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[Promedai]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19fXUi5JgvbUTwDmVejX9bUhiChcc9mhBOmWCL1HWkIA/edit?usp=sharing

Chapter 1. Pioneer of the Wastes.

Ever since the dawn of the calamity, the morning light has been stained by black spores dusting and darkening the sky.

Blanketed by the byproduct of mycelium spreading into the atmosphere, those once bright rays have been reduced to dim ashen tones as they are filtered over the earth by a muted and stifled sun, yet Frederick Kreeburg cannot help but to think that it seems fitting, considering the wasteland which lay underneath it nearly devoid of human life.

The last bastion of hope for humanity now sits amidst the debris of ruined cities, surrounded for miles by a barren canvas of dry, inhospitable landscapes; the Miskatonic Shelter and Research Center operated as one of the few sanctuaries left for those who still lived to study the virus. Dr. Kreeburg was but one of a dozen scientists who still held some misguided hope, that maybe by exploring the origin point of the plague, they would be able to build a better understanding of how to repel it before they were wiped out completely.

Although the world may very well have been ending in front of Dr. Kreeburg's eyes, little by little, he doesn't seem to be bothered by that idea anymore.

Instead he stands outside, bathed in the dull grey sunrise, with equally dull grey eyes bordered by a thick veil of white lashes. His hair rests in cream-colored waves around his face, with the bulk of his bangs swept into a voluminous arch across the left side of his forehead; the remaining length of his ivory hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail, with tufts of it jutting out in a controlled sort of chaos, cascading down to sit right between his shoulder blades.

A grave and dire expression is written upon his features, permeating his outward demeanor as it always does.

According to his colleagues, it was said that he often looked sad or frustrated, if not entirely annoyed. Frederick just had that sort of face, with furrowed brows and deep-set downturned eyes... or perhaps it was the dark circles permanently underlining them that lent him a certain look. At the very least, he imagined being seen as a serious person would've helped him appear more dependable in his pursuits, however, they instead seemed to interpret his stern features as the face of a man haunted by misery.

Well, it really didn't matter. His dissatisfaction with life had no bearing on his research or ability to do so.

Thankfully, he was afforded his preferred solitude in this moment as he stared absent-mindedly into the distance. Out here by himself, he was nothing more than a single speck of humanity balancing upon the delicate precipice of an apocalypse, and he felt oddly at peace in the emptiness of this abyss. It felt like he alone stood at the center of some great cosmic stage and the silence held was in anticipation of what he would do next. The world's fate was at his fingertips.

He knew no one else's research would be able to unlock the secrets of the mycelium... because they couldn't hear the call.

Frederick has always heard things that no one else could, beginning early in his childhood. He was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder -- psychasthenia, they called it. They promised that the things he heard were merely audio hallucinations, that it was all in his head and not to listen to what the whispers said.

Of course he didn't know, nor did they at the time, that this would turn out to be something much more than a psychological phantom.

In this wide open wasteland, there was nothing else around him except for that unnatural sound which would repeat the longer he listened. It echoed in the vastness of the desolate earth, rumbling low and distorted, like a message from the deep. The maddening hum of the mycelium is a sound so loud to Dr. Kreeburg, but nobody else can seem to hear it; only him.

Could it be the heralding call of whatever is coming to change this world?

Whatever it is, he wants to know its name.

It whispers to him. It speaks in the undercurrent of the wind. Perhaps it's the voice of the very spores carried through the air that speak to him. Every bit of it is alive, after all, which is why he's forced to wear a protective mask, fitted over the lower half of his face, to keep the infectious air from invading his body.

But sometimes, he wonders why he even bothers, since he was tainted with it already from birth.

It had been discovered upon his arrival at the Miskatonic Shelter and Research Center, that Dr. Frederick Kreeburg, in fact, had a benign strain of the virus dwelling in him. Needless to say, it came as a shock to everyone that day, but not nearly as much to him as it was to the others. If anything, he felt validated to finally know that his monsters weren't imaginary.

The simple evidence of Frederick bearing the virus, although unexplained, was enough to challenge and completely destroy some significant foundations their previous data had been reliant on. It raised a lot of interesting questions. Unfortunately, time wasn't a luxury they could spend on searching for the answers to those theories just yet.

One thing was certain; the strain within Dr. Kreeburg's body was unique in that it was dormant, showing no signs of harmful or transformative activity to his physiological state. The only unusual thing detected during his physical exam were some abnormal pigmentations of the skin, which admittedly may have been a symptom of the mycelium, but the condition of his skin, much like the condition of his mind, had always been that way as far back as he could remember.

