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

If you haven’t read it already, you might like to read An Adventure In The Castle Of Despair, Part 2

The band of Adventurers were nonplussed.

“I’m kind of used to riddles being inscribed above the magic doors of castles and caves and whatnot,” said Borgus to the others. “Usually, you solve the riddle and the door just… opens.”

“Oh right, yeah yeah,” said Flargflarg, “like that one where you had to say the Half Orc word for ’platonic relationship’ before it would open.”

“Exactly,” said the Mage, scratching at his carefully groomed beard.

“Only,” continued Flargflarg, “the Half Orcs don’t actually have a word for platonic relationship, so you had to know to use the word for ’enemy I ate with a small amount of regret.’”

“Exactly,” said the Mage. [1]

“And even then, ’regret’ in Half Orcish is only ever used to indicate that you might have added too much curry powder.”

“Shut up,” said the Mage.

Riddles inscribed above magically locked doorways were a fairly standard thing in the Adventuring industry, and many a quest came to a disappointing conclusion because, as it happens, being great with a sword and looking fantastic while swinging from a chandelier in a loincloth didn’t always equate to being versatile at abstract or lateral thinking.

However, in this particular situation, it didn’t appear that much abstract thinking was required, as inscribed above the magically locked main entrance doors of The Castle Of Despair was the following simple statement:

“Fuck Off”.

It wasn’t even written in Half-Orcish, or Elvish, or any of the other exotic languages of the many Races of the Wisdomverse. It was written in plain English, in a very straightforward font, and it had been underlined, for the benefit of those who weren’t otherwise convinced about the intent.

***

Being a Deathpriest took a certain sort of mindset, and usually vacancies in the priesthood attracted a particular type of applicant. It helped if you lacked imagination. It was particularly beneficial if you had a strong stomach. And if you were also the kind of person who could do 12 horrible things to mostly innocent people in a day, and still go to sleep thinking about building a bigger boat shed, all the better.

Darren Deathpriest and Murray Deathpriest were, if anything, extremely typical Deathpriests.

They could lurk at a moment’s notice. They could make furniture feel menaced, if the situation required it. They could cackle even when things were very, very unfunny, which was much of the time. But most of all, they could leave the job of Deathpriesting at the door when they went home in the evening to the Deathwife and the Deathkiddies after a hard day of making that day much, much harder on someone else.

Currently they were on duty in the main foyer of the Castle Of Despair, and they were entirely unprepared for what was about to happen to the front doors…

Holy moly, folks, what is about to happen to those front doors? Will our band of Heroes really ‘Fuck Off’? Will Darren and Murray get to build a bigger boat shed? How do you say, ‘Please stop eating my legs!’ in Half-Orcish? (Ironically, it’s kind of a sound like, “Aaaaaargh!!”) Find out the answers to some of these questions in Part 4!

Copyright © Murray Wells 2011

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

“Anything?” asked Borgus Rennan, 13th Level Mage, who had dismounted from his mighty steed and had spent the last 20 minutes tinkering with its throttle.

“Nothing much,” said Nurl. “It’s apparently a Level 9 castle, no-one knows who built it or why. Or when. Or out of what. And it’s been called The Castle Of Despair for as long as anyone can remember.”

“Huh,” said Gort the half-Elf, leaning forward on the handlebars of his scooter. “It’s hardly a castle of despair. It’s more like a fortification of despair. People will call anything a castle these days.”

“Well,” said Nurl, “whatever it’s called, we need to get inside. And that means we have to go across that.”

The Castle — or perhaps Fortification — Of Despair had been built against the staggeringly steep face of a bleak mountain, overlooking a valley that dropped dramatically away to a remote river floor below. The only thing that connected the Castle to the outside world at all was a stone causeway that stretched out across the chasm that separated the other side of the valley from the one on which the small band of Heroes now stood; and, against all expectation, that stone causeway somehow managed to look even more ancient than the mountain rock out of which it had been constructed.

“Fuck that for a very silly idea,” said Wandering Xing-Lu, who stood a little behind, arms folded across his chest. “If it doesn’t collapse on our way over, you sure as Hells know it’s going to collapse as soon as we become really interested in coming back as quickly as possible.”

