The fuck even is this

[wrecking_yard]

"Are you sure this is where you want off?" The wagon's stopped by a smaller road leading off of a somewhat wider little-used dirt road. The merchant I'd hitched a ride with is restless at the cart reins.

"Very." The trees and vegetation is noticeably thinner than it was closer to the nearest town; I wave as I head down the thinner road and that's all it takes for the cart to take off as fast as it can manage - it wasn't cheap to convince someone to shift their route even this close. The normal ambient birdsong and rustling of wildlife gradually drops as I get further in, and I stop to check over the mask.

The seal I made for it still fits around the edges, with no signs of damage or marks that might compromise it. The filter I set up back in town after hearing warnings of strange poisons is solid - charcoal, various fibers, astringents and other compounds to trap, neutralize, and block anything noxious.

I pull it on and then put the dark hooded cloak over my coat - a cloak that has a new coat of protective wax added - and Orthax stirs quietly. It's disinterested in the investigation, but it's not digging in or fighting me on it.

The trees and plant life get more withered and ragged, the silence becoming unnatural - after a while, the plant life all seems to be dead, and there's no sound but an occasional weak breeze through the branches. There's a thin, yellow-grey discolored fog on the ground, visibly thicker ahead. I can only hope the alchemy I resorted to is enough protection against whatever the Hell it is; judging by the state of the local flora and fauna, it's not anything I want to play with. There's off-white fibers stretching between dead tree branches and branching along the ground in places, too heavy and oddly colored to be spider webs, nevermind the texture being all wrong.

Then a mostly skeletal fox shambles across the path ahead of me, bones and patches of fur held together by more of the dingy fiber strands. The 'fog' is getting thicker, and there's a noticeable dust on my boots, the fibers branching out of the ground in places getting thicker.

Spores. I am going in the first stream I see when I get out of here.

The spore-fog keeps getting thicker and deeper the further I get towards the abandoned village, until it's a pervasive white mist dimming any light, thick enough on the ground to eddy and swirl as I walk through it. There's shapes moving in it off the road - zombies overtaken by the strange fungus; humans, shapes that should be smaller animals, a few horses and oxen in the remains of fields, all dead and puppeted. Nothing's coming after me so far, but I'm keeping distance from them as much as I can.

Something that is either a small river or an overambitious stream flows between the fields and the village proper with an infested stone bridge over it - the water's clear and flowing well, with a few fish visible in it that seem sickly but alive and not infested; the spores that settle on the surface seem to dissolve - good to know that water is safe, mostly, although there's filaments of the fungus starting to reach out of the earth along the bottom, growing as if they'll eventually choke the stream out.

The village itself has larger yellow-white masses on buildings and fences, covering structures in places; the bigger masses have smooth pustules growing, a few of them popped with the spore-fog pouring out of them.

The town is empty, overgrown with the strange fungus. It takes a little more work to avoid the former townsfolk; they do turn and seem to follow within a certain range, and take a bit of work to ditch once they start tracking, but I can see the manor house rising out of the spore-fog and they seem to stay slightly away from the grounds.

What must have once been the outer wall of the grounds is now a fibrous white wall with irregular fungal towers bleeding spore-fog everywhere. Past the gate there are tall masses spaced out along the wall on the inside, too regular to be accidental; it's an intentional parting gift they left behind, planted to spread spores from inside the wall out of sight. From what I could gather from the living people in the area, a number of the villagers would have already been dead when they were planted, and the rest would've had little defense against the "poisonous fog" that they'd cited as the "final manifestation of the curse" - nobody could give a good estimate of how long it was between exposure and death, but the few accounts of survivors who left at the first sign something was wrong suggest it wasn't very long.

There's a few patches of the fungus in the barren ground inside the wall, but it doesn't reach very far from the original spires toward the house; either the house and grounds are treated to repel it, or there's some kind of magic ward restricting it. Even the spore-fog thins out quickly, the night sky visible overhead as if I've found the eye of the world's laziest and lowest-resting hurricane, and it's nerve-wracking. They turned the town into a lethal wasteland and made sure they would only be remembered in a few stray, dry official documents and hazy rumors; why preserve the house?

The front door hangs open, hinges broken. As I get closer, there's movement somewhere off in what had been the gardens - a very wet, choked canine huff that brings back plenty of awful memories; I slip in the door fast, flattening against the wall with a towering old clock serving as cover between me and the door. I can hear one of the things pad up to the doorway and jam its head in the opening with the sound of shredded flesh scraping off, but the door doesn't seem like it's moving; the wolf-abomination can't get inside, and after a few minutes of struggling it leaves with a frustrated snarl.

