Vampiric Potionmaking - Ch. 2: Unwelcoming Beginnings

A/N: This is chapter 2 of my upcoming story, Vampiric Potionmaking. You guys seemed pretty excited and receptive on the first chapter, so I thought I'd keep shelling out some chapters until I run out of backlog. Enjoy! 

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You must now pick a class. There are 326 class options available.

326?! Nara gaped at the boundless list that appeared before her. She found she could scroll through it using her mind as a cursor. The text somehow seemed to detect her will, as if it was another limb, like a hand or leg. It was unnerving.

Most of the so-called classes were grayed out. They had requirements she didn’t meet – levels she didn’t possess. One that immediately drew her eye – Witch – required a rank 3 in the Broom Riding skill. Nara had level nothing in that. She frowned and pressed it anyway. It gave her a rousing no, nice try via the haptic feedback. Her brain buzzed unpleasantly.

“Fine, if you won’t let me be a Witch, I’m closing you.”

She tried to dismiss the class selection process, but it wouldn’t budge. It vindictively increased the size of the font until she couldn’t see anything else. It was either find a class to pick, or live forever with an open, vengeful window painting over her eyeballs.

“Stupid thing,” she muttered. “I want to be a Witch. Make me a Witch.”

After a few failed attempts at clicking the grayed out class, Nara examined the filters menu. She could check a box called Meets Requirements, which narrowed the list down to an astounding… seven classes. The first three seemed mostly concerned with hitting and stabbing things. Classes like Brawler, Swordsman, and Ninja.

Nope. Nara tabbed away. She wasn’t interested. Skateboarding had been the only palatable sport for her, and even then, she had only really done it to prove to Heather that she could. That was sort of Nara’s whole M.O. If someone told her she couldn’t do something – she would do it.

But no one was daring her to become a Ninja, so she wasn’t going to bother. She’d probably just take her eye out with a shuriken. She was much more equipped for the more cerebral arts – memorizing Jeopardy questions, perfecting veggie burger recipes, and, as of late, mimicking ancient Wiccan spells.

Of course, look how that worked out for her. Maybe becoming a mindless Brawler was the sane choice at this point. Her fists couldn’t accidentally transport her to foreign dimensions with frog gods.

She scrolled through the remaining four available classes.

Chef

Bartender

Potion Alchemist

Vampire Lord

Nara paused. So she could either prepare meals, be spit on by drunk people, make potions, or be a literal Vampire Lord?

She expanded the Vampire Lord class.

Class: Vampire Lord

(Race-based Class)

Vampire Lords are masters of agility, flight, and illusion. They feed off of the Vital Essence of their victims to power their attacks. Lurk in the shadows until it’s time to strike, and then bleed your opponents dry.

The god Boppit recommends this class to you.

She didn’t bother reading past the description. Hard pass. The whole vibe was way too creepy for her. Plus, she didn’t want to attack anyone, no less bleed them dry. Nara wasn’t exactly a pacifist – she pretty much lived for a good argument – but she was a word fighter, not a sword fighter. And definitely not a neck biter.

The real eye-catcher for her was the third choice, Potion Alchemist.

Class: Potion Alchemist

Potion Alchemists are elixir experts. They can concoct a brew for any occasion, whether it be for speed, strength, or finesse in the bedroom. With their adept knowledge of all things flora and fauna, they can combine foraged ingredients to create powerful concoctions. This class is a great support class for large parties, or as a standalone Merchant class.

Nara immediately fell in love. It had everything she loved in a short little description box – foraging, mixing, planning, following recipes. Plus, it said that she could earn a good living from it. Having spent most of her life broke as shit, that would be a pleasant adjustment. And it seemed like a whole lot safer way to make some cash than brawling with monsters – or whatever it was that lay outside the inn door.

She eyed the door worryingly. She could hear the faint sound of a lute playing. A hand plucked the chords with precision. Muted voices layered over it, conversing in a whisper that was too faint for Nara to hear.

She sighed. It didn’t sound like there were any monsters lurking outside of it. Judging by the faint sunlight streaming into her room, she guessed that it was early morning. Maybe 8 or 9. Sometime before the peak hours of drunkards and other varieties of trouble.

