Razzles rubbed his nose, made a final adjustment to his eye, which glinted in the sun, then said, "That wretched Grimmbreath, he could have had my eye out! Not this one - the other one obviously!” He hopped about a bit, irately waving his fists at that last point for emphasis. “What kind of person throws innocent grovelhogs? It's cruel!” The comedown from a knohm's ihmpish peaks often resulted in disturbing mood swings.

"Is that why you ran away? To escape the cruelty?" retorted Hob insensitively.

"I had to, you whistled the things right onto me!" Razzles complained.

“Not my featherless trumpeting throbwattle! It was your alarming jingling!”

“Jingling! I’ll give you alarming jingling!" sniffed Razzles rather petulantly, “Right in your pointy green ear!”

"That's specist that is!" muttered Hob restraining a powerful urge to swat the bell right off Razzles’ bright red hat.

"You’ve not been happy since I got this special eye have you!" Razzles taunted.

Fürgůïn was about to ask the ireful knohm just where such an unusual eye had come from when a strange thing happened.

A blinding light erupted in the sky, surging clouds spilled from the light and a mysterious figure bloomed within the billowing mists.

"I am Nirvas," the figure announced, "I am about to change the course of time.”

In the dazzling brightness the knohm, renling and nibblin shielded their eyes, averting their gazes. So the apparition demanded, “What are you looking at? Are you listening?” But the three kept clawing at their faces, avoiding the painful glare.

“Oh - look at me in the sky!” demanded the voice. They tried, fighting to squint at what might be a luminescent woman floating in the light.

“Woe woe woe!” the figure further proclaimed dramatically, causing her audience to cringe.

“Are you listening to all this?” she boomed.

Then her voice softened and she leaned forward, her dark almond eyes sparking within the light.

“I have a quest for you Razzles! You will be greatly rewarded, if you succeed. You would like that wouldn't you?” Speaking now to the spellbound knohm with the brightly condescending, emotive tones of an indulgent aunt, she continued, “You must go on a trifling and engaging little journey to find the source of time!" Unfortunately, what Razzles heard was: "You must gird on a trifle and engage a little gerbil to find the sauce of thyme!" So he just stood open-mouthed gawping at the beaming figure.

She hesitated briefly at his lack of response and then went on: "A simple venture even for a knohm of your impressively negligible capabilities." Still no reaction. The knohm just stood there.

"Greatly rewarded…" she repeated. "It's not like you won't come back!" she added with a note of puzzlement. Razzles flinched at this latter notion and held up his artificial eyeball to see if it helped in some way. It didn't.

Noticing the trio all frowning, Nirvas appeared to conclude that their limited intellects or attention spans rendered them unable, perhaps unbothered, to grasp what she was explaining. So she handed them a page of drawings that depicted an object that they were to obtain. They looked at it like children who had been told they were about to be given sweets. Fürgůïn seemed especially enraptured, he peered open-mouthed at this ‘goddess’ and at the egg-shaped structure in the pictures. Then all three looked back at Nirvas hopefully.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Nirvas sighed. Knohms were fairly malleable folk and, despite their inclination toward emotional outbursts they would usually do as they were told, especially if they were promised some suitable incentive. Perhaps she should offer something enticing: an ornamental toad, a fungus-shaped seat, a beard waxer or maybe some sort of exotic cream or foundation.*

* A depressed knohm could at times be beguiled by cosmetic items. Nothing weird mind you, but a highly symbolic aspect of knomic ritual. By the application of layer-upon-layer of make-up, but never having any of it removed, a knohm comes to resemble a repeatedly over-painted garden ornament, an object of great significance within knohmdom.

# see endnote 5

The party contemplated the strange woman’s demand, wondering whether they should go off on this quest before she felt the need to smite someone. Hesitantly, they began to move. The questees took three purposeful strides before stopping and frowning.

"What exactly is it we're after?" enquired Razzles, concerned there might be hard work. The luminous lady sighed very deeply and pointed at one of the pictures on the paper she had provided, "This - just this." Razzles and Fürgůïn cringed at her tone.

Razzles fiddled with his beard, mumbling, "To quest or not to quest? That is a beastly one…"

The wearisome bemusement and tedious puzzlement of the trio of creatures clearly wasn't making the apparition very happy. Razzles wiggled one unruly eyebrow at the small sheet of intricate diagrams and sketches, making a show of employing his special eye. The pictures resembled a mechanical egg or beetle or an artificial sea urchin. Then he looked up with that sweet-expecting look again. What kind of rewards?

Maybe it would have been better to appeal to the renling. Renlings love secrets and mysteries: tell a good renling that there is a hidden passage in his cellar and he will dig until he either finds it or creates it.*

*The elongated hare-like feet of renlings are ideally suited to excavation. These give the creatures the odd appearance of having backward jointed knees.

As if inviting her attention, Fürgůïn asked, "How do we get it?" He was trying to contain his astonishment that the thing in the pictures strikingly resembled something described upon the pages of his lost books. The fact that this woman was pursuing it tantalised him even more. He was about to tell her what it said on one of the few pages he had saved. But the apparition tilted her head, apparently attending some other voice.

“No time to explain - he's trying to activate it right now. Bring the boldi device here and you, keep it secret.” Then, waving her arms, she flung Razzles, Fürgůïn and Hob the nibblin through space and time and into a night forest somewhere who-knows-where.

Disappearing into darkness the three questees found themselves transported to a foreign place. Razzles, rather fortuitously, landed on someone's curlsome head, Hob and Fürgůïn found themselves sprawled among wet pine needles to one side. Fürgůïn spotted one of the objects from the picture in the hands of a startled human before them - it was all lit up and looked about to do something dramatic.

"That's it!" he yelled, "It's the egg thing in the picture." Razzles hysterically went into action attempting to snatch the device from the stubborn human who wriggled frantically in an effort to keep it out of his grasping little hands. "Get it, get it," Fürgůïn encouraged from below. Words were said, hair was pulled, flora and fauna abused.Then, with a mad grab they had it. The metallic egg was theirs.

Instantly, they were whisked off once more and with a bump landed where Nirvas had previously spoken to them. She was not there. Neither was Hob, just Razzles and Fürgůïn. This realisation quickly sent the initial flush of success hurtling around the murky u-bend of disappointment. Not only that, Razzles had landed awkwardly on his return.

"Oh great!" he complained, hopping, twisting, rubbing and wincing, "You've gone and lost Hob! H-O-B!!"

"It wasn't my fault - I didn't see what happened to him. I thought you were with him. Besides, didn't ‘she’ say we might not come back," blustered Fürgůïn, wondering what exactly had just happened to them. He looked moon-eyed at the device in the knohm’s hands, “Is that all there is to it? That can’t be it surely?"