Previously called "Umbral Mind." Rated T for some violence, blood, and death. Mild swearing, no sexual content. Only platonic relationships among the survivors. However, there may be some vague CharliexMaxwell, but only for plot development purposes (no fluff). There may also be references to romances in a backstory or two (for example, Lucy and Woodie), but it's off-screen.
This first chapter functions as a prologue centered around the Origin Story video, and technically could be considered skippable if you've seen it, but I wrote in a few little things that may have something to do with some later plot devices. So skippable, yes. Recommended to do so? Nope. :)
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and please enjoy the story!
Prologue
Wilson slowly struggled back to consciousness. It was like wading through thick mud; his mind felt groggy and infuriatingly slow as if he had been given a heavy dose of anesthesia. His thoughts whirled and clashed haphazardly into each other, and he didn't dare open his eyes for fear of the dizziness manifesting itself more so, causing him to be sick. Thus he laid there, trying to collect the scattered scraps of memory as to how he arrived in this woeful state.
The machine. That cursed machine the voice from the radio instructed him to build. At the time, the opportunity for access to such grand and forbidden knowledge was far too tantalizing for Wilson to bypass. Being a scientist struggling to make his way in the world, he greedily accepted all information given to him, abandoning the wisdom that had told him to avoid taking orders from a disembodied voice from an old radio.
The voice had been the first he had heard in quite a while. As shunned and secluded as he was out in that old cabin of his out in the woods, he never got visitors, and he rarely left the place. He only ventured out when lack of supplies drove him into the nearby town to collect more. The residents of this town thought him to be mad, and often went out of their way to avoid conversing with him. From time to time he did find himself craving the companionship of someone other than his skeleton model in the corner or the skittering lab animals, but he always quickly dismissed the loneliness in favor of furthering his scientific research. He buried himself in his work so to avoid being reminded of the tragedy that landed him in this woeful position.
So to hear the voice so suddenly was quite the surprise. He could barely get a music signal to reach the decrepit radio on a good day, let alone hold a conversation with somebody through it. The voice that came through was decidedly male, and his every word seemed to ooze with the impression that whoever was speaking had a perpetual smirk frozen upon his face. Though the haughty manner of speech annoyed Wilson, he quickly learned to ignore it as the content of the words took precedence. The amazing amount of knowledge that was bestowed upon him over the next few days was almost more than he could absorb.
One tidbit of information he gathered was the voice's name: Maxwell. All the while a small entity in the back of his mind pleaded for Wilson to ignore Maxwell's seductively informational voice, but the lust for knowledge all but swept any qualms he had under the rug. He did everything in his power to make up excuses for continuing to listen to the sweet, whispering madness. He knew its name, for one. Putting a name to something unknown, by human nature, makes one more comfortable with the thing or idea at hand. It had willingly told him its name, so really it couldn't be all that scary… could it?
Maxwell, in return for the information bestowed upon Wilson, had requested—no, demanded—that Wilson do something in return. He happily obliged, eager to get his hands working on some grand new project that was no doubt far less likely to fail than any of his own ludicrous ideas and experiments of late. With his newfound knowledge, looking back at his previous research made him scoff at his former ignorance.
Maxwell carefully instructed in on how to build a machine. For days Wilson worked under his command, following his every order and carefully constructing the device. He rarely took any breaks to care for his already malnourished body. His fervor combined with Maxwell's compelling promptings made him continue long past what he normally would have considered healthy. He usually did try to make a valiant effort to take care of himself, for he knew that if his body were to fail, his precious mind would be quick to follow. But as he built that cursed machine, all those matters were thrown out the window.
After days of work, the machine was nearly complete. It stood before him now, in all its rickety, metallic glory. It almost seemed to be smiling at him, making Wilson uneasy. For the first time in days, he really got a good look at his handiwork. Knobs, wheels, and levers jutted out at awkward places, the moving parts in anxious suspense for their grand finale. Maxwell's voice echoed through the dusty room once more.
