The story of King Rik - Chapter 1: The arrival (part 3) () - Gamaker

I started to regain my ability to produce sounds so that they'd actually had a meaning to them.

"W-what happened...?" I produced.

Before Quincey could give me a proper answer I realized what happened.

"What the... Why did the door explode?"

"Errm, that would probably be Jeroen's doing."

"Who?"

"Jeroen, he's the locksmith of this castle. But he randomly places explosives and other kinds of traps on the doors and windows here. Always sayin' he has to gain experience or somethin' like that. So if you open a door it may explode." He grinned again.

"Explosives?! That's dangerous! What if people get hurt by that? Or even killed?!" I realized just now that my back wasn't hurting that much anymore. "Why am I not hurt?"

"Hehe, nope, people can't get killed by explosives within this castle. That's one of the laws the king made. You can't get killed by a fall either. When you're inside the castle's walls you can't die from exploding or falling, no matter from what height you fall. Things can't be damaged by explosives either."

I looked at the floor and saw that the door hadn't been blasted into thousands of splinters. Instead it had just fallen apart into the boards it was made of. I looked up at the opening in front of me, but instead of a chamber there was merely a metal plate just behind the place the door had been. That just did it. That was al I could take for one day. I slowly turned around, trembling with anger, but Quincey was still laughing. I closed my eyes and pushed my clenched fist with all my strength into the jesters face. The contact was short and then I felt his face shooting backwards and I heard his body slamming into the wall behind him. I turned away from him, opened my eyes and started walking away from the idiot.

"NEVER MIND! I'll find it myself" I yelled at him and turned around a corner. In blind rage I ran as far away from him as I could. I turned around corners and ran through corridors for a few minutes and was planning to do so for another few minutes, but when I turned around another corner my feet found out the ground needed to move forward was missing. I looked down and saw a staircase leading down and unfortunately gravity had already taken hold of me and I fell down. Within a few seconds I had passed the bottom step and my back felt the comfort of hitting rock bottom. I decided I would just lay there for a moment to think things through, but right after I had made up my mind I heard a woman's voice.

"Well hello there, how nice of you to drop in, is there something you need dear?"

Instantly I got to my feet and looked at the woman smiling at me. She was rather thin with bright eyes and brown hair. She was sitting behind a desk and it looked as if she was writing before I dropped in, she was still holding a pen. Apparently I had fallen into an office of some sort, but it looked more like a medieval hall. In the far corners were standing two knight harnesses and a few torches were burning on the walls. Half the floor of the room was covered with a nice red carpet and the other with light brown stones.

"Errm, where am I? And who are you?" I asked the kind looking lady behind the desk a bit confused.

"I am Sanja" She said "and I am the receptionist of the castle of king Rik. And you are currently on the first floor of this castle."

"Receptionist..." I said "that means you'll probably have a lot of information about this castle, right?"

"Certainly dear" She smiled "is there something you'd like to know?"

"Yes, I would like to know where my room is."

"Hmm..." She said and frowned. She grabbed one of the brown leather books shelved to her right. "My room, My room" she said while leafing through the book. At first I didn't quite understand what she was doing, but when I had realized it she had already closed the book and looked at me.

"I cannot find such a thing as a My room, we do have a Mine room though, but I don't think you're looking for that, now do you?"

"Errm, no" I said "but how about David's room?"

She opened the book again and started to leaf through it again. After a moment she closed the book again and shook her head.

"I cannot find a David's room either. We do have a Dave's room, but that's not quite it either."

I sighted. How the hell was I supposed to find my room if it wasn't even registered. I was sure the king could at least have phoned her about my arrival. I counted five phones on the desk on her left. They looked pretty old and each one of them was painted a different color. The one closest to me was pink, the next to it green, the one behind that one was brown, the phone after that one was blue and the last was red.

"Well, can I at least maybe call the king to ask where it could be?" I asked her.

"No, that is not really possible" she replied.

"What do you mean?! There are five different phones over there, I could at least just use one of them to call the king right?"

