Dawn breaks over Ankh-Morpork, the Disc’s largest city. The narrator notes that only roughly two-thirds of the city is actually asleep, with the criminal element fully awake and productive. A digression recounts how the former Patrician, Olaf Quimby II, once legislated for complete literal accuracy in speech and writing and was subsequently killed by a disgruntled poet. The ghostly tide of magic from the Octavo flows through the city streets, visible only to wizards.

Unable to see far enough from the roof, Galder uses magic to propel himself to the top of the ancient Tower of Art. His ambitious second-in-command, Ymper Trymon, follows. Galder immediately strengthens his personal protection spells, distrusting Trymon for being too clever and humorless. From the tower, Galder watches the magical wave sweep across the Disc. The wave covers the Disc in a shimmering white skin before vanishing with a high, sharp sound. Trymon correctly identifies the event as a Change spell, one that appears to have left the world entirely as it was. Galder tries to think of gods who might owe him favors. The gods, however, are occupied in a dispute with Ice Giants over a lawnmower.

The Change spell’s effect is then revealed: Rather than dying while falling off the Disc, Rincewind abruptly finds himself hanging upside down in a pine tree in the Forest of Skund. He falls through the branches and lands on his head. Reflecting on his situation, he recalls sneaking into the room housing the Octavo, after which one of the Eight Great Spells lodged itself in his mind. He now suspects the Spell deliberately kept him alive.

Disoriented in the unfamiliar forest, Rincewind kicks a nearby tree, which drops an acorn on him and tells him he deserved it. After a brief conversation, Rincewind firmly dismisses the talking tree as an impossibility and walks away.

Nearby, also saved by the Change spell, Twoflower sits calmly on the hull of the sinking Potent Voyager in a lake. His only worry is the whereabouts of his Luggage, a chest made of sapient pearwood that follows its owner everywhere. The Luggage has already appeared before a mushroom-intoxicated young shaman in the forest, regarded him balefully, and trotted off.

Rincewind finds a path, ignores several trees attempting conversation, and is reunited with a soaked but cheerful Twoflower and the Luggage. Sheltering from rain under a tree, Twoflower asks why they survived. Rincewind admits he has no idea. When the tree offers acorns and speaks aloud, Rincewind insists trees cannot talk. He brazenly maintains his supposed authority as a woodland expert, misidentifying the tree and nearby plants. Twoflower spots a cluster of large red-and-white mushrooms, but Rincewind declares them inedible because they have little doors and windows.

Later that day, eight senior wizards gather in the Great Hall of Unseen University. Their attempts to learn about the morning’s events by consulting demons, magic mirrors, and tarot cards have all failed, so Galder proposes performing the Rite of AshkEnte. He’s mildly disappointed when the others agree without any dramatic resistance. The eight senior wizards, all traditionalists who favor wax, bone, and ritual over Trymon’s preferred methods of organizational charts and memos, spend 40 minutes setting up occult paraphernalia before Galder completes the summoning.

Death appears as a tall, skeletal figure in a black robe, holding a scythe in one hand and a snack of cheese and pineapple on a stick in the other. He explains he was at a party. Galder begins a formal binding speech, but Death impatiently skips past it. In response to Galder’s questions, Death explains that the morning’s events were the Octavo reasserting reality to prevent Rincewind and the eighth spell lodged in his head from falling off the Disc. Death then reveals that an ancient prophecy inscribed in the Great Pyramid of Tsort states that all eight spells must be spoken together on the next Hogswatchnight or the Disc will be destroyed. Hogswatchnight is only two months away. When a wizard named Spold asks him to repeat what he said, Death gives him a long, thoughtful look. Before departing, Death reveals he’s expected to unmask at midnight at his party and suggests the festivities will go downhill at that point.

Trymon, who has been watching in secret, immediately retreats to the University library, a treacherous place where magical books leak power and attract creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions. He uses a banana to coax the Head Librarian, who is still an orangutan, into retrieving an ancient, barely legible volume on the history of the Pyramid of Tsort. Hearing the other wizards approaching, Trymon offers the librarian another banana and secures the book.

The Forest of Skund’s name means “Your Finger You Fool” and comes from an explorer writing down a native person’s response to his pointing gesture. Twoflower is dissatisfied with the small creature who lives in the mushroom, insisting that a genuine gnome should have a red hat and a jollier manner. Rincewind counters that a six-inch creature living in a mushroom is self-evidently a gnome. Twoflower’s romanticized knowledge of mythical creatures comes from childhood storybooks, and he describes the tooth fairy fondly. Rincewind privately considers how brutal forest life actually is but can’t bring himself to shatter Twoflower’s illusions.

The gnome introduces himself as Swires, offers Rincewind newt sorbet, and proposes leading them to food and shelter. The group sets off. Behind them, a tree asks the Luggage whether its construction hurt. The Luggage considers the question, shrugs, and waddles away.

Swires leads the group to a small, ornate cottage built entirely from confectionery with walls of gingerbread, a licorice doorknocker, and a cotton candy doormat. Rincewind detects a strong residual magical field. Swires explains that an old witch once lived there, and her magic still holds the structure together. Twoflower is delighted by the structure.

At Unseen University, Trymon studies the book on the Great Pyramid of Tsort, noting both its tedious statistics and the critical information about the rewards for uniting the eight spells.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the frozen Hub regions, a barbarian chieftain asks his companions what the greatest things in life are. His warriors offer answers involving the open steppe, hunting, and the defeat of enemies. The chieftain then deferentially poses the question to his celebrated elderly guest, a small, toothless man with a legendary reputation. After prolonged thought, the old hero answers that the best things in life are hot water, good dentistry, and soft toilet paper.