"Good, good, my little puppet." A silly nickname he had given Wilson. He tried not to dwell on it too much.
"It is nearly complete. It's absolutely beautiful, no?" Maxwell gushed. Yet another thing that perplexed Wilson. Maxwell spoke as if he could see the contraption as well as he could, though he was merely a voice emanating from a simple radio. Wilson hypothesized he used some sort of spying device. Given the caliber of the inventions he had already described to Wilson the past couple of weeks, he wouldn't be surprised to find this to be true. A man of such knowledge wouldn't be held back by such a simple issue as not being in the room. But for the time being it mattered not, and Wilson pushed this line of thinking into the back of his mind.
"Now, we need a living element to fuel the machine," the crackling radio continued. "A generous helping of fresh blood should do the trick." The menacing smirk was clearly heard in this morbid announcement.
Wilson slowly walked to his workbench, retrieving a fresh beaker and preparing a sharp knife. Again, that pesky consciousness of his pleaded for him to stop this madness.
Madness? He nearly laughed aloud at the idea. The townspeople would be much too delighted to confirm such suspicions. He had already been framed for a heinous crime he did not commit, but he only got off on the grounds of lack of evidence. They were constantly looking for excuses to peg him as a lunatic. He might as well let them believe such things, so later he could prove with further grandeur that he was a perfectly sane genius, one born in a world not yet ready for his superior intellect. It would be such a sweet victory to see their faces when they discovered him to be not a madman, but a leading figure into the world of tomorrow. Then perhaps both he and the townspeople could move on from the catastrophe that happened all those years ago. The thought made him grin. He would finally have peace.
His resolve firmed, he brought the knife to his hand and closed his fingers around it. Bracing himself, he quickly drew the knife from his grasp, wincing as the blood began to flow from his flayed palm into the hungry maw of the beaker below it. When Maxwell indicated an adequate amount was collected, Wilson hastily bandaged his throbbing hand, and ceremoniously filled the contraption's fuel tank with the warm blood.
Having officially completed the machine, Wilson stood back to admire his work. Though he didn't yet know the exact function of the device, he still prided himself in his ability to build such a magnificent thing using only a voice from a radio.
"Excellent!" the grainy, static-marred voice agreed. "Now, there's only one thing left to do. Throw the switch!"
All the qualms Wilson had been harboring suddenly came bubbling back to the surface as he reached for the lever. What was this thing he had created? Who in their right mind would build such a thing under direction from someone they had never seen or met before? Especially someone with so much knowledge of otherworldly sciences, if half of what Wilson had learned could even be called science. Everything about this felt wrong, and his hand hovered reluctantly over the switch in agreement.
The radio violently cracked out an enraged "DO IT!" that made Wilson jump. The smooth, instructive voice Maxwell usually used on him was lost in favor of a fury and force that Wilson didn't know could be contained within a single human being.
Not wanting to risk evoking the full wrath of Maxwell upon himself, Wilson grasped the lever and slowly, so very carefully, moved it down, activating the machine. It rumbled and roared into life, the vague smile in the architecture he had noticed earlier cracking and morphing into an evil, malice-filled grin. Wilson's blood ran cold as he instinctually realized that he had made a bad, bad decision. He tried to slowly back away from the terrifying grinning face as Maxwell's horrid laughter filled the room, the voice strangely no longer concentrated on the old radio.
Wilson noticed movement at his feet, and nearly shrieked in surprise as his shadow came to life. Its shape morphed into that of two dark, clawed hands that subsequently peeled themselves off the floor, manifesting themselves as tangible twin horrors that snaked around him with sinister intent. Nothing in his experience offered any explanation to the entities he was seeing, and he defaulted to the age old fight or flight mechanism—in this case, immediate and frantic flight.
He lunged toward the door, deftly evading the hands that were clawing at him. He had a momentary glimmer of hope as he thought he had evaded the shadows, but upon his final lunge for freedom, cold, unearthly claws wrapped around his legs, and he began to fall.
