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Espial LONG summary
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BUG UNIVERSE EPIC

Hello, I wanted to make a document “summarizing” the most important parts of this story so that I don’t have to keep explaining it very poorly off the top of my head to anyone who asks. (Thank you for asking, by the way!)

And then I got a LITTLE BIT too detailed and now it’s 36 pages but OH WELL.

The “Bug Universe” consists of a few main stories:

All of these stories take place in the same world. I also call it the Espial Universe sometimes since that’s the biggest story and the first one I started developing, so I associate it with the universe as a whole.

WORLDBUILDING

GENERAL SETTING

Have you ever played Hollow Knight? It’s like that but w

The world of the Bug Universe is, quite obviously, inhabited by humanoid bugs. There are no humans and there never were humans, bug people are just the standard.They don’t really have any special traits or abilities that come from being bug people, they are functionally the same as humans.I just like drawing bug people more, so I made them bugs. has it become painfully obvious that i love hollow knight and i started making this story right after i played hk first time

Animals and plants are kind of up in the air for the moment, but they are different from earth’s animals and plants. I haven’t put a lot of thought into developing it, but there is unique wildlife and greenery. Non-humanoid insects are still a thing. Also I really want to develop different types of food/meals, that would be fun. Anyway,

The world itself is kind of in Ye Olden Times. Any type of technology that’s powered by electricity is out, so no phones or computers or electric lights or anything like that. Also, no cars, but there ARE trains and trolleys. Probably not a lot of them are functional, but they do exist. “How are there trolleys if there’s no electricity” shut up hoollow knight had trolleys so i can too

As for “groupings of places where people live”, villages and towns are most common, but cities do exist. Usually, the cities are very small. There are many empty ghost villages/towns/cities, but there are ALSO a lot of small thriving communities that manage to keep themselves afloat. There are lots and lots of places to travel, lots of people to meet (though maybe not all of them are friendly), and lots of sights to see, they’re just far apart and take a lot of wandering to find. The world is not entirely dead, it’s alive if you just look for it. There’s no type of national government/law enforcement, and no types of national currency. That type of thing is unique and varies between any individual community. Most people usually settle for trading supplies if they can’t agree on what type of currency to use.

There’s lots of abandoned buildings to take shelter in or to try and loot for supplies. You can wander a while without meeting anyone, but depending on where you are there’s a decent chance you’ll come across another living soul—Another wanderer, a shopkeeper, a bandit, etc.

It is much more likely, though, that you’ll come across a……..non-living soul. Did I mention it’s the zombie apocalypse?

THE INFECTION

Known by many names, such as The Infection, Cordyceps, Mycelium, or Whatever The Hell Else You Wanna Call It Because There’s No Government To Give It An Official Name, this is THE MOST widespread threat in the Bug Universe. It has fractured the world basically everywhere and caused the dissolution of society as we’d know it.

Where did it come from? Absolutely no clue. I did not develop that part yet. It started out infecting small animals/wildlife and then managed to move up to infecting people. Absolutely nobody knew how to deal with it and it quickly spread and

HOW DOES IT WORK?

There are two types of infection, Direct Infection (the worst one) and Exposure Infection. I will explain Direct Infection first.

DIRECT INFECTION

The Infection is spread through wounds, usually scratches inflicted by a fully infected individual. Wounds/scratches must break the skin and draw blood in order to infect. It is very possible for a zombie to wound someone so severely that they die of blood loss/other complications before getting fully infected, and in that case no zombification happens. They just die.

After an individual is scratched, there is a period of “incubation” time before they’re fully zombified. This period of time can range anywhere from 1 hour – 2 weeks, depending on many factors such as:

(The incubation period is usually around a day or 2, an hour is considered extremely short and 2 weeks is considered extremely long.)

For longer incubation periods (anything over 2 days), the individual will begin to experience symptoms such as:

  1. Lapses in memory and/or memory loss
  2. Loss of fine motor control that gradually gets worse over time
  3. Derealization and general confusion/brain fog
  4. Individuals will have “dazes” where they .I'm sorry I don't know how to explain this in a professional sounding way Basically it’s like flashbacks/dreams they experience where they find themselves in a past memory, living it out again as if they are really there. Usually these dazes end when they realize that something is a bit off and they remember where they’re supposed to be in the present day, or someone finds them in real life and shakes them awake. Either way, once they snap out of it and wake up they usually find themselves just…standing, mimicking whatever gesture/interaction they were last having in the daze. It is hard for them to remember what they were “dreaming” about when they wake up, but there are usually residual emotions/feelings leftover. Also upon waking up they might get a “sleep paralysis” thing where they just can’t move for a while even though they’re out of the daze. Dazes get more frequent and last longer as time passes.
  5. ……..Pain……

Once the incubation period is over the individual will become fully infected/zombified.

EXPOSURE INFECTION

As you can likely guess by the name, this is a form of infection only acquired if you’re exposed to zombies frequently but never actually scratched. If you’re in close proximity to an infected individual for an extended period of time, this is what you get.

It’s basically all of the symptoms present during the incubation period of Direct Infection, but they never lead to you being fully zombified. Just those symptoms, getting gradually worse the longer you’re in direct exposure to a zombie.  

Individuals with Exposure Infection do not ever develop growths or fully become mindless, and cannot spread the infection to other people. This form of infection is curable.

ZOMBIES/HUSKS/WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL THEM

Zombies are basically mindless husks whose only goal is to infect more people. They are not capable of forming coherent speech or understanding speech, but they may repeatedly utter whatever their last words were before being fully infected.

The individual will develop fungal growths that are beige in color. These growths most prominently sprout from whatever scratch infected the individual, but can also grow from any pre-existing scars or wounds. And, of course, they will develop claw-like growths over their fingers that can be used to scratch and infect others. These growths become more larger/unruly the longer the zombie “lives”, including the claws. After a pretty long time, new growths may form in places that aren’t even scarred, bursting through their skin or growing through their eyes/mouth.

Zombies don’t need to eat/drink. Physically, they are permanently stuck at whatever age they were infected, and they can’t die of old age in the same way that a living person would. It is possible, however, for them to exist so long that the growths become so terribly unruly and start breaking down so much of their body that they can no longer move. After a zombie is immobilized for a long time they become dormant, thus “dying”.

IT IS POSSIBLE TO TEMPORARILY SNAP A FULLY INFECTED PERSON OUT OF IT. This is very difficult, though. It requires reminding them very strongly of something very important to them, such as a person they really cared about, a treasured memory, or a really strong core value they had when they were alive. This will only snap them out of it for a couple of seconds, maybe a minute at most, and then they will return to being a mindless husk. This gets less effective and more difficult to achieve the longer someone has been infected, and at some point it just becomes impossible. Also, it’s more effective on people whose incubation times were really short (a couple of hours), and it will barely work on someone with a longer incubation time (a week or something) who already spent all of their willpower fighting it off for that time.

Uh what else is there about zombies.Um

Shorter/smaller/weaker zombies are typically more violent and aggressive, and may actively try to kill people instead of just infecting them. Taller/larger/stronger zombies are more placid on the other hand, and will only try to inflict one or two scratches on people.

This is because if a small/weak zombie were too placid/meek, then it would just get pushed aside and killed instead of infecting people (ineffective for spreading infection), and if a big strong zombie were overly aggressive it would end up killing more people instead of infecting people (ineffective for spreading infection). so the infection evolved to compensate in the opposite direction for each one to be more effective in spreading.

Also, you can technically catch a third type of infection that’s like Direct Infection but minus the physical part (no growths/claws/wounding) if you frequently eat the flesh of infected individuals but like. w. why the hell would you do that

CURE

None. There is no cure for an individual who has been scratched. Once they get scratched, they’re living on borrowed time, and once they’re fully infected, they’re gone. Direct Infection is incurable, this is a rule for the Bug Universe and it cannot be broken

The CLOSEST thing to “cures” for Direct Infection are:

  1. Making an enchanted necklace you can wear that prevents you from getting infected upon being scratched. This CANNOT cure or stop the progression of someone who was already infected, and it requires very powerful obscure magic that all of two people understand how to do.
  2. Taking a fully infected mindless husk, and restoring their intelligence/memories with magic. Do you know what this does? It doesn’t restore the husk’s personality or soul or anything that makes them them, it just gives you a really smart zombie (who has no goal but to infect people) that now understands emotional manipulation and has the context of memories to work off of. That is a terrible idea. Don’t do that.

For an individual with Exposure Infection, if they just……………stop being around whatever infected person they’re getting it from, then it will go away over time. How long it takes to go away will vary, but it usually takes a couple of years for the symptoms to completely disappear. I consider this a win in comparison to Direct Infection.

Okay I think that’s all on The Infection. wait no. Oas

OAS INFECTION

help. Okay Oas can also infect people but it works slightly differently. “Who is Oas,” you ask? Don’t worry about it this will make sense if you read Espial Story Summary Section

Oas infects people through wounds/scratches as well, however there’s not really an incubation period. It takes like, 5 minutes for it to fully set in, maybe you can fight it off for an hour if you’re really determined.

She can also “infect” inanimate objects, hence why her main vessel is a fountain statue, though she can’t really control them/move them around. It’s more like she’s just using them as a holder for herself.

There are a couple more interesting abilities/characteristics that arise from Oas being a unique sentient strain of the infection

Most obviously, people/things infected by Oas have orange growths instead of the usual beige ones, and the growths always appear in the same pattern; sharp tendrils* that grow from the upper left part of the vessel’s face.

*Tendril is the wrong word but it’s the only thing coming to mind.

Speaking of Tendrils, Oas can also form actual tendrils to grab things and/or use as weapons, but she usually doesn’t do that unless she really has to.

Oas can also hide the growths and choose when to show them. She can give her vessel claws like normal zombies have, but typically refrains because she Does Not Like Claws.

Also sometimes little orange mushrooms grow from the vessels but that usually only happens if she’s infecting them for a long time. People infected by Oas may or may not physically age slower, I haven’t really decided yet.

Oas also causes Exposure Infection in people, and it pretty much* has the same symptoms, but she can purposefully choose whether or not to inflict it on people. She can cause it in like, 30 minutes if she specifically tries to.

*By “pretty much” i mean the person afflicted with the Exposure Infection may also start hallucinating things and/or flashing back to things from oas’s memories. Oas does not know that this happens.

People infected by Oas tend to be very warm, almost like they have a fever. They also experience some level of pain, but that varies depending on whether she’s directly controlling them or just . Damn hold on i have to explain that too

PASSIVE CONTROL

Oas has the ability to infect multiple people at once, but can only fully control one at a time/can only have her consciousness in one place at a time. If they’re not being directly controlled by her, they’re put into a sort of trance-ish state. Their emotions and personalities are subdued, their state of mind is hazy and they may have a Bit Of Memory Loss. they’re influenced by Oas somewhat, but they’re not being actually controlled by her in any way.

This type of infection causes growths that are less pronounced/sharp looking, and they usually grow over the vessel’s face instead of Bursting Out Of Their Fucking Skin. The growths will not have Oas’s signature eye present, it will usually just have an      orange version of the person’s usual eye.

It also causes constant mild/dull headaches.

Oas can choose to switch her consciousness to any person who is Passively Infected and start Actively controlling them instead, or she can just actively control them right off the bat.

ACTIVE CONTROL

This is what happens to a vessel that Oas is DIRECTLY controlling. Well first of all if she chooses to show the horrible orange growths then they will burst through the vessel’s skin. This causes Significant Blood Loss.

