Everfree Fever
Stage: 0
Healthy, Pre-Infection
Stage 1: Initial Infection
Host has come into contact with a pony carrying the disease and had been bitten or otherwise gotten infected blood or saliva in an open wound.
The area of contact becomes itchy and irritable. Avoid biting at it to relieve the pain.
This is the only stage in which the pony is curable, albeit by brutal means as the infected area must be cut off to ensure it does not spread. The longer one waits the more of the area that must be taken off.
Bites to the flank, back or throat are fatal no matter what, death is more merciful than the fate they will succumb to if the infection is allowed to continue.
The subject has 3 hours before Stage 2 begins
State 2: Progression
Once they enter stage 2 they’re a lost cause. Death is the most merciful option but the hysteria that sets in seldom makes it easy. Even if a pony has accepted what must be done the infected brain will keep going regardless and instinct has begun to override the conscious mind.
The first signs of the progressing infection are boils forming nearby the site of contamination which spread up the leg and in the later hours, dark spots of necrosis and decay. The eyes begin to sink in and the hoof’s keratin begins to start growing rapidly and sharpening. The pupils noticeable begin to dilate even in high light levels until only a sliver of color remain.
Muscle spasms start within the first hour or two of this stage and get more violent with time and eventually leads to muscle damage, including the ripping of the jaw as it aims to stretch impossibly wide as the body beings to look more lithe and malnourished. A hunger begins setting in around thirst stage, one that cannot be satisfying no matter how much or what they try to eat. Sometimes results in choking due to impulsive attempts at eating with a broken jaw
The bones begin to reshape beneath the skin
Stage 3: Vivusmortuus
The final stage, the hope that they can be saved is lost at this point. The site of infection has rotted away almost completely and spread up as have the boils. The hooves have morphed into overgrown claws and the legs elongated and can bend in unnatural ways allowing for the infected to squeeze through small spaces that they otherwise wouldn’t fit through. It is highly recommended that all ways to the outside of a safehouse be secured top to bottom. Despite their frail appearance they are dangerously strong. The pain receptors that once kept them from pushing their muscles too far no longer fire.
It is just a husk of hunger that will go through any means necessary to satisfy the empty pit that never seems to fill. If the mind of the pony the husk once was is in there. All control over their body is gone.
It is still fully capable of speech and uses it to lure out prey from their safe havens. There’s tells as it speaks with slightly off inflections of the voice. There’s little to put words to explain what about the way they speak is slightly unnerving.
Avoid at all costs.
If you have an opportunity to kill it. Do it. It is a mercy, even if a cure is possible they’re body could not survive it.