CodeVein: The Survivor and Artemis

ARTEMIS 2

"This is my home. I'm the only one who lives here now, so make yourselves comfortable."

The woman we met took us to her hideout. The place was a set of rooms located on the 2nd floor of a slightly taller building complex. Somewhere in my mushy memories from the old world, I remember that these were called apartments...? Anyway, there were a couple of rooms where the walls were pretty much obliterated and you could definitely see the outside world and the room next to it. But all in all, this place seemed much more habitable than the outside world.

"Thank you. Um...?" Nicola said. Oh yeah, the woman have yet to tell us her name.

"You can call me Carmilla." she said. "Oh, and just remember: You are going to be working for me from now on." I was wondering why this woman, Carmilla, wanted to take us in. She wanted us to work for her? What kind of work will she put on us?

"With that in mind... You are skilled at separating others from their blood beads, correct?" she asked.

"You helped us even though you knew?" I said. If you knew that we were good at that, you still took us in? What if we just stole your blood beads and ran off? Either Carmilla is very confident that we wouldn't do something like that, or she could also be confident in her own ability to hunt us down afterwards.

"I helped you because it was practical for me. So long as I have you two around, I won't need to risk my own neck. Why else did you think I would bother taking you in?" She said. The sharp and cold tone in her voice and aura really felt through every word. But I gotta be strong here.

"Why are you confident that we wouldn't just take your blood beads and run?" I asked, trying to not act intimidated.

"You can consider it an equivalent exchange, or a fair deal as they used to say. I give you some roof over your head and a place to sleep that isn't entirely out in the open, and you do some grinding for me".

We ended up agreeing to her proposal even though I myself wasn't too fond of it. I still wonder if she would have been able to actually hunt us down if we snuck away with her blood beads. I still wonder what actually the reason for us sticking around with her was originally as I, myself did not really like her. Could be just that we did not have any other viable alternatives at the time either. Both me and Nicola were tired of wandering around and scavenge for blood beads on our own. I wish... that the original writer of this story maybe could have given us more information on this instead of the poor guy writing this fanfic.

From that day we started to live with Carmilla. Whenever there were sightings of scavengers or other rogue band of revenants hunting for blood beads, I went out there to separate them from the stash of blood beads they had. As I didn't want Nicola to risk his life out in the ruins, Carmilla just let him do some house chores.

Have to admit, it was pretty nice of Carmilla to at least let us stay with her. But other than that, I didn't really like her. She was always acting selfish, and bossing me and my brother around. Not to mention her cold demeanor.

I remember that one time when I just came home from a hunt. I bumped into a conversation between Carmilla and Nicola.

"Have you always lived alone, Carmilla?" Nicola asked.

"The past really doesn't matter, does it?" she answered. "You've got bigger things to worry about like the laundry.". Dodging that question huh? Not so nice of you Carmilla.

"Ah! I'm sorry, I'm doing it." Nicola said and went back to doing the laundry.

Exchanges like these happened pretty often. Nicola genuinely showed interest in Carmilla's past, but she just keep dodging the question nonchalantly. Not to mention she very often also dodges those by making Nicola do chores.

"Did everyone run away from you for being so selfish?" I asked.

"Being nice doesn't do you any favors." she answered. "When it comes down to it, everyone looks out for number one. You would do well to remember that." Duly noted, Carmilla. I expected nothing less. Dodging the question with sharp words. Though, there might be some good lessons behind these words. Lucky for her, she never actually punished Nicola for messing up any chores. If that ever happened, god knows what I would do with her.

Our days went on like this for a good couple of weeks. Though eventually, these days came to an end, when a large horde of Lost approached our hideout. I remember it being in the middle of the night and I was getting ready to rest when I noticed that Carmilla just dressed up, brought her weapon and went out. She did that sometimes, just fully arm up and then go out.

It wasn't before I heard Nicola that I started to notice the presence approaching our hideout.

"We're in trouble. The Lost are swarming out there!"

I looked out into the ruins and saw them, a large number of Lost were creeping up on us. So that is why Carmilla went out. It didn't take long for Nicola to also notice that Carmilla wasn't here.

"...Huh? Where's Carmilla?" he asked.

"I saw her leave a little while ago... She must have caught wind of them and took off." I answered.

If we stay here for any longer, we will both die by the hands of the Lost. Without hesitation I shouted "Get ready! We need to run, Nicola! And get the blood beads from the storage!" Every time I came home from a hunt, Carmilla always took most of it and dumped it in a cache. We were only given enough to make it past the day always. Who knows, maybe she goes out to sell off our loot?

"But, those belong to Carmilla...!" Nicola answered at first looking confused. We didn't really have to waste right now. So I answered with Carmilla's own words.

"You remember what she said: 'Being nice doesn't do you any favors.' Now hurry up, Nicola!"

We quickly opened the cache that I see Carmilla store our blood beads in. Interesting enough, there were alot of blood beads still in it. I quickly prepared a bag where we dumped all of the content from the cache.

After that, we took off.