If you haven’t already, you might like to read An Adventure In The Castle Of Despair, Part 3 first.

In Part 3, I introduced Trevor Deathpriest and Lorenzo Deathpriest. By the time I started writing Part 4, I had decided to rename them to Darren Deathpriest and Murray Deathpriest for nefarious purposes of my own. Hope that doesn’t annoy anyone too much.

***

“What,” asked Darren Deathpriest, against his better judgement, “do you mean by painful? Do you mean like a stinging pain, or is it more like a throbbing pain?”

“Well,” said Murray Deathpriest, reflecting for a moment, “sometimes it’s the stinging type of pain, right, but sometimes it’s definitely more of a throbbing pain. It kind of depends on the, er, ‘situation’, if you get my meaning.”

Darren Deathpriest rocked back on his heels and stared up into the shadows that lurked around the ceiling of the Castle’s main foyer. Birds and bats and Grod knew what else lived a simple existence up in those lofty heights, and not for the first time Darren Deathpriest found himself wishing he was a simple bird with simple bird needs who didn’t have to spend 9 hours a day listening to his colleague’s disturbing medical problems. “Well,” he said, taking out one of his Ritual Disembowelling Spoons and beginning to give it a polish, “I’d definitely have that looked at, if I were you. Doesn’t sound normal, stinging and throbbing. Not normal at all.”

“I know, I know,” said Murray Deathpriest with a worried expression. “It’s hell when you’re in the middle of torturing someone and you’re up to your elbows in gizzards and blood, and you know you’re not doing a decent job of it because of the mild to medium discomfort. But it’s not the kind of thing you want to go into your Doctor’s office about and just say, ‘Pardon me, Doc, would you be so kind as to take a look at this?’ I mean, what if he… what if he said, ‘Ewwwww,’ or something?”

Darren Deathpriest shrugged. He was already feeling very “Ewwwww” just about the conversation itself. “Obviously it’s up to you, mate. But me, I’d get that looked at.”

The two stood silently for a moment, one lost in thoughts of stinging and throbbing, the other wondering if he’d touched anything that day that his colleague had handled.

“Tell you what, though,” said Murray Deathpriest eventually, “if nothing else it sure makes you appreciate good quality toilet paper.” He picked a morsel from between two of his teeth with a sharpened fingernail and snorted with disgust. “Not like the fucking sandpaper they have in the toilets here.”

“I do know what you mean,” Darren Deathpriest agreed, squinting at his Ritual Disembowelling Spoon before polishing it some more. “That stuff is murder on your infernal regions even without any stinging or throbbing.”

***

“Fuck off, is it?” muttered Borgus under his breath. “Really? You think your magic’s strong enough to tell us to fuck off and we’ll just go away, will we? Really? Hah!” He was rummaging through his backpack and the small pouches tied to his belt and muttering things like, “Lizard tongues, I know I packed lizard tongues,” and, “Where’s the fucking unicorn eyeballs? Don’t tell me I forgot to bring unicorn eyeballs!” Every now and then he’d stop, catch sight of the two words chiselled above the Castle door, and that would set him off again with another, “Hah!”

The other Adventurers were keeping well clear.

All of them except Phil The Berserk Accountant had seen Borgus like this before, and there had been an unspoken consensus that something dangerous was about to happen to someone and it was best watched from a short distance away. Even Phil, who usually lived in his own brightly-lit world of accountancy-induced psychosis, knew that you did not annoy a 13th Level Mage if the thought of having your face melted off caused you any sort of anxiety at all.

“Aha!” said Borgus, holding up a small jar and squinting at its contents. “Genuine unicorn eyeballs!”

***

“What,” said Darren Deathpriest, horrified, “all over?”

“No, no,” hissed Murray Deathpriest hastily, making a ‘keep it down’ gesture with his hands. “Just… you know… on my er… groinal… region.”

“Grod,” said Darren Deathpriest, edging away, “I don’t think it’s normal to get blisters on any part of your body. Especially your groin!”

Murray Deathpriest wobbled back and forth from one foot to the other, wringing his Death Halberd in his hands. “So, you er… you think I should have that looked at too? Just in case?”

“Looked at?” replied Darren Deathpriest with disgust. “I think you should have the fucking thing removed, Murray, really I do.”

“Oh, now there’s no need to be like that…” Murray Deathpriest whined.

***

Borgus finished adding ingredients to his flask and put a thumb over the opening and gave it a vigorous shaking. Small jets of green foam sprayed out and gently sizzled where they splashed on the earth.

A mad glint dawned in the Mage’s endless-midnight eyes, and the other Adventurers took another 3 steps back. Collectively they realised they were now a little less than a step away from tumbling to their deaths in the chasm that surrounded the Castle, so they all took one cautious half-step forward again just to be a little safer, relatively speaking.

The Mage strode to the doors and, dipping a fingertip into the flask, began inscribing a complex rune on the ancient wood in sharp strokes of his finger. As each stroke sliced across the wood it glowed briefly, and then faded into nothing.

***

“…as long as you remember to squeeze them,” continued Murray Deathpriest, “and that helps to keep them drained, see? It’s not so bad when you get used to it, honestly.”

Darren Deathpriest was fairly certain he was going to be ill, and he was going to be ill in the dusty and cobwebbed ceremonial Death Scimitar stand that stood next to the Castle’s main entrance doors. He was in the middle of wretching when he suddenly stopped.

“…did you hear something?” he croaked, frowning at the entrance doors.

Neither Deathpriest had ever seen the main doors standing open. They used other, secret doors to enter and leave the Castle and it was said that some mighty and arcane spell protected the Castle’s main doors from ever being opened.

***

Borgus Rennan, 13th Level Mage, stepped back and admired the handiwork that only he could now see. In his sable-depthless eyes the door writhed with a living rune that represented the symbol of Grod in His aspect as The Slightly Annoyed Destroyer.

The Mage raised a hand and stretched out and wiggled his fingers.

“Here we go,” hissed Nurl, and all of the other Adventurers cupped their testicles for reasons none of them would ever be able to explain.

And then Borgus spoke, and the words he uttered were: “Fuck off.”

***

“…?” mentioned Murray Deathpriest.

***

The doors were there and then the doors weren’t there and the world was instead filled with noise and light and sizzling bits of burning wood.

The two Deathpriests were slammed from their feet and thrown across the Castle’s main foyer as if they had been nothing more than a child’s ragdolls. Murray Deathpriest was already in a coma before he hit the opposite wall, and Darren Deathpriest’s last thought, before he also lost consciousness, was, Well, at least I’m not going to die from something I caught from him, the filthy animal.[1]

***

Borgus Rennan, 13th Level Mage, stood where the Castle doors once existed and gently smoldered. Whisps of smoke rose attractively from charred areas of his beard, and it took him a little while to notice that his tunic was on fire. He absently patted out the flames and then giggled and then slowly sagged to his knees and fell forward onto his face.

***

Yikes! I told you something was going to happen to those doors, and not only did it happen to the doors, it happened to several of the characters as well! Will Borgus’s beard every grow back? Will Darren Deathpriest ever find out which diseases he’s caught from his extremely good looking colleague? There’s only one way to find out — tune in next time for Part 5, if you dare!

Copyright © Murray Wells 2011