Sevastiel

Hey there, sleepyhead. Playing with your doll. Is that all that’s left of you?

Dream of pretty flying things, that your mind not fall away.

Though it’s already fallen, hasn’t it? Kings and kingdoms birthed from a skull parted like cut silk in your madness and pain.

You could not hope to hide your emotions forever, look now how your tears burn holes with which to see them like acid through your skin.

Dream of better things. Happier things. Pretty places and tales that love you. Look not unto the wyrm crawling from your soul. It is desperate. It is hungry.

Stuff your memories of the Zariman with paper and masks, little child. You don’t have to remember anymore. Even though you know it isn’t real.

Hold tight to your stories, child. Lest the memories drag you down. I know you hear that song in your nightmares. I know you know the faces pounding against the surface of the water.

Even though I know you cant forget those gnashing teeth. Those hands that reached. Grabbed. Tore. The eyes that hated you. You were a child. It’s not your fault they wanted to eat you. They were remembering years to come. They knew what you would do.

What you gave away.

some extras i cut out from the comic + silly unrelated doodle based on what my friend said when i was drawing this comic on call:

BLOOD

Going over what I know about it first, since I don't have anywhere NEAR as much info.

1- It takes a long time to really 'kick in' and start showing physical effects. Simon got a strip across his face and it took about a day or more for the area to redden, iirc. It didn't REALLY start mutating him until there was a fair amount of it on him either, and it had a long while to work.

2- It took the sub cracking under pressure for blood to get in at all, and then it grew off of itself rather than growing INTO the things. If assimilation did occur, it was mostly due to and with living flesh. It's hard to say how much of the Blood effect on the sub towards the end was 'real' but in lieu of that answer I'm going to assume all of it.

3- Once it is in an area, it congregates to itself RAPIDLY. It needs its own mass to do this.

4- How much of a hivemind it actually is seems a bit... up in the air. The only minds we hear are from the science team, so if there is one it's not connected to the "light", any of the dead souls that make up the ocean, etc.

5- It's not a hivemind that seems capable of forcing control. If Eli could have forced Simon to do things, it would have. Moreover, the mutations that Simon ultimately suffered were geared towards him, meaning that getting connected to the blood doesn't 'add' you to the hivemind as much as it just creates a sort of empty link. So, you can still 'use' it and grow in a separate way that would hurt the 'hivemind' (Just Eli and the science team), even if it tries to enforce it's own idea of what you should be onto you. (Fishimon -> tree)

6- It's power source, or... 'origin,' definitely isn't connected to the hive. Whatever the light's goal is/whatever it wants, is definitely not what Eli wants, is definitely not what Simon wants. Eli hivemind actively changed its thoughts on what it wanted using information it learned through Simon, too, which means it's bound to local time/space.

7- It's unclear how much of the mind the Blood actually alters if it does at all. Aside from creating connection, Simon was still Simon till the end that we know of. It was exposure to the light that actually made Weird Shit Happen, and how much Simon was hallucinating/out of it can more directly be attributed to the known symptoms of dehydration+extreme stress+starvation+overheating+Did I mention stress+SEVERE radiation exposure+Sleep deprivation+multiple concussions+Multiple other injuries+Drinking Fucking Rubbing Alcohol

8- I don't know whether the vision of future Simon was blood related time fuckery, god related time fuckery, or just time fuckery time fuckery. We don't see time fuckery at other points so I assume it's not the blood.

So, this all leaves me with the conclusion that the Blood functions more like a mycelium network.

It is neutral, and manipulatable by the minds that tap into it to a certain degree.

Eli/the science squad got directly tapped in and grew/mutated, and used it as a way to contact Simon, (and later seemed to try and mutate him into something like them) but didn't seem to control the Blood as much as they were aware that the Blood Wanted To Tap In. Because the Light wanted to see, yk?

If they could actively control it I think Simon would have been dead/assimilated WAY faster, as they were in a similar sub themselves and would have been able to 1, get/corrupt the blackbox, 2, mess with the controls more directly, 3, interrupt other systems, 4, mess with the power, etc etc etc. The fact that Simon was able to dive into a giga puddle and get the blackbox and get back out alive is proof of this. If the blood could grow on itself, and they could control it, they coulda locked him in there so easy.

