Before they could enter, though, a wicked Voldyvort from the nearby water reached a long tentacle out and began playing with all of their balls.

"Cursed thing!" shouted Borgonium.

"Eeeee hee hee hee hee hee!" yelled Strider, who was known throughout the land for his girlish giggle and ticklish balls.

"Enough of this! Let us run into the Piles of Volvula!" cried Galfgab, hoping that no one had noticed in the melee that he did not have any balls.

Once inside the Piles of Volvula, Grabby Groinloin boasted that it was the land once ruled by his spare cousin, Umlaut. Cave-midgets, he explained, all had spare cousins in case something happened to one of their regular cousins. This rule did not apply, he went on to say, to cave-midgets who did not HAVE regular cousins, as that would make the spare cousins into regular cousins by default and since there was no regular cousin position for the spare cousin to fill, to have a spare cousin would create a logical fallacy that could very well cause the entire universe to implode and wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish. Grabby then went on to realize that everyone else had left him there babbling long ago and ran after them on his stubby little sawed-off legs.

Grabby caught up to the others as they walked through a giant living room with a huge couch. Under the couch were dozens and dozens of dead cave-midgets with buckets on their heads!

"This is no living room," quipped Borgonium. "This is a living tomb!"

"Except without the 'living' part!" joked Galfgab, to the red-faced anger of Grabby.

"Perhaps we should call it a 'deading tomb'!" laughed Lordo. The others, recognizing that he had taken the joke beyond jokedom and into crapdom, did not join him in laughing.

"Because...because they're...dead..." Lordo added, trying to save face and regain some composure.
"Looks like they put buckets on their heads and either walked into walls until they died or starved to death because they couldn't eat with the buckets covering their mouths," surmised Strider.

"No, no. These are not buckets they put on their own heads," said Galfgab, inspecting a bucket. "These are buckets that were placed on their heads by evil Bucket-Bills!"

"Bucket-Bills!" shouted Grabby. "They did this? I'll kill them with my hands and my axe and my feet and my axe!"

"Shouldn't you 'axe' them why they killed these people?" Lordo said, trying to salvage some pride by cracking a joke that might make them laugh.

"Shut him up," said Strider.

And they did.

For sunless days and sunless nights they walked through the endless living room maze of the Piles of Volvula. In the lead was Galfgab, since he was the only one to think to bring a flashlight. Borgonium followed closely behind, to the point where he would run full-tilt into Galfgab whenever Galfgab stopped to take a breather or pick up his flashlight. Lordo walked at the absolute back of the party, nursing the broken jaw he'd received from Galfgab's expertly-swung plastic walking stick.

The rooms seemed to go on forever, and in every one the fellowship would point at the crushed velvet throwrugs, gawk at the embroidered pillows, and generally laugh ceaselessly in the direction of Grabby Groinloin, who reddened considerably and spent most of the journey defending the interior decoration of his people. "The crying clown painting DID bring the room together," he interjected as they left another identical living room.

"Why nothing but living rooms?" asked Borgonium, who was only half-paying attention to the rest of the party, as he was mentally reliving the moment at the gates when he'd guessed "Samgam's hands" to the Riddle of the Door and everyone had thought he was Mr. Smartboots for a bit, even if his answer hadn't actually worked.

Grabby went on at some length about cave-midget customs, and their love of charades and Monopoly, and how at some point every cave-midget lingered in the living room so much that Thrusty Meatnozzle, his great great grand-midget, had sagely advised that every room be a living room, and then a lot of other immensely retarded things happened after that, but by then everyone in attendance was sorry Borgonium had even bothered to ask, and shot him stinkeye in the dim light of a living room they were passing through. Galfgab steered the conversation towards oral sex, and everyone perked up considerably after this, putting Grabby's boring lineage out of their minds to everyone's pleasure and Grabby's poopy frown. Grabby tried once more to get the conversation spurred back to cave-midgets, but Galfgab was way ahead of him, and had grabbed an armload of priceless cave-midget artifacts, which he would casually whip against a wall every time Grabby made a noise.

At the back of the procession, Lordo whiled away the hours by nursing his swollen jaw, and aiming kicks into the beefy fat backside of his slave Samgam, who walked ahead of him and would call back with "Nice one, Mister Lordo!" and "I felt that in the base of my spine, Mister Lordo! Well aimed!" Lordo would laugh merrily with his good friend, then spit in Samgam's hair, and laugh even more merrily, since Samgam was his servant and couldn't do anything about it. In this manner the two close friends whiled away the days.

