Quote Originally Posted by C0L0R3D View Post
Phew! Now I’m in better shape, let’s get back to digging for info. My target this time is that Holly Home place, as I feel it may hold a link to Drestan somehow... whole kid thing and stuff? Maybe? Guess I’ll have to see.
After waking up in the morning, you graciously thank Benni for the early morning breakfast of fresh fruit and breakfast pastries before stepping out the front door to head immediately west toward the abandoned derelict of the Holly Home.

The walk toward the house itself doesn’t seem at all foreboding and almost seems peaceful with the calm and pleasant weather. Still, you decide not to get your guard down and despite the abandoned house being relatively close by to Benni’s farmstead, you brace yourself for anything.

Upon arrival at the dark-brown house, you see it isn’t completely in disarray. Neglect has caused some of the external features of the wooden house to need servicing, like new paint, replacing some of the rusted metal fixtures, and some new masonry might help it look new again, but it at least doesn’t look like its on the verge of collapse like some other places you’ve seen. In contrast, compared to some of the other buildings in this section of town, it’s one of the nicer-looking places here and you don’t feel that intimidated investigating it today. Some of the windows are broken from pillagers trying to snatch whatever valuables might still be around, but you find they could still be easily replaced if someone wanted to live here again, although the rest of the surrounding area says that would be a bad idea.

In your hunt to see if Drestan really is Fallow, you come up empty-handed when it comes to the outside of the house. The yards are in disarray, but there’s nothing really out of the ordinary here. You then decide to go inside and it doesn’t take very long for you to learn more about the story of this place.

Inside, most of the Holly family’s belongings and furnishings are still there. You figure anyone looting the place would only be looking to take things that were valuable and easy to carry like money or jewelry, but the heavy objects like cabinets, bookshelves, and desks still remain. Looters that weren’t interested in their low-value items like family pictures, books, knick-knacks, flower pots, and other simple things still remain, gathering dust while waiting for the family to come home after being gone for years.

Who is the fifth… the fifth child…?

From your investigations into the Holly family’s life, you see Mayla and Errando, both Mightyena, had four children, Yetna, Mishy, Orlandz, and Kesni, all Poochyena. As you search among the family photos and family documents, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of a fifth child. Old photographs and family documents like birth certificates clearly only depict four of them.

But as you wander around the derelict house, you can almost hear the word “fifth” and “five” and it has you turning your head searching for the source of the noise, not sure if its wind coming in through the broken window or simply created from taking steps on the wooden floor.

Another strange thing you’ve noticed is all the clocks in each of the rooms seem to be stopped at the same time. It strikes you as unusual because it seems like it’s only been a few years since the house was abandoned and at least a few of these clocks could have still been running given the long battery life they should have had. Instead, they’re all stopped at 2:14, which seems more unusual given all these clocks should have died all at different times. The coincidence is unnerving to you and you believe something else had a part in having everything stop at this one time.

You come across one room and it appears to be a baby’s nursery. At first, it doesn’t strike you as unusual, but then you recall from the photographs that Yetna, Mishy, Orlandz, and Kesni all seemed to be fairly grown up children and the youngest, Kesni, looked to be at least five years old and wouldn’t need a nursery like this. And yet, as you look around, the room is furnished with colorful childlike paintings on the walls along with cute-looking baby toys and supplies. It seems unusual given most of these should have been discarded after Kesni grew up and didn’t need these anymore. Meanwhile, the room looks rather clean and comforting, as if seemingly resistant to the dust collecting on the rest of the things in the house.

…The fifth…

In the center of the room, you see a colorful baby crib that looks like it was just built or purchased yesterday. You decide to approach and take a look inside to see if anything was left behind.

@Damned Screaming – GHOST (5 Damage>)@ Trap 40% Evasion Test: 41 out of 100: Failed!

You see the empty space in the crib before you and suddenly you realize the trap that you’re in. But before you can duck down, it finds your mind and rushes toward your brain. You can only scream at the nether energies fill your head with anguish… and suddenly your eyes go white…

You can only twitch and shake as your body feels paralyzed and your brain feels like it’s being crushed into a blender before the maniacal machine from hell is mercilessly turned on and everything that defines you is turned into glue.

Colored has suffered 2 Sanity Damage.

The room melts. The baby toys suddenly show their true nature and it was all part of a demonic ruse. It was never a nursery, just part of an illusion and the room that used to be a nursery was converted into a storage cabinet…

But what… what happened…?

You don’t quite understand what the meaning behind the fifth child is. Why none of this makes sense.

The void in that crib… it takes shape and form from the blackness and you see something hideous begin to appear, but you know it’s only in your mind.