Now.

HELMINTH. (Lizzie! Yay!)

1- If you don't know already, Warframe's Infestation probably sweeps every other bio-plague on the block, if you grant all strain usage. (Some of the strains might solo, also. Grey and common specifically.)

It is made to assimilate EVERYTHING, to constantly adapt and grow. It can survive in space, it can consume and manipulate code and any other form of energy, and it can infest and subsume and actively utilize basically every material we've come across in some form or another given time. This shit eats planets. Literally. And did I mention the core of it's split hivemind exists outside the realm of reality, in the void, where it can reach all time and space? Also I don't know where the hell it gets it's mass from but it doesn't seem completely limited to shit it can ingest. Or it can manipulate what it does eat at an obscene level.

The only reason Warframe's universe isn't uberfucked is because every single faction in the solar system shakes hands over "fuck that and kill everything you see and abandon any ship that gets taken and please god get the tenno on site" and have been doing so for the last thousand years. The amount of shit that's been thrown at it, only for it to survive somewhere and regrow, is comedic. Earth nuked itself into oblivion trying to get rid of the first outbreaks and failed. (Hello, 1999! And then 1899! And... Duviri??? And then- Albrecht stop fucking instating that shit back further in time and farther in space whaT ARE YOU DOING-)

Our final saving Grace (and also the biggest problem) is that it's split into multiple smaller hiveminds with different specialties, intelligences, and growth types, that don't always get along.

2- The Helminth is one of those hiveminds. It is, specifically, extremely old, extremely intelligent, and tailor made to infest specifically people. It's more than capable of subsuming/running right on over other forms of infestation, and is capable of consuming basically everything and using it. It also has connections to many other forms of infestation already, iirc, and the void itself in general.

(Source: We can and do feed it most materials in the game, including infested ones, it's the thing that makes/operates/is/upkeeps warframes, which are biomechanical super soldiers who can wield the power of the void itself to truly ridiculous usage. With frames like Nidus and Caliban it shows that it can take normally living other forms of infestation or biomechanical life (I do think the sentients are a form of infestation) and take sole control over manipulation. And through visions I believe we see it having connections to the grey strain and further, as well as Eleanor (a protoframe granted telepathic connection via Helminth) being able to reach so far out into the void she can find alternate versions of herself. In different. Universes. Eleanor can reach farther than the Man in the Wall can, do NOT tell her (wally) she will be so jelly and like 203987x as mad we took 1999 man-

3- It is not limited to humans whatsoever. It infests our spaceship, grows huge manipulatable flesh masses, and makes pretty flowers. <3 Nor does it 'need' humans to create any sentient, organic life. Just material.

4- Infestation does seem easier when it's directly transmitted by fluid, (see: serums, Flare's guitar getting infested with a chunk of their own brain through shredding until their fingers bled, etc) but whether or not this is an actual limitation is currently unknown to me. It also seems to require quite a bit of itself to allow full scale biological changes (complete mutation) and propagates quite slowly, and is generally non infectious. (Possibly by choice, possibly by design, entirely unclear.) I'm not ENTIRELY sure why multiple doses of the serum are needed to warframe a person, but I'd assume it's actually pretty bad at 'growing' itself without specific things. Warframes take 3 days to build from scratch, after all.

(I believe it took at minimum 1 serum dose to completely alter the protoframe's externals, and another to alter the internals/allow for void usage.)

5- It's also good to note that the Helminth IS capable of communication with us, and has full control over everything that is "Helminth". Down to the spores. We are very, VERY lucky it likes us. This control allows it to custom alter how its infestation affects people physically, allowing it to, say. Infest someone, change their bodies to it's whim, and then alter it's biological programming to preserve consciousness and memory despite warframes being made to lose big chunks of specifically that. (See: Flare) It can force control, it doesn't want to.

So...

Helminth subsumes/alters with conscious intent, and has few limits if any aside from that which it imposes on itself.

FINAL TLDR!!!

Helminth goes "nom" and eats both.

What the fuck is the blood gonna do, man? It can eat the guy but like. Unless another conscious mind in the network reaches out its just Getting Bloodified.

There's literally nothing that we genuinely know of stopping the Helminth from waltzing in, taking a good gander, and going "Cool shit! New new for My Me! :D"