A happy ending

The palace of great dwarven King Dalmoz was having a grand ball, in honor of the noble king’s eightieth year on the throne. It was going to be a feast of grand magnificence, with guests from all over the kingdom and many foreign dignitaries from around the world. The meads were brewed months in advance. Entire flocks of chickens were pampered for weeks. The pork had been marinating in wines imported from Vidalidene, herbs specially selected by the finest herbalists, and the cheese... the cheese was almost as old as the king. Fresh fruits and vegetables were sourced from the valleys of Loraine, and were accompanied by their most talented musicians to provide entertainment worthy of that celebration.
All and all the capital city of Gruzg was seeing an influx of goods, people and joy. Even crime was at an all time low, there was honest work for everybody and the jubilations were contagious.
A prime example Alkin, the court wizard, a dwarf of great respect, who in the last war, the war turned the rebellious brother of the king in a mouse and thus ended the war. That earned him fame and fortune. What most people didn’t know was that he captured and fed the mouse to a hungry cat. The king didn’t question him. Alkin promptly converted his fortune into feasting, drinking, whoring. Soon after his belly grew threefold larger, and his beard reeked of a tavern.
Alkin already had a plan, what to eat, how to drink, where to fuck, a master plan of a lecherous drunk with terrifying magical powers. Let’s be clear on one thing, Alkin is a terrible dwarf, there can be no argument there, and I will show you.
On the eve before the festivities would begin Alkin was at home, in his dimly lit kitchen putting finishing touches on his plan. He was tuning his pet ferret to smell his level of inebriation, it should be quite above tipsy and just below being incapacitated. The animal’s spirit was bound to Alkin and would whisper directly in the dwarf’s mind when to correct his drinking pattern. The poor beast was to experience an endless torment while performing this task. With this minor tweak, Alkin turned to the map of Gruzg that hanged on his wall. There were differently colored pins all over the place, red pins were places where he’d be getting drinks, yellow were the best feasting locations, black pins signified hidden places where Alkin could vomit without being heard or seen. There were seven white pins, those pointed to the homes of three extravagant noble ladies, while three of the others were the locations of the best brothels and the last one was for the Sarcastic Weenier, the cheapest brothel. Alkin smiled, and then took a giant sip of beer out of his ridiculously large mug (1.3 liter monstrosity). A loud burp shout out of the dwarf’s mouth and he scratched his belly. He was happy with the planned debauchery. With one additional gulp he dried his mug. It was time to sleep. Alkin waddled toward his bedroom and collapsed on his magically reinforced bed, within a minute he was snoring soundly.
The wizard didn’t sleep well. He trashed around, woke up many times, went to the bathroom at least four times, and the burning sensation while urinating wasn’t going away, despite Alkin’s meticulously crafted spell to banish the infection in the primordial realm.
When the artificial sun brushed Alkin’s dirty face the next morning he was tired and miserable. He got up and filled his mug with Boldigar mead, a sweet low alcoholic beverage for the professional drinker. For breakfast he had three boiled eggs and a serving of bacon which danced in the pan at the wizards whim, then flew right into his greasy mouth, overall it was a light breakfast for Alkin, he had to pace himself, the Lard Palace was his first stop, only 2 hours away. It was an excellent time to review everything. Alkin got in front of his map again. All the pins had fallen during the night, “Stupid quakes...” the dwarves wizard grumbled and started to gather the pins that were littering his countertop. He counted 46 pins which he jiggled in his left hand. One was missing, a white one. Alkin looked around, but the missing pin was not missing, it was still on the map, though nowhere a white pin was supposed to be, in fact it was pinned against the location of his home, where he currently was residing. “Silly pin...” Alkin muttered. The very idea to bring a lady friend home was ridiculous. The dwarf grabbed the pin and tried to pull it out, but it remained unwavering. “Silly pin...” he muttered again and grabbed the pin with both hands and yanked with all of his strength. The pin remained unbothered and unmoved. “Silly pin...” Alkin raised his voice, he rose his arms and muttered some incantation. Ethereal powers gathered around his fingertips, the dwarf focused those at the stubborn pin, the spell grabbed at the pin. With a swift move of his will the map flew in flaming pieces from the wall, yet the pin remained firmly attached to the wall along with the piece of map that represented his house. With the map gone Alkin could see the wall behind it. A set of concentric circles emanated from the remaining pin. The circles were... orange. “What an odd color for occult shit” Alkin thought. He reached toward his mug and took a nice wet gulp. It was sweeter than usual. He sniffed the mug, it reeked of...
