The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (5 page)

“I do.” Darwin frowned. “I trusted you. Why would you go and blab to someone about me? What if they had wanted to do tests on me? What were you thinking?” His words were angry, but his voice was muted and somber like a man morosely recalling the past.

“I . . . I . . .” Kass was trying to find the words to defend herself, but she was coming up short. For some reason, Darwin’s empty, red eyes had pierced through her spirit and left her wordless and without a defense.

“That’s enough, you two. She didn’t understand the ramifications of what she was doing.” Charles held up his right hand, gesturing for Darwin and Kass to be silent. “She isn’t lying. She mentioned several times during her pre-interview that she wouldn’t discuss anything other than her particular involvement in the system. She had no idea that the tiny pieces of information she released could be so damaging.”

“Oh, so because it’s a--” Stephanie began to lay into Kass again, but didn’t make it far. Charles slammed his hand on the table, cutting her off mid-sentence.

“Stephanie, please. For my sake, don’t make this into something more than it is. You know exactly how we humans are. Full of errors, yes?” He gave her a stern look.

How we humans are? Is Stephanie not a human? Is she like Darwin? These people are demons . . . in real life?
Questions started racing through Kass’s head as Charles had obviously stressed the word ‘human.’

“She’s never dealt with journalists before,” Charles continued, “so how was she supposed to know that even the slightest mention of a few details would lead to Darwin getting late night coverage more detailed and negative than a U.S. presidential candidate’s voice cracking while talking about an affair?”

“I’m . . .” Initially, Kass had been feeling very wronged when she got there. She had been the one who was getting mistreated. She had been the one who had been carried away in the middle of an interview, forced into a car and driven to an unnamed location against her will. She was the offended party--or so she had thought since the second she had been ‘politely’ asked to leave G.O.R.N. Things seemed a little different now. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know,” she said mousily.

“There. Now, let’s move on.” Charles lifted the hand he had slammed on the table and picked up his empty soda as if that action somehow rendered the subject officially closed. “Anyway, I’m sorry about how we treated you, removing you from the broadcasting station, but you have to understand that you put us in quite the predicament. We’d rather the world know as little as possible about Darwin and his involvement with Tiqpa. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kass felt like she was five years old again and being scolded by her father.

“Great. Now, Alfred and Alfred, go fetch us all some drinks. I think everyone is either out or hasn’t been served to begin with.” Charles waved his hand and two butlers appeared with fresh drinks.

“You have two butlers named Alfred?” Kass, despite the tension of the situation, couldn’t entirely avoid giggling a little, finding the whole thing a bit silly.

“Of course. Have you ever met a rich guy who took the time to clear away a giant underground lair and didn’t have at least one butler named Alfred?” Darwin piped up with a laugh from the other side of the table before momentarily straightening in his seat and looking over at Charles. “Wait, you’re not going to name me after a flamboyantly red-breasted bird, are you?”

“No, no. I went through ten orphans before I gave up on that gag,” Charles mused, the other three outright cracking up. “Apparently, orphans don’t always make good parkour students.”

“Ah, right.” Stephanie grinned. “Do you get Eve to wear leather outfits when she tries to sneak into the house at night and steal your goodies?”

Charles cocked an eye. “I tried to get Eve to wear leather outfits for everything. She’s always in a cocktail dress like she’s about to play the lead heroine of a spy thriller.”

“Yeah, but the poor kid is terrible at the whole spy thing. She gives away the plot before her part even comes on screen. It’s like she’s trying to play poker with a lie detector strapped to her.” Stephanie leaned back and chugged an entire soda right in front of Kass. She then crushed the empty can on her head. It was a move that would have been right at home for a frat guy who had drunk one too many next to pool table, but it just didn’t suit the petite blonde.

“Really? Sis isn’t that bad at deception, is she?” Darwin’s face was full of curiosity.

