Healer Spawn - Episode 1 - Prologue (Patreon)

Hey everyone

Well, here it is — our first interactive adventure in a long time has finally begun. The prologue came out kind of by accident, I honestly didn’t expect to get pulled into the story of his parents, which suddenly even hit me a bit (guess I’m getting too old for this shit, lol), but in the end, like I promised, I’m posting the first episode for everyone (check DeviantArt, I’m not going to post anything for free on Patreon anymore).

Quick reminder of the poll results (it was on Patreon for all free users):

Winner is Ethan — 24 years old, a total nerd and shut-in. Programmer from Seattle or Austin. Lives in his parents’ basement, plays D&D and World of Warcraft, almost never leaves the house. Socially awkward virgin, but very sarcastic and snarky online. Somehow, he ends up inside an MMORPG world.

And in the second poll (both paid and public) about what he becomes, the winner was:Low-level elf healer with a unique ability to heal through sex — skinny, small breasts, very fragile (medieval fantasy world)

The next poll now on Patreon, but all future ones will be Patreon-paid-only (behind the paywall — I don’t want Patreon nuking the polls again), and accordingly, if this does well, there will be continuations, which will stay one episode ahead on subscription compared to what I post for free.

Alright. Too many words. And there’s still a whole prologue ahead haha

...

The gray, overly familiar Seattle drizzle hung in the air like a dense veil, turning everything around into one continuous blurred wet stain. The hills, overgrown with damp grass and bushes, looked as if the sun had never touched them, and the old wooden houses stood slightly tilted, like people who had long gotten used to enduring and not asking questions.

The Fosters’ house was one of those.

Two stories, with siding darkened from moisture, with a porch where the boards creaked slightly even under their own weight. The paint had peeled in places, the steps were covered in moss, and the small yard had long since stopped being something anyone actually took care of. Everything looked… not abandoned, but tired. As if nothing new had happened here for many years.

Inside, though, it was warm. And quiet. Too quiet, even. As if there wasn’t Susan Foster in the kitchen right now, carefully placing freshly cooked stewed meat with mashed potatoes and vegetables onto a plate, nor Andrew, who sat leaning on the table with his elbows, staring at one point, thinking about something of his own.

Susan moved in a familiar way, almost automatically. Her light blonde hair, tied into a neat ponytail, swayed softly behind her back, while a soft home dress with thin straps gently hugged her still fairly slender figure, one she, to be honest, was even a little proud of. Just a little, but proud, and she tried to take care of it, even though she worried a lot about the wrinkles and other signs of aging that had come over her so suddenly.

Both of their day was no different from yesterday, just as yesterday was no different from the day before. Only a different outfit and different food, although even that came from the same list of things Susan cooked constantly, and probably could make with her eyes closed, without thinking for a second about where the salt was, how many minutes to keep the meat on the heat, and when exactly to add the spices. All of it had been brought to such a level of automatism that sometimes it felt to her like she wasn’t even needed here at all. Like the kitchen would manage without her.

She placed the plate in front of Andrew.

He nodded without even lifting his gaze.

— Thank you.

Susan smiled, as if that “thank you”, habitual but still necessary, triggered a tiny, almost imperceptible mechanism inside her that still held onto the feeling that she wasn’t here for nothing, that her presence had meaning, even if it was expressed in such small things as warm food on the table and a quiet “thank you” in return.

While she stepped away to serve herself, Andrew had already lowered his fork into the warm mashed potatoes, steaming with a pleasant aroma, lazily mixed it with the gravy, as if even that required extra effort, and started eating. He loved this taste, even if he didn’t show it to her, to his beloved “Sue”, as he used to call her back then, 25 years ago, when they had just met in a small bar not far from the university, where he, still full of energy and some strange, almost bold hopes for the future, told her about his projects, about how one day he would work on something truly meaningful, and she laughed, throwing her head back, fixing a loose strand of hair.

He remembered how she first cooked dinner for him in a tiny rented apartment with peeling walls and a creaking refrigerator. How grateful he had been to fate for this woman, for how he felt with her, how he wanted be near he, and the fact that she, with her own hands, had made something simple but so real for him, back then seemed almost intimate, almost sacred, something that couldn’t be devalued.

Now he just ate.

And even the fact that he liked the food didn’t affect anything. He just chewed, swallowed. Chewed and swallowed. He didn’t even notice when Susan, as usual, sat down next to him, the chair leg slightly creaking as she moved closer.

Unlike Andrew, she took a spoon, even though she thought a fork was more convenient, but still continued to eat like that, not even knowing why. Maybe because she was used to it, or because she wanted to show that she was different from him. She no longer remembered. She scooped up some mashed potatoes with gravy, slowly brought it to her mouth, and at the very moment the spoon touched her lips, a muffled male shout came from the basement.

— ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? — and then a loud bang, shaking even the walls of the house.

Then another.

Then another.

Susan froze, holding the spoon and staring toward the basement door, on which there was a sign written in uneven, almost deliberately careless marker letters: “DO NOT ENTER”, and below it, in a different handwriting, more angular and bold, it added: “SERIOUSLY, MOM”.

That sign didn’t appear right away. First there was just a closed basement, then a lock, then some attempts at “do not disturb”, and then this, something almost teenage, almost funny, if it hadn’t been so… final.

Ethan Foster, born into the Foster family 24 years ago and remaining their only child, went down there about three years ago. "I just need not to be distracted from work" — an argument everyone accepted, despite the fact that even then there were already signs of that silence in the house. And since then, the basement stopped being just his room and became something like a separate world, one that Andrew and Susan entered less and less, until they almost stopped entirely.

— GO FUCK YOURSELF! — came again from below, more muffled now but with the same sharpness, and again a dull thud, as if something heavy had collided with a table or a wall.

