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mishapen-dear · 2 years

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There’s a little green something in the cracks of the road. Grian stares at it, and then he looks at Scar, who is humming cheerfully while he rummages in his bag, and then Grian looks back to the little plant.

Grian looks at Scar again. He takes a step closer to the plant. Scar, blissfully, does not notice.

Something fungal bubbles at the back of Grian’s throat.

He crouches, inconspicuous, next to the plant. He knows it isn’t grass, that it’s probably a weed, but he doesn’t know anything more. He doesn’t care to know anything more, really, and it won’t matter in a moment anyway. He reaches and-

A dull pain pings bright on his arm. He startles upright, wings flaring out, and Scar shoots him several more times with the Nerf gun. The little foam darts bounce harmlessly off of Grian’s chest.

“Bad Grian!” Scar scolds him cheerfully. “No plant killing! Bad!”

“But it’s a small one!” Grian protests immediately, startled and indignant at the embarrassment of being caught. Another foam dart hits him.

“Nuh-uh!”

“Ow- Scar, come on, it’s itsy bitsy,” Grian tries, wheedling now. “It won’t hurt anything.”

“Well, you know that’s not true. It’ll hurt the plant,” Scar answers reasonably. He waves his toy gun threateningly at Grian. “You know the deal, G. No pestulating in the Hoe-ly Spaces.” He uses his dramatic voice to say Hoe-ly Spaces. He always uses the dramatic voice to say Hoe-ly Spaces. Grian wants to punt Hoe-ly Spaces and all associated dramatisms into the sun.

“That’s not a word, Scar,” Grian says petulantly. He ruffles his wings and sits on the larger half of a broken concrete barrier. The vines that had been wrapped around the barrier writhe away from the spores that fall from his wings, so Grian vindictively shakes his wings more. This, at least, Scar does not scold him for.

“What? Sure it is.” Scar has gone back to rifling through his bag again. He keeps pulling out strangely shaped bottles of bright colours with baffling smells. Grian would be more alarmed, but he knows Scar has a weird thing with taking labels off of bottles. How the man ever remembers what goes where, though, he has no idea.

(He has some idea. Scar’s tongue is too many different colours, always, and he’s been almost poisoned thrice. By Grian’s count, the man should be dead.)

“Pestulate is not a word,” Grian says, doubling down.

“Then what is it?” Scar asks innocently. He pulls out a jug of blood and lugs it into the centre of the clearing.

“A nonsense.” Grian shakes his wings again. There’s now a full circle of empty asphalt and concrete around him, free of plant matter. His spores won’t root without living tissue, but he feels a little vindicated by every twitch of the green things moving away from him. “Are you done yet?”

“Grian, Grian, Grian, you can’t rush a good blood ritual” Scar exclaims. “Do you know what happened to the last guy to rush a blood ritual?”

“He di-”

“He died!” Scar presses a hand against his heart. “The plants swooped up and ate him! I found his bones, Grian! His bones!”

“We could just leave,” Grian suggests. “This is- what, the fifth blood ritual? We’re fine without them, Scar. I bet the Kingmaker doesn’t even notice.”

“Oh, pish-posh.” Scar holds out the jug and pours the blood straight down over the smallest unbloomed flower in the clearing. The jug makes awful noises as the blood chugs and glugs out of it, because Scar doesn’t care for any silly thing like fluid dynamics. The jug convulses like its gasping for air and it makes sounds that Grian thinks Scar would make if he were ever simultaneously choked and drowned. The red blood splashes across the green, seeps through the cracks in the asphalt, and gets all over Scar’s shoes. Grian draws his own feet up in distaste, but he’s far enough that no blood touches him. “You know that’s not his name.”

“He doesn’t get a name,” Grian says. “I’m mad at him.”

“Careful, Grian!” Scar says cheerfully. “That almost sounds like rebellion.”

Grian scoffs, loud, but he doesn’t say anything. Scar continues with his stupid blood ritual. Which is to say that Scar goes back to his bag, grabs a canteen, and returns to the plant. Without ceremony, Scar upends that jug over the plant too.

“Scar!” Grian squawks, scrabbling to his feet. “Scar, that’s all our water! Scar!”

“Oops!” Scar says cheerful.

“You only used a few drops for the other rituals!” Grian wails. “We just got that!”

“Oops!” Scar says again. He has no remorse. Grian snatches the nerf gun from where Scar had left it on the ground and shoots him with it. “Ow!”

“You’re the worst,” Grian says.

“Love you, too, G,” Scar says. He shakes the canteen to get the last few drops of water out. Grian watches them fall with despair. The water washes away the blood, dilutes it across the asphalt and towards the ring of vines and green things that surround them. Scar gives the little twice-baptised bloom a loving pat, and it opens in his palm. The petals are a different colour in each Hoe-ly Space, and the same holds true for here. These petals are unnaturally white, unsettlingly perfect, and-

“Is there another flower in there?” Grian demands.

Scar doesn’t lift his gaze. “Yeah,” he says. He touches a scarred hand gently to the second bloom, which shivers at the contact but doesn’t open. “Huh.”

“...Huh?” Grian echoes. “Scar?”

“It’s okay, G,” Scar says too fast. “Let’s just go shopping, yeah? All done here.” He steps back from the plant. He sees the look Grian is giving him and tries to give a bright smile in return. “Seriously, Grian, it’s fine.”

Grian has always had a knack for knowing when Scar is lying.

“...If you say so.” Grian watches Scar pack up his bag, holster the nerf gun, and throw the plant a two-fingered salute. He’s too quick. They haven’t been here for even twenty minutes, maybe, and normally Scar stretches the ritual to last an hour. Grian guesses that he’s not surprised that the blood-jug and the water are the only necessary components. The steps for the other rituals had been sporadically changed each time. “Ready to go?”

“Can we get ice cream on the way?” Scar asks, even though he knows that all the ice cream in the world has already melted.

“Sure,” Grian says, even though he knows that the corpses of the ice cream shop workers are ripe in their rot.

Scar steps up onto the concrete barrier, almost loses his balance then helps Grian up and almost sends them both toppling over. Grian doesn’t comment on it. Scar keeps casting glances to the weird plants, but stops when Grian opens his arms. Scar grabs onto him, tightly, and Grian holds tight in return. Grain’s wings start to flap (Scar sneezes at the spraying spores) and they step off the concrete barrier together. Soon, they’re in the air.

(Scar has cracked a Superman joke at least once every time Grian has flown him somewhere. This time he’s nothing but silent, and he keeps trying to peek back at the plant-filled bridge they’d left behind. Grian flies a little faster.)

—---

Scar lets Grian kill whatever he wants, most days. He doesn’t like mushrooms, or fungus, or mycelia-filled goo, but he doesn’t complain too much. It’s a good deal for both of them, Grian figures. Scar helps Grian with his whole ending-an-apocalypse-by-causing-a-different-apocalypse deal, and he’s good company in a world full of decomposing things that used to be people, and he lets Grian know when he’s getting too close to the rebellion line. The plants destroy anything that oppose them, and the last thing Grian wants is to openly oppose them.

Mushrooms are better. They’re kinder. Almost plant, almost animal, and there’s so much for them to eat. Much better than the violence of true plants.

Honestly? Grian shouldn’t even be alive. It’s pure luck that he found the mycelia before the plants could burrow into him, it’s luck that it Chose him, and it’s luck that it wants the world to end again.

(Sometimes, late at night, he wonders if he’d be happier if he’d been the first harbinger of end-times rather than the second. But, then again, mushrooms are components of decay. Scavengers rather than hunters- it makes sense, maybe, that the fungal spread occurs after the flora’s feast.)

