I Can't Get the Vampire Rogue to Romance Me

Chapter 2 - Character Builder

"Ugh." The being before her groaned and dropped his hands with disgust. "You are going to make this unnecessarily difficult, aren't you?"

She cocked her head to the side warily. "No. I mean, I'm not trying to," she looked back over her shoulder at the grid still floating in the air. "It's just really hard to take a dream seriously when... when..." But she just couldn't be sure this was a dream. This all felt too ... real. Absurd, but real.

"What... what's happened to me? I feel like I've fallen into a... a coma or something."

"Stop talking," the being commanded, his voice reverberating with power louder than a thunderclap.

Evangeline dropped to the ground, covering her ears with her hands, only lifting her head when the vibrations in the ground abated. A little more respectfully, she glanced up at the being still hovering before her.

He frowned down on her and floated closer.

"I, little mortal, am your god. You are my chosen hero, brought here to do my will and fulfill my quest. Now if you are perfectly done making a fool of yourself, we must finish your stats so you may begin your quest. Now stand up, you look like a frog crouched like that."

He floated around and gestured at the stat table floating before her. "I assume you understand what you are looking at here, your very typical basic stats: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, etc. You've also got your list of skills. At least the basic ones. These will go up in percentage points the more you use them, and you have plenty of room to add skills as you find them. You'll be starting with these. I based them on what you are already able to do, you know, because you are not a complete idiot. But once you pick your class, the rest will fill in with the first level. Now this, you need to pay the most attention to."

He floated around the table and tapped on the box labeled Special Skill: Meta Knowledge. "This is my special gift to you, my chosen. Not only are you bringing in your base skills, but you will also have access to everything you know about your quest." He smiled like he had eaten the cat who had eaten the canary. That was when Evangeline realized his teeth were all very pointy.

Evangeline flinched back. "I... I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"Oh, I'm sure you don't, but you'll figure it out as you go along. Now, what do you say?"

"Uh..." Evangeline stood there blinking, her brain going blank. "I..."

He gestured "come on" with his hand.

"Thhhhhank you?" she ventured.

"Meta," he finished for her. "Thank you, my lord and god, Meta."

Evangeline's brows knitted together. "Well... then shouldn't your name be Mark Zuckerberg?"

"What?" the god being cried, again with the booming voice, though this one didn't nearly blow out her ears.

She waved her hands before herself. "Uh, never mind. Bad joke."

Meta's gaze sharpened. "Oh, come on," he whined, "You know, you are surprisingly ungrateful for the gift I am bestowing on you. I am making your dearest heart's wish come true."

She didn't know what to say to that.

Then suddenly, the wind stirred up around her, making the grass and trees waver violently all round. Meta disappeared, but she could still hear his voice; though, it was becoming less petulant and more detached. "Choose your class."

"I..." Evangeline wished she knew what was going on.

"Hurry," Meta's voice urged.

"Uh, Rogue!" she shouted, the wind stirring up worse, her hair whipping across her face, blocking her sight. The grove disintegrated around them, but the table remained. Underneath her name, another line appeared. Class: Rogue. Race: Human."

Other things began to fill in on the graph, but Evangeline couldn't see at all anymore. The wind was picking her up and tumbling her around. With so much spinning, Evangeline thought she was going to be sick. Finally, she became aware of her body straightening out and being still as everything resolved away. The chaos calmed and reorganized and then ... manifested.

She had no other word for it.

Wood walls with thick logged rafters coalesced all around into a twenty by thirty room. A large stone fireplace filled one wall, and a fire erupted inside it. Tables, chairs, and a bar filled up the rest of the space. Plates of food and mugs of drink covered them all. Then there were the people, occupying those liminal spaces. A curtain dropped down beside Evangeline that partly obscured her from the room as well as the table and people sitting at it.

"Ah, yes, there you are. We've been waiting for you," said a man with a deep baritone.

Evangeline blinked, trying to refocus her eyes as she took in the rather large person who certainly did not skimp on dessert or alcohol, sitting on the far side of the table. If it wasn't for the person playing the lute in the corner or the very pseudo-medieval sheen on everything, she would have sworn she had fallen into a mafia movie instead of... whatever this was.

Yet, as she took it all in, she confirmed for herself that she recognized it.

I've fallen into the game, she thought. There was no other explanation. This was the starting spiel that got it all going, where the player comes and takes an offer, they can't refuse to do the initial quest that sends them off to the greater adventure in the game—the Race for the Phoenix Egg.

Everyone wanted it. Apparently, it gave the ultimate prize, one perfect wish, but Evangeline had never finished the game. A wish that gave you exactly what you wanted, not a tricky careful-what-you-wish-for sort of wish. A real one that could rewrite everything. It had never really mattered to Evangeline. A McGuffin was still a McGuffin. It wasn't what she loved about this game. It was the characters and how they interacted. It was the encounters and most importantly...

A high-pitched peel of laughter cut across the room, drawing her attention straight to it.

And most importantly it was about Valerian, the vampire rogue, who had stolen her heart.

To be continued...

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