It's time for a bit of tough love.
[https://i.imgur.com/pUJ6jxJ.gif]
CHAPTER 9: FUCK YOU
[ NARRATOR ]
The question hung in the sudden silence, its malevolent intonation shocking not only the undead lord, but the semi-orc and her elven mother as well. It was hard to reconcile this vitriolic tone with the merry, if odd, girl they had been conversing with mere moments before.
Now, as if made of actual porcelain, Victoria’s dollish features looked almost too still as she stared, unblinking, at the deathly pallid man standing across the table from her. Her eyes themselves showed ghastly changes. The pulsing carnelian red that always ringed her irises had bled to their cores, where her pupils had narrowed to vertical, ophidian slits, and they gleamed with the shadowed, flickering light of dying embers.
The face-off lasted for several long, enduring seconds until an undignified snort from the albino dhampir broke the chilling tension, followed by a short discordant peal of laughter.
Victoria’s tight mouth stretched into an overly wide grin, and not only her fangs, but all her pearly white teeth appeared slightly sharpened in the dancing light of the firefly-like orb hovering above the table. In one oddly fluid motion, she coiled her legs under herself, sprung off her seat and set foot atop the table with feline grace. Eyes fixated on her target, she stalked across at a measured pace, her bare soles barely making a sound on the ancient oak wood.
Dusk Lord could not help taking a step back. Somehow, the figure of this small woman advancing on him was more disquieting than anything he had ever encountered, for her bloodied gaze held an emptiness which he instinctively feared without being able to define or comprehend it. Indeed, no sane human could quite conceive being looked at by one of their kind with such utter disregard, with the kind of contempt and scorn normally reserved to ants, flies, and other worthless vermin.
With each step of the girl, the boundless darkness enshrouding the room seemed to deepen. One by one, the lights shining over other unoccupied tables went out, as the Library itself focused a portion of its cyclopean intent on the group’s location. In its seat next to the semi-orc player, a dog puppet animated by an old draconic soul shrunk down, hair standing on end and teeth nervously bared, highly uncomfortable at the faint touch of the antediluvian, foreign and incommensurably vast consciousness that dwelled within these ancestral walls bloated with eldritch power.
The interminable shelves looming overhead still glowed; however, their bright yellow radiance was slowly dimming to a faint, ominous, hell-spawned ochre. By their creaking and groaning, one could imagine them leaning down to eavesdrop and worry they might collapse, leaving anyone too slow in escaping buried under their colossal weight.
Victoria’s actions had led her to stand a foot taller than the wary vampiric guildmaster. Hands folded behind her back, she leant down, bending her spine in a smooth, unnatural arc and bringing their faces at eye-level and invasively too close to each other. Her unbound chest swayed enticingly inside her loose summer dress; but in stark contrast with his usual brazenly prurient behaviour, Dusk Lord’s gaze never wandered away from her unblinking stare and her aberrantly fixed and chilling grin.
Silence returned with a vengeance. The vast dark room seemed to expand. The obscurity gained further in substance and became increasingly inscrutable and hostile. Without the other scattered lit-up tables, theirs morphed into a solitary isle of light threatened by the suffocating darkness and surrounded by interminable pillars of ochre. In the distance, there seemed to echo the whispers of a thousand hushed voices, interspersed spastically with the broken laughter of a little girl.
Cold sweats flowed down the backs of the vampire, the elf and the semi-orc, even as electric shivers crept the other way up. The draconic spectre let out a discrete whine and curled up, tail between its legs.
Eventually, from either excess discomfort or pride, Dusk Lord found his voice once more—somewhat. “Wha-What are you staring… at?” His attempt at haughtiness unfortunately died in a stutter.
Instead of answering, the dhampir leant even closer and, barely moving her lips, hissed a sibilant whisper. “I asked… what did you say?”
