VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne

The mood of their shopping trip had been thoroughly ruined by the latest events, however Valerie couldn’t help but feel like it was her fault, and not the fault of the Thug.

Things had still been fine with Lucy, even when she was beating the snot out of the guy. Things had still been light and jovial even then. It was only when she tried to finish it that the mood changed.

But even now, as she sat on the queen-sized bed of their hotel room whilst Lucy was showering, she still couldn’t feel like she had done anything wrong. She didn’t feel anything. She had run the scenario through her mind over and over a few times, and every time she was sure that she had done everything right.

Every time, she imagined pulling that man apart piece by piece, leaving behind a torn mess that would be impossible to trace back to them. Such thoughts left her with no guilt, no remorse or any negative feelings in the slightest, perhaps except for hunger.

She understood why Lucy did what she did. She knew that murder was wrong, in the way that it was illegal. But she couldn’t bring herself to care. Where there used to be this font of care and empathy, there was a shrivelled husk of a heart.

At least she had not lost the ability to feel worried about that absence of feeling, but it was only because she had previously felt it that she knew it was supposed to be there in the first place.

The bathroom door opened and Lucy stepped out, a towel wrapped loosely around her body which had reverted back to its pink demonic form. Steam curled off of her body, as she practically dried herself with the natural heat of her body alone. Even still, she was towel drying her hair, taking extra care not to catch or rip the towel on her horns, and taking even more care not to look at Valerie.

The sting of that realisation, Valerie felt.

When Lilith sat down on the opposite sit of the bed, behind Valerie so they were looking in opposite directions, Valerie spoke lowly.

"Do you think I’m a monster?"

Silence. A long, and painful silence. Each second that passed by in that silence was a stab in her dead and shrivelled heart, until finally Lucy answered.

"No."

Valerie sighed in relief, although perhaps a moment too soon.

"But I think you have the capacity to be." Lucy continued, turning those needles stabbing into Valerie’s heart into a singular dagger that plunged deep and twisted.

"Oh... I see..." Valerie muttered, clenching her hands together and lowering her head. But before she could sink into her despair, a pair of warm hands slipped under her arms, pulling her back into a hug as Lucy sat on the bed behind her.

"No, you don’t. It’s not your fault. I think that we all have the capacity to be. These changes... they are more than just how we look. We are changing in ways that we can’t understand or expect, not even with future boy.

I can feel it too... the pull. There are some days I want to grab someone and just drain the life out of them, like Vi’fer did... But I keep it in and push it down.

You just... scared me, that’s all. We didn’t know that this was what we were in store for when we chose these classes, and Jason... I know he won’t get it. He’ll try, but he just won’t be able to understand.

But whether we intended it or not, this is the hand we have been dealt. All we can do is work to keep the monsters inside and keep hold of whatever humanity we have left, and you can start by going to bed."

Lucy said, squeezing Valerie a little tighter before shifting away and starting to get under the sheets.

When she saw that Valerie had hardly moved, she nudged her with her foot and said with a half-hearted smile.

"Come on Princess of Darkness, It’s bed time. Unless you want to go out and stalk the moonlit streets for your next victim."

Valerie let out a soft, unintended chuckle, sparing Lucy a heavy glance as she joked back,

"Are we sure that’s not just the Succubus trying to lure me in to be her next victim?"

They laughed, real and true laughs even if they were dragged down by the weight of the subject matter, before Lucy smiled again. Much warmer and much more heartfelt this time.

"Well, I promise not to drain you in the night, if you promise I won’t wake up with your fangs in my neck."

"Deal." Valerie said with a laugh, wiping her cheeks and watery eyes, before crawling into the bed alongside Lucy. The two girls talked for a few minutes longer, before eventually falling asleep.

***

A battered and beaten thug staggered down an alley, leaving a trail of Synth-blood behind him. Every step was pain, his body swaying as he leaned heavily on the wall just to stop himself from toppling over and each movement was accompanied by an agonised groan or a pathetic whimper.

When he wasn’t letting out pained grunts, he was muttering to himself. Cursing the freaks of the world, swearing revenge for what happened to him and already planning what he would do when he got it.

"What a loathe-some thing. He will make a perfect puppet." A voice echoed throughout the alley, even more than it should. It was otherworldly in its tone, and sounded like multiple people... no such a voice could definitely not belong to something called a person. Multiple things layered their voices together, speaking those words in sync.

The beaten thug raised his gun in his trembling hand at the shadow in his peripheral vision and didn’t hesitate to fire. This time the glorious bangs echoed out, ringing out one after the other as he blasted the shadowy source of the voice until the gun clicked when he pulled the trigger.

Yet the shadow still moved forwards, revealing itself to be a young man in a simple hoodie. Twelve holes had been punctured through that hoodie, where each bullet had torn through, yet not a single drop of blood dripped from the young mans torso.

"He thinks that his flesh is weak, so he turns himself into a wretched man of cold iron. The foolishness of a miserable mortal. We know the strength that flesh can have, with the right influence. We can give him strength. We can give him flesh."

The inhuman voice echoed from the young man, who had deep bags underneath his miserable and dead eyes. He looked like a tired corpse that had been dragged from its eternal rest. Worst of all, his mouth didn’t move in the slightest when the voice spoke, yet it still somehow came from him.

"Yes Master..." The young man muttered, his mouth moving this time, his voice rough and exhausted. Yet despite his demeanour, he moved with inhuman speed.

In a blink of an eye the Thug was once again being slammed against a wall. The young man held him up with a single hand, his fingers curled and pierced through the flesh of the Thug as he was held up by his broken rib-cage.

Then, the fingers started to burrow deeper.

The Thugs body convulsed under the strangers grasp, as the implants he had spent hundreds of thousands on started to pull themselves from his body. What would have been his death hours ago, had turned into a living hell he could not escape from.

When the metal fell from his body, new flesh wriggled into existence, spreading from the strangers fingers like a plague invading his body, which no longer belonged to him. It belonged to the Master.