The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3

by Charles Dean

  “I think that’s the first prebuilt fight that actually had specific event triggers and a basic strategy,” Darwin noted as his eyes darted between the three ruined foes.

  He had finally reached Level 60 during the battle, another milestone, and was eager to check out what he’d receive, but he figured distributing loot should probably come first. Most of his milestone level-ups tended to come with decisions that required a lot of thought, and making the whole group wait for his choice didn’t seem right, so he decided to put it off till later. “Alright, let’s divvy the spoils!” he said, going through the chilling scene and rifling through the corpses. It was a common practice in gamer etiquette for a party to let the group leader do all of the looting so that it could be divided fairly and evenly. While no-one was worried about that within the party, the tradition wasn’t about to die.

  “What’d we get?” They all peered at Darwin as he looked at the three items.

  “Well, we have a dagger that seems to be made of that red ice stuff. It’s called ‘Burny’s Ironic Blade.’ It seems to be made out of ice but has a property which causes it to burn enemies kinda like my sword. Who wants it?”

  There were three dagger users in the group, Minx, Mclean and Daniel. Naturally, three hands shot up. After much discussion, Mclean ended up getting the dagger. “What’s next?” Daniel and Minx both looked in anticipation.

  “Well, we have another dagger called Winter’s Ethic. It doesn’t do much damage, like almost none at all, but the damage doubles with every strike. Who wants it?”

  Since Mclean had gotten the first item, she wasn’t in the conversation for the second one. It ended up going to Daniel, who seemed both very happy and very confused about the weapon. In terms of quick killing, it was worthless. In terms of fighting tough players or enemies with tons of health, it would be invaluable. It was a unique dagger he could only use in special circumstances.

  “And the last item?” Kitchens asked, the remaining unlucky individuals still curious.

  “Sunny’s Son, a yellow belt that stops one attack from successfully landing once every minute,” Darwin tossed it to Fuzzy Wuzzy. “I think he’s the one that needs it the most. Anyone disagree?”

  Fuzzy Wuzzy looked at the item in bewilderment. Everyone just kind of nodded their approval as he put on the silly yellow belt that had an obnoxiously large buckle in the shape of a sun on the front.

  “I don’t think I’d want to wear that anyway,” Kitchens laughed. “I haven’t seen a buckle that big since I last visited Texas.”

  “Yeah, probably the case. Let’s just head back to Lawlheima and see if Valerie and Kass are back yet.”

  Chapter 3 – Homewreckers and Party Guests

  Kass:

  Kass struggled to open her eyes, giving them a few good rubs as she came back into the real world. She had been having a crazy dream about angry butterflies attacking a group of revolting walnuts over who could sit closest to the fire. Wait, where am I? Bits and pieces of the night before started to flood into her mind. Her vision was still too blurry to see anything, and she hadn’t quite wiped away all the little eye boogers that generally accompanied mornings, but despite that, she could definitely tell she wasn’t at home. Her bed didn’t have sheets this nice, pillows this soft or air conditioning that was always on.

  How long was I out? The next question hit her mind with an unusually strong sense of urgency. Dad is probably worried sick. She rubbed her eyes again. She was just now starting to get the blurry vision to go away, and she was able to make out more clearly what was around her. Her mind was already racing with more questions than a hungover frat boy’s after a good kegger: Does Dad even know where I am? Did he watch last night’s interview and see me get kidnapped? Did they even show that part? Her head spun as she tried to puzzle out the full nature of her situation.

  Okay, let’s start with where I am. She forced all the other questions out of her head so she could handle them just one at a time. I’m in a bed now--a bed that has a-million-thread-count sheets--and last night, I was in a weird underground room having dinn-- The fog in Kass’s mind suddenly cleared as the memory dawned on her. Oh God, I fainted while having dinner with Darwin and Stephanie! That is so embarrassing. She facepalmed so hard it stung. She didn’t have to finish putting together any more clues. It was all clear. She had passed out at the table in Charles’s underground lair, and someone had probably carried her to a spare bedroom. After all, leaving a dinner guest to sleep in a plate of food wasn’t exactly the most hospitable thing to do. Oh God, this is worse than passing out drunk. At least you have an excuse for falling face first into dreamland when you’re drunk.