The nightmare in your vision beholds an Espurr and nothing about it makes sense. The first thing you consider is that seems like it has nothing to do with the Holly family. It was a family of Mightyena and Poochyena and the family photos and records confirm that. There was no fifth child…

…

…o̮͎̖̎͊͋r̞͙͇͔͇̭̘ w̪̥͙͕̗̪͋́̋ͤ̀ͤå͉ͬͅs ̲͉̖͆͂̿th̞̖er͔̹͈͖̍̄̌ͯe͓̚.̤̝̓͑.̝̗ͫ̂.?̯̰͖̘̳̓͊̈̔ͮ̏ ͓

…

The nightmare continues and you feel lost, still trying to grasp the situation. But dark things begin to come to mind and they begin to drop engrams of the story like planting bad, sanity-consuming seeds into your brain. They take root, they begin to germinate… and they g͔̘̹̘̙̬̟̋̊͛̐̐ͩ̂r͐͛ͦ͑o̰̜̻ͧ͗ͦw̘̪̙̪ͦͪͥ̒…

The father… Errando…

Errando… what did you do…?

…

W͕̜̗̰͉̗ͦ̍ͯ̏ͬͮH̞̯̹̟̣͖aT ̟̐Di͖̹͓̠̹d ̹͚͚̘̑̎ͥ̔y̻̰̳͖̪OU̺ Dͣͦő ̋̒͂̀̂E̱̦͕ͬ̆́ͮͅĔ̜͍̹̻ͬͬ͑ͨͅra̞̱̠̳̓̎ͤ̂Ṇ̠D͙̄O̾͆ͨ̌!̰̉? ̃̍̍

And suddenly you see what the nightmare is about. Suddenly it hits you like a truck speeding down the highway, and you vomit what feels like spiritual essence mixed with the fluids in your skull.

Errando had five children.

Five children.

Four of them were with his wife Mayla.

The fifth was with a Meowstic named Kabina…

…and the baby Espurr they would have had together was aborted before it could be born… to hide the fact Errando betrayed and cheated on his wife and abandoned his family. The scream in your mind makes the truth clear and you feel a kind of dark, psychological sickness when you realize Fallow’s Stalker presence here. And this empty crib is the essence of a child that could have been and could have had a life to live… but was terminated to hide the sins of the parents.

Fallow, as you painfully realize… adores this and doesn’t hesitate to reveal this dark truth to everyone that comes here. And as you look around you at the dark secret of this house, you realize this is everything Fallow could have wished for. The ultimate happy ending of a child-killer. A family destroyed by the truth… and the death of an unborn child out of choice… out of a lie and out of deception. But like a buried weed, the sin still found its way out of the dirt that tried to cover it. It poked out and grew and grew into a monster.

What happened to Mayla… what happened to Yetna, Mishy, Orlandz, and Kesni? Did they find out? Why did they never come home…?

There’s only one logical answer…

Cȍ̺̺̳̟́͂̎lored has su̜̝̰̹͉̇̿ͣ̐̓ffered 3 Sanity Damȁ̽͆̒ͨge.

@{The Derelict Crib: Body Cavity} Damned Screaming GHOST – (5 Sanity Damage)@ has been noted in the Team Records.

There’s a reason why no one came back to pick up the pieces…

You try your best to crawl out of the house, keeping your eyes shut as much as possible, trying to avoid looking at the family pictures on the walls and shelves, trying to shut out the noises of “the fifth child” that seem to whisper into your ears. But it’s like a maze of horrors as you try to navigate it blind and every time you try to slightly open your eyes to peek and find guidance to reach the exit, they seem to land on pictures or depictions of the once happy Mightyena and Poochyena family.

…But all of them now have a vacant black space… a black, Espurr-shaped space. Like a shadow that watches from the darkness… a birth from sin that caused betrayal and death… leaving you cringing and turning your gaze away as the whispers keep drifting into your ears.

Eventually you find your way to the entrance and you make a mad dash for it, throwing open the wooden door with a slam that seems to echo throughout the western area of Seabourne Town. You’re suddenly back outside and you see dark clouds in the sky beginning to gather, to take form, and you see it looks like it’s going to rain soon.

You almost shamble trying to make your way back to Benni’s farmstead. You stumble once and in trying to get back up, your gaze lands upon the house once more…

…and for one dark moment, you see the face of an Espurr looking at you from the window of where the nursery would have been. Watching. Staring. Never once moving or blinking.

You turn around, get up, and sprint toward Benni’s farmstead nea͍̼͙rly͎̯̬̗͉̯̻ ͚͓̮̠scre̺ͅa̬̠̦ͅmi̺̭̞ng̩̭͉̬̞…͕̮̭̜̤

Colored the Snivy (S: Grass)
Health: 16/16 | Sanity: 12/20 | Purity: 24/24 | 6/10 Kurosuōbā | Dodge Rate: 40%
Perk: Diplomacy
Reincarnation Forms: Morelull, Palpitoad, Mega Audino, Pidgeot, Cinccino
EQUIPMENT:
  • Defense Armor: <Empty>
  • Jewelry: <Empty>