That’s right
, Kass thought.
He never knew his sister. All of that happened before he ever even found out that there were others like him.
She kept watching him, his face lighting up as Stephanie and Charles both talked about his sister, but somewhere in the middle of their conversation, something started to dawn on her. She had been vaguely aware of it from the start, but the significance of what she was looking at hadn’t exactly hit her right away. For the past day or two, she had been staring at Darwin’s face set underneath those sinister horns. Hours of seeing him with the fearsome protrusions had conditioned her to think they were normal.

But this wasn’t Tiqpa. She hadn’t used her dive device to enter a fantasy world this time. Everything was real now, and she was staring at a giant man with demonic horns in real life. Darwin’s characteristic red eyes were almost ignorable in Tiqpa, a world where the magical was expected, but here they were frightening and inexplicable. Here, every miniscule imperfection on his horns wasn’t an impressive feat of graphic design, but a terrifying fact that sent chills up and down her spine. She tried to wrap her head around what she was looking at, and it became a little more than she could handle. She had been absconded from an interview and driven into the middle of nowhere, but she could handle all of that. She could process all of that. In a way, it kind of made sense. It wasn’t right--she should be angry, not joking around with these people--but it at least was within the realms of reality. Yet, here and now, there was something she just couldn’t comprehend. From the piercing red eyes that seemed to eat her soul to the gigantic horns, it all wasn’t right.
This just . . . This just can’t be real . . .

“Kass? Kass, are you okay?” She heard a voice as her vision faded to black, and she felt herself faint from the pressure of everything. Subconsciously, part of her knew, without a doubt, that she wasn’t in Tiqpa anymore. After all, there wasn’t a friendly little ‘you’ve passed out’ message box.

Ashish
:

Ashish dusted off the soles of his feet as he walked into the bar. “Is this the place?” he asked the giant, earth-colored Jotunn next to him. “We didn’t make this trek all the way to furry land for nothing, did we?”

“Relax, little one.” The Jotunn, who stood at least eight feet tall, laughed. “We were close by to begin with since you insisted on us going south for a dungeon. It’s not like it was much of a detour.”

“Alright, well, where is she then?” Ashish scanned the establishment he and his towering companion had just entered. It seemed to be a sort of tavern. Whereas everything else in the vicinity had been rather floridly ornate, this particular bar was not. It was as plain as could be: wood, brown and unfinished, flanked them on all sides. The walls were made of it, the four-peg stools lining the bar were made of it, and even the chairs and tables were made of it. The only thing that wasn’t the same drab color were the people and the lanterns.
This place could really use an interior decorator. Millions put into VR design, and the best they can come up with is this for a tavern?
Ashish grumbled to himself as he looked around, his eyes darting from patron to patron.

Everyone in here is a darn furry. What is wrong with this place?
Ashish continued to complain to himself. When the game had come out, he had immediately skipped over the plain, animal-like races. There were so many options, but he felt like most of them were just silly. How could someone pick a simple human or an animal hybrid when other races had so much more to offer? Like the White-Wings, for example, some races granted the ability to fly. What was more exciting than that? It was a dream many men had held onto their entire lives made as real as morning dew the instant you entered the game. There were also the Fire-, Earth-, and Ice-Walkers turning everyone’s favorite cartoon dreams into a reality as they could grasp and bend the very elements to their will. So why, with all of these options available, did people insist on picking furries? Was being a cute panda, kitten or dog really worth giving up the fantastical powers that the other races had to offer?

“This place gives me the creeps,” the Jotunn said, taking a large sniff. “My eyes see the pets, but my nose doesn’t smell the usual aroma that goes with a house full of them.”

“That’s what bothers you about this?” Ashish laughed. His second-in-command had always found the strangest things unsettling. Ashish would grumble about the uneven terrain upsetting their guild’s formations, or the flyers always hovering just out of their spells’ range, but not Linzmeier. No, he was the type to get frustrated with the appearance of wolves in an area that didn’t have deer or other large game, and he had been known to complain that the architecture in Jotunnheim was bothersome since none of the NPCs had the toolset to produce it.

