Inkuborn

Your heart pounds as you leap the fence and dash across the muddy ground to your house. You hear the crash behind you but you don't dare look back. The door slams shut as you leap inside, and you fumble for a weapon, a way to call for help, anything.
A loud slam heralds its arrival. The blow nearly causes the wall to collapse, but the door is the only real casualty. You see the mangled remains of a tree root retract through the hole left behind. With a shudder, a tree trunk impacts the side of the house, causing the weak wooden wall to shatter into splinters.
You hope the end is quick, at least.

The Inkusel is a disgusting disease. The sufferers' skin darkens and turns green as the disease progresses, their minds turning to more and more destructive behaviours. At the infection's zenith, this stops, and they turn their minds and bodies to trying to infect as many people as possible. As time passes, the Inkusel mutates, tearing their body apart and turning them into Inkuborn.

Nothing Left

Anything that characterized their sophontic nature before their infection is wiped away by the sheer ferocity of the Inkusel. Their limbs swell and turn into masses of greenish-black slimy flesh. Their eyes turn an inky black, although at this point they rarely need them. They no longer speak, only wail and gurgle. And any sense of intelligence or self-preservation or relationship is long gone, replaced by an insatiable hunger to hurt and infect.

CW: disease, death, body horror, injury, second person narration

Related Condition

The Inkusel

Affected Sophonts

Smoothkin
Stalwartkin
Hardkin
Theoretically others

Geographic Distribution

• Inkuna Forest

Non-Sophonts

The Inkusel can make Inkuborn out of non-sophont material as well. A common target are trees, which uproot themselves and drip Inkusel-laden sap wherever they go. Then there are Inkuborn rocks and - in at least one reported case - Inkuborn made of metal, dripping with the contagion and nearly impervious to harm.

All images in this article were created by me, EmperorCharlesII, unless otherwise indicated.