The process of being controlled by Oas is Very Painful. In addition to the “OUUOGHH OUU OH THE ENTIRE LEFT SIDE OF MY FACE IS   FUNGUS GROWTHS OUCH THIS IS CAUSING Significant Blood Loss, ” which already hurts pretty bad, it also causes pain throughout the vessel’s entire body.

The vessel is usually fully conscious and lucid while being controlled, they are just unable to move or speak. It feels a lot like sleep paralysis. Yes I make 90% of my “getting controlled” things feel like sleep paralysis because I get sleep paralysis often and I’m projecting because it is really funny.

it IS possible to regain control for a very short amount of time if they make a very sudden and strong jolting movement, but this takes INCREDIBLE amounts of effort and most likely will not last very long. For like, 2 seconds probably.

On the off chance that they do regain control for a longer amount of time (probably 30 seconds to a minute), Oas will have reduced awareness and will not be able to move or talk while they are back in control. She is also likely to be a little bit pissed off afterwards.

It’s not possible for the vessel and Oas to both be controlling the body at once and fighting against each other, nor is it possible for Oas and the vessel to talk to each other during the time that she is infecting them. They’re probably able to gauge each other’s general emotional states, but they can’t hear each other’s thoughts or anything like that. (I bend this rule for shitposts because its funny)

Oas’s infection is “curable”, AKA it’s not permanent. She just has to choose to let them go and then they’ll be cured. However, if it was Active Control and they had The Growths Bursting Through Their Skin, they will obviously be left with significant facial scarring and they will probably end up being blind in their left eye. If they had any antennae/appendages on their head in the area of the growths, they will probably be left without that as well.

What else is there to say. U,m. hr,m. Not sure, I think that is everything.  

STORIES

This contains spoilers, obviously, so if you don’t want to be spoiled for the animated series/comic/written project i’m gonna possibly make in like 500 years then d

ESPIAL

ESPIAL: PERENNIAL

Main Characters:

Summary:

There is a woman named Beby. She used to live with her family (including her little brother Sonny), but left on good terms to travel the world and is now a lone wanderer. She enjoys finding abandoned places and exploring them, keeping extensive research journals (by that i mean she jots down various observations) along the way. Every couple of years she walks all the way back to her childhood home on foot and visits Sonny to give him some souvenirs before going back out again.

Anyway, eventually she finds her way to a Mysterious Abandoned Ghost Town while she’s traveling. This mysterious abandoned ghost town has a trail leading to an abandoned church. She’s very intrigued by this and decides to camp in the big old building for a while. The old church has old books in it, so she decides to read them, but they’re all written in an ancient glyph language that she knows nothing about. Being the curious and incredibly categorization-inclined woman she is, she decides to start ardently studying the glyph language. She doesn’t really expect to understand anything by the end of it, but she finds the process interesting.

She particularly enjoys studying in a back room of the church, one with a nice fountain.

She devotes so much time to this (reading the glyphs, copying the glyphs, trying to find patterns in the glyphs) that she starts dreaming about doing it. And, when she starts dreaming about doing it, she becomes lucid. Turns out that writing the glyphs in a dream causes some Slightly Strange effects, because they are actually Magic Language and accessing them in a dream activates them. In a dream she manages to heal a small bruise/cut she got (by ramming open the gates with her shoulder) while sleeping, and then wakes up to realize that her wound is actually gone in real life too.

Cue her entertaining herself by learning magic through hours of trial and error.

Meanwhile in The Heavenly Plane or whatever though, A Dream God named Deatais manages to detect that there’s a mortal using magic. He decides to make it his duty to check up on this strange lady, attempting to do so by visiting her in a dream.

It does not work. She’s lucid in all of her dreams now and immediately gets startled awake anytime he barely approaches her. He has to figure out a different strategy, and settles on temporarily turning himself mortal to go see her in person.

Shenanigans ensue. Upon turning himself mortal for The First Time ever, he immediately loses all of his memories, fumbles around in the forest, and injures himself. He does manage to make it to Beby in the church though, knocking on the door to see her (even if he doesn’t actually remember why).

Beby answers and sees the strange injured man, immediately taking him in to patch him up. (she does not have a good instinct for self preservation, but this works out because Deatais is nice). She actually heals him a little bit with some very basic healing magic she figured out.

They spend a lot of time together while Deatais is recovering. Maybe they fall in love a little bit except neither of them really know that because they’re both oblivious. Deatais also starts revealing that He Also Has Magic And Can’t Remember Why, and his is different from Beby’s (stronger, more intuitive for him to use).

Eventually Deatais is fully recovered from  his injuries (but still doesn’t remember he is A God). He decides to part ways with Beby to leave the church and go…somewhere (he does not know where), but they both agree that they enjoyed each other’s company. Deatais leaves and Beby goes back to journaling on her own.

…

except after deatais leaves he realizes he accidentally forgot to return something from beby (accidentally kept one of her journals that she was showing him, something like that) and he’s like “Ah wait I gotta return that,” so cue him walking back for a few hours.

Meanwhile at the church Beby accidentally falls asleep in the fountain room studying. She is woken up by Weird Sounds in another room and , when she goes to look , there is A Bandit stealing stuff from her bag. She’s like “Hey that’s mine” and then the bandit immediately retaliates by fighting her with a knife.

Deatais returns in time to see Beby being attacked and he IMMEDAITELY goes to defend her from The Bandit. Small scuffle ensues, Bandit tries to attack Deatais but gets grabbed by the arm. Deatais goes Angry Super God Mode With The Scary Glowing Eyes and, immediately forgetting any sense of restraint, starts petrifying the guy alive.

(He can petrify things.)

Beby sees this and goes “HEY Hey okay that’s kind of overkill you don’t have to do THAT”, which snaps Deatais out of it a little bit. He releases the bandit (who escapes with Just his forearm turned to stone, immediately runs away of course) and Beby tries to help calm him down.

Once he is sufficiently calm, he remembers that he is A God and he’s like “Ohhh that’s why I have magic and stuff, i forgot.”

At this point they maybe slightly realize that they’re in love just a little bit and decide to stick together from then on.

[End of season here, post season events that happen offscreen are as follows]

So they spend a long time together, years, wherein Beby teaches Deatais about the world, and Deatais helps Beby learn much stronger magic. They are basically equals. Also they’re in an established relationship now.

They debate for a second about who’s taking whose last name, but Beby doesn’t know her last name(???) and Deatais doesn’t have a last name, so Beby just takes the last 3 letters of Deatais’s FIRST name and makes that her LAST name. Hence, Beby Dea.

They decide they want kids, eventually, and have twin children who are also half-gods and very adept with magic. They have a good life together.

Her kids grow up and fall in love with whoever mortals, having More Part-God grandbabies, The Part-God grandbabies grow up and fall in love and BLAH BLAH BLAH the descendant line continues down with each new generation being a little more mortal than the last. They tend to keep the last name “Dea” though, because who wouldn’t want their last name to indicate the fact that they are related to God?

Meanwhile Beby has reached old age (she looks middle aged because of The Magic but she’s like. at least 100 years old probably) and she would like to die peacefully and Symbolically live on through peoples’ memories/her contributions to the world/her descendants instead of being actually immortal. Deatais is like “What do I do with your body after your die, do i like bury you or scatter your ashes or. Uh. What” and Beby is like “I really dont have any opinions on this, i’m fine with anything and i trust your judgement. do something interesting” (???????????)

Deatais respects her wishes and brings her back to the fountain room one last time to pass away peacefully. Once she dies, he takes her body and turns it into a statue on top of the fountain [petrification skills], blessing it to run eternally to preserve her memory.

Deatais, heartbroken at the death of his wife, goes back up to the heavens. He is resolute never to interfere with mortal affairs again because it just left him really really sad.

The end!

ESPIAL: FORGOTTEN

Main Characters:

Summary:

150 - 200(???) years after Beby’s death and Deatais’s retreat, their great-great-great-great-grandkids are born. They are named Vernon and Mayer, and they are almost completely mortal. They don’t even know they’re descendants of Gods, that information got lost somewhere along the way while they were trying to survive in the zombie apocalypse. They are, however, pretty okay metalworkers, because that skill got thrown into the descendant line somewhere.

Vernon and Mayer never had the time to hone their magic abilities. Their parents…died in an unspecified manner… so they’re just a pair of brothers trying to survive on their own. One day, when they’re around 15 and 11 (respectively), they encounter a zombie in an abandoned house they were trying to loot. They try to run away, but they get cornered, and they don’t know how to escape. They are about to die.

Vernon tries to hold the door shut but the zombie bursts in anyway which causes Vernon to get slammed against the wall and pass out.

Deatais detects this from all the way up in heaven, and realizes he cannot let Vernon and Mayer die because 1. they are innocent children and 2. that goes against Beby’s wish of living on through her descendants. So he contacts Vernon while he’s unconscious and makes an offer to help by possessing him temporarily and killing the zombie for him.

Vernon says Yeah Okay, because What Does He Have To Lose?

So Deatais possesses Vernon, gets up, super duper fucking kamehameha murders the zombie with a giant overkill beam attack (not actually a beam attack i just thought that was funny), then leaves. Mayer is very shocked, having no clue about Deatais, but commends Vernon on his amazing magic. Vernon passes out wordlessly from expending so much energy.

Mayer takes care of Vernon, who is really tired for the next few days. He wakes up to eat and drink and then falls asleep for the rest of the day. While he’s asleep Deatais contacts him occasionally to explain “Hello you are my descendant also I am God isn’t that cool?” and “My wife is fucking dead, i’m rreally sad about it”

At some point early on, Vernon is like “man i bet this is just a weird fever dream and i’m actually dying and my brother is getting killed by a zombie. there is No way i’m talking to a god.” In reaction to this, Deatais asks to see Vernon’s hand, to which Vernon reluctantly obliges. Deatais burns a teardrop-shaped marking/scar into his right palm, and says “when you wake up that will still be there so you know this is real”

(it is still there when he wakes up. In fact, he has it for the rest of his life)

Once Vernon recovers he has a way better grasp on his magic than he did before. He’s not as strong as Deatais, obviously, but he has a few new abilities. He mostly uses thermokinesis (he can make things really warm/hot) to light campfires and he can make his hands/eyes glow which helps them see on dark nights. It also entertains Mayer greatly.

They grow up and do a pretty decent job surviving. Vernon is really good at magic, Mayer has learned some too. They’re young adults now, and Mayer meets this nice woman named Cora. They Kiss Kiss fall in Love and start traveling together. A few years pass and Vernon uses his metalworking skills to make wedding rings for the couple. He takes up the hobby of making jewelry also.

Eventually Mayer and Cora want to have kids, so they try to find a decent abandoned house to live in. They find this cozy small-ish stone house in the forest and decide on that one. They make it their own and settle down there.

One day Vernon leaves To Go Get Some Supplies Really Quick and Mayer is like “okay” and then Vernonjustfucking disappears and then a year later comes back with A baby daughter (he names her Lesday). Upon being asked about this (“WHY DID YOU DISAPPEAR FOR A YEAR I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!??? YOU SAID YOU WERE GONNA GET SUPPLIES”) he does not elaborate very much (“I Got Distracted, Sorry”)

Another year later Mayer and Cora’s first child, a girl named Oas, is born.

Family Life is going Pretty Well, a couple of peaceful years pass. Oas and Lesday are close like sisters. Cora and Mayer have another child, a son named Bozwell. They call him Bozzy for short.

More peaceful years pass, Bozzy is around four years old now, Oas is ten and Lesday is eleven. Vernon teaches Lesday basic magic/metalworking and shows her how to make necklaces. Cora has a lullaby about the stars that she sings to her kids every night. All is going well. It’s time to gather some food or supplies or something, Mayer and Cora go out while Vernon stays home and watches the kids. I’m sure disaster will not strike.

