I Can't Get the Vampire Rogue to Romance Me

Chapter 53 - The Tree of Dawn

"And you took this guy's money?" Valerian asked.

"Yeah," Evangeline admitted, leaning her back against the root-hallway. They hadn't moved from that spot as she quickly updated him and the rest of the party about what she had discovered and remembered.

"Can't you just give it back?" Artmond asked, taking the secret message from Valerian, only for Valerian to snap it back from him with a glower.

"This type is not interested in the money. They want the thing promised," Hagor said.

"And I don't feel comfortable talking about all of this out here in the open. We should return to the camp," Sigismund said. She wrinkled her nose as another thought crowded out of her mouth. "And where is this pot of money you supposedly received from this deal?"

Evangaline grimaced. "It's back at the camp—"

"It's her money," Hagor spoke over her at the same time. "She is under no obligation to share it with any of us."

"But if she had..." Sigismund sputtered, shrugging off Artmond's warning hand. "I mean, this is the whole crux of the problem isn't it? We could have done this job of hers with more help and support, and we wouldn't have nearly died. Hagor actually did die! Why didn't her Meta power tell her that?"

Silence answered her as the whole party stared at her.

It was predictably Valerian who broke it. "So does this mean we're ditching the Harrowheart thing or... what's the plan... Leader?" He turned to Evangeline, grinning with supreme satisfaction as he said the last word.

"Uh, no, no," Evangeline said, shaking her head. She knew in the game, if she went to do one quest over another, as long as she didn't leave the act, the second quest would wait. It's just, so far, she didn't have the same sort of confidence about any of this.

Can I dare risk it?

The stakes suddenly felt very high and very real.

"No, we can't leave Harrowheart hanging." Evangeline took a deep fortifying breath. "Whoever this note writer is, they can wait. And if I'm wrong, it's all on my head."

"And our necks," Sigismund growled, grasping the collar to waggle it in Evangeline's direction as if she had forgotten about their ties that bind.

"That's enough," Artmond gently admonished with just a small undercurrent of noble authority. It was just enough of an undercurrent, because whatever more that was going to come out of the cleric's mouth died on her tongue, and she closed it, crossing her arms instead to end things.

# # #

Even though Evangeline had seen the interior hall within both Great Trees, walking, actually walking into the enormous space was the definition of awe-inspiring. The Tree of Dawn had grown, or really she knew it was designed by some concept artist in her "real" world, with a vaulted ceiling inside the living tree nearly 50 feet high. Orbs of sunlight floated amongst the space, casting enough light that even smaller branches within leafed. A few even had flowers. It was perpetually day in this space, even if the rooms the occupants lived in could be made dark. By contrast, the Tree of Twilight was dimmer with moon-like light floating amongst night flowers. A perpetual evening.

Druids and the living creatures who lived beside them were going about their business.

"Seems a bit ... uncouth to be sitting on stumps and logs inside a living tree," Valerian noted, gesturing over to a group who were doing just that in a circle, talking animatedly about some business in the grove. "Like sitting on rawhide chairs at a Minotaur tribe."

"Those are fashioned from dead branches that have fallen from the Great Trees themselves," Hagor explained.

Valerian's narrowed even as his lips smirked. "Now wait a minute. Aren't these trees like your gods or something? How do divine trees have 'dead branches?'"

Hagor looked affronted but answered his question. "They are still trees."

"There's Harrowheart," Evangeline said, pointing to the ogress on the far side of the hall. Tensions were already high amongst the group; the last thing they all needed was another fight breaking out.

"Are you ready?" Harrowheart asked as they approached. The ogress had cleaned herself up, looking different with brushed hair and gold clasps adorning the end of her lower tusks.

"Yes," Evangeline replied.

Harrowheart nodded and turned to lead them to the back of the room, guiding them through to a set of uneven steps formed out of ascending branches through a door-sized knot hole.

"Wow, this is beautiful," Sigismund said softly to herself as Artmond offered his hand to her to help her up.

"I can't believe the tree grew this way," Artmond said.

Sigismund rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure they used druidic magic to make this happen." She lifted her robes to go up the natural stairs.

The stairs brought them to a short hallway with two doorways covered in woven cloth, hanging over the entrances. A cleric sat at a small desk before the doorway at the far end of the hall, who stopped writing on a scroll laid out before with an overly large quill.

Harrowheart walked right up to the desk, as the cleric set down his quill and folded his hands on top of his work. She towered over him, but the possibly human, or maybe elf—it was hard to tell with his hood up—did not seem intimidated by it.

"Harrowheart," he said, with a soft, cold voice. "What can I do for you today?"

The orcess's usual confident bravado retreated behind a mask of polite anxiety. "I wish to see the High Cleric."

The cold-voiced cleric smiled mirthlessly. "Concerning what?"

An urge to intervene washed through Evangeline. Interrupts were a thing she could do when she played the game in order to give the player control of the conversation if she wanted. She decided to follow the feeling.

"We have business with the High Cleric," she interjected.

The cold eyes shifted to her, then up and down her. They almost looked away with dismissal, then stopped just as they met her own gaze.

Social Skill: Intimidate or Persuade?

Social Skill: Intimidate. Success.

She offered her own grin to this gatekeeper cleric. He blinked a few times in rapid succession as he straightened.

"I will see if she will receive you," he said as he stood, now taking in the other members of the party and realizing that if this was trouble, he was sorely outnumbered. She could practically hear the thought, Better to pass this along to be someone else's problem, as it passed over his face.

Then he disappeared behind the door.

"Yeah, waiting. I love waiting," Valerian jibbed.

To be continued...

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