A Scientists journey (Fiction, Halloween based)

A mad tapping is heard coming from the door. Darius Weber is wondering why the tapping isn’t ending, and why he even is here. Normally he would send a underling, because Darius isn’t just a adventurer, he is a mad scientist, and he needs what’s in this run down castle before he can proceed with his plans.

Prologue

Darius Weber was born 48 years ago, in a rural area of Scotland , to 2 scientists. His parents brought him up in the world of science. At the age of 12, he invented a potion able to disguise a someone as a animal. At age 15, he started to go mad. He ran away, bringing with him the ingredients needed to create potions and all of his parents work of the past 20 years. His parents, distraught, started a search around the surrounding regions. He was never found.

He spent the next 10 years working on a potion for a higher longevity. He managed to use a potion he was hiding from his parents in order to escape. He made it to the highlands and settled in a cave, leaving twice a year, using his secret potion, a invisibility potion, in order to plunder food from nearby villages.

He grew used to the dark, eventually even being able to see in the dark, and being able to advance the invisibility potion to where it could disguise items and his clothing. Darius assumed that’s how he’d live his life, in caves in Scotland, until at the age of 25, someone stumbled onto his cave when he was in the village, and took his ingredients, but not taking the potions. He was unable to recreate invisibility potions anymore

He left his cave, carrying his remaining stuff and using the last of the invisibility potion in order to go to England, where he settled in Southampton, creating a underground laboratory where he would work on his work. He hired plenty of other scientist, and together they formed a union of scientists. They invented potions to increase health, your vision to a point you could temporarily see in the dark, as Darius lost his night vision when he exited the cave for the last time. They also invented a super quick acting poison where it won’t kill, only really harm the person who is hit with it.

At the age of 30, he set out to create a potion that would render him and his team of scientists immortal, and to edit the DNA to a point where they would forever live in the body of a 25 yr old. They ventured all across the world for ingredients, from the Sahara desert, to the jungles of Brazil, to the mountains of Nepal. They obtained all of the ingredients they assumed they would need, however after testing, they found they would need to add 5 ingredients in a specific order, and at the age of 48, Darius set out alone to find that ingredient.

Chapter 1

Present day

Darius is annoyed at the relentless tapping on the drawbridge. He knows he must enter, but the only way in is either by climbing, or opening the bridge. He is afraid of heights, and thus waits. All of a sudden, dark clouds ominously start brewing in the previously bright sky. He becomes cautious, as last time this happened, his cave was ransacked.

He is getting annoyed at the foul smell of rotten eggs, as this castle was abandoned and forgotten after sulphur killed the previous occupants, freeing the peasants from the taxes, as it wiped out the whole family of the lord who lived there, letting the woods surrounding the castle become thick and occupied by creatures.

All of a sudden, a segment of wall falls apart. Darius believes it is from the relentless tapping on a unmaintained castle. He wonders if he should enter, when he hears a crow crowing, presumably at him. He turns around, and to his horror, the crow has three eyes. He contacts his team, and they tell them they speculate that that is what may occur if the ingredient is ingested without the other ingredients.

He makes his decision. He is going into the castle, and he doesn’t care if it’s the last thing he does. He knows it won’t be easy, as why would the ingredient be unguarded? Little does he know, it is guarded, but he is very surprised by who it is guarded.

Chapter 2

Darius enters the castle through the broken segment of wall. To his surprise, it isn’t met by resistance. He wonders who is guarding it. He then hears what sounds like a cane hitting compacted dirt. He spots a old man hobbling his way to him. Darius wonders why the man is here, and if he is the one causing the knocking. The old man turns away 50 meters from Darius, but only after yelling, ‘That dang wall always falls down’. Darius is confused. The castle didn’t have any other broken walls. He then feels his hair spike up.

Suddenly, without warning or rain, a bolt of lightning hits the ground where the wall once stood. But after a bright light, the wall is fixed. The castle is apparently magical, and he’s lucky he entered when he did, as it has only been 45 seconds since he entered and the lightning looked like it would cause a lot of pain if he was standing right under it.

He spots the old man, who is apparently sitting on a chair that wasn’t there before. Darius wonders if he was a adventurer trapped in the castle. He is partially right. As he approaches the man, he screams for him to stop. He yells out that he should turn away. Darius, the most confused he’s been since he was born, hollers back, wondering why he shouldn’t. The man pulls his cane out of the ground, leading Darius to believe this man isn’t a adventurer, rather the guard of the castle.

Darius approaches the man, seeing a door appear right near the man who ha now gotten out of his seat and is now attempting to cower behind a inlet set into the wall. Darius goes to open the door, forgetting the man is there hiding. He hears footsteps behind him, and then suddenly he spots the can in the door beside him. The old man tried to throw his cane. It would have been lethal had it hit, as the spike on it was sharp enough pierce wood. Darius scampers back to where the wall once was broken and waits there to devise another plan.

