The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (33 page)

“You realize it’s a bit hypocritical to call me old man, right? I am almost positive that when I log off, you’re the old man in the group,” Kitchens assumed correctly. “You calling me old man is like the two babies in the group arguing over which one is the whelp.”

“Yeah, but, while you’re still here, I need to take the pot-shot before I lose the opportunity.” Darwin chortled more. “It’s not like we’re recruiting people who know what a flip phone is on a regular basis.”

“That’s true, whipper-snapper,” Kitchens returned fire. “So you think there is something preventing the other players from attacking us here? The title of King may explain why the NPC guards have been treating us well, even if they seem annoyed to do so, but it doesn’t explain why the players haven’t been doing anything.”

“Have you actually seen any players?” Darwin noticed that, while there were still a few players here and there, there weren’t significant numbers in the streets like there had been last time. He couldn’t be entirely certain, as the players may have just been keeping their distance, but they were generally fairly easy to identify by the way they clustered together. Players often chose odd garb they considered fashionable and insisted on holding their weapons and wearing armor in town as if they were going to be forced into a brawl at any moment. The NPCs, in contrast, were generally dressed like professional role players who broke character as often as a struggling extra afraid he’d lose his last paycheck if the director heard him say one word without a fake accent.

The last big give away, one for which you had to be close enough to the NPCs to listen to them talk to tell, was their speech patterns. Most of the players spoke in choppy, to-the-point sentences that featured as few words as possible strung together in an order that would make a seventh grade language teacher cringe. NPCs, however, always spoke in full sentences that were somehow always magically grammatically correct--even though Darwin hadn’t seen a single school his entire time in Tiqpa.
How did they even learn to read and write?
He found himself baffled after thinking about it.

“Not enough for a city this size. Did we scare them all away?” Kitchens’ head turned quickly from side to side. “Do you get that eerie feeling that we are walking through a bad horror movie too? That there might be some weird terror waiting for us around the next corner?”

“You go to the paranoid option quick, don’t you?” Darwin observed.

“Well, you know, war and winter. Those that don’t worry over the small possibilities either end up dead or turn out to be lucky when one of those two hits. Last I checked, we are in a war . . . or, at least, we were,” Kitchens noted.

“That is a good point, but maybe you’re overthinking it.” Darwin didn’t actually think he was. ‘Eerie’ was an understatement. He felt more creeped out than the only girl at an anime convention; and, even though he didn’t see anyone looking at him, he had the strange sensation of eyeballs following his every moment. He just knew that the only thing he could do was operate on the knowledge he had at hand and trust in his zweihander. “Maybe the good players all just joined our guild, and that’s why the city is mostly empty. The ones that are left are just the crafters.”
And let’s hope you believe that. I don’t want to put too much time into worrying about something I can’t change.

“So that’s how you think it is?” Kitchens looked at Darwin for a moment, an odd, flat glare, as the two continued walking. “Then I suppose it wouldn’t hurt one way or the other if we just dashed at full speed. After all, we do have a schedule to keep up with.”

“No. No, it wouldn’t,” Darwin replied with a nod, and the two took off sprinting. It wasn’t just their ordinary pace, and it was like a game as Darwin ducked, weaved and spun around the people walking through the market. He was going so fast he could feel the wind pressing against his face stronger than any natural breeze or gust ever had as he gave it his all. At one point, failing to find a path between a rather obnoxious group of hippo-sized bear people, Darwin jumped over them and didn’t land until he was dozens of feet past them on the other side. He was having so much fun playing his little impromptu game of ‘dodge the pedestrian’ that he almost didn’t notice when they reached the gates of the palace. He would have kept going right past it if Kitchens hadn’t yelled ‘stop’ at him once or twice.

“We’re here,” Kitchens said one last time in a voice that made Darwin think that his statement of fact was more than just that and had the dual-purpose of making sure Darwin didn’t keep barreling down the road. “In excellent time, I might add.”

“Yeah, I kind of hope we didn’t knock over too much on the way.” Darwin looked back at the wake of his run. The people behind him were still staring at the two strangely, as if a celebrity and a famous axe murderer had showed up at the same time.

“Should we call a guard, have them get all prepared for us, or just go in unannounced and make them nervous?” Kitchens questioned, looking up at the rather large building.

“You mean like a dad who wakes up too early and catches his kids still playing games at 5:00 a.m.?” Darwin asked as he scaled the marble stairs toward the ornately-gilded, double-door entrance at the top.

“Angry father catching the kids gaming it is,” Kitchens said as he followed Darwin up the stairs.

“Might as well get the persona right. I’m told heads will roll at this meeting if we don’t get all eight copies of our Monday TPS reports from each person in the department.”

“TPS report? That sounds computery. Have you worked in an IT department?”

“No, but it just seemed like an appropriate line. If I was to go into how ridiculous and redundant some of the military procedures can be, well, you might have a real hard time believing me,” Kitchens laughed. “I mean, we had a guy show up late by half a minute at the beginning of the month once, and by the end of the month, they had us showing up at 4:00 a.m. just to make sure we didn’t miss PT that wasn’t scheduled to start until 7:30 a.m. My cursed punctuality had me there at 3:45 that time. And that’s just an average day for the enlisted.”

“Remind me never to join the military.” Darwin’s gamer instincts caused him to recoil at the thought of all the potential EXP wasted from sitting around and doing nothing for two and a half hours.

“Nah, it’s good. I’d go on about how it enforces discipline or some other mumbo jumbo, but, to be honest, it’s the dental and health insurance that really sells it. They have great dental,” Kitchens replied and shrugged.

