Marina Vapoulos (Eng)

## Marina Vapoulos

**Marina Vapoulos** is a female character from the webcomic Foribus Mentis Saga 2. She's a college student and friend of Threvor Ryland and Trent Hira. She is the shortest character of all the sagas, she has long brown hair and the same color as her eyes, she always wears a dark blue cap with white and tanned skin. She is the daughter of Greek immigrants who came to the United States. Although she is American, she claims that she is "culturally" Greek.

## Summary:

Prior to the events of the second saga, Marina had a partner. This was a somewhat abusive relationship on her part, which caused Marina to create certain parasite-like entities. These entities suck psychic energy from people. Although at that time, none of them could see entities, so they acted invisibly. As the months passed, her partner decided to go as far away as possible, never to see her again. After leaving her a note with everything she felt and with the new relief of no longer being by her side. Marina was deeply hurt emotionally and understood in a bad way the damage he was doing to her. Even though the years have passed and it is easy to locate a person on the internet, she preferred not to do it. Although deep down she hopes that someday her ex-partner will come back. This led her to distance herself from others so as not to make the same mistake, as she did not believe she would be able to reconnect with other people without falling into the same kind of abuse.

During the beginning of the saga, she meets Ryland and Hira days after the havoc caused by the fighting between entities and soldiers in the outskirts of town. By that time, she had already been able to see in a very limited way some entities wandering around the town, but she believed they were just strange animals camouflaged in the darkness of the shadows.

Looking at her face, she gives the impression that she is always in a bad mood because of her constant frown, she tends to be sarcastic at times and is always arguing with Trent Hira, though she has shown on occasion that she really cares about her friends and that her attitude is just a psychological wall to avoid being hurt emotionally.

### Nightday

While Ryland and Trent were being attacked by an entity that appeared thanks to an eclipse, Marina was ordering a coffee at a take-out place. Suddenly, Marina sees how the shadows of the people who were under the sun start attacking their persons. One of the people ends up killed when her shadow pushes her towards itself, which causes a shift in positions where the shadow takes on the role of an object that produces the absence of light and not the result of this. Marina calls Ryland to ask if they had found the root of the problem and Ryland tells her that they are struck down by the force of that entity. Marina is attacked by her shadow, so she, in the midst of the chaos, decides to climb into a cooling machine to prevent her shadow from grabbing her legs, as it was far out of the range of the lights. She looks up and sees that the ceiling lamps are on, as the weather outside is quite gray and she sees that only the shadows of the people are taking on a life of their own, but not the shadows produced by the objects. Marina decides to tell this detail to Ryland while she was still on top of the machine so as not to produce any shadows, nevertheless, one of the lamps starts to light just in the direction where she is, which causes it to generate a shadow on the platform where she was. She knew that climbing to the top of that machine was not the best idea, however, it was far from the only exit door, so she only managed to think about finding a place that would give her some time. When she saw that her shadow was about to pounce on her, she decided to throw herself to the floor and take refuge behind a table that had been dislodged by the commotion caused by the people in the place, Marina knew that this was a risky decision, since when she jumped from her previous place, her shadow attacked her and caused a wound in her leg, but she had no other option. Being behind the table, she was able to find shelter in the shadow of the furniture.

   During a conversation she has with Trent, she reveals to him that she sometimes hates herself for not being able to change her personality and that this, caused her to lose a loved one in the past (alluding to her former love relationship that ended badly because of her abusive character). This happened because Trent made a comment to her about what she thought of him (about being a loser for not having achieved anything in life), the same comment Marina made to her former partner. That caused her to cry a little.

When Marina discovers that part of the town is also part of the Mindverse, she discovers a sacrificial tree whose branch spreads out offering a fruit. At that moment, a mysterious figure appears and tells her that the fruit is the result of a noble sacrifice someone made to extend the life of another person and asks her if she will accept the offering. Marina is hesitant about the offer and thinks that if she just walks away without accepting it, she will not bear the burden of not reciprocating the sacrifice. In response, the figure tells her that Marina's doubt could also save her from consuming a fruit contaminated with the rancor of the person who made the sacrifice, since it is not known if the person did a self-sacrifice with good intentions or died holding a grudge.