“He’s right,” said Flargflargbloxlnl The Difficult To Pronounce, who usually didn’t get a chance to say much in the stories in which he appeared, and who was therefore going to make the most of any lull in the conversation. “Same damn thing happened to me the last 4 castles I raided. It’s bloody annoying, to be honest. This is why I’ve only been doing temples recently. Usually you only get the giant rolling stone balls and the poison darty things with temples.”

“What are we waiting for?” snapped Phil The Berserk Accountant, the last member of the party, rejoining the group from where he had been crouching, intently examining the castle through a pair of battered binoculars. “Castle over there,” he pointed impatiently, “why are we still over here?”

Nurl stroked his handsome chin with several handsome fingers and then shrugged.

“We leave the bikes here,” he said. “We play rock, paper, scissors, sorceror, political assassination to see who goes across first. Be ready to move out in 10 minutes.”

The band of adventurers (and one very angry Accountant) began their various preparations.

“It’s not even particularly ‘despairy’,” said Gort as he pushed his scooter towards a small patch of gnarled, weather-bleached bushes. “I’d have said it was only mildly depressing at best.”

Oh no! Our heroes (and one very angry Accountant) are about to enter the Castle — or possibly Fortification — Of Despair! Will they survive the crossing of the ancient causeway? What terrible secrets await them on the other side (if they survive the crossing of the ancient causeway)? How is it possible to have handsome fingers? Find out the answers to some of these questions if Murray ever writes a Part Two!

Copyright © Murray Wells 2011

The three adventurers — Nurl, his Half-Elven flatmate Gort, and Borgus Rennan, 13th Level Mage — were crouched on the crest of a steep hill overlooking the long valley that ran between The Vampire Foothills Of Deathhausen and the staggering spire of Mt Crucible, former home of the Younger Gods before they got fed up with the majestic scenery and moved en masse into the shadier parts of Wisdom City, where all the fun was to be had.

"Maybe it’s a folk festival?" suggested Gort in his annoyingly bright and positive and maliciously pleasant Half-Elven voice.

"Folk festival my bottom," muttered Nurl. "You don’t get seven or eight-hundred Half-Orcs and Hobgoblins in one place because you want to explore traditional arts and crafts. You get them in one place because you want to explore some very traditional and exceptionally unpleasant ways of killing a lot of people. And what about this?" He held out a crumpled piece of paper, which fluttered back and forth in the high wind that coursed across the hill. "I found it nailed to a tree a couple of miles back."

Gort took the piece of paper and glanced at it, then passed it on to Borgus with a shrug. The Mage spent a few moments examining it, then looked up at his companions.

"It’s been a long time since I tried to read Hobgoblin, but I think this," he traced some symbols with a finger, "is a name — ‘Gralgar The Perpetrator’ — and this smudgy thing here could be the symbol for ‘Attack at dawn without mercy and kill everyone starting with the women and children because, wow, don’t they usually get off easy?’ Or… or, it could be the symbol for ‘Attack at dawn, with a little mercy, but not much because word gets around and we have a reputation to maintain, so women and children are optional but we are nevertheless expecting a top effort from everyone in the wholesale slaughtering and mindless carnage arenas.’ It’s hard to tell, considering that Hobgoblins only have about 12 words in their vocabulary and 11 of them are used to describe ways of killing people."

"What does the 12th one describe?" asked Gort.

"Basically, what to do to the people after you’ve killed them. But that’s only if it’s written on its own. That’s the problem with Hobgoblin — the meaning is entirely dependent on the context. In fact, the most famous piece of Hobgoblin writing, "The Ballad Of HLaarRRlllRrrllRllll", can be read either as a very moving poem about a young Hobgoblin who meets the Hobgobliness of his dreams and who decides not to kill her and boil and eat her head, which is the traditional Hobgoblin courting ritual, so his relatives kill him and boil and eat his head, which is the traditional Hobgoblin method of dealing with rebellious teenagers; or it can be read as a recipe for a moderately dull chicken salad with sesame seeds; or it can be read as detailed instructions on how to repair a General Alchemical toaster oven."

