A Perilous Pest

Chapter Three

A small crowd had gathered around a little, grey stone house in Tullgotha. They stared as a hooded member of the City Watch hauled out a very limp knohm enshrouded in cobwebs and somewhat pale of face. One foot dangled as he was dragged, trailing along the ground creating a feeble, disjointed jangle from a bell on his shoe. The inert body was slung onto a low hand cart pulled by a large, grey rock oafe* and Razzles was dragged off through the narrow streets to the city sanatorium.

* Unlike oaves in general, rock oaves are great, grey creatures that don't grow much in the way of moss, fungus or other floral elements about their persons, only a smattering of green or yellow lichens. They are naturally belligerent and ructious, and not suited to normal oafely duties however, suitably drugged with the right blend of mold and sludge a rock oafe can be an almost ideal beast of burden.

Sometime later, in the 'completely out patients' wing of the sanatorium, Auger the apothecary peered down at the body through his complex, red medical lenses, rimmed by rotating dials and intricate scales and made various 'hmmff' noises. He applied assorted tinctures and unctions, poked relevant orifices and made a few scribbly notes.
"Dysentresse," he finally announced to his disturbingly hunched assistant, "Worst case I've seen."

Indeed, Razzles hadn't moved or reacted in any way since he had been discovered in his web-festooned home by a nosey neighbour. All of Apothecary Auger's efforts had produced no favourable outcomes.

"They go like this in the end. First, depression or drowsiness, then they fall asleep somewhere and if you don't get in soon enough it's pretty much impossible to wake them."
He tried a smart slap on the knohm's face. When this proved ineffective he put a wad of fabric up the patient's nose and lit it, waiting to see if the tingle of flame on a nostril might do the trick.

"Terrible malady," he opined, "Some disorders affect the body, some the mind. This one seems to ravage the very spirit of a creature. No one really knows what causes it." The assistant listened patiently, but showed absolutely no sign that he either heard or took the slightest bit of interest. "Some say," Auger went on, "that we all have many different forms in many different worlds and dysentresse comes when one of our selves loses all interest and gives up. Terrible affliction."

Auger tried spinning suddenly, without warning and yelling 'wah!' into the knohm's ear, whilst waggling his hands right over his eyes. Still nothing. Another slap maybe?
"Completely disentresse dead."
The pair eventually moved off, leaving Razzles breathing faintly but unresponsive.
"We'll bag him up and keep an eye on him. If he starts to exhibit any disturbing symptoms put him in the basement." Those would seem to be Auger's last words on the subject.

*****

Grimmbros slept an unnatural sleep, a whole day passing over him until a shadow of uneasiness swept through his deep dream. Initially, he slept on regardless, however, this intruding emotion would not leave his unconscious mind, it swelled to a niggling crescendo until he could, eventually, no longer ignore it. Something deep within the urgh-bane's subconscious brain hauled him out of his somnolent state with a violent lurch. He sat bolt upright, fists clenched and face bent into a scowl; the force of his resurrection was a surprise to himself, let alone the two elbhs that were presently coming to the end of a trajectory* into which they had been launched from the startled rise of the urgh-bane.

* Grimm was used to folks entering into trajectories about his muscular form, such flights often being followed up with a bit of offensive holding or intentional grounding, whatever gained a few more yards or resulted in putting something or someone 'out'.

Grimmbros rubbed and then tried to focus his bleary eyes on the two tiny creatures as they tumbled and rolled across the grass beyond his feet. One crashed with a whumpf against a stone, legs in the air, and head contorted to an awkward angle against his elevated torso. The other, his face a mask of horror, glided face down through the lush green blades, to the edge of the lake, finally to disappear over the bank with a pebble-sized sploosh!