There Are Figures In The Mist.

There are figures in the mist.

Haven’t you noticed them? They loom at the edges of your vision, perpetually on the edges of sight. They wander as if lost, moaning with their silent mouths, pleading with their wispy hands. But every time you whirl around to get a closer look, they dissolve into the air, only to reappear the second you turn your back.

Do you know what they are?

No one else knows. We know where they come from, we know they’re dangerous, but we don’t know why they follow humans. There are theories of course; some say they’re chasing after the one thing they’ve been given a taste of that was cruelly ripped away from them- a soul; some say they’re hungry and nothing else can satisfy them; some even think they aren’t harmful and their dangerous reputation is simply misunderstandings. I know better.

They come when you look into The Mist. Looking into The Mist is fatal. See, these creatures, they know when someone is looking, and they flock to you the moment they sense the change. Something about them forces you to keep looking - perhaps because there are so many, or because you’ve never seen them in plain sight before - but, nevertheless, you keep looking. And The Mist, it sears itself into the contours of your brain, slinking it’s tendrils inside you through the receptacles of your eyes and through your skull. It wisps and twirls through you as it likes, shifting, shaping itself, and always followed by a soft thickening of the mist inside you. You’re allowed to look away then, because it’s started. The creatures absorb themselves back into the silver shade they came from, and you’re left wondering why they were there in the first place.

You go about your business as normal, but even you can tell you’ve changed. A strange fog rests over your mind, pushing, pressing, but you push back. You can’t be out of action, after all. You have a life with friends and family and a job, and it’s not appropriate to take sick days just because you feel all foggy. The defences of your mind are weakening. The figures don’t follow you any more. Their purpose has been fulfilled. However, it doesn’t stop you from seeing them. You spot them following your children, their friends, their teachers. No longer do they have to hide, but you seem to be the only person they’re not shrinking from. That’s the first symptom.

The second symptom is when you get the urges. This would be once a month or two has passed, and you’ve forgotten about The Mist. It’s made your forget. Nobody can suspect anything, after all. The urges cry into your mind, a constant command for you to return. Return to where? You don’t know. But you want so desperately to return, you feel it echoing within every fibre of your being (or is that the mist within chiming again?). So you start wandering, trying to find your place. You go up to people, hands clasped, telling them you’re lost and you’re trying to get somewhere but you don’t know where. You never find it.

The third symptom is very similar to the second symptom, but it has its differences. For instance, the second symptom hits you in strong, irresistible waves, while the third is like an insidious presence in the foggiest corners of your mind, a susurrus that never pauses for breath. The third symptom tells you to follow, so quietly that your brain takes it as its own and executes this without your noticing it. You start to shadow your coworkers, a strange blankness in your eyes, and when they call your name, you don’t respond. You start to follow your children to school, staring after them without replying when they say they love you. You even follow customers around the shops you frequent, when you should be collecting groceries for the next week. Sometimes, you catch yourself, but you have no memory of what you were doing before. The urge to return is still strong within you, but you don’t realise because it coincides with the need to follow, and so you think your strange feeling has finally disappeared. You call yourself cured, unknowing that the gaps that you are you are growing shorter and shorter.

The fourth symptom is the final step. This is the step that enables The Mist to pull you within its clutches, where you never escape from its strangling embrace. You start to fade. Your coworkers that before would have greeted you every morning, start to ignore you. When you greet them, their eyes slide right over you as if you aren’t there. They see only an empty space. Your children no longer see you, only a monster that used to be their parent. Your eyes mist over, the fog within them finally showing in your physical form through a familiar silver. Your brain becomes yours no more, only belonging to The Mist. Your fingertips fade away, becoming transparent, and your skin turns pasty and grey. Your hair, before a shiny, luscious thing, now has the permanent look of dampness to it. You remember now. You know your true purpose. You serve The Mist. You leave your house, and return to your true home, to become fully incorporeal to those who view you. And you never return.

So, dear reader, beware. There are figures in the mist.

This the image prompt I used!

More Posts from Lowkeyspawnofloki and Others

lowkeyspawnofloki

2 months ago

Further speculation on Shen Yuan transmigrating in some kind of Beast:

Werewolf Shen Qingqiu.

And like, major emphasis on the wolf, in his case. Not wolfman. Every full moon Shen Qingqiu has to make arrangements for himself to turn into a gigantic silvery-white wolf that retains extremely little of his consciousness, and mostly just seems to want to do Wolf Things, though according to PIDW and all information he has on the matter, he ought to be turning into a violent and bloodthirsty predator.