…

Obviously disaster strikes. Cora accidentally slips up and gets scratched right on the chest by a zombie while she’s out. They hurry home, Mayer panicking out of his mind. He slams open the front door and helps Cora inside.

The next few days are spent trying to figure out how to cure Cora. She actually does a really good job fighting off the infection and remaining very lucid, which is uncommon. She still chooses to stay in a small room at the back of the house, though, so she’s far away from the others when she’s inevitably Zombified. Mayer assures her that he’ll find a cure. She knows that’s impossible. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that, but she knows.

When she realizes she’s probably gonna be gone very soon, she decides to have one last moment with the kids. She invites them into the room and hugs them and talks with them as if nothing is wrong. They’re crying. She is also crying. None of them acknowledge it. They stay together so long that they end up falling asleep in the room. Vernon and Mayer have to move the kids into their bedrooms while they’re sleeping. Also, he disallows Bozzy and Oas from going too far outside ever because he’s fuckibg traumatized and doesn’t want them to get infected as well.

One Tragic Day, Mayer and Vernon open Cora’s door to visit her and she is in fact a zombie. She lunges at them to try and scratch them, but Vernon quickly knocks her out with his magic. (By knocks her out i mean he like. puts his hand on her face and she passes out instantly)

Mayer is fucking Devastated that. help why is this summary so long it’s not even done yet.

Mayer is fucking Devastated that he failed to cure her in time. Absolutely devastated. Vernon (the reasonable one) says that they need to put her out of her misery now so she can rest peacefully, but Mayer cannot accept that at all. He swears he can still find a cure for her, he just needs more time.

Vernon supposes it’s worth a shot but they obviously can’t just have Zombie Wife wandering around in the house , this isn’t Resident Evil, so he….uses his metalworking skills to make a fucking shackle/chain for her. Just one around her ankle so that she can’t lunge and attack anyone. Mayer very much hates to see her like this, but he hates the idea of her being permanently dead and his kids growing up without a mother even more.

He works tirelessly, using his magic to try and restore Cora’s intelligence/memories/etc and cure her. He gets Exposure Infection from being around Cora so often. He does not interact with his kids nearly as much as he should, but he does always try to say goodnight/good morning to them. Vernon is also the one going out to gather supplies now since Mayer is too busy (scared). He is also helping Mayer come up with a magic cure at the same time.

A few years pass, and Vernon comes up with a big breakthrough. He figures out how to make Magic Enchanted Necklaces that can PREVENT you from getting infected if you’re wearing it. Vernon is very happy with this. Mayer is not, because it’s not a cure for Cora. Vernon only makes one necklace because they’re pretty difficult and taxing to make, giving it to his daughter (she’s a teen now). Oas and Bozzy don’t need them because they don’t ever leave and thus aren’t at risk of being infected. (WRONG)

One day Bozzy and Oas are stargazing on the porch (they do that often). Bozzy decides to step a couple feet outside of their front yard to get something, to which Oas protests because they’re not allowed to go further than the yard. Bozzy brushes her off and goes anyway. He picks a pretty orange flower (it takes all of 5 seconds), then rushes back and brings it back to Oas. She appreciates the gift, keeping it with her to wear it on her head sometimes for as long as it stays unwilted.

Mayer has been trying to cure Cora for 7 or 8 years now and has hit a bit of a wall. He has restored Cora’s intelligence and her memories but. y’know. she’s just a really Smart Zombie now, she isn’t Cora, so she keeps trying to manipulate him into coming close enough to infect by pulling at his heartstrings. He resists.

 Also, Mayer’s Exposure Infection Symptoms are getting REALLY bad and disrupting his life constantly. also he’s just generally really depressed and tired all the time. Vernon doesn’t want to help come up with a cure anymore but he doesn’t want to abandon his brother either.  

Vernon goes to sleep one night and Deatais contacts him through his dream.

Deatais says “Hey I know how hard it is to have your wife fucking die but please tell your brother to stop…doing whatever he’s doing. It’s not good. It’s not gonna end up well. This will end in tragedy.”

Vernon says “Ahhh okay” and goes to tell Mayer. He brushes Vernon off by saying that dreams don’t mean anything (in extreme denial) and says he’ll keep trying to cure Cora until he succeeds. Deatais temporarily possesses Vernon again to try and convince Mayer to stop and does a bunch of Dramatic Theatrics like putting out all the candles in the room at once so the entire room is dark and you can only see his glowing eyes and Mayer’s just like “Vernon Stop Trying To Intimidate Me With your Magic It Won’t Work”. [he still does not know about Deatais]

Anyway After a bit of an argument where Vernon fails to convince his brother to put Cora out of her MISERY and move on and raise his kids like he should have been doing this entire time, Vernon makes the decision to just leave. He takes Lesday and moves away because he knows this will end up badly and he does not want to see his own daughter get hurt. He doesn’t want Bozzy or Oas to get hurt either of course but those are Mayer’s kids he obviously can’t move away with them. Lesday gives a tearful goodbye to Oas and Bozzy before she goes. They are devastated because they were all very close and they’re not sure if she’s gonna come visit.

[Suicidal ideation TW for this next paragraph i think]

Mayer is also devastated, and it is The Straw That Breaks the camel’s back. He finally gives in to Cora’s manipulation and [after a particularly bad sleepwalking daze thing that leaves him very emotional] hugs her, barely even in denial that it’ll get him killed. He cries and says how sorry he is for not being able to save her, and how sorry he is for not spending enough time with his kids and how sorry he is for basically everything. Cora hugs him back tightly and then digs her claws into him With Both Hands and puts HUGE gashes in his back. Mayer immediately realizes that this was a terrible idea because he still has children to live for and regrets it instantly. He stumbles away and falls on the ground, futilely attempting to resist getting infected.

About an hour or two passes. Oas and Bozzy have been in the living room the entire time, completely unaware of anything going on at all. Oas decides to go check on her dad because she’s worried. She knocks on the door to her dad’s study and gets no response, which makes her even more worried. She goes in (she’s not supposed to do that without permission but she’s very worried), sees her dad bleeding on the floor, and runs up to check on him without thinking. Alas, he is A Zombie and he immediately turns and scratches her on the left eye.

She tries to run away and immediately falls backward, being very disoriented from the uh. getting scratched by a zombie.

[Suicide/self sacrifice TW for this next paragraph]

Mayer brandishes his claws and is about to scratch her AGAIN, but he looks at her for a second and lowers his hand, snapping out of it. Shaking as though it takes every ounce of his willpower to move, he uses his brief moment of lucidity to put his claws up to his neck and slit his own throat. I swear, this part is more drawn out and dramatic than I just wrote it to sound.

Before he thuds on the ground he tries to give Oas a look that means “I’m sorry,” but she doesn’t really understand because she’s TURNING INTO DAMN ZOMBIE ALREADY and no longer recognizes that Mayer is her dad. She stares at his dead body on the floor for a while.

after an hour or so she—fully zombified—gets up and goes to infect the last person in the house, Bozzy. he has been sitting in the living room crying because he knows something terrible is happening but is too petrified with fear to actually check. Extremely Very Infected Oas walks up to him and his concerns are instantly confirmed. He tries to run away and corners himself like a dumbass because he’s 12 years old and he’s panicking.

Oas raises one of her claws (Like Zombie Father Like Zombie Daughter!) and is ABOUT to scratch Bozzy when he says something like:
“No! Oas! Can you hear me? I’m your brother! Please don’t hurt me!”

This snaps her out of it because she does, in fact, care about Bozzy a whole lot. She stumbles back a little bit, starts shaking, touches her wounds, and immediately passes out.

(did i mention oas is . not good with the sight of blood. she also passed out for a second when she first saw her mom come home with a giant wound on her chest but now she passes out Longer because of the whole zombie infection thing)

So Oas is just knocked out on the ground now. Deatais hesitantly does his thing again and tries to contact her while she’s unconscious but it doesn’t work like normal because he’s never done this to an infected person before. He can’t actually get through to her and speak with her so he just like. Gives her a magic blessing magic boost thing and hopes that helps somehow.

The Blessing activates Her Epic Dormant Magic Abilities which kick in to save her life in any way that they can, causing her consciousness to merge with the infection itself and then split off into a separate strain of it. This is kind of confusing but she is no longer A Bug, she’s A Sentient Strain Of Infection that is inhabiting her own body, which doesn’t have a consciousness anymore. Also, her growths have turned orange (color of Deatais Related Magic) and she has an “eye” on the growths now (since they were over her left eye).

This process takes 2 days and she’s knocked out the entire time. Bozzy had waited 1 day for her to wake up before he concluded that she was dead and he ran away, taking Oas’s shawl to remember her by.

Oas wakes up with no emotions, no memory of who she is, and no memory of how she came to be, laying on the floor of a stagnant house that smells like death. She gets up and wanders out the door.

The end!

ESPIAL: TRIBUTARIES

Characters:

Summary:

this is just the backstory setup for onward

OHHHH boy i’m losing steam after writing the entire espial:forgotten summary let’s see how fast i can do this one. Okay.

(Note: most times when I say Oas “remembers” something, I don’t mean she actually fully remembers it. I mean she’s subconsciously reminded of it which influences her behavior a bit.)

Oas keeps wandering and wandering, seldom stopping to rest/eat/drink because she doesn’t need to anymore. She just walks for 2 years straight, until she finds this big stone church in a big forest. She’s intrigued (subconsciously it reminds her of her childhood home because they’re both stone buildings in the forest) and goes to the back door to enter. The gates in the back are broken so she can just walk right in.

The first room she sees has a lovely fountain with a very realistic statue of a woman on top. (It’s not a statue, it's Beby’s resting place. Oas does not know this). She explores the different rooms, finds old prayer books, reads a couple, and thinks “Oh. I want to be a saint. I want to be like the holy people they show in these books.” She tells herself it’s because having a group of people who trust her and pray to her would be an immense aid to her survival but subconsciously she just wants to have some sort of family again.

She decides to abandon her vessel in favor of the nice fountain statue lady. She leaves her old body and takes up residence in the statue, keeping her original body in a small back room because she’s still a bit sentimental about leaving it. It’s entirely dormant but doesn’t rot because of magic so it’s just sitting in there.

A few people do wander in over time and she convinces them to stick around. She offers safety and community and shelter, on the condition that they STAY. Some people do think that sounds a bit nicer than dying in the wilderness so they accept. She starts calling this place The Compound.

She has them start saying prayers to/for her, as well. Does she know what purpose prayers are supposed to serve? Absolutely not, but she saw it in the books so she figures it’s something you’re supposed to do. Baby’s First Cult!

hold on i forgot what happens next [checks my notes] Oh yeah

Hey, remember Lesday and Vernon? They’re still alive. They have also been wandering this entire time, and they’ve coincidentally wandered into the same area as The Compound. Lesday (who is in her mid 20s now i think) is extremely sick though. She is on the verge of dying and she can barely walk. Vernon is desperately trying to find a place where they can rest for the night. He sees The Compound (thinking it’s just an abandoned church ) and thinks “huh okay it’s worth a shot”

He enters through the back door (everyone enters through the back door because, once again, the back gates are broken so anyone can just walk in) and sees The Extremely Ominous Infected Fountain Statue that is Oas. He tries to leave immediately without catching her attention (The Statue is facing away so she can’t see him) but she has already detected his presence.

Oas asks, “Who are you?”

Vernon refuses to answer because he is obviously wary of The Tall Infected Fountain Woman. Lesday, lacking any self awareness or self preservation instincts because she’s so out of it from being Deathly Sick, simply says “You sound familiar” upon hearing Oas’s voice.

