Chapter 16

It didn't take too long to find the hotel Rysk was staying at, it was pretty well advertised. As it turned out, Amya was like a gem, she was amazingly useful especially since none of the others knew any German whatsoever. They actually turned out to be in Hamburg which surprised everyone, although Alasdair insisted he knew exactly what he was doing. To this Emerson just said: 'If you knew what you were doing, why did we have to explain for two hours where Germany is?' and Alasdair shut up.

After an hour or so taxi ride, in which Amya chatted to the driver in perfect German while the others just sat there awkwardly, they arrived at the hotel that they assumed Rysk was staying at. Amya had got the taxi drivers phone number just in case it was the wrong hotel so they could go to another easily.

"He gave his number to you like he was giving you a bomb." Alasdair mocked Amya.

"As if." Emerson corrected automatically. "He gave his number to you as if he was giving you a bomb."

"Oh, right, yeah sorry." Alasdair replied awkwardly.

"You should be, there's no excuse for poor grammar."

"Well anyway, it's almost as if he liked you." Alasdair taunted, stressing the words as if.

"Oh grow up." Amya said as if she were talking to a small child, which in some ways, she was.

They went through the obviously wildly expensive, electric doors into an enormous lobby with four desks on their left, a receptionist behind each one. On the right was a huge, grand staircase obviously leading up to the rooms above. Emerson made a beeline straight to one of the receptionists who was already talking to another customer, with the others right behind him.

"Which room is Navaryous Rysk staying in?" Emerson demanded.

The receptionist looked startled, obviously not used to an English man coming up to her and demanded she tell him where one of her guests was staying.

"I'm sorry, but can't you see I am already talking to a customer, wait in the line please." The receptionist replied in heavily accented English.

"Where is Navaryous Rysk?!" Emerson said again more forcefully.

"I'm sorry, but I am already with another customer, and anyway, I am not permitted to give you details of one of our guests." The receptionist retorted smugly.

"I really can't say I care." Emerson said, losing his patience. "Now tell me where Navaryous Rysk is staying, which room is he in?"

"As I said, I cannot tell you."

"If you do not tell me, then I will destroy this entire hotel and drag Rysk out from the rubble." Emerson said darkly an edge to his voice that warned the receptionist that he wasn't lying.

The receptionist turned her head to the other customer and said in German, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible, but I was obvious that Emerson had frightened her:

"Would you mind waiting a few minutes please?" The man just nodded, shocked by Emerson's aggressive words. The receptionist turned back to Emerson and took a key out from under the desk.

"Would you mind coming this way please?" she asked wearily in her accented English.

"Of course." Emerson said back calmly as if nothing had happened.

The receptionist turned, walked out from behind her desk and led the way up the stairs with Emerson and the others right behind. She turned left at the top and took another staircase up to the floor above. This floor was labelled: 'Wichtige Personen' which Emerson assumed meant something along the lines of important people.

The receptionist turned down a corridor and strode down it. At the end of the corridor, were two large, grand doors. The receptionist fitted the key into the lock, turned it and swung the doors open. I front of them was a large room with doors in random places leading to the different rooms of the almost apartment.

"This is his room." The receptionist announced.

"His room? More like his holiday home." Emerson said in wonder, the receptionist shrugged.

"We are the best and largest hotel in the whole of Europe." She said.

"Oh, I can imagine." Emerson muttered. "Well you'd better go back down to your other customers, I can imagine they're quite infuriated." The receptionist turned and left the room.

"Well, I wonder where our dear Rysk would be…" Emerson wondered.

There were footsteps, almost like a skittering sound and the huge glass double doors that must have led to the balcony swung open and Rysk appeared.

"Good, finally here to give me a massa…" it started but when it noticed the group in front of it, it slowly trailed off.

"Hey Rysky, we're here to ask you a few questions. Now scream, run, attack us or whatever you want, but we're not leaving until we get the answers, and neither are you." Emerson explained.

"Oh poop." Was all it said.

"Where are they keeping my brother?!" Emerson demanded.

They'd all sat down at a table in what they assumed was the living room as they were sitting on sofas and arm chairs. Rysk had transformed into some random person so that he too could sit down. Alasdair had offered to make some tea, but the majority vote was against, well, more Emerson made a violent gesture towards him before anyone could actually answer.

"At The Miranda Castle, in Belgium." Rysk told him.

"Ok, well can't you at least… wait what?" Emerson asked confused.

"The Miranda Castle, in Belgium." Rysk repeated.

"Oh…. Right, I just didn't think it'd be that easy…" Emerson said awkwardly. "I though you wouldn't want to tell us, at least straight away."

"Yeah… me neither…" Alasdair agreed. "Why exactly did you run all the way to Germany away from us when you were just going to tell us anyway?"

"I wasn't running from you, I genuinely have some meetings down here." Rysk replied.

"Oh… well that's pretty convenient, thank you for your time Mr Rysk." Emerson said and stood up, extending his hand to Rysk, who took it and firmly shook it. He led to the door, with the others following him. He started down all the stairs and Amya strode next to him, keeping his pace.

"You know that this is going to almost definitely going to be a trap." She warned him.

"Oh undoubtedly." Emerson agreed.

"Yet we're going to go anyway?" Amya asked her voice concerned.