Grian thinks he’s almost done. He used to be human, but now mushrooms sprout around him when he sleeps, and spores spread on the wind from his wings. He leaves large fields of fungus in his wake. Soon enough, he’ll have to actively hunt for the green and force it to recede. Soon enough, the old apocalypse will be ended, and the new ending can truly begin. That’s why Grian doesn’t mind carting Scar around to the last green places so much- Scar gets a free travelling companion, and Grian gets lead right to the green sources that Scar doesn’t want him to hurt. Grian doesn’t hurt them because then Scar will stop showing him where they are, and Grian is smart enough to bide his time. One day, maybe, Scar will die, and Grian will be free to kill as many green spaces as he wants.

(Grian shouldn’t have to kill him. The plants should have killed him. The fungus should have rotted him. Grian sometimes wonders what it means that he’s still alive. He licks poison and blood and shiny things that should give him tetanus, but he’s still alive.)

(Grian thinks about leaving, sometimes, but he never does. He’s always been too curious for his own good.)

“What’s that for?” Grian asks.

Scar freezes like a statue, weedkiller clutched tight in his hands. Slowly, as if Grian is a predator with poor eyesight, he hides it behind his back. Grian tries, unsuccessfully, to stifle his laughter.

“Scar. You know I can see you, don’t you?”

Scar deflates, shoulders slumping forwards as he pulls the weedkiller out again. “Okay, okay, you caught me, G,” he says. “I’m just… looking for a drink.”

“That’s weedkiller.”

“So?”

“...Okay, you’re not even trying now,” Grian says. “What’s with the weedkiller, Scar?”

Scar shuffles his feet and bites his lip, then huffs out a breath. “Are we alone?”

Grian, still smiling, raises his brows and looks around the store. Most of the shelves have been raided, several of them knocked over, and the only people in the vicinity haven’t been people in a long time.

“The plants, G,” Scar says impatiently.

“Oh, no, those are gone,” Grian says. “The mycelium works fast, you know that.”

“Right,” Scar says, and he goes quiet.

Grian eyes him, then gestures to a currently-indoor outdoor furniture set that doesn’t even have any blood on it. “Do you want to sit down?” he offers.

Scar makes a beeline for the furniture set, weedkiller still clutched tight in his grasp. Grian has barely figured out how to sit without crushing his wings when Scar blurts out, “The King’s called a meeting.”

Grian almost falls out of his seat. “What?”

“Yeah,” Scar says. “And I have to go, or, you know.” He jerks his head towards the nearest corpse. There are vines wrapped around its neck. “I was hoping you could give me a ride?”

Grian gapes at him. He feels his mental gears spinning frantically, completely tractionless. “Okay- wait.” He runs his hand through his hair and ignores the mushrooms that brush against his hand. “The King called a meeting- why? He hasn’t done that before- do you think he knows you’re working with me? This is probably a trap, Scar. You know this is probably a trap.”

Scar looks at the weedkiller on his lap. “Yeah.”

Grian stares. “Oh.”

Scar grimace-smiles. “I figured- you’ve been a good friend, Grian. I have… loyalty, to the crown, but I won’t let them kill you.”

“Oh.”

Scar shrugs a little self-consciously. “It’s the least I can do, you know?”

Grian doesn’t want to say it. He likes Scar, though, and he would feel guilty if he didn’t point out, “What’s stopping me from killing them, then? You know what my goals are.”

“Rebellion, Grian,” Scar says automatically. Grian winces and raises his hands in apology, and Scar continues. “I figured- well, maybe you won’t if I ask you really nicely?”

“That can’t be it.”

Scar shrugs. “You haven’t touched the spaces,” he explains. “And all I did there is ask you nicely.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

Grian fumbles for a second. “That’s- it’s- like- chopping off a head will kill a body?” he tries. “Like- the spaces are the hands, and the King is the head, so that’s- yeah.”

“Are you going to chop his head off?”

Grian is quiet.

“Please, Grian, don’t kill him,” Scar says. He holds the weedkiller carefully, and his fingers keep nervously tapping at its sides. “Neither of them. None of them. Just- keep being your mushroomy, birdy self, okay? You don’t even have to talk to them if you don’t want to.”

Grian is silent.

“Please?”

Grian caves. Mournfully, he thinks of the Hoe-ly Spaces, and he thinks of the quiet rule he has to kill those whenever Scar dies. It feels wrong to delegate something like killing the King to that same rule, but- Scar is right. Beheading the King sounds like it comes too close to rebelling, anyway. “Okay.”

Scar lets out a breath, then gives Grian a winning smile. “Okay!” he says. “Okay, perfect! Hey, I think I saw some chocolate earlier, maybe it won’t be expired.”

“It’s definitely expired,” Grian says, but he stands and offers Scar a hand to help him up.

Scar takes the hand and pulls himself up to his feet. “It’s always good to have hope, G,” he says brightly, and they continue to ravage the store.

—---

The place Scar takes him to isn’t green at all. It’s white and red and brown, like old and new blood on white petals. Well, Grian shouldn’t be thinking in similes here- there is literally old and new blood staining old petals almost everywhere he looks.

The border of the Tree’s territory is made of wood, or whatever it is that roots are made of. They drip red onto the white flowers that make up the groundcover. It had been relatively easy to get past the border- it opened up when Scar approached, peacefully allowing him through. The roots shuddered furiously when Grian approached, but they didn’t kill him when he tucked his wings in and pretended to be demure, so he thinks that means he’s basically Scar’s unwelcomely welcomed plus one. He’s not sure if court people even get to have plus ones, but he’s not skewered by evil plant matter so he thinks that he gets to count as a plus one.

He’s maybe a little nervous.

The interior of the Tree’s territory doesn’t make him feel any more at ease, either. This, too, is a place that is blindingly white. The Tree itself sits in the very centre, painfully pale and looming. The King’s Spire sits to its right, a building of previously-white colours that has now been overgrown with green. Moss and vines, Grian thinks, but he can’t distinguish anything else. Beneath the Tree are several small figures that cause something fungal to gurgle in his throat when he looks at them too hard. Grian stays close to Scar and tries to turn his eyes to the ground.

It’s hard not to acknowledge the Tree, though. They approach it together, slowly engulfed by the leaf cover overhead and hidden from the sun. It’s almost dark. Grian feels very small. The last time he’d felt so small was when his human self had accepted the blessings of the mycelium. He’d been welcome, then, but there is no welcome for him here.

Scar, of course, seems unaffected.

“You’re late.” Grian chances a glance upwards to see a woman with dead eyes and red flowers sprouting from her hair. The fungal thing tries to crawl out of his mouth. He swallows hard and ducks his head. He’s suddenly questioning the might of Scar’s weedkiller against all of this. He understands a little, maybe, the might that would have been needed to bring the first apocalypse.

“I’m right on time,” Scar disagrees. “You’re just early.”

“Everyone else has gone.” The woman sounds unimpressed. “And who do you have with you? You know he wants these audiences to be one-on-one.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Scar dismisses. “Sym- synergy. We’re really synergetic. I couldn’t have gotten here at all without Grian.”

“Your funeral.”

“Ha,” Scar says. “As if.”

Grian is startled enough by this statement to look up at Scar, but Scar grabs him by the arm and ushers him towards the trunk of the Tree. “Hey, wait- what do you mean?” Grian hisses. It occurs to him for the first time that this could be a trap for him.

“Not now, G,” Scar mumbles to him. “Ask me later.”

Grian, ruffled, unruffles a little bit at that. After all, there wouldn’t be a “later” if Scar was going to kill him now, right? Grian is beginning to realize that Scar is wrapped up tighter in whatever- whatever this is a lot more than Grian had first assumed, and he does not like it. Not one bit. He hates this, actually, and he hates it more when Scar knocks on the trunk and the wood creaks as it twists and bends out of their way.

