A/N This story, by the way, will update about once a month. i say "about" because sometimes it'll be twice a month. Won't be less, though.

Oh, and if anybody is even halfway decent with sprite art (even halfway would be better than me) and would be willing to help me spruce this up, their help would be repaid in cookies. Or stories. I'll write a short fic for you. Pick your poison, your fandom and themes and characters and all, and I'll get it done.

Disk one: Genesis

Chapter two: I Don't See an Easy Way to Get out of This

Your name is CASSIE, which is why Marco had to change his WAA username. Your own username, by the way, is Zoe249. That's kind of important, but we won't say why just yet. There are other things on your mind. We'll just say you're keeping a secret.

We could talk about your INTERESTS right now, like how much you love ANIMALS and the AWESOME FARM that your family owns… owned. Yeah. You're having some trouble with tenses right now. And that's kind of… kind of why you don't want to think about that stuff right now.

It all seems kind of POINTLESS, thinking about the past. Especially with what happened after you started playing Sburb. It has been SEVENTEEN DAYS since you and your friends entered a strange place called THE MEDIUM. You all found yourselves separated and on SMALL PLANETS WITH ODD NAMES and no explanation for how your houses, which had been brought with you, were still running on electricity when they seemed to be cut off from any kind of power supply. There's still internet, too.

It HURTS just to wrap your mind around it.

Lots of other things are HURTING, too.

It had been going so well, you had thought. There were people here, of a sort. You mean, they were TRANSLUCENT WOLVES that kept going on about the periodic table and E=MC2 and things like that and they barely ever SHUT UP, but they were still people, you guess, and you were making pretty progress in figuring out what the problem was in this place and how to fix it. So had everyone else, it seemed.

But now…

You guess it had been destined from the start. It was all in your title, wasn't it?

Your name is CASSIE, and you are the MAID OF BLOOD, or so the wolves told you after they stopped TALKING ABOUT COPERNICUS. You were on a planet called the LAND OF HOLLY AND KNIVES, imperiled by a foul and all-hungering DENIZEN called FENRIR. It was your DUTY to save this world and RESTORE WHAT WAS MISSING.

If only you could have figured out what that was in time to do something about it.

Instead… No, of course you were the Maid of Blood. Because here you are, bleeding out your life like a busted pipe. You don't know whether to feel grateful or regretful that Jake is able to be here with you. He had told you that it was so depressing, where the game had sent him. So he came for some better company than a bunch of MAGENTA SIBERIAN TIGERS that were, apparently, worse conversationalists than the animals on your world. And instead he gets to watch you die on a stone slab.

CASSIE: Tell him. Even if it HURTS.

"R-Rachel…" you tell him.

"Don't worry. She's okay. I talked with her."

You're trying to morph. If only you could morph, then all of your wounds could be healed and you'd be back in fighting shape. And you can morph, you really can, but it's taking so long and you don't understanding why.

"No. Not that." You try to shake your head but barely move it at all. "She attacked me."

She must have done something to you. You can feel the change but it's taking so long. You won't make it in time. But she needed you to last. To die slowly, not all at once. And she destroyed your computer, even though it's too far for you to get to now. Even if you were capable of walking anymore.

It HURTS so much.

CASSIE: Keep talking.

"You have to tell the others," you whisper.

"What?"

"Sh-she t-told me…" you stammer, the words hard because of what they mean, not the physical strain that it takes to make them. "T-Tobias. She killed him." The silence hangs over the two of you for a second as you take another breath.

Oh God, it HURTS so much. Just to breathe.

CASSIE: Keep on talking. Keep talking. Keep talking.

"Marco… and Ax. They don't know."

Why did it have to happen like this?

"But I…" Jake swallows. "You'll die alone."

There are no wolves in sight. They fled from the very sight of Rachel. Her jacket, stained with blood.

You had thought something was wrong. Instead she pinned you to wall with knives that she had taken from the trees outside. She twisted them and forced them deeper, talking to you all the time, talking like you weren't even there and then suddenly you were, as if she didn't even know for sure if you could hear her or if she was even saying anything at all or it was just in her own head.

Tobias was dead.

She didn't even morph to do it.

And then she dragged you here, left you here to die like a sacrifice to some bloodthirsty god. Slowly. She told you how long it would take. Down to the minute, so long as you wouldn't move and make it worse.

You had to beg Jake not to move you. Moving HURT so much. Even to talk.

CASSIE: Ignore the pain. Keep talking.

CASSIE: You have to keep talking.

And now you have to beg him to leave you. "They need you. They don't know."

You close your eyes when he leaves, so that you don't have to watch him go. So that your vision goes away altogether instead of slowly, slowly fading into black.

The darkness is a blank slate for your mind and it conjures up memories. Of plains of holly, trees with knives hanging on their branches like steel fruit and climbing vines with striped berries and shrubs that glow in the dark. Wolves with clipboards, hanging on your every word whenever they stop talking for long enough to notice that you actually exist. Wolves with clipboards, and sometimes even graduation outfits with those silly square hats.

The farm where your family lived. Slowly being overgrown by polka-dotted climbing vines and some purple moss kind of thing that smells like chocolate but tastes horrible, like radishes or something.

It's so beautiful. All of it. Everything is beautiful and everything… everything HURTS.

The farm where your family lived. Lived.

The meteors.

You remember the meteors.

And it was all your fault. Everyone's. But sharing the blame doesn't make it weigh any less.

CASSIE: Be Jake. Save your friends.