Blackness.

  Grimmbros was dead.

  Everything was black - no, wait! There was a dot of light. A halo around the dot, no, a tunnel. A bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. Grimmbros blinked. Blackness with blurry light. Yes, indeed he was dead. As if to absolutely establish this sad fact, there were faces ahead in the light beckoning him. Loved ones! Loved ones calling to him! It was a relief in a way.

  "Come to the light, Grimmbros." Grimmbros blinked again. He should go, shouldn't he? But why was it such a struggle? Shouldn't he float or drift into effulgent bliss effortlessly? He attempted a mental clenching, straining procedure that he felt ought to initiate the expected weightless gliding, but if anything, his sense of earthy immobility increased. This wasn't blissful; this was distressing! Why wasn't it bliss? It should be bliss!

  Again there was a presence in the light, apparently moving closer. This time the face filled the tunnel, eclipsing the light.

  "Come on, Grimm! You can do it." That was no dead loved one. In fact, its status as a living loved one was dubious. It was Fürg??n panting excitedly.

  "Come on. Get out of that rabbit hole."

  Rabbit hole! The mention of rabbits threw Grimmbros into a panic. All sense of otherly bliss shattered as Grimmbros flexed his huge form and struggled upward.

  As he rose, soil fell from him in clods and clumps. A shower of earth rained down as he shook his befuddled head.

  "What? Rabbits? Where? What happened?"

  "It was amazing!" Fürg??n enthused. "We were falling. You jumped! I landed on you just after you hit the ground, well I say ground, I mean sheep.

  "Well, how bizarre!" said Grimmbros, looking around him, then squinting upwards to see whence he had, apparently, fallen. "I can not say that I have any recollection of that." The urgh-bane seemed totally bewildered by his current position. As he poked, picked and plucked remnants of rabbit hole from every orifice his head had to offer, Grimmbros started to recall a few pre-fall thoughts. Suddenly, with a start, he remembered something; a single memory, jumped into the forefront of his mind and doused him with a bucket of ice-cold reality, awakening him from the drowsy warmth of blissful amnesia; he turned to his companion, and with anger and hurt undisguised in his voice he implored: "Why would you do that?"

  "Eh?" responded the renling, looking left and right, fully expecting to see that someone else had joined them, and was the target of the urgh-bane's pain.

  "You told me to jump, you big-eared toad!"

  Fürg??n looked back at Grimmbros in stunned silence.

  "I heard you, you chimp-nosed knave!"

  "Eh?" Was all the renling could muster, shocked to find that it was, indeed, himself on the end of this scandalous accusation.

  "You called out... from behind me... to jump off the top of the tor... you frog-skinned scoundrel. Why? Why would you do that?" The anger had faded, and the urgh-bane's tone was all hurt now. "Eh?" Fürg??n repeated floundering in deeper and deeper confusion, “Chimp eared scoundrel? "All I said was ‘Grimmbros.’"

  “And!” Grimmbros’ face took on a whole other level of outrage as the memories returned, “You rode me! You rode me like a sledge down that hill.”

  Fürg??n tried to get a look into the urgh-bane's ear, wondering if the mosquito that the elbhs had talked about was making him hear things.

  "You said: 'Why don't you jump off and give us some peace, you big moaning pile of weasel waste.'”

  "I never did!" protested the renling, coughing and repeating his protest in a lower pitch. “I saved you, I managed to pull your head upward using your hair and one nostril and guide you down the slope at the bottom of the rocks! I thought we'd only go a few yards, but the sheep droppings seemed to smooth the ride. We would have gone further if you hadn't got wedged in that rabbit hole. It was..." The renling searched for a suitable adjective, failed and continued, "I even tried to steer you round that gorse bush on the way down. Ok, I failed and you went straight through it and over a badger too, but I tried. I'm innocent! It's that skeeto, that's what it is!"

  Skeeto? Mosquito! Could that even be possible? The recalcitrant renling had many noisome nuances, but lying was not one of them. Sure, he was capable of bending and stretching the truth on occasion, and certainly, he was guilty of hiding it with regularity, but then, which renling didn't?* The urgh-bane himself kept choice truths from his companion: playing guardian to many secrets - dark secrets, dangerous secrets... But he knew the renling would not outright lie; it was contrary to his nature.

  So, that left what was left of the mosquito. The entrenched half-bug had been playing merry havoc with his emotions; those elbhs had made it quite clear that that was to be expected, but to suggest that it was now capable of communicating with him through some kind of subliminal speech: well, that just seemed absurd!

  Grimmbros squeezed his great forehead with his massive hand, as if he hoped to force some single strain of sense from out of his pores.

  * A good renling considered it his job to hide anything that ought to be hid, the truth often being just one of such things. After all, where would we be if everything was simply exposed and out in the open? Fürg??n had once even suggested that Grimm might consider the benefits of a good hiding.

