239. Marbleous!
Amy decides to check out the thicket. “After all,” she reasons, “if there is a monster in there, I don't want it leaping on me from behind.” She cautiously moves toward the sound she heard earlier, then pushes aside the bushes and takes a peek inside.
She finds within a small lizard with eight legs and a strange crown-like bone structure atop its head. It lies curled on top of a nest of what look like chicken eggs. In a one foot radius around the nest, all plant life has spontaneously died, turning black and rotted through. Amy has a sinking feeling that she knows what manner of beast this thing is, having played her share of role playing games in her day.
The lizard looks dolorously up at Amy, and Amy finds herself frozen in place. The pain evaporates from her aching muscles as flesh and sinew is transformed to gleaming white marble. Within her still-active mind, Amy lectures no one in particular that she is looking at a basilisk, a kind of evil mythological beast that's some sort of weird cross between a lizard and a chicken. The basilisk kills all that it sees, generally by turning them into statues.
Amy has a long time to ponder her mistakes, now that she's frozen as a marble statue, leaning down to investigate the thicket, bare bottom thrust out behind her.
“At least I got to see a basilisk,” she consoles herself sullenly.
Amy is in no state to continue this adventure.