Grime and Bumble

The eyes of Grime the druid snapped awake as he sucked in air. The rich, acrid smell of a potion workshop invaded his nostrils, causing him to cough. The movement was met with a sharp pain in his abdomen.

“Aha! Back with the living!”

The voice was shrill, familiar and somewhere off to Grime’s right. He squinted through a growing headache, trying to recognise it. After a moment it clicked and he gurgled out a response.

“You sound surprised…”

A face popped into his vision. It was a tiny one, squinting with concentration. His skin was grey and as dark as slate. His white eyebrows towered over orange eyes that caught the candlelight like a cat’s in the night. It was Bumble, the doctor. He took a moment to peer into Grime’s eyes, before letting out an excited chuckle.

“Good! Excellent! Was beginning to think I’d wasted the last of my tonics!”

Grime’s head throbbed and he slowly sat up, the wooden table supporting him creaking under his weight. Instantly pain and aches shot through his body and he grimaced. Bumble quickly moved to his side, steadying the druid.

“Easy now, don’t want you doing too much too soon. You’ve been in a terrible state these last couple of days. I was afraid there was barely enough of you left to put back together when they showed up at my door with you!”

The throbbing in Grime’s head began to subside and he looked down at his body. It was wrapped in all manner of makeshift bandages. One of them had the pattern of ducks stitched into it. The druid stared at it for a good moment, puzzled. Gnomes...

Grime fingered the bandages wrapped around his arm. Why in-earth did the gnome bother putting these on him? Surely he knew by now Zook had a handle on such things. He began to tug at them.

“Hey hey hey!” the doctor fussed, slapping the druid’s hand away from the dressings, “I’ve had enough of your blood in my workshop, thank you very much!”

The druid rolled his eyes and let it be. He looked around the interior. Bumble’s workshop looked untidy at the best of times, but this was different. Everywhere were torn strips of linen, discarded vials and open books. The sink was half full of murky red water and a bucket and mop lay haphazardly nearby. The doc’s bed looked like a cave bear had been at it.

Grime attempted to rouse his tongue and form some kind of sentence with his mouth. The words came hard, “What happened?”

“What happened,” the doctor began, “is you died. Or very close to it, if it wasn’t for the many tricks available to me. You owe me Grime - you’ve been dining with devils for the last two days.”

“Devils…” Grime murmured, “two days?” He took his throbbing head in his bandaged hand, “But I was in the pit, we were... close…”

“Well something compelled you to leave the pit.” the doctor interjected, coming over to Grime’s side with a bucket of water. He began to dab the druid’s head with a sponge as he continued, “You climbed out, as I’m to understand it. Some of your… *ahem*… friends brought you here. Best thing they’ve ever done for you, if you ask me!”

Grime swatted away the sponge, shaking his head. His vision began to focus. Suddenly his heart leapt in his chest.

“I climbed out?! I’m out? I can’t be out, I need to get back! There must be another party, if I hurry back I can sign up!”

Bumble held the sponge idle in the air and stared in disbelief, “sign up? Another party? You must be joking!”

“You should have seen it, Bumble, a whole maze of wonders. They’re right, the boys, that pit holds the secrets of the world!”

Bumble threw the sponge into the bucket in disgust before turning a cocked look to the druid.

“Oh yes, and you saw these wonders did you? Was it while you were running for your life, drowning them in your own blood? Those drunkards down at the tavern have filled your head with nonsense!”

“It’s not nonsense Bumble!” the druid began, feeling his strength returning, “it’s the answer!” He stood, continuing, “Glimmerstone-”

“Glimmerstone!” the gnome’s eyes glared wide at Grime, “don’t you start, Grime! All I’ve heard from you these last weeks are ‘Glimmerstone’, ‘Glimmerstone', ‘Glimmerstone’!”

The gnome barked the name out like a yipping dog, his white hair dancing with each syllable. He finished by dropping the bucket in his hand onto the floor with a clatter.

Grime inhaled and gathered his senses. In the dim light of the workshop he began to make out a thin green haze hanging around him, its tendrils dancing like beckoning fingers. He grinned—Zook was looking eager.

“It’s down there Bumble, what I need to take Glimmerstone back.”

The gnome sighed heavily, he had turned his back to the druid and was thumbing a nail sticking out of a crooked door frame.

“Glimmerstone is gone-”

“No it’s not!” Grime roared and he slammed his foot into the ground. The entire workshop shook from the impact, pots and tools rattling and falling off their shelves. Outside the alley mutts started up, their barking muffled by the locked shutters on the workshop’s windows.

Breath coursed in and out of the druid’s flared nostrils. He stared down the doctor, who stood frozen in a wince.

As Grime stared at him, his breathing began to settle and after a moment he regained himself. He looked down at his foot, which was now at the centre of a small crater. Benches sat crooked on the buckled stone, spilled reagents ran into fissures and dust hung in the air.

The druid stammered, “I- I can fix this. You know how I am with stone, will be good as new! Can’t have your new workshop looking like a troll’s been through it.”