A voice from within calls, “Welcome, Goodtimes, to my most private of areas.” And Grian hates that most of all.

They enter the Tree. The Tree creaks and groans and it closes behind them. Trapping them inside. And Grian hates this so much.

He finds even more to hate as they delve deeper into the almost-room that’s waiting for them. The King sits on a throne in the centre, drooping like a wilted flower. He’s dead. Grian can tell that immediately- he wants to spread his wings and spread the spores, but Scar asked him not to, and-

Wait. What?

Grian looks again. The King continues to be dead. The crown sits golden on his head, shining and perfect. The King is undecayed, unblemished, but his eyes are flat, and he isn’t breathing, and Grian can almost hear the creaking as he scowls.

“What have you brought me?”

“Presents,” Scar promises. “Just as you’ve asked. They’re for you, too, Bdubs.”

Grian again begins to wonder if this is a trap. Before he can continue that train of thought, however, there’s more creaking as the Tree shudders around them. The walls shiver, and lichen sloughs downwards until there’s just a human-shaped lump of green left against the wall. The human lump turns around and looks right at Grian with its impossibly large eyes.

Grian almost bares his teeth. He knows that look. This is competition.

(Competiton for what? There’s so much to fight over, probably, if he really thinks hard about it.)

“Why is the bed made of dirt?” Grian asks.

Scar balks, the King pauses, and the lichen-man stares.

“I mean, not to ruffle any feathers,” Grian rushes, valiantly not ruffling any of his. “I guess I was just expecting…”

“What?” The dead King asks.

“More?” Grian says. “Pillows? Blankets? Uh. More gold, I guess, but I know people don’t really carry that around these days. Didn’t.”

“The crown is gold,” the lichen man says.

“Aye, but tis a tiny crown,” the King concedes.

“And the bed is made of dirt,” Grian says.

“It’s a plant apocalypse,” the lichen-man -Bdubs- says. “Of course the bed is made of dirt. It’s not like he actually needs any sleep.”

“I like to nap,” the dead King protests. “Royal naps are very important, Bdubs.”

“Of course, your highness, of course,” Bdubs says quickly. “But the dirt is fine, right?”

“I mean,” the King says. “A dirt nap is mighty thematic, all considering, but… You there, Goodtimes! Have you brought your king a pillow?”

“Uh- no, no.” Scar laughs a little, startled. “No, I didn’t.”

“Shame,” the King says. The Tree rumbles. “Then you have failed me. Goodbye, Goodtimes. You served me well.”

“Whuh-” Grian starts.

“Woahwoahwoa-” Scar babbles.

“WAIT!” Bdubs shouts.

The Tree stops rumbling.

“Yes?” the King asks.

Bdubs looks at the King, then he looks at Scar, then he looks to Grian, then he looks back to the King. “Scar - Goodtimes has displeased you mightily, my liege,” he hazards. The dead King nods wisely. “Right-right- but he has displayed his loyalty quite mightily, too! The blood sacrifices are always pleasing, aren’t they?”

“You would have me grant mercy?” The King sounds displeased. Grian shuffles. He wonders if it’s even possible to kill a dead guy. He wonders if his mushrooms can kill. He hasn’t had much practice spreading them on purpose, but maybe if he can get them in the eyes?

“No, no, no, no mercy,” Bdubs amends hastily. “Just- inconvenience.” He leans in and whispers loudly. “My lord, he has a friend with him. The oncoming rot? I’m just saying- two birds with one stone here.”

“Oh?” The King looks closer at Grian. Grian lifts his wings a little in a threat display. The King nods slowly. “I see, I see… Goodtimes, I offer you a choice.”

“I don’t want to make a choice,” Scar says, more weakly than Grian has ever heard him.

“Nonetheless you have it!” the King booms. “Goodtimes- you may spare your own life, or the life of the oncoming rot. You have-”

“To give you your gifts first,” Scar says loudly.

The King pauses. “You interrupt me?”

“For presents,” Scar says quickly. He pulls of his bag and rifles through it quickly. Bdubs shuffles over and Scar hands over several unlabelled bottles. Salvation. Hope rises within Grian until, alarmingly, he realizes that none of the jugs are the weedkiller.

“Scar,” Grian says quietly.

“It’s okay, G,” Scar replies quickly.

Bdubs opens each jug and sniffs it in turn, then brings them to the King and pours them at the base of the throne. With each bottle the King’s body twitches, making noises like an ancient rocking chair, and- it takes Grian a moment to notice, but each bottle emptied at his feet brings life back to the King’s features. He grins, wide and sharp-toothed, and Grian wonders if he’s lost his chance to escape.

“Now, the choice,” the King begins.

“No,” Grian says, and he lets loose.

He’s on the ground three seconds later.

Lichen fills his mouth, vines around his wrist and wings, bark already growing quickly over his legs to trap him in place. Bdubs wipes a stray mushroom off of his sleeve in disgust, and Scar stares with wide, despairing eyes.

Do something! Grian tries to yell back with his own eyes. Scar doesn’t do anything except let out a breath, and then start to smile.

Scar says, “Phew! That took you forever, Bdubs.”

“Huh?” Bdubs says.

“I started thinking you weren’t going to stop him at all,” Scar remarks, and Grian’s heart drops into his stomach.

“OH,” Bdubs says loudly. His eyes sparkle. “Oh, so this- oh, phew! You got me worried there, Scar! Really worried! ‘Why is he hanging out with the oncoming rot,’ I said.”

“I said that,” the King argues.

“Of course, of course,” Bdubs says quickly. “Anyway, I said ‘wow, I wonder why Scar is hanging out with the oncoming rot!’ But you just needed a bit of help with this one, didn’t you?”

Scar smiles widely. He rummages through his bag again. “Right on, Bdubs,” he says. “Can’t kill a fungus surrounded by fungus, right? It’ll just grow right back!” The two of them chortle together and Scar brings another jug out of his backpack.

In fragile hope, Grian’s heart begins to beat again because he recognizes that jug. It’s the weedkiller. Label torn off. Scar opens it, takes a sip, and doesn’t flinch.

Grian feels several emotions all at once.

Scar hands the weedkiller over to Bdubs just as the King says, “What are you waiting for, Goodtimes?”

“You still have my bow, King,” Scar says.

“I thought we gave that back…?” The King looks questioningly to Bdubs.

“You took it away again after Scar failed to provide appropriate subservience, my lord.”

“Oh, well have it back, then, Goodtimes.” The King waves his hand and more of the tree creaks and moans. A real and true bow and quiver are revealed when the floor pulls back. Grian wriggles frantically, fear spiking again. Scar still hasn’t wavered. Grian is starting to doubt the contents of the weedkiller jug. He tries to flap his wings but the bark has grown over the edges. He tries to let the fungus out but his throat is clogged by lichen. The wood around him dies and tries to rot but it’s just grown over and living again in less than a second.

Scar strides over, playing with the quiver. He kneels next to Grian, then pulls out an arrow. Grian stares up at him, making his eyes as wide and pleading as he can. Scar doesn’t look at him. “Long live the King,” Scar says, raising his arrow. Bdubs raises the jug to him, but doesn’t drink.

Consternation flashes over Scar’s face, and Grian feels another rush of emotion he doesn’t know how to parse. Then Scar’s expression hardens and he brings the arrow down.

It hurts. Grian yells against the lichen in his mouth. There isn’t any blood- Grian isn’t human anymore. Of course there isn’t blood. There is an arrow in him and there isn’t any blood and Scar raises his fist with a cheer, and the King raises both arms with a cheer, and Bdubs drinks the weedkiller.