  Ugh. I just need to make an entirely new set of friends, find a new guild and hope I don’t give them a reason like this to laugh at me. She struggled to think of a way to get past her moment of shame as she got up. Looking around, she knew without a doubt that she was still at Charles’s place. He and that G.O.R.N. guy were the only people Kass had seen pull off that ‘creepy white room from an old sci-fi movie’ feel: white sheets, white bed, white night stand and no windows. Am I still underground, or does he just hate sunlight like some sort of vampire? Wait, if Darwin is a demon . . . Could he actually be a vampire? Is that the real secret behind why all of these gaming companies are underground? That’s it . . . All the executives are vampires who accumulated their wealth over centuries and are now just making video games based on monsters that are real, monsters like Darwin, that people don’t know about . . . she hypothesized as she tried to navigate the room. The room was so uniformly white that she almost tripped over a chair near the door as she tried to find her way out of the room. This guy’s taste really is horrible. He needs to add a few colors, she critiqued as she finally opened the door to leave.

  “Good morning, ma’am. You’re expected in kitchen number four.” One of the black-suited men straight out of a conspiracy movie was waiting for her as soon as the door opened. Kass noted that he didn’t even bother turning to look at her as he spoke. Instead, he maintained his stalwart position staring at the wall on the other side of the hallway.

  “Kitchen number four? No chance you can show me where that is?” Kass did her best to adjust her clothes, suddenly self-conscious of her appearance. She had been to enough parties to know that there was little she could do to redeem an outfit she had slept in, but given she that hadn’t brought anything else with her to wear, this was the best she was going to be able to do.

  “Of course, ma’am. Right this way.” His voice was a low monotone that was so steady and unchanging that it could have rivaled a tired school professor trying to give the same lecture after forty years. The man turned and began walking down the hallway as soon as he finished speaking without ever looking back.

  “Umm, sooo . . . My name is Kass. What’s yours?” Kass did her best to make small talk as the bodyguard led her down one hallway after another in the maze-like complex that Kass could only assume to be Charles’s home. It didn’t feel like an office since most of the rooms she passed appeared to be empty. There was an occasionally humming sound that came from behind a few doors that sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite figure out why.

  “I know,” the man responded, completely ignoring her question.

  Kass frowned. “Don’t talk much, do you? Is your name classified, or is it just too embarrassing to mention?” She tried to break the awkwardness of her bizarre situation, but her guide just kept silently leading her down the hallway. Jerk. She almost mumbled it out loud, but just left the word lingering in her thoughts instead as she inspected the uniform walls on each side of her.

  How far is it to just get to a kitchen? At this rate, I could have walked to the convenience store, bought a six pack and been halfway back to the house if I were still at home. I bet this is why Charles is still in such good shape at his age. He has to spend forever walking just to get around his own house. That must be the secret to how rich people always look younger: they spend so much time
trekking around their own enormous homes.

  After about ten minutes and a few flights of stairs, they finally stopped in front of a large set of double doors that came up on their left. “We’re here,” the man said, finally breaking his silence. He opened the door and then stood to the side of it as he had before.

  She walked in to find a rather quaint-looking kitchen. Despite all the ultra-chic, sleek modern design that had gone into other rooms, this kitchen was so ordinary that it could have been in any one of the numerous houses that stretched up and down her neighborhood. The kitchen had cheap-looking laminate countertops, wood veneer cabinets and a fridge with the tell-tale water dispenser built into it that gave away the appliance’s age. It had two simple round tables, each of which was surrounded by chairs. One was large enough to fit seven or eight people, and the other was only large enough to fit four--if their plates weren’t too big. In fact, as her eyes passed over the room, she began to notice that nothing seemed to be new or modern. There wasn’t a single piece of connected technology like a smart stove or coffee maker. It was all old-fashioned. Charles was seated in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair pulled up to the large table with his back to her.