“Apple juice?!” The dwarf cried. “What happened to my precious morning brew?!”
The wizard sighted deeply, threw the pins on his counter and got  a bottle of afternoon brew from his extra dimensional closet no 2, the extra dimension was on a world covered in a perpetual mild winter. Alkin didn’t pour into the mug, instead he grabbed the cork with his teeth, pulled it out and spat it, then proceeded to take a ginormous gulp. Disappointment flowed down his throat. His perfect spirit had been replaced by sparkling water. There was a mild bite from the bubbles, but nowhere near what he really needed. Alkin opened his winter closet once again and pulled a different bottle, which turned to not be alcoholic as well, replaced by orange juice. The dwarf tried a third, a fourth, until in a panicked frenzy he went inside the closet. There, waiting on the ground were similar concentric circles.
“I smell some nasty magic!” the dwarf murmured under his breath. “A very nasty piece of magic, yet somewhat...” he paused and inhaled deeply, “...familiar.”
Alkin kneeled next to the reddish circle on the ground, the drew his finger on the paint and sniffed it. It had an almost unmistakable smell, but just to be sure he licked his finger. Just as he suspected, blood, dwarven blood, a magical dwarven blood. It seemed that the Warlock Association of the Stone had finally decided to stop his drunken ways.
That was a mistake, on their part, that is. Alkin returned home and went straight into his magical closet. That one was in a fiery dimension, some would call it Hell, but there the dwarf had stored his most fearsome arms and armors. He didn’t think, in an instant he found his trusted auto sword, complete with fire and ice modes. His armor was another story. His girth had grown considerably since last he adorned it.
“Or, for fuck sake!” Alkin cursed, and waved his hands like a madman in a frenzied dance. Pain shot through his body, but the fat he had accumulated drained out of his body into a puddle next to him.
“I like being huge and wobbly!” the dwarf barked at the puddle of his own fat. To his surprise a face emerged from the puddle and spoke in a slow and lethargic manner.
“Don’t leave me here...”
Alkin kneeled directly in front of the puddle and poked with his now skinny finger, The lump of fat jiggled.
“Ooo, that tickles...”
The dwarf couldn’t just leave his fat laying around. Instead he devised a plan. He waved his hands once more and muttered some ancient words, and presto his fat became something that resembled a bald cat, complete with a tail and fleshy whiskers. To be honest, the creature was hard to look at.
“Ok, you’re mobile now, and I will call you Lard, because that’s what you are.” The creature giggled, now its voice was high pitched. “Ok, Lard, we have some unpleasant folks to visit and remind them who is Alkin.”
Out of the four people that could pull such a stunt, namely replace all of his booze with nonalcoholic drinks, only two were suspects, the other two were lady Azmund, but she’d been in the trance for a decade now, transcended beyond petty mortal affairs. The last was himself, of course, it would’ve been easy for him to pull off such a... not prank - atrocity, that was the word. That left the twin Gudi brothers Handi and Jondi, a talented duo, but way too self righteous for their own good. They looked down on Alkin, the time was past due to remind them of the pecking order.
With that in mind, Alkin dressed in his armor, gave his Lard buddy a gentle pet and rushed back to his house and straight for the Gudi mansion. The dwarf was so determined in his walk of vengeance that he ignored the crowd right in front of his house, and the people seeing him armed and grumpy didn’t question him, just stepped out of his way, especially after seeing Lard. Alkin was dragging his sword, leaving a scorched trail behind him.
