subject_013 | deerington/deercountry Inbox

"Man, this place sounds like another dystopia. Why do so many worlds have that going on?"

It must have been some weird luck she was born in some world where nothing as interesting happened until she actually left it. To think though, that some worlds were on par with this one on how bad things could get.

Luz nodded. "Darn right! And I've been pretty into birds, or was anyway."

Wolves had recently come into her life, and they were kind of their own thing.

"I think you're right about that. But at the very least, there's no Julia or Mother Superior. At least we don't have to feel like there's a target painted on our backs. we can at least have moments to breathe easy!"

Whenever they came and they had the foresight to see them.

Luz looked at the lamp and nodded. "Let's go!"

"In my world, it depended on your perspective: the average person barely suspected what went on in the shadows. The worst of the outbreaks was explained away as mass hysteria, but people had started to see the loose ends in the narrative. It wouldn't surprise me if the powers in this place had an affinity for summoning those of us who hail from such dark worlds. We likely have more resilience," he notes.

"We'll see what manner of treatment our new hosts give to us. At least whomever they are, they allow for warm welcomes," he notes. He's accepted this world as his life, but dwelling in the predecessor to this world, to say nothing of the preparedness his world of origin gave him.

"Further up and further in," he murmurs and steps into the glow of the Lamp...

...The pull of the lamp draws them through into the warm lights of the windows in what looks like a fantasy inn. "Well. Dare we expect a warm fireside with travelers meeting for the first time, a darkling stranger watching from the corner?" he muses.

"That sounds like how my world might operate, if things like that were a thing. For all I know, that might even be the case. There isn't a lot that our own government tells us in the long run, and a lot of what we could know is sacrificed for comfort a lot of the time. I think you're right about people having more resilience from darker worlds though. I've always thought that was why a lot of us are here."

Luz nodded. She could definitely agree with that. They still had to be wary about a lot of things.

And now they were pulled into some kind of inn, where it looked like it could be something right out of a horror story.

"Only if they sing a rousing ale song and can carry a tune," Luz replied, giving him a totally-approving-of-this-place look.

He'll kneel, and if she allows, he'll help her down from his shoulders.

"Like something straight from Lord of the Rings," he muses, leading the way, his hand straying close to the dagger at his belt. "Though if there's any ale involved, I'm the one drinking it," he adds, with a mischievously paternal lilt.

Luz will totally allow him to help her, as she can sometimes be all limbs when it comes to that kind of thing.

"Ugh, gladly. I do not get why any kid wants to drink something that's so bitter. I'll stick with Boba tea and soda, thanks. The only thing I'd envy those dwarves for are the songs: they have GREAT songs."

He'll lead the way up the path to the door, hitching his Robe a little higher and winding one corner around the back of his head as a hood.

"As a former teenager myself, it's the lure of the forbidden, though when I was fourteen, I was starting medical school and already knew much about the effects of alcohol on the human body," he muses. Reaching the door, he pulls it open and steps aside to let her enter first.

Luz chuckled. "Yes, well, maybe I might have been curious if I hadn't seen kids my age and a little older drunk in a strange hotel. They might not even remember me from then, but I remember. Seems like a lot of fuss for something that makes you act silly but not remember it."

Luz watched what he did and also put her hood up, though considering the cat ears, it looked somewhat less dramatic.

"Ahhh, yes, what I had dubbed 'the idiot parade' at the Grady Hotel. They seemed to have a thing for clomping like drunken moose in the hallway outside the door to my room," he says, dryly. "In moderation, it's a pleasure, but without that moderation, it's a painful thing to all involved."

They step into a warmly lit taproom, a fire on the hearth with a hunting dog laying on the fur rug before it, a few patrons already gathered, the innkeeper behind the bar looking up from wiping out a pewter tankard. "New Sleepers, eh?" the innkeeper notes. "What'll ye have?"

Luz laughed. "They were fun to be around though. I think when you're younger, you like to dabble and be silly about it. That's why I don't get why people want to do it when they get older. It just seems like there'd be more cons than pros."

Ooh, comfy. Luz immediately went over to respectfully pet the dog, then looked up.

"You don't have apple cider, do you?"

"Some people take a slower route to maturing," he says, with a lilt that he might be one of them, albeit by a darker path, which has found its way into the twilight.

