Verena scowled as she woke to a knock at her door. It was practically identical to the morning of her meeting with the Baron Morel. The same time of day. The same polite knock. She even awakened in the same position as that morning. However, there was one very important thing that was different.
"Lady Tavanor? Your father wishes you to join him for breakfast." The young maid who peeked into the room was not Marianne. Verena didn't know much about the woman, and she honestly didn't care to learn. All that mattered to Verena was that she was filling a space that shouldn't be empty. A space that had, nonetheless, been empty for the past three days.
The evening after her heart-to-heart with her father, she had gone to bed with a fire in her heart, more determined than ever. However, when she had awakened the next morning, nothing had changed. Her resolution hadn't magically altered her life. It was the same room, the same bed, the same manor and city that it had been the day before, and a little bit of that fire died. It's been said before, that the most difficult step of a journey will always be the next, and Verena was living that, right now.
Her determination remained, but she had no real focus to channel it into. No great project, no sudden crisis, no spontaneous awakening to give her something to do. Her outlook had changed, but her life remained painfully unchanged, with the exception of one thing, an absence she felt all too acutely.
She had tried to find Marianne. She needed to be discreet, as her father still believed her to be on leave to handle a sudden emergency. However, she had spent whatever spare time she had looking for the woman. Despite those efforts, she had yet to find anything of substance. A couple dead ends, a few crazy "seers", and a whole lot of nothing. Once, while walking the streets, Verena thought she saw her. A brief glimpse of a figure, slipping around a corner. When she reached the spot, herself, Verena found only an empty alley, and a dead end. She would have thought she was seeing things if not for the fact that she had watched Marianne vanish into thin air, right before her eyes.
It had been three days, now. Three days of nothing, and it was driving Verena mad.
Now, she was sat up in her bed, scowling at a maid who shouldn't have been there, in a place meant for another. "Get out." Her voice was cold, hiding the wrath of her temper, shorter than ever, as she bared her fangs at the maid. "Tell my father I'll be down whenever I damn well please, and if he wants to eat with me, he can wait for as long as he wants."
The poor maid let out a frightened yelp, closing the door before fleeing the hallway. As soon as she was gone, Verena sighed, rubbing her temples as she chastised herself. "Stop taking your frustration out on the staff, you moron. That's the last thing Marianne would want. They haven't done anything wrong. They're just doing their jobs. It's not their fault." She reassured herself, but she had told herself the same thing the previous morning. Yet here she was, still letting her temper get the better of her. "Fuck, I really need Marianne back."
Verena reluctantly got out of bed, making her way to her closet to get ready for the day.
*****
A short time later, Verena entered the dining hall to find her father waiting expectantly, as she knew he would be. "Good morning, Verena. How did you sleep, last night?"
She slowly sat down, across the table from her father, before responding. "Good morning, father. I slept quite well. Thank you for asking."
Dominik raised an eyebrow, looking at her skeptically. "Really? Because, judging by the state of the maid I sent to wake you, I find that hard to believe."
Verena winced, letting out a deep sigh before she spoke. "Yes. Well, that was... not about how much sleep I got." She shakes her head. "Speaking of which, I'd like to know where that maid is assigned, today. I owe her an apology."
As they talked, the servants brought in breakfast for the two of them. The list of things a vampire could eat was extremely limited, but fortunately, Count Tavanor's head chef was an expert in blood-based cuisine, so the family never suffered from a lack of variety.
Dominik shook his head. "Little Amethyst, I know you rely on Marianne, but you can't just fall apart, the moment she's not around." He leaned forward, looking at her with concern. "I know I've taught you to treat the other races with respect, but you still have to remember that they are different. There is a reason why our kind almost exclusively pairs with elves, dragons, or our own. Becoming too attached to someone you'll outlive by centuries can be very damaging to someone."
Objectively, Verena knew her father was right. Marianne was a human in her thirties. Unless she had a truly exceptional Vitality, she'd likely live for another seventy years. Eighty at most. To even begin to reach a lifespan comparable to Verena's, her Vitality would need to be in the hundreds.
That thought, however, brought something else to Verena's attention. "Father, what can you tell me about Marianne? I've realized I know almost nothing about her life before she came to work for us. I don't even know her class, or her level."
