The Bathrobe Knight

The Bathrobe Knight

Volume 1

Written by: Charles Dean

Co Written with the help of an anonymous friend

Edited by: Joshua Swayne

Copyright © 2015 by Charles Dean

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Deadly Spooning

Chapter 2: Town Trip

Chapter 3: Deal me in, poker bear

Chapter 4: The red-eyed flight to zombogre town

Chapter 5: the bear necessities

Chapter 6: A hop, skip and a pan away

chapter 7: one stone to rule them all

Chapter 8: Mountains out of molehills

Chapter 9: cry havoc – let slip the turtle-wolves of war

chapter 10: lines in the sand

Bonus chapter 1: Maddock’s POV (for chapter 9)

Bonus chapter 2: Dawn of Eve

The Reliquary

Chapter 1: Deadly Spooning!

Darwin:

Darwin felt as though he had two major secrets in life. The first was one that he knew would probably get him laughed out of the office. The other was the type sci-fi movies and bad books had made him too scared to ever share, lest he end up in a lab somewhere.

That's why every morning before work Darwin had a ritual that he couldn’t deviate from. Blue contacts. Tall men’s suits that hung a little loose. Extra-worn nail files. These items were Darwin's mask. The mask that stopped anyone from finding out his first secret. That his eyes were red. That his muscles were embarrassingly large and that his nails had come pre-sharpened.

The second secret Darwin kept, the one he was most worried about breaking his cool guy persona, was ironically one shared by many people at the same office. He was a gamer. He spent his nights with a complete group of strangers in a mystical world of magic and swords where he and every one of the 10 million people playing were there to save the day. He was a hero. He was Arch Lance Ser NightVale, the great level 72 White Knight Commander of the StormGuard Alliance and leader of the 2nd Hope raid group. He smote vile criminals at the tip of his spear and in his free time saved damsels in distress. This, he knew, of all the facets of his otherwise rather tedious existence, would bring him the type of shame that lasts for generations.

No matter how much shame his secret would bring, though, he just couldn't stop playing. Day in and day out, he was at the computer. He didn't even pause his game to eat. It was always ramen, spaghetti, or rice at the computer. The only things that let him know when holidays were coming up or his birthday was near were the in-game notifications and prizes that gave uneventful days like Christmas a meaning. After all, games offer double rewards for grinding on Christmas.

Grinding in games was something he looked forward to so much that he even got off on little inside jokes about the activity. For instance, he had told his coworkers that this particular Christmas he was going to spend the entire time grinding with his special girl. They asked if he had any other plans, and he just winked, nudged, and said, "Yeah, we're going to go to the mountains where there will be plenty of staff usage." He thought he sounded cool, and no one had the heart to tell him otherwise. And that's exactly where Darwin was on Christmas. Grinding in the mountains. In fact, after reaching Mount Horandur, he had managed to kill more Frost Drakes than any other Knight on the server, which may have had something to do with the little detail that he never slept and wasn't hampered by those ridiculous burdens like family dinners or having Christmas presents to open.

It was for this reason that he was stunned when around 8 p.m. Christmas Day, there was a knock on his door. He moved to get up from his swivel chair then stopped himself. He was in a robe and slippers, his contacts were sitting in solution in their case on the bathroom sink, and his unfiled nails were starting to resemble claws. Anyway, who would be going door to door at this time, and on
this
day? Darwin wondered if he should walk quietly over to the front door and peek at who his visitor was. But . . . no. Without his mask in place, it was too risky. He looked around quickly to reassure himself that all the lights were off and then for good measure turned the volume on his computer all the way down. The quiet persisted for a few minutes, punctuated only by the clicking of his mouse and keyboard, during which time he couldn't bear to look away from the game for more than a few seconds at a time. Until the knocking began again. Three taps, and then the doorbell, which no one had ever used. It was a sound he felt he should have recognized though he couldn't recall a time when he had merited any visitors.
Go away!
He wanted to call.
I'm not home
.

Whoever it was did not go away. Darwin had almost decided that it must be Mrs. Old Lady from across the street bringing him leftover Christmas cookies and was seriously considering that they might be a treat delicious enough to warrant putting in his contacts. Another knock came, more forceful, and then a sound as if someone had body-slammed his door followed by the sound of splintering, cracking wood. Darwin stood up sharply. He thought he heard footsteps in the front hall. Darwin froze and then grabbed the only pointed object he could find: a butter knife. He made his way through the hallway as quietly as possible. He chastised himself about how each step he took towards the unknown assailant was too loud. He should have changed the floorboards.
Why did I have to go with a hardwood floor? Carpet wouldn't creak like this,
he thought.