The dog lifts its head, sniffing at Luz and thumping its tail, friendly. The innkeeper keeps one eye on Wesker as he speaks to Luz. "Got some fresh, from apples just in season."

Wesker takes down his hood. "Might I request a bottle of red wine if there's any at hand?"

The innkeep discreetly makes a gesture, almost like something magical. "Got some of last year's vintage left, if that would please yer palate."

"Or maybe Deerington was too much for people sober?"

That sounded like something they might say, and while Luz had never been drunk, NOT being drunk and dealing with Deerington had been pretty rough to begin with.

Luz is still petting the dog, and finally looked up, grinning. "Awesome."

She'll be up in just a minute. She just needs this, despite having an omen who is an actual wolf.

"Fair point. Even I found myself needing a glass of wine at the end of the day in that place, at least until my supply ran out."

"Yer new in Trench, aren't ye?""Been seein' new Sleepers pass through here.

"Got some fresh mushroom steaks, if yer hungry."

"And I'll have chocolate milk to forget the day's usual taxing and possibly traumatic effects!"

With no milk, sadly.

"Ooh, mushroom steaks! Yes, please!"

"Two steaks, comin' up. Ye'll eat here, or ye want a room for the night?" the host says, moving toward the kitchen.

"Your choice: I have a feeling you'd prefer a spot by your furry friend here by the fireside," Wesker muses. The late summer night is cool enough to suggest autumn, and he wouldn't mind dinner by the fireside.

"Do you usually have a room here by yourself, Wesker?"

Luz asked this as she was petting the dog and rubbing his tummy, of course. Luz was not a girl who was going to miss a chance to pet a dog but was still going to have conversation with a good friend while having a hot meal.

"My first time here. I gather we're both strangers in this strange new land," he muses. "A sequel to the story we both lived in Deerington." He takes down his Bag, digging into it and taking out the Journal, removing a cartridge pen from inside it. "I suppose it's a bit soon to make plans for the future, but I've always been one to think at least three moves ahead.

"And I think your canine friend there hopes that one of our plans involves spending some time here with him," he adds, warmly and even indulgently.

"Ah. Just making sure!" Luz said, taking note of him already taking out a pen and logging something into his notes. That actually reminded her of Dipper a bit, though she imagined that was where the similarities ended. Clearly Wesker had his own reasons for writing down whatever he was thinking right now.

"A pretty strange sequel too, what with all the blood and everything," Luz said, still petting the dog who had now designated Luz's lap as his new pillow. "Thinking of a new bunker, in case things get crazy?"

Luz had not forgotten the final weeks of Deerington, where just staying alive was a daily struggle.

She might catch the beginning of an entry albeit viewed upside down, as he pauses while writing. "It's rather like the gothic tales I read as young teenager, only far stranger, since we're living it." The sight of her snuggled with the canine might soften his smirk a bit.

"I'm jotting a few observations, though once I find a house of my own, it will give me a foundation to build from. A roof of my own as well as some private space in which to work and build a library. But also with a bolthole for the times when the place turns stranger than I can handle on my own."

It was a shame that Luz couldn't read it, remaining blissfully as unaware as she was. "You know, I might have even read something like that too, in fanfiction my mom didn't know I had access too. It was just not something I often read."

And now she didn't have to imagine it at all, much to her chagrin.

"That sounds like a good idea! I'd be looking for one myself if I didn't live in an ideal situation. Chances are that we'll have a few ways to hunker down and stay protected ourselves in case things get really dicey."

"Hmmm, if you were a smidge older, I'd recommend a few authors. Sometimes their content can get a bit intense, at least by suggestion. But, a good entry level novel would be the mother-monster of them all, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

"Hopefully, the powers in this place will grant us some clemency and a respite in which to be settled. Though the pirates on the seas weren't precisely a harbinger of hope," he muses.

At that moment, a girl who could be the innkeep's red-haired daughter approaches with a tray with their, keeping her gaze modestly averted, though Wesker might give the girl a bit more than a once-over, not perversely but with a definite appreciation for a Titian-haired damsel. "Your meal should be ready soon," she says, softly before scooting back to the kitchen, peeking over her shoulder, as if making sure there's no trouble.