The Tree shudders.

The King collapses like a puppet with its strings cut.

Bdubs shrieks. The weedkiller drops. It sprays over the floor. The Tree screams. Grian thinks he’s also screaming. Scar isn’t screaming. Scar is frozen, false smile plastered across his face, and Grian realizes with dizzying clarity that he has no fucking clue when Scar is or isn’t lying. That’s a weird thing to realize in the worst moment of Grian’s after-apocalypse life and it’s so silly he just starts to laugh. He stops laughing when a branch spears through Scar’s chest.

“Traitor!” Bdubs yells. Three more branches strike Scar through. He gasps at each one, but he doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t try to get away. He doesn’t stop smiling. He doesn’t start bleeding. “The King trusted you!”

“The King is dead, Bdubs,” Scar says. “And your apocalypse has been ending. The oncoming rot hasn’t been oncoming for a long time- it’s been here-” he gestures wildly to Grian, who has yet another flurry of unregistered emotions “-the whole time, and you’ve let it!”

“The plants-”

“Kill those who oppose,” Scar says. “But your court has been opposing you since the moment you raised them. You failed your own apocalypse.”

Grian feels dizzy. He isn’t bleeding, but he is dying.

Why isn’t Scar bleeding?

“...What are you?” Bdubs asks. He’s breathing heavily. Grian’s vision is swimming, but he thinks Bdubs has sunk down to the floor. “Why-“ another branch spears Scar through “- aren’t-” another “-you-” another “-dead?”

“I’unno,” Scar says. “It never sticks.” The Tree rumbles overhead. Grain can feel it through the floor. “How about you? Are you dead yet, Bdubs?”

There’s silence. “Bdubs?”

The Tree stops rumbling.

“I don’t think poision is supposed to work like that,” Scar says. Or he says something like it. Grian isn’t sure. He’s really tired.

There’s something warm pressed against his face. “I didn’t lie to you,” Scar says quietly. Grian makes a little noise. “I didn’t. I said I wouldn’t let them kill you. I didn’t say anything about me. Doesn’t that mean something, G?” Grian doesn’t answer. “Yeah, yeah…”

Grian breathes out, slow, through his nose.

“You’d hate it the other way around,” Scar promises quietly. “But you did it, Grian. Bdubs wouldn’t have drank that without you. That was you, alright? You did it, you won. New apocalypse, new you. That’s the way it goes. The King died, and now it’s you, and- and it won’t be like this. It’ll be better. I don’t like mushrooms, but I’ll learn to like them when they’re you, okay?”

Grian can’t reply.

“I’ll see you soon, Grian,” Scar mumbles, and he sounds so far away.

And Grian goes to sleep.

And Mother Spore wakes up.

---

written for the @pinchhitsfromthevoid event and for the @ghastspidergwen person! this got. wildly out of hand basically the second i started to write it. unfortunately i suffer from "cannot write a normal apocalypse au" disease but eyyy that just means its a two-apocalypse package deal, which was really fun to write. hopefully it's just as fun to read!

(also on ao3)

#i wrote this in like four or five hours and posted On the deadline #this is almost pure stream of consciousness babeyyyyy #mishapen words #grian #goodtimeswithscar #hermitcraft fic #<- lemme know if i need to add any more trigger tags #hello tag readers. i want you all to know how genuinely little i planned this fic going into it #i do not understand how there's several moments of foreshadowing #i cannot comprehend the fact that the consistencies outnumber the inconsistencies #this fic wrote itself and i was merely its possessed vessel for four-five-however-many-hours #anyway spoilers in the next few tags you have been Warned #look away now #have you looked away #it's okay i read ahead when i shouldn't too #these are the trigger tags for filtering purposes theyve got to be spoilery sorry about that #death tw #blood tw #body horror tw #<- im not sure the body horror really Applies but there you have it anyway #lemme know if i missed any

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ljsarts · 1 month

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Here’s a big old infodump on Mari Matilla an AW 2 oc who's little plot and background I kept on adding to for the last month or so till it spiralled into a fully fleshed character-

I briefly mentioned Samy and Mari’s dynamic in this post so this is more focused on Mari as the remaining Matilla sister.

Warning its a long post I've tried to section out but I thought i better post it now or i never will so oops here we go ALSO spoilers for the entirety of AW2 just to cover my bases

Tldr basic info-

Name: Mari Matilla

Nickname/mean rumour name: ‘Mary Shell-y'

(Anglicised her name to Mary if people mispronounce it enough)

Close Relatives:

[Deceased] twin Sister Sam Matilla.

Estranged Mother Francesca Matilla. [Alive]

Stepfather Micheal Matilla. [Annoyingly Alive]

Name: Samy matilla

Nickname: ‘samwich’ a highschool nickname that Samy tried to spread herself that Mari will not let her live down.

Close Relatives: (same as above but was secretly still in contact with their mother Fran)

Died : 2022 spring swimming in cauldron lake.

The duo moved to bright falls in Spring 2019.

Works at the summer general store before the lake is closed off to the public.

Samy Drowns and she moves into the general store basement in 2022. (Year before the nightingale murder and the events of AW2).

Additional oc Outside the Matilla family:-

Name: Satu Barkley

Nickname: Sparky

Works for Biltmore’s Logging camps, mostly delivers the logs but won't skip the opportunity to do some log splitting. Her Hobbies vary from wood carving to hiking and darts. She met and ended up dating Mari after getting set up on a blind date with her via their shared friend Rose Marigold.

Family:-

Recently Mari Lost their twin sister Samy Matilla violently to ‘the cult of the tree’.

Her ‘murder’ happened a year before Saga and Casey arrived to investigate Nightingales murder.

This death in the family leaves her alone in Watery with only the company of their senior dog Charlie, a greying jack Russel with a laziness problem.

Mari makes do with the little family she has left (literally little Charlie is tiny even for his breed she jokes he's shrunk as he's got older)- not having many relatives nearby as a support system considering she ran to bright falls after cutting contact with everyone but her sister in 2019.

Before her Grimm passing the twins had very little other family than distant (both physically and emotionally) aunts and uncles as well as having a mother and stepfather they'd cut contact with for good reason.

The ’murder‘

The grizzly ritualistic murder of Miss Matilla and Mari’s trauma from discovering the gruesome aftermath (only being drawn outside by Charlie howling at the cultists outside) has led to her becoming an elective Mute when encountering about 90% of the town.

Because of the cult's anonymity Mari lacks any kind of mutual trust in the majority of the town growing paranoid that anyone could be a cult member after her too to finish off the whole family.

This paranoia in turn led the non cult members of the town to be suspicious of her being that she somehow didn't hear the murder happening right outside her home at the time (staying for the summer in the general store by the lake).

All they'd heard was that her sister had been murdered right on her doorstep and she'd just slept through the ordeal only waking when it was too late.

The truth being that Mari had been up the last two nights looking for her sister who'd set out to go swimming in the lake despite her protests that those waters were not safe.

See She'd been too swept up on scouring every inch of the woods after finding Sam's bag, shoes and phone sat on the edge of the lake just abandoned that she hadn't called her in missing in town (not daring to leave the woods) . And even after spending the full day searching she didn't trust the police to come looking for her either.

This lack of sleep from searching day and night meant she had passed out on day 3 and slept through the cults ‘murder’ ritual never knowing that her sister was long dead before the cult began attempting to carved her heart out (Samy having been drawn into and drowning in the lake while trying to disprove her sisters worries about her. Samy following a ‘figure’ into the waves).

