Read "The Lightning's Course" by John Victor Peterson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Within, the monkey-like robot waited, weapons gleaming in its finely fashioned hands. A stranger was approaching -- someone who knew the Master -- friend or foe, it knew not; yet something purely intuitive spoke inside it, saying "Friend! "
Darkly red and ominous, the old pile seemed untenanted when first its bloody portico spread beneath his swiftly questing feet. Fantastic, ponderous arches topping offset, fluted columns; weirdly carven facades. An architect's nightmare; a surrealistic concept of a palace in Hades; but house ne'er seemed so welcoming to a lone man against a world.