“Wha-What—”
*grip* Victoria’s arm whipped through their air, faster than anyone could expect. Her white fingers closed like an angry talon on the vampire’s face; her nails, freakishly elongated and blackened with streaks of carmine, dug into his cheeks. Her so-far eerily frozen traits were distorted in baleful, quavering rage. “I asked, what did you just say, you insipid waste of breathing space?” The muscles of her hand constricted. Beads of blood trickled to Dusk Lord’s chiselled jaw—his own.
He opened his mouth, tried to say something, but she cut him off. “No. Don’t answer. In fact, I heard you the first time.” She took a shuddering breath and, as if to contain herself, clamped her teeth aggressively on the forefinger of her free left hand. Red streamed down her wrist. She frowned and moved her hand away. She flexed her bloodied fingers and sighed.
“Listen here, dullface. I don’t mind that you turn your vapid— I supposed you’d call them ‘charms’ on me. It’s an eyesore, sure, but I get it. Lechers’ gonna lecher. And I do have this rocking bod.” Suddenly playful, she ran a slow hand over her side, from her supple breast to her smooth hip, smearing gore that her enchanted dress greedily sucked in. “I’d lust after myself too if I were you. Looking is free. Honestly, it’d be a shame not to.” She paused, her teasing smirk fading. “…But. You start insulting my g– friend? In front of me? I don’t care she can crush both me and you like bugs under her boot; when I’m through with you, you filthy boorish maggot, there won’t be enough left to fill the space between her sole and the fuckin’ floor!” Her face jumped forwards, now frankly brushing his. Her eyes, freakishly wide and unblinking, filled his entire sight. “Capisce?” She leant back.
“You bitc—” *Slap!* Victoria’s right hand introduced its palm to his cheek in a fast swipe, leaving behind a stinging imprint and four short claw marks.
“I’m not finished.” Her voice thrummed with ancestral authority, and Dusk Lord’s vampiric gene snapped his jaw shut and petrified his muscles without him even realising it. “You ask what I’m staring at?” She poked Dusk’s luxurious shirt with her bloodied left finger, smearing red over the expensive silk.
“I’m staring at an opprobrious dipshit who made his avatar look like the gross crossbred between a cheap gigolo and the obscene wet fantasy of a salacious, lonely and severely brain-damaged teenage minx. That you even dare to call anyone ugly simply astonishes me. You want to speak of beauty? Do you have the skill and patience to beat a motherfucking elder dragon with a defensive class? Because that’s freaking beautiful. Could you escort a criminally idiotic weakling through a dangerous landscape teeming with abominations trying to eat you, and not be an arrogant prick about it? Because that’s freaking beautiful.”
He opened his mouth again, only to be stopped by a returning backhand.
“NO!! Shut up! Would you have the righteousness to help an irritating airhead to honour a debt you decided on your own wasn’t repaid because you’re that much of a motherfucking champion? Because that’s. Freaking. Beautiful!!” Her clenched fist collided with his nose. “FUCK!! You piss me off! Go find a plastic surgeon that’ll Photoshop your fucking ugly soul. Cause it’s in dire need of fixing.”
Twisting a hand in his collar, she pulled the stunned vampire closer before he could recover from her punch. Her left hand tapped his chest ponderously, dragging more blood over his white shirt. She leant closer again, their faces again almost colliding. He could feel her breath on his face. It smelled of blood. She spoke in a voice too low for anyone but the both of them to hear. “Fuck off now, or I’ll cut you to ribbons and wear your intestines as a fucking scarf.” In her empty eyes, something flickered—something that almost looked like eagerness for him to resist.
“Err, Vicky?” At that moment, a raucous voice spoke up hesitantly. “What are you—”
Ears twitching, the pale girl straightened and looked over her shoulder with a smile—a genuine smile this time, though no less unsettling with her snake-like glowing red eyes. She raised a delicate finger asking for patience. “Shush, love, I’m explaining life to this dipshit.”
