The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3

by Charles Dean

  The others, some of whom had watched in envy as she leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek, were too shocked to react immediately. Valerie, who hadn’t expected their befuddlement to give her such a boon, quickly took advantage and slipped her other dagger into another player’s gut before pushing off the ground and taking to the air. She hadn’t made it more than half a foot in the air before she noticed that her wings weren’t carrying her like they used to. She wasn’t getting the same lift she had grown accustomed to feeling, and she struggled to press upwards into the air so she could get proper altitude for her next dive. Crap, crap, I’m going to die . . . She smiled. Well, they wouldn’t have run anyway. They would have fought to the bloody end, even if they knew they were going to die. She couldn’t help but laugh as she remembered the image of Darwin struggling to keep on fighting, even as Daniel organized his unwilling exit from the fight with the Panda King’s forces.

  When did I ever shy away from doing the right thing? When did I ever worry about my life in a video game? She laughed to herself--really at herself--as she tried to find a target near Kass and Mclean in the fight that had broken out after her betrayal. She wasn’t actually concerned if either of them died before adjusting to the skirmish. She knew, in her heart, that neither would mind dying in a good fight.

  Let’s do this! She turned mid-air and dove one last time, knowing in the back of her head that if she didn’t land on a cushiony bag of meat her death was certain. She could feel her wings slowly deteriorating as she turned around and angled her descent towards the closest foe, the wind painfully ripping the feathers from her wings. By the time she had landed feet and blades first, right into a poor, fat Ursine, her wings had already reached the point of non-functionality, and Valerie knew that her death was assured. Three down, she thought. How many more are there to go? She laughed as she remembered the game she played with Mclean and Daniel in the Fire-Walker chamber.

  Before she could even make it to her fourth victim, a roar pierced the sky and rivers of fire shot down around her. The Blue-Drakes, with Minx at the helm, flew down in a V-formation like a flock of migrating ducks, spewing fire all over the cluster of distracted foes.

  “Sorry, Val! I was going to wait for you, but Darwin’s almost here, and we didn’t want to miss the party!” Minx said, deftly jumping off her Blue-Drake and landing behind Mclean. She positioned herself so the two were back to back, each holding their daggers at the ready. Unfortunately for the two, the flames had engulfed almost all of the fur-balls, turning the entire would-be fight into a toasty barbeque featuring a wide array of different types of meat.

  “I see you guys have been busy,” Darwin laughed as he stepped out of the forest. “We were worried we wouldn’t make it in time. How did you all fare over here?”

  “We got attacked by two large groups, but Val went weird like a cuckoo clock and saved us, so it’s okay . . . But is she?” Minx looked over at Valerie, who was standing in the middle of the circle of the burning oil and fire the Blue-Drakes had painted the ground with.

  “Valerie, what happened to your wings?” Darwin asked, stepping over the fire.

  “Huh?” she said, looking down at the remaining stubs of what had once been her proud and majestic wings, her joy as a White-Wing, lying on the ground next to her. “Oh . . . crutches shouldn’t be kept after you’re whole.”

  “Crutches? But aren’t you a White-Wing? Isn’t that your identity, not a crutch?” Darwin asked, confused.

  Sigh. Does everyone have to spell everything out for you? I can’t tell if you’re brilliant or dense or both sometimes. Valerie decided she would let him off the hook this time. “If that were the case, my eyes wouldn’t be so pretty,” she joked, making light of the matter. “I’m a Demon, after all,” she admitted, knowing that the combination of her red eyes and lack of wings meant that there would be no simple way to hide the fact. Unless, of course, there is a magic flight spell and an illusion spell and . . . Well . . . No, that’s just too much effort.

  “You’re a Demon?” Darwin said more than asked, but the pitch was still slightly higher at the end, so it still came across as a question.

  “Apparently so,” Valerie replied and nodded. “Actually, maybe the two of us can talk privately later.” Valerie added, looking around at the others who were staring at her and Darwin.