"Oh these" she said "no these are not for calling." She picked op the green receiver and showed it to me, there was a yellow note attached to each of the ends of it.

"I use these for memos" She smiled.

"Why do you have phones if you don't even use them?!"

"They look nice" She said "don't you think so? With all those colors... it really brightens up the room" She smiled even wider now.

"Okay, well... never mind" I said and I thought for a moment. "Hmm, what if I just look for the advisor. Can you maybe tell me where I could find Stephan?"

"I certainly can dear" She replied.

She put the book with the room-names in it back on the shelve, counted the books right next to where she placed the first and six books to the right she grabbed another one with a leather cover. She sat down again and placed it on her desk right in front of her. She opened the book and leafed somewhat through it until she seemed to have found the page she was looking for. She looked at the clock once or twice and then back at the book.

"Ah" she said at last "Yes, well Stephan should be in the kitchen right now, so if you go there you'll find him for sure."

I had risen a bit from my seat to see what was written in the book. It looked like a time table, so I figured it actually was a timetable. Just after I had figured that out she slammed the book in my face and I fell back into the chair.

"What's he doing in the kitchen?" I asked getting back to our conversation.

"Cooking off course, what else could he possibly be doing in a kitchen?"

I didn't have a good answer to that, but in this castle anything could be a possibility. I didn't really want to think about that, because I was tired and had a headache already.

"Okay then" I said after a while" One last thing. Could you please tell me where I could find the kitchen?"

"Sure, it's pretty easy to find actually. First you go through that door." She pointed at a door somewhat on the right of her desk. "Then take the second corridor on the right, follow that until the end and there you'll find a staircase leading up. The kitchen is on the second floor and after that just follow your nose, the kitchen is situated where the smell is the strongest. It should smell pretty nice over there, tonight should be pasta night; my favourite!"

I was long gone before he could finish her sentence, but I could hear the rest through the walls. I followed her instructions through the corridors. Though my nose isn't that good, I could easily pick up the overwhelming smell of food being prepared. I followed the smell and eventually reached the door of which I was certain the kitchen was behind. The only problem I was facing now was: the door was locked. The door was huge and completely mad out of red painted wood. In the middle were six copper squares with gold figures imbedded in them neatly placed beneath each other. There was a picture of a chicken, a tomato, an apple tree, a plate of spaghetti, a remote control and a helicopter. I looked around to see if the other doors had the same images on them. They did all have six images on them, but all of them were different. If behind this door lay indeed the kitchen, I could see how the top four pictures related to that, but the last two would make no sense at all. I knocked on the door.

"Advisor" I said, but after getting no response I called the advisor louder and after that called his name even louder, while knocking on the door the whole time. Instantly the door swung open and Stephan stood behind it. He smiled. Behind him lay a huge kitchen with big black marble kitchen sinks and all sorts of kitchen utensils hanging from the walls. Everywhere were big plates of all sorts of food and ingredients. Stephan was now wearing a pair of baggy jeans, a black T-shirt and a grey beanie with a big orange stripe on it.

"Hi David" he said "Come in, come in." And he stepped aside to let me into the kitchen.

"I'm sorry I didn't hear you call right away, but I was busy. I usually do not let anyone enter when I'm cooking, except maybe for Niels, but because you are new here I'll make an exception. Is there a problem of some sort?"

"Well not really, but I was just looking for my room when I realized I had no clue where it could possibly be."

"Oh yes, I forgot to tell you where it is before I left. I'm sorry but I have to deliver dinner on time, cause the king will become grumpy if he doesn't eat enough or on time. I could tell you where it is right now, but as dinner commences in just a few minutes I think its best if you stick with me for now. I'll tell you where it is while dining. I was just putting a finishing touch on the dessert. Feel free to wonder around the kitchen while I finish this."

He got back to his cooking, which he did, unlike any other movement I had seen him make since I'd met him, pretty fast and determent.

"Errm... can I ask one question?"

"Certainly, go ahead." He said while continuing business.