The broken eye-contact finally allowed Dusk Lord out of his stupor. Fury was quick to replace it. “You bitch!! Do you know WHO I AM?!”
Smile melting, Victoria turned back around to eye him with absolute contempt and tensed irritation. “I don’t care. …Do you know who I am?”
“…No?” The Vampire Lord blinked, once more caught off balance by the retort.
“Good. Let’s make this a learning experience.” Her smile returned, jeering.
Anger creased Dusk’s feature. His eyes twitched. His fingers formed claws as if he couldn’t wait to tear into the insolent girl. “You— You—”
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“Seriously, are you someone important?” She looked to be having far too much fun now. “Should I know yo—”
He finally snapped. “You little SLUT!! I will show you who I am! I will make you beg for my forgiveness!” His eyes glowed red. “Kneel before your Lord!” His voice came out charged with arcane power. The command crashed against Victoria like a mighty wave surging against a breakwater.
And, like a wave against a breakwater, it shattered harmlessly.
“……” After a brief awkward pause which saw nothing happening, the dhampir’s eyebrow raised another notch. “Yeah… How about ‘no’ and ‘fuck you’?” She scratched one of her fangs. “Also, didn’t I tell you to fuck off?”
“…Eh?” Dusk Lord blinked stupidly—again.
“Wrong answer.” Not leaving him any time to gather his thoughts, Victoria reached for his chest. A wisp of blue-red mana topped left index finger. With it, she flicked the bloody rune she’d been drawing on his shirt while Dusk Lord was distracted.
The gory glyph lit up then burst with a deafening roar.
*WOOFFF**crack* The explosion blasted the vampire lord away like a ragdoll almost too fast for the eye to see. He stayed airborne for several seconds before slamming into a bookshelf—hard. *BAM*
Books fell off from the impact, raining down around him. Some hit him painfully even as he slid limply to the floor. One particularly heavy tome dropped right onto his head, filling his sight with stars. Groggy, Dusk blinked, but he was already rapidly regaining his bearings. He wasn’t that weak, after all. He’d been caught off guard, but he wasn’t seriously injured.
Seeing a mass of white hair approach through the blurry filter still covering his sight, he flicked his wrist in the girl’s direction. Blood streamed out from enchanted spatial storages hidden within his clothes, coalesced into lethal shards and darted at his target, the powers of Dusk’s special race allowing him to bypass incantation altogether for blood-related magic.
As his vision cleared, he watched in disbelief ruby red crystals similar to his own appear faster than casting should permit—not that he’d heard any spell. The opposing shards crashed in mid-air, shattering to bits. Movement caught Dusk’s eyes, and he hurriedly ducked. With a sharp noise, a massive shard embedded itself in the shelf behind him, through the space his head had occupied just a heartbeat ago.
But he didn’t have time to process his near-death experience, because the blood chunk suddenly turned liquid above him, splashing down on his head. Blinded once more, he could feel the viscous, lukewarm fluid flow unevenly over his face. Panic seized him when some of it crawled underneath his eyelids as if of its own volition and forcefully invaded his eye cavities. It enclosed his eyeballs and started weakly pulling—not enough to gouge them out, but nerve-wracking in teasing the possibility.
The horrified scream creeping up his throat was however silenced when a shockingly powerful sideways blow that smashed his jaw. *crack* Dusk was thrown back to the floor, his mouth radiating with pain and filled with the taste of blood.
“Aw, shit. I think I broke my foot.”
The deceptively calm voice of the pale monster in girl skin reached his ears. “Bit’ssh!!” he tried to shout, while shaken down to his bones and spitting gore and bits of teeth. “You’ll refret thissh! Mysh juild will huntsh you! We’ll killsh you backrsh to lefffel one! You antr your kreen whore!”
