Worried that this event was even stranger than that of the woman in the sky, Fürgůïn leaned over to the frothing Razzles and discreetly took back his device. The fears running through his mind, however, were too late to stop the inevitable: Grimmbros was a sportsman and so he had to play. Spinning his device deftly around in his hand, Grimm pressed a big finger onto a small bump.
"I wouldn't touch..." the renling demanded, flinging himself forward, hands outstretched. Grimm had touched though and he had gone! Vanished into thin air with an ugly supping sound.
Flying through the same air, fingers clawing the emptiness, Fürgůïn's eye caught a red spot flickering on the device that he had just dropped to the grass beneath him. He realised with dismay that Grimmbros’ disappearance must have triggered something. Were the devices somehow connected to each other?
But his airborne wonderings were cut short, since wherever Grimmbros went, he was not gone long. Fürgůïn, in a bewilderment that contorted his features even more than his earlier panic, was still barely at the end of his pathetic attempt to grasp the device out of the disappeared urgh-bane's hand, when Grimmbros was sucked right back to whence he had departed, with thunderous impact. It was as if someone had tied a rubber band around a heavy rock and had thrown it away as hard as they could. After barely seconds of absence, Grimmbros pounded into the lunging renling, knocking all the breath right out of him. Reappearing in the exact physical space occupied by Fürgůïn, Grimmbros’ body temporally clashed temporally with the renling's. The air around the pair appeared to warp and bend, and am odd ringing sound pulsed in painful throbs, emanating from the event epicentre.
Briefly renling and urgh-bane flickered visibly. Fürgůïn blinked, shook his head in a demented spasm, blinked again and then sneezed. His eyebrows sizzled and his teeth hurt. He gave one last frenetic blink before evaporating away into nothingness with a loud suction-like 'sup' just as Grimm had earlier done. Momentarily stunned, Grimmbros span round, grasping at empty air, as if snatching at gnats. He felt his hair crawl - all of it - as if it was attempting to reject his body, setting his nostrils, armpits and ear trumpets itching. Then, with a supping, gut-wrenching lurch, he felt himself being sucked out of existence, he was gone again.
In danger of resembling a frog-hopper lost completely in cuckoo spit, Razzles wiped a sleeve across his face and tried to focus his gaze through an eye that was twitching so hard it made his head nod. As
he stared, open-mouthed - ‘sssup’ - Fürgůïn reappeared, flinging his arms out, grabbing for the urgh-bane’s waistband even as the giant vanished. He leapt manically up his chest and seized Grimm’s bottom lip, managing to dangle from the unseen giant’s nose. Hanging there, Fürgůïn swung round in a fog of perplexity, wondering why he could feel the urgh-bane but couldn’t see him.
Then Grimmbros loomed into view, swatting at an invisible source of annoyance on his face. The urgh-bane was completely befuddled by his forceful return and for a while, confusion reigned. However, confusion was about to abdicate its throne to annoyance which, in turn, would inevitably fall in an uprising of ranting and abuse. ‘Sup!’ The renling returned, seemingly flung into mid-air. Fürgůïn swivelled to face away from Grimmbros and swivelled back again. The urgh-bane was nowhere to be seen.
Realising that it was his turn to appear once more, Grimmbros opened his mouth to complain, but was gone before he could get the words out and Fürgůïn was back, somehow still scrabbling over the head of the absent urgh-bane – looking as though he were climbing over empty space. Grimmbros was prepared when he next whisked back and demanded that the filthy little rapscallion get off his face.
Razzles leapt back aghast in a spray of foaming drool, his prancing accompanied by a racket of demented jingling. He was really struggling to comprehend what was going on. He felt a great urge to spell something as knohms often do under pressure and a heaving compulsion to blurt out something irrelevant about beards.*
“Grimmbros has grown a… a… no! N-O! Wait a second… It’s Fürgůïn he’s having… a… Oh! This is doing my head right in! By my bountiful black beard! That’s just what it’s doing!” he blurted. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other in time with the changes happening before him.
*If a knohm could manage to fit some kind of gratuitous beard reference into his speech he would generally do so regardless of the relevance.
Razzles could feel a greater bout of hysteria galloping up on him from within. He stood gawping with the kind of expression that suggested his brain had finally packed up the one last marble left rolling around at the back of his skull and sneaked out via the nearest exit; the rest of his body was just doing random things to fill up the time. As he watched Grimmbros and Fürgůïn alternate a while longer, his body made a weak attempt to reassure itself that it, at least, was still okay, all there and in the right place at the right time!
He scratched his head, first with the left hand and then with the right; he didn’t know what else to do. If he could have scratched his head with his feet, he would have! Instead, he scratched his left cheek, and then the right cheek, then just rubbed the two together. For a full five minutes, he stood gawping like a small boy watching a fairground ride. In the end, he decided that the only course of action was to leave them to it - perhaps he should just slink off and regain some well-needed hush. But just then he noticed something.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
There at his feet, lying in the grass, was the very device that the lustrous lady had asked him to obtain. It appeared that whilst Grimmbros had carelessly lost his device somehow, Fürgůïn had dropped the other one onto the ground. It lay there before him, a few short feet away. It seemed to be beckoning to him silently. The giddiness careering around inside his skull slowed and spiralled into focus. Focussed on the device.
An unexpected, eerie calm then took him. He glanced around to see who was looking, sidled up and muttered, “Hmmm… this quest is actually turning out to be a bit of a doosy, ain’t it!”
