OKAY SO. I am writing a WIP that explains how and why the Twisted Child ending would ever happen. Weird medical shit fascinates me, so here are a bunch of headcanons for the pathology of it

A normal parasitic root life cycle

Once it somehow finds its way into a host, the bud closes off any bleeding wounds, settles into a nice body cavity and sets down roots into its host’s limbs, digestive system, brain, and any natural SOUL storage or sources

This horrifyingly draining, painful process leaves the host constantly drained of soul and smelling inexplicibly like plant.

Horrifying hunger and carnivorous tendencies is an immediate symptom, as is incredible thirst and urge to be somewhere wet

The twisted bud is a lil baby concerned only with survival instinct. It carries no malice.

There is a short window of time after getting infested where it is still possible for the host to voluntarily seek treatment. Once about a day or so has passed, though, the host will begin showing highly abnormal behavior, protecting and feeding the bud to a fanatical degree and failing to notice or care about their own dire physical condition.

The exact thought process of the host will differ, but some degree of delusion is usually present -the host isn’t in their right mind, in any case.

At first, this changed behavior may be incredibly subtle -you can tell something is wrong, but not what. But the host will grow more erratic and dysfunctional over time the longer the infestation goes on.

The twisted bud uses the host’s senses and is capable of controlling the host’s body directly. However, this expends energy and they are not very good at this, showing unnaturally jerky movements, so they prefer not to -their usual method of influencing the host’s behavior seems to be some unknown mechanism of indirectly inducing an instinct.

When the bud is close to being ready to emerge, the victim will grow incredibly lethargic and dazed, and will find somewhere good to die before just… waiting.

However, very disconcertingly, the host often is aware of their own oncoming death for quite a while, and strangely fine with it.

The bud usually comes out looking something like their host, very xenomorph style

This process usually takes a few weeks and does not involve inexplicible wooden transmutation. Rebirths Georg is an outlier and should not have been counted-

If the host manages to survive due to medical intervention or luck, abnormal behavior will persist for some time and then slowly wear off.

Headcanons for Hornet’s case, specifically

Hornet believes that the twisted bud is her oncoming child. She hides this fact and lies about it for reasons even she isn’t quite aware of, but she’s a poor liar, her strong maternal instincts palpable in her scent.

The twisted bud’s brainwashing seems to manifest within her primarily as unnatural cheeriness, large gaps in her memory, and a strange lack of caring about anything, drifting through the main quest as if it’s happening to her and not an active choice she made. Like the weight she carries through the ages is suddenly forgotten.

Hornet’s inability to use crests is because the pressure of the new presence inside her is making it difficult for her to tell the different facets of her soul apart.

She could theoretically use tools, but the sharp implements scare the bud, so she doesn’t.

She seems almost, almost aware that things are abnormal. But it’s like she can’t seem to process that it is abnormal, so she vaguely acknowledges that something’s changed in the purely factual sense but acts as though things have always been this way, and seems incredibly confused if questioned or pushed to question her current state, as if she simply… can’t.

Hornet is aware of her oncoming demise and making preparations for her child, not knowing that this root child is vessel to a witch that will be reborn a god. If she could think, she would be bitterly amused by the irony.

From an external POV, pretty much everyone who knows her is aware something isn’t right, but it isnt like they can exactly do anything…

Shakra in particular immediately figures out what’s wrong. She is a type of parasitoid wasp and her tribe has a word for this sort of madness that roughly translates to “host-sickness”, as those who become hosts to her own kind often show similar altered behavior.

Do you ever watch a show or multi-installment movie series and watch as a strong, competent female character completes her arc or changes life circumstances and suddenly… gets hollowed out into a generic passive housewife and stops being herself? This is how Hornet is supposed to come across while parasitized by the twisted bud.

Part 2: The Parasite (3 versions)

Regular

Without text

Without the border

Wanted to do something a little different for Greyroot. Have it infect multiple hosts until those hosts fully become root, and of course Greyroot doesn’t exactly have a set form it takes

Bonus little doodle

Ya know the first one took me 12 hours to make, and this one only took 5 and half hours to make, so I really don’t know how often I’ll be making and posting these, but I’d say to expect them somewhere around every 3-4 days