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

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth…

Thanks to my old mate Thomas who always seems to find this sorta stuff… while holding down a high pressure day job.

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

I’m sitting on the back deck of a house in West Hobart, looking out across the city to the Derwent River. This view is picture-postcard pretty. No, scratch that, this is better than a postcard, because it moves and changes as the afternoon progresses, which postcards don’t do until you get halfway into a bottle of tequila and that’s usually when the uncontrolled sobbing starts.

I love the rhythm and pace of Hobart. It’s kinda like everyone down here is on the really amazing antidepressants that you have to buy under the counter from veterinarians elsewhere in Australia [1]. I love the sense of history and the feeling that if you walk down this particular alley you are much more likely to discover a hidden cafe, rather than being mugged and left in a coma.

Also, more bad news if you live anywhere else, everything down here tastes better. In fact, the food in Tasmania is so good, it’s worth a separate visit on its own — which I think is sort of a deliberate ploy on behalf of Tasmanian Tourism, curse them for their foodie cleverness.

All-in-all, this place is frustratingly pretty and aggravatingly relaxing and I can’t think of anywhere else in the world that I’d rather be sitting right at this moment. I think I’ll have another beer and be pleasantly annoyed some more…

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