CD Chapter Nine

Alpha sat up with a gasp. Or tried to. Her head whacked hard into something, a hollow wooden thud echoed in the small space in which she laid. She blinked, looking around. Everything was rendered in shades of gray, but once her mind adjusted to what it was seeing, she could tell she was in some kind of cramped, rectangular space. Subtle gradations showed swirls that looked like wood grain, and she let her head fall backwards onto the bottom of the coffin - because there was nothing else it could be - with another thunk.

“Oh, come on, Amythyst,” she muttered, reaching up to push at the wooden lid. There was no response, but she was pretty sure that if there had been, it would have been a snicker. Alpha reached up with one of her new black talons and scratched at the wood. A curl of wood dropped down onto her face, and she smelled sawdust.

Quest: “Might As Well Start Digging” available.

Oops! Someone must have thought you died. Maybe next time you should have them tie a bell to your toe. Too late now. Dig your way out before the sun rises or someone hears you and comes to put a quick end to your undead uprising.

Time remaining: 29:17

Success: Experience. Five levels in the skill [Fast Digging].

Failure: You die. Again. Pro-tip: Vampires only get one life.

Accept: Yes/Yes?

Wait. What? No, no, no. No way was she playing on Hard Mode. She had always played it safe, sticking to killing lots of low-leveled mobs, no matter how boring it got, before moving on to something more challenging. The goal was, of course, to make sure that the ‘challenging’ thing actually wasn’t, by the time she got to it. There were some absolutely insane players who at least claimed that every time their character died, they wiped the character and started over. A sort of self-imposed hardcore mode.

As far as she was concerned, she was already living in Hard Mode, and she didn’t want to deal with it in her games.”Forklift!” She gritted her teeth, and felt a drop of liquid ooze down her jaw as she bit herself.

You have lost 1 Drop of Blood.

What. The. Hell? What had listening to that crazy GM gotten her into? Frantically, she dug at the wooden lid of her coffin, though she moved her point of attack lower, so she didn’t get splinters in her eyes and mouth. The wood shredded beneath her talons, until one broke, sending a lance of pain through her hand and up her arm.

You have lost 5 Drops of Blood.

Oh, no. Her pain settings were screwed up, too. They were supposed to be at 30%, which was as low as you could go without serious debuffs, unless you were a kid. Orc-Alpha had had a constant low-level debuff called Wait, that hurt? It reduced her Dexterity slightly, mimicking the way someone with low pain input might respond to an injury more slowly. That was fine. It was completely worth it not to feel real pain inside a video game, no matter how immersive it was supposed to be.

This? This hurt. A lot.

She pulled up her settings and stared at them. At least half of them were grayed out. Unchangeable. One of the ones she couldn’t touch was her pain input. It was maxed out at seventy-five percent, and that was a hard no. A broken fingernail was one thing, but no way was she going to feel seventy-five percent of being stabbed, or even breaking a leg. She’d done that once, in real life, and she never, ever wanted to feel anything like that again.

“Amythyst! You forklifting bucket loader! Unlock my settings! Now! Or I swear I’m going to let myself fail this quest, and you’re going to have to find some other masochistic jackhammer to-”

Amythyst was there. On top of her. The coffin was really too small for two adult women of average proportions, much less one Alpha’s size plus, well, any other adult. Amythyst braced her arms on either side of Alpha’s head and stared down into her face.

“Oooo, I like it!” the GM said, tilting her head to examine Alpha more closely. “So much better than the orc look Though I still think vampire fangs should be on the top. I mean, how are those even going to work when you bite someone?” She drew in a breath, and as her ribs expanded, Alpha realized two things. First, she was now physically closer to Amythyst than she could ever remember being to anyone, other than her mother. Second, she, herself, was not breathing.

Suddenly, primally, terrified, she dragged stale air into her lungs, sending herself into paroxysms of coughing. Amythyst’s lightly freckled nose wrinkled, and she shook her head. “Don’t do that. There’s not much oxygen left in here, and you only need it to force air over your vocal cords so you can talk, anyway. I mean, you may be dead, but I’m not.” Some indecipherable expression crossed her face, and she lowered her head so the next word was muffled by Alpha’s collarbone. Still, Alpha was pretty sure she said, “Probably.”

Before Alpha could ask what that meant, Amythyst raised her head again, her eyes looking into Alpha’s from far too close. “I am sorry, but I can’t really do anything about the pain thing. The person who created vampires wanted to make them really, really powerful. He was forced to compromise, though, and since he didn’t really care about the person playing the race, he kind of screwed you over. Honestly, the whole thing was designed with one particular player in mind, and that guy is kind of a nutjob. Just get through this, and I promise it’ll get better. Please?”

Long, curly lashes fluttered, and Amythyst vanished again.

Quest: “Might As Well Start Digging”

Time remaining: 21:04

Alpha banged her fists futilely against the coffin lid, and started digging.