Oas (attempting to ignore what Lesday said) offers to help heal/take care of her if she and Vernon join The Compound. Vernon refuses and tries to run away, but Oas does not want them to leave (A. because she’s aware that they’re powerful magic users who could either be a great asset or a great threat,  and B. because she subconsciously does NOT want them to leave her again like when they moved out years ago) and summons tendrils to grab Lesday with before they can get out the door.

Oas is now holding Lesday hostage, threatening to slit her throat with A Very Sharp Tendril if Vernon leaves. [is she bluffing? Who knows!] She tells him to take off his enchanted necklace [he managed to make one for himself after moving out] and let her infect him. Vernon briefly wonders how the hell she knew his necklace was enchanted to prevent infection but he listens because he doesn’t want to risk Lesday getting hurt. She also takes off Lesday’s necklace and infects her. HURRAY!

Oas keeps them in the back room with her old body. They are in quite the daze constantly from being infected so they just don’t question it. Oh no i have to go back and write details about oas infection in the infection section DAMNIT WHY DO I HAVE SO MUCH CONTEXT FOR THIS STORY

Anyway, they’re part of The Compound now. Oas treats them relatively nicely by her standards (she goes out of her way to bring them mostly anything they ask for, like books to read or interesting things to decorate jewelry with) but they’re NOT allowed to come out of the room at daytime. They can only come out at night when everyone is sleeping and nobody can see them. Of course, they’re very unhappy like this but Oas doesn’t really get that. She has them make the enchanted necklaces for every other member of The Compound so that they’re safe from being infected as well. It becomes part of the rules that you have to be wearing the necklaces constantly. When the members ask “where did you get magic enchanted necklaces that prevent us from being infected” she just Does Not Answer

A couple of years pass and two more people wander into The Compound, a tarantula named Cecil and his spider wife Betsy. Cecil and Betsy have spent a majority of their lives nearly dying in the apocalypse, but they now want to settle down in the safest place they can because Betsy is about to have a child. Oas gladly takes them in, and they’re very grateful for it.

They become very devoted to Oas/The Compound and take on a leaderly role, so Oas decides to officially make them the Head Disciples. They get a personal bedroom and special cloaks that have HOODS so they look COOL. Their daughter is born, they name her Dallin and raise her in The Compound. They do not allow her to go outside because they are just a bit traumatized by nearly dying 500 times and they don’t want the same to happen to her.

Also if you see  me accidentally type “Dallon” and use he/him pronouns it’s because i just recently changed the character’s gender and i’m going through replacing it in this doc

3 years later, somewhere nearby, this fella named Northen is wandering about. He has a young son named Rowan, and a Pregante™ wife named Alena. Alas, she dies shortly after their second son Olen is born. Northen and Rowan are sad of course, yada yada yada, but he obviously tries his best to take care of his new child. Can you tell i didn’t develop this part a lot because it’s only important for like 1 episode

2 months into raising Olen, some shenanigans happen. Northen’s looking for some place to take shelter for a while. He finds a house that he thinks is abandoned, and tells Rowan to wait outside while he checks it out.

It’s not abandoned and the person inside does not take kindly to him. They immediately stab him in the fucking stomach (even though he is Holding A Baby in a sling on his back) and he runs outside bleeding profusely, telling Rowan to run the hell away as fast as he can. Rowan reluctantly does so, leaving Northen and Olen behind.

(Rowan eventually finds Bozzy after a couple of years  and befriends him but that’s. not really relevant ever)

Northen wanders around, clinging to his baby and slowly bleeding out. He finds The Compound and enters, hoping someone inside can help and/or take care of Olen if he dies, but he just finds Oas. She offers to help patch him up if he joins them, but he knows he’s already too injured to be saved. He’s not fond of the idea that he has to leave his son’s life in the hands (tendrils) of an infected statue he randomly just met, but he has no other options.

He attempts to intimidate Oas by saying something about how “The Stars And The Cosmos See Your Every Misdeed So If You Let My Son Get Hurt Then More Than Just The Guilt Will Come Back For You” (he’s bluffing) and then he dies holding Olen in his arms.

Oas is a little shaken by this, not because it actually intimidated her but because it reminded her of the childhood lullaby about the stars Cora sang when she was young. Baby Olen starts crying, and it even further reminds her of when Bozzy was first born, so she finds herself actually showing some genuine emotion when she picks him up (with tendrils) and gently rocks him to sleep. She hums him the lullaby (she doesn’t remember the words or where it came from, but she remembers the melody) to calm him down. After he falls asleep, she learns his name is Olen because it’s embroidered on his blanket/swaddle. She also checks Northen’s bags and finds a knife (one with a Wharncliffe style blade), which she decides to keep.

She gets Lesday and Vernon to clean up Northen’s corpse, then hands Olen off to Betsy and Cecil, saying that “a baby was left on the doorstep and he needs someone to take care of him.” They accept and gladly raise Olen as their own. 3 year old Dallin gets used to her new baby brother fairly quickly.

Betsy and Cecil don’t mind Olen’s baby blanket and try to keep it, but they eventually lose track of it when Oas takes it and stores it in the back room with Lesday and Vernon. [i guess the back room is just “Weird Sentimental Stuff Oas Doesn’t Wanna Deal With”]

A lot more people join The Compound over the years, also.

A WHOLE DAMN SECTION JUST FOR AYESHA’S BACKSTORY BECAUSE I CAN’T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE TO PUT IT

Summary:

Ayesha is a little kid surviving in the apocalypse all on her own. She lives in a big city that’s almost ENTIRELY abandoned, which is good for her because she likes to be alone and she likes looting empty buildings. she also likes collecting flowers and pressing them in books.

One day as a child, she’s looting a dilapidated house, but she’s caught off guard when someone ELSE enters. She immediately turns and points her weapon at the stranger, only to see he’s a young moth boy, just a bit younger than her. He’s very clearly not a threat, but Ayesha still doesn’t lower her weapon for the whole time he’s introducing himself. His name is Danice, he’s glad to see another living soul in this city. He reaches his hand out for a handshake and Ayesha does not take it, but somehow they become very close friends after this.

Danice and Ayesha leave the abandoned city and spend the years together traveling. They go anywhere they can, visit any place they find. They walk, they travel by carriage, they take old barely functional trolleys (HOLLOW KNIGHT REFERENCw) and end up in tons of weird random villages/cities/towns/places of nature. They both live to travel, and they end up very far from the city where they both started.

This all goes wrong when, after nearly a decade of traveling together, Danice is badly injured. Very badly injured. They’ve gotten into scraps before, but nothing as bad as this, Ohhh No!. Ayesha tries desperately to patch him up, but she does not succeed. Danice dies and she blames herself for not being able to save him. (Yes this part is very vague because i literally have not figured out how Danice got so grievously injured in the first place)

She’d keep traveling but it’s just not the same without someone to travel with. She buries Danice’s body and wanders into a nearby forest (Yes she has ended up in the same forest that The Compound is located). She keeps walking for a few days until she finds a little shop/house, with a big ol’ sign that says “AUGUSTINE’S EPIC AND COOL SHOPPE” or something [IT DOES NOT SAY THAT]

She enters in hopes that it’s abandoned and she can stay there for a while, but she opens the door to find A Zombie. She assumes this was the Augustine who used to own the place, and she’d feel a little bad killing her and taking her shop, so she just lures her away into the forest and takes down the sign.

Ayesha tells herself she’ll just stay there for a little while before she starts traveling the world again. In the meantime, she decides to reopen the shop and become a shopkeep just so she has something to do. “A Little While” becomes “A Couple Months” becomes “A Couple Years”.

She still occasionally leaves, collecting flowers and gathering supplies to sell [some of which are from A Mysterious Abandoned Ghost Town Nearby], but she’s very unhappy. She really wants to start traveling again but she can’t bring herself to. She puts an effort into gathering medical supplies and researching healing techniques.

ESPIAL: ONWARD

Main Characters:

Minor Characters:

Summary:

Dallin and Olen are very close growing up. Olen is a lot more outgoing and upbeat, Dallin is calm and somewhat timid. Anytime Oas catches a glimpse of their interactions she’s reminded of Bozzy and herself when they were young, some distant memory in the back of her head, but she tries to ignore it.

One day Olen, about 4 or 5 years old, goes over to Oas and just starts having a conversation with her. Oas is a little bit surprised by the way he just casually goes up and talks to her (members don’t approach/talk to her unless it’s very important, and even then they’ll be very concise and formal), but she’s okay with it. She enjoys the conversation and it reminds her of Bozzy but she ignores that

He does this every so often. Eventually in one conversation, he asks her where he came from, because he has noticed that his parents and his sister are spiders while he’s an ant. Oas doesn’t want to traumatize him by saying “your father wandered in here bleeding profusely and died in front of my very eyes so we adopted you”. She just says he was left on the doorstep. This still traumatizes him because now he thinks he was unwanted by his birth family. He becomes slightly bitter towards the outside world, and feels much safer being raised in The Compound.

Olen grows up viewing other members as family, connecting with the other young members easily and forming friendships frequently. Dallin , on the other hand, is alienated a bit by the other kids. They’re wary/afraid to interact with her, because they see her as the esteemed daughter of the two well respected Head Disciples. Dallin basically never makes any friends or real connections aside from her parents and Olen, because everyone is too afraid to approach her.

Olen and Dallin both kind of get jealous of each other, Olen wishing that people respected him like they do Dallin , and Dallin wishing that people treated her as a regular kid like Olen is treated. Neither of them ever bring this up though. They’re still very close.

Dallin and Olen spend a lot of their time stargazing and talking together on the balcony. Dallin is up there almost every night. Everytime they go to bed they try to say “goodnight” at the same time and accidentally interrupt each other, so they come up with a rule where Dallin always says goodnight first and then Olen can always say good morning first. They continue doing this into adulthood.

Also another habit Dallin has that I SWEAR i put here but I guess I didn’t. Dallin enjoys music and rhythm but doesn’t have access to any instruments, so she ends up just humming to herself and tapping rhythms on things.

Dallin , one night, can’t fall asleep. She stays up and wanders the halls in the middle of the night. In doing this, though, she accidentally encounters Lesday, who was also wandering because she thought everyone else was already sleeping.

They stare at each other, both very shocked, before Lesday runs off back to her secret room. Dallin doesn’t follow. As she grows up she half thinks she just imagined the whole interaction.

One day, when they’re about 9 and 12 years old respectively, Olen tries to get Dallin to sneak outside with him in the middle of the night [OR AFTERNOON I HAVENT DECIDED]. Dallin is hesitant at first but thinks it would actually be kind of fun. They sneak to the front doors, and Olen goes out first. Dallin is about to follow, but Cecil walks up and catches her. He scolds Dallin , not seeing Olen because he’s already outside.

Olen peeks back in to see Dallin being walked back to her room by their dad. Olen misinterprets this, thinking that Cecil only cared enough to stop Dallin from going out because it was dangerous and would be fine with Olen leaving. This makes him mad (he is 9 years old and does not realize that Cecil just didn’t see him) so he storms off and explores the forest alone.

He wanders around until he finds a nice orange flower, which reminds him of Oas. He picks it and brings it back to show her. Oas is initially going to scold him for leaving without permission as well, but she suddenly remembers that one night Bozzy did basically this exact thing. Instead she just accepts the gift and tells Olen he can be the official outdoorsman of The Compound when he’s older.