  “I’d like that,” Darwin agreed. He probably understood her sentiments. “But the question still stands: Are you okay?”

  “I’ve never been better,” she responded, beaming. “Today was . . . Well, it was a lot of fun,” she answered honestly. There wasn’t a single trace of deceit in her voice. Even though she relived losing the ability to move in a way that had for so long felt natural, having it suddenly yanked away from her as her wings had been cast aside in the transformation, she just couldn’t help but be happy. The wings weren’t a part of her. They truly were a crutch, a crutch she would never need again now that she was whole once more.

  Darwin:

  “So . . .” Darwin fumbled for the right words to propel the conversation past the stalled out stutter that the two seemed to be locked in, half-expecting Valerie to fill in the words for him. The two stared at each other, waiting for the other to begin, their red eyes meeting in a stare that oddly felt even more intimate than the ones he shared with Stephanie.

  “So . . .” Valerie passed the ball back to him.

  Great, so I have to fill in the dialogue. Darwin’s eyes darted to the table between the two of them as he tried to figure out where to start.

  When Darwin and Valerie had both agreed they needed to talk about things, Justin had been more than happy to accommodate their privacy requirements. Apparently, while everyone else had been out trying to figure out how to make their home safer, there had also been plenty of hard workers who had decided to take the initiative and turn the entire dungeon into a more comfortable living space. They had constructed a myriad of different buildings, each hewn from the basic raw materials that were available to them. Indeed, many of the new edifices embodied various different elements based on what they were constructed from.

  While a handful of the buildings were identical in layout and design--stacked on top of each other like chips trying to reform a potato--it was clear that the vast majority had radically different architects. They sat side by side with more than a dozen dissimilar drystone designs. They were, for the most part, assembled from similar types of stones, a thing that Darwin hadn’t been able to tell if the game had generated naturally or the diggers and workers who unearthed them had worked to achieve, but there were also some that were made from wood. Such was the one Darwin and Valerie were currently in. It was a quaint, humble-looking log cabin on the middle of an empty platform, barely large enough inside to afford the space needed to fit around the three-foot-wide square table that Valerie and Darwin were currently seated at.

  Not saying anything at first, Darwin’s eyes darted across her face. He couldn’t tell if it was her bone structure or even the puffiness of her lips that matched his sister, but for some reason, he couldn’t help but think about Eve. With just a change in the color of her eyes and the paleness of her skin, she looks like an entirely different person. Or is it the wings? From blue eyes and wings to red eyes and flightless, I guess I’ll be hearing the story of fallen angels turning into demons one more time today, he mused. He was curious what her own inner monologue must be like as she processed the change. I was born like this, but she just fell into it. Is it because of the guild? “Is it because of me?” he pondered, the words almost inaudible as they escaped his lips. His eyes moved across her skin like a climber’s free hand searching for something to hold onto that would give him a better grip on where to start the conversation. And why does the atmosphere here feel like a confession scene in an old-school anime? He sighed as the tension of the moment weighed on his chest. What do I even say to someone I might have turned into a Demon?

  “Maybe,” Valerie answered his mumbled inquiry with a bi
t of a laugh and a half-sigh of her own, the converging nature of those two expressions somehow easing the heaviness of the sparse dialogue. “It might be because of you; it might be because of the game or the guild.”

  “Is it in real life too? Do you also have the strength and the red eyes?” Darwin had to ask, knowing that his own fiendish identity in the game was due to his real-life condition and that, if her situation were similar, it might manifest itself in the same way as well.

  “Yeah, but there is more to it,” Valerie started. “I can feel my feet again. I can move my legs again in real life.”

  “Again?” Darwin looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You couldn’t before?”

  “No.” A frown flashed across her face before twisting rapidly back into a smile. “But this morning I could. It wasn’t one hundred percent. I didn’t just wake up and have a working pair of legs again, but there was feeling--there was pain and movement. It’s something the doctors told me all those years ago would never happen again. I didn’t have any idea what was going on until my mother pointed out my red eyes, and I remembered that I knew someone who had a similar set of looking-goggles--someone else with red eyes--so I got online to talk to you.”