This time Susan even flinched slightly and blinked, though after that she returned to her frozen state.

She just kept sitting there, holding the spoon and staring at the door, probably thinking about how it all turned out like this and that maybe it would be easier to have another child — a thought she was afraid to admit even to herself.

Andrew, on the other hand, didn’t even slow down. He kept chewing, as if the sound was just part of the background, like the rain outside the window or the creaking of the old floor.

— Why did you freeze? — Andrew finally asked after a few stretched seconds, not taking his eyes off the plate, as if it wasn’t a question but just another sip of water.

Susan slowly inhaled, lowered the spoon back into the plate, and only then seemed to come back to herself.

— It’s nothing… — she shifted her shoulders slightly, as if shaking something invisible off, and exhaled. — Just thinking.

She stood up, the chair creaked quietly, and she walked over to the countertop where the remote from a small plasma TV lay, the one that had been hanging on their wall for the past five years, and clicked it.

The screen lit up with a cold, slightly delayed glow, immediately showing some kind of news studio where an overly energetic host with perfectly styled hair was talking about something with an important look, as if, like always, the fate of all humanity depended on this news.

Susan remained standing, holding the remote in her hand as if she had forgotten why she even picked it up, and only after a second slowly turned around.

— Andrew… — she said, a little quieter than usual, as if checking whether he would even hear her.

He kept eating without looking up. Only the sound of the fork scraping against the ceramic slightly broke that same "silence", now filled with the voice of the host.

— Andrew, honey… — Susan said more gently, almost purring. She tilted her head to the side, playfully swayed her hips, her earrings glinting in the kitchen light, the lipstick on her lips becoming more noticeable. For some reason she herself didn’t understand, she hadn’t washed off her makeup today after coming back from the clinic where she worked at the reception.

"I’m still beautiful, right? Say I’m still beautiful!" flashed through her mind, and she flinched when Andrew raised his eyes, a faint blush spreading across her face, and she was about to straighten up, to take her usual posture, but with some effort of will forced herself not to.

Andrew stayed silent. Chewed and stayed silent, his brows slightly drawn together in a questioning way. And that only made it worse.

— Well? — she said quietly, not losing hope and with a faint smile, tilting her head a bit more. The gesture came out almost girlish, almost like the way she once looked at him in that bar many years ago. — Don’t you notice anything?

Andrew looked at her, but now more attentively, starting to scan her. His gaze slid over her lips, her eyes, the earrings she almost never wore at home, lingered somewhere along the line of her shoulders, then returned back.

From below at that moment something banged again, but more muffled now, as if Ethan had just kicked something out of anger, and a muted voice came from the basement:

— Fuck off…

But neither of them turned.

Andrew slowly swallowed.

Leaned back slightly in his chair, as if only now allowing himself a pause.

And only then, squinting a little, with that light, almost lazy smirk of his, said:

— Hm… — he tilted his head slightly, as if looking at her in some new way, but there was no surprise in that “new way”, no… what she had been waiting for. — You put on lipstick.

Pause.

— And earrings… — he added, as if that required a separate clarification — You… going somewhere?

He looked at her again, at her face, which seemed to instantly light up, and it was impossible not to notice. She slowly exhaled and took a small step toward him.

— No… — she answered, a little quieter than before, but still trying to hold onto that lightness, — just…

She stopped next to him, rested her hand on the back of the chair, leaning slightly toward him.

— Wanted you to like me, — she said almost in a whisper, leaning in so that the strap slipped off her shoulder.

Andrew understood everything. They didn’t need words, despite the fact that the last time they had sex was probably more than a year ago. But now. Now it felt like that wasn’t the main thing.

From below, at that moment, there was another dull thud.

— ARE YOU… SERIOUS?! — Ethan’s voice cracked almost into a screech, and something fell to the floor with a metallic clang.

They both flinched slightly — almost in sync.

And froze, continuing to look into each other’s eyes. For a long time, at least it seemed that way to them.

It was almost like back then, 25 years ago, when everything still felt simple and at the same time so important, when the thought that they were about to make a child wasn’t just a desire, but some strange, almost forgotten sense of meaning, and when there wasn’t all this "silence", broken only by the loud outbursts of their son, stuck in puberty, to whom they had given everything they had, without even noticing how, in the process, they had slowly, almost imperceptibly, given each other away too.

Susan slowly blinked, as if afraid to scare this moment away, and her fingers resting on the back of the chair tightened slightly, revealing the tension she was no longer trying to hide.

— Andrew… — she exhaled, almost soundlessly, and in that quiet address there was more than in all her previous attempts to seem light or playful.

— Sue... — he answered just as quietly

And that was it. A second later they were no longer thinking. They both decided, unconsciously and at the same time, that there was nowhere to retreat. That the only chance was here and now. Their lips met sharply, with the tension that builds up over years and suddenly finds a way out, and Susan exhaled softly into his lips, barely shuddering when his hand, at first cautiously, as if checking whether he even had the right, rested on her waist and immediately tightened its grip.

From below something crashed again.

— ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY UP THERE OR WHAT?! — Ethan’s voice broke from below.

Susan pulled away for just a fraction of a second, their foreheads almost touching, their breathing uneven, and she looked at him the way she hadn’t in a very long time.

— We understand… right? — she said almost in a whisper, her voice trembling not from uncertainty, but from finally allowing herself to say it out loud. — That with him… we can’t do anything anymore.

Andrew froze for a moment, as if hearing something he himself had been telling himself for years, and then nodded carefully.

— Yeah, — he said quietly. — But... what if this one will...

It wouldn’t. They already knew for sure that there wouldn’t be another “Ethan.”