"Those Hobgoblins and their toaster ovens," Nurl said sadly. "You’d think the silly bastards would have learned by now. They haven’t even invented fire yet, let alone electricity. No wonder they always think the things are broken."

Borgus stared out at the hive of activity taking place in the valley below. "I don’t think we can just ignore this. That’s a veritable crapload of Half-Orcs and Hobgoblins to have just an hour’s ride from Wisdom City. Maybe it is some sort of innocent gathering; but then again, maybe we should just go with bitter experience and assume these mad, bloodthirsty lunatics intend to attack the city like every other time 3 or more of them happen to be standing somewhere together at the same time."

"I say we wait until nightfall," said Nurl. "We should have a better idea of what they’re up to, and maybe Wandering Xing-Lu and Phil The Berserk Accountant will have got here by then."

"I agree," said the Mage. "Five against eight hundred makes so much more sense than just three against eight hundred."

"They won’t know what hit them," said Gort in a teeth-grindingly well-adjusted and pleasant tone.

"Yeah," said Nurl. "And if we’re really unlucky they probably even won’t notice what hit them, either."

Here Endeth Part 1. Please send lots of money, or I promise I’ll write Part 2.

He took a sip from his frosted latte.

"To get to the lake, you must walk through the forest. To get to the desert, you must swim across the lake. To get to the mountain you must trek through the desert. And when you reach the base of the mountain, that is where your true journey begins."

The Master began smearing marmalade on a freshly toasted piece of bread and then stopped. "And it’s a big fucking mountain."

He continued scooping large, mountain-like dollops of marmalade out of the jar.

There was a rustling among the Disciples.

"And this is just applicable to men, is it?" One Disciple asked, with a definite edge on the word ‘men’. The other Disciples shifted subtly, eyes rolling in the direction of the one who had spoken, as though they had been collectively wading in shallow waters only to discover that they were, in fact, frolicking at the very edge of a bottomless trench.

The Master stopped mid-bite, sticky toast crumbs decorating his beard in mystical patterns.

"Well," he said cautiously, clearing his throat and scattering crumbs on the tabletop, "I don’t think it only applies to men, per se, but it was generally men that I had in mind, er, yes. I suspect women have other… things… that they… have… uhm."

"Only," continued the Disciple, whose name was Allegedly Dennis, "it seems like men think they have some sort of deathgrip or something on being deep and interesting, like it takes having a penis to wonder about the inner nature of the Universe. And, if you really think about it, having a penis is probably counter-productive to doing any thinking at all. At least," Allegedly Dennis added in a dark mutter, "that’s always been my experience with men."

The Master frowned. "Look, Dennis," he said, "when you applied to join the Brotherhood, did anyone explain-"

"What if you don’t like forests?" Interjected another Disciple.

"What?" said the Master.

"What if you don’t like forests?" repeated the Disciple. "Could you have an inner carpark, instead of an inner forest?"

"An inner carpark?" said the Master incredulously. "Who in the name of Grod wants an inner carpark? That’s a horrible, soulless, desolate metaphor for an inner landscape!"

"Oh, but what, an inner forest is, like, amazingly better?" said the Disciple. "Huh, I’d rather spend my time crossing a desolate inner carpark than staggering through a self-actualising forest with creepy-crawly-things-with-claws-and-poison-darts-and-great-big-bloody-bitey-whatsit-fangs!"

"Unless you got mugged," observed a third Disciple, whose name for some reason was Inappropriate Ralph. "Most of the carparks in my neighbourhood, you’d be lucky to make it across alive even if they gave you a headstart first."

"I can’t swim," said a morose voice from the back of the group. It was a voice that knew no-one was listening to it, because no-one ever did, and in this it was perhaps the wisest voice in the room, because, in fact, no-one was listening to it at all. "I just know I’m going to drown in my inner lake."

"What I want to know," said one very intense Disciple, stabbing a finger at the air as though he meant to do it physical harm, "is whose brilliant idea was it to put Enlightenment at the top of a fucking mountain? I mean, forest, yes. Lake, whatever. Desert, okay if you absolutely must. But I get nosebleeds getting things down from the top shelf in the kitchen! Even if I go through all that other crap, I’m going to be spending all my Enlightenment leaning my head back and wishing I’d brought more tissues!"

