Priest Dun - II

When we left our good-humored priest last time, he was just heading out from the small village of Erisgate quietly cursing under his breath because, as usual, his god had played another trick on him. There was a small rain cloud over his head, following his every move. It’s probably a good thing that our priest Dun recognized the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it, otherwise he might have gotten the impression that he could quit his job. And that wouldn’t please his god at all.

Well, priest Dun was traveling to a distant Lord’s manner this time. Somehow a small artifact of tremendous power had accidentally found its way into priest Dun’s hands, despite him trying to avoid touching anything for this exact reason. He wasn’t at all convinced his god had nothing to do with it. This small artifact had turned out to have, rather conveniently he thought, the owner’s name and address on the bottom. Not an everyday sight and he felt that it would be prudent to make the long journey to the owner and return the item. Otherwise he’d probably wouldn’t get any rest until he did anyway.

It was therefore a great surprise to the suspicious priest that nothing major had happened to him so far, except for the rain cloud off course, especially with his final destination so close. He felt sure his god must have fallen asleep or otherwise have something up his proverbial sleeve.

Rounding the bend in the road, he quickly abandoned all hope of a nice quiet trip. In front of him, in the distance, lay his final destination. A great big, black castle sitting atop a mountain with dark clouds gathered around it was staring back at him with a perverse sense of… well…

“I told you so” was the first thing that came to his mind. Damn.

Looking up, seeing that the little rain cloud was still tagging along happily, he let out a small sigh, adjusted the position of his traveling bag slung over one shoulder and continued on. Considerably less happy.

It was still a good ten miles until he’d reach the bottom of the mountain, yet not long after he’d passed the bend in the road, the small rain cloud vanished. He wasn’t exactly sure when that had happened since he hadn’t paid much attention to it anymore, but it had disappeared. He didn’t pay much attention to its disappearance either. Bad choice.

Finally arriving at the foot of the mountain, he realized that it was even bigger than it had looked from his earlier vantage point. There was however a convenient and well-maintained broad dirt road going up the mountain at a leisurely incline.

“Hmmm..” he thought quite predictably, “this is too damn convenient for my taste. Well, no other way up as far as I can see. It’ll have to do I guess.” With a quick look towards the sky, where he was sure his god was laughing his glorious head off right now, he started upwards. As he moved up the dirt road, it continually got less wide and less well-maintained. By this time off course he should have realized something was going on and look up, however, he didn’t.

About halfway up the mountain, the broad and convenient dirt road had turned into a nasty little twisty sort of road. When priest Dun finally did look up he saw, to his dismay, that the little rain cloud hadn’t actually disappeared at all but had simply moved. Up the mountain. To right above the nasty, small, twisty road which was getting increasingly steeper. Damn.

“Maybe I could reason with him.” He thought. At the exact moment that he opened his mouth, Nature or more likely his god, decided make a display of electrical fireworks the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Looking at the stunningly big and bright bolts carving up the sky, priest Dun realized he had left his mouth hanging open and quickly shut it.

This didn’t quite feel right. Sometimes after all, even his god couldn’t control the way the story went. Which was quite disturbing when you thought about it since he actually wrote it. Or rather made it up as he went along, but that would be beside the point right now. Priest Dun looked up.

The sky was black with a thick smoke-like coverage of rain clouds. Bolts of lightning, positioned right above the sinister castle for the maximum of cinematographical effect, were shooting down from the clouds