The sun had set and the stars had begun their chaotic dance above as the Captain paced outside of Dhamnú’s open front door. He found it hard to pace while stooped, thus his present location.
“Damned pixie,” the Captain hissed.
“So what you’re saying,” Ghost-Tongue summarized, “is that when we were searching that mountain for the Gurglesplat, we were actually crawling around inside the belly of the Gurglesplat.”
“Aye,” said Dhamnú, “Though ‘belly’ might be a loose description. Not very sure about the gabfudder’s anatomy.”
The Captain paused and shivered. Ghost-Tongue went on. “And this Gurglesplat is actually a huge stony creature that preys upon dwarves and gnomes and other earthen spirits. It comes alive during the night and starts to move about.”
“That’s ‘bout right.”
“Furthermore,” said Ghost-Tongue, “That goblin called, Turbees was the lone and solitary creature who knew how to keep the Gurglesplat asleep?”
“And you barfangle killed him, yep.”
“And the rumbling we have been hearing ever since the sun went down… the same sound I heard last night?”
“That’d be the Gurglesplat on its dagwifting way to tadwolling kill us all, aye.”
The Captain looked back toward where the sun had set and from whence the rumbling was growing louder. He let Ghost-Tongue continue his line of questioning as synaptic cogs and neural gears gnashed together beneath a dark brown Western hat.
“What did you do about the Gurglesplat before Turbees?” the Indian asked, chewing on yet another sprig of root.
“We died, human. We died.”
“Hup!” barked the Captain. All eyes in the hut turned to him. “Thar she blows.”
A scurry of footfalls preceded the arrival of the gnome and Anasazi outside the hut. Just breaching the horizon where the chaotically starlit night sky met with the rolling hills surrounding Kettle’s Knob, a black, jagged, jutting silhouette rocked back and forth beneath a starlit ode to a mangy dog. The Captain, with his scrutinizing eyes pinched behind his Transdimensional Aural-Sensitive Goggles ™, which drew forth from the world around him the ambient life force like a magnifying lenses to light, could see much more.
For him that dark ominous shape was instead a mottled glow of muddy browns and flaring reds interlaced with veins of living white. “There’s so much living on that thing, I can’t distinguish its aura from everything else. My best guess is… anger and dirt,” he muttered. “Barely a mind at all.”
Dhamnú nodded. “It only knows one burblappet thing: killing.”
The Captain was distracted by movement down below and saw gnomes sprinting up to the hilltops, taking speculative looks at what was coming and dashing down back to their burrows. “What of your fellow gnomes of Kettle’s Knob?” the Captain asked. “Do you think we should inform them?”
“I dare say they gabblethunting knew well before you two even arrived.” Dhamnú turned his angry glare to the village and said, “Moles and rabbits have likely been thumping their kizzungas off since it first started moving.” When the Captain and Ghost-Tongue turned questioning glances to each other and then to Dhamnú, the gnome further explained, “It’s a relay system. Sort of like signal fires you can hear.”
“Bestial telegraph,” the Captain gleamed. “Brilliant.”
“I had wondered why the kufuncting forges had been kept running last night,” Dhamnú growled. “’Course they wouldn’t trod up here to inform me. Oh no! I had to find out half a day late by means of two gubfaddled humans dumber than a grob-snogging gubbertwob.”
“So you and the other villagers,” the Captain pried, “don’t see eye to eye?”
“Is that some sort of short joke?” Dhamnú barked. “’Cause we’re all the same size! Makes no fobfaddered sense!”
“No, no, no,” Vaguely apologized. “I mean, they and you… you don’t get along?”
“Drub ‘em,” said Dhamnú. “So’s I got a bit of a jaggled wicked tongue? What of it? Like any of their bogiewompus young are being damaged by my miftwallering language. Just soft is what they are. Snodroddled soft!”
“That catapult doesn’t look too soft,” said the Captain as a siege engine the size of a wagon, wrought entirely from metal, was rolled out from one of the tunnels below. “Reasonable construction from what I can see, but usually wood is a bit more forgiving than what appears to be iron. I fear the thing will bash itself to pieces after the first launch.”
“Bodgrotted scatgotting idiots!” Dhamnú cursed and began a stump-legged trot down the hillside.
The Captain looked to Ghost-Tongue and said, “Time to meet the locals, Jobi. Looks like we’re pulling militia duty.”