"I think she's leery of me."

"Luckily everyone in my worlds' heard of Frankenstein, but I haven't gotten to read the book yet. I'll be sure to go pick it up if I find it in the library. I don't mind reading something that's supposed to be out of my age range!"

What did that really mean anyway, when you had seen and heard as much as Luz had this year and a half anyway?

"The pirates were kind of on the low end of danger though, for me. I mean, I robbed them and managed to escape. I'd say that the farm, or those parasites were the really bad part."

Luz paused when the girl came by, and Lus gave her a bright smile and her thanks.

"She was really pretty! You're pretty imposing, to be fair. Maybe she's just shy?"

"You'll find it's quite different from most of the movie versions: the book makes one wonder which the monster and which the human, the doctor or his creation?" He says this with a note of seriousness, as if he's gone down that dark passage and thanks to The Doctor, he's taken a hard look at what came out the other end of the passage.

"Admittedly, my strength has been all over the map. Of course it had to fail me when I was in the middle of dealing with those pirates. Though ...that's when I found that ingesting Blood restored my enhancements," he notes, with a weight to his words suggesting how he discovered that.

"I do have that effect on most people," he adds, taking the cork from the wine bottle and filling his glass, then doing the same with the bottle of milk and it's accompanying cup, holding the latter out to her. "Shall we make a toast?"

"I always kind of thought that the creator was the monster though. Wasn't he the one making a person out of dead body parts? It's not like they can give consent, and usually if you do something like that it's considered grave robbing, right?"

She was a little surprised at how seriously he said that though, as if it was something she should commit to memory. It occurred to her that he might have done some unscrupulous things in his past. She'd ask about that later.

"How exactly did you find that out? I'm assuming you didn't go all full vampire on one, right?"

How WOULD he find out something like that anyway?

"I'm waiting to see if you think that's a good thing or not," Luz said, grinning. She took her cup, and brought it up to his. "To current and good friends?"

"To give my assessment? I saw a little of both, of humanity and monstrosity, in the creator and the creature. I suppose, I've been involved in some at best questionable things done in the name of science," he admits, but there's a chariness in his tone now, as if he's not ready to disclose this.

He smirks at her question, regarding 'going full vampire'. "Almost, though not quite, initially. I was able to fend off several of my captors, but my strength abated and five of them pinned me down, with only my head free. I defended myself in the only way I had left: I bit the nearest one in the arm, hard enough that I drew blood. That taste gave me a boost of strength and I was able to break free and fight them off. I would have consumed it in a civilized way, but I didn't exactly have any syringes on me. One does what one can. I've been warned by some of the Wakers that folk with Vileblood are regarded as the source of inspiration for tales of vampires, and I'd had people in my world of origin say I looked like a 1990s vampire. Leaning into ones clichés isn't such a dire thing."

"We'll say, the people who don't find me so alarming are the ones most adept at getting through the defenses I'd raised about my spirit. That would include you," he says. "To fine company and the strength and cleverness to rise to whatever this town can and will toss our way," he adds, clinking his glass against her cup.

Yup, that was definitely the voice of someone who had been a little bit of Doctor Frankenstein himself and was fully aware of it. It was probably better that Luz didn't ask all about it right now, as that kind of query was bound to lead down toward other directions she might not want to go yet.

"Ohh, now I get it! I should have remembered you were Vileblood. Luca has to consume blood too! I just figured that might be something you got from your world: after all, in Deerington, we had a vampire ourselves, though I guess she wasn't going around draining people whenever she wanted. I just happened to lose the lottery on that one, not helped by the fact that I was pretty, uh, drugged up at the time."

"Drugged out" would have been more appropriate for what was happening to her at the time, but that was neither here nor there.

"It has been said that I can befriend just about anyone!" Not that Luz thought that befriending Wesker was especially hard, just that she wasn't the type to immediately be dissuaded by looks or a prickly demeanor. "I'll drink to that though!"

She clinked her up glass against his and drank, making a satisfied sound afterward.

deerington/deercountry Inbox - UN:A_Wesker013

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[CW: Fictional pathogens mentioned]

Re: [CW: Fictional pathogens mentioned]

Re: [CW: Fictional pathogens mentioned]

Re: [CW: Fictional pathogens mentioned]