Erg is discovered cleaning his armor. Oz is in conference with the wizard above, and the stray spacetime eddies that continually drift from his back rooms carry little snippets of the conversation...
Wiz: "Now for the big question! We want to know if the clock at Q' is moving away from the clock at P'. To answer this, we compare its velocity vector to the following vector: what we get by first parallel translating v along itself over to P'... "
Yow! This Oz must really know his stuff... I don't even know what the Wiz is talking about anymore... I don't know what *Oz* is talking about... though I suspect he is getting assistance from his brothers Ox and Oy (they shared a common origin). I liked it better when *I* got to ask the questions... "Help Oz"... ha ha ha ha, right. Oh, well, I suppose I'd better try to bring myself up to speed here...
Erg sets out to retrieve some of the extant tablets from outside the cave; as an afterthought, he decides to put on his armor; there may be trolls lurking about. Sure enough, no sooner has he put his head out the opening then a cry is raised: They had been waiting for a return engagement.
The meeker ones cringe away, but a band of young troll-toughs urge each other on, eager to settle the score. Brandishing his newly cleaned sword seems to interest them only mildly, and then slowly, as their brains react with their characteristic geological wit, to amuse. Slowly, and horribly, individual trolls let out squawks and burps, which gradually begin to resolve themselves into that most frightening of troll utterances: Laughter! A noise like a rock sifter working on aggregate became deafening, and some of the trolls actually began to crack smiles, the fissures extending from the corners of their mouths and throwing off rock splinters.
Dumbfounded, our hero let the sword hang limp and began backing up, while the cacaphonous trolls scented victory and closed in for the kill. And then, he did the only thing that could possibly have saved him, whether by luck or design we cannot know, though with each retelling the history drifted torwards the latter. Erg tripped over backwards and again collapsed in a heap!
Instantly, silence. The expressions of amusement turned to horror as they all remembered where *that* had led to. Stumbling over themselves in their eagerness to be away, lest they too be hurled over the cliff, the young toughs soon showed their superior mettle by outdistancing all other trolls in the rout. Indeed, some of their fearsome but oddly alluring mates, the trollops, who had been hanging back during the confrontation, now seemed in little hurry to leave the field, but shambled off giving the hero suggestive moues over their brawny shoulders, which made him blush under his visor. But soon they too were gone, leaving the field unconstested, for which the reader may be grateful, for he is beginning to suspect I have overextended the franchise of this series... Our hero shrugs, and gathering the remaining tablets under his arm (some with troll bite marks), returns to the cave.
Here he begins to take notes.
[But now, having exhausted the time available to pursue this in frivolity, yet eager to offer up this humble leavening of amusement while it is still fresh, I must beg the gentle reader's indulgence if I post an item totally free of physics and resume note-taking on the morrow... No more trolls, I promise.]