The town also was not aware that at that time the three of them (Samy, Mari and Charlie) slept in the basement of the old general store, meaning even if Mari had been awake she wouldn't have heard a thing anyways. (This doesn't stop her blaming herself though).

They also didn't know that Mari had stirred that night at the sound of the howling and barking making it out of the general store door rifle in hand a moment too late only seeing deer masked figures fleeing into the woods and the telltale pattern of her sister's dress covering a bloodied and water trodden body splayed out on the picnic bench. She'd rush out not realising she was screaming already and try to shake her sister awake to no avail.

Seeing a body

something there ,

not her sister

not anymore.

The sun would rise by the time she called into the sheriff's office. Hand still wrapped around her sisters, hair wiped off her bloodied face with loving care and blanket pulled over her so she wouldn't get cold.

They'd come within the hour and cordon off the area.

She'd only let go of her sister’s now Ice cold hand when another would grab hers leading her off to the car park in silence.

Mari had been taken to the police station to fill out all the reports and witness forms not really saying a word just in shock. They'd ask if anyone could come collect her and when they received a shake no offer a lift back up to the store to get her things.

Later on she'd be silent still as she begrudgingly brewed coffees for the sheriff and deputies up at the general store while they took the body and photographed the crime scene.

They'd comment on how the heart had been half carved out sliced open shoddily but not removed properly like the other victims and that the noise of the dog howling and the lights of the store turning on must have put off the ‘killers’ assuming someone nearby was watching them (at least that's their running theory).

Aftermath-

Mari gets very intense surrounding the investigation into Samy’s death. She finds out from her autopsy some key facts that don't add up -

Samy's lungs were filled with lake water - logically yes she drowned in the lake so how did she walk up back to the general store where she got murdered.

Her mottled skin and appearance applies more to a body that's been in the water for weeks not mere days at most.

The cult still seemed to have tied down Samy’s body but the marks on the body would coincide with her being alive at the time of the ‘murder’ and pulling against said restraints.

In Mari’s mind she can only comprehend two ideas-

Either one : Samy almost drowned in the lake barely surviving and after being lost in the woods for two days finally struggled back home to the general store getting picked off like a wounded animal .

Or worse, the cult tortured her by waterboarding her in the lake only to grow ‘ bored ’and kill her up by the general store as a threat.

In either of these options one thing remains - guilt Mari feels such a deep gnawing guilt at not running after her sister after Their fight at not checking up on her sooner knowing the lake had a history of drownings.

It had to be her fault , hers and the cults.

The police (well really just the Sheriff since he's the only one who can relate to Mary having hallucinations having his own about shapes in the night) considered making a recommendation to go to the cauldron lake clinic after some pretty horrendous ptsd episodes and bouts of insomnia began occurring more frequently to Mari leading up to deer fest.

These recommendations definitely did not arise because she accidentally punched a newbie cop in the face who mistakenly jumped out at her from a dark corner with a deer fest mask on while trying to prank their coworker).

These episodes are all being triggered by the surrounding deer imagery of all things. Why'd the cult have to pick the town's mascot of all things, why not a wolf or something scary?.

Mari denies the help initially. Partially on lack of trust and partially because in her own words-

‘Im not fucking crazy Breaker alright! I just get spooked by y’all running up on me all the time with this stupid deer fest shit it's every day and it's it's everywhere in town already the festival’s not for another month and a half alright! Why? why are they rushing?’

It takes one pretty rough breakdown and waking up in an open holding cell on a Sunday morning with no recollection of the *last ten hours for her to finally realise yeah getting help might be the best thing for her sanity and safety right now. That or moving out of town forever and that's not an option in her mind.

*Those missing ten hours consisting of her actually getting the courage to shoot at a cult member missing by an inch, fleeing badly on foot , getting caught , kicking screaming and exchanging punches, just to then in a fit of rage screaming at them to go ahead kill her like her sister only to get *bonk* knocked out cause a taken was approaching and they didn't have time to explain to her what actually happened with her sister. A cult member dropping her off at the station steps as a ‘drunk and disorderly’, their fellow cult members in the police station getting her inside and checked over.

Satu the lumberjack picks her up from the station in the morning with coffee , an ice pack for that possibly broken nose and therapy enrollment forms alike in hand.

These outbursts lead to her becoming even more of a social pariah, seemingly an outsider against small town customs .

But In Spite of said episodes she still aims to be polite when she does choose to speak to the townsfolk.

She always pays promptly and tips well in the dinner;

she'll smile back at the townsfolk as she walks by when taking Charlie to the town park to chase pigeons.

When she stocks up She nods along with cashiers gossip trying to remember who's who and waits while they give Charlie all the fuss his old little face can handle. (Which is surprisingly a lot , he loves all the attention).

Most of all when she heads back to the woods she's never late for work.

Not that she could be late considering she works alone as pest control and wildlife management in the acres surrounding the lake.

She only visits town to stock up on supplies every month or so and since Rose in the Dinner is about the only person she’ll hold a full length conversation with in town , her social skills have been lacking as of late. (Not that she has great ones to begin with)

She thinks Rose is ‘weird’ (heavy quotes weird) like she is , changed by all the weirdness in this town.

She’d never admit it but she feels Like something is following rose around too, a darkness that dims the usual sparkle in her eyes sometimes or a daydream on the air she gets lost in.

Not that she'd admit to spending way too much time staring into Roses' silvery eyes though.

But she knows Mr Wake writer extraordinaire is Rose’s ~ one true love~ and she's only a pinch jealous . Though she does love to hear her excited reviews and ratings of - ’the best Casey novel in her opinion , or are we talking about most engaging ?or ooh! the one that the critics like the most? cause that's a controversial pick in my opinion~’.

(Oh and Mari totally didn't get accidently spoiled by Rose about Casey dying in the last book when she’d just decided to start reading them.)

After her sort of one way crush faded a bit and Rose and her became more besties , Rose tried and succeeded to set her up on a blind date with a local lumber worker who Mari had met in the past delivering logs up to the general store - Satu Barkley.

A broad shouldered gentle giant of a lady who Mari sees as way out of her league but who seems to be pine-ing (pun fully intended) just as much as her.

They bond over a shared love of woodwork with Satu carving a little wooden raven to go on Samy's grave and a little wooden wolf for Mari to wear as a necklace Mari immediately swooning.

Satu becoming the second person she feels safe enough around to talk to freely when she comes to visit the lake and deliver logs.

Work-

Work has been weird too lately.

She used to work in the bustling old general store with their sister before the whole park got shut down.

It was a dream I mean sure the summer rush was always hard to stay on top of but the work kept her mind occupied and sharp , it was a challenge and made the quiet evenings afterwards so much more rewarding.

Worth the struggle just to get to see the sunsets and hear the full array of seasonal birdsong , the cool breeze through the woods slightly chilling the skin.

Her sister always the overachiever would spend the summertime working by Maris side part time shopkeep but full time most days ‘idiot supervisor’ (her own words) or rather doctor and emergency first aider. (Spending the rest of the year working in the wellness centre)

Having worked in emergency medicine in a Vancouver hospital before moving to Bright falls to live with her ‘runaway’ sister, Samy knows her way around your miscellaneous woodland injuries handling the splinters to sprained ankles and the more grizzly injuries too with equal measures of care.

Those summer days in the store by her side the lake and the woods felt even

brighter,

warmer,

kinder than usual.

The woods used to be alive with a beating heart of campers and birdwatchers, the odd ‘guided adventure tour’ by the Koskela Brothers too travelling down the trails like veins through the woods.

Now they're just too quiet.