Unfortunately for Darwin, his worst fear about the burglar having a gun and having heard him were both true. The burglar's footsteps sounded out in a terrifying jaws-soundtrack-like vibrations as they approached him in the hallway. *Thump Thump. Thump Thump. Thump Thump.* Darwin clenched the dull, edgeless blade while frantically looking around for anything that might be more effective than his butter knife,
+1 against spaghetti.
*Thump Thump. Thump Thump.*
How long does it take to cross the living room into a hallway, you idiot?
Just get this over with already!
He yelled in his head, jumping out and throwing the butter knife as hard as he could at the direction of the footsteps.

The surprising thing, to both the burglar and Darwin, was that the blade had hit the burglar directly in his right eye, not penetrating but causing him to fall over and squeeze the trigger on his gun a few times. The shots missed. Not waiting for the burglar to get back up, Darwin dashed at him and kicked the burglar's face as the would-be thief made a comic attempt to hold his eye, get up, and not lose the gun at the same time. Success! He probably should have stopped kicking, but Darwin had seen far too many action and horror movies to not make his best attempt at a "double tap" as he kept kicking the man over and over again in the face.
Slippers of +10 face-smashing.

It was then that something even more extraordinary than the robbery happened. A small blue status window popped up in the corner of his field of vision. “You have gained 285 experience points!” it read as a ding sounded inside his head “You have reached Level 2!” “You have reached level 3!”
Have I lost it? 285 experience points? Th . . . this isn’t a game. Level 2? Level 3? Wha . . . what is going on?

No sooner had the questions popped into his head than a status window appeared. It showed a picture of him silhouetted with his arms spread wide like  Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and his clothes off to the side with lines connecting them to the appropriate body parts.
Is this . . . me?
he wondered, looking at the numbers and “attributes” listed to the left of the image of him in the status window. Upon seeing all the numbers next to each attribute, his gamer instinct kicked in. He highlighted each attribute looking for the "benefits" and trying to read what each did. Darwin's gaming nature would likely have kept him fiddling around with the status window until work started the next year if it weren't for the sudden white light that shot up from under his feet. A ding sound occurred and then one final message window appeared in front of him before the light consumed his field of vision.

• Welcome Home, Darwin
  

Qasin:

The King adjusted the Crown on his head for the 17th time in the last 10 minutes. It wasn't that the Crown didn't fit right--it had always been too big for his head--but the adjusting was more of a nervous reaction than an actual need to get it properly set on his head. He couldn’t help but be nervous given the circumstances. Any minute now one of his ‘loyal’ Scouts would eagerly, and probably cheerfully, present news of the 8
th
Legion’s defeat on the eastern front to the White-Horn army. Just perfect. If he couldn’t find the right way to spin the news, then the Council that had been plotting against him for the past 4 years would finally have its victory. He needed a way to gain control of the situation before it became out of hand. He desperately needed to keep them from gaining any more footholds with the public against his authority.

Before he could come up with a plan though, the large wooden double doors at the other end of the stone chamber finally opened and the bearer of bad news happily began sauntering across the red carpet that stretched in a line from the door to the throne.
A thousand men over level 20 dead, and this fool is one pep in the step away from a hop, skip and a jump. The traitor
. The King just couldn’t get it. He saw the Councilmen as rats and fat pigs grubbing over the Captain’s chair of a ship they were sinking in order to kill the Captain. He didn’t care for the chair. If he thought any of them had the slightest idea of how to save the Kingdom, he’d have happily let them take the throne, but he just knew that giving up would only sink the ship quicker, and the White-Horns didn’t have his sense of mercy or justice. If they took over, it’d be Hell on Tiqpa.

“Your Majesty! I bring dire news from the north!” the Messenger said, doing his best to fake a solemn tone.

“I trust it is not too dire. I’m sure if it was I would have received word of it sooner than the weekly update, no?” the King said, half to stall and half to make the happy fool squirm.

“Er . . . that is . . . Your Majesty, the dates just coincided.”

“I see. So the news is that dire, and you waited for the appointment day? I should have you hanged. What if I had wanted to take action upon hearing the dire news?” The King said as his eyes darted around the room looking for inspiration. Minutes. This was only giving him minutes but it had to be enough.

“Sire, if I am to be punished for delaying the news, then please do not let the punishment grow! May I speak?”

King Qasin relented. There wasn’t hope for him, and these minutes served as nothing more than time used to humiliate an idiot soldier who picked the wrong side. “Fine. Deliver the news but be brief as I have news of my own to deliver afterwards.”

“Yes, Majesty. I’ll be brief then. The 8
th
Legion has been decimated. They fought valiantly against the White-Horn’s threat to Valcrest, but upon failure, they tried to recoup their forces and retreat to safety. Unfortunately, they were routed and destroyed to the last man by the Black-Wings hidden on their southern front between them and Valcrest. There were no survivors.”

“Did you survive?” The King asked. Finally breaking what little confidence the soldier had that he would stay out of prison. The King knew the soldier and the Councilmen likely had either used their own forces to kill the retreating legion, or been in on the Black Wings’ ambush plot.