He bent down to the metallic egg resting on the turf, picked it up and started to wander off with a display of casual strolling and innocent whistling. Grimmbros and Fürgůïn were left behind taking turns in ‘being’.
“I say! I distinctly feel as if I have been trod up...”
“Are you going off somewhere else you...”
“...without feet actually going anywhere...”
“...you can’t just leave me up this idiot, and what have you got...”
Razzles was not listening.
Grimmbros’ frown revealed, as he switched form, the dawning realisation that he had lost his recently obtained treasure. When Fürgůïn appeared he was waving his fists rapidly at the departing knohm. “Something’s not right here - N-O-T R-I-G-H-T!” he raved in knohmish phoneticising to emphasise his annoyance.As Razzles strolled away, his composure gradually returning, he puzzled over how he might best exploit his new-found advantage.
He retreated a way off and crouched under a bush where he felt a degree of calm slowly descending. The smell of damp moss and the feel of ferns reassured him, as did the curtain of tall foxglove spires nodding softly in the breeze. After all, he was a simple creature who was not at all accustomed to such tumultuous adventures. No, he was the kind of knohm that knew there was no place like home; a quiet afternoon sitting before the fire in his underwear, perhaps having the odd scratch - that was really living. Of course, he knew that the device before him was of great importance though and for the moment he felt satisfied knowing that he had such a valuable possession in his grasp. What to do - what to dee oh?
Sitting cross-legged, with the egg on his lap, he patted the thing and began to wonder.Why him? Why would some floating female entity pick him to get her gerbil and find her thyme for her? Not only that, how do you gird on a trifle? Wouldn’t it run down your drawers? And... what does all of that have to do with this peculiar metal thing? It was all very evitable. That’s what it was, evitable.Everything had happened all too quickly for his liking. But wait, he was doing well, he already had the thing, how hard could it be to find some thyme growing somewhere, wasn’t it some kind of cooking herb?
He clutched the shiny egg to his bosom, stroked its smooth metal surface and was about to call it something endearing when he was rudely interrupted. He heard a rustle from within some nearby thickets. He looked up, eyes bulging, ears twitching and nostrils aflare. Then, the startled knohm stiffened mid-twitch, floundering in a thick syrup of worry and confusion – frozen like a rabbit in torch-light – right before someone pokes it with a stick. Then he saw it.
As Grimmbros reappeared momentarily again, he was surprised* to see Razzles scampering furiously towards him at full speed from the undergrowth.
*Grimmbros' surprise at seeing Razzles sprinting from the undergrowth in terror reveals a lack of understanding of knohmic traditions. The typical knohm response to a perceived threat, regardless of the nature of the danger, is always to find the nearest place of refuge—even if said refuge doesn't recognise its status as such. See endnote #8
“Save me Grimmbros - S-A-V-E M-E!” he screamed. The desperate knohm, who was obviously running to avoid some sort of impending annihilation, was wailing in an even higher pitch than usual. In his hands he was clutching the device, holding the thing out before him as though it were a dribbling baby about to blow.
“Save me… save M-E! He’s coming! He’s going to E-A-T M-Y H-E-A-D!” blurted the frantic Razzles in a spelling frenzy of impressive rapidity and debatably unnecessary precision. Close behind, Grimmbros saw a large, dark, hairy creature descending upon the pathetic knohm.
“I say, press the device, young Razzles. Point it, point it at me... ” thundered Grimmbros, cut off abruptly as he disappeared again, wildly gesticulating in exaggerated poking motions.
“Save me !” screamed Razzles urgently.
“Press it!” barked Fürgůïn, seeing the impending danger.
“I’m trying, you high-up, hovering hooligan.”
“Press it, press it good you big, bell-wearing, namb...”
“How? Where? W-H-E-R-E?” screeched the now-hysterical Razzles.
Disappearing, Fürgůïn yelled hoarsely, “Just press it, you dismal, demented, squalid, little cre…”.
Razzles in near-total brain-melt-down steadied his trembling hand by imagining himself stretched out in his favourite armchair, back in his small stone cottage, a mere hop, skip and a jingle away from the lower Tullgotha city centre. Then - with just moments to spare - he took a deep breath and pointed the device at the fluctuating forms of Grimmbros and Fürgůïn
A light flashed and suddenly urgh-bane and renling dropped to the ground like two old sacks of putrefied fish. Whatever Razzles had unwittingly done had somehow done the trick.Both renling and urgh-bane had been restored and the tibmibling was shakily making a return to its favourite shoulder. Its agitated squeaking though was quickly drowned out:
“I’m back!” roared the jubilant Grimmbros, patting himself all over as fast as he could. He was checking all was in place: legs, arms, ears, nothing climbing on his head except his beloved cherry-beret.
As Fürgůïn clambered to his knees, the hideous creature was upon them. In terror, he scrabbled about madly in the dirt before scuttling off on all fours toward a large tree, flailing ears trailing in the air.
Razzles saw the fleeing renling from the corner of his eye and likewise scampered off, waving his arms about and dropping the device in a desperate attempt to get well out of harm’s way. He fled toward the same tree, leaving the egg lying squarely between the urgh-bane and what looked like a huge, horned bull-like beest! The urgh-bane eyed the panting beest staring directly at him. He knew that this monstrosity was after the object that had somehow enthralled them all.
“Can’t let you have it,” muttered the eloquent yet brutishly rugged urgh-bane as he steadied himself for the inevitable confrontation that was about to follow: it was the semi-finals all over again he thought. He leant into a slight crouch, one hand on the ground, the seams of his bright suit struggling to cope.