Curiosity nagged at her. She wanted to open the door, but she knew it was better to deal with the giant screen in front of her eyes first. Didn’t want any visual noise clogging her perception if she was about to get decked in the face by some tavern-dwelling ogre.

Turning her attention back to the words in front of her, she read the rest of the class description. All that remained was the Skills and Attributes section.

+ 5 to INT

+ 5 to WIS

+ Potion Crafting (R. 1)

+ Plant Identification (R. 1)

+ Fauna Identification (R. 1)

+ Alchemy (R. 1)

Studying the numbers, Nara thought back to her Modern Witchcraft book. There had been a passage at the beginning about the way that one could train in certain domains of witchcraft – hexes, boons, elementals, magical ingredient foraging – to increase their aptitude for certain spells. She supposed these listed skills might be similar to that.

She pressed Accept with her mind.

You have chosen the class: Potion Alchemist.

You have acquired the starter quest: Basic Foraging

Quest: Basic Foraging

Without ingredients, a Potion Alchemist can’t do much. Seek out three of the most basic ingredients in an alchemist’s toolbelt by foraging in a nearby area. You cannot complete this quest by purchasing or bartering.

Baby Shroom [0 / 1]

Nightshade [0 / 1]

Dragonbloom [0 / 1]

Closing out the mental window, Nara felt invigorated. She had been given a task. A task with three neat little boxes. Nara thrived on tasks, especially if they came with lists. A grocery store visit for her was nothing short of thrilling. But nothing beat foraging for your own ingredients – they were much less expensive (free), and the search was just as delightful as the catch (finding a mushroom in a field was way cooler than finding Cheez-Its on a shelf).

Potential energy brewing inside of her, she pushed her door open.

—

The inn reminded Nara of life on the road. The smell was ripe, a mixture of body odor and the aromatic band aids used to cover it. Candles and sweet-smelling perfumes. It was like the backseat of the Camper, patched up chairs and an abundance of miscellaneous doo-dads. Everything looked worn in a warm kind of way. Lived in.

A lady worked the bar. At least Nara assumed she was a lady. She had green skin and plump lips, made-up eyes. She was a lady in the way that Miss Pac Man was a lady – surface level, with all the stereotypical trimmings. Everything else about her was foreign. She had horns jutting out of her where ears should be, and a body like a sumo wrestler who ate steroids for breakfast.

She cleaned the table like a sumo wrestler, too. She was grunting at it like it was some kind of opponent, gliding her handkerchief over the surface like she might as well have pummeled it to death. Her mouth curled around the words clean, clean, BE CLEAN ALREADY.

Nara approached her reluctantly. She didn’t really have a problem approaching people usually, but the horns – as well as her general attitude – threw her off a bit. She knocked on the bar once to get her attention, and the lady looked up, staring at Nara through her long eyelashes.

“Whataya want?”

Nara swallowed. She realized she had nothing specific to say. She really wanted to say: What the hell? But that wouldn’t do. Maybe: Am I dead? That wasn’t ideal either – it would probably only alarm the woman.

What’s the first thing you ought to say to someone when you’re dropped, unannounced, into their foreign universe? It hadn’t exactly been covered in her high school curriculum. She was too busy learning how to calculate the square footage of a kiddie pool. If only that had been a class option – Basic Algebra Problem Solver.

“Um,” Nara inhaled slowly. “I don’t know. Water, maybe?”

“Alright. Ten cents.”

Oh. Nara hadn’t accounted for water costing money. She fished into her pockets, but came up empty.

“Okay, nevermind,” she backpedaled. “Can you tell me where I am?”

The woman looked at her strangely. “Why you bothering me with a question like that? Just ask your system.”

“My what?”

The strange look only intensified. “Were you dropped on the head? Your system. Just think location.”

Not wanting to anger her any further, Nara did as she said, thinking ‘location.’

Location – Plucky Feather Inn

Town – ???

Region – ???

“Coming up empty there,” Nara smiled nervously. “Seeing a bunch of question marks.”