  “So you weren’t always red-eyed? It’s a new trait?” Darwin’s mind shifted to thoughts of his conversation with Stephanie and Eve from earlier. This reeks of Stephanie. What in the heck did she do? “Why are you the only one who has changed though?” he said, proceeding to the next logical question. There are several other players in the game who have joined up with me, so why is Valerie the only one exhibiting signs of a transformation? Why is she the only one? The only person who could possibly answer that question wasn’t there at the moment, but Darwin knew that he would likely see her that night--a benefit of sharing the same bed.

  “No, it was a surprise to me. I wouldn’t have noticed it if my mother didn’t point it out. The doctor thought I was wearing contacts, and I didn’t want to correct anyone until I talked to you. Is this . . . Is this some kind of disease?” Valerie asked the question in a timid fashion, but she still had the same happy gleam in her eye from earlier. “Are there negative side effects I should be worried about?”

  Why does she look so satisfied if she is asking about whether or not it's a disease? “Well . . .” Darwin debated on whether or not to tell her about the sanity problem. She already knows that I’ve had problems controlling the skill, but Stephanie made it sound like it was a problem only men had, not one that the women of the species shared. After all, isn’t Stephanie over a century old? And don't the symptoms start around the age of thirty? “Well, not for women,” he shrugged. “It’s got a few symptoms, but from what the girl demons say, the bad stuff seems to be sexist and favors only attacking one gender.”

  Valerie’s grin grew again, finally matching the gleam. “Great! So I get my legs back and there isn’t any downside?”

  “Nope, not that I can think of, but that is going to vary person to person. The problems are supposed to affect every man over thirty, but there are plenty of men in this particular camp past that age that haven’t shown even the first symptoms yet, so you might not have what I have,” Darwin answered honestly. “Then again, their conversion has been pretty recent, so maybe it isn’t based on the age, but rather the duration in which the person has been in the state . . . Or maybe the game itself controls it.”

  “Out of curiosity, what happens at thirty years old that causes men issues?” Valerie’s right eyebrow raised and her lips twisted to match.

  She does have a right to know, doesn’t she? I mean, even though she isn’t a man, she still might be plagued by the madness too. Darwin debated whether or not to air the entirety of his dirty laundry for her. He summed it up to the best of his ability in one sentence: “We grow a bloodlust that drives us into a state of uncontrollable rage.”

  “Ah, that doesn’t sound pleasant at all,” she said. Her smile remained for half a breath but then suddenly faded. “Wait, do you mean you go crazy? Like, do you see stuff?”

  “No, it’s more of an out-of-body experience. It’s like drinking so much you black out, and your body keeps running, but your mind has completely shut down. When you come to--if you come to--you don’t remember everything you’ve done. You just kind of know that you’ve done bad stuff and, hopefully, to bad people.”

  “I see . . .” Valerie paused. “But there aren’t any visions?”

  “Well, there will be for you,” a new voice joined the mix, and Darwin felt soft hands rubbing against his shoulder.

  Ah, that feels good. Darwin took a deep breath. He was almost positive that her hands were magic as they worked out stress and relieved tension Darwin didn’t even know he had built up. “Stephanie?” he asked, recognizing the voice but feeling a need to double check who it was. After all, if it wasn’t Stephanie, he didn’t want to find out whether or not Stephanie fit the stereotype that watching television, listening to music and reading the newspaper had built up in his head of the crazy girlfriend who was certain to misunderstand such a situation.

  “Of course, darling,” she said, leaning over and hugging him from behind. “Unless you were hoping it was another girl? Maybe a brunette in a white dress?”

  Kass? His mind flashed the image and his cheeks colored with a hint of red. Not a full blush, but at least a hint. “Why would I ever be expecting anyone else?” He did his best to give a perfect response.