"Look," said the Master, "the thing about Enlightenment is, you don’t just get it by going through the motions, right? If you climb to the top of the mountain and you find that your nose is bleeding, yeah, then chances are you climbed to the top of the wrong mountain. Do you see?"

There was a long, contemplative moment among the Disciples.

"Wait," said one Disciple. "There’s more than one fucking mountain?"

‘No,’ Jacob said. ‘No more talk. I’m done with talking.’

‘But,’ Jack said, ‘maybe you’ll get used to it?’

‘Get used to it?’, Jacob said with a snort. ‘I’d rather kill myself than carry you around for the rest of my life. In fact, I’d rather kill myself than carry you around for just one more day.’

‘Oh that’s lovely,’ said Jack, ‘you really know how to make someone feel like shit, don’t you?’

‘It’s nothing personal,’ Jacob said. ‘I didn’t ask to be cursed, you didn’t ask to be the curse. But here we are. Now shut up, I’m trying to read.’

‘Shut up, he says,’ Jack muttered bitterly to himself inside the box. ‘All I’ve really got is the ability to talk, and he says shut up.’

‘Shut up,’ Jacob repeated, and flipped another page of the very old book. ‘Okay, it says here that Goldmeadow was able to get rid of Evil Pixies with some sort of potion. Are you a Pixie?’

‘How the hell would I know if I’m a Pixie?’ replied Jack. ‘What does a Pixie look like? While you’re at it, what do I look like?’

‘I could tell you what you look like, but you won’t let me open the box.’

‘Yes! Don’t open the box!’ Jack said emphatically. ‘Something bad will happen if you open the box!’

‘So you keep saying, but it occurs to me that I only have your word for it.’

‘Please don’t open the box!’ Jack begged. ‘I promise you something bad will happen!’

‘Okay, okay,’ Jacob said with a sigh. ‘There’s a drawing here of a Pixie. You don’t sound like you look like that.’

‘Show me?’ said Jack. ‘You can open the box just a little bit. But,’ he added hastily, ‘only just a teeny, tiny little bit!’

Jacob held up the book and pulled the lid of the box up a fraction, so a small sliver of darkness showed from within. There was a scuttling sound inside the box, and an eyeball pressed up against the sliver.

‘This Goldmeadow,’ Jack said after a moment, ‘was he completely right in the head? I thought Pixies were supposed to be cute with an extra helping of cuteness. That thing looks like it could eat through concrete.’

‘Who knows?’ Jacob said with a shrug. ‘Maybe you need to be a bit mental to write a Grimoire about banishing Demons and Devils. And Pixies. I mean, it’s possible it might help with trafficking with the dark arts, if you’re already a little snorting mad to begin with.’

‘What’s in this potion he talks about?’

Jacob scanned the page again. ‘Doesn’t say. Just says that it’s a ‘vile and most profane concoction.”

‘Right, well, I can’t say I like the sound of that. ‘Vile and most profane?’ That sounds pretty bloody unpleasant, actually.’

‘No-one said getting rid of a curse would be pleasant. Or easy, for that matter. Don’t worry, I already assumed you weren’t going to enjoy it.’

‘Oh, that’s a weight off my mind,’ said Jack. ‘You know something? I’m three-and-a-half thousand years old. Maybe you’re my curse, did you think of that?’

‘Nice try,’ Jacob said with a razor-edge smile, ‘but you’re in the box, and I’m not. I’m going to get rid of you, and you are going to be got rid of. See? At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter who is being cursed.’ He dropped the book back onto the table and got up. ‘I’m going to see what I can find in the house to make a ‘vile and most profane concoction.’ You stay there.’

‘Oh, very funny,’ said Jack inside his box. ”You stay there.’ You should be a bloody comedian, you really should.’

A few minutes later, Jacob returned, carrying several bottles. He set them down on the table, and added a ceramic pouring jug that he had been clutching under one arm.

‘Okay, let’s see,’ he said. ‘I have bleach. I have turpentine. I have weed killer. And I have creme de menthe. If that doesn’t make a ‘vile and most profane concoction,’ nothing will.’

