Page 25 of Code Mages & Empty Pages
This moment is so ending up in my next story, Lucien.
“Okay?” I had no idea what got into me but…what did I have to lose? “I’ll probably suck, though.”
“Come along, Dawn. I’ll introduce you to my guild.”
“Now?” Panic laced my voice.
“I’ll even put on a shirt for the occasion,” Luc teased. “Come on, they will be nice to you.”
I followed him into his room and waited until he had put on one of his hilarious shirts. I snorted. The shirt read “I WENT OUTSIDE ONCE” in large letters and below it in smaller font it said, “The graphics weren’t great”.
I’d never hung out with nerds before. My ex-partner had been so serious in his career at a bank in Broomshire. There had been no nerds to be around.
I liked it, and I was already sure I had more in common with his guild than with the stuck-up cunts at Morgan’s job. God, I’d hated those people.
“Okay, take this. We’ll tell them we’re back, then we’ll make you a character,” he explained, handing me a black and neon green controller.
“What do I have to do?”
“Breathe, Dawn.” Luc gave me a tiny wink. “And don’t let Dante scare you away. She can be a cunt, but she’s a fucking great Arcani.”
I understood fuck all of what he said, but before I could enquire what on earth an Arcani was, he woke his enormous screen. A fantastic world came into view. Three characters, a tall guy in green and brown clothes, a magician in swirling black robes, and a bipedal wolf with an impressive assortment of weapons strapped to his hips and back stood in the middle of a forest clearing.
“The headset is off. They can’t hear you right now, okay?”
A line of chat bubbles popped up at the bottom of the screen.
Dante: You got some nerve, asshole
Comte: Back
Dante: Fuck you
Hippocampus: lol
Comte: sorry, I brought a guest
Hippocampus: hello guest (they’re reading along, right?)
Comte: yup
“Uhm, can you tell him I say hi?”
“What do you want to be called?” He tilted his head at me.
“I have no idea. Why are you called ‘Comte’?”
“Lucien is a character in the ‘Comte de Monte-Cristo’. I’m half French. It fit my Varg.”
Half French?
Omg. So hot.
I made a mental note to make the male main character in my next book French.
“How about ‘Roe’?” Luc suggested.
Did he come up with this on the spot, or is it a nod to my pen name?
