zoomingupthathill | RYSLIG; ic inbox

[He can't show her the sapling, that's something Max would have to get up to come see, so instead he looks to see if there are any other unique flowers he's been growing that might interest her. He's got all sorts of varieties, from those native to the peninsula, to others a bit more obscure. Eventually, he settles on a variety of pansies, Viola Northern Lights, because it's probably one of the more unique earth-plants he's got in his collection.

But then, just as Basil is turning to bring the pot back, he stops short. That tension in his chest that he'd been brushing off has mounted suddenly to an unbearable degree, to the point where his breath feels literally caught in his throat. His heart thuds loudly between his ears, blood roaring as if it's pounding off the walls of his skull.

It comes for him without preamble. The grass, fortunately, is a soft enough buffer that the pot doesn't shatter when Basil drops it, though the soil falls out as it tips onto its side, rolling a few feet away from where Basil collapses in a heap, like a marionette with its strings cut.

He isn't moving.]

[ About half a second before it happens, Max feels an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. The feeling that something is cold and wrong. Maybe it's in the way he coughs. Maybe it's just because it's July, and July isn't exactly her favorite month anymore. Whatever the reason, as he's turning back she can feel her ears swivel forward towards him, and the fur her tail, which is squeezed through a hole in her modified jeans-into-cutoffs, flare out, despite how gross and matted it is.

A moment where everything in the air tells her: Something very bad is about to happen.

And then it does.

All at once, Max is on her feet, skateboard and wrench discarded. ]

Basil?!

[ Her voice catches in her throat in lieu of any breath. She drops to her knees, hard, and a jolt of pain shoots up her body. But Max doesn't care about that, right now. Not as she pulls on his arm to turn him over, wings large and cumbersome and in her way. ]

Hey- hey, Basil, what's wrong? B-Basil, wake up—

[ The déjà vu's stronger now. So strong it feels like it's going to choke her. ]

[From a distance, it would be easy to assume Basil fainted. He'd passed out for whatever reason, which wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of possibility for Basil to be doing. He's an anxious, nervous person, and he gets overwhelmed easily. But Max had every right to feel like something was wrong, because something is wrong.

When Max reaches down to lift Basil in her arms, it will be like picking up completely dead weight. He's limp, his head lolls loosely as she turns him over onto his back. Logically, if he had simply lost consciousness, his eyes would be closed. He would be breathing- shallow and faint, perhaps, but breathing- and his body perhaps reacting in some way to outward stimuli. His tail twitching, ears moving, anything.

But as Max turns him over, the moon hits his face, and his eyes are wide open. Jaws slack and unresponsive. His body, normally almost too-warm for Max to touch, is losing its heat rapidly. It isn't just getting cold.

It's a cold Max is implicitly familiar with. It's the same cold she feels all the time, every day.]

What...? No.

[ Max stills. She's watching the life leave him. The glow of his eyes fade. ]

Basil. Basil, get up—

[ Billy, get up, please.
Billy, get up, please, please— ]

Basil, pl- please, I can't- do this again—

[ His empty face kaleidoscopes as she blinks out tears. Max gasps and wheezes, trying to take in breath to calm herself—because that's how she reacted, when Billy died, but it does nothing for her, physically, so she's just stuck like that, caught directly in the moment, a second away from screaming for help. ]

[Basil...doesn't respond. He can't. There's no way he can reassure her, because even if he was conscious and could, he wouldn't know what was happening to him either. Just that one moment he was fine, and the next...

Well. At least for a mercy, the changes aren't slow. In fact, since Mana generally wants to make sure monsters get their bang for their buck in most cases, the moment that Basil's body has died...that's when things start changing. It's a blessing in disguise, perhaps, because Basil isn't present to feel the pain of it all.

It's almost...weirdly efficient, the way un-needed body parts drop off first. His wings are the first to go, the scales along the membranes flaking off like petals before the mass drops onto the grass. The same goes for his long tail, which thuds to the ground like it's been chopped off, clean and effortless. His horns crack and become brittle in the seconds that follow before snapping off at the roots and tumbling to the ground as well, clattering together like old bones. Perhaps this is just the result of Max never seeing what it looks like when the Fog reclaims a body before, but...that won't seem like the case very quickly, here.

Because Basil's body starts changing just as quickly as parts of him disappear. His scales are still falling off as fur quickly grows in its place, patchy and dead looking. Where scales used to cover his head, actual hair- the hair he once had- rushes back to fill the gaps around the crevices where his horns were, with new ones already poking through to take their place. And the final nail in the coffin, perhaps, is the way his legs start to shift and bend underneath him. No need for the bones to reform for the most part, so much as his feet themselves. The claws fall off just like the horns had, regrowing, reforming, reshaping-

...hooves. They're hooves, and everything is starting to become clearer now.