  “I don’t know. You are kind of a demon in the sack, so who is to say whether or not you have a string of women who might line up to try it out?” She laughed, sliding around his body while still hugging him until her arms were draped around him as she sat in his lap. This time, her remark had caused Valerie’s face to flush. She didn’t just redden a little: She was positively the color of a rose. “See? Look at her. Even she’s got a vivid image of it in her head already. Do you think she wants to join us?” Stephanie winked at Valerie in a way that made it look like she was trying to hide it from Darwin, but her whole body moved with the gesture, so he couldn’t have missed it if he had tried.

  “I . . .” Valerie paused and then lowered her eyebrows and locked eyes with Darwin. “I can’t imagine the experience not being worth at least a try.”

  What? Darwin’s mouth fell open. What just happened? No, this isn’t right. Isn’t Valerie the same girl who believes in romance so much so that she went ballistic and betrayed her own people over a guy that she had only ever kissed? The facts scrambled in his brain as he struggled to add them up properly, but he had just about as much success putting it together as a guy who couldn’t match the round peg to the round hole or a kindergartener trying to get a PhD. She can’t be that type of girl all of the sudden, can she?

  “That’s a girl. So what did you see?”

  “Huh?” Valerie played dumb.

  Darwin was starting to notice that, other than the one time he had mentioned the insanity, her eyes shined past her facial expression, like the glow at the top of a lighthouse that penetrated even the darkest fog. It’s almost enchanting. It’s like her optimism is more persistent than student loan bills for the fresh American college graduate. Darwin admired her enthusiasm as he commented to himself on her eyes. Even the most benign fairytales don’t have endings happy enough to justify that look. He felt somewhat jealous, but, no matter what his feelings were concerning the look itself, after scanning his memory to the best of his ability, he couldn’t think of a single time in which she had shown those radiant eyes before her metamorphosis.

  “I mean, when you were in the battle, when you saved the StormGuard Alliance form losing any people, what did you see?” Stephanie spelled it out.

  “Oh? I don’t know. I guess I saw two guilds, so I--” She began explaining, but Stephanie raised her hand and talked over her before she could get further.

  “Don’t play coy or mistake this visage. I’m just like you in real life. What did you see?” she repeated again.

  “I saw flashes of my past
, memories that led me to a battle strategy which helped me trounce those gullible goons that grated against my nerves.” She smiled with an open mouth that bared her teeth. “It was interesting.”

  “Ah, so it did happen. And here I was worried that you weren’t just playing stupid. Like, you totes shouldn’t, like, do that.” Stephanie stuck out her tongue while winking one of her eyes again, causing both of them to laugh.

  “I’ll have to remember to check how much wool I have before trying to pull any of it over your eyes,” Valerie giggled.

  Why do I feel like this is a trap, and I’ve already been caught? Darwin laughed helplessly to himself.

  “Dear, you can take the sheets off if you want. It won’t bother me at all,” Stephanie teased again. “But would it really be in your best interest to trick me? After all, aren’t I the only one who knows your situation? Well, at least the only sympathetic ear?”

  “Wolves are known to wear the clothing of sheep,” Valerie replied coldly.

  “And sheep uneaten kill themselves through stupidity and starvation.” Stephanie didn’t shrug, but her words left it to be felt.

  “Well, then perhaps we should call in Justin and order a drink to stave off starvation with some proper consumption.” Valerie’s words had the same mark of arrogance Darwin had grown somewhat accustomed to as of late from Stephanie. It was almost like he was talking to two Stephanies, except one didn’t have the same enthusiasm for old video games--or at least Darwin didn’t think Valerie did.

  “That’s not a bad idea. I always like a little wine when I dine, and your bravado is so cute I could practically eat you up,” Stephanie laughed.

  “Alright, enough.” Darwin did his best to slam his foot down, but being seated with a girl in his lap made it rather difficult. He wasn’t familiar enough with cat fights or word-play skirmishes in general to tell the difference, but he knew he didn’t like being left out of the conversation as the two exchanged what felt like barbs back and forth. “We’re going to keep it civil, straight, clean and start back at the beginning.”