The Bathrobe Knight (26 page)

The nova exploded out with blue flame, catching her in the back as she was making her way to her third victim. The fire sent a searing pain through her wings and let her know that she now had less than half of her health left, but she forced herself onward. She used the concussion wave of the nova to shoot at the feet of her prey and rip his tendons, causing him to land on his face, at which point she viciously plunged her Daggers into his back.
Three down.

No sooner had she finished him off, however, than she had to roll out of the way of another set of fireballs.
I didn’t think this happened outside of Jackie Chan movies.
She rolled back to the other side, dodging another incoming projectile.
A third of the health bar left and only three kills? I can’t let those two beat me this badly,
she thought, pushing herself up and running at the fourth Fire-Walker in a mad sprint. She knew she wasn’t going to be breathing for much longer. Just the after effects of this guy’s flames were ripping her bar to shreds, but she wasn’t about to let that stop her. She stabbed, hard, and the blades dug into the Fire-Walker’s chest.
Four down.
A fireball landed next to her and knocked her off her feet.
Crap, what do I do now?
she thought. Her health bar was sinking too fast for her to make it to the next one. The flames lingering on her body would kill her before she could reach the fifth target.

“Don’t die just yet, girl! I’m already at seven!” Mclean yelled at her, seeing her predicament.

That’s right, I didn’t get to be the first player ranked Herald of the Sun God Empire for nothing. I got here through hard work and determination, not giving up just because I’m about to die from a damn, rigged Boss. You can do this, Valerie
, she said to herself as she stood up, the pain of the flames started to get to her and set her off balance.
Eight percent . . . Eight percent is all I have left? Screw you for going for me first!
she pulled her daggers out and threw them at the fifth target. The target dodged the first blade but the second one landed square in his throat. As the flames consumed her and her vision started to fade to black, she felt happy. She could see her last kill choking on his own fiery blood on the ground in front of her.
Five . . . five isn’t too bad, right?

• You have died. You will have the option to respawn at your bind point hwen your death counter expires.
  

Valerie sighed as she logged off. Sure, she had died, but it had been the most exciting fight she had been in since she started playing the game. The heat from the flames that chased her across the field, the certainty of sure death that followed, and the overpowering aura that the Boss let off--it was epic. It was a Boss fight worth fighting.

She was just about to go to bed when her phone beeped. She had an email. It was a notification that someone had sent her a private message on the forums
:
“Just died. We got all of them before the Boss got us. Didn’t think you’d be so eager to play bait, but you bought us plenty of time! Anyways, had a lot of fun, look forward to playing again with you two. - Mclean.”

It worked! I got burned, it hurt, I died, but it worked! And it worked because of Valerie, fearless Herald of the Sun God Empire! Yes!
Valerie thought, mentally high-fiving herself. She wasn’t used to putting herself out there that much, but she had been part of a team for once and gotten carried away in it. She wasn’t even used to caring that much about the outcome of the stuff she worked on, but this time, she had put everything she had into that fight, and it worked. They had won, and the smile it left on her face was one she knew wouldn’t fade for days.

Darwin
:

As Darwin looked at the prize he had come so far for, he felt a little disappointed. He had somehow expected a giant glowing golden chest with beautiful inlaid jewels. He had even expected there to be other magical items around it as if it were a Dragon’s hoard of loot. Instead, he found an empty chair facing the entrance of the room covered in food crumbs and archaic game consoles he hadn’t seen or heard of in decades. There, lying next to the cluttered crumby chair, was a wooden container the size of a kid’s shoe box.

“So, this is it,” Stephanie, the peppy medusa, said. “It’s the holy grail of goodness! Inside is that amazeballs stuff you have, like, been totes after.”

Darwin looked at the wooden treasure receptacle. It was a square wooden chest that had been severely mangled with rhinestone glitter. “A wooden case with glitter?” he asked.

“Yeah! Who doesn’t, like, absolutely love glitter. It’s like totally pretty!” Stephanie shouted happily.

“Why just a wooden bin though?”

“You can’t be serious! Everyone knows the holy grail has to be the wooden container. Didn’t you ever watch Indiana Jones?”

She feels like the Boss of a Mean Girls movie more than a dungeon,
Darwin thought, looking at the box. Everything about the dungeon was entirely unexpected, so it almost took him by surprise when he finally opened up the wooden container and saw something that looked exactly like he suspected. It was a bright, golden, egg-shaped stone small enough for him to cover up with a fist. It seemed to radiate light.

“I’m not sure why I was expecting some massive tablet,” Darwin said, holding the tiny egg that would hopefully be the salvation of Valcrest.

“Well, bigger isn’t always, like, better, you know? Like especially with things you got to, like, carry around and all. I mean, just . . . ewww . . . can you like imagine having to carry around a bunch of, like, junk in your pockets all the time? It would, like, totes ruin a good outfit. For such an amazing beauty like me, it would, like, be awful! I might, like, look like I had a bulge in my pants or something. That’d be totes disgus.”

“Yeah, you’re right. By the way, do you ever clean up?”

“Eww, don’t be, like, that old man. I already have like two parents. Don’t need one more. Also, with how burnt out I am on Tetris, I don’t like think I can stand to organize one more thing,” she said, scoffing.

