What does revenge even mean?!

During my frozen stupor, Vivian thumbed the bracelet and pulled forward her character display, and that’s when I remembered that I had released a new update to her attribute menu and that I was in trouble.

This latest feature was perhaps my last desperate resort. None of my previous ideas, whether they were lengthy messages or suggestive emoticons, had borne any fruit.

But this was also perhaps my most punitive measure and therefore most likely to backfire.

Now, instead of trying to suggest the optimal choices for Vivian to select, I simply hid the stats that I no longer wanted her to gain. In this case, I had completely removed the strength and stamina and luck icons, replacing them with enlarged buttons for her personality, intelligence, and willpower traits.

This was, in my original vision, absolutely foolproof and forced Vivian to choose the attributes that I mandated. Yes, I was perhaps the most vindictive UX designer to ever exist, but tell me, how can Vivian level strength when there’s no strength to level? Furthermore, I had planned additional designs which only showed one attribute to level when I felt like certain thresholds in her other stats had been achieved.

But after Vivian’s honest soliloquy, an earnest guilt overwhelmed me. It felt wrong to rob her of choices that defined her physical and mental person. After all, she had just lambasted the actions of another man who wronged her and wasn’t I, in a sort of roundabout way, committing a tangentially similar crime?

I considered withdrawing the feature and implementing the original character menu, but Vivian had already begun scanning the details of her new menu with curious eyes, and it would have been a greater disservice to be duplicitous and pretend I had never come up with this idea, to pretend it was all just a fanciful bug and that I never intended to box Vivian into choices I forcefully made on her behalf. No, it was better to be honest with Vivian in the way that she was with me.

And so, I waited in silence for Vivian to condemn me.

“I can’t believe it,” Vivian murmured, her hands floating across the display. Shame burned itself into me, “Bracelet, no, you are absolutely right. How could I have missed something this obvious?”

That’s right. I was…right?

“Diane was right, of course,” Vivian sat back against her bed frame and pressed her palm against her forehead, “It’s so clear now when you put it this way.”

Now I was getting concerned. What was so clear about what was happening?

“It’s a Royal Ball, not gladiatorial combat,” she said, “If I want to be the most presentable, I need to distribute these levels as they call it into the attributes that most likely align with presentability.”

I experienced the metaphorical equivalent of a jaw drop. Could it really have just been that easy to win Vivian over to my perspective? What had I been doing this entire time?

“Let’s go with personality tonight and see where we go from there,” Vivian said, then wrapped her blankets around her and nodded off to sleep. “Good night, bracelet.”

Good night, bracelet?

As Vivian slept, I was left confronting a series of new realities.

The most obvious development was Vivian had talked to me, and it felt good to be spoken to, even if indirectly. Sure, it was unlikely she knew that I was more than the equivalent of a magical algorithm that gave her handy recommendations, but it was a start. I had never made any headway until Diane made those absurdly comical comments that gave Vivian strange ideas. I would have to thank her later, somehow.

The more pressing concern, however, was whether Vivian still had time to achieve the milestone abilities necessary for a guaranteed success at the ball. The short answer was no. She had essentially wasted most of the last month placing points into attributes unusable for the Royal Ball, which left little wiggle room for optimizing her build for the event.

The long answer was that if Vivian played her hand right, she still had enough time to unlock some basic traits and talents that could give her an edge, but it wouldn’t guarantee complete and total victory. With enough personality and intelligence, for instance, the embarrassing results of the soirees and parties leading up to the Royal Ball would have played out dramatically differently. The aristocrats might have sympathized with her plight or they would have approached her to probe her brilliant mind.

There was, however, that bug that crawled in the back of my proverbial mind as I raced through these possibilities. Would those attributes really have mattered, or were the aristocracy so caught up in their games of political intrigue that Vivian’s charms would have no effect?

In fact, a darker and horrible question approached me like an assassin in the night. Did these attributes ever matter or were they fickle numbers drafted for the express purpose of providing me the illusion that they mattered? Could Vivian simply achieve her revenge without having spent a single time trifling with her magical bracelet?