In the next twenty minutes the dwarf thought how to punish the brothers. He would of course demand the surrender of their booze, that would be fair, but Alkin wasn’t fair toward his adversaries, he was a cruel dwarf. It would require a lot of power and finesse on his part. The brothers are powerful wizards, not some royal brats or common solders.
“Thank the Gods you’re here, master Alkin!” Handi greeted after Alkin knocked on the front door. “Something terrible has happened...” the younger dwarf couldn’t finish as Alkin punched him in the gut.
Handi curled on the floor in agony. Alkin’s punch included an incantation for extra pain. The old wardrobe just stepped over and entered the mansion.
“Jondi, you miserable coward, where are you hiding?!” Alkin shouted loud enough to overcome Handi’s pathetic screams.
Nobody answered. The other brother was the smarter one, he knew that playing dumb wouldn’t work.
Unfortunately for Alkin, the mansion of a wizard is like a living maze, ever shifting, if the owner didn’t want to be found, it would do everything in its power to prevent it. Living was the key word. A wizard mansion needed a beating heart somewhere to keep it going, and the heart could not be hidden away. All of the illusions were projected by it, but because of that it was ever present in each and every room. Alkin just had to find a suitable chamber and...
“Ah, yes!” Alkin exclaimed when he entered a small broom closet.  He closed the door behind him and lit on fire his left middle finger. The ceiling was low, and a bunch of brooms was stacked next to the opposing wall, in front of them was what looked like a well.
“House, I am giving you warning, cease your troublesome attempts to prevent me from finding your master and I will spare you. Refuse me and burn.”
A sudden stillness filled the air. That was a living house contemplating. Alkin knew that he will be refused, still, it were good manners to present an opportunity to shed less blood than needed.
The house groaned, yet nothing changed.
“I am so sorry...” Alkin muttered, he almost believed himself, but the opportunity to destroy a living building rarely presented itself so readily.
The dwarf stepped towards the well. The house groaned once more.  The walls started to move in on Alkin. He had to hurry. With one hand clenching his sword, he used his other to grab the chain that descended in the bowels of the well. He started frantically pulling whatever was attached on the other side of the chain. His hunch was correct, he gave a sigh of relief. The chain was attached to a bucket in which a throbbing heart diving out rhythmic sounds. Alkin swiftly plunged his sword in the heart and set it ablaze.
The whole house shuddered. The walls screamed in terror and pain, and then all the rooms merged into one right before Alkin’s eyes. Jondi materialized a meter away.
“You psychopath, why did you do that? Do you know how hard it is to enchant a house’s heart? No of course you don’t, living in that pigsty you call h—“
Alkin grabbed Jondi’s face to shut him up.
“What did you do to my booze? And why? And where’s your wine cellar, I have a thirst.”
Jondi blinked in confusion. Then he groaned and Alkin could make  out something like “You idiot...”
At that Alkin kicked the other dwarf in the ankle, so he fell to the ground.
“You compete moronic idiot!” Jodi cried in pain. “We didn’t do anything to your booze...” Alkin circled around the fallen dwarf and kicked him in the ribs.
“All of the booze is gone...” the younger dwarf cried. “Yours, ours, every single bottle and barrel stated for the feast is now water or some nectar, everything, to the last drop, you drunken let—“ the next kick was to his face. That shut him up.
Alkin’s horror grew, he hadn’t had a proper drink since last night. Unacceptable.
“N-n-n-no b-b-b-booze anywh-h-h-h-here in the c-c-city?” Alkin stuttered.
“Not a single drop”, Jondi spat out with difficult, “...in the world...”
Alkin fell down on his knees and screamed.
“Oh, grow...” Jondi said painfully, “...up, man...”
Alkin rolled over and picked Jondi’s head, “How do you know it’s all around the world if it isn’t your fault?!”
“Been... working... it... whole... morning...” the younger dwarf was slowly but surely slipping out of consciousness.
“You don’t understand, if I don’t get drunk in the next couple of hours...”
Alkin’s alcohol abuse was keeping the end of the world at bay. What he wasn’t prepared to say was that it was his own fault to be in such a situation.