They do these things called the Communal Dinners every so often (monthly? bi-monthly? Yearly? i don’t know) where they all gather around a big dinner table and eat together. They make special food with various ingredients foraged from the forest instead of just from their garden like usual. The members are only allowed to participate in this upon turning 12, which is also when they receive their masks.

(Did I mention all of the members of The Compound wear white wooden masks and brown cloaks along with the enchanted necklaces? The masks are hand carved by the Head Disciples with Oas’s supervision. The cloaks don’t have any backstory for now. I just thought they were cool.)

Anyway, when Dallin turns 12 and is allowed to go to her first Communal Dinner, she’s initially pretty excited. Her dad gives her a newly carved mask and leads her to the dinner table. They all say a prayer to Oas in …perfect unison, which actually is very ominous and slightly frightening to young Dallin . The rest of the dinner is utterly silent and feels very cold to her. She accepts that this is just what it’s supposed to be like even if it doesn’t feel very communal at all.

When Olen turns 12 and is allowed to go to his first Communal Dinner, he’s initially excited as well. Dallin is the one who leads the prayers now, in preparation for becoming the next Head Disciple. Like usual, the dinner is very quiet. Olen thinks it’s boring and leaves, taking a plate of cake with him. Dallin tries to stop him and fails entirely because she cannot control a bored 12 year old.

Olen instead goes to Oas’s room and asks if he can eat with her. Oas is silent for a couple of moments, which makes Olen think that she’s mad, but she eventually accepts and has a pleasant conversation with him while he eats cake.

Olen and Dallin grow up (they’re 22 and 25 now), becoming the next Head Disciples in place of Cecil and Betsy, who retire. They get to stay in the special bedroom and wear the special Head Disciple Hooded Cloaks. Olen becomes the resident outdoorsman of The Compound as well, like Oas said he would.

(I Swear I mentioned that two chefs named Hugo and Marie also joined The Compound in this time, but I guess not. Huh. Anyway, three siblings named Ciel, Hugo and Marie joined The Compound. Ciel becomes the resident gardener while Hugo and Marie become the resident chefs.)

It’s time for another Communal Dinner, and it’s Olen’s job to gather the ingredients as the resident outdoorsman.

Dallin is very unhappy all the time because she really, really wants to go outside like Olen gets to instead of being cooped up in this giant stone building all day everyday for her entire life. Olen catches on to this fact, and proposes that they trade jobs for a day and Dallin goes to forage the ingredients.

Dallin thinks this is ridiculous because everyone would notice if she was gone for that long. Olen has a FOOLPROOF plan for this, however. He swaps his mask with Dallin’s mask and then puts up their hoods, and they look virtually the same (minus the 3 inch height difference). If anyone needs to talk he’ll just whisper the responses and say he has a sore throat. Foolproof plan.

Dallin thinks this is very stupid but she’s desperate to go outside for at least a little while so she goes through with it. They swap places and Dallin leaves to gather the ingredients, taking a couple of supplies like Olen’s favorite knife (One with a Wharncliffe blade, it’s Northen’s knife but neither of them know that) for self defense.

Upon stepping out the door leaving The Compound for the Very First Time, Dallin is absolutely in awe of the beautiful nature. Actually being there is a lot more breathtaking, compared to just seeing it from the balcony. It’s a lovely fall day. The leaves are orange and there is a gentle breeze. She wanders around staring at nature for so long that she loses track of time and forgets that she was supposed to be gathering food.

It’s night now. Dallin is staring into a lake in the middle of the forest. It reflects her like a mirror. She takes off her mask and sees in the reflection just how tired and sad she looks. After thinking for a moment about how unhappy she is living in The Compound she also realizes that it’s dark out now and she did not forage anything and also it’s raining oh no

She stumbles about in the rain for a second trying to navigate, and then she hears something rustling in the bushes. She turns around to look and it’s a FUCKING ZOMBIE (the zombie is Augustine from earlier which is kind of irrelevant i just wanted to say that)

She attempts to defend herself with the knife she brought, but she has absolutely no experience with weapons or fighting, so she fails miserably and Augustine scratches her on the shoulder. OUCHIE! The necklace activates and prevents her from being infected but she still has a giant wound on her shoulder so she runs away.

Dallin is lightheaded from seeing this much of her blood outside of her body for the first time ever, and also she did not eat anything before she went out, also she has never done cardio in her life and also she did not have a good sleep that night and she’s on the verge of passing out. She keeps running until she sees a little shop in the middle of the woods.

She approaches the shop and knocks Politely. A lady answers the door and starts saying something but Dallin immediately passes out before she can finish her sentence.

The lady in question is, in fact, Ayesha (she’s 27 now). She is obviously baffled that someone just walked in and passed out on the ground, and she’s a little miffed that she just got the floor wet because she was soaked with rain. She looks a little bit closer though and realizes that Dallin is, in fact, bleeding.

Ayesha immediately starts to patch her up without question. She does not worry about how she got injured or where she came from, she just brings her into the shop and starts cleaning/bandaging her scratch. (Yes this is partially because she’s still very guilty about Danice and now feels a personal responsibility to make up for it by bandaging this random lady she just met. It’s also because she’s nice though)

 She brings her into the back (which isn’t part of the shop, it’s more like her personal room) and lays her by the fireplace so she can warm up. She also sews up the tears in her cloak from being scratched. Dallin wakes up a couple hours later, looks around, and then does a “deer in headlights” sort of look when she realizes she’s waking up in a stranger’s house. O No.

They talk a little. Ayesha is a bit confused as to why this lady who is clearly not experienced with traveling was out in the forest on a rainy night but she refrains from asking about it. She leaves the room for a while to get something. Dallin looks around for a bit and sees a lap harp on the ground. She is very intrigued. She picks it up and immediately improvises a tune on it.

Ayesha comes back (holding some ingredients to make soup with), but she just stands in the doorway as Dallin plays the lap harp. After a minute or two of playing, Dallin notices that she’s back. She fumbles and puts the lap harp back where she found it, apologizing for using it without permission. Ayesha says it’s okay and that Dallin plays it better than she does.

She makes some soup and talks with her more.

Dallin is hesitant for a while because her parents always told her that the outside world is absolutely dangerous and uncaring, but she is happy to be having an actual conversation while eating for once. It feels warm and friendly as opposed to the Communal Dinners that she is used to.

Once she feels recovered enough to walk around again, she remembers that she was supposed to be foraging ingredients. She asks Ayesha for help with this because she has no idea what she’s doing, and Ayesha agrees. They go around gathering different edible plants and blah blah blah maybe they hunt some fish or something idk. Dallin goes to the lake again and sees she looks a lot happier in the reflection.

After they gather a sufficient amount of ingredients, Dallin says she has to go back to her……..house………. or something like that. Ayesha tells her to be safe, and to visit again soon so she can check on her wounds/replace her bandages. Also because she just likes talking with her. Dallin agrees even though she has no idea how she’s gonna manage that because sneaking out was supposed to be a one time thing.

Ayesha goes back to her shop and Dallin finds her way back to The Compound. Olen asks how her foraging went, to which Dallin replies it went…well…neglecting to mention that she got scratched by a zombie and met a shopkeeper. Dallin asks how pretending to be her went, to which Olen replies it was really sad because nobody approached him a single time while he was dressed as Dallin.

Dallin shrugs and says that’s about normal (Nobody ever talks to her ever). Olen realizes his sister may be a little bit lonely. Anyway, they swap their masks back and go to bed for the night in preparation for the Communal Dinner tomorrow.

The next day The Communal Dinner goes as it always does. Dallin almost forgets to start the prayer before they eat but Olen reminds her.

All Dallin is thinking about the entire time she’s eating is how nice and friendly the atmosphere in Ayesha’s house was compared to this. The dinner is over and everyone goes back to whatever they were doing before. Dallin and Olen go to their room and go to sleep.

…

I lied, Dallin does not go to sleep. Once Olen is asleep she decides to sneak out and see Ayesha, once again taking Olen’s knife for self defense.

She approaches the big doors of the church in the middle of the night, walking as quietly as she can, and hesitates staring at the door for a moment. She takes a step forward, about to push the door open, and then she hears a voice from behind her:

“Hey dallin what’s up how’s it going haha why are you awake,” says Betsy. Dallin immediately startles extremely hard and lies very poorly to her mother, saying she was just wandering around and was gonna get a midnight snack or something.  Betsy is like “Ah what a funny coincidence, i just woke up for a drink of water. Come to the kitchen with me.”

They go to the kitchen. Betsy starts prepping a small snack for dallin—a piece of flatbread with jam on it. Betsy starts with some small talk:

“It’s a little boring around here, huh?”

Dallin barely responds, nods lightly. Betsy continues, “It’s really different from how I grew up. It’s funny for me to say this, but I realize now how strange it is that I’d have never met your father if I didn't run from my own home and venture into the world.”

Dallin freezes for a moment.

Betsy starts to get herself a glass of water. “And I’m happy here now, but really, so much time has passed before my eyes. Time flies here. You’re, what, 24 now?”

“25,” Dallin corrects with a quiet laugh.

“That’s what I meant.” She hands the snack to Dallin, and then takes her glass of water. “It’s just interesting to think about.”

Dallin takes the snack, lifts her mask to take a bite. Betsy lifts her own mask to take a sip from the glass, and then says “Well, I’m going to bed.”

“Goodnight, mom,” Dallin replies

Betsy starts to walk away, but briefly turns back—”Oh, sneak out of the window in your room instead, by the way. The big doors are creaky when you open them. Goodnight, love you.”

Betsy leaves.

Dallin pauses for a moment. She heeds the advice.

[i know this is supposed to be a summary with joke-y writing but i LIKE this part]

Anyway, When Dallin gets back to Ayesha, she’s glad to redo the bandages and take care of her wounds. She also starts to open up a little more about where she came from and how she used to be a traveler. Dallin asks why she stopped traveling if she enjoyed it so much, and Ayesha goes quiet.

She goes through one of her drawers and shows a big packet of flower seeds that she bought years and years ago. She says she was gonna plant one at each place she traveled to, but never got around to it before she stopped traveling. Dallin suggests they go plant one right now. So they do.

Dallin continues sneaking out every so often to visit Ayesha, and they both open up about their lives a lot more. Ayesha starts talking about her travels and how maybe . … .  Dallin could be her. .. .  new travel buddy >. .,,. ? ?  Just for a little bit  >.. . . ????

The flower they planted grows over the weeks.

One night, Dallin sneaks out to Ayesha again, and she gets so caught up in conversation that she doesn’t return to The Compound by morning. Olen wakes up and sees that Dallin isn’t there. He’s very freaked out but keeps it down so he doesn’t cause any panic.

He quietly goes to Oas’s room and tells her that Dallin is gone. Oas does not like this one bit. She tells Olen to go out and find her.

Olen tries to get his knife (yet again for self defense) but he can’t find it because Dallin took it. He asks the chefs if he can borrow one of their knives instead, and they hand him an old cleaver with a chip in the blade. He’s not a fan of this but it’s better than nothing.

He goes out and wanders around, trying to find where Dallin could’ve gone. He hears some rustling but runs away like a reasonable person before Augustine can pop out of the bushes and attack him.

[Augustine is noticeably disappointed that she didn’t get to attack.]

Eventually he does find Ayesha’s shop. He’s about to enter and ask whoever’s inside if they’ve seen Dallin (a last resort because he does not like talking to strangers), but he stops and decides to put his ear up to the door instead.

Through the door, he hears what is definitely Dallin’s voice. She’s having a conversation with Ayesha about how she never really trusted Oas and never enjoyed being part of The Compound. Ayesha proposes that she can be her new travel buddy and they can go out to explore together tomorrow. Olen loses his shit and gets very mad overhearing this. Still, he Politely Knocks before entering.

