Once upon a time, in a land not so far away...
You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside.
You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all.
It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right?
A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it?
A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves.
Claw marks gouged deeply into the door.
Into the wall above your bed.
Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh.
Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next...
...what a horribly big mouth you have.
--------------------
Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all.
Until now.
Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions.
However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow.
Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello.
Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round.
It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead.
theyre gonna be best friends
No, they're going to be eaten by something else if we just leave it on the ground.
[He may be a little more useless at foraging than he was at hunting, but he was at least picking something out of branches. Maybe it speaks to how poorly they planned this whole expedition to the apple tree that neither of them thought about how to actually bring all the fruit back to camp.]
Wasn't it your job to get a basket?
absolutely
[She did bring her empty pack though, and will start unfolding that and grumpily tossing apples in it once she's finished eating that one.]
Probably going to need a few trips for all this.
no subject
Akira drops his pack at the tree's roots before making his own landing in the grass. He never kept anything in it beyond the very basics like the mirror shard. Plenty of room for apple-carting.]
How many? I lost count after the first dozen I threw down here.
[It does occur to him to take his unused shirt from the pack to make an impromptu bag out of it. Helping!]
no subject
[Was she supposed to be counting? She probably was, but tallying and record keeping's never been her strong suit. Even back in the days of the Round Table, other knights were way better at doing things like that than her.
She was more looking at them being all over the place than trying to keep track of how many there were. So she'll take another glance around and give her best guess.]
...more than a dozen then.
[Anyways, moving on!]
Hey, that's not a bad idea. We can probably use this too.
[She'll take her jacket off, figuring between that, his shirt, and the two packs it's hopefully enough to get all of these bagged up. Or at least some of them.]
no subject
[He asks with genuine concern, as if totally oblivious to his own pants-only situation. Nevermind the fact that he was currently attempting to hackey-sack kick one of the apples into his hands with equally bare feet. He supposes he may as well get some entertainment out of the most boring of their daily tasks.]
Except, rather than land in waiting palms, it goes flying well over his head and rolls to a stop in Mordred's direction. Fighting dark forces doesn't require one to be particularly dignified, apparently.]
no subject
No way! Maybe if I was a normal person, yeah, but stuff like this is nothing to someone like me.
[Both because as a Servant, she's more durable, and because she's just arrogant. What are things like the cold to the person that slew King Arthur?
And as far as that apple goes, she'll wedge her shoe under it and kick it back over at him.]
Now if it was some of the others, yeah, you'd probably have to worry about that with them.
HOPE LATE TAGS ARE COOL
Sure. I like someone who can teach the weather a lesson.
[This time, the apple caught and tossed in with the others, though it may be in a bit of a less edible state after being kicked around so many times. Whatever. They had plenty of other ones to go around.]
Who are you supposed to be, exactly?
[Sure, he gets paired with someone named ‘Mordred’ and he’s bound to have a few questions. Mainly about naming choices. Assuming she’s the traitorous quasi-historical figure supposedly seen frozen in Cocytus? Nah.]
Definitely fine!
What do you mean who am I supposed to be?
[She's a little put off by that. It's partially her own fault, she's spent her time here being quiet about her name, giving Saber out instead.
Which'll probably stop after this month anyways. And her True Name doesn't lead to much recognition anyways since when most people think about the Knights of the Round Table, this version of Mordred really isn't what comes to mind.So yeah, this is a sore spot with her.]
Didn't anybody tell you?
good yes
[He apparently didn’t get the memo about his apple-picking partner being a big deal. Akira tended to just skip any reference to being Devilman or anything about demons to begin with. Made for conversations with strangers a little less awkward.
If he was just weird guy Akira Fudo with an uncanny ability to eat enough for eight and almost never getting tired, that was fine with him.]
no subject
[She can't imagine anyone going around calling themselves Mordred if it wasn't their actual name, and the confused look on her face says as much.]
It's my name. Saber's more like my nickname. I guess? It made sense at the time since I wasn't trying to throw my name out there to everybody.
[She says this like it all makes sense and isn't canon specific garbage that only applies to her here.]