❦ ❦ ❦

Alpha thrust a hand up into blessedly cool air, finally able to understand why the zombies in horror movies always did that. It would make way more sense to emerge cautiously, clearing space for the head, looking around, and then climbing out only when the coast was clear. But the relief of being out was just so huge, she found herself scrambling free of the grave without even thinking about whether someone might be around who would frown on a member of the undead popping up nearby.

Quest: “Might As Well Start Digging” complete.

Success: 700 experience. +5 levels in the skill [Fast Digging]

You have gained the skill [Fast Digging]. It is now level 5.

You have gained one Class level. Master is now level 2.

Waving away the notifications, Alpha found her gaze drawn to the horizon, where the first hints of light were touching the trees, and low-hanging clouds were painted in pastel hues of orange and yellow. She didn’t know what would happen to her if she was still outside when the sun finished rising, but given that the digging quest had mentioned death, she thought it was a safe bet that she wouldn’t enjoy it. Being burned alive at seventy-five percent pain input did not sound like a pleasant experience.

Her eyes darted around, even as she brushed the dirt from her clothes. Absently, she noted that she wasn’t wearing any of her orc-self’s heavy armor, but that made sense. After all, that Alpha had been a good foot taller than vampire-Alpha, and had a different class.

She hesitated. She hadn’t actually looked at her stat sheet yet, since she’d been assuming it was basically the same as it had been last time she looked at it. After that last notification, she wasn’t so sure. Still, shelter first. She had to find somewhere safe to log out, since she only had a little over four hours of real-time to sleep before she needed to go to work.

A woman stepped from the shadows behind a large memorial monument of some kind. The top third of her face, starting at the corners of her eyes, was painted a deep shade of red. The bottom two-thirds was matte white, with red lips. Her obsidian hair was cut in what VaVa would call Bettie bangs, with the rest of it flowing in a sleek, satin waterfall down past her shoulders. Her black dress - which was really more of a robe - fell from a high collar to drape around her wrists and brush the ground.

A tiny smile touched her red lips. “Welcome, Alpha. I am Mai Ley. My Goddess has sent me to greet you, and bring you to our humble shrine.”

Quest: “Smiley Mai Ley” available.

Follow Mai Ley to the shrine of her Goddess.

Success: Unknown.

Failure: Unknown.

Accept: Yes/No?

Alpha’s hand hesitated in mid-air. That was a singularly unhelpful quest prompt. Usually, the success and failure results made it pretty clear whether a quest was worth taking. What was she supposed to do with ‘unknown’?

“Who are you, and who is your goddess?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at the stranger. After all, last time she trusted a strange woman, she’d ended up dead.

[Mesmer Eyes] failed.

You have gained a level in [Mesmer Eyes]. It is now level 2.

The small smile dropped off of Mai Ley’s face. She didn’t quite look angry, but it was clear that she was not pleased about whatever had just happened. Alpha needed to find somewhere safe to check her new character sheet as soon as possible.

“My Goddess is Atae, the Inescapable, Lady of the Chaos Pool.”

So, just the goddess of death, then. No big deal. Still, in the recent war, Atae had come down on the side of the Pantheon of Light, like Alpha’s patron, Vorus, God of soldiers. Though, since Alpha was now a vampire, didn’t that put her on the Dark side, whether she liked it or not? Was Vorus even still her god? If not, and if Alpha was now Dark, that would technically make Mai Ley her enemy.

Alpha stepped back, summoning her sword from her inventory. It was huge, and well-suited to seven-foot-tall half-orc Alpha, but it was a bit over-sized when handled by a woman two inches shy of six feet. Still, Alpha had invested over two hundred points into her Strength stat, and even if she didn’t get her orc Strength bonus any more, that was more than enough to wield the thing. In fact, if anything, she felt like it might be a little easier to use now. Maybe increased Dexterity was a vampiric racial trait?

Mai Ley sighed, very slightly, and a black ball of light formed above her open palm. “Unsouled One, I understand your trepidation. Nonetheless, the sun rises and you must choose. Will you follow, or will you attempt to kill me? I warn you: my Goddess has given this task to me, and I will not fail it without a fight.”

Unsouled? Was that a fancy way of calling her undead? Alpha narrowed her eyes at Mai Ley again, this time concentrating on her [Identify] skill, instead of letting the system try to figure out what she was doing. An orange tag popped up over the woman’s head. So, not aggressive yet, but definitely thinking about it.

Mai Ley (NPC) - High Priestess of Atae. Level 200.

Alpha froze, and her sword vanished from her hand. If she fought, she would lose. There was absolutely no doubt about it. A level eighty-three newborn vampire versus a level two hundred High Priestess? With the tiniest, most inoffensive gesture she could manage, she pulled up her quest list and accepted ‘Smiley Mai Ley’.