The only harsh sound being the consistent clanging and buzz of the monitoring station in the hill a crude noise cutting through the bird song in the morning

Moving on-wards-

When the general store got shut down the two of them had moved back into an old cabin their aunt owned that they'd inherited after she passed in 2019 , (this inheritance prompted Mari cutting contact and moving).

The cabins Situated just outside the town's borders up in Watery, but the two secretly keep the keys to visit the general store every summer and fish the lake.

Mari couldn’t bear going back to the cabin without her sister ; all her clothes laid out for work tomorrow , all the sticky notes reminders the plants in the window unwatered. That whole cabin just felt like an open unhealed wound .A living tomb dedicated to a woman who'd never step foot in it again.

She'd slept in her truck that night and sold the place to whoever would move in the quickest, this person ironically being Satu who was a little shocked to see Mari just up and leaving.

After she'd gathered all her sister's and her stuff on the back of the pickup truck she'd left for the woods.

And Once she'd found the old store keys and some solid padlocks she'd set out to bunker down in the basement of the abandoned general store. It was the warmest down there and had been least hit by the elements being some old bunker design from way back when the caldera in the lake was more of an active threat.

(Listen please okay , I sleep deprived Luc editing this backstory right now knows that there isn't a basement but I forgot that the first cult encounter happens in the general store and it's inferred they chill out in there too so we're shifting from the og idea of living in the general store to a second location , for story purposes she's hiding out in the fictional basement keeping Charlie entertained with a bunch of tennis balls and chew toys while the cults lurking above like a fox beneath the hunters, she's covered the hatch to the basement with moss and scrap wood it's all good alright… at least for now).

The store itself is broken down in patches, it's overgrown in others and the patches between those two variables aren't looking too good either.

But It's familiar , it's safe enough

If only it wasn't close to where it happened.

She keeps envisioning that day over and over , rushing out to Charlie's howling , seeing shadows scatter into every corner of the woods.

Seeing her.

Trying to perform CPR on someone , something long gone, a bloodied chest and empty eyes. Just a shadow of the bright bubbly sister she'd angrily yelled goodbye to a few days prior.

The blood on her hands grew as cold as the one she clasped.

It's always the same nightmare , the same moment until eventually it's just silent rest .

Maybe she hopes deep down by staying in that dingy building by letting it rot around her bit by bit.

By being in that right place at all times she can stop the cult using the woods for their murders and make them slip up somehow.

That she can be there when she wasn't before awake and watching.

It was a stupid and under-thought out plan but it's all she can think about now , the what ifs that might have saved her sister , that could save another soul eat her alive in the silence like rust through iron slow moving but persistent till the end.

She spends weeks out at night tracking , documenting and trying to hype herself up to take a shot at these cult members. Trying to detach herself from reality by hyping herself up going ‘deer hunting’ never quite having the bravery to pull the trigger once and for all. Hell when she finds an old Halloween mask- a wolf while clearing out boxes for memories she dons that imitating the very cult she's trying to catch out.

Her days, unlike her nights, are monotonously spent culling ‘ diseased ‘ wildlife for the weird company she's found herself working under. They say their pest control and testing wildlife so they can provide treatment and preserve the species in the woods. She doesn't ask questions , the pay is a little too good to be true but it's paid on time and she doesn't have to worry about being late.

This constant prowling of the woods A dedication to surrounding the lake is why she kicks herself when she returns from a monthly supply run to find the area cordoned off with a dead FBI agent there splayed out contorted just like her sister was.

Nicknames-

After a few days of near encounters with the cult she hangs tripwires at the front doors attached to chimes she makes from razor clamshells taken from the lake, the one on the front door additionally bearing the old door's entrance bell in its centre for extra volume.

Gossip, well more a cruel mythos started spreading of a ‘Mari shell-y’ a week after the Chimes went up.

The story goes that when two rangers came to check on the abandoned store after seeing smoke in the forest that they reached for the doors and were ambushed by tripwires of shells wrapping tightly around their arms, the chimes breaking in the process.

That ‘Mari the shell lady , the weirdo in the woods who lost their voice in the lake, had finally gone looney and is collecting shells to fight off the “witch's powers”’.

She persuaded the rangers that she was just lighting a fire to mask her scent, and that she was on the job- tracking some weird wolves in the woods with rabies , emphasising how rabid and uncontrollable these wolves were to the rangers, this task putting them at enough unease to leave promptly with a ‘-good luck with that’.

Interaction/encounter wise within AW2

(Disclaimer I wrote the majority of this stuff while watching a play through of aw2 and was only on the first few chapters of the game so there's some bits that are out of sync with the main plot)

Overarching plotline of Mari like most Bright Falls inhabitants is just a ‘so bad very bad day worst day of their life’ plot. She doesn't influence the progression of the main story and is more just another victim of the horror genre narrative demanding sacrifices barely surviving it's attacks on her ‘Until Dawn style’ (Emily from until dawn my beloved inspiration).

So Mari’s arc Aka ‘Mari will not die in spite of the world trying it's best to axe her’ (wink wink) begins with a nice calm start in the oh deer diner:

After Rose gives her ‘remember me? , weird your back cause…’ speech to Saga and she's gone through both conversation roots, Mari can lightheartedly bantering with Rose at the counter of the oh deer dinner about how-

M- ‘the animals in the park, well around the whole lake are acting weirder than usual lately like really off putting, more aggressive, almost rabid, think it's just the changing of the seasons getting to them?’

R- ‘must be that volcanic ash in the air their studying down there, you should mask up breathing all that dust in all day and night oh and get a little doggy sized mask for Charlie to wear you'd match’

M- ‘we would (she grins) , you worry about me too much though Rose’

R-‘well someone's got to , I mean just look at you’

M-‘hey!, I'll have you know this is my best shirt I ironed it and everything’

R- ‘oh really? So that's why you wear it every time you're in town hmm? S’got to be the fourth time I've seen it this year’

M- ‘you try living in the woods with a senior dog who's always needing carrying I'm sure all your clothes would be finely pressed and smell like daisies’

R- ‘daisies and roses. well, at least I know what to get you for your birthday’

M-’ a new shirt?’

R- ‘shush you'll ruin the surprise’

Mari doesn't really speak to Saga in the dinner but will nod when noticing her and smile genuinely (if a little anxiously) at her if approached before turning back to the counter and the paper sat on it before her. Giving Charlie scritches behind his old scruffy ears, who sits next to her on a pulled across diner chair.

General Store Basement introduction-

Saga and Casey can encounter and interact fully with Mari in a night-time/late evening cycle of exploring around cauldron lake anytime after the first overlap events/ first encounter with the cult occurs.

When returning to the murder site A trail of fresh blood not washed away by the rain can be found and observed leading from bushes nearby to the general store.

Meeting Shelley for the first time she'll be hunkered down in the deepest corner of the general store basement

To get in you'll need A key for the front door that can be found using the flashlight as its hiding spot on a small metal tin is marked by fluorescent paint.

Several shell tripwires can be inspected and disarmed outside the doors and windows, some of the windows are hammered shut shoddily with long nails sticking out of the frames.

Unlocking the front door and delving into the general store again , several objects are disrupted

- a table is shattered, legs strewn apart , several frames off the walls smashed on the ground and a cult mask sits on the floor brandishing some dog sized chew marks.

-Following the trail of blood leads further into the store and to the attached laundromat room where one washing machine has been pushed out of place revealing a hatch concealed below it.

Below the general store in its basement Mari is found on her last tether.

Being guarded by a quietly growling charlie (you know that sort of old dog rumbly growl they have?) And with A shotgun raised shakily she crouches in the farthest corner of the store wide eyed at the intrusion and visibly bleeding. Having been shot in the shoulder , rough gauze is wrapped haphazardly around the wounded area but She looks palpably pale and clammy.

