Petals Shorn, A Rose Lost to The Twilight Veil

Nevermore

"We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind." Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence.

Bold: Important note to the story

Italic: Important message to a specific character or event

"Message" Inhuman Speech

"Message" Speech

'Message' Thought's

|Boom!| Noise/sound effect

Yall may have noticed that there's already been a lot of characters having specific plots and reactions to events.

There won't be a single character from the series that will get neglected. Every single one is majorly important to the story in one way or another.

This chapter alone will likely have 5 or more different character POV's, some of them are allies to Ruby, others are opposition to her goals.

-----------------------------------------------

"Ruby..........................Ruby's a vampire now Tai." With that statement, Tai grew pale and started to hyperventilate.

"What?" He croaked out quietly.

Tai's entire body was deathly pale from those words, his skin clammy and covered in sweat, his breathing fast and erratic. He remembered some of the times he had fought against vampires, and how deadly those mere moments of fighting had been.

They moved so fast that even for a huntsman it was hard to keep up, their blows felt like he was being hit by a speeding freight train. Vampires were pure monsters who preyed on any humans they found to be their fancy, or heavens forbid, found you worthy of becoming one of them.

Ruby's new behavior had not been unnoticed by both Yang and himself. Ruby's always been slightly anti-social before due to her somewhat nerdy nature, but this kind of anti-social nature was far too similar to someone who had something very dark to hide.

That kind of thing was something Ruby would've never been good at, just like her mother, Ruby wore her heart on her sleeve, until now it seems....

"Qrow, how did you find out?" Tai asked quietly while trying to hold onto his fraying nerves and psyche.

"Oz told me something had happened to her, so I went looking for her and found her in the town past the woods." Qrow gritted out with a heavy tone from behind his hands.

"She........she found a boy slightly older than her sitting in the park........and she attacked him viciously! The poor bastard had been screaming for help before Ruby covered his mouth with her hand, and then ripped her vampiric teeth into him while draining him of his blood." Qrow shuddered and nearly felt the food still left in his stomach come back up.

Lifting his face from his hands, Qrow looked his brother in law straight in his eyes.

"Ruby enjoyed it......she enjoyed drinking his blood and bathing in the boy's fear........the Ruby we knew might be gone Tai..........taken from us by who she is now." Qrow shook again before slamming his fist down upon the kitchen counter in anger and misery.

Flashes went through his mind at the days following the mission Summer went on, and the subsequent consequences of what the village had done by misreporting the threat level of their situation.

Villages had to pay fees according to the threat level of what their situation is, effectively it was a bounty system, so some villages who have harder times earning revenue trick hunters on the threat level of their request.