“Of course. If something doesn’t add up, that’s exactly when you should be unsettled,” the Jotunn said in a matter-of-fact way. “If things don’t add up, it’s because someone somewhere is messing with you. How could that not bother you?”

“Why would anyone be messing with me? We’re just here to get a mission,” Ashish replied, brushing off Linzmeier’s concern. “There is no-one in here trying to trick us or anything. There’s just a bunch of NPCs, one of whom has the holy grail of quests.”

“Holy only because no one has completed it yet.” The dour vibes radiating from Linzmeier’s gigantic frown permeated the atmosphere, infectiously making even Ashish momentarily doubt himself. “This whole thing bothers me. Something is wrong.”

“You worry too much. It’s not that complicated. There is just a random NPC tucked away inside this bar that only talks to guild leaders and gives out a hidden quest that you can’t share.” Ashish realized exactly how odd it sounded as the words stumbled out of his mouth. “Okay, so maybe something is a little off, but don’t you want to be the first group to actually complete the quest?”

“Four mutts, no smell. Two cats, no smell. Something isn’t right here. That’s all I’m saying. Even the way they move, talk and act isn’t right. It’s like this whole place isn’t real,” Linzmeier said, maintaining his doubts. Ashish had tried many times to convince his big friend to just go along with things, but, until everything ‘added up,’ Linzmeier’s attitude wouldn’t ever budge. He’d follow the guild even if he disagreed with a course of action, but he wouldn’t be happy about it.

“It very well might not be real. This is a game, after all. Maybe the reason this quest is so hard to find and isn’t shareable is simply because the developers tried to write it out of the game,” Ashish offered. He knew that the best Easter eggs were often the pieces of dust a game designer forgot to sweep back under the rug before launch. “But either way, Xeal and Waseem both said that this place had a quest with the best reward a player could ask for, and so far, everything has matched up with what they told us about the place.”

“Maybe.” Linzmeier’s frown faded, barely, but his eyes showed that his uneasiness remained. “Let’s just get this quest and get it over with.”

“Is that really the attitude that two young adventurers should have when faced with the challenge of a lifetime?” A sultry voice crept inside Ashish’s right ear at the same time a hand slid across his left shoulder. “Don’t tell me you would think of a chance at the panda’s throne as nothing more than something to ‘get over with.’”

The two men turned to face the woman who had snuck between them, and a shiver creeped up and down Ashish’s spine.
When did she get here? Where did she come from?
He cursed as his eyes darted around, trying to figure out where she had come from and how she could have gotten the drop on them. Linzmeier’s sense of things had turned out to be more accurate than Ashish had thought. Everyone in the bar was gone. Only the building, a hollow shell of what it had been before, remained.
Was it all even here to begin with?
he wondered, now even more on edge.

“Easy there, handsome.” The dark-haired, red-eyed woman’s voice enthralled Ashish with its demure melodiousness like no music ever could. “You came here to find me, so I just thought I’d make it easy for you,” she said, letting a red-lipped smile creep across her pale face ever so slowly.

“Boss, let’s get the quest and leave.” Linzmeier knocked Ashish on the shoulder, jolting him back to reality.

“Of course, you’re in charge. Why wouldn’t you be? You’re destined to greatness, born to rule men. It’s as plain as day to see.” The words lured Ashish back into a dream world, reality and logic quickly behind him again. “Now, have you come to save me from my problems, kill the evil demon and prove yourself worthy of the crown?” She smiled, producing the fabled crown of Robin the Panda King from behind her back and proffering it to Ashish.

“Of course.” Ashish nodded as he stared into her beautiful red eyes. “Of course I’ll save you.”

“Ashish, snap out of it. Get the quest, and let’s leave. I don’t like the effect this lady seems to have on you.” Linzmeier nudged his leader again, but, this time, it produced no response. Ashish was already lost to the siren’s melodies.