

“Urgh?”

The golem looked left and right at the sound of his voice, but could not see him.

“How old do you think this creature is, Colonel?” Sharp said.

Bixby stuck his head up from behind a bush. His eyes narrowed as he studied the mud golem.

“Well, certainly if Fitzwilly saw it, that was almost 200 years ago. I think it’s safe to say the construct is older than that. Presuming this is the same one, of course.”

“He doesn’t know,” Finley said. She sat near the top of the stairs, watching everything, arms wrapped around her knees.

“I say, Lady Finley,” Sharp scolded from the branches of another tree nearby. “That is hardly a safe place to observe the proceedings, dangerous as they are!”

She waved him off.

“That thing’s after the Sergeant, or whatever else catches its eye. I can make haste long before it reaches me.”

Rip smiled at her as inspiration struck.

“I just need to catch its eye.”

He dug in his pocket for a coin, pulling out a couple. He stared at them for a moment, then looked over at Blair from her position behind the tree.

“What’s the difference between a penny and a farthing?”

“A farthing is one quarter of a penny.”

“A quarter of a penny? You people haven’t experienced inflation, I see. Okay, a farthing it is.”

He put the other coin back in his pocket and carefully aimed, then tossed the coin down on top of the mud golem’s head.

“Urgh?”

It looked up, both eyes glowing bright red.

Rip pulled out a Webley again and clicked back the hammer with his thumb. He squinted and aimed carefully, then fired a shot through the golem’s left eye.

It bellowed in anger as the glowing stone shattered.

It swiped up in the air with long slimy arms, screaming in rage. But Rip remained safely out of reach.

“I think I figured out what its core is!”

He had to yell over the deep roars of the thing as it continued trying to swat him down.

He grinned at Finley and said, “You said, ‘Whatever catches its eye.’”

She raised her eyebrow and smiled.

“If it works, it works, Sergeant. Results are the important thing. Congratulations.”

He nodded and cocked the gun again, this time intent on taking out the golem’s second eye.

“If that’s not the core, or one of the dual cores, then at least it won’t be able to see us.”

He aimed straight down, tracking the eye in his gun’s sights.

The golem stopped suddenly, and the deep rumbling roars ceased. Its one good eye locked on Rip, dangling from the grappling hook’s rope with his gun aimed down. The two froze for a moment.

The golem bolted for the stairs, abruptly moving faster than ever before.

They heard its squishing, wet steps going down . . . down . . . until finally they could hear it no more.

Chance and Twig came out to greet Rip as he let out the line and slowly came back down to the floor.

“Good job,” Twig said. “You scared it off.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone scaring off a garden golem before,” Bixby said with a smile as he and Sharp joined the little group along with Blair.

For her part, Finley remained near the stairs. She did not stand up, even when the monster raced past her.

“Well, to be fair,” Sharp said, “there aren’t too many records of encounters with garden golems. Or any golems, for that matter. Even if we were to return to Doctors’ Commons right now, we’d be giving lectures in the Lyceum for a week, answering all kinds of questions.”

Rip tried dislodging the harpoon high above, but he soon gave up and left the rope dangling.

Turning to the others he said, “You know, I wonder if this is where the legend of the Cyclops came from. Some giant golem or something got an eye taken out and wandered around with just one. Does your world have the Cyclops?”

“Yes,” Sharp said. “Homer. The Odyssey. We’re quite familiar.”

“If everyone is quite finished chitchatting,” Lady Finley said, finally standing up, “our mucky friend has left us a perfectly good trail to follow.”

She pointed down the stairs, where muddy footprints led down.

“Right,” Bixby said. “Everyone ready? Let’s go down again.”