Nightmare Fuel / Aurora (2019)

As per troping policy, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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"ssssssssssSSSSSSSSTARVING"

• The fate that befell the citizens of Vash is worse than just dying. The Collector sealed the crater that the city was built within, burying Vash and all of its inhabitants. Normally upon death Vash would sever their connection to him as a funeral rite, but since Vash is gone, that can't happen. Instead, their souls are trapped inside the ruined city, unable to pass on. And since the connection wasn't severed, Vash and Kendal can hear them down there.
  Collector: Actually, would you mind describing the sensation for me? This is an unique opportunity, and it could be very enlightening. I'm guessing a... spreading numbness? Maybe pins and needles?
  Vash: [furious, sword raised] I CAN FEEL THEM SCREAMING!
• In Chapter 2 Kendal and Alinua investigate the site, and the former hears the people of Vash slowly realize their predicament. We only see fragmented snippets, but they're chilling. And Kendal, with no way to unearth them, is forced to leave them down there so he can stop the Collector.
  can't see
  My lord! Where
  My son where's my s[on]
  Someone help
  Did he win?
  don't understand
  What was the noise
  [N]ora! Where did you
  Let me out
  Why is it so d[ark?]
  Mama!
  [T]he walls! What's happ[ened?]
  Can't breathe
  cold
  Why is it cold
  no no no no
  • Later in Chapter 11, Erin mentions that by his count it's been a sef ^note one week and a half since Kendal was "born". The people of Vash have been stuck in total darkness, unable to move, breathe, or even communicate with one another, for eleven days.
• Children who carry the Chimeric Plague are born with a natural gift for life magic and an intricate green birthmark vaguely resembling the great rune for Life. What sounds like a blessing quickly turns into a curse, as the child's power inevitably goes out of control before they're even five years old, killing themselves and irreversibly mutating everything in the vicinity. Even worse is that despite being called a plague, it behaves nothing like a transmissible disease usually would; there's only ever one chimeric carrier in existence at a time, and after one dies, there's no way to know where the next one will be born.
• The Collector tells Vash her true motives, and they're terrifying. Basically, she inadvertently touched the remaining mind of the Life elemental Primordial, which not only seemingly made her The Ageless, it affected her mind, convincing her that Life regretted her choice to become the planet, and thus she is capturing souls in order to reconstitute Life by killing all life on the planet. And even without getting into the can of worms of whether or not Life wants this, doing so would release the Void Dragon from the planet's core and let him continue devouring stars!
• Basically everything about Tynan.
  • At the end of Chapter 10, we're introduced to Tynan for the first time. He makes his entrance by arriving in an enormous storm to the shores of Crow's Head Plains, where the local god attempts to intimidate him into leaving. He manifests before them in a lightning strike, and strikes them down in a single blow soon after. The chapter ends with the god's incarnation disintegrating to nothing as the rainfall begins and Tynan advances over the plains...
    Tynan: All talk. Always just talk. Only one of you could ever really back it up. But from what I hear, he's gone. I wonder how you'll manage without him? I've waited long enough to find out.
  • Tynan's backstory, told by Tahraim in Chapter 12, is sobering in of itself. He was once a completely ordinary storm that, by happenstance, blew over to a civilized area and grew a sense of self from feeding on their terror. So, it sought out to cause more terror and eventually, it became a god. And unlike most gods who are bound to a certain area such as a city or a plain, Tynan is the storm itself - he has no boundaries, no need for worshipers long as there's fear, and he's effectively invincible since there's no physical body to strike, meaning that even other gods are powerless before him. All of this happened by sheer chance one day.
    Tahraim: At the end of the day, when all pretenses are shed, a divine body is still just a body... and a storm is still a storm.
  • Throughout the pages of chapters 13 and 14, dark storm clouds can be seen advancing toward Zuurith, and everyone but Tess is too caught up in their own problems to notice anything's wrong.
  • Tynan makes his grand entrance interrupting Kendal and Dainix's match, and we see firsthand how he got his reputation. He blasts Zuurith's incarnation apart with a single lightning strike and kidnaps Kendal, intending to fight him just long enough to wring out every last hope of the citizens of Zuurith. His callousness and nonchalance just makes it all worse.
    Tynan: You don't really care about these mortals. They're just fuel for your power, and now they'll be fuel for mine. I'd be doing you a favor, if you really think about it. Think how much more orderly your city will be without any people.
  • Even once the party manages to gain the upper hand while fighting him, he turns the tables back on them by turning into a dragon. He might not be able to incarnate into this form indefinitely, but he's much more powerful; Erin casts enormous fireballs at point-blank range and they only inconvenience him at worst. In particular, the panel of Erin's outstretched hand in front of Tynan's maw of teeth scared many readers.