However, it turns out that the wolf form does retain some awareness from the mind/soul of the human, meaning that the reason SJ's wolf was so incredibly unsafe to be around was because it was constantly trying to process SJ's trauma in wild animal terms. So, it was hostile towards the vast majority of humans and in a heightened state of anxiety, always anticipating violence (and reacting accordingly) whenever something unexpected happened. Matters were not helped by SJ's decision to try and lock himself up for every transformation, which of course freaked his wolf out even more (trapped) and resulted in self-harm as it desperately tried to escape. It was just that SJ interpreted the self-harm as a sign that the wolf was so extremely violent that it would cannibalize itself rather than go a single night without the taste of blood.

SY, who is a lot less traumatized, conversely has a much more calm and curious wolf. Like he's extremely cautious and nervous about the whole thing, because he's expecting it to be violent based on his information, and since he doesn't retain much awareness of his transformations he has little idea of what his wolf-self does. But he also isn't great at locking himself up like the original goods did, and he never really seems to wake up covered in blood or anything? Once or twice he thinks he might have hunted a rabbit, but they definitely were rabbits and not like his subconscious somehow going after children in the middle of a wilderness somewhere, because when he came to the wolf had brought the leftover bunny bits along back to the ruined temple he was supposed to be shutting himself up into.

The new Shen Qingqiu consequently gets a bit complacent about the whole thing. He can only blame himself. Maybe he should have anticipated Luo Binghe, with his boundless curiosity and interest in his shizun, would notice the oddities in his schedule and follow him out one night. Everyone's supposed to believe that he's just going to brothels and engaging in purely mundane debauchery, though, so why would Binghe doubt his story?

But he did, and so of course Luo Binghe ends up witnessing his shizun's terrible transformation into a wretched and hated beast. Stunned, the young disciple stands transfixed (no doubt in horror) in the moonlight. The wolf sees him, and though Shen Qingqiu doesn't retain much memory, he recollects the running, the leaping, the... uh... licking...?

Well. Turns out that even Shen Qingqiu's subconscious wolf mind recognizes Luo Binghe as pack, and thank goodness too, because at least he didn't attack him!

Although after that it becomes an extreme challenge to explain to Luo Binghe why he can't accompany Shen Qingqiu for his transformations every month. It's not safe, the wolf is unpredictable and Shen Qingqiu can't promise that he won't startle or suddenly change his tune and lash out, and even though Binghe's cultivation is progressing in leaps and bounds, the wolf also isn't limited to normal mortal strength. It would be able to track his scent and follow him relentlessly, chasing him down to catch and pin him beneath its massive paws, and... Binghe why is your face so red? Are you feeling alright? If it's too frightening, then let's not describe it any further, but the point is that it's dangerous.

Shen Qingqiu has to put his foot down. In the end, he has his suspicions that Binghe is still circumventing him, as he could swear he sometimes remembers running around the wilderness with company. (Binghe is absolutely sneaking out to go spend time with Wolf Shizun.) But there's nothing concrete enough to be certain. Meanwhile, Luo Binghe has at least agreed to keep it secret (for now -- probably not once the time comes for Shen Qingqiu to be put on trial) and fusses over his shizun, helping him keep track of the moon scheduling and always making sure he has a full belly before he goes into wilderness seclusion (Shen Qingqiu never says, but somehow Luo Binghe guesses anyway that he doesn't like waking up to find that the wolf had a snack during the night...)

Another hazard: lycanthropy in the PIDW setting is a curse. Like admittedly it's kind of a kickass one, but it still has tons of negative associations, most commonly befalling impoverished individuals or travelers who get bitten by wild wolf demons, and survive only to find that a piece of the wolf's spirit has gotten stuck to their own. Cultivators with lycanthropy are often associated with demons and disrepute, like Wu Yanzi, and there are countless tales of them turning on their own people or being revealed as violent, depraved criminals. It's only slightly more acceptable than being a demon outright.

In other words it's not a desirable circumstance.