Bumble spoke quietly, idly picking up the vials and pots that had survived the disturbance, “It’s fine, I don’t think the humans that made this place intended it to be…” he paused amid his tidying, searching for a way to finish, “...Grime-proof.”

The druid started trying to help, but every movement he made bumped or shifted the furniture, causing more mess than he corrected. The gnome was right, this place was far too small to house an over-sized brute like himself. He wondered what purpose the humans of this place could have had for such a cramped dwelling. Even for the tiny Bumble it seemed unfitting, crammed as it was floor to ceiling with equipment and knick-knacks.

“I don’t think these humans understand the first thing about how to house a gnome.”

“Grime, don’t-”

The druid’s breath became heavier again, “This whole damn city is a joke! A pack of hyenas all chewing on each other. Not fit for you, not fit for me neither!”

The gnome settled an armful of collected vials on a tilted bench and spoke through clenched teeth, “Keep your voice down, or those hyenas are going to come and chew on my ear!”

Grime took a grip of the bandages around his arm and resumed tearing them off, “I’m going back down there, Bumble. And I’m not coming back up until I’m ready to save-”

“Stop that! I put those on you for a-”

The druid’s voice rose to a boom, “-until I’m ready to save Glimmerstone!” He cast the bandages into a sink.

“Or you’ll join all those blasted fools, dead as door nails down in that pit!” Bumble’s voice had become agitated and he fettered about, scooping up the bandages from the sink in both arms and shaking them at Grime.

“You think it was easy getting you back up with the living? Hm? The history books should put me down as a miracle worker! Bumble the Healer, Bumble the Saint, Bumble the blasted Necromancer!”

Grime was ripping the bandages off his legs now. Underneath large scars ran across. Already shimmering fungal strands had knitted up the worst of it. Grime smiled—Zook had been busy.

“No offence Bumble but there’s only one necromancer in this room.”

The gnome scowled, “You think you’re invincible with that spore cloud around you!”

“His name is Zook!”

“Well it wasn’t Zook that took you in off an apple cart in the middle of night. It wasn’t Zook that put every last good batch of healer’s brew down your throat and tore up half his bed sheets to wrap up your wounds!” Bumble was furiously shaking empty bottles and torn bed cloth to make his point. Seeing the druids lack of response he turned and started angrily piling them into a bin.

Grime rubbed the shimmering scar, testing it. Sharp pain shot through him and he tried to hide the wince, but he knew better than to think the gnome would miss such a detail. Instantly Bumble was wheeled around, his eyes wide and his finger waving at the wound.

“Yes, I imagine that hurts quite a bit! Good! Maybe you should poke it some more, sober you up some!”

“If anything, I could use a drink…” the druid muttered as he hoisted up his heavy obsidian breastplate. It was scratched and marred in all manner of places. He gave it a careful knock, sensing the stone for weakness. After a moment of evaluation he nodded and began putting it on.

Finally Bumble stopped his fidgeting and simply stood, watching the hulking druid donning his armour. The sound of the straps and buckles straining and fastening dominated the moment. When the doctor spoke again his voice was calm and quiet.

“So you’re really going, then?”

“Yes.”

“You’re really going back and throwing yourself into that pit?”

“That’s the plan.”

Bumble continued to stare for a moment and then strode over to a chest at the end of his ruined bed. He threw it open and a moment later dumped a leather backpack on the floor. Grime paused.

“What’s that?”

“That,” he continued to rummage around in the chest, “is my field pack.” He threw a sturdy pair of boots down onto the floor next to it.

The druid watched, his hands frozen mid action as he regarded the rummaging gnome. “A field pack?”

“Yes, for the field.” he said, clattering a set of torches on the floor before thumping a coil of rope on top.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Well,” the gnome’s head emerged from the chest to glare at Grime, “seeing as you’re in no fit state to leave my care, yet so determined to get yourself killed, as your doctor I’m obligated to see to it that you stay alive!”

He finished the last point by slipping on a jerkin, his head popping out the slightly too tight neck hole.

Grime stood, “What? You can’t go down into the pit!”

“Oh I can’t go down there?” Bumble said, his voice thick with derision, “how foolish of me! Grime the Wise has declared no one must enter the pit!” The Gnome stuffed the rope into the field pack.

“Listen to me Bum-”

“No you listen to me you fool!” Bumble yelled, “do you think you’re the only one that misses Glimmerstone? Do you think you’re the only one that’s lost something? That’s tired and scared and sad? That town was my home! Those people were my friends! And Garl damn-it Grime, so are you!”

He stood in the middle of the tiny workshop holding the clutch of torches, shaking.

“I need you Grime, you’re the last piece of Glimmerstone that I have left.”

Grime stood, stunned. After a moment he put his giant hand on the gnome’s shoulder and took a torch from his grip. Gently he set it in the field pack.

“Then let’s go, you and me. If we’re to be the last of Glimmerstone, then so be it. But let’s not rot in these slums, in some worthless little box in some worthless little alley. Let’s show this world and all it’s horrors that Glimmerstone still shines yet!”

Bumble looked at Grime, blinking back tears. Slowly the gnome’s face broke into a smile and as his eyes cleared he slid the rest of the torches into the pack.