Time seemed to stand still. All hope fled from his mind with a sickening lurch. He experienced what he assumed was his "life flashing before his eyes." It was as if he was preemptively dying at that very moment, before the horrid shadows could finish him off themselves. He clawed the air frantically, trying to gain purchase on something—anything—that could save him from whatever terrible fate the darkness had in store for him.
But to no avail.
As he was enveloped by the shadows and yanked away from all life as he knew it, he thought he could hear Maxwell's voice again, laughing in sick triumph.
Everything went black.
So it was much to Wilson's astonishment that he seemed to be waking up. Still too motion sick to open his eyes, Wilson relied on his other senses to determine his surroundings. What he gathered was nothing like the infernal pit of despair he had been expecting.
He felt grass beneath his prone form, making the exposed skin on his neck and hands itch. He heard birds squawking in the distance, and a warm breeze tugged at his unruly hair. The sun was shining down upon him, and even through his closed eyelids it made his eyes ache from the light that he was so unaccustomed to seeing after being cooped up in his cabin for so long.
A slight wooshing sound suddenly manifested itself near him, accompanied by a shadow being cast on his face.
"Say pal," a voice said. A horribly familiar voice. "You don't look so good." It took Wilson a moment to recognize the voice without all the crackling and static that normally had accompanied it when it came from the radio. Maxwell.
"You better find something to eat before night comes," he continued, the smirk in his voice all the more obvious without the radio's white noise. "We wouldn't want such an obedient puppet to go to waste after all that hard work would we?" A small chuckle, and the sound of moving fabric.
The voice was now whispering in his ear. "Find me, and all your questions will be answered." Then, somewhat wistfully as if Maxwell wasn't quite talking directly to Wilson, "What has been lost shall be restored, and things will go back to the way they were. Good luck." Another small woosh and the blinding sunlight returned to searing his closed eyes, and the dark presence he felt was gone.
Wilson took a few more minutes to get his head to stop spinning adequately enough for him to attempt to open his eyes. Slowly, he was able to sit up, clutching his aching head. He blearily saw a small meadow surrounding him. Birds flew about, tall grass swayed in the breeze, and rabbits went about their business searching for small morsels of food to eat.
At the thought of food, Wilson's stomach gave a hefty growl. It brought back the awareness that he couldn't even remember the last time he had even eaten. He cursed both himself and Maxwell for putting him in such a position.
Maxwell must have somehow drugged him and spirited him away somewhere, unceremoniously dumping him in this field. Surely it must have been some kind of poison, otherwise he wouldn't have seen those shadowy hallucinations… there was no other logical explanation, other than perhaps lack of sleep and sustenance. But the former was far more likely, considering his current location. This, by far, had to be the worst prank anyone had ever played on him.
All I have to do now is find civilization and catch a train back home, he thought as he stood up. The wilderness is no place for an inventor, and a gentleman no less!
Thus, Wilson began to walk.
Thank you so much for stopping by! Apologies if the first chapter or two are slow, it's my first time really writing a fanfiction, so I'm still testing the waters. I like to think it picks up a bit after the bit of prologue though, so I hope you stay tuned!
I've got plans to incorporate almost every character at least in some small way, so be sure to take a peek at my profile and vote for your favorites! The more popular they are, the more screen time they might get!
I'm basing a lot of my theories about the Don't Starve world off of a book I once read called Fragment by Warren Fahy. In the book, a group of scientists investigate an uncharted island that, in its isolation, has evolved an entire alien ecosystem with ravenous monsters and even sentient spider-like people. That's basically the idea that I'm going with, that Don't Starve is in the same world that we're in, just... somewhere hidden, with plants and animals that don't quite follow all the rules that we're used to, yet are still are eerily similar to creatures we know. Of course, I may explore a touch of magic every now and then, but whatever can be explained by science, will. We are following Wilson's point of view after all!