Darwin, having reached the top of the stairs, opened the door to find nothing. It was just a large empty chamber with fancy, elaborate paintings of everything from waterfalls to cherry blossom trees on every wall. There were all the kinds of nature paintings, in which a few leaves would be beautifully laid out on the canvas, and then there would be nothing else but blank space surrounding the painted the leafy bits. It was eye-catching enough to make both Kitchens and Darwin pause until a guard interrupted their thoughts. “Can I help you?” the halberd-carrying lynx hybrid said, pulling the two men back to reality.

“Yeah, we’re looking for the council chambers,” Darwin said, not seeing any marked doors or guiding placards in the room.

“Right this way, King Hornsenstuff, and, might I say, you are dressed impeccably,” the guard turned and took the two of them towards one of the walls.

“King Hornsenstuff?” Darwin asked as he touched one of the horns on his head.

“Oh, that’s just what the council calls you since no one knows your actual name,” the guard answered without even turning around to address him. “We were told that you won a tournament and proved yourself as the noblest and greatest fighter in the city before overthrowing the king, but for some reason, the previous tenant to the crown threw away all the records of the event, so we only had hearsay to go on.”

And no one remembered my name? Well, I guess the primary witness and many of the other secondary witnesses probably died either in the ring that day or in the big battle later.
Darwin sighed.
Oh well. I can enter it in the records later. That is the prerogative of the victor, right? To alter the records to ‘best’ reflect history?

“Now, I will warn you,” the lynx-man continued, “I’ve been told not to let anyone into the council chamber because they are currently in the middle of a serious debate discussing important matters of state.”

“But you’re taking us to them regardless?” Kitchens asked.

“Of course! Have to follow the line of authority, after all. My mother always taught me to do whatever the boss says--unless his boss says different.” He chuckled as the three of them approached a wall with a waterfall painting on it. “Here you are,” he said, pressing a petal of a flower painted near the waterfall. When he hit the button, a clicking sound was heard, and the entire wall slowly slid open to reveal an even larger room with what looked like fifty different were-beasts eating finger foods and drinking what Darwin could only assume was wine or sake huddled around the floor in groups of five or six and rolling dice.

“Who dares disturb a council meeting! Can’t you see we’re up to important work!” one of the men yelled as they all turned to see why the door had opened.

Up to important work, are they?
Darwin glanced around at the strange markings, the old-fashioned character cards and the high numbered dice.
They are! They’re playing board games!
“Very, very important work, I’m sure,” he said as sarcastically as possible.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll learn the importance of a ten-foot pole,” Kitchens mocked with a laugh. “Perhaps they’ll even be sure to carry rope.”

“This is because of the old man remarks, right?” Darwin laughed.

“Yep,” Kitchens snickered. “Us old men have to have a good memory, or there would be no point in a long life.”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but we are deeply immersed in serious matters of state,” the loud-spoken one who first assaulted Darwin’s ears with his snappish complaint about being interrupted replied in a much softer, but still condescending, manner.

“Matters of state, huh?” Darwin remained skeptical as he looked around.

“It’s really quite simple. We break into groups of five--or six if we have leftover people--and play as the opposition. We run simulations on all possible attacks or outcomes over and over again in a safe and secure game setting. We try our best to conquer the town, and then, if we win, we talk about what weakness was exploited,” a rhino-man explained without ever looking up. He looked as if he were too busy with his character sheets to be bothered by anything around him.

“That’s . . .” Darwin considered if this would count as red teaming. “That’s actually pretty ahead of the times. What scenario are you running now?”

“Well, we were, at least until you interrupted us, carrying out simulations on what would happen if you rejected the crown and came to butcher us all. We have to shore up our defenses and do what is best for the peasants, but we’d much rather just have you accept the crown and move on like every other good-natured king before you. After all, you clearly don’t have any issues with the beast-born servants as your right-hand man seems to be one,” the rhino said as he put on some spectacles and turned around to face Darwin. “You are going to take the crown, right?”

“Where is the crown?” Darwin looked around for it, wondering if he were speaking literally or figuratively.

“Oh, Tompkins, go fetch him his crown,” the rhino said while waving his hand like he was brushing dirt off some imaginary object hanging in the air.

“Yes, Councilman Tato.” The guard that had shown the new king into the room bowed and then disappeared. While he may have said that Darwin was higher up on the food chain, he treated the council with more pomp and circumstance than he did Darwin.

Tato? Like Potato?
Darwin pondered for a second as he looked at the rhino-man, but, as soon as he saw the were-beast’s shape, he understood immediately where the name came from.
Whoever programmed him must have had a good sense of humor to name that poor guy Tato,
he laughed to himself.

“Is something funny, King . . . Well, what is your name?” Tato asked, the others still staring at him, one or two even trying to sneak in more gaming.

“Just this whole situation,” Darwin said honestly. Then, seeing Tompkins returning with a crown, he reached out. “Let me see that thing.” The crown was as ordinary as crowns came. It was solid gold, but didn’t have a single jewel to it, and the sides looked like they had different thicknesses throughout. “Is there a reason this has no decoration and kind of looks beat up?” Darwin asked as he stared at the odd, junky crown. He had never anticipated that a solid gold object could so closely resemble a piece of trash.

“It gets resized a lot,” Tompkins answered before Tato or one of the other dice-rolling fogies could finish clearing their throats to interject with their own--Darwin could only assume sarcastic--response.

“Oh.” Darwin looked back at the misshapen piece of head jewelry.

“Differently-shaped heads always taking power and whatnot. We will need to get a smith to fit it to your head, of course. I am pretty sure yours isn’t the size of a panda’s, but that can take place before the coronation or whatever fancy event your kind do to mark the occasion of claiming regency,” Tato said with a sneer, talking down to Darwin again, his tone filled with condemnation and disgust.