On the third day, Lordo was punching Samgam playfully and with great force in the small of his back, when his trusty sword, Rustmagnet, began to glow. "Mister Lordo!" gasped Samgam. "Do you think there's evil about?" Lordo ignored him, since he was an idiot, but nonetheless kept a careful eye out for trouble. "Keep your eyes peeled for danger, Samgam," he warned, looking around him cautiously. "You've got it, Mister Lordo!" dribbled Samgam, before tripping over the creature Gorrlub and breaking five of his teeth. The Halfsies helped Gorrlub to his feet, all the while surreptitiously patting him down for change or an easily-grabbed wallet.

"What brings you this way, Gorrlub?" asked Lordo, who used to amateur wrestle with Gorrlub in college.

"Oh nothing," dismissed Gorrlub. "You know, this and that, mostly window shopping. Say, seen any rings around? I ask only out of curiosity. To be honest, I couldn't care less if you had, you know me, what would I want with a ring?"

"Just this one," said Lordo, sensing an opportunity. "Makes you invisible. Twenty bucks?"

"I don't have any money," said Gorrlub.

"Hmm, tell you what, you can owe me the money," said Lordo, tossing the ring over with a ting noise.

"Ha!" said Gorrlub, catching the ring. "Finally! I shall win the favor of the master Saffron! The forces of evil look kindly on me!" In the distance, the Cloak-Ghosts could be heard, shrieking in triumph. The Patriots had won the Super Bowl.

Lordo and Samgam made a mental note to tell the rest of the party that they'd sold the ring and no longer had to journey, but along the way got distracted by a dust mote and completely forgot about it. And besides, soon enough they had reached the other end of the Piles of Volvula.

"Shoot, that was easy," said Strider Stepopolous. Everyone agreed that it had been a piece of cake, and asked what all the fuss had been about.

"Well then," said Galfgab. "Off then to the evil land of Molehole, to throw the ring to rim the ram's jam into the pit of Swimbeasts!"

"No no," said Grabby. "I remember distinctly that El Rondolo told us to take the ring to the Lakes of WetWater, cut the ring in two, and give the pieces to the Beetle-Bobs That Know Not Sleep But Only Dance."

"What?" said Galfgab. "You're an idiot."

"Yes," agreed Strider. "I distinctly recall El Rondolo told us to roll the ring down the Mountains of Forgotten Promises into the fire-ringed anus of the Long-necked Devil With the Black Dress On."

"You weren't even there!" yelled Galfgab. "You were dead then!"

"Maybe I dreamed it," admitted Strider Stepopolous.

"Perhaps we could give the ring to Samgam's hands," offered Borgonium helpfully.

"Nobody's hands!" said Galfgab. "It was Molehole! And the Ram's ham, and throw it into the Mountains of Forgotten Anuses in the Long-Necked Swimbeast of the Dance." He paused. "Goddamnit! Now you've got me all mixed up!"

Dejectedly, the fellowship walked back through the Piles of Volvula, back up the Minty Mountains, and eventually across the front driveway of El Rondolo's place. El Rondolo spied them through the window. "Oh, fuck me," he said, and turned out all the lights.

"Open up, you spick asshole!" raged Galfgab, hammering on the door. "We know you're in there! We're not idiots!"

"Perhaps he's not home," suspected Strider. "His lights are off."

"Oh, alright," said El Rondolo, poking his head out the window. Strider shrieked with fright and passed out. "But make it quick. I've got a quiche in the oven."

Galfgab wrote down the instructions very carefully, making El Rondolo spell everything out exactly.

"Is that V as in Victor?" he asked. "Yes, now go already," said El Rondolo.

"Do you smell something burning?" Samgam asked Lordo.

"My quiche! Oh, you assholes," muttered El Rondolo, leaving.

And so the fellowship once again jogged up the Minty Mountains and through the Piles of Volvula, this time at a much brisker pace and with considerably more bitching than on the previous attempt. And again they made it untouched out the other side of the Piles of Volvula, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Okay," said Galfgab, panting. "Now. We go south to the land of Molehole, and throw in the fucking ring, and then we all go our separate ways and never talk about any of this again."

"Actually," said Lordo, absently. "I just remembered I gave the ring away."

After Borgonium and Strider had pried Galfgab's hands off Lordo's windpipe, they massaged some life back into him and Lordo resumed breathing. Then, very very reluctantly, the fellowship went once again into the Piles of Volvula, found Gorrlub, beat the fucking stuffing out of him, got the ring back, and trudged once again towards the exit. It was only then that the evil things that dwell in the forgotten deeps attacked, since they'd been putting up with the fellowship tracking mud through all the rooms for a month now, and all the clomping around going on above them was getting on everybody's nerves.

Especially the Leg of Many Foots.

Continue on to Chapter 5: Galfgab Plummets To His Death (Spoiler)