Darwin frowned. He wanted to chide her about the whole room, but his had been just as bad when he was back in the real world. There were often stacks of empty instant ramen noodle packages by his computer, and, on more than one occasion, he had built entire pyramids and castles out of the coke zero cans he went through during a holiday. “So, yeah, this stone is it, ey?”

“Yep! You, like, don’t know how to, like, activate it at all though, do you?” she laughed. “Did, like, your sister, Eve, not explain anything before she, like, sent you out here to get it?”

His face answered her question before his words could.

“Okay, like, all you have to do is pretend you have the ability it grants you. Just like bring up your Tiqpa Menu and ask for it to, like, open up the Town Menu. It’s just, like, that simple.”

“That simple, you say?”

“Yep. Like, it’s so easy even a White-Horn could do it,” she said, still smacking her lips while she talked.

Does she actually have bubble gum? What’s with her?
Darwin couldn’t help but think as the sound started to grate a bit on his nerves. “Thanks for this,” he brought himself to saying.  Regardless of how annoying the sound was, she had done him a huge favor.

“No problem. It’s like the least I could do. Just don’t like forget that you totes owe me one, you know?” she said.

“I won’t. Anyways, I’m going to head off. Got a lot to do, and I need to figure out how to use this stone properly,”  Darwin said, making sure to avoid glancing at her as he turned around and started to head towards the door and back into the hall.

“Oh, before you leave, I just had like one tiny little question that I’d, like, love you to answer and all,” she said as he was just about to head back to Kass.

“Darwin, why the player?” her tone suddenly hardened, and her voice flattened out, completely losing its giddy, high-pitched perkiness in an instant.

“Huh?” Darwin asked, the shift taking him by surprise.

“The player Darwin--you brought a player to my home.”

“She’s my friend,” he answered.

“Yeah, I get that you think that, but that can’t happen, Darwin, and we both know it. You can’t be friends with her.”

“Stephanie, I just said we are friends, and I mean it. It’s not something that can’t happen; it’s something that already has happened. Kass is my friend, okay?” Darwin said.

There was a pause. Darwin hadn’t seen her face this entire time, but he could feel her rolling her eyes at him in frustration. “Darwin, look at me,” she pleaded, and he did.

Darwin turned around and looked her in the eye for the first time since they had come to her little private dungeon. Even with her bad makeup and questionable fashion choices, she was beautiful in a classical sense. She was a young, blonde Audrey Hepburn in knee-high socks, a plaid skirt and an oxford shirt. It was such a pretty sight that he almost forgot what they were talking about.

“See, nothing. No stone, no death, no agonizing scream or death throes. Nothing. But, how much do you want to bet that if Kass or one of those NPCs you are playing stepdaddy to were to look at me for even half a second they’d be holding up pillars in my dungeon right now?” she said.

Darwin knew what she was trying to get at. It was the same point Eve had tried to make in the cave when they first met. He just didn’t care. He had spent too much of his life in the phatic communication zone of endless
Hi, How are you? I’m fine, thank you, and you?
’s to want to give up what he had with Kass. “Stephanie, she’s my friend,” he said again. He wasn’t going to change his position on the matter.

Stephanie didn’t respond. She just walked up to his side and patted him on the back.” If you say so, but you should be careful; Eve is not going to like hearing that her long lost brother is hanging around with a player.”

“She’ll get over it,” he said, not entirely sure he believed the words himself.

“Ok, well, like, whatever with the drab. I like bet your friend is totes uncomfortable waiting out in that hall with like a hundred hot, chiseled guys posing at her.”

“You mean your statues?”

“Whatever, don’t be jelly of all my rock hard guys outside,” she said, snorting as she suppressed a chuckle at her own joke.  “Dates with them will just never feel as alive as they would with you, if you know what I mean.”

“A date with me?” Darwin had to double check the implication she had slipped into the conversation. He had never had a girl even mention his name and the word date in the same sentence, let alone joke about it being a good thing.

“Yeah, come on, take a girl out for ice cream sometime. I promise not to turn your favorite restaurant into stone,” she said more directly.

This whole thing took Darwin out of left field. She had gone from helping him, to lecturing him about hanging out with a player, to asking him out on a date in the course of one conversation. It felt like he was about to get whiplash from all the mood changes, but she really was a attractive and a gamer, despite the awful high school teenager act and the gum smacking sounds. “Umm, yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I kind of have a lot to do, but if we get the chance, I’d love some ice cream. I haven’t had any since I got here.”

“Since you got here?” she asked, as if Darwin had said something wrong.

Did I say something wrong?
“Yeah, anyways, not sure when we’ll see each other again, but desert for sure next time.”

“Kay, I’m, like, totes gonna hold you to it. Later gater,” she said, walking over and plopping down in her chair as Darwin left to go meet back up with Kass.
 

What the Hell just happened?
Darwin thought, a million questions racing through his mind as he left.
Is it because no one else can look at her without turning to stone? And since I didn’t turn to stone, does this mean Eve was right about me? About us?
Regardless of why she had asked him out, Darwin’s cheeks were red and his heart was racing. It was a first, and just the fact that it happened made every step feel lighter than air.
Win.