I Can't Get the Vampire Rogue to Romance Me

Chapter 63 - In a Barrel

"But I don't understand, why didn't it revert back to a man like the others," Artmond asked.

They all stood around the body, still in their midst under the bedroll.

Evangeline had slept so well last night, she had forgotten about that morning, and the porridge she had been eating from felt like a heavy lump in her stomach. She couldn't bring herself to eat one more bite.

Valerian sighed. "Because, I told you, he doesn't look like this because he's a druid who lost concentration on his spell. He's a vampire who gained the power of this animal shape. If I turned into a vampire bat right now and you shot me, I would remain a vampire bat."

They all looked at him.

"Can... you turn into a vampire bat?" Artmond asked.

The question reflected on all of their faces.

He looked at them all. "No, I can't turn into a vampire bat, my special power is the darkness thing. You've all seen it."

"Oh, yeah," they all said, nodding and turning their attention back to the body on the ground.

"So... how do we get him back to where he needs to go?" Evangeline asked. In the game she would have been able to "put" the body in a "barrel" and carry that in her inventory...

Harrowheart appeared, dropping a barrel down with a definitive thunk.

"Where did that come from?" Sigismund asked, wrinkling her nose at it.

"I always carry a couple in my inventory," Harrowheart said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"You carry that around in your inventory?" Artmond asked, reaching out to touch it as if to confirm it was real.

"Barrels are very useful," Harrowheart said, as if that explained it all. "Come on, help me. We got to get him in there."

"No way," Evangeline said, her eyes bugging out.

"What?" Valerian asked, glancing at her while Hagor stepped forward and helped Harrowheart maneuvered the werewolf-looking vampire toward the barrel.

She shook her head, unwilling to believe what she was seeing. "He can't possibly fit..."

And then the two larger beings poured the body into the barrel. Evangeline didn't have another way to describe it. If Ryder had still been alive in his werewolf-seeming form, he would have been able to easily fit that same barrel under his arm, but now she didn't see a trace of him at all as Harrowheart fitted the lid.

Evangeline didn't realize her mouth was open until Valerian tapped the bottom of her chin with two fingers.

"I didn't know barrels could be used that way," Artmond exclaimed, apparently just as surprised.

"What? You've never hid in a barrel before?" Hagor asked, the first sign of his usual self they had seen all morning.

"Well, yeah, but I was a kid then," Artmond said, lifting up the edge of the lid to peek inside. "I can't believe that worked."

"It's not over yet. The real question is who is going to carry him," Harrowheart said, folding her arms. "I'm not going to do it. This isn't my mess."

"Oh, that's convenient," Valerian snarked.

Harrowheart glared at him. "I have already stowed away the statue of Ashar in another barrel in my inventory. I am strong but not strong enough to carry both."

"I'll carry him," Evangeline volunteered before this turned into a big fight.

"Are you going to have enough space in your inventory?" Sigismund asked.

"One way to find out," Evangeline said and stepped in to lay a hand on the barrel. With a thought it disappeared. She immediately staggered as the feeling of a great weight bore down on her.

Hagor's own arm snapped out first to grab her shoulder and help steady her. "She's encumbered," he said.

"Of course she's encumbered," Sigismund snapped, shifting her crossed arms to plant her first on her hips. "She's trying to carry a whole barrel with a corpse inside. The question is how badly is she encumbered?"

"I don't know? What do I do?" Evangeline asked, panic and bile rising in her stomach.

"What do you mean 'what do you do?'" Sigismund sneered, but Valerian flicked her ear as he moved to Evangeline's other side.

"Hey!"

He ignored Sigismund's protest and swat at his arm, while he threw Evangeline's over his shoulder, using his hip to prop her up. "Open your menu and take a look at your strength stat," he instructed. "The red number will tell you..."

"Right, right, I know this," Evangeline said, taking her hand back from Hagor so she could gesture.

Her menu opened and sure enough, where the number [8] was next to the STR was another number in angry, red parenthesis.

"It says it's a 13," she reported.

"Over what?" Valerian asked.

"8."

He glanced up at Hagor, who nodded. "Okay, that's not too bad. What else do you have in your inventory that you can drop?"

She flicked over to the list. "Not that much. Some food, a medkit. Rope. Lockpicks. Several bags of herbs that I've picked up for potions later."

"Okay, you're going to drop all of that," Valerian said, readjusting her weight against him.

"But..."

"Just do it."

She complied, running her finger over each item and selecting the drop command from the menus that appeared. As those and a few other things she hadn't mentioned disappeared from the list, then reappeared in the "real" world on the ground before her. It took a few items but slowly the red number went down one. Evangeline felt a little bit of relief from the weight.

"Did you sell all the knives you picked up?" Sigismund asked, looking over the pile.

"Well, no. I kept five of them. I thought they would be useful for throws and such."

"Drop them now," Valerian said. "We'll carry them for you."

"We will?" Sigismund challenged.

"I'll carry them for you," he corrected pointedly at the cleric.

"I shall as well, field mouse," Hagor agreed.

Evangeline was relieved to hear that. She had worried that there was a chance that Hagor would turn against her when she sided with protecting Valerian the vampire.

It ended up taking her dropping all her weapons, not just the back up ones before the red number ticked down and then disappeared. Evangeline breathed a sigh of relief.

"At least I was able to keep the gambeson so I'm not totally unarmored," she said. "Now that we've figured that out, what's next? What's the plan?"