Frostbitten Wayfarer

“So I’m… a half vampire or something then?” The girl said aloud again, speaking to whoever these screens were. She thought about a status window, something that would give her more information. She pressed her mind for something to happen, and something did.

*Ding*

Name: Zoe Mara

Race: Human

——

Stat Points: 0

Strength: 20

Dexterity: 20

Vitality: 20

Endurance: 20

Intelligence: 20

Wisdom: 20

Health: 200/200

Stamina: 200/200

Mana: 200/200

——

Class 1: Earthian (1)

- Identify (1)

——

General Skills:

- Vampyric Regeneration (1)

- Vampyric Senses (1)

- Vampyric Resistance (1)

- Vampyric Immortality (1)

- Vampyric Charm (1)

- Vampyric Empathy (1)

Blinking a few times at the flood of information, she thought about the Vampyric skills she was given. Urging the system to show more information about them.

*Ding*

[Vampyric Regeneration]

As a Vampire, your health regenerates much faster. Fear not the blows of your prey as your body repairs itself in front of their very eyes.

[Vampyric Senses]

As a Vampire, all of your senses grow stronger. Hear your prey from farther away, smell their fear across the fields and stalk them through the night with peerless vision.

[Vampyric Resistance]

As a Vampire, your body grows more resistant to changes in temperature. Fear not the chill nor the heat as you stalk your prey in any climate with ease.

[Vampyric Immortality]

As a Vampire, you become immune to the passing of time. Relish in the glory of the hunt for all of eternity, striking fear into the hearts of your prey forever more.

[Vampyric Charm]

As a vampire, your eyes become an endless sea of beauty, capable of twisting your prey’s emotions at your will.

[Vampyric Empathy]

As a vampire, you develop a sixth sense for your prey. Feel their fear, know their plans as you stay one step ahead at every turn.

The girl stared at the screens calling her a vampire, feeling her claws digging into the ground next to her. She looked back at her class The skills seemed powerful at least, though she felt some concern about the focus on prey. Having to stalk prey for all of eternity wasn’t her idea of a good time.

Can’t linger on it, she thought. She grew up as a human, and even these strange messages say she’s still a human. She’s just a really messed up human now. With Vampire abilities. In a world with absolutely no clue where she was, what’s going on, or if there’s even any other people at all. She thought about the possibility of it just being all vampires and shivered.

She looked to her Identify skill, urging the system to give her more information on it as well.

*Ding*

[Identify]

Derive information from mana structures.

Pretty basic, the girl thought. All the flourishes in the vampyric skills made them seem so much more impressive.

Leaning back against the tree, she cried some more, thinking about her home. She never did manage to beat the boss she struggled with, and somehow that was eating away at her the most. She missed her friends, her bed, her entire life. But somehow it was never being able to kill that damn boss that was bugging her the most right now. She chuckled, tears still rolling down her cheeks.

There wasn’t an awful lot left for her back at home, anyway. A few friends online that she cared about but nothing super serious. She worked a dead end job at some consumer electronics store, wishing she could actually help the customers who came in more instead of being pressured into adding twelve items onto every single damn purchase. She had some family but wasn’t super close to any of them. She thought it wasn’t really all that different to the characters in stories she had read being uprooted and thrust into an unfamiliar world. Just get up and move on, she thought.

But she couldn’t. She still had a routine, she had goals and aspirations that she wanted to work towards. Perhaps they weren’t the most important things, but they were hers. And now they’re gone, while she’s stranded in this messed up world with nothing but her black leggings and tie dyed t-shirt. Worse than that, she barely even counts as human anymore, for whatever that means.

The girl stood up and started walking again. As bad as things were, she didn’t want to die. She needed to find shelter from the snow, she needed food and water. Maybe it was a naïve hope, but she even wanted to find civilization. People. Other humans she could talk to, who would speak english for some reason.

The snow could provide her water at least, or she hoped it could since the cold didn’t bother her anyway. She knew that eating snow took too much heat away to be worth it, but if freezing wasn’t a problem then would it be possible? She wasn’t sure, but figured she could melt it in a leaf or on a nice rock she finds if nothing else.

Hours more passed into the night, the darkness seeming as though it were a bright sunny day. It still looked dark, she thought, but she could see clearly as though it were lit anyway. It was a strange feeling, but it made her much more comfortable walking through the dark forest.

A few times, she noticed tracks in the snow where animals had walked through before. Wolves and rabbits mostly, she knew somehow. Tracking had never been something that interested her before, but the paths in the snow just seemed to scream what made them at her.

She didn’t seem to tire, even as the sun began to rise once more and the forest came to life with the sounds of animals ready to take on a new day.

One path through the snow stood out to her among the swarm of rabbit and wolf tracks. One that said something different. Human, it screamed at her. A human had walked through this forest yesterday.

