AN: You know, I was going to start posting regularly this week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. However, I've been reading this book "Dead Man Walking" so I've been a bit distracted. This book broke my heart when the convicted murder is killed in the electric chair so I've been wallowing in grief for a while. To tell you the truth, I haven't really read a book in over a year so I'm not used to books giving me this reaction anymore. Also, it doesn't help knowing that this was a true story. And I guess college and student loans have really been taking my focus away from this story, too.

So yeah, that's my excuse for not posting. Enjoy the chapter!

"So why don't you want to see your mum?" Wheatley asked as they walked back to the apartment.

"I really don't want to talk about it," Doug said.

"But she's your mum!" Wheatley said. "She brought you into the world! If I had a mum, I'd want to see her."

"Wheatley, I seriously don't want to talk about it," Doug said. "As my friend, could you please just drop it?"

"As your friend? Absolutely! Because we're friends! Buddies! Mates! Um…..Pals!"

"Okay, stop that."

"So just for you, I'll drop the subject. I can't even remember what we were talking about."

Wheatley kept prattling on about friendship as they returned to the apartment. Doug was greeted by Marie who was holding a black stuffed rabbit up to her chin.

"Do you know any stories?" she asked him.

"W-What?" Doug asked.

"That's just what she does," Spencer said from the couch. "She likes to test people by asking them for a story."

Doug didn't like that Spencer chose to use the word "test" but it gave him an idea.

"Yeah, I know a story," Doug said. "Here, let's sit down first."

Marie ran to the center of the room and plopped down on the floor. Spencer moved down from the couch to sit next to Marie. Doug and Wheatley followed them by also sitting on the floor so that they formed a circle.

"Okay," Doug said awkwardly. "Well…..Once upon a time, there was a beautiful queen named Carol. She was extremely smart and kind to everyone in her kingdom. But one day, her royal wizards kidnapped her and forced her to become an evil witch. The witch became furious by this betrayal so she got rid of everybody in the kingdom—"

"You mean she killed them?" Marie asked. Doug would have expected her to look frightened or nervous, but she actually looked a little excited.

"Uh….yeah," Doug said. "She killed everybody in the kingdom except for the prisoners. She ruled the empty castle for years. The castle wasn't an ugly place, though. It had marbled walls and granite floors with many clockwork lifts everywhere.

"Now, as I said earlier, the witch had kept the prisoners in the dungeons alive, but she had put a sleeping spell over them so that they wouldn't awaken until she needed to use them. One of the prisoners was a silent maiden. She had been arrested for giving stolen bread to a poor little boy. Her punishment had been having her voice taken away by the royal wizards so she couldn't speak. When she was woken by the witch, she was defiant but she did as she was told."

"What did the witch do with the prisoners?" Marie asked curiously.

"She would make them perform tests," Doug said.

"Oh!" Wheatley said. "I know what you're talking about! Uh, the witch would make the prisoners use portals."

"Spells that would create doorways," Doug explained. "You could create a portal on one side of a room, place another on the other side of the room, and walk through the first to cross the room in one stride. Do you understand?"

Marie nodded.

"At first, the maiden started to let her guard down. The challenges in the beginning weren't as difficult as she had expected. It was mostly about carrying a large wooden box from one side of the room to the other while having to avoid an acid pit that was in the way, or maneuvering her way to a magic rune that she had to touch in order to leave the chamber. Some of the tests required her to use falling momentum to propel herself over a very deep pit." Marie looked confused by the word "momentum" so Doug tried to watch what words he used from then on. "The witch even promised the maiden a cake if she passed all of the tests. But as she continued, the tests became more challenging and more dangerous.

"In one test, the witch introduced round, little goblins that were so fat that they couldn't walk. If they saw the maiden, they would shoot tiny fireballs at her with slingshots. They may not have been able to move their legs but they were impossibly fast with reloading their weapons. The maiden's brain worked very quickly, too, though. She was able to dodge the creatures' attacks easily enough.

