By now, Murphy had grown into a true big shot, and he felt that there were few things left on this continent that could surprise him. After all, he could chat and laugh with gods, scheme against the shadows of Chaos, and deal with a bunch of foreigners who were constantly doing the most outrageous things. His nerves had been tempered to extraordinary toughness.
He thought he could face anything in this world with a smile. Then the world promptly slapped the overconfident Chosen of the Creator right across the face.
When he actually came face-to-face with a mind flayer—a creature often described in lurid detail in all sorts of fantasy stories and ranked fairly high on the list of "masterminds lurking behind the scenes across the planes"—Murphy was still struck by the sheer disparity of the world and by the sort of craziness the Creator could come up with whenever He went off the rails.
That lunatic called Data Deletion had actually planted an elder mind flayer on a planet He had personally designated as a "civilization habitat"!
Holy shit!
Just how carefree did you have to be to pull something like that?
If you had nothing else to do, you might as well bite down on a lighter in front of the shadows of Chaos. At least you might earn a round of applause from the shadows of the Warp.
And when the "Undying," Sym, who was no longer concealing his true appearance, extended a "sincere" invitation to Murphy, the vampire governor hesitated for once. As he had said, a White Cliff set up as a trap by Twilight and a White Cliff serving as an elder mind flayer's lair—there was no telling which was more dangerous.
At least the former could be dealt with using the Rod