A very disturbing noise was hanging in the air ever since Alkin killed the house, but now it got louder and finally it got the attention of the elder wizard. Just a few paces away, a disgusting scene was taking place. Lard was nibbling on the Handi’s left leg, which was torn off right from its owner.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Alkin lept to his feet and with a wave of his hand took Lard’s ability to stand up, “Bad Lard!”
Then the the conscious dwarf got to the one missing a leg. Alkin mended his wound with a quick flick of two fingers. There was nothing to do about the leg, Lard had already consumed a good portion of it. Poor Handi was in for a shock if he ever woke up.
It was Azmund, that old goat who had decided to deny alcohol to everybody, such a bitch move on her part. That she’d given up any pleasures of the flesh, didn’t mean she was free to take them from the hard working dwarves all around the world. She’d need to see the light, and if not the light, at least the very real possibility that a sober Alkin will end all of existence. There was no way to reach her physical body, he had or traverse the minefield of the plane of the trance. Alkin awoke Lard once more.
“Guard me, boy, and don’t eat the stupid brothers!” with that said, Alkin sat down, cleared his mind, and let it flow towards the trance.
The sensation of leaving one’s body was one that Alkin hated, precisely why he had his ferret to keep him grounded. Where had that blasted ferret gone? No matter, Alkin was now in the trance. The trance was different to all who entered it. For a person such as Alkin, it was a void, an endless swirl of colors, smells, all manner of other sensations, and a constant white noise, a maddening sensory overload. Alkin had to concentrate, he needed the void to take shape, at least something resembling anything, enough for him to traverse through it.
All he could do was shape the trance to look and feel like a tropical jungle, the most uncomfortable place he’d ever been in the physical world. The void only took the concept of a jungle. The colors were still swirling, each tree was in a unique shade, and the white noise remained though it sounded more like bugs flying around. The smell took the worst hit, it was nothing like a real jungle, the odor that filled Alkin’s mind was of a clogged outhouse, namely - it stank of shit.
The the ground was muddy, the deep foliage felt wet to the touch. Alkin moved slowly. Not that it mattered, the trance wasn’t a physical location to be traversed, it was a mental plain of existence where one would need to clear their mind and focus on whatever they needed.
“This place is not fun when sober...” Alkin lamented.
The metaphysical jungle was getting deeper. He was slowly sinking in the mess of his own mind. The wind whispered truth about his life.
“Weak...”
“Phony...”
“Lazy...”
“Weak....”
“Weak......”
The whispers were exasperating, yet very to the point, it was weakness on Alkin’s part that was at the bottom of this mess.
“Time is running out, little dwarf.” a familiar voice overpowered the other sounds, it was cold and... evil.
“Right on time,” Alkin barked back, “And I had hoped to never hear your putrid voice ever again.”
A skinny, tall, bright-red figure was standing right in front of the dwarf. The other person was all but naked for a brown loincloth. Its whole visage was dream-like, unstable, yet its presence was commanding. The face was featureless, just two bright white eyes staring into Alkin’s soul.
“But you don’t have a soul, shorty, you got me instead.”
“Oh, shut up or I’m gonna...”
The demonic figure laughed out loud, “There is nothing you can do.”
The demon was right. Alkin had been living on borrowed time ever since their paths had crossed.
“It was your choice to pursue the Zeil magic, to use it, to consume it. I am but a humble servant of it as well.”
The demon’s grin was wider than its face. Each word it spat out was harsh truth. What else could’ve Alkin done? The king was losing badly in the war with his brother. Only the Zeil would allow them victory, and such total victory, none even remembers how bad were things, or did using the Zeil shifted time and space, Alkin wasn’t sure. The only thing he knew was that evil triumphed along, not the chaotic, destructive evil, but the mundane one, that left all the people a little worse.
“Yes, yes, loose yourself in the memories,” the demon was self assured, and egged on Alkin, “Give in, let self pity consume you!”
The dwarf was deaf to anything the demon said. The memories and regrets were consuming him. The trance was not helping, as it being a medium of emotion, and most of Alkin’s emotions were of sorrow. In the end what does really matter?