The woman – who Nara now knew was called Donna, judging by her badly stained nametag – stopped her scrubbing. She set the handkerchief aside and leaned across the bartop, her giant forearms nearly denting the wood.

“Now that I think of it, I don’t remember renting you a room.” Donna’s eyes scanned her face, and some unknown emotion passed over her. “You know, you look awfully like a nightwalker. You got the ears, the eyes…”

Donna stared at her neck. Her pupils dilated.

“Shit, you even got the bite.”

As if on cue, a scream erupted from behind Nara.

“A vampire!”

Nara whipped around. The accusation was accompanied by a stubby, pointed finger, and several horrified expressions. The scream had emerged from a woman no taller than Nara’s waist. She was accompanied by a group of similarly small men, all dressed in scuffed up workwear. The head of a pickaxe poked out behind the woman’s shoulder.

“Donna, unless I’m going crazy in the head, I’m looking at a certified bloodsucker,” she said, her voice laden with panic. She stepped back a few feet, and retrieved the pickaxe from her bag. She pointed it menacingly at Nara. “Don’t you come near me, beast, I’m armed!”

“What? A vampire? Where?” Nara squealed, looking around rapidly. 

“Gods, don’t toy with me,” the dwarf bellowed. “Boys, surround her.”

The men obediently circled around Nara, who stood there stunned, her hands above her head.

“Wait – what are you doing? You seriously think I’m a vampire?”

The men glared at her, harboring a mix between rage and fear. They held a menagerie of weapons and tools – pickaxes, hunting knives, one or two daggers. Nara’s heart fluttered in her chest. She didn’t dare move a single limb, should they deem it a threat.

A flash of memory came at her. My race selection. She had been too stunned to really process it earlier. She thought the vampire thing had been some kind of gag. A joke by the universe – or the holy frog – at her expense. She knew her appearance had changed, but she didn’t feel any different. She felt taller, if anything. And maybe a little more hungry than usual.

“This is all a big misunderstanding,” she insisted. “I’m really not a vampire.”

“Those bitemarks don’t lie, kid.” The dwarf held her axe towards Nara’s neck. “You’ve been bitten. Changed. Doesn’t matter what you were before. You’re a bloodsucker now.”

Nara padded at her neck. True enough, two slightly raised moles sat close to her collarbones.

“No one bit me,” she frowned. “I think those are just freckles.”

The dwarf shook her head. “Even if they were, the pointed ears, the faintly purple skin… Donna, put out a message to the guard.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Melina. I don’t need no guards here inspecting my cellars. We can take care of her by ourselves. She’s a youngling after all, doesn’t look a day after twenty. The real power doesn’t kick in for at least another year with these types.”

Take care of her? Nara’s eyes nervously darted between the two of them. She needed to figure her way out of this situation, and fast.

She looked at the open window, the sunlight streaming in, and an idea came to her.

“Wait,” Nara slowly pointed towards the window. “If I was a vampire, wouldn’t that be frying me alive?”

Melina’s eyes traced the line between the window and Nara’s glittering skin. The sun was absolutely bathing her, dousing her in pure, unadulterated light. Her scowl faltered.

“Could be a potion,” Melina mumbled. “Geff, do you smell it on her?”

One of the dwarves to her right leaned towards and sniffed.

“Smells like…” he inhaled loudly, snorting. “She needs a shower.”

“Hey,” Nara narrowed her eyes. “Not funny.”

He glared back.

“Not joking.”

Donna rounded the bar table and shoved the dwarves aside, approaching Nara. The woman was startlingly tall from close up, like a basketball star with triple the muscle mass. Nara tried to give her a winning smile, but the woman didn’t reciprocate. She reached towards Nara and curled a hand around her collar.

“If you’re not a vampire, then you’ll survive a little sunlight,” she grunted. She lifted Nara upwards, leaving her dangling by the collar of her shirt. Nara yelped, kicking and thrashing. She nearly came out of her shirt by the time they reached the entrance.

Donna shoved the door open with a solid thump, nearly taking off the hinges. She stepped out onto the porch, stood there for a moment, and then promptly dropped Nara like a sack of flour.

“Hope you enjoyed your stay at the Plucky Feather Inn. Don’t come again.”