As you desperately circle the room, blasts of doughnut transmogrifying silver energy whistling unpleasantly close, you brush up against the side of one of the potion shelves. From somewhere in your pocket regions comes an unexpected squish. Reaching down, your hand comes into contact with something wet and slimy stuffed down inside your pocket. Doing a quick shuffle across the corner of the room to avoid another eratic spell that converts a tentacular plant into yet another lump of fried dough, you suddenly remember the impressive pedistal in the western alcove.

Your fingers explore the distinctly nasty feeling mess experimentally. The flesh is firm and a litle slimy, but undernieth you can clearly feel some pretty strong fish bones. Furthermore, you find yourself wincing as your thumb comes into contact with a particularly sharp section of fin.

At last! a weapon concealed under your clothes and within the invisible barrier of the ring. You have no idea whether witches have some weakness to fish (though you do recall water in general causing them problems), but right now anything is worth a try.

lacking any sort of dice to test your agility, you duck, bob and weave, trying to get close to Sugarina. Grabbing up a cutglass bowl of shredded toadstools you hurl it vigorously towards the whirling, screaching black clad figure. As Sugarina blasts the bowl with a burst of silver and a derisivve squawk, you dash quickly in to one side.

Using the momentum of your run to give you extra force, you pull the fish from your pocket and sweep it forward in one motion, like a samurai suddenly engaged in slapstick comedy.

the speed of your rush, and the fact that the fish doesn't become visible until it actually leaves your grasp means that you catch Sugarina completely off balance. The half pound of slimy dead piscine slaps brutally onto her liver spotted cheak with a very satisfying squish!

Involuntarily, the witch jerks back in disgust, letting fly with another highly colourful expression, her thin black clad arms sweeping up reflexively to cup her cheak. being as her hands were full of ballistic enchantment at the time, this reflexive reaction really was not the best in the circumstances, as from her fingers a ray of blinding silver energy strikes her full in her ugly, hate filled face.

In the best tradition of vanquished villains your not disappointed that the first sound Sugarina lets forth is a very loud wailing "noooooooooooo!"

there is a sudden bright flash of white light, far brighter than when the witch turned other objects into doughnuts. You watch in fascinated horror as the witches' hiddious form begins to writhe and wripple like an action figure in a microwave. her body twists, black rags of cloth flapping and billowing as her limbs distort and bubble. With a horrible hiss, clouds of dense black smoke fly from the twitching bundle which is rapidly shrinking and distorting into inhuman shapes benieth the layer of black shrouds.

For a second you see what appears to be a round, circular object suspended in midair within the cloud of wavering cloth and billowing fumes, then suddenly there is another bright flash, this one the sparking orange of fire and all the black wrags that once were the witches dress burst into sooty, spitting flames.

A few seconds later all that is left of the villainous old hag is a sticky black stane on the carpet and a horrible smell of burnt sugar.

Cautiously, you tipto over to inspect the carpet where Sugarina was standing, but there really is nothing but a few last whisps of smoke and that unpleasant stane which even the strongest carpet cleaner would have a tough time shifting.

Nervously, you tug off the magic ring, it's quite hard to get off sinse your hands are rather sweaty by this point, and walk tentatively around the witch's empty den.

The room is a shambles, most of it's unpleasant contents have been transformed into doughnuts, and the nasty smell of overdone baking and frazled cloth hovers thickly in the air.

Walking over to the shelves where one or two bowls and teapots stil hold potion ingredients despite the spate of eratic spell hurling, you pick up one of the doughnuts that once was a plastic bowl.

it sits in your hand, the stil warm coating of sugar on the outside making your fingers sticky, the familiar smell of frying assailing your nostrels and reminding you of good times at the seaside, fish and chips, padling in the sea, carrying an umbrella around the beach as the rain beats down.

You have no doubt what to do next. Slowly, you raise the doughnut to your mouth, close your eyes, hold your breath and take an enormous bite!

A second later, you feel the gentle pit pat of drizle on your face and you can here the familiar sound of slow moving traffic. Opening your eyes, you find yourself standing on a long grey road, the beach a litle ways away, cars idling past and a large square bright red van parked kneetly at the corner.

You turn your back on the bvan and start walking. Carefully you pull a paper tissue from your pocket and wrap the rest of the cooling doughnut in it, afterall you would like to see Gougehook and the other goblins again, maybe tour the goblin city. But for now, you are home. Back to mobile phones and the internet, celebrity tv and pizza hut.

Yet now, you know more than that. You put a hand into your pocket and idly caress the two ring, your litle suveneer of magic. you'll find a use for that soon.

Afterall, now you've seen the world that lies behind the commonplace, the world of goblins and monsters, magic spells and secret knolidge. You know there is more to life than the next paycheck, the next blockbuster movie, the next years' fashion.

you are wiser and stronger now, you've faced monsters, seen through riddles and puzles, and defeated a powerful enchantress. Truly you are a -----

"Toffy apples! perfectly safe, absolutely none magical toffy apples"

You stop, looking towards the small stand by the side of the road where a withered, twisted old stump of a man is proffering something round and sweet smelling on a stick.

wow! you didn't even know they made toffy apples anymore, lovely!

truly, you are a sucker!

The end.


congratulations, you have survived the Horrible dungeons of dreadful doom. Any comments, questions, diatribes or death threats, please contact me on dark@xgam.org, and for more information about Darkgrue, go to http://www.kaldobsky.com/audiogames/

I hope you have enjoyed the book and it's rather insane brand of humour. hopefully i'll be able to come up with more gamebooks in the future.

Goodbye for now.

Dark.

copywrite2011 by Dark.