Pieces of a Puzzle

Cathy followed them with Amanda in her arms as they headed toward the stairs. Passing by the check-in desk Paulito threw another coin at the man behind the counter and said, "I'm claiming the dead guy on the floor. Make sure no one filches anything before I get to him." The man nodded and a pair of casino employees dragged the Allarian knight out of the room.

Once they got to room 555, Paulito grabbed a bottle of red-eye and tried to make the three silent, vacant-eyed men drink. But to no avail. Paulito figured they were suffering the effects of some kind of magic, but that didn't help him much. Paulito was no expert in stuff like that. He was going to need help and that meant calling attention to himself; the wrong kind of attention. And he didn't really want to do that.

"Damn it guys, wake up!" he yelled in frustration and slapped Josh in the back of the head. To his amazement he heard Josh sputter and then holler, "Heyyyy!" Paulito nearly jumped for joy and immediately smacked the other two. "Owwww!" "Stop that!" they yelled in succession. Josh shook his head, looked around the room and then grinned when he saw Paulito. "Well you're a sight for sore eyes," he said, "but where the hell am I?" Paulito breathed a sigh of relief, whatever the magic was, it seemed to have worn off.

"We're in the Calamari Desert, in Vegas," he answered his friend. "But why you're here, and who these two men are, I don't have a clue." Josh nodded and then reached for the bottle of red-eye. "Well it's kind of confusing," Josh began after taking a swig, "but let's see if I can fill in the blanks." Paulito sat down and listened to his fellow knight explain how, after Fred had died and Paulito had disappeared, King Emry had sent Josh to go slay the Dragon. Once in the caves, Josh had been drawn to a caged bunny and had kissed it. His spirit had then been transferred into the rabbit while the spirit in the rabbit took over his own body. This impostor-Josh then left the cave. Luckily, another knight came along and he kissed the bunny. This man was Sir L.E. Paulito turned toward L.E. and the man held out his hand. Paulito shook it as Josh continued his story.

So now Josh was inside of L.E.'s body and L.E. was inside the bunny. Josh then kissed the bunny again, reversing the swap. Grateful, L.E. decided to help Josh get his body back. And then they were met by Amanda, the redheaded girl. Together the three of them discovered a portal which connected the Southern Caves with the Wild Deuce Room, located on the second floor of the Gold Doubloon Saloon.

Once in the casino, they found impostor-Josh. He had just killed a knight who turned out to be yet another dragon-slayer sent by King Emry to kill the Dragon. And he was about to kill the other man with them -- Paulito turned toward him and the man smiled, introducing himself as The Seeker. But then Josh-bunny switched bodies with impostor-Josh at which point the bunny morphed into the seven foot tall monster that Paulito ended up having to chop into little pieces.

As for L.E., he turned out to be a knight from Gala, sent by his king on a quest to slay the Dragon of the Southern Caves. "Preferably before you boys did," L.E. grinned.

"And what about you?" Paulito asked The Seeker. "How did you and that other knight find your way to Vegas?" The Seeker concentrated for a moment, preparing his words before he spoke. "I'm not quite sure how I got to this city," he said truthfully. "I had traveled to the Southern Caves in search of knowledge. There is more hidden there than just the Dragon. In the caves I met up with Sir <INSERT NAME HERE>, your fellow Questor. He had come to slay the Dragon since presumably both you and Josh had been killed just like Fred." Paulito looked at Josh, "He must have been one of the younger knights, I'm not familiar with his name." Josh shrugged, he didn't know him either, although he did look a little familiar. But then there were quite a few knights in the Great Kingdom. Seeker then continued. "I remember being in the cave with your fellow knight and then... being here. There was something else, but..." Seeker looked over at both Josh and L.E. The two seemed to understand what Seeker was hinting at. But Paulito did not.

"But what?" Paulito demanded to know.

"Well," Josh replied uncertainly, "for a while there we, all of us, thought that, uhm, that all of this (Josh waved his hand at the room around him) was all just a story."

"A story?" Paulito repeated, not sure of what he meant.

"Yeah, part of a writing game in a computer," Josh added.

"What's a computer?" Paulito asked.

"Hell if I know," Josh answered. "But, and this is so strange, we thought that Amanda here, and the Dragon, Fred, the King, that they were all just characters, imaginary characters, and we three were part of a group of authors making this all up. And the casino down below, it looked... different. There were strange lights and machines, slot machines, unlike what's really down there, and the people were dressed so strangely. And the city, it wasn't Vegas, it was Las Vegas, found somewhere in a place called Nevada. My mind hurts just thinking about it, but at least it's fading away now, like a bad dream."

"Not a dream," Paulito answered him. "An illusion, created by the Dragon to make you vulnerable. I was wondering why you were running in circles around that rabbit like an idiot instead of fighting it. But after I killed the thing the magic spell must have been lifted. Whatever crazy thoughts or visions the Dragon put into your heads, well you can forget about them now. It's over and all of you can be quite sure that this (he waved at the room) is the only reality there is."

1. Paulito turned to Cathy and Amanda. He wondered why Amanda had been in the Dragon's caves.

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