The girl grew excited, her heartbeat racing as she stared at the tracks. She forced herself to calm down. Maybe these humans died to wolves, or maybe they’re horrible bandits. But humans exist here, she thought. Even if this one sucks, maybe others exist and don’t suck.

She knelt down and tried to see which direction they had gone in. Pleading with her skill to give her something more. But no amount of touching, sniffing or licking seemed to give her any more information. She knew a human made it yesterday, but didn’t know where they went.

She grabbed a stick and scratched one end of it with her claws. If her skill won’t help her, then luck surely will, she thought as she threw the stick in the air. The stick twirled around and fell, the scratched end pointing to the right, and off she went.

The trail would have been easy to follow even without her vampyric abilities, the path through the snow clear as somebody plowed their way through. But with her vampyric helper, it felt as though she was walking down a familiar road, knowing where each and every turn would be.

It only took another ten minutes of walking before she found herself on a road. Or something resembling a road, at least. The snow seemed packed in, with clear lines where wheels seemed to roll through it.

She looked both ways, trying to see a sign of which way to go, but found nothing. She went right last time, so this time she turned left and started walking down the road with the sun high above her.

The sun had nearly set by the time she saw a change in the scenery. The forest stopped a couple hundred feet away from a large stone wall that rose off in the distance.

It was only a few times her height, but seemed to stretch on to either side for as far as she could see through the trees. Round pillars evenly spaced throughout, with roofed sections that had a couple of people in each.

Some kind of castle wall? She wasn’t sure, but it was a clear sign of civilization. Of people. A small fear rose up in her at her appearance. The white hair draped on her shoulders, the red eyes piercing through the snow, and her sharp claws. But she was human, she reminded herself. It said so, right on her stat window.

A mutated human, maybe. But a human. She wouldn’t be killed for looking different, she hoped. And even if she would be, it was still a safer option than trying to survive in the wilderness without any tools or supplies at all.

Zoe continued down the road, right up to a large gate set in the wall. Two guards stood outside, flanking the large wooden doors.

When she looked at them, she felt a sense of caution and intrigue poking at the back of her mind, underlying motes of anxiety fluttering just below the surface.

[Warrior - ??]

Identify showed them both the same. She wasn’t sure how it worked, but it didn’t seem very useful to her yet.

“Uhh, hi.” Zoe said to them as she approached.

“Hello. Reason for visiting Flester?” The guard on the right asked, leaning against the stone wall behind her. Her casual stance contrasting the sense of unease Zoe felt from the guard.

“Um, I guess I’m lost? I want to eat and sleep, and stuff?” She fidgeted.

The guard looked up the wall for a minute and then back at Zoe, and gestured for her to enter. “Alright, have a nice stay.”

Zoe entered, and walked down the street. There weren’t many people walking about, but her mind was overwhelmed with the emotions she felt from them — fear, lust, annoyance. All slamming into the back of her mind like a sledgehammer made of angst and pride.

That must be the Vampyric Empathy at work, she thought. She wondered if there was a way to turn it off, focusing on the skill and trying to disable it. The flood of emotions stopped as though she turned off a tap of despair and lust.

The smells and sounds overwhelmed her nearly as much, though. She could hear the arguments people had in their houses, people bartering in shops. The clashing of metal on metal, the sizzling of something in an oily pan or meat over a fire perhaps.

She decided to find somewhere to sleep. A hotel, or inn, maybe. A nice park even. She didn’t have any money on her, but maybe they would let her work in exchange for a place to rest at least.

She wandered down the road, each building seeming the same. A boring gray stone, holes along the side acting as pitiful excuses for windows. Maybe they just don’t have glass, or maybe it’s a poor town that she’s stumbled onto.

One building stood out to her, though. A dull orange glow covered the door, with somehow bright black lettering overlaid on top of it. “John’s Books” it said, casting a shadow over the door.

She thought it was worth a shot at least, maybe she could find a book on the area. Turns out Russia’s got weird magic vampires and moscow’s just down the road or something. Probably not, but she still hoped.

She opened the door and stepped inside, looking around. It was a dark store, lit only by the little light that seeped in through the holes in the wall. A few dark wooden bookshelves were spread throughout, each with ornate golden threads woven throughout.

And to her immediate right, was the most monstrous being she had ever seen. A green gloopy mash of limbs with a tiny head and two black eyes sat on an equally strange chair that seemed to conform to its bizarre body.

She froze in fear. Should she call the guards? Should she run and scream? She wasn’t sure.

She focused on her [Vampyric Empathy]. It was excited. To eat her? To sell her books? She cursed in her mind. Of course this wasn’t just Russia, weird stat windows would have made global news the minute they appeared.