"Why are YOU cooking? I don't think that is part of being an advisor, right?"

"You are absolutely right. But right now I'm not the advisor."

"You're not?"

"No, I'm not."

"Oh" I had the feeling this conversation wasn't quite at the level I usually conversate.

"Then what are you right now?"

"Currently I am the kitchen princess."

"Errrm, don't you mean a kitchen prince?"

"No, I mean princess."

"Ah, and... Why?"

"I don't quite know, but that just happens to be who I am."

He started to walk up and down between a freezer and a kitchen sink carrying dishes of ice-cream.

"Right" I said, concluding the conversation.

I looked around to see if there was more to explore in this kitchen. I saw that except the one I entered the kitchen through there was one more door. This one just looked like a plain wooden door. I walked over to it and reached out to grab the doorknob.

"Would you like to help me carry our dinner to the elevator?"

Apparently Stephan had just popped up behind me just before I could open that door.

"Elevator?"

"Yes, elevator. You know... a box that goes up and down. Like I told you before, the dining room is on the third floor so in this particular case it has to go up."

"Oh elevator, yes sure I'll help"
After carrying the food into the elevator and sending it up, we ourselves went up to the dining room on the third floor. The doors were opened and from every direction people went in. I saw some familiar faces, but most of them I didn't know. The dining room itself was a big white room with a lot of paintings on the walls and a giant chandelier from the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a huge donut-shaped table with at least fifty chairs around it and on the inside. The king already occupied a seat and signed us to come to him. After we walked to him the advisor (at least I thought he should be the advisor again being out of the kitchen) sat down next to the queen who sat on the kings right. The king asked me to sit on his left. After a few minutes it seemed like everyone was seated. On my left sat a woman I hadn't seen before and in front of me on the other side of the table sat down Tessa, the royal linguist. There were many people walking around, sitting at the table and/or talking, which I didn't know yet. Some of them
looked really nice and others rather strange. I had no meaning or intention to meet or talk to them whatsoever, because I was - Which I have told many times before - very tired at this point of the story and had one hell of a headache.

Suddenly the king hit me on the shoulder.

"Hiya kid, how're you doin'?"

"Fine, I guess"

"How'd you like my castle so far?"

"Well... It's great... I really like the... errrm..." I wanted to complement him with something, only nothing came to mind at that moment. "I like this room... for example... because of the... errm... with the... errm... I like this table." I finally said.

"You do now, do you?" He said cheerful "There's actually a quite funny story to this table. You see, we used to have this square-ish table, but at one point it just didn't have enough chairs to seat all the people living in this castle, so I had to find a new one. After a long and hard search I finally decided to buy this one though it was a bit pricy. This table was originally a round table, but because that would be a waste of a lot of space we decided to make it a donut table. I bought it on eBay from this guy who called himself king Arthur. He also told me this strange story that he and his 'knights' got into a fight over some sort of cup and they all split up. He was getting all emotional about it.... Weird guy!"

"Ah right" I had nodded a few times while he was talking and tried to look understanding doing that.

A few minutes after that the adviser got up and held a wineglass up high. Nobody seemed to notice. Then he threw it against the wall and it shattered with a tinkling sound. Quickly a butler hurried with dustpan and brush to wipe up the shards of glass. When Stephan got everyone's attention he signed the king and sat down. Now the king got up and made a little bow to his audience.

"Dearly beloved, we are all gathered here in this room today for a special event. We are here... to dine." An applause rose from the rest of the table and the king made another small bow.

"But before we do" the king continued "I would like to make a few announcements. The first announcement involves the arrival of a young man at our castle who has just this afternoon decided to stay with us for a while." Another applause rose from the table.

"Now stand up and make a little bow, so they can see you." King Rik whispered in my ear.

I obeyed. I got up, made a little bow before the residents of the castle and felt my head turning red. Quickly I sat down again. There was a buzz from all the people talking about me. I saw another glass sore over my head and smash into another wall, followed by the butler with the dustpan and brush. The buzz died away and the king got up again.