Basil's body is dead. A corpse, parts of him already sunken in and hollow. The places on his body where hair- fur- has grown to take its place ranges between dead-grass blonde to almost neon green, an unnatural color that stands in stark contrast to the clumps of dead lichen that his old monster parts have shriveled up into within moments. And while Basil has yet to actually take a breath, when his muzzle finally shrinks and his face begins to reform into the shape it once had when he was human, his eyes begin to flutter back open.]

[ Now, pieces fall off him, and Max is, perhaps, even more distressed; her pleading turns to whimpers, as she thinks he's going to crumble apart in her arms. And, in that moment, she does think it's the fog, as despite him going to pieces, Max doesn't shy away. No, she holds tighter, as if she can physically hold him together, choked thoughts escaping her in bursts, don't go, you can't take him—

And then the feeling of fur springing up under her arms gets her to pull back. To look at him through her teary eyes.

Max was with Basil when his body grew scales to begin with. When his hair was what fell off in clumps, blood and tissue oozing off him. She sat with him in it, the gross and the muck. This is some...bizarre reversal, except different. New horns grow. And, he's practically in her lap (—she would never know it, but it's eerily similar to how Lucas held her many months before, as she sputtered and choked in his arms—) and she can feel legs move even though his torso, his body is still, his eyes staring at nothing.

She jerks her gaze to them, and that's when she feels horribly impossibly cold, as she watches his feet crush and twist and mold to something new and familiar all at once. ]

That's...

[ How macabre it is, to be surrounded by the remains of Basil's discarded body parts. How horrifying. Max can't look at them, now, once it all starts to click. Because her eyes are locked on his face, so she sees it the moment his eyelids start to flicker. ]

B- Basil, c- can you- hear me—?

[ Her nose is going a mile a minute. Quite suddenly, Basil's scent has changed. He still smells like soil, potting dirt—but there's a fundamental shift from something like hot rocks to...a wild mix, honestly. Something earthier. Musty...and musky, at the same time. A hint of sweetness, from the flowers growing from his horns, and it's strangely overwhelming.

Without realizing it, she starts to lean in. ]

[By the time it sinks in for Max what exactly is going on, the main transformation is nearly complete. Basil isn’t a Gargoyle anymore. His scales have been traded for fur and hair, and his skin- though cold and pale- is closer to human than it’s been in a very long time now. For Basil’s part, everything is still dark and hazy. He can hear Max, muffled and distant, but can’t quite make her out yet as the darkness slowly pulls back. His vision- gone from the height of a Gargoyle being able to see from miles away- has drastically lessened, yet his hearing and sense of smell are both almost unbearably strong. It’s almost too much to wake back up to.

Yet, that’s what’s happening. He’s waking up, a soft wheeze escaping his lips as his eyes actually move a little, now.]

Ma…..w….what’s…….ha-happening…..

[It isn’t over, not yet. Basil’s body has more decaying to do as some of the skin on his legs abruptly slips away, exposing the bones of his ankles and femur underneath. It happens in patches on his arms, but the most obvious is the way his collarbone seems to sink into his chest cavity, a dark recess hiding underneath the fur of his neck as jagged spikes of bone appear like a crude necklace around his throat.]

[ She smells it more than she sees it. At the neck, yes, it's obvious, but the arms, the way skin sloughs off his leg—she far too close to take it all in. She gasps quietly, as her nose almost vibrates. ]

You're—

[ —alive, no he's not. That's a foolish thing to almost say, and she's glad she doesn't.

Eyes wide, still leaning in, Max murmurs, a hand brushing hair from his forehead: ]

You're...becoming like me.

Edited 2023-07-03 05:50 (UTC)

[He’s…

……what?

Basil…is barely coherent, still trying to regain consciousness. His body isn’t in pain thankfully, though he is very sore…the changes are slowly finishing up now, his long ears more deer like than they were previously, less large and floppy. His horns are smaller, purple, and his snout is missing, replaced with a dark deer nose instead. Perhaps the one glaring difference between them are the long fangs he now has, which actually don’t seem much different from the snaggleteeth he had as a Gargoyle.

But…as his vision swims into focus, Basil realizes that the shadow blocking out the moon in front of him is Max. She’s holding him up off the ground, he thinks. And she’s………

Very. Very close.]

Hh….wh……?

[ Max is very close. Close enough to watch his nose fully round like her own. Her frostbitten lips, slightly parted, exhale cold, cold air.