“Aw, you really shouldn’t have said that.” The coldness in the terrifying voice registered with him just as the blood in his left eye socket hardened. With suddenness, but nevertheless ever-so-slowly and deliberately, he felt the globe being twisted, pulled and dragged out. He wanted to scream, but the horror was too overwhelming. His eyeball passed the chokehold of its orbit with an audible pop. Then the alien sensation of his optic nerve being pulled taut assaulted Dusk’s upset mind. When it snapped and recoiled, the pain finally caught up.
“GRAAAAAAH!!” Dusk shrieked, gripping his face and taking blind swipes at his tormentor. “YOU FFFUSKING WHORE!! I’LL FUCRING KILL YOU!!”
“Oh, shut up.”
Suddenly, a truly indescribable, atrocious, ungodly agony exploded in his crotch! His body seized and petrified, except for his remaining eye. It nearly bulged out of its socket, helped along by the pulsing blood filling the gaps. Through the waves of pain, part of him was distantly aware of the large needle impaling his privates. The needle rummaged in his groin, and the front of a boot pressed aggressively against it as well. Dusk’s gargling squeal at that moment rivalled that of a slaughtered pig.
A thin hand clasped over his mouth, and a warm breath caressed his pointed left ear. A nearly inaudible whisper, flat and emotionless filtered in. “You asked me what I was looking at. The answer’s nothing. I have no feeling about you one way or the other. You’re like… like a piece of chewed gum or a used Band-Aid. You’re just a thing to remove.”
A sickening series of wet cracks echoed, twisting flesh and snapping bones. Then a violent punch jerked his face to the left. Another followed. Then another. And another. And another. The series ended eventually, leaving him gasping and bruising. Silence fell again, Dusk lord too stunned and hurting to speak. Only a faint breathless panting could be heard.
“You know what? I take that back.” The hated voice came out louder this time. The needle heel twisted cruelly in his balls, eliciting an emasculated whimper from the vampire. “To me you’re more… like a bloody turd shat by a dying hyena atop a pile of steaming garbage that even flies would spurn. You are the smelly, maggot-swarmed corpse of a five-day-old road-killed skunk festering in the sun. You are radioactive sewage refuse washed on the shore of a polluted stream that even Greenpeace wouldn’t care to clean up. Something rotten and offensive to the senses. You are the mould growing from piss on the underside of a public urinal.”
The uppercut sent his head careening backwards. “The sight of you makes me want to gouge my eyes out so that I won’t have to watch for another second your pasty, vainglorious, dull male bimbo sex doll face smirking so vapidly it’s a wonder whether you ever have thoughts that aren’t about yourself.” Another punch rocked Dusks senses. “The fact you are a grown man who preens proudly, sincerely, from looking like the phoney wet dream of a pubescent girl waiting for her cheap, bland, Hollywood-branded, surgically-crafted prince charming is the single most sad, pitiful and humiliating thing I’ve ever witnessed in my entire fucking life!”
A vicious grip wrapped around his hair, pulling back and down, and bending his neck to force him to look up. The liquid blood around his right eye streamed out, the sensation revolting on a level he couldn’t describe. Vision returned, blurred this time by tears. He found himself staring into bloodshot, evil, glowing red eyes and bared rows of shark-like fangs framed by a sea of wild white hair.
“I must ask,” said the girlish voice that reverberated with a deeper, distorted echo. “Do you enjoy looking so pathetic? How do you find the will to wake up in the morning? Why don’t you kill yourself? In fact, please do. You would spare the rest of us who aren’t narcissistic, plastic cut-outs jerking off to our own image and who cannot stand sleazy, male, whinny bitches like YOU begging for the attention of others so that you can continue existing in a world that doesn’t want anything to do with you or even gives a crap about you beyond perverted fetish material!” Each sentence was punctuated by shoving the vampire’s head into the hard shelf behind.