Dallin hides (goes to the back) before Ayesha answers the door. She’s about to give her standard “hello traveler” greeting, but she takes one look at Olen and realizes that the mask/cloak/necklace outfit is the exact same thing that Dallin is wearing.

She panics a little bit and tries to prevent Olen from coming in, which she fails at entirely. Olen looks around the shop and asks if Ayesha has seen Dallin, even though he already knows the answer. Ayesha lies (poorly) and says that she has no idea who he’s talking about.

Olen is very unamused. He ends up just yelling “I KNOW YOU’RE IN HERE DALLIN I HEARD YOU TALKING” which prompts Dallin to come out.

Dallin asks why Olen is here. Olen asks the same thing to Dallin . They decide to go talk outside for a bit. Also, both of them are still holding their knives.

They argue for a while. The argument escalates and turns into a bit of a yelling match. Olen runs up to punch Dallin in the fucking face but he has forgotten that he’s still holding a cleaver, which causes Dallin to panic and slash him in the face with a knife without thinking.

Olen stumbles backward, gripping his face. Dallin thinks “O God Did I Just Severely Injure My Brother O God Oh Fuck”, but Olen puts his hands down to reveal the knife only put a gash in his mask, not his actual face.

Olen is still really sad about this though because he viewed the mask as a thing that unified him with the rest of The Compound.

Dallin says that Olen can come with her and Ayesha, that they can see new places and do new things even if just for a day, because the world outside is really not as bad as everyone in The Compound paints it to be. Olen is too conflicted and emotionally overwhelmed to make a choice right now so he just runs back to The Compound.

On the way back, he comes across the lake, and looks at his damaged mask in the reflection for a while.

By the time he’s back at The Compound it’s night time again. He goes back to the chefs, who ask what happened while he was out, but he just quietly puts the cleaver back on the counter.

He solemnly goes to Oas. She asks what happened to his mask and where Dallin is. Olen describes the whole argument, all the things Dallin said, and says that he thinks they should let Dallin leave because she really isn’t happy here.

Oas is silent for a couple of moments, which makes Olen think that she’s mad, but she eventually tells him to come a bit closer.

He steps closer, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s absolutely wordless as she GRABS HIM AND RIPS OFF HIS FUCKING NECKLACE AND INFECTS HIM

She gets up, now using Olen as a vessel, and goes to find Dallin herself. She goes back to the kitchen and grabs the chipped cleaver again before going out. The chefs are very confused.

On the way there, they come across the lake again. Olen staggers and tries to look at himself in the reflection, but Oas stops him and keeps walking.

Dallin, meanwhile, is still at Ayesha’s place. Ayesha is packing up some bags to go traveling. Dallin is sitting in the shop thinking about the argument very remorsefully, wondering how she could’ve handled it better, and if she should’ve just come back to The Compound afterall. She’s broken out of her thoughts by a knock on the door.

She quickly goes to answer, suspecting that it’s Olen and about to gush about how sorry she is, but she hesitates. She asks who it is just to be sure.

As she expected, Olen’s voice does answer from the other side of the door. He sounds a little bit off though. Dallin gets a bad feeling immediately and asks if he’s okay. “Olen” answers that he’s just tired.

Dallin is very very hesitant to open the door. She can tell something is wrong. They have a pretty long conversation through the door, during which Dallin is very concerned and suspicious, but she’s eventually convinced to open up and let Olen in.

Olen looks very off as well. There’s something different about the way he carries himself. Dallin notices he’s missing his necklace, and she’s about to point it out, but Olen pulls her into a hug before she can. It doesn’t feel like a real hug at all, but Dallin still hugs him back. Olen is also oddly warm for a guy who just walked his whole way through the cold winter forest at night.

Ayesha notices the tension between them and says they should probably just go to bed and keep packing their bags in the morning, putting off exploring for a day or two to rest. They agree. Dallin says goodnight first like always, and Olen responds “you too”.

Dallin wakes the next day to see Olen is already up, looking as though he did not sleep all night, and he is ….staring at her silently… Dallin is slightly put off by this, but she still waits for her brother to say “good morning” like usual. After an uncomfortably long silence where he still says nothing, Dallin decides to just get up and start the day.

They spend the whole day packing bags with supplies to go out exploring/traveling. Dallin tries to reminisce with Olen about the past and look forward to the road ahead, but he’s acting uncharacteristically stoic. Ayesha and Dallin plan their expedition a little more over...another bowl of soup or something like that. They determine that they will definitely go out tomorrow.

Everyone goes to bed for the night, Ayesha falls asleep first. Dallin decides to finally ask Olen why he’s been acting so weird and where exactly his Important Enchanted Necklace went. Olen answers that he “lost it on the way home”, and then quickly says goodnight and lays down. Dallin points out that she’s supposed to say goodnight first but Olen doesn’t respond. Dallin falls asleep.

She’s asleep for a couple of hours until she……wakes up in the middle of the night…to see Olen standing over her with a cleaver. Dallin is groggy and barely processing what’s going on but she manages to roll out of the way barely in time when Olen tries to SWING THE CLEAVER INTO HER FUCKING HEAD. She doesn’t quite fully dodge it, though, and ends up with one of the leg-appendage-thingies on her head chopped off.

Dallin OBVIOUSLY knows something is extremely wrong now, because even if Olen did try to kill her, he would NOT do it with the world’s most blank expression on his face. Dallin grabs her knife to try and defend against her Uncharacteristically Murderous Brother, but still tries not to actually hurt him.

Olen has a whole damn monologue about why he’s trying to kill Dallin, which is basically just “bla bla bla you’re setting a BAD example for the rest of the members. you’re the leader so if you run away they’re all gonna copy you and end up DYING and i DON’T want them to die.”

His speech mannerisms/vocal tone slowly slip into Oas’s speech mannerisms/vocal tone and Dallin realizes that she has, in fact, infected Olen. Dallin’s like “OH THAT’S WHERE YOUR NECKLACE WENT! I KNEW IT” and then Oas walks up to her and rips off her necklace as well.

Ayesha has woken up by this point because of the loud “swinging cleaver into shit/running around trying to dodge cleaver” sounds, and she’s like “WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK IS GOING ON WHY IS HE TRYING TO KILL YOU NOW“

Dallin is a bit too preoccupied with Not Dying to explain coherently, but she doesn’t wanna keep fighting in Ayesha’s shop in case she gets hurt, so she runs into the forest instead, telling Ayesha not to follow. Oas pursues Dallin.

Oas explains her plan to FUCKIING MURDER DALLLIN and then go back to The Compound, still pretending to be Olen, and claim that she was gravely injured outside and couldn’t be saved no matter how hard Olen tried. This will deter the other members from ever wanting to leave ever again, and she won’t have to worry about her 30-or-so years of hard work building up The Compound to keep people safe going to waste because they wanna copy Dallin. Perfect plan.

They have a chase, running throughout the forest until they find A Giant Fucking Cave. They stumble into the cave and keep fighting. Oas decides to finally show her true face, breaking the mask in half before doing the whole thing where the Horrible Orange Tendrils Break Through Half Of Olen’s Fucking Face And Get Blood Everywhere. She also stops putting the effort into maintaining his facial expressions, so the one eye he has left is showing his actual emotions (mostly “horribly agonized”).

They continue fighting [more like Oas continues trying to kill Dallin while she continues dodging without actually attacking because she doesn’t want to hurt Olen] and arguing. Dallin is hallucinating a little bit at this point because Exposure Infection 👍. Oas starts revealing her REAL real reasons as to why she’s trying to kill Dallin, which is basically just:

“It’s dangerous out there. I’ve seen it with my very own eyes, you can lose everything with just a moment of weakness. If you let your guard down for even a second you will get scratched by a zombie and that is a fate worse than death. If it’s not you getting scratched, then it’s someone you love, which is even harder to deal with. The Compound is safe, and if you refuse to stay there then I will kill you myself just to ensure it’s as quick and painless as possible instead of letting you leave and get turned into a wandering husk, or have to watch someone you love get turned into a wandering husk. Do you know how hard it is to kill someone you love to put them out of their suffering? If you can’t win this fight while I’m using your brother as a vessel then you’re not strong enough to survive out there, physically OR emotionally.”

Dallin is basically like “But the whole world outside isn’t just danger! There are people that will help, I know that for a fact because of Ayesha, and that makes everything worth it! I want to thrive and be happy and die in the sun instead of living my whole life in those cold stone walls!”

and then Oas is like “Bitch do you hear yourself? you don’t want to die in cold stone walls? You’re in a CAVE. you are going to die IN THIS COLD STONE CAVE.” [she does not actually say Bitch]

Oas swings at Dallin. She doesn’t dodge quite in time and ends up getting a big gash in the side of her chest/torso. Oas keeps swinging at her and she keeps backing up, but eventually corners herself like a Dumb Ass. Oas swings at her again but she blocks with her own hand because she is panicking. She gets 2 of her fingers chopped off and drops her knife. She stumbles and falls backward.

Oas brandishes her cleaver and slowly approaches. Dallin doesn’t know what to do so she resorts to trying to call out to Olen.

She says “Olen, do you remember when we’d stargaze together?”

Oas pauses for a second, but keeps walking towards her.

She says, increasingly panicked, “Olen, do you remember when we tried to sneak out as kids?”

Oas tells her to STOP and BE QUIET, raising her cleaver.

She talks once more, yelling at this point, “Olen! Can you hear me? Please! You’re my brother!”

Oas freezes, just before she was about to Slam The Cleaver Into Dallin’s Face. Dallin wonders if she successfully broke through to her brother, but when she looks at Olen’s eye it kind of just looks …confused. Oas herself, though, looks like she’s in a daze. After a moment she even starts to look remorseful, as if she is lost in some sort of distant memory where someone she once knew yelled, “OAS CAN YOU HEAR ME I’M YOUR BROTHER PLEASE DON’T HURT ME”

Oh well. Dallin takes the opportunity to quickly grab her knife off of the floor and knock Oas’s cleaver out of her hand. She immediately snaps out of …whatever trance she was in, and gets UNCHARACTERISTICALLY pissed at Dallin . She tries to get her cleaver back but Dallin shoves her away, so she ends up brandishing her actual claws and running at her.

Dallin immediately panics and um. stabs her straight in the stomach. which is the first time she’s ever actually attacked Oas during this entire fight. Oas is taken aback because she was not expecting her to actually do that. There’s a very long moment of silence before Dallin takes the knife out of her stomach and she backs away.

She searches for something to say and ultimately lands on “You’re not worth it,” before finally leaving Olen and going back to her statue. She lies and tells herself she’s leaving because wasting another vessel trying to kill Dallin would be too much effort but she is 100% leaving because she feels bad.

(Something Something, she was kind of trying to kill Dallin in the first place because he reminded her of herself when she was younger. Yada yada this made her absolutely infuriated to hear that she would just leave her little brother Olen, and that Olen was gonna let her, because she thinks siblings should stick together and she’s NOT subconsciously bitter about Lesday being forced to leave her when they were young and she’s NOT subconsciously bitter that Bozzy didn’t stay around to see her wake up. and then she realized that she was doing the exact same thing her dad did, keeping them inside for fear of danger in the world, except worse because she was literally Murdering them for trying to leave, and then she had an epiphany. Except she never actively realized any of this it was just Subconscious Feelings)

Anyway, Oas is gone now. Olen immediately passes out and collapses, because being forced to fight your sister for hours while infected and then getting stabbed is quite the energy draining ordeal. The entire left side of his face is bloody, missing skin.