  Grimm shook his head, attempting to focus on the situation at hand and forced his introspective musings deeper. If, therefore, there was truth in this preposterous mosquito proposal, the conundrum that caused Grimmbros particular concern was: why would it want, now, to kill him? Wasn't it just a helpless bug head?

  Grimmbros looked skywards as he began to ponder an ever-increasing, rich kaleidoscope of convoluted drudgery. Could it really be possible? Why did a head want him dead? And was the head working alone? Suddenly, as Grimmbros struggled to comprehend the strange situation, Fürg??n let out a startled gasp.

  "Look there, Grimmbros, look there!" screamed Fürg??n pointing into the distance. Grimmbros looked bemusedly in the direction of Fürg??n's quivering finger. He saw black clouds shifting on the horizon, weaving across the windswept moorland.

  “ I say, now they do not look at all good,” he muttered.

  “No, no! Not there! Look over to the left!” said Fürg??n.

  “It can’t be, can it?” replied Grimmbros slowly, squinting at an approaching figure beneath the clouds. It was Razzles, darting fitfully toward them, the moving clouds twisting and winding in pursuit of him.

  “What is he on?” Fürg??n wondered out loud. “It's… he's on a purple… chicken!”

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  The puzzled renling was not quite right. Razzles was, in fact, precariously astride a lesser-squalid rock-dodo. A semi-flightless creature with aviation potential akin to that of a farmyard hen and the intelligence of a barnacle. If it put its mind to it and the wind was right it could perhaps just about clear a house with assistance or struggle along a foot or so above ground for miles, again with assistance. As such, the knohm’s little legs were skipping, scrabbling and hopping each time the malformed bird hit the earth.

  Scampering along, barely airborne, the jingle of bells mixed with protesting squawks, a jubilant Razzles wobbled up the last few hundred yards to rejoin his friends. However, any moment of welcome was drained as Fürg??n and Grimmbros had their attention on the frantic knohm's pursuer.

  As surprised as they were to see the knohm, after such an extended hiatus, that surprise could not compete with the alarm that barged in like a belligerent bailiff, seizing possession of their senses over the encroaching cloud. As the recumbent pair peered past Razzles and his dolorous-looking dodo to the horizon beyond they saw the cloud advance across the moor with a disconcerting rapidity and a disturbing, irregular fluidity. As it closed, indomitably toward them they found that they could not help but stare at the flying mass: there was an unnatural nature to it that held their attention for far too long. It seemed as though it was alive; it pulsed, it flickered: it fluttered.

  As it got closer, it was evident that it was not so much ‘alive’ but consisted of living things, birds perhaps. They could see the surface of the cloud now: nebulous, a constant flurry of movement, edges amorphous, constantly changing, unable to keep a consistent shape due to the persistent flap and flurry of wings and the tussle and tangle of creatures shoving within. The beating of the cloud created a staccato sound that roared like a vibrating pride of lions. The density of the massed creatures blocked all light; the crescendo of their din drowned all sound.

  Fürg??n climbed to his feet; “What… is… that?” he breathed, his voice a cocktail of awe, bewilderment and dread.

  “Ah!” gasped the breathless knohm, as if he had just returned from the shops with a box of groceries, but then remembered that he had forgotten the very thing that he had gone out for. “Yes, that is why I am on this.” He patted the desperate dodo’s flank. “We really can’t hang around here chaps; I’m being chased.”

  Without waiting to hear if the renling had any further questions the urgh-bane launched to his feet, “I suggest we had better run,” he grumbled and threw himself in the direction of the knohm with fast, powerful strides. He knew exactly what it was and he had no intention of hanging about for it to get close.

  Fürg??n was not so quick with his flight response. Every nerve in his body interested in preservation was begging to follow the other two, but they found that they were out-shouted by those more interested in investigation.* He turned back to get one last look at the distant living cloud, only to find that distance was a luxury he no longer had: the bird-cloud was now less than a hundred skips from where he stood. The conglomeration of crow-like creatures had abruptly stopped in their pressing advance like a charging black dog reaching the end of its chain. They hovered in front of the rooted renling bustling, jostling and rustling in front of him as the more distant birds pressed into the mass, making it pulse as might a great panting beast waiting to pounce.

  *The curiosity of renlings had led many to their doom or injury. Hence the saying, “a renling in the bush is probably looking for something.”

  Then the bird-creatures at the bottom of the throbbing flock started to peel off from the rest toward the ground. As each body fell, one on top of the other, it fused with the one below to form the beginnings of a shape. The piling of bird bodies began to solidify into a compact trunk; simultaneously, a second formed beside the first. As the birds kept falling, more of the structure took shape; the columns grew into two great legs. As the structure towered upwards and outwards, the motion of the bodies seemed to change; as the bulk of the mass became rooted to the ground, the remaining creatures fell with an ever-increasing momentum drawn by the relocated gravity of the mass.