Captivated, she leans down— ]

[ —and bumps her nose against his in one easy, fluid motion.

Boop. ]

[Are you ever just so out of it that you have no clue what's going on until it's already too late and the moment has mostly passed? Because that's how Basil feels, right now.

The first thing he's able to see as he literally reanimates is Max just inches from his face, leaning in close enough that his ears end up perking straight up, quite literally a deer (or in this case, Deerling) in headlights as he leans back against her knees, his fingers pulling at the grass underneath him. Like, she's so close he can feel her frosty breath against his skin.

He feels his throat flex, constricting as he swallows, but before he can think to do or say anything...she leans in.......

And she boops her nose against his.

Basil's response is for a sound to finally escape him: a very soft, pathetic sounding little mmmeeeeh.]

[ The noise sparks a strong protective instinct in Max, which in itself is weird. Her ears shoot up, and her eyes go very wide as she realizes 1) how close she is and 2) that Basil is quite literally cuddled in her lap. ]

I didn't- [ Moving her lips this close, that's bad too, she jerks up. ] I'm sorry- I don't- literally don't know why I did that—

[ If she could blush, she'd be beet red. ]

Edited (wrong beet) 2023-07-04 01:57 (UTC)

A-ahh...uhh...

[Basil doesn't...really know why he did what he just did either! Someone help.

He's still laying where Max dragged him, because he has no strength to sit up on his own just yet. He...doesn't even realize yet that he's not alive anymore. When Max said "you're becoming like me", well...it hasn't fully sunk in. It probably won't until he notices just how much of him has suddenly changed.]

It...it's okay! I...

[Basil has to close his eyes for a moment, a brief wave of dizziness threatening to overwhelm him. It's half due to the sudden change, and half because his head simply doesn't weigh as much as he's used to. The added weight from his larger horns and snout is just...absent, suddenly.

And as he lifts one of his hands, tentatively touching his face with it, he's starting to realize something has happened here.]

W....am I....?

[Now he's actually trying to sit up, even though he's shaking head-to-toe from the exertion.]

[ Embarrassment be damned, the moment she feels Basil start to shake, Max leans back down, this time taking hold of Basil's arms and helping him sit up, slowly. ]

Whoa, whoa, easy. You're gonna feel kinda out of it, 'til your body adjusts.

[ He has his face back. Max was starting to get more used to seeing, well...the snout. How weird is that? ]

[The world is still swimming into focus, and it's made worse by the way everything swings about dizzyingly as he sits up. Having Max there to steady him helps, at least...with Basil blinking hard to try to encourage his vision to correct itself. Everything has a subtle blur to it, like he just can't focus properly...

In the end, though, the first thing he finally settles on are his legs. They're stretched out in front of him, half bent at the knee. Somehow his clothing didn't get horrifically torn by the changes- perhaps because they're tailored to work for a Gargoyle, less so for a wingless monster as now the back has a useless gaping hole in it- meaning that he's able to fully focus on the deer legs he now has, completely lacking in any proper feet or digits or...anything. They're just hooves attached to furry green stilts.

...and they're. Partially decayed.]

H....e...mm-eeh!?!

[Basil brings both hands to his face, touching it all over until he reaches his ears, squeezing them briefly before he reaches up even further to touch his horns...no, his hair. His HAIR. He has hair??]

I- I ch-changed! But-...!

[I want to be able to spend more time with Max.

...]

[ He keeps making that sound, and it's got Max alert and attentive all at once. There's actually a part of her brain that thinks it sounds...incredibly cute, and she does not know how to address that at all. ]

Yeah, you're- holy cow—! [ Max has turned her head to where Basil's looking. Sees his decaying leg. Becomes aware of the bones at his collar.

Realizes that's a bad thing to say, she's just a little on edge from it all. Basil dying, the change and revival, the—thing she just did for some stupid reason— ]

It, uhh- Was it...something you said to Mana? You went today, right?

Y...yeah. I...I asked her...

[...

Max reminding Basil gives him a chance to think about what he said to her. Like, really think about it. See, he didn't exactly know what he was asking for at the time, just...you know. Something to help with his weakness to the sun. The part about Max was added unconsciously, and as a result...

Oh. Oh no.

Basil looks...both appropriately stunned and embarrassed all at the same time, and perhaps he's lucky that he's dead because he'd be blushing so fiercely his entire head would be flushed at this point. He brings his hands back up to his face, feeling it a little more deliberately now. His hands...he has his fingers back. The scoop-like claws are gone, replaced with fingers tipped with much smaller claws. Claws that pull through his hair, which is a little more...straw-like and lifeless than he remembers. He pulls his legs a little closer to himself with some difficulty, looking from his knees to his torso, then properly down...