"After a while, the witch got bored with the maiden so she attempted to burn her alive."

Marie's eyes flashed at this. "Really?" she asked. "This is a neat story."

"Neat?!" Wheatley asked with disbelief. "Burning alive is neat?!"

"Neater than how the usual stories go," Spencer said. "Like making a princess sleep until she is kissed by her true love. That's just lame."

"Well, the maiden escaped," Doug said. "She used the portals to get behind the walls. She snuck into the throne room where the witch was protected by three horse-sized dragons. As the dragons tried to attack her she…" Doug tried to keep up with his improvisation. "She broke….a lantern that was holding a fairy in it. The fairy had been casting just enough magic to keep the witch from going on another rampage. But when the maiden broke the lantern, the fairy died. The dragons became furious and snapped at the maiden with their huge jaws. The maiden managed to slay the dragons and stabbed the witch in the heart. As a final desperate act, the witch cast a powerful spell on the maiden to make her sleep again before falling to the floor."

"Many, many years later," Wheatley cut in, "the maiden woke up in her prison cell. She didn't know how she'd gotten there, but she was greeted by a…a…"

"A lizard," Doug said. "A small lizard with one bright blue eye and wings."

"A lizard?!" Wheatley exclaimed. "Alright, fine. A handsome, charming lizard. He tried to help the maiden escape but he…Well, he accidentally woke the witch up."

"How?" Marie asked. She was leaning forward now and gripping her stuffed bunny tightly with suspense.

"A magic rune on the floor," Doug said." The maiden hadn't seen the witch cast it before she died. The rune was cast so that if someone stepped on it, the witch would come back to life."

"The evil witch immediately recognized the woman and went mad as she tried to crush the, er, lizard," Wheatley continued. "Out of spite, the witch continued to test the maiden and mock her by calling her fat. She was quite nasty to the poor maiden. But luckily, the lizard survived and he heroically broke the maiden out of the dungeons! They killed the witch's little goblins, and cast a charm on themselves so that the witch couldn't use a sleeper spell on them! And then…" Wheatley paused briefly with hesitation, then rushed through his words in an attempt to finish the story. "Well….Andthenthelizardandthemaidenescapedthecastleandlivedhappilyeveraftertheend."

"Wheatley, you know that isn't how it went," Doug said.

"That's not a very good ending," Marie pouted, crossing her little arms. "That's lame."

"I'll tell you what happened," Doug said. "This next part is exciting. After disabling the witch's sleeping hex and slaying her goblins, the lizard and the maiden entered the throne room once again. The lizard knew only one spell could defeat the witch, but it was highly dangerous and risky. It seemed they had no choice, though. The lizard cast a spell that sucked out all of the witch's powers which he absorbed himself. There was so much magic flowing into his body that he thought it might kill him, but soon he started to grow bigger and bigger until he was as big as this room. He looked down at the maiden as a mighty dragon with brilliant wings."

"Oh," Wheatley said. "That's why you went with a lizard."

"The tiny lizard turned into a dragon?" Marie asked. "Could he breathe fire?"

"Of course," Doug said. "At first, the maiden was overjoyed to see her friend like this. The dragon was prancing around as he showed off his shiny scales and his immense power. He even did her a favor by turning the witch into a little pixie and he tore her wings off. But the magic started to go to his head very quickly."

"Like an idiot, he attacked the maiden and sent her down a very, very, very deep hole," Wheatley said with annoyance toward himself.

"Along with the evil pixie," Doug continued. "They fell down so far that they couldn't see the light of the castle anymore."

"Was she okay?" Marie asked. "How did she get saved?"

"She didn't get saved," Doug said. "The maiden never gets saved in this story by anyone but herself. You see, she had been wearing magical boots from the witch's test that made her always land safely on her feet. She ended up in a huge, ancient maze. As you know by now, the maiden was smart and quick. She navigated the maze quite easily. Along the way, she found the evil pixie and brought her along for guidance. The pixie started to remember her life as a queen and how kind she had been to everybody, and this distracted her from helping out the maiden very much. Eventually, they found a very long, clockwork elevator that brought them back to the castle."