Judging by the wet marks and fresh scrapes of jagged bone on the door, my memory of how huge those things looked when I was younger didn't get exaggerated nearly enough.

There's rugs on the floor, a couple of cushioned chairs by a table in the foyer, and display cases with trinkets and odd pieces from foreign lands; nothing extremely rare or unusual, mostly just souvenirs and curios. There's dust, but everything is oddly untouched by vermin and decay...

Of course, the spores and other things left behind probably killed any rats or insects that might have gotten in.

There's a painted portrait hanging in a frame over the central staircase landing - Delilah and Sylas.

I swallow the tight twinge in my throat; I've definitely found the right place.

The place isn't huge - it's easy enough to find the hatch up to the attic, to start from the top and scour the place for anything that might be a clue. Furniture, basic housewares, most things have been left intact...
But any books, documents, valuables, or anything that might have been a clue is gone. Even hidden compartments have nothing but dust in them, desk drawers empty. Nothing's locked, either, although there's an unreasonable number of traps rigged up on otherwise unprotected spots with nothing of interest to show for it, and by the time I've cleared the second floor I've dismantled enough mechanisms for a thieves' guild trial; luckily the only one I set off spat out a cloud of something foul-colored that tinted the room for a few minutes, but didn't get through the mask.

The only sign of anything moving in the house is a faint sound of a child sobbing in one of the first floor rooms; it only takes a peek through a crack to see a translucent figure of a young girl in peasant's clothes on the floor, a room that looks just as stripped as everything else, and plenty of reason to just not even bother the ghost.

There's a normal parlor for entertaining in the basement, with a door that opens into a room with cages, dissection tables, and torture implements, old blood-splatters soaked into stone here and there; another door opens into some kind of heavily damaged ritual chamber that's darker than it should be, the shadows on the walls seeming to ripple, that I am not stupid enough to set a foot in.

Still nothing useful, and Orthax is drowsing unconcerned; whatever magics might linger, it doesn't seem to think they're a threat.

Even the old hidden escape tunnel's stripped and empty.

They cleaned the place out of anything useful, and turned the entire area into a giant deathtrap for anyone trying to track them, one that's slowly spreading outward at that. There's a graveyard visible toward the back of the grounds; it's not overgrown, but there's some of the fog encroaching, and any surprises they might've left there are not something I want to deal with when I'm alone and dependent on keeping the mask and garb undamaged to get out of here alive.

I can hear the wolf-thing actively patrolling the grounds outside when I return to the foyer, but it's apparently going all the way around, giving me gaps in its presence toward the front - enough to slip out the door and dash back into the town without getting chased; I make it to the bridge without any further trouble, and stop, looking back at the infested town.

I have a good firebomb on me, new design; just enough gunpowder to make sure a thickened version of normal alchemical fire spreads and sticks until the target catches.

I pull it out, adjust the cap, and tug the wick out, lighting it and throwing it at the nearest mass of fungus - trailed by sparks as the spores filling the air start to light from the flame on the wick.

The entire wall-covering mass goes up like dry paper, the spores exploding out in blazing sparks; within moments, it's snowing flame, the fire spreading fast.

Good News: The spores are very flammable, and the blaze is doing an amazing job of clearing the fungus and the spore-fog.

Bad News: That includes the spores that have collected on my person. I am also flammable, and carrying gunpowder. The waxed cloak is slowing the flames, but only enough for this realization to fully process without any explosions, not enough to prevent me being partially on fire.

I dive into the river, submerging completely as much as I can manage with only short pauses to get air. The water's freezing, but the firestorm I just caused is leaving noticeable waves of heat along the top.

By the time it dies down enough to climb out of the river, I'm exhausted and chilled through, with burns getting barked as I shamble away. There's still ongoing fires across the span of deadwood and the remains of the village, smoke thick enough that it's a small mercy the mask is still working; the road out is barely passable. Everything not on fire is scorched and covered in a layer of ash. Eventually I manage to clear the worst of the smoke, and it seems like the living foliage has slowed the flash-burn from turning into a wildfire. I pull the mask off and stow it folded in my coat. The hooded cloak is a loss - a tattered mass of misshapen, melted and fast-chilled wax and gaping burn holes, and I give up and toss it toward one of the still-burning spots.

I push onward until I manage to reach clear air and agitated birdsong, and slump off to the side of the road to sprawl out and wait for sunrise.