And yet, for some reason, Luo Binghe is reprehensibly lapse in his protections against lycanthropy. Shen Qingqiu has told him all of the precautions he knows against it, and yet it's almost like Binghe keeps doing the exact opposite things! Listen, wolves are cool. Shen Qingqiu knows that. He's actually kind of fine with turning into one, since it seems to be less of a ravenous beast situation than he'd feared. But there are still social consequences to this kind of a thing! Luckily, it doesn't actually matter much because even with his uncharacteristic youthful irresponsibility, Binghe's heavenly demon blood protects him from ever being cursed. The only way he'd get lycanthropy would be if he deliberately let a werewolf bite him and then just refused to excise the curse, and even then, he could purge the tainted wolf spirit from him just by force of will whenever he wanted.

Seriously, though! It's only when Shen Qingqiu points out that Luo Binghe is going to make people suspicious with all his negligence towards basic precautions that Binghe finally smartens up about it.

(Luo Binghe, out in the woods during a full moon: Wolf Shizun please bite me? Bite Binghe? Then we can be together every full moon! Look here I'll stick my hand in your mouth... just, just chomp down... no don't lick... *sigh*...)

Anyway, the plot still goes mostly the same, except that when Shen Qingqiu put into the water prison it's the full moon. He expects this is part of Luo Binghe's plan against him -- Binghe probably couldn't reveal the lycanthropy without also admitting he'd known before and helped hide it, but this way, Shen Qingqiu can just get caught as a wolf by the palace guards. But Luo Binghe's just been so frazzled and distressed by everything that he genuinely forgot what phase the moon was on. Shen Qingqiu's expecting a lot of things when he wakes up after transforming in the Water Prison, but being back out of the Water Prison and snuggled up to the protagonist's chest wasn't on the list.

Turns out that after his confrontation with Luo Binghe and the Little Palace Mistress, Gongyi Xiao went to check on him and found him transformed. After Gongyi Xiao alerted the rest of the palace, the Palace Master determined that Shen Qingqiu being a werewolf was as good as a confirmation of guilt, and had the wolf dragged out to be killed. Luo Binghe intervened, Shen Qingqiu took off, and between one thing and another the whole night was spent with Huan Hua and Cang Qiong cultivators trying to catch him (for different reasons).

Of course it was Luo Binghe who eventually cornered the terrified wolf, at which point the wolf actually, finally did bite him. But when Binghe failed to react, it whimpered and went back to its usual behavior, and let Binghe lead it out of the city and off to its usual territory near Cang Qiong. The wolf then proceeded to act like an overjoyed puppy whose owner had finally come back from war, until Binghe broke down and sobbed himself to sleep. It must have curled up onto his chest afterwards.

Shen Qingqiu is deeply embarrassed, but... somehow Luo Binghe doesn't seem to be taking revenge on him?

He's going to need to treat that bite wound soon, though.

Binghe.

Binghe, you are going to treat that--

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lowkeyspawnofloki

2 months ago

During an intersect event Shen Qingqiu is poisoned. How do we know he was poisoned? Because the dumbass that did it immediately jumped from the public to gloat about it.

The CQM delegation promptly then grabbed their unluckiest peak lord and dipped back home to try and not have him die. (They also grabbed the dude that poisoned him, to get info on the poison and all that)

It's supossed to steal half of a person's lifespan; and as Shen Qingqiu has lived for a while the dude thinks it will just kill the Lord. It doesn't do that thought... It splits the Lord into two young adults, each half of Shen Qingqiu's age. They are both fucking confused and looking at the other wide eyed.

SQQ#1 blinks and ask everyone to leave. SQQ#2 just agrees when asked by the other peak lords. It's an exercise in patience to get Yue Big-Brother-Extraordinaire Qingyuan to leave his favorite shidi who suddenly multiplied. He is rabid. Overdosing on shidi.

Shen Yuan is both terrified and ecstatic to be free from SQQ's fate, but also guilty? of leaving the other to deal with it. He's 90% sure the other SQQ is the original goods.

Shen Jiu is just looking at the body-snatcher, trying to decide whether to kill the other or kidnap him to keep such a wonderful teacher for his peak. Finally, someone to deal with the brats.

SY: Well, sorry for stealing your body, my bad. I will now leave you to-

And SY gets grabbed by the scruff and forced to spill all his secrets. The system doesn't register SJ as a separate entity so they are free to converse and make plans. By the time the other peaklords (mainly YQY, QQQ, and WQW) come back for gossip the Shens are gossiping about them and sharing some little cakes with their tea. BFFs.

Oh, they are 100% roasting eachother. Don't mind them too much, they are trying to decide who gets to be the older one and thus the one in charge.

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lowkeyspawnofloki

7 months ago