A whole new world

[aestrix]

There is a forest that likes to pretend that it's ordinary. It isn't, it's quite bizarre. Every night, in fact, zombies and other horrible monsters swarm this place, looking for people to kill. Not that they've found anyone, the forest itself is quite empty of residents. But they search anyway, during the night, shambling and groaning and occasionally leaving body parts lying around. Those disappear pretty quickly, but it still happens. Then the day comes, and they depart to who knows where, swearing (if mindless monsters could think, or in fact swear to anything in particular) that they'l be back the next night. Repeat ad nauseum.

It's currently in the day portion of this cycle of directionless attempts at violence. Maybe this day will be different from all of the others.

But then, probably not, it's a very boring island without anyone here.

Comments

[greatestgift]

She collects cobwebs and pot contents. Smashing things! Hooray!

[aestrix]

Smashing things is fun!



... Groundsense says that there is a walking thing heading towards her. It's human shaped.

[greatestgift]

Human-shaped, but less so than Dylan the horrible person-thing. The horrible person-thing at least seemed to be sort of alive.

She climbs out of her current cave and holds up a torch to get a look at the walking thing.

[aestrix]

It looks rather like a walking corpse. It growls a little, heading towards her with singular determination.

Brains.

[greatestgift]

Sable is frightened but also ticked off.

She attempts to beat it to... extra death... with her stupid wooden sword.

[aestrix]

It is much tougher than the slime. Also less easy to knock away. And stronger. And faster.

... More show up before this one's dead.

[greatestgift]

She will beat them to extra death too.

[aestrix]

Well, the first one becomes extra dead.

And now there are a lot of them. Along with the walking dead, there are flying eyeballs. Flying evil eyeballs.

[greatestgift]

"Blight it all," Sable growls.

Rather than continue fucking around with the sword, she resorts to extreme measures. She has experimented enough with ground-ripping to know how, and that she can do it, and that it really does a number on her already oversensitive ground - but if ever there was a time for it, 'surrounded by walking corpses' is that time. She targes a chunk of the nearest walking corpse's spine just below its head, and an instant later that piece crumbles to grey dust and she is metaphysically splattered with a tiny bit of horrible-walking-corpse essence. Ow.

[aestrix]

Well, that worked. The dead thing becomes more dead, and as such, explodes. As is tradition.

[greatestgift]

Good. She does the rest, thwacking the flying eyeballs with her sword whenever one comes close.

[aestrix]

The remaining shambling corpses explode, too. The flying eyeballs... Are thwacked, but spin around to charge her again, and again.

(More of them are coming...)

[greatestgift]

But now she has enough breathing room to make a run for her house.

[aestrix]

She's faster than the things after her. But there are, of course, lots of them between her and her house.

[greatestgift]

She explodes all the corpses and dodges or thwacks the eyeballs as necessary. It's not much fun, but she makes it home and slams the door behind her. None of these monsters are smart enough to open doors, right? Right? Because she will block up the door if she has to.

[aestrix]

They are not smart enough to open doors.

But they are smart enough to bang on it. And scratch at the walls. It's fruitless, but the effort's there.

[greatestgift]

"Blight you all," yells Sable.

[aestrix]

The only reply is more groaning. Also an eyeball flinging itself at her roof.

[greatestgift]

Of course.

She's technically within range of the campfire outside, but she places another one and curls up next to it.

[aestrix]

Obligingly it doesn't set her house on fire.

Well. It'll likely be a long night.

[greatestgift]

The campfires' aura is soothing enough that she actually manages to sleep.

[aestrix]

She can likely tell it's day when the sounds from outside have stopped.

[greatestgift]

The quiet wakes her, and she stumbles outside, rubbing her head and growling to herself. Her head isn't exactly what hurts, but it would be impractical to rub her ground.

[aestrix]

It is idyllic! As if nothing last night even happened. No mess from the zombies, no claw marks on the door. Just some scattered coins from the exploded zombies, twinkling innocently in the sunlight. A bunny hops, over there, nibbling on some dandelions. Hop, hop, hop. Nibble nibble.

[greatestgift]

"Ugh."

Sable kicks a wall. And then sighs, and goes to collect all the coins.

That day, she successfully assembles all the materials to make a bed. Her house is kind of crowded with crafting stations at that point, so she clears some more trees behind it and expands the one-room cottage into a two-room house. She discovers that wood can be crafted into thinner two-foot-square panels instead of the default two-foot-thick cubes, and exchanges her dirt floor for a thin wooden one and puts up interior walls to separate her bedroom from the crafting room.

Now she's ravenously hungry. She goes out and tries to catch one of the suspiciously tame rabbits.