His eyes settle on the now gaping cavity in his chest, and he has to cover his mouth with his hand. Max can't see it at the angle she's at, as you can only really get a good look from directly above. But even with how dark it is, there's enough moonlight filtering in for Basil to see the openings past his ribcage...and the organs beneath. His lungs. His heart.

All of them motionless. Lifeless.]

[ Max waits for him to explain. There's probably a pretty simple place Mana got screwed up, and Max isn't sure if they can do anything about it...but maybe if she offers some of her coins, too? She'll offer, once Basil's done...

...but instead he trails off, getting reacquainted with his body. She can't really blame him there, either. And it gives her a little time to get her brain under control. What the hell was that? And why does just sniffing the air make her feel like she's covered in goosebumps? Like...she's got tingles all over, just from being near him. Like, okay, Max knows- she's figured out by now she has an incredibly inconvenient and somewhat guilt-inducing crush on him, but seriously? He just died literally on top of her, that is not supposed to be a turn-on!!

She's still supporting Basil as he gets his bearings, so she feels when his hand moves abruptly. ]

What? What's...

[ And she tilts her head and trails off herself. As she catches just the briefest glance at the chasm open in Basil's skin.

There's a hole in him. There's multiple holes. ]

...I'm gonna kill that witch.

[As much as Basil is feeling nauseas from seeing his own insides, it does at least distract from him having to actually tell Max what he asked Mana for. At least...in more specific terms. He's having a weird enough day as it is, he does not need to add embarrassing himself horribly onto that!

Nevertheless...it's clear just by looking at him that Basil is rattled. He's been completely changed into a new monster, and his body is not yet accustomed to the feeling. He's freezing cold, for one, unused to no longer being impervious for the most part to temperature since he's just so hot all the time. That, and every so often Max might notice the way he'll suddenly gasp like he's been startled, but the truth behind that is the fact that he's not used to just...not breathing. He keeps scaring himself by the way his body simply isn't telling him to take a breath anymore, and its giving him this recurring awful sensation in his chest that he does not like at all, thanks.

Basil whines a little under his breath in the silence that follows, and when he exhales, he can feel how icy cold his own breath is.]

M-max. Just now....d...did I...?

[When he blacked out...]

[ It doesn't feel natural, how cold Basil is. Max has gotten used to touching him being like a shock to her system, something teetering on the edge of dangerous that's come to give her a rush. Now... Well, the rush is still there, but it's vastly different. The warmth is gone. On top of that, the way he's...gasping, it sounds so familiar. Like how she had, trying to adjust to her body's new normal in the early days post-death.

All at once, she wants to warm him up. To save him from this. To restart his dead heart. But if that was something Max could do, she would've for herself a long time ago.

Her grip on his arm tightens. ]

Y-yeah. Yeah, you did.

[ He died, right before her, right in her arms. She felt him stop breathing. ]

[Basil has to just. Sit there, for a long few moments, letting that understanding sink in. He'd been feeling bad before, but after he'd "fainted"...he didn't remember anything else. It was so sudden he didn't even feel any sort of pain, he was just...gone the moment his heart stopped. And that is mortifying for a number of reasons, to the point where Basil is struck numb by it. He doesn't even know what to say.

Eventually, though...what he does end up saying- murmuring, really- is probably exactly what Max could have expected.]

I-...I'm s-so sorry, Max. I...I'm...

[Though perhaps it was not so personal as this, Basil has seen death before. He's handled a corpse. He has looked the macabre in the eyes, and that was long before he ever came to Ryslig.

Subjecting someone he cares about, especially someone like Max, to the same...is probably his worst nightmare.]

[ He just died, and he's apologizing.

It hurts. Max feels the hurt radiate out from her heart and seize all of her. It doesn't matter that, in this situation—if she ever sees Lucas again—she would be having the same reaction, mortification and shame over putting someone so close to her through that. It doesn't matter, because right now, she remembers how terrifying it was to lay dying with no way to stop it.

Without waiting a second longer, Max wraps her arms around Basil, effectively hugging him from behind as tight as she can. Embarrassment from the strange action she took when he woke is wiped away, much like when she crawled onto his bed to hold him while his initial Gargoyle changes proved unbearable. ]

Don't you dare. Alright? Don't.