He reached for the first bottle and at that moment a loud thump was heard from upstairs.

‘What was that?’ Jack asked.

‘Is it 6:15?’ Jacob said, as he poured a measure of bleach into the jug. ‘It must be 6:15. At 6:15 Mrs Sphyx always hangs herself upstairs. She’s my landlady.’

‘Wait, wait, your landlady hangs herself every day at 6:15? I mean, she hangs herself?’

‘Has every day since I rented my room from her, yes.’ Jacob said with a shrug. ‘Nice lady, though.’

‘Is she not good at it? Not that I’m an expert, but I thought most people only hang themselves just the once.’

Jacob leaned closer to the box. ‘Yes,’ he said helpfully, ‘but this is Elsewhere, you see. Things are always a little different Elsewhere, haven’t you noticed? You get used to it after a while. She’ll be down in a few minutes and cooking dinner.’

‘Wow,’ said Jack. ‘You can get used to your landlady hanging herself every evening, but you can’t get used to a talking box. What does that say?’

‘It says,’ Jacob said slowly, as he measured some turpentine into the jug, ‘that you are much, much more annoying than my landlady.’

A short while later the jug was full, and while the contents looked and smelled unpleasant, neither Jacob or Jack were entirely certain it was the vile and most profane concoction mentioned in Goldmeadow’s Grimoire.

‘I have to give you extra points for adding in the creme de menthe,’ Jack said. ‘Not everyone would have the courage to do that. It definitely makes it technically evil, but I don’t know about vile and profane, exactly.’

‘Only one way to find out, I guess,’ said Jacob, taking the jug by its handle and lifting the lid on the box a fraction.

‘No, wait!’ shrieked Jack. ‘Why don’t we-’, but he didn’t get a chance to finish the thought.

‘Aargh!’ Jack yelled as Jacob poured the potion into the box. ‘No! Please! It’s…! NooooOOOooo!’

Once the jug was empty Jacob set it back on the table and listened to Jack’s shrieks and wails. Eventually Jack fell silent, and Jacob frowned.

He used a finger to open the lid a fraction, and peered inside. ‘Did it work?’ he asked hopefully.

There was a short silence, and then a sarcastic voice said from within, ‘Depends. Were you trying to make me sticky and smelly? Because, if so, I am completely fucking sticky and smelly. Well done, if that was what you were trying to achieve.’

‘Okay,’ said Jacob, ‘but no feeling like you’re going to die, or be banished, or just generally, you know, disappear?’

‘It stings a little,’ Jack said. ‘I guess that’s a plus, from your perspective.’

Jacob sighed. ‘Okay, Plan B. I brought the electric drill from the garage as well. Let’s see if that works.’

‘A drill?’ Jack said. ‘But hold on, to use a drill you’d have to… DON’T OPEN THE BOX! Please don’t open the box! The bad thing will-’, but he didn’t get a chance to finish that thought, either.

There was a sproinging sound, followed by an uncomfortable silence. Jack was hanging limply over the side of the box, his shiny wooden face and improbably large hook nose glowing with embarrassment and humiliation.

‘So,’ said Jacob calmly, ‘when does the bad thing happen?’

‘When does the… Isn’t this bad enough?’ Jack demanded. ‘I’m just hanging here, like some sort of useless idiot! I hate it when people open the box. It’s so… so… demeaning, is what it is.’

‘I can see that,’ Jacob said with a nod.

There was a soft knock on his door, and a pleasant voice said, ‘Dinner will be ready in 10 minutes.’

‘Thank you Mrs Sphyx,’ Jacob called out. Then, ’10 minutes gives me enough time to see if the drill will do any good. It’s cordless.’

‘No, wait!’ yelled Jack, but there was no waiting to be had.

"3 of you?" Nurl murmured, frowning down at his crossword puzzle.

" – yes, and we were looking at this sword, right -"

"Which 3 of you? I thought you usually worked alone?"

"- yes, normally, but I met the other 2 at a bar — this being FlargFlargBloxlnl The Difficult To Pronounce and Wandering Xing-Lu -"

"Xing-Lu’s out of jail again? I thought he was in for 8 years this time?"

"He was, but he got off on a technicality."