The shotgun is leaning awkwardly against her stiff bracing shoulder twitching much to her dismay and Charlie the jack Russel sits tucked onto her lap.

Saga can de-escalate the situation by showing Mari her badge and introducing herself and Casey, commenting on recognising her from the dinner in town earlier and asking about her dog.

‘She's Charlie , She's harmless, really more talk than bite. Not that she could bite with her old teeth, give her one of these biscuits off the counter and she'll be your best friend’

A dog biscuit can be retrieved and given to Charlie who softens up at the approach.(And yes you can pet the dog)

When Mari finally calms down she'll crumble a little bit from the stress and alot-a bit from the general blood loss.

Saga can then ask her name and ask about the gunshot wound :

Asking about the name triggers her to recognise the last name Matilla as one of the previous victims of the cult commenting on the incident occurring around a year and a month ago and how the victim looked identical to her minus the haircut.

Mari winces at the comparison, combing a hand through her hair she clarifies Samy was, is , her twins sister and almost spitefully asks why they've turned up now of all times to look into the murders,she calms though saying it's atleast better late than never.

Asking about the bullet wound prompts Mari to comment on it not being as bad as it looks,

‘I was just bunkering down for the night getting Charlie her dinner when I got ambushed by this smokey figure? Like not smoking burning like an enveloping aura of sooty air must be the fucking volcanic ash shit from the lake’ , she quietly adds “I haven't been drinking I swear.’ when Casey's eyes fall on the array of cans on the table.

‘The shot though that went clean through and it's missed the brachial plexus see’ ,

holding up her hand she clenches and unclenches her fingers a few times it's weird though there's two of her fingers on this held up hand missing old wounds scarred over.

‘It all still works just hurts like a bitch , missed the subclavian artery too, still made a mess of my good shirt though and Im supposed to wear this to date night tonight :( ’. Mari is scarily calm for someone who's been shot.

Casey comments on the formal medical knowledge Mari seems to possess but rather lacking medical application of the gauze on her shoulder.

She divulges that her sister used to pop quiz her on the parts of the body, the challenge growing along with her growing up from bones to muscle systems to arteries and where they are a great way to pass time on long summer days.

All great fun at the time but in hindsight it would have been better in this case to have been taught how to bandage said body parts.

Casey has some medical training from a previous operational medicine program he gestures for her to approach so he can adjust the gauze and the two agree to answer some questions in exchange for them just double checking that shoulder wound and rewrapping it (concerned by how pale Mari looks).

While Casey's sorting out that shoulder wound Saga can explore this corner of the basement further around where Mari has crumpled down She has several frankensteined together sketches of the cultists faces from memory watching the cultists hiding in the different areas around the lake, noting down details when they'd lift masks to take sips of beers or drunkenly letting them slip off entirely.

Yellow and pink post it notes , receipt paper ripped from the cash register , and lined stationary paper are stuck haphazardly to a corkboard against the wall with whatever Is available .

(Casey's pretty sure there's a few empty pens stabbed into the cork in more than one spot.)

While Saga is looking around Casey can ask about Mari’s hand if it's a ‘New wound? , looks old from the scarring, that from a cult attack too? ‘

She clarifies no an old wound from when she was a kid , an accident with an unsafe bear trap, not that there is a safe bear trap for a child to be left around and supervised by a ‘distracted’ stepfather on a hunting trip.

She changed the subject pretty quickly and apologises for the shell alarms out front. Commenting on the rumours and nicknames around her,

Casey in turn comments on the choice of names saying it's cruel when a nickname sticks , mari sympathises making a guess that having the same name as a fictional character must come with a lot of jokes and jabs.

Casey asks how she can be staying in the general store and not have heard the murder happening right outside.

Saga, equally confused, clarifies their here because of an FBI agent being murdered on the picnic table outside.

Mari stumbles back up to her feet and with some assistance closes the hatch door , the room immediately falling deathly silent of the sounds of the outdoors now locked away.

Didn't hear a thing. I'm afraid it's an old bunker design sturdy as anything but soundproof too.

Mari promises to head into town to get the shoulder looked at and as Saga and Casey head out to explore the cauldron Lake area she can be heard calling up Satu to come and pick her up trying her best to downplay her injury and saying it was an ‘accident’ while cleaning her rifle.

Escalation /second worse encounter:( aka the angst zone of Samy the dead sister returning.)

Her sister was buried in the woods near the lake wanting to be surrounded by the very nature she coveted . Her grave being marked by some small memorial rocks from mirrors peak and carvings of a crow , a bear , a little wooden duck and other trinkets left by visitors. Fresh flowers sit picked from the surrounding area.

Saga can on her travels around bright falls encounter a manuscript page that details a horrifying encounter - an empty grave and a taken soul rising up to lay it's last family member to rest beside her in that woodland tomb.

Of a shadow imbued figure clawing out of the dirt handful by gritty handful and brandishing an axe ripped out of a cedar tree stump, carving its way through the general store's front door like a horror cliche , the shell chimes rattling a final death rattle.

(this next bits a little messily written i won't lie i love all the manuscript pages and the style of writing in the game but i cannot imitate it i do visual art not written so shoutout fanfic and authors this is harddd.)

“Beyond the door , her last remaining protection Mari Matilla , still recovering from her bullet wound burning a hole in her shoulder, is frozen in place staring in wide eyed abject horror at the looming figure on the other side of the splintering wood.

This figure who shares the same face , the same blood now cold no longer pumping through dead veins looms forward through the gash in the door.

A single white eye peers through the crack sunken into it's hollow socket, the creature smiles a sickly grin too wide for it's face.

She swings her axe bringing the door down with it charging through the threshold , with each slamming step Mari snaps out of the ever growing fear in her heart willing herself to just move! as the axe comes slashing down again.

Finally it makes contact, clipping her ankle with a sickening thump. Bone exposed She screams the world all crashing back down around her at once.

‘The light , the basement. The light will keep me safe’ she thinks and so she dives for that sunken room.

Gunshots ring out in the distance , safety , a chance at survival; she knew who it was, the only one brave enough to be out in these woods alone , Saga Anderson, her hero.

she screams again louder than before:

‘SAGA she's Here Help me!’ she just had to hold on a few moments more. Just a few moments longer. The creature a mirror of her lurches forward for the basement door and-”

The rest is scratched out.

The page ends before anything else can occur saga sets off back to the lodge as the day draws to an end.

On the way to cauldron lake she calls Casey and tells him where she's going, chasing after another page by our best selling author friend she's pissed she asks why he'd write something like this into reality.

He tries to explain that he doesn't remember writing this but writing in the escape , writing in that saga is there to save her and that the basement full of lights is the safest place for her to be. That sounds like what he'd write , from what he knows that that is how he can help.

‘its a horror story all of this is I have to stay within the narrative tropes but you can change it's ending it's not written yet there's always a final girl right who barely escapes but not unscathed?’

When she arrives at cauldron lake it's dark the sun's setting , as she approaches down the hill from the parking lot she encounters several taken , gunshots ring out and she hears from the general stores direction screams for help exactly as written she just prays Charlie and Mari have reached the basement , sprinting towards the store.

The sister's warped and ritually sacrificed body has become a taken a hollow hole in her chest, hair slicked to her face and hands bloodied .

((I have two visual ideas for this currently. One is that she sort of floats above the ground like a body floating face down in the water. Or alternatively upright usual axe swinging but her hairs sort of floating behind her and clothes slightly flowing in a current we can't see)).

She has dirt across her arms and under her fingernails having crawled and clawed her way out of the grave. Stumbling back to her place of death hearing Mari whistling as she cooked, her attention drawn and a rage at her own death bubbling up inside her.

