I Can't Get the Vampire Rogue to Romance Me

Chapter 76 - I'm Just a Cute Little Puppy

"The sunlight dappling through the trees is beautiful this morning, isn't it?" Evangeline asked as she strolled through the undergrowth.

"Why is she so chipper?" Sigismund grumbled, who was anything but.

"Two long rests back to back, you'd be chipper too," Hagor said, grinning with serene benevolence that reflected the bucolic peacefulness of the forest around them.

"I think Valerian is beating me out for sunshine enjoyment," Evangeline pointed out, nodding toward her rogue companion.

At having attention drawn to him, the vampire snapped his hand away from the beam of light he had been playing his fingers through as they walked.

"Still don't understand how you can do that?" Sigismund noted, arching an eyebrow at him poignantly. "Are you sure you're a vampire?"

Valerian gave her a sharp, angry smile. "Can any of us be sure of anything in this world? Maybe we're just some dream conjured up by an overworked god who's going to wake up any moment?"

Evangeline could sense the meta rabbit hole that level of thinking was going to send her; the only one in the whole group who actually had some serious evidence this was all just her fever dream. Shoving those implications to the back of her mind, she determinedly continued to enjoy the walk.

"I never took you for the deep philosopher type," Hagor observed.

"I did go to university," Valerian sniffed.

"How?" everyone asked in unison.

Valerian stared at all of them, then gestured to himself, "Do I look like an 'undereducated, unwashed masses?'"

"Yes," the party said.

He looked at himself again, the frayed, third-hand, clothes were showing slaps of mud o his legs from their stroll. His boots had a worn toes, showing much of the same mud and the darker mismatched tunic under the leather jerkin they had procured from the market didn't diminish his personal beauty.

"Actually, you look more like a poodle whose been living in a pigsty," Evangeline noted.

Valerian wrinkled his nose. "What's a poodle?" he asked.

Just then, as if on cue, and for all Evangeline knew it could have been, a yap-yap-yap cut through the air.

At first, the group saw nothing beyond the normal forest movements.

General Skill: Perception. Success.

"There!" Evangeline said, pointing at some undergrowth that split as some creature rushed through it at speed. Having gone through too much since their adventure had begun, every member of the party drew their weapons, just as a small dog burst from the grass.

"Oh. That's a poodle," Evangeline said as the small, curly haired creature rushed up to them, then proceeded to zoom around them in a yippy-yappy circle.

Disarmed by cuteness, the party could only stare.

"You think I look like that?" Valerian cried, the first to break.

"What are you doing out here, little fella?" Artmond asked, the first to put away his sword and kneel down to the creature. The dog rushed over to Artmond, wagging its tail so fast it was a blur, even with the fluffy pom on the end providing wind resistance. It put its front paws up on Artmond's knee, its tongue going as wildly as its tail, missing the bottom side of his chin. Didn't deter it from continuing to try to shower him with kisses. Unable to resist, Artmond picked the small dog up and received those generous kisses. "What are we going to call him?" Artmond looked around at his party mates.

"We're not keeping him?" Sigismund immediately said, crossing her arms.

"It's a him?" Harrowheart asked.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure," Artmond asked even as he did a quick confirmation check.

"I do no look like that," Valerian repeated.

"Oh come on, Val. He's adorable."

"That exactly it! I am not adorable!" the vampire insisted, crossing his own arms and seemingly unaware of that his lower lip was threatening to pout.

"Oh, I don't know," Hagor said, looking between the dog and Valerian. "White hair/fur, fangs, small."

"Everyone is small compared to you!" Valerian shouted.

"Needs us to survive," Evangeline added.

That earned her a sharp glance.

Just then, the dog yapped afresh.

Thieves Skill: Sense Danger. Failure.

"What is he barking at?" Evangeline asked, looking up toward the sky where the little dog was directing his gaze toward the treetops.

"Evie!" Valerian shouted, just as claws landed against her chest followed by a wingspan of black feathers. Her Gambian resisted the damage from the attack but not the knockdown that landed her hard onto her back on the ground.

The air woofed out of Evangeline's chest even as she stared wide-eyed at the stinking visage of an ugly humanoid face. Rotten breath that smelled worse than a dumpster, wafted over Evangeline's face, making whatever she had for breakfast that morning rise up to the back of her throat. She couldn't see much of a torso as the creature was bending over her, snuffing at her hair. The wings on either side of the creature molted with each flap and adjustment the creature... the...

Knowledge Nature. Success.

... the harpy made as she balanced on her chest.

"Get off me!" Evangeline tried to ground out.

The harpy screeched in her face with an audibly painful shriek. Then she was yanked away, leaving behind nasty wing fluff to get sucked up Evangeline's nose, making her cough and sneeze at the same time.

It was Hagor, using his thorn vine rod to ensnare her attacker. The thorn vines looped around the creature's body, pulling her off and away. Hagor wrangled the creature, grabbing the vines coming out of his rod in his other hand so he could whip them hard, slamming the harpy even harder onto the ground. The move stunned her, while black blood splattered from the thorns digging into her flesh.

Evangeline lifted herself into sitting to stare at the bare chest of the harpy as it tried to fight her bonds. Which only weakened it further, until she laid still panting for breath.

"You alright?" Valerian asked, dropping down beside her. Then he bucked away, grabbing his nose. "Oh hells, you stink terrible."

"How kind of you to say," Evangeline noted archly. "At least that encounter wasn't so bad."

And then three more harpies appeared.

To be continued...

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