VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne

The Duke quickly moved over to the coffin and opened its lid, revealing the rather plush and comfortable looking interior. It was lined with a delicate, expensive looking cloth that contained some plump stuffing.

For the final resting place of the eternal slumber, it had been crafted with comfort in mind, despite the obvious fact that the intended customer would never actually get to feel how comfortable it was. But it sure did make the people looking at it feel better about certain things, and made the seller a lot of extra money.

Breaking up this heaven of deathly comfort was a circular stone slab roughly the size of a dinner plate that had been embedded into the back of the coffin, around chest level. Whoever had placed it there had even carved out the coffins normal comfortable stuffing to jam it in there, so it didn’t create too much of a lump.

This stone slab was covered in an incredibly intricate runic circle. It was the most complicated one that Belladonna had ever seen. It was easily ten times more complex than the ritual circle she had used to summon Beans, with hundreds more Runes and Glyphs carved into it with the utmost care and attention.

All of the carvings seemed to have the pattern of swirling inwards towards, or protecting outwards from depending on how you looked at it, a carved recess in the middle. The recess looked like it was designed to hold something roughly the size of a marble, but was currently empty.

At this level of craft, carving even a millimetre too deep or too shallow could seriously mess up the spell. It must have taken months to craft just this simple stone slab. If you could dare call such a thing simple.

As he showed off what he had prepared, the Duke was eagerly explaining the process of what it had taken to prepare it, all the time and effort he had put in and how he had even achieved it in the first place. All while praising Belladonna, as the Madam Emissary, for guiding his hand in creating this masterpiece and making sure to repeat that everything was created to her specifications.

However Belladonna did not hear any of these words, as her thundering heart beat was the only sound that filled her ears, and such a sound was deafening.

Her eyes were locked onto the carving, as she felt it connect with something deep inside of her. So deep that she did not know it existed, and yet she had felt its effects a few times before.

Deep inside her, the prison containing something truly ancient, cracked open just a little more as Belladonna felt herself being pulled towards the carving. All the while, a voice whispered in her mind.

The whispers were quiet and subtle, yet she could still hear them over the sounds of her thundering heart. This whispering voice was not the one she was used to. The voice of her feral [Blood Frenzy] was wild and aggressive, like a rabid animal that had been chained up and poked with a sharp stick until it attacked anything near it.

That voice demanded power, it needed it, and it cared of nothing else. However this voice was gentle, almost maternal in its tone. It whispered honeyed words and was seemingly trying to advise her instead of force her. It was as if she was listening to a doting grandmother telling her fairy tales that were meant to teach her lessons, but she couldn’t figure out what those lessons were.

Yet she found herself relaxing, losing herself to the stories and the gentle words, until her consciousness slipped away.

However Belladonna did not fall to the ground as her consciousness left. Instead she straightened up more, took a step forwards, and manifested her crystal nib pen into her hand with a simple flick of her wrist.

Stepping towards the coffin, Belladonna bent over and, with the utmost confidence in her work, started to carve into the stone slab. The Duke wanted to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. Instead he watched on with a mixture of fear, curiosity and anxiety as Belladonna changed what he had spent so much time, money and effort on.

With hands as steady as a surgeon, Belladonna edited the slab. Adding lines to the foundational geometric circle, adding new runes here and there and even removing some with a wave of her pen as if she was just erasing notes from paper before replacing them with her own runes.

After completing her changes, a process that took little more than a minute compared to the months it had taken to initially create the slab, Belladonna stood and turned to face the Duke.

He let out a sharp gasp as he finally saw her face once again. The colour had been banished from her eyes. The inky blackness of her sclera had been forced outwards, spreading completely across the top half of her face, cutting off half way down the nose and above the cheeks, as if it was a shadow being cast by a hood. However there was still a few droplets trickling down her cheeks, leaving trails of oily blackness.

The red of her iris’ was no where to be seen, leaving her eyes completely pale white as if she was blind, which only stood out more against the blackness that covered the entire top half of her face.

"You had some errors in your carving. I have corrected them." ’Belladonna’ said matter-of-factly, as if fixing a carving she had never seen before, with skills that she did not possess, was little more than child’s-play.

Her tone still held hints of arrogance while also being kinder and more gentle, as she knew for a fact that she was superior but simply did not feel the need to flaunt it. Her posture became more naturally regal and noble, like that of queen’s who had ruled for decades.

In the corner, the maid who had seen through her previous act, stiffened slightly and bowed her head, not daring to look the new version of the Emissary in the eyes. Previously the maid had thought that the one she had met in the bedroom was the true self, while the one that had shown before the Duke was simply a public persona.

But now... she wasn’t exactly sure which was the true self, nor was she sure that she was worthy of finding out.

"Now," ’Belladonna’ continued, moving around the coffin with such elegant steps she seemed to glide across the ground, "You may continue with the ritual, properly this time. Once I give you the final ingredient that is."