"Of course. They've spent the time to set a lovely trap for us, the least we can do is walk blindly into it." Emerson explained as if it was obvious.

"You really are strange." Amya marvelled.

"Yes, that has in fact been mentioned quite a lot to me." Emerson confirmed and Amya sighed and dropped back to talk to Alasdair. Jeremy replaced her striding to keep up with the rest of the group's fast pace.

"How are you doing?" Emerson asked him.

"Well, I just teleported to Germany to meet a creature that can change into almost whatever living thing it wishes, and now we're walking blindly into a trap set by murderous psychopaths, not exactly what I told my Mum that I did in my spare time." Jeremy explained and Emerson smiled, but then his face turned serious.

"If this is too much for you, honestly just say and you can go home. I promise you none of us will think any less of you."

"Oh no, this is great, genuinely I love it." Jeremy said a little too quickly.

"Jeremy, is everything alright with you at home?" Emerson asked; concern evident in his voice and Jeremy sighed and said nothing for a while.

"Well…" Jeremy started, but was interrupted by Alasdair:

"We're out of sight here, I could probably teleport straight there if you want?" he offered.

"Yeah, that'd be great." Emerson said gratefully. "First though, do you actually know where Belgium is?"

"I'm pretty sure I do, yeah. It's the one with the nice chocolate right?" Alasdair asked.

"Yep that's the one." Emerson confirmed.

"Right." Alasdair said and paused, composing himself. "Ok, let's go."

Everyone grabbed on and as the world flashed away, Emerson muttered to himself,

"How can you know where Belgium is, without knowing where Germany is?"

And they appeared.

"Well I guess I spoke too soon…" Emerson muttered, again to himself. They had appeared in what seemed to be a factory, there were machines everywhere, each one making a thick brown liquid. Emerson looked around some more and something caught his eye, he looked back around and saw it, a logo.

"We're in Cadbury World." He said, his voice conveying no humour at all at their current predicament.

"So we are." Alasdair exclaimed. "I thought I recognised it. You see I came here when I was a kid perhaps about…" he started to explain happily but was quickly cut off by Emerson.

"Why the heck are we in Cadbury World?!" he snapped, his voice straining to shout.

Alasdair thought for a moment, "It must be because I was thinking of chocolate… you see I associate this place with loads of happy memories so as soon as I thought of chocolate, I thought of here."

"I don't care if you lost your bloomin' dog here, just get us to Belgium!" Emerson shouted this time.

"Jimothy?" Alasdair said timidly.

"I'm sorry what?" Emerson asked confused.

"Jimothy was my dog, I lost him here." Alasdair explained and Emerson nodded sympathetically.

"You called your dog Jimothy?" Amya asked in disbelief. "What kind of a name is that?"

"An amazing name actually." Alasdair said proudly.

"It is a great name." Emerson agreed knowingly. "Especially for a dog."

"See." Alasdair said triumphantly.

"You're using Emerson in your argument to decide the quality of a name?" Amya asked which made Alasdair think. "He likes any name; he'd call his son Gertrude for Pete's sake!"

Emerson nodded thoughtfully, "Yeah, that's true." He agreed.

"Oh well, it's still an awesome name." Alasdair declared.

"Whatever, just get us to Belgium!" Amya snapped.

"All right, all right…" Alasdair said. "There's no need to be so aggressive."

"Actually, there kind of is, we needed to go to Belgium and you brought us to freakin' Cadbury World!" Amya replied, her voice starting to rise above the normal level.

"Well we might want to go now; we seem to be attracting some attention." Ryker pointed out. He was right; a man in a black suit had a radio to his ear and was staring at them with a look of confusion on his face. Emerson figured he was probably calling for back-up.

"Good idea, we don't wanna get into a fight in Cadbury World, it's a place of love, not war." Emerson decided. "But before we go, I've gotta do something." And with that he turned and ran down a corridor.

There was silence for a while until Amya broke it,

"What the heck is he doing?!" Amya demanded once she had recovered from the initial shock.

"I have no idea." Alasdair replied. "What do we do now?"

"I know where he's going." Jeremy said and everyone looked at him. "Well think about it, this is Emerson right and we're in Cadbury World, where would you go if you were him?"

"I don't know." Alasdair insisted.

"I do." Ryker answered and Amya and Alasdair looked at him. "This is Emerson in Cadbury World."

"Oh." Amya said as the realisation dawned on her.

"What?" Alasdair asked, still not getting it.

"I hope you've been to the shop." Amya said.

"Well of course I have, you don't go to Cadbury World without going to the shop. Why?"

"Where else would Emerson go?" Amya asked.

"Oh, right, yeah…" Alasdair said. "I guess that is pretty obvious…"

"Shall we go then, or are we just gonna stand here awkwardly?" Ryker asked.

"Oh, yeah. Of course, grab on." Alasdair said and they disappeared.

A/N: And that's chapter 16! I've been thinking about doing chapter names for each of my chapters, so I'm probably going to spend a bit of time doing that. It shouldn't take too long cause it probably won't be too hard to think them up, but still it might mean the next chapter I releases will be in a bit more time. As I said, this was quite quick and I should continue writing at a similar speed (hopefully, but not guaranteed). I really enjoy writing this and it's so nice to see that at least one other person does too (thanks Anatasia) so please review, it genuinely warms my heart. Thanks so much for reading.

Mangobean.