• Come chapter 18, Kendal has figured out that he can summon Vash into his body by stabbing himself with his sword. Though not shown directly, the implication was still disturbing enough that Red included a long warning page for people who could be triggered by self-harm.
• All forms of elemental corruption are bad but two of them stand out.
  • Life corruption. Unlike the other elements, Life magic can more easily get around the soul-barrier protecting the body and cause chimeric alterations and mutations, and it's considered the most dangerous of the main six for this reason. The Chimeric Plague showcases just how bad it can get; when the carriers lose control, they emit a wave of raw, untempered life magic, killing the host and mutating all living things caught in its wake. Said living things, plants, animals and people, cannot be restored to their old selves and are driven insane, attacking anything they can find.
  • Cave corruption. Those who suffer from this are overwhelmed by intense hunger. While some hunger for things like vegetables, more dangerous variants include bone marrow and blood. Spend long enough in the Singing Caves or in a region affected by famine or plague and you turn into a degraded monster that knows only hunger. And if that wasn't enough, unlike corruption from the main six elements, it's unresponsive to all treatments. Once you're affected, you're affected for life.
• In Chapter 19, we see what everyone is doing in the aftermath of the battle against Tynan. Kendal is unconscious and not healed enough to wake up, and a peek into his dreams at the end of the chapter shows that Kendal is currently being grabbed by an inky black void of hands, presumably the lost souls of the people of Vash that have yet to move on. The look of horror on his face as he realizes exactly what's going on really sells the scene. Even if the very last page of the chapter subverts it by having these souls actually be friendly, the few pages before it were still very scary.
• In Chapter 21, right before Dainix and Falst get ambushed by cave crawlers, Falst realizes that that smell he's been noticing is actually cave crawlers -and then the duo looks up to see a ton of glowing eyes... Cue the swarm of cave crawlers.
• In Chapter 22, Alinua successfully tracks Falst and Dainix by using her powers to detect all life in the area... But in the process, she gets overwhelmed by how infinite life is. Erin has to snap her out of it, and nothing worse happens as a result... But you have to wonder what would've happened if Erin hadn't been there. Would Alinua have gone insane, overwhelmed by the vast infinity of life? Would she have become like the Collector?
  Branches on branches. It doesn't stop. It doesn't know how to stop. Was she already an infinity before she became a world? How can she stand it?
• Meanwhile, Falst and Dainix enter a big, empty room that feels uncomfortably quiet. There is an entire dragon skeleton in front of a large, suspicious crack in the room. There's also some kind of defunct magic structure in the middle of the room, which has one of its metal beams damaged with claw marks that look almost melted. Then Dainix realizes that the room is too empty. Why is the room empty? Because there's a slimy monster on the ceiling, and it's been killing everything that enters that room.
  • Moments before the slime monster attacks, Falst notices black slime drip into the floor from the ceiling, and just barely dodges the monster before it hits the ground. Dainix is not so fortunate, and the monster manages to put its hand on his face and do something to him that makes him have flashbacks and leaves him badly shaken.
  • Then Falst gets reckless while fighting it and gets hit with its psychic attack gaze, which leaves him as badly shaken as Dainix if not worse. The monster then proceeds to use its severed arm to hit Falst on his injured side, slamming him into the wall hard enough to leave a dent.
  • After that, you would think the monster would simply try to consume Falst or engulf him, right? Wrong. After Falst is left helpless on the floor, the monster grabs him and attempts to use its psychic attack on him again. That's right, Falst is defeated and the monster keeps tormenting him anyway.
  • Later on during the fight, as Dainix's partial Crucible transformation lets him to power through the psychic gaze, the slime changes tactics, pinning Dainix to a wall and engulfing his nose and mouth to fully smother the transformation. Not to mention that Dainix for whatever reason already had trouble maintaining the Crucible form while in physical contact with the slime, implying that it can somehow shut down what has previously been an unstoppable threat.
  • The slime monster itself is pure nightmare fuel. It's a gelatinous, oily mass with skeletons stuck inside it, many slimy clawed arms as well as eyes that can appear out of its surface, it screams, and is intelligent. And because this thing has never been mentioned or shown to exist, there's no indication what it is or what it can do.
  • Erin's analysis later reveals it to be a type of cave crawler that's been stewing in Void energy for so long that it's been reduced to a "pile of hungry meat". Word of Red specifies that its individual cells have become hungry with corruption, and heavily implies that this particular crawler was once an Ancient. Which means that it's been around for thousands of years.

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