"Really? What was the technicality?"

"He ate his way out of his cell and killed all the guards."

Nurl blinked and gave this some thought. "That’s by way of being a hell of a technicality."

"Yes, anyway, so I met them at a bar and we’d had a few too many drinks and it seemed like a good idea at the time… You know the sort of thing — someone says, ‘Hey, I know this Level 9 Castle that’s just around the corner. Who’s up for storming it?’ And it’s only as you’re clinging to the underside of the drawbridge, staring down at a moat that has more fangs in it than any moat should, that you remember that you need at least 4000 heavily-armed soldiers to attack a Level 9 Castle, and here you are with 5 pissed warriors and a very angry accountant named Phil. Even worse, Phil is the only one making any progress and you can hear him going completely berserk somewhere in the castle over the state of their tax returns. So, anyway, we’re looking at this sword and it’s, like, stuck in this stone, so -"

"It’s stuck in a stone? The sword is stuck in a stone?"

"- is what I just said, yes, it’s stuck in this stone, and -"

"Like, it’s fully encased in the stone, you mean?"

" – no, no, it’s sort of buried in it, standing upright -"

"Wedged? Would you say that it was ‘wedged’ in the stone?"

"Who the hell cares if it was wedged or not?! The important thing — the thing that matters the most — is that it is stuck in the stone -"

"Who would leave a sword stuck in a stone like that?"

"- is something of which I have no idea… Listen, are you going to let me tell this story or what?"

"Tell, tell." Nurl said absently.

Kenneth took a deep breath. "So -"

"What’s a 5 letter word for treasure? Starts with a ‘b’."

"What?"

"5 letter word for treasure. Starts with a ‘b’."

"Booty. So -"

"Boooooooooty," Nurl repeated, carefully penciling the word into the appropriate squares.

"Look, will you please shut up. So, there were the 3 of us, looking at this sword, which is stuck, as I have pointed out, in a stone. And there’s a plaque, which says -"

"Extract."

"… Actually, yes, words to that effect… Hang on, have you seen this sword?"

"Hmmm? No, no — 7 letter word for ‘retrieve’, starting with an ‘E’. Extract."

"Right! I’m going to go tell this story to someone else!"

"No, no, I’m listening. Sword. Stone. Plaque."

"… Okay. So, yes, there’s this plaque, on the stone, and it reads, ‘"Whoso shall pull this Sword forth of the stone
is rightwise king, born of all England.’"

"Did I ever tell you that I was emperor of Prussia for a couple of weeks, until I got sick of the cabbages? King of England would be better. Not so many cabbages, you’d imagine."

"Which is what we were all thinking as well, except for the part about the cabbages, yes. So, there we were, trying to pull this damn sword out of this damn stone, and this kid comes along. What was his name…"

"Barry? Graham? Seth?"

"…You’re not helping, you know that, yeah? Arthur! That was his name – Arthur! So, this kid wanders up to the sword, and we’re all giving him crap about the fact that if 3 muscle-bound heroes can’t get it out, what hope in hell does he have, right? I mean, we were all pissed, so our manners weren’t the best, and -"

"Aha ahahah — your manners are never the best, even when you’re sober. Especially when you’re sober, come to think of it."

"- shutup, and knock me over if the little bugger doesn’t just pull the damn thing out! So, we’re all like, ‘Yeah, well, you know, we loosened it for you and everything,’ and the kid says, ‘You 3 look like you are of noble and heroic birth — you shall be the first to become my Knights Of The Round Table." So, we all looked at each other and the same thing occurs to all of us -"

"You mugged him."

"- which is exactly what we did, and we made off with the sword."

"You mugged the King of England. I’m having coffee with the guy who mugged the King of England."

"Anyway, so we hightail it into this forest, right, and we get our silly asses lost -"

"Hah! There is no surprise to me in this. Remember that time you raided the Temple Of Grod, and you were in there for like, 14 weeks? And it turned out there were only 6 medium-sized rooms to the entire temple? And you had a map?"

"Shutup. So, we’re standing in the forest, arguing about whether or not we should have taken a left, instead of a right, back at the Gingerbread Cottage, when this guy jumps out from behind a tree, all dressed in green -"

"Good color for a forest. Very soothing."