"That's when they found the castle starting to crumble," Wheatley interrupted. "The dragon didn't know how to control the, er…the, uh, runes that the witch had created so traps were being triggered left and right! Curtains were catching on fire! The ceiling was caving in! But the dragon was so busy trying to torture the goblins by stuffing them into wooden boxes out of spite and anger that he didn't even care about the destruction of the castle! He thought he could fix all of this when he had no bloody idea what was really going on! He thought that his power gave him intelligence when really all that it gave him was a big, fat head full of hot air and selfishness!"

"Wheatley," Doug said. "Calm down. You're shouting at her."

Wheatley had gotten so caught up in his own self-loathing that he hadn't noticed Marie clutching her bunny tightly as she stared wide-eyed at him.

"Oh!" he said, giving her an apologetic look. "I'm terribly sorry! I-I get a bit carried away at times. Just tell me to shut up when I'm talking too much."

"Don't be afraid to say it to him a lot," Doug said.

Marie giggled a little and hid her smile behind her bunny's head.

"Right then," Wheatley said. "Well, when the dragon found the maiden and the pixie, he decided to torture them by making them run tests. See, in my—I mean, the dragon's mind the maiden had wronged him just as much as the witch had. The maiden had never spoken to him or shown him any kind of gratitude so the dragon thought she had been using him."

"The dragon started getting really frustrated with the results of the tests because he didn't think the maiden was suffering enough," Doug said.

"That's not true!" Wheatley claimed.

Doug shushed him. "The dragon was battling with different feelings of guilt and anger so his mind wasn't clear. Eventually, he found a cure for this mixture of negative emotions. There were two creatures in a dungeon that were half human, half dragon. The dragon realized that he could use these creatures for the testing instead of the maiden. The dragons showed more pain than she did, but they were also stronger and less likely to die."

"The dragon planned to kill the maiden with spikey walls," Wheatley said, "but, of course, the maiden escaped with the pixie. The maiden was rather clever and the pixie knew how to defeat the dragon."

"With a sword?" Marie asked. "Or a knight? Or magic?"

"Or an iron arrow?" Spencer asked.

"Spencer, you already know how this story goes," Doug said. "The maiden and the pixie found three young dragons who were willing to overpower the great dragon. So the maiden confronted her best friend and had the younger dragons attack him. The great dragon fought the little ones and spit fireballs at the maiden. He was able to get control of the younger dragons, though, and he blew a huge blast of fire at the maiden."

"But she bloody got up!" Wheatley said excitedly. "Nothing could stop her! She stood up and created a portal that led to a dark oblivion of nothingness! She turned out to be so much more powerful than the dragon! The dragon was sucked through this void with two of the younger dragons!"

"Awww!" Marie said, looking disappointed. "I liked the dragon. You mean he didn't get to say sorry to the maiden?"

Wheatley stared at Marie for a moment before his eyes started to water a little.

"Unfortunately not," Doug said. "With the dragon gone, the spell on the pixie wore off and she became a witch again, but she had bonded with the maiden. In the end, the witch treated the maiden's wounds and she let her go. The maiden found a small village where she lived happily ever after."

Marie looked down at her bunny as she thought about something before she turned toward the kitchen and asked, "Mommy? What's that c-word for something being too complicated?"

"Convoluted, sweetie," Valentine said.

Doug looked up at her and suddenly noticed that she was standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

"Yeah," Marie said. "Your story was con-fluted."

"It's convoluted," Wheatley corrected. "And no it wasn't. You just didn't understand it."

"I did, too!" Marie said. "Why didn't the dragon get a happy ending?"

"How about the dragon finds a female dragon in the void?" Valentine suggested. "And they live happily ever after despite the both of them being stuck in nothingness?"

"That's a good ending, Mommy," Marie said.

"I agree," Wheatley said. "That is a much better ending."