If you haven’t read it already, you might like to start at An Adventure In The Castle Of Despair, Part 1

48 games of rock, paper, scissors, sorcery, political assassination later (it’s hard to beat political assassination) and Gort stepped out onto the causeway. Had the band of adventurers chosen to use commonsense instead of bickering for 20 minutes over the rules of the game, they probably would have opted for sending the slender, diminutive half-Elf across first anyway, if for no better reason than he weighed about a 3rd of the next lightest miscellaneous adventurer in the group.

Additionally, Gort was simply too pleasantly optimistic to be worried by the obvious trap that the causeway represented. If it had occurred to him that he might at any moment be about to tumble screaming to his death, it appeared he was rather looking forward to it and it would be a cheerful sort of scream.

“I fucking hate Elves,” muttered Flargflarg as Gort moved out onto the ancient bridge, whistling a happy tune. “Does he have to fucking skip? Is that absolutely necessary?”

“Everybody hates the Elves,” said Nurl. “But Gort’s okay. When he doesn’t whistle. Or speak. Or smile in that way like everything is going to work out for the best.”

Nurl was right, everybody did hate the Elves. It wasn’t just because they were always going on about peace and love and harmony and sustainable agriculture and the benefits of a high-fibre diet [1], it was also partly because they were horribly efficient at killing things. Somehow, the whole tree-hugging, woodland spirity, one-with-the-deeper-magic-of-nature thing just didn’t add up if you ever got a chance to watch an Elf with a sword in each hand brutally carving his or her way through an entire band of Half Orcs, apologising politely at each agonising Half Orc death yodel.

Next across the causeway was Wandering Xing-Lu, bow slung over one shoulder, dark robes flapping wildly in the wind that howled down through the chasm. After he reached the other side Phil moved across, then Borgus [2], then Flargflarg, and then finally Nurl.

Nurl gritted his teeth with every deliberate step, but he refused to hurry or appear concerned. There were some things you couldn’t do when you were at the top of the Professional Hero League, and one of them was definitely that you couldn’t soil yourself just because you were very, very afraid.

The musclebound Hero had just taken his last step off the bridge when the steep canyon began to echo with a deep rumbling sound. The band turned to look at the causeway and watched silently as a huge chunk of stone fell away, and then another, and another, until the entire bridge suddenly disappeared from view, tumbling into the canyon below.

“So, who saw that coming?” said Wandering Xing-Lu once the noise had subsided.

“You did, Xing,” answered the rest of the band meekly, in unison.

“And who said we’d end up trapped on this side if we came across?”

“You did, Xing,” they said again.

“And who is not going to be impressed at all if we get chased out of this castle by a horde of shrieking zombie skeletons and we have no way of retreating back to where we left the bikes?”

There was a small amount of conferring among the other members of the group and then, a little hesitantly, they said, “You are not going to be impressed, Xing?”

“Too fucking right I am not going to be impressed!” snapped Wandering Xing-Lu as he stomped off towards the castle.

There was this to know about Wandering Xing-Lu: he was possibly a demi-God, or on the other hand he was possibly not. No-one was sure. Certainly, ancient scrolls told of a mysterious trickster figure called Wandering Xing-Lu who stole fire from the Gods and then who sold it back to them at an appalling markup. Current opinion among many of the Wisdom City Professional Heroes was that there was a chance that the Wandering Xing-Lu they knew, and the Wandering Xing-Lu from the oldest of the old stories, could be one and the same person.

The contemporary Wandering Xing-Lu, for example, was as inhumanly skilled with bow and arrow as the legendary figure, and the contemporary Wandering Xing-Lu had the habit of turning up in the most unexpected places, just as his trickster forebear did in all of his stories.

And of course, Wisdom City and the universe in which it existed was exactly the sort of place where this sort of thing happened all the time, and it often paid not to jump to hasty conclusions.

“Oooookay,” said Nurl to those members of the party who weren’t currently fuming and muttering dark curses a small distance away, “we all know why we’re here. We’ll figure out how to get back when it’s time to get out. For now, we go in.”

***

A cowled figure stepped back from a slitted window high in one of the Castle’s many towers.

“They are here, Master,” a voice hissed from beneath the cowl.

“Excellent,” said another figure in the room, seated in shadows. A gloved hand caught the flicker of a dancing torch as it carressed the silky fur of a black cat, which abruptly ceased living at the touch. “We have waited many years for this moment. Make our guests welcome.” The voice paused. “And get me some more cats. It’s hard to be evil if you don’t have cats.”

***

Egad, what have our heroes got themselves into?! Will Wandering Xing-Lu ever stop being pissy about the fact that the causeway collapsed just as he predicted it would? If everyone hates the Elves, why are nude Elvish calendars always so popular? Who are the two figures in the castle tower, and maybe the one with the gloves should stop patting cats if they keep dying when he touches them? Tune in to the next episode to find out some more about… An Adventure In the Castle Of Despair!

Copyright © Murray Wells 2011