Dominik shook his head. "That's not my story to tell, Verena. If you really want to know, then ask Marianne, when she gets back."
Verena looked down at her plate, picking at her food as she thought about her father's words. "Yeah... When she gets back..."
*****
The rest of breakfast passed in silence. After a short detour to apologize to the maid who had woken her up, Verena returned to her room, sitting down at her desk to think. As she sat in her room, she did something she almost never did. She opened her stat sheet.
Name: Verena Tavanor
Race: Vampire
Gender: Female(Hermaphrodite)
Age: 70
Titles: -
Class: ???
Level: 1
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 16
Agility: 12
Vitality: 28
Intelligence: 14
Will: $%*<
Charisma: 43
Arcane: 8
Passive Skills(0):
Active Skills(0):
There it was, right before her eyes. The single most vexing thing in her life. Every single piece of it seemed to be mocking her. The age, counting her years of failure. The ??? in her class, boldly declaring what she was missing. Every empty field, a stark reminder of how little she could do. And her stats. With the exception of a decent Vitality, and an exceptional Charisma, her base stats were abysmal. And her gender, a constant reminder of the thing that set her apart. The thing that made her one good stat almost useless, because any interaction with another person was constantly overshadowed by that creeping dread. The fear of what they would do if they found out. How would they react? Would they be afraid? Disgusted? Would they think she was a pervert if she hid it, or would they think that of her for just bringing it up, unprompted?
There were very few people who knew the truth, and of them, there was only one whose reaction she believed to be genuine. Her parents knew, of course, but their support meant very little to her, in this matter. After all, they were her parents. They would always be supportive. That's just how they were. The maids who helped her bathe knew, but each of them was warned, ahead of time, and told, in no uncertain terms, what would happen if they shared the information, or upset her, about it. She wouldn't be surprised if some of them were absolutely disgusted by her, but they were consummate professionals and never said a word.
The only person who she had ever confided in was also the primary reason for her insecurities. Her first real romantic interest, an elven woman who she had gone to university with when she was twenty-two years old, was the first person Verena had ever actively chosen to tell the truth to.
It was about as bad as possible. She screamed. She said a lot of things, none of them good. Things Verena had tried very hard to forget. She even vomited. It was the worst moment of Verena's life. Even worse than all the failed class tests, and the mockery from her peers. She could deal with the ridicule about her class. After all, she had showed them. Despite being the only classless person in the group, she had graduated top of her class, with just about every merit it was possible for her to earn.(Something she found herself needing to be reminded of more and more often, as of late.) Her body, on the other hand, she had nothing to fall back on. The only person without an inherent bias had made her opinion unbelievably clear, and that stayed with Verena.
However, despite all of that, none of those things were the reason she avoided her stat sheet so adamantly. The thing that kept her away from it, the one thing that really, truly, made her afraid, was her Will stat. It had been like that from the moment she turned eighteen. She had never told anyone. Not even her parents. As far as they were concerned, her Will was just an abysmal eight. It terrified her. She had researched it, extensively. Never once, in all of recorded history, had anyone ever encountered an error in the system. As far as the world was concerned, it was impossible. The system was a fundamental part of Orellia. It shaped life across the planet. If something ever went wrong with the system, it would be anarchy. And every time Verena Tavanor opened her stat sheet, there it was. An impossibility that could upend life as they knew it, staring her in the face.
This was the real reason she was so afraid of the hunt for her class. What would happen with her Will stat if there was a change in her status? What if it made things worse? What if the error spread? What if it affected other people because of her?
Verena didn't know what had caused the error, but she was confident she knew what it had done to her. The Will stat was known to be associated with self control and mental resilience. Something that Verena had always struggled with, immensely. She had come to the conclusion that, because of whatever had caused the glitch, her Will stat was, functionally, zero. This was the reason she had such a short fuse. This was the reason she struggled so much with self-worth. She quite literally had no willpower.
As she closed her stat sheet, she leaned back in her chair, sagging. "That's not completely true. There's one time I have some self-control. One time I don't have to fight, tooth and nail, not to give up on myself." She looked out the window, longingly. "Where are you, Marianne?"