She screams out at her in its distorted voice ‘ why weren't you there ? Why did you leave me to die? What sister lets her sister die in the cold in the dark ? Look at me, You wretched bitch look at me!’

When saga arrives to save Mari she can look around and find the shallow grave empty and flooded with lake water, the coffin floating atop and ripped open. Reaching the general store front door is destroyed , Mari surprisingly isn't dead but has barely contained ‘what was samy’ in the basement of the general store. Rattling and slamming can be heard against the basement hatch upon arrival that goes scarily quiet when Mari calls out to saga again.

She's blood splattered and with one arm weakly cuddling Charlie and is pretty sure like 90% her ankles fully broken (saga is more than sure it's broken she's pretty sure it's been slashed by an axe swing and maybe broken too who knows but she's trying not to panic despite being able to see bone) saga quickly sets to scouting around finding something to splint the leg with and something to cover the basement hatch with that's heavy.

Mari's struggling in the sort of blood loss delirium but asks saga (when she brandishes her weapon of choice and flashlight to go head down into the basement with) to please please leave her be,

Mari asks why she's like that why she came back like that,

She confesses quietly that she hopes that whatever has brought her back can purify her if , if they just wait long enough right , keep her in the light? She doesn't know how she knows but she just knows the light will fix her. It's a fact in her mind now the light is safe and she can be safe again.

She has to be right? .

M: ‘I just , I mean , she's talking. She's breathing what she's saying is cruel, sure but it's better than silence. Please don't hurt her, what would you do ? What would you do if Logan came back out of the Lake please just leave her be’

It seems the story has warped Maris memory of events aligning it with Logan drowning too.

Saga sympathises with Maris grief but stands firm on Logan's condition ,with both hands on Maris shoulders reminds her that -

‘Logan isn't dead. Your sister down there? she’ doesn't have a heart ,

theres post mortem autopsy incisions across her chest Mari , the woman she was, your sister , who you cared about so deeply , that you feel so guilty about not being there to save that version of her she is gone and that thing in the basement is just a vessel being puppeted around, a shadow of who she once was . whatever that is now it is not your sister it's a monster , it's dangerous and it will kill you if we don't kill it’

The Frankenstein's monster - part beloved body - park lake darkness, trapped in Mari ‘Shelly's’ basement and wanting revenge upon her misguided ‘creator’- Mari feeling solely responsible for the argument that led to Samy going to the lake.

(Am I forcing this concept too hard? Yeah absolutely, probably but oh well it's fun and stupid too something something seeing the humanity in someone you've lost coming back wrong even if this vision is clouded by your own remorse).

Ultimately Samy ends up breaking out of the basement if Saga approaches and/or leaves the area and Saga has to put her down fighting in the limited space of the general store trying to lead her away from where Mari and Charlie are cornered.

After defeating Samy , Mari will be in tears but gather herself as the trio make a break for the car park , the escape sequence set off by a loud rattling of all the shell chimes outside and a growing dark presence outside warping the scenery. Mari can carry her own flashlight helping to stun enemies and throwing out the odd flare but is slow moving due to the ankle wound and dog on her hip.

(no she will not leave the dog she'd rather die )

(I'm imagining Kind of like the AW1 section where you're getting Barry Wheeler across Anderson's farm - defeat a wave or two of taken and then rush for the exit no cool rock number though but alot of ambient sound - storm , shell wind charms etc).

After getting their leg seen to properly, splinted stitched, wrapped and painkillers prescribed by Doc Nelson and an ambulance called .she gives the excuse some poachers put bear traps up in the woods and that luckily Saga was in the area following a lead and was able to open the trap for her.

He half buys it considering there's a record that Mari lost two fingers as a teen to a bear trap but doesn't ask further questions considering she's been escorted to him by an FBI agent who still has some blood splatter on her coat.

After aftermath:

It takes a few days to overall emotionally recover from the horrors ™. But once she does recover Mari can then be found half the time hiding out in a makeshift room in the ‘employees only’ room in the back of the oh deer diner.

She refuses to stay in a hotel or home saying she's not getting taken out in her sleep after surviving all this. It takes s while for Satu to persuade her to move back to the cabin with her (mari joking they’ve only been together 6 months and already moving in how forward~)

Rose agrees to watch over her when she’s in the diner she can until everything's sorted out.

(And lend her some actually daisy smelling shirts joking she bought the detergent just to prove her wrong)

The reward for getting Mari alive out of the taken onslaught is a charm she offers that reduces the damage you take from axes (thrown or melee) by 50 percent. It's shaped like a little shell and hook.

Eventually Mari starts spending her daytime out of the back room and in a corner booth of the diner. She doesn’t want to be idle so spends some time folding napkins and cleaning cutlery whistling little simplified versions of the chapter songs as the story progresses.

Charlie settles really well into her corner booth of the dinner enjoying pancake scraps from the chef and scratches from the patrons equally.

I think at some point after the events of AW2 when she finds out about everything (the cult, the taken etc) she ends up having a bit of a fighty argument with Ilmo only to falter when finding out his brother's death.

She gets closure from knowing while her sister probably did suffer drowning in the lake she wasn't tortured or aware (as far as she knows) as a taken when the ‘cult’ got her.

Other little details/ miscellaneous plot beats i didn’t know where to put:-

Mari feels like the failure of the family in her eyes. Her golden child sister got her degree worked in a hospital and seemed to have her life together while she just struggled to figure out what she wanted. That's why she feels so bad that Sam died, not her because she feels she wasn't doing enough with her life while Sam had so much more to give. She learns to push through this guilt and live for the both of them by the end.

Mari lost two of her fingers ( pinky and ring) in an accident with a bear trap when she was little. Her stepdad at the time forced the two twins out in the snow to go hunting despite their protests. Mari was a good shot but didn't enjoy the cold. She'd never seen a bear trap before and then suddenly bam no pinky or ring finger. Stepdad freaked out calling for help and scrambling while Sam stayed calm checking on Mari and talking to her to keep her from going into shock. Since that day Sam's always been Maris' hero. And since that day Samys always knew she wanted to be a doctor to help people like her sister in crisis.

While Mari was born before Sam , Sam has always been the ‘ older’ sister of the twins. More mature in nature and in ego.

The day after Sam dies Mari lops half her hair off because she looks too much like her sister. In turn this makes her look just the same as she did when they first moved to bright falls (partially symbolising how she's set herself back in time healing wise by not confronting her grief). It only kind of works so she gets rid of the mirrors in the cabin.

Maris' fatal flaw was her devotion to killing the cult, it drove her to insomnia, dehydration and overall not taking care of herself .

She obsessed over unmasking a group that she'd fallen for the publicity of.

Spending months in total out in the woods at night , a wolf mask worn to conceal her face stalking the cult never brave enough to pull the trigger and take one out but Internalising the same ideology the cult used to detach themself from the rituals (telling herself ‘ it's just deer hunting , their not people just pull the fucking trigger’) even at times almost getting caught after hallucinating her sister by her side taunting her to take the shot.

she thought they were evil and had murdered her sister but she ultimately (by the end of the game/her character arc) ends up being told the truth and convinced to either work with the cult to take down taken (as a parallel to Ilmo losing a sibling but having the community for support) or teaming up with rose as a body disposal guy. (Since The hardest part is hiding the bodies ; D) she laughs about it in hindsight if only she'd known from the start how different things could have been.

#alan wake oc #remedyverse oc #cult of the tree #its an oc infodump babeyyyyy #oc tag: Mari Mattilla #tw gore #tw body horror #long post #alan wake 2 spoilers

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