  “I thought my dad was the only one who still used the manual, turn-on, drip coffee machine,” Kass commented, expressing her surprise at the whole set up.

  “Some people say that old dogs can’t be taught new tricks,” Charles said after sipping his drink for a minute. “But I suppose I’ll get around to upgrading the coffee maker if I ever get around to drinking the poison.”

  “You don’t drink it, but you have a maker?” She found it odd that there was a fresh batch of coffee brewed, yet he claimed that didn’t even drink the stuff.

  “Eve insisted on buying one. I never got around to getting rid of it, and my guests seem to keep using it. Feel free to pour yourself a cup.” He gestured to the pot after folding up the newspaper he had been reading and setting it down near him. “I hope you’re okay with omelets. I asked my cook to whip up an extra one when I was notified you had woken up.”

  “Yes, sir, that sounds delicious.” Kass found herself speaking with the same overly-polite tone she had used the night before. It made her feel like one of a thousand anonymous interns meeting the CEO of a company for the first time. Then again, if her dad had his way, that might very well be the case when she talked to Charles in the future.

  “When you finish pouring yourself that coffee, can you get a chocolate chip cookie out of the fridge for me? Perhaps fetch me a glass of milk too?” Charles asked, sipping his tea.

  Before Kass could even think of making a smart aleck answer, she had already finished pouring her cup, fetched him the chocolate chip cookie and milk and had sat down. Something about the way he spoke moved people to action in a way that she would probably never be able to emulate. It was as if years of giving orders had imbued him with the expectation that others would simply do as he said and granted him the commanding aura to ensure it.

  “There. Now, how are you this morning? I trust you slept well?” He sipped his drink again.

  “I did, thank you. I’m very sorry about last night,” she apologized, still embarrassed about fainting. Then something clicked. Wait, he kidnapped me from a paying gig! “Why were you so forceful bringing me here?” she blurted out. Her humiliation immediately faded as she remembered the ire she had felt for being forced to go against her will.

  “I think we’ve already gone over all the important details, don’t you?” He flashed a smile that sent a chill down her spine.

  She didn’t know if he was saying ‘I believe I have adequately explained myself, and you should thoroughly understand the reasoning’ or a more threatening ‘You need to understand your place and stop asking questions.’ Either way, she didn’t feel like pressing it further. Quickly switching the subject, she jumped to the next logical question. “So, why am I still here? You could have had one of your drivers take me home last night after I . . . um . . . err . . . fainted.” It was so embarrassing that even just mentioning it again made her cringe.

  “I could have, you’re right. So what do you suspect might be the reason you’re still here?”

  His odd smile and tone of voice caused the nerves up and down her back to tingle in the most unpleasant way. “You have something you need me to do,” she frowned. This is not turning out to be a pleasant morning. She grumbled silently to herself as she sipped her coffee, not wanting to say something off-mark again.

  “That’s right again. You’re quite the intuitive young woman.” Charles’s smile opened up a bit to reveal a hint of his teeth. “Which probably means you are on edge, aren’t you?” He guessed correctly, drawing out a slow nod from Kass. “You are probably wondering, ‘What could he want from me when he could just as easily hire someone to do anything he needs,’ aren’t you?” Kass nodded again. “So, not being able to figure out what I can’t just pay for, you’re getting more and more nervous and hoping I will just come right out and cut to the chase, aren’t you?”

  Kass just sighed and nodded again, taking another large gulp of coffee. It was hot and burned her throat going down, but she had already managed to drink almost half the cup without even noticing. “Yes . . . Yes, I do want to know what you want from me,” she admitted, the suspense driving her crazy.