As she spoke, Victoria’s formerly dull tone rose increasingly with heat, rage and hysteria. “Ugly? UGLY?! I’LL SHOW YOU UGLY, YOU WORTHLESS DIRTBAG!! Because you’re a shallow son of a bitch with shit tastes! Your tastes are shit. Your brain is shit. Your whole existence is SHIT!! And if you don’t apologise to Thena right fucking NOW, then these little flesh wounds?” Her crystallised blood boot dug mercilessly in the mess of blood and meat that used to be something recognisable between Dusk’s legs. “These will feel like a lover’s caresses in comparison to what I will do to you then, you moronic little shit. I will make you regret the day you shit-man dared crawl out of whatever haemorrhoidal sphincter you came from!”
Her foot slammed into the gory mess between the vampire’s thighs. “ACKRRR!!” Dusk Lord could do nothing but choke on his own blood while his pain-addled mind struggled even to comprehend the words was spat at him by the crazed dhampir.
“I TOLD YOU TO APOLOGISE! NOT SCREAM LIKE A LITTLE BITCH!!” With just a mental command, a thick spike of crystallised blood drove itself into the man’s stomach. He screamed. She shouted louder. “APOLOGISE!!” The crystallised blood erupted outwards in countless spikes. “WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING WAITING FOR?!” Fragile, the spikes shattered against bones and sometimes even muscle tissue, the shrapnel shredding Dusk Lord’s insides into bloody mush. “APOLOGISE!!” She drew her good hand back, the one that hadn’t been shredded by her own explosive rune and was now held together only by the blood gauntlet she’d wrapped around it.
She was about to drive that good hand into the beaten bastard’s broken nose, when a larger, stronger hand closed around her small wrist—in fact engulfing nearly her entire forearm. Snarling, she jerked her head back, only to meet stormy golden eyes.
“Vicky, stop.”
“LET ME GO!! THIS ASSHOLE HAS NO RIGHT TO INSULT YOU!!”
“Vicky. He’s dead.”
Victoria’s carmine eyes blinked, rage faintly dissipating, blood seeming to drain from her sclera. She turned around and witnessed the slumped, still body of the vampire lord, not even twitching. She blinked again. Her gaze returned to the looming, worriedly frowning semi-orc. In just a few breaths, Victoria’s appearance was back to that of a beautiful doll-like girl, her monstrous features nowhere to be seen. A frightened realisation replaced the madness in her eyes.
She looked into her friend’s troubled gaze. “Thena, I—ugh!”
A sharp stabbing pain tore through her lower back.
Stunned, she saw the tip of a jet-black katana emerge from her torso. Feeling faint, she threw up a mouthful of blood—her own—and slowly cranked her neck around. From the corner of her sight, she followed the long pitch black sword down to the hand of the man she’d just killed, who was staring back at her with a crazed, sadistic grin and a mad victorious glint in his eyes.
Then the glint fainted, and he faceplanted ungracefully to the messy, bloody floor. The katana dissipated into black smoke, leaving a gaping, haemorrhaging hole in Victoria’s chest.
She only had the time to meet Athena’s horrified eyes one last time, before she too collapsed to the floor.
*tutu*
☠ You have died. ☠
As the light faded, a final cry reached her ears.
“VICKYYY!!”
…shit…
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< MAIN POV >
I blink blearily in the dim light that suffuses the inside of my gaming pod. Shivers run over my entire body. I feel feverish. Heaving a sigh, eyes shut tight, I hit my head against the padded cushion under it. With jerky movements, I press the release button and wait for the coffin-like device to open before crawling out of it. As if in a dream, I struggle to my bed and creep under the covers.
After some time, a slight creak makes me peek towards the door. The black furry head of McLeon pokes in, his one remaining eye gleaming in the faint light coming from the pod. The feline mastodon appears to survey the room in a typically cat-like lording fashion, before stalking over to the bed and jumping on it with a grace surprising for such a large animal. Without a sound, it walks to the head of the bed and plops down next to me.
I slowly reach out, hug his large body, and bury my face in his thick fur. With no one to see but an aloof cat, I let the tears roll freely and shake with silent sobs.
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