I'm alive. That's what's important, no matter what weird things happen so long as I live it can get better.
Standing with the help of the rails on the walls I shuffle over to ware the door should be in this dark room hopefull that no one locked the door. When I reach the door I test the handle. It opens quietly so I poke my head out expecting to see someone walking by.
I don't see anyone but I do see haphazardly abandoned carts, medical supplies, and what looks like someone's boot. I guess they all left?
Looking around I see more rails lining the wall, and a window sits at the end of the hall letting an off twilight illumination in.
Then I hear it. A scratching coming from a neighboring door. Curious I shuffle on over to the door its made of solid wood like most of the doors in this building.
"Hello… you alive…" I say as loud as I can it's not much but it's enough to increase the eagerness of the scratching. Chewing?
I'm just about to open the door to help who ever this might be, when something pierces though the wood around anckle height! A lightly glowing blue crystal spike! it quickly racks back. Creating a small hole in that the creature seams eager to expand!
I fall surprised by this fresh dose of horror "NOPE" I flee! Or try to crawl way at least.
Not knowing ware to run and not wanting to get boxed in by heading back to my pitch black room I look for somewhere to hide.
Spotting a me sized push cart with a cloth cover. I shuffle over and slip into the recess.
A few moments later I hear the thing bigine pushing itself through the hole in the door it made while I was trying to hide.
Risking a peak I push the cloth aside and see what could be called an animated skeleton inching through the hole it's chewing in the door. The bones are vaguely human but subtlety warped while being seamingly crystallized and fractured at irregular points creating extra joints that shouldn't be there. These joints are sadly not held together by magic, instead tendons and vains have been tied around each joint in writhing knots. Of course it's not crawling ether it walking with its ribs like some demented insect! It's arms and legs are just kinda getting dragged around. It's head though is the worst. It's been smashed? No it's more like it exploded from the inside out. With the shards reassemble into misshapen mandibles stitched together with vains.
Dropping the cloth while holding back my dry heaving as I hear it slowly skitetering across the floor.
At least I now know why people probably ran way now… and what the notification for my title ment by mutate.
I shiver at the idea of becoming that thing.
Sadly all I can do is slow my breathing, and hide, cause I definitely can't fight it!
Minutes pass. I don't think its very aware, or coordinated for that matter, as I hear it bump into the walls and various items a few times.
What feels like an hour passes and its still just skittering between our two rooms at the end of the hall . As if it can't grapple with the idea I might be somewhere else. Curiously it doesn't even seem to notice my hiding space even though its bumped my cart a few times, is it blind?
Only one way to find out. I slowly come out of hiding. It doesn't react or change its pattern. I grab a scalpel of the cart I was hiding in and lob it as far as I can away from me.
The object lands with a light clatter a dozen feet away in the hallways only junction. Almost immediately after the creature rushes to the spot.
I feel oddly wronged and happy? But mostly very concerned, how many more of these things infest the hospital? And how am I supposed to survive them if they can chew through wood, and by the sounds of it metals as well. Cause that poor scalpel is practically screaming as it gets destroyed.
Nudging the cart I was hiding in, I find it's wheals are pretty quiet.
Thus the cart becomes my new support, helping me walk to the window at the opposite end of the hallway from where the creature is munching on a debris.
The outside looks wrong. The sky is purple? With wiggly clouds ranging across it but it's all off as if a a cheap illusion. Additionaly the earth seems to end a few miles away from the building. I can also see what looks like a lake that's barely visible at the edge of the window.
Oh and people are walking around in the parking lot of the building, looking pretty lost. At least I hope they're people.
Im at a dead end so I look back to the creature laying there, effectively guarding the hallway's exit. As if sensing my attention it chitters, and begins trying to learn how to use its limbs.
I look way from the horrific sight of arms and legs bending in impossible ways and silently begin checking the rooms around in the hall. Every time the creature begins coming back towards me I lob some junk back towards the junction, keeping it fairly distracted.
Thers 8 rooms in this hallway and there should be about 4 hallways like this perfloor from what I remember hearing, with two central rooms dividing the hallways and an elevator in the middle.
The 6 rooms i can safely access are all largely useless. But I have been diligent and collected and food stuffs and lose cloth I can find.
I'm now the owner of a pound of hardvcandy some some assorted junk food and a dozen granola bars. Only one water bottle though. Of course the rooms all had occupants it's just, they weren't alive.
Three we're just still almost looking asleep. one didn't even look human, while the last one was crystallized into a perfect statue. I reluctantly barricaded myself in that room because said person statue is actually glowing.
Tired I settle down way from the door and sip some of the water I found. I mentally poke the dot in my vision to up my status though I only focus on one part.
[•Health (4>4)
•Vigor (2>1)
•Mana(1>0)]
So vigor is a measure of endurance? Curiously I can almost feel my vigor slowly replenishing as I rest. Follow this feeling is hard but is seam to originate form my chest and then spread though out my body with every heart beat.
I feel other energy doing the same. But ware vigor settles into what little muscle my body has, the other two are different. On which I think is my health is in every part of me and it feels like most of is wasted, like I'm to small to hold it all. While the the other I think is mana cause it's setting into my bones, or more accurately my bone marrow, it makes me feel tingly and slightly sick like it doesn't quite belong there. I try a few things to interact with the mana but it stubbornly remains locked in my bones. I actually successfully move my vigor through! But pushing it out of myself just makes me even more tired.
I check that door is blocked as best as I can get it and curl into a blanket I snatch form one of the rooms and try to sleep.
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I awake some time later to a scratching noise coming from the door.
"No"
Slowly I watch as the skeletal creature digs through the wooden door. Its no longer skittering it seems cause I watch with growing dread as its head slowing rips though from the middle of the door, and it turns its splintered face to look straight at me.
I begin throwing whatever I can at it, as the creature slowly breaks in! In a desperate moment i even try chuck a tiny flower pot I that I found at its head. The ceramic explodes and the creature recoils for a brief moment retreating from the hole, before throwing its whole body against the door. Acting like a wood chipper it's whole body begins digging, every sharpend joint ripping into the door. When It finally invades the room I notice the pot broke off one of three false mandibles.
"S Sorry?" It clearly doesn't except my apology as once the door is properly shredded the creature rushes me with a horrible inhuman lunge.
Panicked I kick the rolling cart with my supplies at the creature causing it to trip over and tang in the cloth I had collected.
I make a beak for it not noticing how my shambling is temporarily gone or how the vigor in my system begins rapidly decreasing.
I don't get fare only to the end of the hallway, the junction in fact. When I finally feel a wariness that leaves my muscles feeling hollow wash over me. Unbidden my Energy stats invade my vision.
[•Health (4>3)
•Vigor (2>0)
•Mana(1>1)]
Im out of Vigor? But I just slept and what happened to my Health?
As soon as I dismiss the screen the creature emigres from the doorway its lost a second mandable from the colisin with the floor. But that doesn't stop it's charge.
I can't run, I can't hide, I can't even survive!…a memory flashes by of two proud backs leaving a starial room for the last time its contents already dead to them. I clench my fist as the [Crystal Abomination] I'm worth something Damit! I have mean and worth! Even if I'm Broken! Even if I'm Twisted buy some sickness!
"You can't just throw someone away when they Fracture!" I shout as the distance closes
Ignoring a growing hollow feeling and how it's steps stutter in surprise, I charge at it, throwing Everything I am against this Things skull with a crude punch even as something inside me protests and breaks a bit further.