The sensation was an odd one when the demon tried to consume Alkin. It made a vain attempt to swallow him whole. Instead it only managed to bite his left index finger. The demon bit hard, blood poured down its mouth. Upon tasting the dwarf’s blood, the demon shuddered. It gave out an infernal, bone chilling cry, letting go of the finger, and shivering up into a pile of ash. It seemed that Alkin still had enough booze in himself to exorcise a demon. A weird calm overtook the dwarf. He only had to find Azmund, the stupid goat, and he knew how, it was so simple. Alkin summoned his power and concentrated it a finger, the same finger that was recently bitten. With that a simple spell started to manifest. The forest started to fade, giving way to an empty space, a completely empty space, neither black nor white... nor any other color, just the absence of anything. The emptiness was vast, endless... infinite. It was also uniform, that Alkin used, one emptiness is exactly the same as any other, infinity can be tiny and who can tell one from the other. Without even a flicker the emptiness compressed around Alkin. It was like a ball deflating. Soon a figure came into focus, or at least the shadow of a figure. Azmund had transcended the need to display her body of flesh, and whatever remained of her soul bound to the trance was far gone.
“Azmund you old stupidly bitch...!” Alkin barked. The figure didn’t respond, the dwarf repeated louder and angrier. Nothing. The remains of Azmund were moribund, barely registering as any substance.
“Damn it!” Alkin cursed. It had been her last deed to deprive him from his precious booze.
Did that matter anymore? The demon was gone, the literal demon. Only the metaphorical demon remained. Alkin didn’t need to drink anymore, but he wanted to...
With this thought Alkin awoke back in the living world. It was dark, and he was simply laying on the floor, his limbs spread. It was quiet, distressfully quiet. The celebrations...
“You should see what we’ve done, little puppet...” a familiar voice called from the back of the dwarf’s mind.
No.
Alkin tried to standup but he couldn’t. He had no control over his body whatsoever. He didn’t feel anything either.
“Ah, yes, poor meat sack, let me help you...”
The dwarf violently jerked up in an awkward standing position. Then his eyes opened. The remains of the twins’ house was burning. The floor was littered with charred body parts.
“Gloriou...” the voice rejoiced, “Let me crank up some other senses.”
The putrid smell hit Alkin in the face like a spiked mace. It was the smell of burning and rotten flesh. Screaming filled the air. Yet with all the burning it wasn’t warm, in fact it was so very cold.
“Let’s go for a walk, see your adoring fans...”, with these words Alkin felt a jolt in his legs and started to move.
Out on the street the situation was dire. There was old Penkins, one of Alkin’s drinking buddies. He appeared to have a minor wound on his ankle. The moment he locked eyes with the wizard panic flashed through the old man’s eyes. He tried to turn away, to run. Alkin was faster. He grabbed Penkins by the shoulder and brought him to his knees. The old man’s eyes filled with tears.
“W-w-w-w-why...?” Penkins stammered.
Alkin wanted to scream, to shout out that it wasn’t him, but he was just an unwilling witness.
“Lard!” the dwarven wizard shouted, while Alkin himself would’ve shuddered if he could. Soon a huge lump of fat rolled right next to the two dwarves. Lard had grown considerably, to the size of a bear. Alkin’s hand pointed towards Penkins. Lard squealed happily and started to engulf poor old man. His screams were soon drowned out when Lard swallowed Penkins whole.
“Delightful, isn’t it, thank you,” the demon’s voice echoed through Alkin’s mind! “This is an extraordinary piece if magic that fat monster, hellbent on consumption, bravo, you were a master of the Zeil.”
Alkin was stunned, literally, yes, and metaphorically too. There was now way out.
Lard purred happily, then just spat the old man’s bones.
“Good boy,”, Alkin heard himself saying, while lovingly patting the monster, “I will feed you the entire world!”

"It's time to rejoice," read one tattered banner. Someone had sloppily written beneth in red letter, "If you are evil"