He could recall his parents inquiring about it when he was a young boy, only to be told not to worry about it too much, as it was believed at the time to be unrelated to his behavioral issues and would have no effect on the quality of his life. He supposed the doctor had been right in that regard, as Frederick was now in his 30s and the pigmentation had presented him with no problems thus far, save for being a blemish on his otherwise porcelain complexion.

Overall, he was really quite a colorless, ghostly looking man. Standing solitary in the middle of nowhere, dressed in all white, he must've seemed like an apparition of a person who died somewhere in the wastes.

He stared longingly towards the far horizon, searching not with his eyes, but with his ears for the source of that strange sound he struggled to decipher. The more he heard it, the more it started to make sense. Like words hidden behind the waves of white noise. To his perception, it had begun to take the form of a melody... and it was indeed coming from that deep chasm in the earth... an organic song rising from the infested crater at ground zero.

Something was living there and it was listening to him just as intently as he listened to "it", for when Frederick tapped the two metal rods of his mycelium detection tools together, he intentionally did so in mimicry of a familiar tune, and he was both amazed and unnerved as he heard the pattern not simply repeated back to him, but completed by the portion of the tune that he purposely hadn't played.

Whatever was out there displayed an intelligent response far greater than the mycelium on the surface.


Chapter 2. A Cry for Help.

"Frederick?"

He didn't answer. He knew there was nobody there. There never was.

Instead he lifted the detector rods again and struck them sharply against each other, creating a crisp chime.

He didn't use the metal cylinders just to detect active mycelium in the immediate vicinity, as was their intended design; he also appeared to be treating the tool as if it were some sort of strange tuning fork.

Dr. Kreeburg would bring it out and strike it randomly throughout the day, even in the midst of conversations with his colleagues, though he tried to keep that to a minimum as he knew it annoyed them. For him, however, it helped to retain his clarity of mind. The singular crisp chime temporarily cleaned the slate and allowed him to concentrate solely on the sounds he wished to isolate.

As expected afterwards, the silence returned, and for a moment longer it remained unbroken. Then a loud sigh, followed by footsteps approaching soon made it clear that there really was someone speaking to him.

He decided to turn around just in time to see Ada Mesmer, the Search and Rescue Team Captain, placing her hands on her hips in a disappointed fashion. "Do I actually have to call you "doctor" every time to get your attention?"

Frederick let out a weak laugh. "You know how often I hear my name being called by things that aren't really there?"

"Well, I'm really here and unfortunately for you, I really need a favor."


[BREAK UP THE MONOTONY HERE SOMEHOW]


His unusual overcoat was the only thing notable about him, with its silver sheen catching the light, and upon closer inspection, the thick cloud-like material creating the fluffy collar and edges of his coat were lined not with fur, but with soft masses of mycelium spores and filaments threaded throughout. Even the embossments on the ends of his coat sleeves and around the outside of his gasmask were actually made out of the mycelial tendrils. Of course, these were inactive specimens of the fungi, rendered chemically inert and functioning purely as decoration at this point.

With all the work he performed while wearing this peculiar coat, the hyphae had never reacted to anything he did or any new environment he entered, so it was safe to say that it would remain that way for the foreseeable future.

As to the reason why he would want to encase himself in clothes laced with a viral fungus, the answer was simple really; he was the team's pioneer researcher and sought to take initiative in exploring the applications and limitations of mycelium. The necessary first step was finding a way to reduce the threat it presented, so that live samples could be properly maintained and studied within the lab safely.

No one wanted to take the risk of coming into direct contact with the mycelium, but seeing as Dr. Kreeburg was technically already "infected" and bore some presumed immunity to it naturally -- more so than the rest of them -- he decided to volunteer to test it out on himself first, and now he had a very unique coat to wear as proof of their method working effectively to contain the hyphae.

This ground-breaking discovery is what opened the pathway for them to start establishing a more symbiotic relationship with the mycelium, and soon, they were able to create various kinds of equipment directly incorporating the fungus into their design.

One such tool was the detector rod that Dr. Kreeburg carried with him at all times; upon sensing a high concentration of active spores in the air, it would emit a sound and signal light to alert him of potentially harmful hyphae in the immediate vicinity. He also carried a companion piece to the detector; a slightly smaller metal rod with an odd round shape at the end, which served no real function except to be struck against the detector rod occasionally.

He seemed to be treating it as if it were a strange tuning fork.

Dr. Kreeburg would bring it out and strike it randomly throughout the day, even in the midst of conversations with his colleagues, though he tried to keep that to a minimum as he knew it annoyed them. For him, however, it helped to retain his clarity of mind. The singular crisp chime temporarily cleaned the slate and allowed him to concentrate solely on the sounds he wished to isolate.