Back at the University, Galder and Trymon discuss a memo urging Galder to send agents after Rincewind. Rather than acting on it, Galder explains his own plan: A Great Spell will seek the nearest receptive mind when its host dies, so he fires an arrow into a magic mirror showing the Forest of Skund. The arrow should create a path that the Spell will follow back to Galder.

Trymon, calculating that whoever unites all eight spells stands to gain the rewards promised by the Pyramid of Tsort, picks up a sharp knife and hurls it at Galder’s throat. A protection spell deflects it, sending the blade into orbit around Galder’s neck before it embeds itself in the door beside Trymon’s head. Galder appears to grow larger and more formidable, then mockingly tells Trymon he’ll never outmaneuver him.

At the gingerbread cottage, Rincewind and Twoflower eat portions of the furniture by a licorice log fire. Twoflower asks to buy the cottage for its ambience. Swires eagerly offers to arrange this until Rincewind describes the cottage as a tourist attraction too valuable to sell. Elsewhere, parties of wizards are converging on the cottage through the forest.

The section ends with Greyhald Spold, the oldest living wizard. Terrified after Death scrutinized him during the summoning, he seals himself inside a magically reinforced wooden box designed to be an impregnable refuge. He lies back contentedly, only to hear Death’s voice right beside his ear, remarking that it’s rather dark there.

Snow falls outside the gingerbread cottage as a small group of wizards hides nearby and debates whether to rush in. Rincewind finds that Twoflower has eaten most of Rincewind’s toffee bed. Swires warns them about the local elves, who are unpleasant, quick-tempered creatures who collect teeth and toenails unlike the noble elves from Twoflower’s books. Before anyone can respond, sounds of forced entry come from two separate directions. Swires shouts a warning about elves and vanishes into a mousehole.

Rincewind and Twoflower squeeze into a narrow cupboard. Through the wall, they hear multiple factions of wizards fighting one another. The Luggage pins two wizards in a corner and snaps at anyone who approaches. Inside the cupboard, Twoflower discovers a broomstick with handlebars, which begins to float.

A wizard spots Rincewind at the top of the stairs. As wizards charge upward, Rincewind jumps on the broomstick behind Twoflower. The broomstick lurches out of control, bursts through the cottage wall, and launches into the night sky. At that moment, Galder’s magic arrow arrives and strikes the Luggage’s lid, causing it to vanish. A nearby village shaman and his apprentice, the young shaman who saw the Luggage earlier, witness the Luggage briefly materialize and then Rincewind and Twoflower fly past upside down, screaming at each other. The two shamans agree to pretend they didn’t see any of this. Back at the cottage, a wizard misuses a pair of seven-league boots in the chaos with disastrous results.

High above the clouds, Rincewind and Twoflower argue wildly as they struggle to control the broomstick. Looking outward in the direction the Disc is traveling, they see that the stars have been swept from that part of the sky. In the blackness, a single small red star burns with threatening intensity. The Disc is heading directly toward it. Rincewind screams and yanks the broomstick into a steep dive.

At Unseen University, Galder performs the final stage of his ritual. He blasts Trymon against the wall when the other wizard considers attacking him again and then speaks the final word of the spell. A thunderclap and an implosion of light fill the room. When Trymon recovers, Galder has vanished, his fate unknown. The Luggage sits in the center of the magic circle. Its open lid reveals only clean laundry. The sight terrifies Trymon more than anything he has ever encountered. He exchanges a few nervous words with the chest and then runs.

Rincewind wakes on a large moving rock in the middle of a snowstorm. Twoflower explains that they apparently struck exactly what Rincewind had joked about, a cloud containing rocks. Examining the stone, Rincewind finds chisel marks and hears a slow thumping from within. Looking over the edge, he sees mountain peaks far below. The two follow the smell of frying bacon to the front of the rock, where a young druid named Belafon is cooking over a small fire. After they help rescue his charred breakfast, tensions ease. Belafon uses a pendulum and a chant to steer the rock upward, and it bursts into bright sunlight above the cloud layer.

Belafon explains that the rock stays airborne through persuasion and warns Rincewind not to think too hard about rocks falling. The druidic cosmos, he explains, operates on four forces, charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness. Any druid who publicly doubts this is burned alive on a solstice bonfire. Belafon identifies himself as a computer hardware consultant and says that he’s delivering the rock as a replacement component for a large stone circle on the Vortex Plains that’s used for calculating astronomical events. When Twoflower offers to lend him an almanac instead, Belafon is deeply offended by the suggestion that paper could substitute for stone. Rincewind warns Twoflower about giving culture shock to the man flying their rock.

At Unseen University, Trymon confirms from the Tower of Art that the Luggage has finally left the campus after having swallowed the Dean of Liberal Studies on its way out. Trymon is privately pleased and begins planning how to reorganize the University.

Belafon brings the rock in for a smooth landing within the stone circle on the Vortex Plains, where an elderly druid immediately complains that the computer has been miscalculating sunrise with just under two months until Hogswatchnight.

Rincewind, remembering the red star they saw in the sky, feels a creeping certainty that something in the universe has gone wrong. The Spell in his mind suddenly becomes active, pulling him into a dream. He’s surrounded by a warm, musty darkness smelling of old leather and paper. The voices of the other spells of the Octavo tell him they bent reality to save his life and that they chose him as the Spell’s carrier because he’s a natural survivor precisely because he runs away. They warn him never to fall off the Disc again, then bicker among themselves about what existed at the beginning of the universe before returning to their message: Rincewind must safeguard the Spell in his head and return it at the right time so that all eight can be spoken together. Rincewind notices that the vague shapes around him are letters on a page, seen from underneath. He asks if he is inside the Octavo, and a voice confirms he is in the book in a metaphysical sense. Rincewind immediately flees.