Dallin catches him and lays him on the ground gently instead of letting him thud on the Incredibly Hard Stone Floor. She clings to his side and calls his name, but Olen doesn’t open his eyes. She tries to shake him awake. Nothing happens.

She sits there for a moment, hearing nothing but the sounds of her own shaky breathing, before ceasing her attempts to wake up Olen. She decides, instead, to pick him up and carry him out of the cave. Dallin is incredibly weak as well (she is injured and losing blood) but she does her best to carry Olen and find her way back to the exit.

She starts hallucinating that she’s back in The Compound as a child, holding Olen’s hand and leading him down the hallway to their bedroom.

They have idle conversation, talking and laughing. (There is nothing but the sound of her own footsteps.)

The hall seems to stretch a little bit longer than normal, but she keeps going until she can see the light of the candles on the walls. (Until she can see the sunlight through the opening of the cave.)

She finally gets to her bedroom door and pushes it open. (She finds the exit of the cave and walks through.)

Olen gets into his bed (Dallin  lays his body down on the grass outside), then Dallin gets into hers (She lays next to Olen). They quietly stare at the ceiling.

“Goodnight, Olen,” Dallin says first, like always. There is no response. As the hallucination dissipates, the ceiling of The Compound fades into the cloudy early morning sky.

Dallin passes out.

…

…

…

…

…

She is not dead though,  She wakes up in Ayesha’s Fuckibg Shop Once More. Ayesha is bandaging her wounds. Dallin asks how she found her. Ayesha answers that she 1. knows how to track footprints, and 2. has explored this forest a couple of times and just had a feeling that they’d try to go fight in the giant terrifying cave.

Ayesha is about to ask why the ABSOLUUTE FUCK she was fighting her brother in the giant terrifying cave and what the ABSOLUTE FUCK happened to Olen’s Face, but upon being reminded that she did, in fact, stab her brother, Dallin tries to get up and find him to check if he’s okay. Ayesha tries to get her to sit back down because she is still very injured, but Dallin does not. Ayesha assures her that Olen is also alive and leads herto where he’s sleeping.

The entire left side of his face is bandaged heavily because DEAR GOD so much blood loss, but he is breathing and alive. Dallin sits by him and eventually falls asleep.

She’s woken up a couple hours later when someone shakes her by the shoulder. She opens her eyes and, surely enough, that someone is Olen. Dallin stumbles over her words, trying to express how sorry she is for bla bla bla bla yada yada yada, but Olen shuts her up by putting a hand over her mouth.

“Good morning,” Olen says.

Dallin blinks.

“Good morning,” she says back.

They are injured, but alive.

[epilogue] [this next part isn’t proofread, it’s 5 am and im sleepy]

Meanwhile, in The Compound, Oas has returned to her statue.

She is sad. Notably sad. More outwardly emotional than she’s been in the past three decades, she’s just staring forward with a guilty look in her eye.

She decides to go to sleep. This is the first time she’s slept in thirty years. The last time she’s shown in this series is with her eye shut, sleeping.

Vernon and Lesday take notice of this. They think it’s strange, obviously, but they don’t complain. Lesday has an idea—having been vaguely aware of all the things happening with Dallin and Olen recently, and also aware that they have left, she decides to do something. She takes advantage of the fact that Oas is asleep by going outside for the first time in many years. She brings Olen’s baby blanket, the one Northen brought him swaddled in.

Then she goes and finds the shop, knocks on the door [it’s the middle of the night], and waits. Dallin answers. I’m unsure if they have a brief encounter face to face [Dallin realizing that Lesday was not a weird fever dream she had as a kid] or if Lesday just puts the blanket on the doorstep and leaves, but either way, Lesday returns to The Compound and Dallin has the blanket now. She vaguely recalls that this was, in fact, the blanket Olen had for a little while as a baby.

The next weeks in the shop are spent recovering from their grievous injuries. Once Dallin and Olen are both okay enough to move and walk, they 1. Do a dramatic hug and 2. start actually packing their bags again to go out exploring with Ayesha. They’ve stopped wearing their masks at all by this point, of course, and Ayesha has lent them some clothes that aren’t stained in blood

 It’s Fall by the time they decide to go out. Just before they do, though, Dallin recalls the baby blanket. She shows it to Olen, saying something along the lines of “I guess this is how we knew your name”

Olen looks at the blanket, and it’s very clearly and lovingly hand embroidered. Inspecting it closer, a corner of the blanket even has a poem embroidered too, reading:

“As does verdure

in spring return—

may you bloom,

and thrive, and

through hardship

endure.”

Olen is like, “Ah. Haha, How cheesy.” and then immediately starts crying with the realization that if his birth family put this much effort into a custom baby blanket then they absolutely did not just abandon him like he’d assumed his whole life, even if he doesn’t know what actually happened. He starts wearing the blanket around his neck like a scarf from then on.

Finally, Dallin, Olen, and Ayesha go out to explore the world in the sunlight.

The end!

STANDING WATER (outdated) (i’m in the middle of changing this to entirely remove damsel and make it shorter, sorry damsel)

Main characters:

Summary:

Okay. This one is much shorter than 4 Season Long Espial I Swear.

BACKSTORY

There’s this Goddess (more like a demi-goddess) of Water. Her name is Damsel. She used to just be a regular damselfly and then she almost drowned in a lake that , coincidentally, Beby was practicing her magic on years prior. Blah blah blah this caused weird magic stuff where Her Soul merged with The Magic Water to save her life and now she’s a weird magic water demigoddess.

She’s very benevolent and kind but very weak by Goddess Standards because literally nobody knows she exists or believes in her so she’s only surviving by her own will, and she can’t really interact with mortals directly because yada yada whatever.

She meets a young man named Etan when he um. falls into The Ocean and almost fucking drowns. She saves his life and heals him. He’s very grateful and asks how he can repay her.

She answers, “Hm. Well I want to go out and help other people just like I helped you but I can’t like. directly interact with the mortal realm and bla bla bla. Do you maybe wanna make a deal where you can BE MY MORTAL HANDS AND ENACT MY WILL AS A PROXY and in return I keep you safe and blessed?” [she does not actually phrase it that ominously]

Etan is like “Yeah okay sure sounds like a deal.” Boom. Magic pact has been made.

He changes his name to Lyre to show his devotion or something, starts wearing a cool priest outfit with a mask for his upper face (I like masks okay), and now he’s a paladin for Damsel. She can now communicate with him telepathically. He’s like a prophet. She can also control him directly but she generally tells him beforehand and he agrees to it first.

He has MAGIC HANDS, signified by glowing turquoise markings on his palms that branch out to his fingers, which gives him the ability to heal/bless people with MAGIC. He goes around healing random people in need and some of them are like “Woah, awesome, can I be a follower for Damsel too?” So she gains more followers like that.

She’s having a great ol’ time and getting more powerful/stable because more people are believing in her. Everything’s going great. Until the fucking. Infection starts becoming more widespread in her area and she cannot heal people from that.

All of her followers either 1. stop believing in her because what good is a Goddess in the zombie apocalypse when she can’t stop people from becoming zombies, 2. get infected themselves, or 3. fucking DIE.

So now she’s back where she started, extremely weak and sad because exactly one (1) person still has faith in her and that’s Lyre. She gets SO weak that she ends up getting infected herself. O no.

But the infection doesn’t interact with her like it would a normal person, because she is A Magic Goddess. It doesn’t turn her into an empty wandering husk, it basically just takes over her entire mind/personality and makes her entire goal Infecting People.

She is now incredibly vindictive and cold. Since Damsel’s entire being has been poisoned with infection, Lyre’s MAGIC HANDS go from healing people with just a touch of his palm to INFECTING PEOPLE with just a touch of his palm. The markings on his hands are the same muddy beige as the infection now. He’s not infected himself though, he just has infection Powers by proxy of Infected Damsel. hope that makes sense (it doesn’t).

Anyway, she just forces him to go around infecting people now. It's a lot more effective than a regular zombie because nobody expects the randomass holy man to be able to infect people with A Touch Of His Hand.

Lyre says, “Uh, Damsel, This is not great and I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS !!!!!!!”

Damsel says, “Too bad man you made a pact with me all those years ago and now it’s your job to do whatever I want. Sorry.”

So he’s just forced to do that and feel horrible about it the entire time. The zombies infected by him have a distinct appearance, lacking any growths (aside from their claws) but instead having handprint shaped beige markings from wherever he grabbed them to infect them.

He also has claws now, by the way. Not big ol’ chunky fungus claws like a regular zombie, his fingers just end in sharp points. He starts wearing gloves/mittens to hide his markings and his claws.

He eventually ends up in a big abandoned and sunbleached city by the ocean. He looks around for a place to pray/communicate with Damsel, and finds a decently large house that is mostly intact and has nice blue frosted glass windows.

MAIN STORY

There’s this lady named Maris. She is quite injured, wandering in the abandoned city with a gaping wound in her stomach. She refrains from leaning on any walls for support because she doesn’t want to leave a blood stain.

She looks around for a nice place to die. Scanning the streets, all she sees are broken street lamps, decrepit shops, and dilapidated buildings. One place does catch her eye, though. It’s a decently large house that is mostly intact and has nice blue frosted glass windows. She decides on that house to die in.

She pushes open the large doors and is about to go lay down on the floor, when she suddenly notices……………a man (Lyre)………….who is already inside of the house. He’s on his knees, praying, but quickly turns around when he hears the creak of the doors.

His face drops when he sees her injuries. She doesn’t really know what to do. Obviously she can’t just leave now that the guy has seen her.

(Damsel talks to Lyre and tells him to infect Maris. He, stalling because he does not want to infect her, says he can’t do that while she’s in this state because she most likely wouldn’t even survive long enough to turn into a zombie if she’s bleeding out.)

He worriedly approaches her and asks if she’s alright. She does not answer because anyone can tell she’s doing quite poorly by the large amount of blood leaking out of her stomach. The man tells her to sit down and rest while he looks for something to clean her wounds with. She does so because she doesn’t want to be a hassle.

After a couple of minutes of frantic rifling through various drawers and closets, he comes back with a couple of rags and an old dusty jug of water that looks like it’s been in the house for years. Better than nothing.

He starts to wipe off the excess blood from her wound, though he notably does not take off his fabric gloves beforehand. Maris says she experienced enough with survival that she can do it herself so he doesn’t get stains all over his nice blue mittens.

After she cleans off her wound and finds some way to turn the rags into some makeshift bandages, the man introduces himself as Lyre and offers a handshake. Maris introduces herself as well, but does not take the handshake.

Lyre tries to ask how she got injured, but she quickly changes the subject. They have a very awkward 30-or-so-minutes before Maris falls asleep on the floor because she is very tired from all of the Blood Loss.

Lyre takes care of her for the next day or two. He brings her whatever food he can find in the house (mostly things like small amounts of dried fruit/meat or nuts, but it’s better than nothing). Maris keeps waking up, thinking “I’ve been here WAY too long, I really should leave and go back to ………surviving on my own, or whatever,” and then falling asleep again before she can actually do anything because she is recovering from Severe Blood Loss And Injury.

(Damsel talks to Lyre AGAIN and tells him to infect her NOW. He, once again stalling, says that she clearly will not let her guard down enough for that because she didn’t even take his handshake, so he needs to gain her trust first.)

Eventually, they run out of food in that house. Lyre wakes her up and says he has to go find more. Maris says “Okay Sounds Cool. Go” and plans to sneak off while he’s away so she no longer has to be a  Be A Burden, but he reveals he is Not going to leave her there because he does Not want her to die while he’s gone. He makes sure she can walk, and then they go off to find another house.