"- shutup, and he yells ‘Aha!’"

"- being standard jumping-out-from-behind-a-tree dialogue -"

"- and none of us are expecting it, so we all go about soiling our loincloths, and he says, "I am Robin Hood! I steal from the rich and I give to the poor!"

"Hang on — he steals from the rich…"

"Is what he said."

"And he gives to the poor…"

"Is also what he said."

"Well, the stealing from the rich part I get. That makes sense. But the giving to the poor? That sounds mental."

"Maybe it’s some kind of fetish thing. Anyway, so we’re all doing this, "Wow, it’s been a long time since we had any work, we’re flat broke, maybe you’ve got a few thousand dollars you can spare?" thing, when he spots that Xing-Lu’s carrying a bow."

"That Xing-Lu. Always with the bow."

"So, he challenges Xing-Lu to an archery contest, and me and FlargFlarg are going, "Oh, hell no, that’s how that whole thing with William Tell got started," but Xing-Lu won’t be told, so they set up this target and Xing-Lu goes first, partly because he’s the one who got challenged, but mostly because you can tell he’s completely psychotic, so who would argue, am I right?"

"Which reminds me — what’s a 6 letter word for a container for carrying arrows? Starts with a ‘q’?"

"Quiver." Kenneth frowned at his coffee companion.  "Look, Nurl, you do realize that you’re supposed to do crossword puzzles on your own, right? Otherwise, they’d be called Annoy The Person Sitting Next To You Puzzles."

An offended expression crossed Nurl’s absurdly chiselled features. "Hey, listen Kenneth," he said, "I don’t need your help with the crossword. The last thing I am in need of, just so we are clear on this issue, is your help with the crossword. What I am doing is allowing you to participate in the crossword, see, in the interests of ensuring that you do not feel left out, in a crossword-participation sense."

There was an acrimonious silence.

"Quiver is with one ‘v’?" Nurl asked with a sniff, as if he wasn’t even vaguely interested in the answer.

"Yes, one ‘v’." Replied Kenneth wearily.

"And a ‘u’?" Nurl asked, also with a sniff.

"Yes, also with a ‘u’."

"And it ends with -" began Nurl, presumably with a sniff.

"Q!" Yelled Kenneth. "U! I! V! E! -"

"All right, all right, I have it now! For the love of Grod, Kenneth, you really need to learn how to relax…"

"I am relaxed," Kenneth snarled, his left eye twitching madly.

"Why don’t you finish your story," Nurl suggested. "You’d just got to the part where Xing-Lu was going to kick some poor demented shmuck’s green-clad ass at archery."

Kenneth giggled randomly for a few moments and then suddenly sat forward. "Well, now that’s what you’d think, right — after all, Xing-Lu’s legendary with the bow, and who the hell is this guy who hangs around in forests? However -"

"Didn’t we establish that his name is Robin Hood?"

"- yes, but it was a rhetorical question -"

"Funny name for someone who steals for a living, when you think about it: "Robbin’." And "Hood"? Why didn’t he just call himself "Robbin’ MafiaHitman"? Or, "Robbin’ Loanshark"? Or, "Robbin’ 2ndHandCarSalesman"? I mean, it’s a little obvious, don’t you think?"

"- yes, yes, we know his name, well done, but the point I’m trying to make, however, is that everyone knows Wandering Xing-Lu is amazing with a bow and arrow and this forest dude is obviously in for an introduction to some major archery humiliation. So! They set up this target and Xing-Lu goes first — thunk! A bullseye! And me and FlargFlarg are going, "Pfeh, of course" and we’re wishing like hell there was a bookie somewhere in the forest when the other guy lines his shot up and kchunk! -"

"Kchunk?"

"- yes, kchunk, shutup, it will become evident why — and kchunk! He splits Xing-Lu’s arrow!"

"He what?!"

"I know!"

"No, no, I didn’t hear what you said, I was trying to spell ‘kchunk’ in my head… What did he do?"

"Oh for the love of Grod… He split Xing-Lu’s arrow!"

"You’re kidding me! What, right down the middle, split the arrow in half?"