[ Her lips murmur against the fur of his neck. ]

[There's really no room for embarrassment here, because it's all taken up by having to grabble with the horror of what just happened to them. Basil has weathered a lot of awful things in Ryslig. From becoming a Shade, to dealing with his changes, turning to stone for the first time, and nearly mutating into a tree...but even with all of that, he never died. And Basil's relationship with death is as complicated as it is tenuous. He's terrified of it, for one. It's torn his friend group apart. It's loomed over his every waking moment, and had become an uncomfortably present factor of his life as his Grandmother struggled through her illness. It was the thing that tore his innocence away at a too-young age, leaving him forced to pick up the pieces.

Basil has also craved it. In times of desperation, of weakness...during times when he felt out of his mind, Basil wanted to disappear. He'd imagined what it would be like to no longer have to suffer through the guilt and every day torment, and to finally just...rest. It's a tempting, if awful, alternative.

And then...he's been left to wonder if he's even alive in the first place. The reality of his status back home had been left up in the air since he got here. Did he drown? He doesn't know. He has no way of knowing. Maybe, even if he did go back home, there'd be no home to go back to. No body. No Basil.

He'd never truly had to experience that here in Ryslig, where that terror, that temptation, had begun to fade in the wake of real, tangible people he could be properly supported by. And it was so...sudden. So simple. One moment he was fine, and the next...he wasn't. Here, anymore.

Max holds onto him, and Basil just continues to sit there for another few moments, too shell-shocked to do anything. Normally they're unable to be this close this easily, due to their differences. But like this...the cold doesn't really change how cold Basil already is. Max is soft, and Basil is soft. Neither of them breathe. They're perfectly still, like two real deer might be curled up in the undergrowth, hiding from predators. And as he sits there, it's Basil's first realization that he can't...properly cry. With a body that is no longer alive, the tears that well up in his eyes feel weird. Not right, somehow. He gasps, but not because he has to, it's because he has no other choice. He curls up with his knees pulled to his chest, making it that much easier for Max to wrap her arms around him.

He doesn't say anything else. He just weeps, quietly.]

[ Max has...depressingly gotten used to crying like this. Nothing feels right about her anymore. Her mouth is always dry, except when she's craving meat. Her body feels wrung out and dry, in consequence, after she cries, until she replenishes it with either plain water or...meaty juices. When she sits in the same position for too long, her blood settles, and it makes it appear like she has bruises on the backs of her arms, legs, back. She's felt it after every single moment they've just sat with each other, Basil's scales against Max's fur leaving it electrifyingly hot. Sometimes that would warm her blood in her veins enough so it felt less like the sludgy, mossy slurry it's become—but it never got it moving.

Nothing gets it moving, except for warm, fresh meat.

Now, there's no chance of it even heating up, but it's comfortable. There's no niggling warning reminding her of what may happen should he get too warm... Though, there hasn't been one of those in awhile. When Max needed help escaping the golf course, she'd asked for Basil to use his fire on her. She's trusted him for some time, and the fact that he can no longer literally burn her changes nothing.

But it's comfortable. Despite the fact that it shouldn't be, with their positioning. They'll sit there as long as Basil needs to, in Max's opinion. He's still sort of sitting against her legs, partly in her lap, but she doesn't make any attempt to change that if he doesn't. Something about being so close like this feels right in ways that almost calm her. She keeps inhaling his scent, even though she doesn't need to, because she can't bring herself to stop.

At this angle, her chin tucked into his shoulder, head slightly tilted so her horn doesn't stab into him, when Max momentarily opens her wet eyes, she can catch a greater glimpse of the empty cavity at Basil's collar. That it's not just darkness, it's everything. Is that what she looks like inside too? Has moss taken up everything? If she cut herself open... Would what she see?

It's a distressing thought. It would be for anyone. So Max wants to bury it, so she can focus more on Basil, on finding some way to help him—

And perhaps that's why it's so easy for the instincts to take over.

They've been sitting there for awhile, her arms around his shoulders, her nose nuzzling his neck. Eyes closed once more, she doesn't even realize it when her tongue, more deerlike than human, slides out of her mouth and starts licking his fur, slowly and gentle. ]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, MADMAX. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 005.08.019.85 * MADMAX has joined 005.08.019.85 <MADMAX> do your thing or whatever <MADMAX>** don't be dumb

cw: death

no subject

cw: death cont but like worse this time

death 2 the sequel to death. cw: ptsd

cw: decay/dessication/changes

cw: body horror/decay

cw: body horror/decay

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no subject

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: decay

no subject

cw: gore mention

cw: gore mention

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major omori spoilers

ST4 spoilers

omori spoilers/cw: complicated feelings towards death, suicidal ideation

cw: cannibalism talk, hypothetical vivisection what a fucking tag to put