  Where they, at first, looked as though they were falling like a flock of grouse being blown out of the sky with grape-shot, now they appeared to be sucked down; drawn by a vortex of impulsion like a shoal of fish sucked into a whirlpool. More and more dropped till a huge torso was built; it was like watching the construction of a gargantuan statue from a million black rags poured into an invisible mould. By the time that the last of the flyers were sucked into its swelling head, the avian cloud had been transformed into a terrestrial giant. On legs the size of sequoias stood a tremendous behemoth of impossible proportions; and it glared, through deep set eyes of blazing fire, with furious intent, at the puny being cowering before it.

  Fürg??n found himself rooted to the spot, his big, clawed feet heavy, unmoving.

  “What is that thing?” was all his overwhelmed brain allowed his tightened mouth to let out. The towering colossus reached out to deal with this trifling irritant when, the three elbhs appeared in the grass just behind it. Major Elbh swung his big wooden mallet hign in the air, but before he could bring it to bear, the monster’s beaked head screeched the ugliest caw imaginable and a vast shadowy foot swung up and down with a sickening crunch. Major Elbh and Medical Elbh flung themselves sideways, but the poor elbh that had first met Grimm at the bridge was crushed helplessly.

  This shift of events gave Fürg??n the opportunity to collect himself and flee. His little hairy legs had never moved so fast and he was galloping after Grimmbros and Razzles in a trice.

  “What is that thing?” he yelled after the nodding, belled-head of Razzles.

  “Murder! M-U-R...” the knohm called.

  “I know that,” interrupted the fleeing renling, “it squashed that poor elbh mercilessly. But what is it?”

  "A murder! It’s a murder!”

  *****

  The unfolding conflict had not gone unnoticed by Grimmbros' would be nemeses. Ignatious had first spotted the dodo-riding Razzles burst from the woodlands some few hundred yards to their left as the hulken trio had completed their descent to the grass plain. Egmord had sputtered a bemused, "What is that cretinous knohm on?" as the disjointed loping flap-hop-scrabble of bird and halfling had safely bypassed them.

  Not long after, the leaves of the trees topping the hill at their backs had been whipped into a mad frenzy by the passage of myriad winged pursuers. As they gazed on with open mouths, the black storm cloud slowly closed the gap until, in the vicinity of the rough tor on the far side of the plain, it dropped from the sky and underwent a process of stupefying transmogrification.

  "You sure you want to carry on?" Ebore had asked nervously.

  Ignatious scowled at Ebore's fearful comment, cuffed him cursorily across the back of his pale green head and turned to Egmord for a reaction. Although clearly shaken by what he saw, the giant rumbled, "Of course we're going to carry on! No flock of birds is gonna get in the way of me having that filthy urgh-bane." To demonstrate his resolve he set off with a roar onto the grassland.

  *****

  Scarpering for all he was worth, Fürg??n wondered how long they might be able to evade the towering bird-thing behind them. He noticed that Grimmbros' initially fleet flight already showed signs of ‘what’s the point’ beginning to set in. Looking back, he saw the great, black colossus heaving there like a ship on high waters still in the place where they had left it. The elbhs surely were the cause of the thing's delay, Fürg??n hoped they weren't faring too badly. The colossus’ attention, however, was locked onto Razzles, as he scuttled along the moorland mounted upon his dodo. With an explosive burst of noise and energy the entire form blew outwards into a million parts, reverting back into the swirling black cloud of birds that it first was.

  As the cloud expanded across the sky once more, it launched into pursuit of the fleeing knohm. The countless mass of bird forms tumbled and swirled over the fleeing forms of Fürg??n, Razzles and Grimm with the thunderous sound of a million wings flapping. It sounded like an orchestra of demented, clapping flamenco dancers beating in rapid staccato rhythm. The corvid cloud churned overhead and flew on several hundred yards beyond where Razzles was leading the fleeing party, then stopped. It once more began its terrible transformation, pouring into the form of the mighty giant.

  Razzles tried desperately to rein in the dodo from its stumbling advance but, in the end, had to resort to leaning forward and squeezing the bird’s throat as he squealed for it to stop, and then it did, immediately. Razzles was hurled from off the back of his perch and was sent rolling along the mossy turf toward the feet of the beast before them. As he came to a stop, his head pressed into the soft peat, he raised himself to see the mighty form of the giant leaning down towards him; furnace-like eyes bore at his, with a heat he could feel from the ground, its mouth opening into a cavernous throat of unfathomable depth, and one mighty, doom-laden arm, slowly reached toward him.

  Grimmbros was not far when Razzles was thrown from the dodo’s back. He slid to an abrupt stop as the massive paramorph reformed before them, and stood, rooted in horror, as the beast towered above the knohm like a terrible tsunami over a tiny bamboo village. Thoughts upon thoughts raced through Grimmbros’ head; random, disjointed expressions, half-thoughts without time for completion: ‘stupid knohm… what kind of… deserves all he gets… incredible creature - impressive… rip his beard right off and beat him with it… keep on running... Ah! Hog-fathers! Just can’t leave the pest to die.’