"Yah! In half!"

"Wow, Xing-Lu must have been pissed."

"Pissed does not even begin to cover how Xing-Lu is feeling at this point. So, anyway, he takes another shot, and kchunk! -"

"Kchunk again?"

"- yes, kchunk!, he splits the other guy’s arrow!"

"Good Grod!"

"But wait! The other guy takes a 2nd shot and kchunk – yes, kchunk – he splits the arrow Xing-Lu used to split his arrow, which he’d used to split Xing-Lu’s first arrow!"

"He split… the second arrow… that Xing-Lu split… with his other arrow…?"

"Yes, something like that — anyway, this keeps going on, right, one arrow after another, until the forest clearing is completely littered with arrow bits and you can’t even see the target anymore, it has so many split arrows stuck in it. By this point me and FlargFlarg have totally lost interest and we’re lounging underneath a tree, swapping lies with this Hood’s group of merry men, while FlargFlarg is also trying to hit on some maid called Marion, when Xing-Lu finally loses his temper and kicks this Robin guy in the fundamentals."

"In the fundamentals?"

"Yes, you know… the, er… you know, the fundamentals."

"You mean the testicles?"

"Ssshh! Ssshhh! Yes, yes I mean the, er, the… fundamentals, like you said."

"That Xing–Lu. Always with the kicking of people in the fundamental testicles."

"Shhhh! So, anyway, this is when everything goes completely banana-shaped, right. FlargFlarg is bragging to this Marion maid about the size of his -"

"Manhood?"

"Estate! The size of his estate! And I’m telling this huge guy called Little John and this other guy called Friar Tuck about how good I am with my -"

"Enraged masculine essence?"

"- sword! How good I am with my sword!"

"Well, yes, I guess you could call it a sword…"

"My real sword! Shut up! And suddenly this Hood guy goes "Hoik!" and slumps to the ground and within moments the air is literally sizzling with arrows and with guys in green swinging back and forth and people yelling "The Sheriff Of Nottingham!" and "Evil Prince John!" and "Phil The Berserk Accountant!" So, me and FlargFlarg grab Xing-Lu, who is still stomping on the forest guy, and we catch the number 93 bus to -"

"You what?"

"We grab Xing-Lu and we catch the number 93 bus, which -"

"You catch a bus? In the middle of all these merry men doing their merry thing in the forest, you catch a bus?"

"Did I not mention about the bus? This is why we were hanging around the clearing in the first place — waiting for the number 93 bus."

"Oh, well done, Kenneth — here I am, thinking you’re in some dark and primeval forest -"

"Well, it was a little dark -"

"- facing off against all these monsters and crazy forest people and whatnot -"

"And it was at least reasonably primeval…"

"- when it turns out you were just running around like an idiot in the flower beds outside the Sherwood Forest Shopping Mall?"

"Look, Nurl, this was serious business! There were injuries! For example — Xing-Lu slipped when he was getting on the bus and hit his head, and now he thinks he’s a small citrus tree… And the disgusting little bugger is expecting to be pollinated! Not to mention that FlargFlarg got into an argument with a group of nuns at the back of the bus and a knife fight broke out and he was stabbed 143 times before any us of thought to go check what he was screaming about."

"These nuns -"

"I hate those nuns."

"- they’re not the nuns that are always singing about how do you solve a problem like Maria?"

"Yes!"

"And the ones who are always going on about how the hills are alive with the sound of music?"

"Yes!"

"Pfeh. Someone should tell those nuns that the only hills in this region that are alive are the Vampire Foothills Of Deathhausen. And the only sound they’re alive with is people screaming, "The Hills! The horrible, horrible hills!" Accompanied, of course, by the sound of chewing."

"I hate those nuns. Have I mention that I hate those nuns?"

"Everyone hates those nuns, Kenneth. Well, maybe Xing-Lu doesn’t anymore. Hard to imagine a nun-hating citrus tree…"

"Pollination," Kenneth muttered with revulsion. "It’s disgusting, I tell you, completely disgusting."

If you enjoyed this (hell, anything’s possible), you might also enjoy:

• Scene From A Cafe Somewhere, Featuring Two Heroes Talking
• Notes on a City