But here she was, standing in front of the most terrifying visage she’d ever laid eyes on. It was just sitting on a chair, running a bookstore. Would it eat her if she didn’t buy a book? Would it eat her if she did?

“Local Geography,” Zoe said, her voice quivering in fear, sweat beading down her brow. “Do you have any books on local geography?”

The creature seemed to ignore her for a couple minutes as its emotions twisted into confusion and then finally settled on relieved just before it waved its hand.

Zoe watched, amazed as the books on the shelves floated through the store and moved around on the bookshelves. And then she shuddered, pain wracking through her, as a wave of thought flooded into her mind, directing her to the bookshelf nearest to her.

*Ding* You have unlocked the Mental resistance.

Zoe stumbled over to the bookshelf and browsed through it, finding a book that talked about Flester and its surroundings. Maybe she’d find something she recognized, or at least something important in it. It didn’t matter at this point anyway, she just needed to buy something and leave. She approached the strange green creature and placed the book on the desk in front of it.

“Um… How much is this book?” Zoe asked, rummaging through her pockets in the hopes that she had something she could at least trade for it.

Another surge of thought flooded into her as she shuddered once more. “One interesting story for the book, no lies permitted,” it said.

Oh god, Zoe thought. It was going to eat her past, she was sure of it.

“Oh… Um… What do you consider interesting?” Zoe asked the creature, praying it would find McDonalds interesting enough. Something she wouldn’t mind losing.

The creature’s emotions seemed to flash through pain, and excitement, boredom and relief. And then a surge of information smashed into her mind, overwhelming her with pain and terror. She convulsed, her mind overrun with foreign emotion and unable to control herself. She stared at the creature with tears streaming down her face and watched as it raised a hand.

She pleaded with it in her mind, begging it not to kill her.

‘Peace,’ the creature wrote in the air. Black wisps flowing together in front of her. The creature exuded a sense of worry and despair.

Worried for Zoe? It felt like that, at least. Was she the strange one in this world for not being able to talk with her mind? Was she being racist, judging this creature just because it was a green monster?

Zoe started laughing, falling to the floor clutching her belly. She was a damn half-vampire from another world, what’s so strange about a green creature that just wants to sell books.

She stood up and looked at the creature.

[µ̶̗͈̳̖͇̭͖̬̹̖̖͈͓̝̥͇̠̱̤̒̑͆̐́͋̓̓̏̈́̇̕̕͘͠͝╛̵̡̧̬̺͍̼̼̤̻̝̳̙̣̳͖̺̮̎͗̔ͅ — ??]

Everything else she identified was red. Were these ones green because the creature was?

“How do I know the story I tell you won’t be spread to others?” Zoe asked, willing her fear away.

‘Telepathy’ The being wrote in the air between them.

“Are you asking if you can respond telepathically?” Zoe asked it, hoping the answer was no.

The creature’s small head nodded, and it oozed contentedness.

Zoe nodded her head back and then shuddered as she received a pure emotion of intrigue, of desire to know more about people. It was better when she knew it was coming, she found.

“Well, whatever. I guess it doesn’t matter that much anyway. I’m not from this world.” Zoe said.

‘Neither am I, which planet are you from?’ The creature wrote in the air.

She got excited for a moment.

“I’m from Earth, where are you from?” Zoe asked.

‘Too long to spell, Earth? How far?’ The being wrote.

“Oh. I’m not sure, I just kind of appeared here a little while ago and now I’m here. And a half-vampire or something apparently.” Zoe shrugged her shoulders.

The being seemed surprised, so Zoe continued, “I was just in my bedroom trying to fix my stupid smart light when I got sucked through some weird portal thing and ended up in the forest nearby. I cried for a bit, and then a vampire attacked me and infected me.

“Something in the system broke though so I got a bunch of vampire skills and abilities,” She showed off her claws to the shopkeeper. “But I didn’t get all the downsides of being a vampire. So I guess I’m lucky. The white hair has kinda grown on me too, I like it. Anyway, that’s my story. Is that interesting enough?”

The creature nodded its head and wrote in the air, ‘Thank you. Enjoy the book.’

Zoe nodded, picked up her book and left the store. A few minutes later she realized she forgot to thank the shopkeeper so she turned around and went back.

The green creature was now standing in the middle of the shop, wiggling its many limbs around as it seemed to dance. Happiness and excitement, Zoe felt.

She wanted to laugh but held it back. That would be rude, she thought. The scariest creature she’d ever seen ended up just being a weird dork. “I forgot to say thanks for the book so I wanted to come back.”

She smiled at him. “Thank you very much for the book. I don’t know if I could’ve afforded it normally anyway and it felt good to talk about what’s happened to me. Thanks.”

Zoe turned around and left, her laugh escaping as she walked down the road.

Maybe Zoe wouldn’t hate this place so much after all.