  “I’m sure you know by now that Darwin, Stephanie and Eve are all demons,” Charles said, ignoring her question. “With Darwin, it was very easy to recognize. After all, his horns had already been formed by the time we first met. But Eve,” --he paused, his eyes glazing over with a look she hadn’t seen before-- “well, that’s an entirely different story. If I hadn’t watched her materialize through a blue portal, I never would have guessed just from looking at her that she was anything but an incredibly beautiful young woman. She didn’t even have a foreign accent when she first spoke to me, and she very well sound as if she could have been raised in the States her entire life. It was as if she had thrown in a pair of red contact lenses and then tricked me with a fancy illusion into believing she was something other than human.”

  “So demons are like people?” Kass didn’t understand the point of this story. What does this have to do with me?

  “Indeed. They are the spitting image of what might pass as a perfect person, but that’s not the point, Kass. You’re sharp. We’ve already established that. Surely my explanation leaves some doubt in your mind?” His grin returned.

  “They spoke English . . . but they weren’t from here.” She put it together out loud, almost before the thoughts even had a chance to clearly form in her head.

  “There you go.” His words were patronizing, but his tone was also congratulatory. “I must admit, I suspected that they were just from another part of our country when they first arrived, their accent perhaps blurred away by ages of television, but then they told me their story. It was a long and terrible tale of war and destruction where they fled a conflict zone in which their people were fighting against genocide in order to come here--and it didn’t fit. First, Eve told me one tale and then Stephanie told me another. They both seemed very close to the same mark, but neither seemed quite right, and something just didn’t make sense. I’ve never met a single person from another country, even in our time, that wasn’t plagued with some form of accent that deviated from native pronunciation.”

  “So you didn’t believe them?” She still didn’t understand how this related to her. Is he trying to make me distrust Darwin too?

  “The question isn’t whether or not I believe them . . . It’s if you do.” His lips curled upwards in an even more sly and devious expression than before. He was clearly amused by wherever he was leading her. “Would you be content with their stories, satisfied knowing the conflicting facts of them?”

  “No.” Kass shrugged. “Why would I? Have you ever just asked them?”

  “I thought about it.” Charles looked down at his cup of tea for a moment before continuing. “But what would there be to
gain from that? Even if the worst of cheaters are caught in the act, their first words are generally, ‘It’s not what it looks like’ or ‘I can explain.’ So if we assume that they are liars, we can also assume that they will try to explain it away--thus defeating the point of the confrontation. If they are honest, and their story matches up, then all we’ve done is planted the seed of distrust, making them now suspect our intentions.”

  “So you hope to avoid them not trusting you by spying on them?” Kass almost laughed out loud at how comically silly her assumption sounded.

  “That is one way to look at it, but no. I don’t plan to spy on them, I just don’t plan on trusting them entirely either.” He pushed his now empty teacup to the side and folded his hands in front of him.

  “But that’s just one detail, isn’t it? It doesn’t seem like you should distrust them so easily. Have they given you other reasons?” Kass queried, honestly confused. Last night, Stephanie and Darwin were joking around with Charles as if they were long-time friends. Now, however, he was obviously trying to infect her with his doubt.

  “Kass, the people that are still in some far off world trying to exterminate their race . . . They are human. They are human, and they are every single reason I need to assume that Stephanie's intentions for you and I are ill. When an individual spends centuries running from a bloodthirsty pack of wolves that slaughtered their family, friends and species, would they look at them with anything other than hatred and resentment? Eve, the younger of the two, is different. She’s loving, kind, and worried about the greater good to a fault. She gives everyone a chance on an individual basis--but not Stephanie. Stephanie has never mingled or mixed with humans. She even uses me as a sort of proxy for all of her endeavors that might force her to talk to people unless she has the opportunity to mess with them in the process. I have good reason to believe that she ultimately means us harm, and I already know that she is more than capable of scheming.