The next house they find is a bit more broken down than the last one, but he doesn’t want to take too long searching/walking when Maris is still recovering. She sits down by the dinner table while he goes in and searches the kitchen. He ends up finding some old packets of tea and some sugar. It’s not really FOOD but it’s probably better than nothing.

He makes some tea in an old kettle he finds and serves it in some dusty teacups. He rinses off the dust first, obviously. He sets it down on the table along with the little pot of sugar.

He puts a tiny spoonful of the sugar in his tea and takes a sip. It tastes a little bit off. He realizes that the pot of sugar is NOT a pot of sugar but, in fact, a pot of salt. He realizes this JUST in time to stop Maris from dumping half of the entire pot into her tea.

He sighs with relief and makes an off handed joke about how she would’ve died of saline poisoning had he not stopped her, and how sad that would be after he went through all the effort of helping her with her injuries. She pauses for just a moment too long before giving a halfhearted laugh.

They talk a little bit over the tea. Maris asks where Lyre came from, and he gives the vague answer of “I used to be a um. Prophet. Priest. I don’t know,” without elaborating. Lyre asks once more how Maris got her injuries, and she gives the vague answer of “I was being careless,” without elaborating.

After they finish their tea, they explore the house a little more and find a survivor’s journal talking about zombies. It discusses what they typically look like/how the growths look/bla bla bla etc etc.

Maris says, “Huh, the zombies around here look different. They don’t have growths but they do have weird handprint shaped markings. Weird, huh?”

Lyre sweats nervously and changes the subject.

The next day, they leave that house and go to a big lighthouse RIGHT by the shore.

Maris and Lyre rest there for a while. They probably find some food there as well idk.

Maris is sitting in one part of the lighthouse having a little bit of a silent breakdown as she tries to work out her self worth problems that she Definitely Very Much Has, Meanwhile Lyre is over in another part of the lighthouse, having yet another conversation with Damsel.

Damsel has caught onto the fact that he is obviously stalling because he does not want to infect Maris, and she is very much not happy about this at all. She tells Lyre to go over and infect her Right Now At This Very Second, to which Lyre actually refuses. This is the first time he has ever explicitly refused to infect someone for her.

Damsel is absolutely APPALLED by this because she’s a PISSBABY. She brings up the fact that they made a pact years ago and it was part of the agreement that he has to do whatever she wants. To prove her point, she forces him to take off his gloves and scratch himself on the face.

Maris is broken out of her Existential Crisis by the fact that she can hear Lyre seemingly yelling/having an argument with someone in another part of the lighthouse. She goes to check on him and sees that he has scratches on his face, but there’s nobody else in the room.

Maris says “I’m sorry what the hell is going on here” but Lyre just runs out of the room so that Damsel doesn’t force him to fucking attack her.

Maris pursues him because OBVIOUSLY something is wrong. They both run out of the lighthouse and Maris tries to grab Lyre to ask him what’s happening, but they both trip and fall into THE FUCKING OCEAN.

This teleports them into Damsel’s Weird Water Pocket Dimension (patent pending). Maris is confused as HELL, but Lyre has been here before when he first almost drowned so he doesn’t question it too much.

Maris is gonna ask what the ABSOLUTE FUCK  IS GOING ON, but suddenly Lyre is dragged away by a bunch of water tendrils. She tries to go after them but a giant Water Wall (everything is made out of water) stops her.

Lyre is dragged until he comes face to face with Damsel Herself. She gets mad at him for trying to break his pact because without her he is nothing bla bla bla she tries to emotionally manipulate him etc etc. Lyre says that the pact SHOULD NOT COUNT ANYMORE because he made a pact with DAMSEL. She’s barely even Damsel anymore, she’s just a weird infected BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!  [he doesn’t say that i’m just getting really tired and i can’t write seriously anymore]

Anyway, Lyre realizes that Damsel is powered off of belief/faith and he’s the only thing left supporting her, so if he just. stops. believing in her then she will absolutely die. He has a whole monologue about that or something and then reaches to take off his mask to symbolically sever his ties to her.

Damsel says “Don’t. DO NOT DO THAT. I Will Fucking kill you if you do that.”

Lyre does it anyway. Damsel immediately screams and stabs Lyre with a bunch of Water Tendrils before she loses power and dies. Lyre is like “HA! WHO’S THE LOSER NOW!” [i’m sorry i’m losing the ability to write serious dialogue] and then he immediately passes out from blood loss.

Now that Damsel is DEAD, The Water Wall that was keeping Maris away dissipates. She immediately runs over to Lyre and grabs him, swimming back up to the surface. His blood leaves red trails in the water.

She pulls him back onto the shore and SLAPS HIM IN THE FACE TO WAKE HIM UP no she doesn’t do that. um. she shakes him to wake him up or something i don’t know. He opens his eyes.

Maris is shivering because it’s very cold and she just swam a pretty long distance holding another full grown person while not fully recovered from her stomach wound, Lyre is pretty injured himself and coughing up a bit of water, but both of them are alive.

Lyre looks at his hand to see that his markings are dark and dead looking, but he’s fine with it. Then he looks at Maris.

“My name is Etan,” he says through a small cough. “That’s my real name.”

Maris stares at him for a second before offering a handshake. He takes it.

Now it’s Maris’s turn to patch up his wounds.

The end!

DETRITUS

Main Characters:

Summary:

I barely even have this one planned. It’s just about this old man (65 year old) named Olis, a real Rugged Survivor type, getting scratched by a zombie RIGHT on his eye. He ends up killing the zombie, but that obviously won’t undo the fact that he’s already infected. He keeps on traveling/surviving because he really doesn’t know how to do anything else.

The next day on his travels, he finds an empty camp. It seems like it was recently abandoned, and like it was abandoned in a hurry, because there’s still good food and supplies inside. He wonders to himself, “who set up this camp and why did they leave in such a rush?”, before he hears a very nearby scream.

He goes to find the source of the sound and, of course, finds a woman who is being attacked by a zombie. He’s a little too late, though, because she’s on the ground with a huge scratch on her back. He runs up and kills the zombie for her, but obviously that won’t undo the fact that she’s already infected.

He helps her up off the floor. She notices the giant scratch on his eye and realizes that he got attacked by a zombie as well.

The woman introduces herself as Grace Warrester, and he introduces himself as Olis Minneston. Neither of them acknowledge the fact that they probably only have a week or less before they’re both infected.

Grace buries the zombie’s corpse (which confuses Olis greatly) then uses some of the supplies from her camp to bandage their scratches. This does absolutely nothing to stave off the infection, but now they don’t have to look at their open wounds, so that’s a win.

Olis asks where she learned to patch people up (and where she learned to bury people, for that matter), and she answers that she used to be a healer in a village. She looks remorseful for a moment, saying that she misses the sound of the river by her house, and the very few Social Skills that Olis has tell him that he should probably not ask why she isn’t in the village anymore.

She breaks the silence by asking where he came from. He has absolutely no answer aside from “I’ve Been Surviving My Whole Life And I Have No Friends Or Family” and then conversation dies again.

Basically the rest of the story is just them slowly learning from each other before they Get Infected.

Grace’s backstory is that she was a healer in the village and she always did her best to help people, but when she came across someone who she knew she couldn’t save, she just made casual conversation with them as they were on their deathbeds. She’d always ask where their favorite place was in the village, and then she’d bring them out there to have their last moments in a place that they loved. It was not uncommon for them to be buried there, as well. But one day she accidentally bla bla bla failed to save one of her family members/friends or something like that and proceeded to run away out of sheer guilt. She continues to blame herself to this day. She’s really good at taking care of other people but tends not to care for herself very well.

Olis’s backstory is that he um. Honestly i haven’t developed this a lot but he’s very very callous and cold because he’s been surviving alone since he was a little kid. He is also extremely emotionally repressed and has absolutely no idea how to deal with feelings at all ever. He learned to numb himself to murder at a really young age because he had to defend himself to survive. He never really learned how to do anything but survive, so he never does the little things that make life a little brighter. He just does the absolute bare minimum to not die. Etc etc.

Grace teaches him to open up a little (and also to treat life with more respect because it never once crossed his mind to properly bury anybody he killed and now he feels kind of bad about that) and Olis teaches her how to stop blaming herself for her past mistakes yada yada yada. They do all of this while also grappling with the fact that they’re slowly being infected + dealing with the symptoms of the infection incubation period or whatever. They both agree that they’d prefer to die instead of becoming endlessly wandering husks.

At the end of the story, Grace is the first one to succumb to the infection. Olis himself is on the verge of being infected as well, but he finds her and she's Full On Zombie Mode. He tries to break through to her for a little bit (not very effectively, because he has a bunch of Epic Zombie Growths in his mouth and his right eye that are preventing him from speaking/expressing properly). After a while he gives up and          grabs her head in his hands. She scratches at him a lot but he ignores it and snaps her neck to put her out of her misery as fast as possible.

He’s about to put himself out of his misery as well, but he stares at Grace’s corpse on the ground and starts to feel extremely guilty about it. Instead of using his final moments to assure his own peace, he carries Grace’s body until he finds a nice place to lay her to rest. He keeps going until he finds a river, then digs a shallow grave with his claws (Did I mention he has Zombie Claws) and buries her there.

He then succumbs to the infection himself and becomes an endlessly wandering husk.

The end!

BRAMBLE

Main Characters:

Summary:

this one is about two sisters who live in the forest, Lea (who is 8) and Renna (who is 12 - 14 i have not decided)

it’s not super planned out yet, but the general idea is that they live completely alone (They are orphans, i guess) and Renna has been basically raising Lea. Renna used to be a lot more lighthearted and playful, playing games while exploring the forest with Lea. They also liked picking berries and making jam.

Lately, Renna has become a lot more sullen and almost exclusively focused on survival. She is learning how to hunt with a bow and arrow.

Lea personally (being an 8 year old) is not super big on killing animals, but renna insists its probably the best way to gather good food. Lea understands but is still a little bit sad.

Lea wants to go out and gather more berries or play games like they used to when they were younger [well. i guess more like when Renna was younger because lea is still very young] but Renna is really more focused on learning how to hunt.

Eventually sometime during the story Renna injures her knee and can’t walk for a while until she heals. Idk. Lea tries to learn how to hunt to help her sister but 1.not very successful at drawing/aiming the bow because she is 8 Years Old, and 2. still squeamish about the blood. renna tries to reassure her by saying they only spill blood for a good reason but it does not work very much. Renna tries to teach her how to fish instead because it’s a little bit less gruesome.

Blah blah blah more stuff happens[I have not planned this story all the way through i just have the broad strokes], Lea is only able to catch a couple of small fish. They cook and eat them bla bla bla they split it so each of them gets half. Renna then goes to sleep because she is tired and her leg is still healing.

Lea feels bad that her sister didn’t get to eat more. she can also see Renna is really not very happy in general and hasn’t been doing much except for hunting and sleeping so she just decides to fucking. go out in the middle of the night and get more food for her.

She sneaks away while Renna is fast asleep and walks in the dark until she finds a bramble berry bush. She picks as many as she can, but the bush is thorny and also ends up pricking her hands a lot. By the end of it she has a pretty good amount of berries in her basket and also there is blood on her hands.

She walks back to Renna [by the time she’s back the sun is rising] and wakes her up to show her what she got. She happily holds up her cupped hands, pricked and bleeding and full of berries.

First of all Renna is concerned that her sister’s hands are bloody. Second of all she realizes that Lea must have snuck out to get the berries and is even more concerned about that. She’s about to say something before Lea asks if they can make jam with them.

Renna obliges. The End!