These questions, I realized, fed a more anxious side of me, a side I only would have entertained in the past over a beer after working hours, so I quelled this internal dispute as quickly as possible and logged off for the night.

Vivian rose early the next morning and had finished the book on her nightstand an hour before Emily walked into the bedroom.

“My lady, I wasn’t aware you were up so early,” Emily said.

“It’s a new day,” Vivian smiled, staring into the garden outside, “Can you please invite Stefan and Vladimir to breakfast with me?”

Stefan and Vladimir later found Vivian sipping her morning coffee in the garden, spinning her bracelet eagerly with two fingers. She motioned for them to sit and the two of them exchanged a few bewildered glances at her unusual morning excitement.

“What’s this about, Viv?” Stefan asked.

“Sit, sit,” Vivian said, “I wanted to talk about the Royal Ball.”

“Are you calling your revenge plan off?”

“No, quite the opposite,” she shook her head, “After confiding in myself last night, I realized that I haven’t had a coherent plan of attack. My revenge is just, what can I do to make the prince feel like he’s made a terrible mistake? And the truth is…”

“The truth is you have no idea how to do that,” Vladimir finished the sentence.

“Quite right,” Vivian agreed, “I’ve tried my best to become stronger, but only for the purpose of being resilient, to endure the gossip and the laughs that people throw at me. I’ve realized that a woman who stands resilient in the face of adversity is not enacting revenge, it’s a pyrrhic victory at best.”

“So why have us here, Viv?” Stefan scratched his head, “What’s the new angle?”

“I have a plan, a plan of attack, but unfortunately I cannot do this all on my own,” Vivian explained, “There are things I don’t know, people that I must acquaint myself with, etiquette that I must relearn, and with the Royal Ball a week away, I do not have the time to do it all alone.”

“We can help with that, that doesn’t seem too bad. I’m well acquainted with who is attending the ball. Meanwhile, Vlad’s a bit out of practice but he can help you with etiquette,” Stefan said.

“Stefan. I’m rusty. And I unlearned most of it, remember?”

“Well, Viv would never learn from mother,” Stefan shrugged. “Viv, are you expecting us to do anything at the party?”

“No. I’ve been in our father's study enough to know that we all have our parts to play at the ball. Things are getting rather serious, I imagine.”

There came a pause, and then the courtyard gathering shared a collective sigh. They all halted their conversation to take a sip of their drinks, cleansing the weight of their responsibilities from their palettes, if only temporarily.

“Father doesn’t have the votes,” Stefan licked his lips, “Vlad’s tried to form a coalition among the magisters but…”

“The mages want the war with Kapur,” Vladimir’s face was drawn with an anger I rarely saw from him, “I suspect my family is playing a sinister role. They’re convinced the gem mines on the peripheries of the empire are worth the cost.”

“The gem mines?” Vivian raised an eyebrow, “The Astral Viscount excavated those years ago, there’s nothing left.”

“That’s where the mages disagree.”

“What little consensus we have won’t make a dent in the assembly” Stefan said, “It’s really only because Vladdy and I are so damn attractive that people even still come and talk to us.”

“We won’t win a war with Kapur,” Vladimir shrugged, “But the aristocracy can’t see that, they think the commoners will act as common fodder. You’re seeing the death knells of the empire and it will refuse to go quietly.”

“Savor your revenge, Viv,” Stefan laughed, “Soon, it’ll be someone else’s turn to enact revenge on the royal court.”

“Whenever we talk about this, my problems seem to pale in significance,” Vivian sighed, “Maybe I really should give up this revenge. Join a reading club with the ladies over in Morovia.”

Stefan chuckled and responded. His response was salient, and it echoed with the grandeur of hollow antiquity.

“Come on, Viv, we’re still rich, young, healthy. How much longer will those three be true all at once? We enjoy this pettiness of life precisely because we’re members of this prestigious echelon. But let’s not pretend that just because we abhor the other aristocrats that we have suddenly unbecome them.”