"As the newest resident of our castle he has yet to be assigned to a job. As an exception we shall give our young friend only one job and one job only. The job he shall perform here at this castle is that of the royal Assistant. The job description is as following: As assistant he shall assist anyone who needs assistance."

Another applause rose. This was one of the most vague job descriptions I had ever heard, not to mention the fact that he could've discussed this matter with me before making such an announcement. The king was still standing and trying to get everybody quiet himself, so the adviser wouldn't have to waste another glass. Or so I thought. The king grabbed a great glass vase with a bunch of red roses in it and threw it at the wall. Which strangely missed the wall and flew right at the butler who could shield himself with his dustpan just in time.

"The second announcement involves the returning of our first knight Ivar with the artefact he quested for." A blond man with unusual long hair and only his right eyebrow rose from his seat at the other side of the table, made a little bow and sat down again. He looked more like the front man of a Heavy Metal band than like a prestigious knight. Then all the heads turned around to face the king again, who now held a rather small glass ball high above his head. I prepared myself for the shattering sound of glass being smashed into the wall. But instead of throwing it King Rik just held it.

"This is the fifth of the orbs of might; it took our hero three whole days and three whole nights to obtain this object from the evil clenches of the creatures of doom. I present to you: The orb of Duh!"

At that moment the orb suddenly screamed: "A helmet is to protect you from head injuries!"

"Yes... indeed..." the king replied to the orb, "Now shut up!"

He threw the orb to the butler who caught it and carried it outside the room. As he walked through the corridor I was sure I could hear it yell 'You can walk with your feet!'

"As you have heard" the king continued "This particular orb reflects all ones knowledge back at oneself, meaning that it cries out every damn thing you already know. But to continue my speech I am also delighted to announce that our brave and heroic knight shall set out into the world on his quest for the sixth and final orb in a few days."

Another applause rose from the castle inhabitants. After this had died away the King concluded his table speech.

"We shall now eat! Before my dinner gets cold. Bon Appetite!"

The silence broke and shattered on the ground as all began to talk again. The butler came back with the dustpan and brush and quickly wiped up all the shard of silence. After that two other doors in the walls opened, which I hadn't noticed before, and through them entered two girls both with an extensive amount of colourful ribbons and other accessories around their arms, legs, waste and head. They were both carrying a few plates of spaghetti, our dinner. Unfortunately the first of them tripped over some invisible objects on the ground and broke two of the plates she was carrying; miraculously she managed to save the other three she was holding. The other also had some trouble on her way to the table too, but all of her plates managed to survive. They handed out all the plates until everybody had some and broke an additional six plates doing so. Finally I had some decent food for the first time in a couple of weeks and it tasted good. I had a nice conversation with the woman who was sitting on my left. I foun
d out she was named Roos (pronounced as Rose) and she told me she wielded the remote control for the king and she read to the king. Her official task was being some kind of host at the castle, but she mainly served just the king. She was pretty small, had blond flowing hair and looked rather young, though she said she was older than the king. (I am still not quite sure how old she exactly was, but that's how it is with women and their age.)

After dinner and quite a few drinks I was pretty tired and all I wanted to do was to find my bed. The next morning I had some trouble remembering what happened between the moment I finished dinner and the moment I got in bed, but later on I heard what happened from various sources. I can remember what my room looked like that night. It was dark and I never turned on the lights so I didn't see the colours, but at that moment that didn't really matter. The room was pretty empty then, it was not big, but not really small either, big enough to live in. There was a wooden table with one chair standing in a corner and a bed in the opposite corner. I do remember thanking Stephan, who had apparently led me to my room, and locking the door before crashing on my bed. I didn't change and instantly fell asleep.

That night I had a peaceful dream about a big grassy plain full of sheep, with the sun warming the lands in the morning and a nice summer breeze blowing through my hair. I just sat there on a hillside watching the sheep happily chewing juicy looking grass and bleating: ...

"WAAAAZZZZAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"

Suddenly something very heavy landed on my back and started to jump up and down my bed while shouting things like "Wazaah!" and "Yoohoo!"

Somehow this made my body shoot out of bed and crash headfirst into one of the legs of the table. Which collapsed and the whole thing crash-landed on top of me. That about stopped my movement and a lay there for a moment counting the body parts that hurt and listening to whatever just jumped on my bed. The squealing sound of something jumping on my bed had just stopped and was replaced by a loud laughter. When I finished counting I came to the conclusion it didn't hurt as much as I initially thought, so I managed to sit up and remove the wood from my shoulders, chest and legs.

I looked at the laughing creature on my bed, but to my disappointment it turned out to be just another man, though he was wearing an almost glowing green cape and a huge headphone around his neck with a wire disappearing somewhere into his pants. The rest of his clothes were pretty ordinary, as far as you can say things are ordinary in this castle. He was pointing at me and was laughing loudly. I opened my mouth to at least ask him who he was and why he was here anyway, but instead I closed it again. I repeated this process a few times until I realised I had to look like a fish doing this. The fact that an unknown man was pointing and laughing at me the whole time didn't make the situation any better. Finally I managed to get to my feet and sit down on my bed next to the person with the green cape. Who hadn't stopped pointing and laughing at the spot I was just a moment ago. He didn't seem to be very bright either.

I tapped him on the shoulder a few times until he stopped and slowly turned his head towards me smiling widely. He had brown spiky hair and a somewhat exaggerated face.

"Yo wazzup my nigga?!" he suddenly shouted in my face and made some strange hand gestures. I had absolutely no clue what the hell he was talking about.

"Errm... Come again?" I replied as polite as I could even though he had just made me rocket into my new obtained wooden table.

"Whaddya name homie?!" He shouted with the same wide smile.

'Ah' I thought by myself 'he must be meaning to ask my name.' So I told him my name and asked for his in return. After decrypting his reply I found out that his name was Jeroen. Then I remembered Quincey telling me something about him being the locksmith of the castle.

"Ah, then you must be the locksmith of this castle." I said.

" Jippiyeah I am" he said "I put locks on doors, windows, cats, chests, walls, trees, ears, chairs, scissors, leprechauns and even put locks on locks I locked." He smiled proudly in a somewhat twisted way. Yes! This had to make sense! Suddenly I remembered that he also had to be responsible for the exploding door. I looked at the wrecked table and though for while. He didn't seem to mind, started to giggle and played with his headphone as I was thinking in silence. Yes, this was another one of those idiots and this one even looked more stupid then any of other ones I had met until now.

But wait! There is more!

Not only did this one look stupid, he, in fact was the biggest idiot I had met so far. He seemed like the only person that was actually inept to say anything sane.

"So..." I said, trying to sound like this was nothing unusual at all. "What are you doing here anyway?"

He stopped giggling to look at me with a screwed face.

"YES!" he shouted after a few seconds. "As a matter of fact I do have a frog in my pants!"

This piece of information didn't shock me as much as the way it was said. To my astonishment this sentence had actual proper grammar.

Suddenly his hand disappeared down his pants and moved around for some time, like he was actually browsing his pants. And as quickly as it disappeared it suddenly appeared again holding a small green object. He lowered his hand until it was hovering a few centimetres above the ground and opened it. The small green object, being an real life frog, croaked and jumped off of his hand. We both looked at the frog as it hopped its way through the room and finally disappeared behind the closet. After that I looked at him again and he was still waving the frog goodbye.

"So..." I said again in another most likely futile try for a normal response. "What did you say you were doing here again?"

He stopped waving and turned to me again with the same twisted grin on his face.

"Oh Yeah... We was just comin' over to welcome tha new man in tah house!"

"We?!" I asked him.

"Aye... We!" He nodded and he pulled something out of his pants again. This time it looked like a normal tennis ball, but... no in fact it was just a normal tennis ball. He lifted it and threw it the light switch of the room.