Chapter 3

He spends the better part of a hour thinking of a plane, before taking a break. Once he starts his break, he sits down on a wall. He hears his bottles clanking against the wall. He remembered the types of potions he had. He had night vision, as it was getting dark, and invisibility! He could sneak into the keep undetected!

With this newfound knowledge, he chugs the night vision then the invisibility. He is now invisible! Although he is invisible, it still causes footsteps so he must walk carefully. He stealthily walks over to the door, and seeing the old man turn his back, he opens the door. A great creak is heard. The old man snaps back, sees no one, then suddenly sees a rabbit emerge from the castle. He assumes the rabbit is the cause of the door opening.

Darius freezes suddenly once the door opened. He saw the rabbit, and to his relief, the old man turns his back to Darius again. He goes inside, keeping the door open, when all of a sudden the door slams shut with a bang. He hears bats flying around, and then one hits his face. He falls the the floor. He may have a bruise from a bat hitting his face, but he is inside the castle, and out of sight of the old man.

Chapter 4

He stands up, when all of a sudden a glow is seen from the end of the hallway, behind a door. He rushes over, forgetting he is invisible and thus is utterly confused when he goes to open the door and he sees he has no arm. He screeches loudly. He realizes his mistakes and opens the door then rushes in, remembering to close the door as hard as he can.

He finds the source of the glow. It is the ingredient he needs! Thankfully, it is already in a bottle. And that’s when he sees a hand holding the bottle. It appears to him that it is the hand of a failed adventurer. He instantly regrets slamming the door shut. He grabs the bottle and runs to the door. He forgets that he shut it behind him, and hits his head.

He wakes up with a pain in his head. He thinks he was hit by a bus. He then comes to his senses. A tapping is heard on the door. He has flashbacks to earlier when he was trying to enter. He instantly thinks it’s the old man again. He sees a deadbolt. It most likely latched when he shut the door, and now he is thankful, and were it not for that, he would most likely me either dead or held hostage by the old man.

Darius immediately prepares himself by grabbing his poison potion, preparing himself to throw it the moment he opens the door. He unlatches the door. All of a sudden, the door swing inwards. It appears to him that the old man was both tapping and pushing on the door. Darius falls to the ground. The old man, thinking he was dead, decides it is not worth the effort making sure and decides to leave him alone.

Chapter 5

12 hrs later

Darius wakes up again. He is on the ground still, surprisingly in the same position. He quickly becomes oriented with his surroundings and remembers his team could back him up. He quickly establishes contact, only for it to not work. Confused, he tries again. Once again, it doesn’t work. Now irritated, he tries a final time only to realize it is most likely being blocked by something.

He hears crunching dirt on the other side of the door, and the sound of metal hitting ground. He now realizes that the old man had once thought him for dead, blocked signals so any accomplices wouldn’t be alerted that he is dead, and then triangulated on the signals that came. And now, Darius knew that he would have to fight. He looks around him, spotting the potion he was trying to throw earlier. He grabs it as soon as the door opens. Darius throws the potion. To his horror, the potion didn’t shatter on impact, rather it bounced back to him.

He ran across the room, hoping to avoid the poison. He accomplishes this, and charges the man. He hits the man, but surprisingly, he stumbles back. This is the reason why the potion didn’t break, he thought. The man has a force field. Darius goes and cowers in the corner. The old man enters the room. Darius jumps up and runs to the door. Once through the door, he feels the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. The old man has a gun.

Chapter 6

Darius slowly puts his hands up. He sees the man has no glasses on. It appears he took the gun out of the frame of his glasses. He shoots the gun. It misses by a hair. Darius can feel the over pressure rushing past his skin. The old man is aiming for the head. He turns around and runs. He can feel the bullets going around him. None hit. And then he feels a steering pain on his leg. He is almost at the door. He grabs his health potion. He drinks half of it before it is shot. His wound is only halfway healed. Thankfully, it stopped the bleeding. He opens the door, then shuts it.

Bullets are going through the door. He runs to the inlet the old man was hiding at before. He takes cover, and sees the old man exit. Darius makes a break for it. He forgets the wall is fixed, and that he has no way out. The old man spots him running and yells for him to stop. What both of them don’t know is that his team got the messages and suddenly, a Jeep hits the gate.

But, the wood doesn’t shatter. It is protected by a invisible force. All the bats that were in the castle have now left. The rush the jeep and pickup the person inside. He is lifted into the air and is never seen again. Darius raises his hands up one more time. It is the last thing he’ll ever do

Epilogue

10 years later

Journal from scientist

Darius went missing that day. The ingredient was found on the ground near the gate, but Darius wasn’t there. It is said now that in addition to the guard, a ghost haunts the castle. We suspect that to be him. He left a family. The immortality project went along nicely after the ingredient was found on the road. We made the potion. We drank it in Darius’s honour. We gave some to his family too. We went public about our organization. But everyone who sees us remembers that we are magic, and that on a whim, we can send in creatures to take them away. That is far from the truth. The scientist sent to investigate Darius disappeared. Someone sighted hundreds of bats carrying something in the sky the night of. But we doubt it was him, for that was in Australia.