Creatures of the Mist

 

The houses stood empty. Around each, a strange webbing had attached itself, sticky and glistening, yet thicker and more viscous than any spiderweb I had seen. An eerie mist hung in the air, hiding the street and other homes from view as I stepped into the otherworldly part of the city that humans had abandoned.

From nearby I felt their eyes on me, a quiet hope that I could stop whatever was encroaching into their homes. Yet not a soul had vanished from the city. Save those who wandered into the mist, letting curiosity betray their sense of preservation. Those poor idiots were never heard from again.

The swirling mist was unnaturally thick. It coiled about my hand, almost playfully, as I touched it. The cool texture brushed my skin and then faded back into its enormous body. Not a sound could be heard as I wandered deeper into the thickening haze, the webbing growing denser, covering entire homes as I walked.

Wood groaned beneath my weight as I mounted a set of stairs to go into the home of one family. Beside my feet, the strange vine-like webbing grew up the stairs, had burst through the door, and pushed into the home proper. I followed its warpath, noting the way the door was stretched and splintered. 

In the shadows of the home, things skittered and hid. I glanced about, stepping over a fallen writing desk to move to where a meal had been abandoned. Maggots the size of my thumb moved in and out of a week-old roast, its meat stripped away to reveal the bones beneath. Yet the maggots feasted, beginning to wear away the bone itself, unlike any other of its kind I had seen.

I gasped as something brushed my leg. Nothing was around me as I scanned the floor for signs of life. Strange fluff that blossomed from tiny stocks in the webbing haad floated to the ground, creating a layer of dust-like haze on the floor. Long, light strokes were made in the dust beside my boot prints, trailing off towards the parlor.

The soft sound of maggots eating and moving touched the air, suddenly noticeable as I strained to hear what lurked in the darkness. I took a step towards the parlor, carefully edging the door open. It squeaked, making me wince. Yet nothing in the room stirred.

Webbing had encased the room, swallowing whole pieces of furniture and erupting out of the window. Small, centipede like bugs the length of my hand walked amongst the woven threads, maintaining the webbing. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see them more clearly as I walked forward. 

The centipedes paid me no mind as I watched them spin their fibrous silk and lay down new webbing, repairing anything that had been damaged. It almost seemed as though a fire had happened from the scorch marks on the floor by the desk. a broken oil lamp charred sat nearby. The creatures worked together, spinning their webs, egg sacs nestled inside. I grimaced, knowing their presence meant an infestation.

An itching tingle touched my shoulder. I turned, seeing nothing behind me. Yet I felt the strange soft movement again. My hand went behind me, closing on a great chitinous body of an insect. I pulled it forward, its long body curling around my arm and gripping with dozens of things, pointed legs. 

Even as I tried to shake it off, it clung, holding to my arm despite me waving it around like a scared child. I kept moving backward, somehow thinking I could move away from it. Its head rose, black eyes glistening in the low light, its head the size of a fist. I shuddered and banged against the wall, webbing catching me.

Hundreds of tiny legs touched my skin as the centipedes climbed atop my body, bringing their webbing with them. I grunted as I pulled them off, using my other hand to free my cloak. It fell to the ground, covered in the crawling creatures. 

I pushed my bug-covered hand against the wall and used a discarded piece of broken door to pry the creature off. It shuddered, but grabbed to the wood and released my hand. I stumbled out of the door, pulling off my shirt to get to the bugs beneath. My fingers slowly grabbed each of them, pulling some from my skin and hair, then tossing them to the ground. 

In the street, I stumbled over a broken wagon, its wood shattered and consumed by the webbing. The bugs climbed over it, slowly tearing it apart as they moved it through their network of fiber that led deeper into the mist. 

My eyes squinted as dark shapes formed in the air. I itched and tingled from the remnant feeling of hundreds of legs crawling over me. Slowly I stood, looking up at the slowly descending shapes. A buzzing sound filled the air as they got closer, their giant waspish bodies drifting lower as great wings pushed them toward me.

Despite my training to stand tall, I turned, running back towards where I had come from. Long legs grabbed my head and hair, clasping me in a strangely vice like grip. I whimpered, looking up at the giant insect as I felt a painful pinch on my back where its stinger inserted. 

My world swam. It let go of me as I lurched, staggering the side as a cold numbness spread through my body. Darkness encroached my vision. I stumbled to the side, gripping something, perhaps a tree, rough and sticky under my hands as the sound of buzzing swarmed around me. 

I didn’t notice that I had fallen to the ground until I touched the earth and felt the cool mud beneath my fingers. The wasps landed, skittering towards me and jumping back when I swung my arms to keep them away. Nausea rolled through me as I shivered from a sudden chill, a stiffness moving through my body until I couldn’t move. The world went dark with the sound of buzzing following me into the pitch black.

My eyes slowly slid open. Darkness was all around me, with weak light filtering in from somewhere above. The smell of musk and earth surrounded me. I tried to turn my head only to feel pain in my neck and no movement. None of my body could move, the paralytic agent still flowing through my veins. 

Hundreds of legs crawled over me, their tiny movements felt over my entire skin. I shivered yet couldn’t move, eyes moving wildly to try to see where I was. Great lurching creatures moved about, insectoid in nature. Giant mandibles, dozens of legs, and great dark eyes aligned them in similarity. Yet some had wings and stingers. Others had strange spinners. Some still with tentacles and great abdomens. 

Over my body, hundreds of bugs swarmed, all different and brightly colored, all strange. I made a muffled sound of panic as I saw them all. They paused, then panicked and slid off of me, running away as my body began to move, just rock slightly, as I felt a tingling move through my body.

One of the wasps, the size of a pony, turned and wandered over. Its legs pulled at me, gathering my body against its own as I murmured uselessly. It was hard and warm against my skin as it held me to its abdomen and lifted me into the air. 

We moved over the colony, a great underground hive where they had made a home. It went down lower and lower, the wasp carrying me down until we landed and I was pulled through tunnels, the webbing becoming ever thicker and deeper, filled with thousands of their people. 

At last, the insect took me to a pulsing pool in the heart of the nest. I was dropped unceremoniously, my body finally starting to work as I pulled myself up to a half-seated position. The pool hummed as bugs moved in and out of it, spilling their unnatural bodies into our world. 

I watched as a giant centipede of pale bone color and several of the wasps seemed to stand, watching me and each other before looking at the blue light. As they supposedly conferred, I pulled up on a remnant stone from an old cave and stood, biting my lip as I did so from the ache in my joints.

A great wasp above me grabbed hold of my head, its long legs holding me still as I cried out in surprise. Its abdomen pressed against my mouth, stringer replaced by a strange growth that pushed against my lips, trying to slip within. I looked up at the creature and opened my mouth, inviting it inward, then moved to my knees for balance. 

It paused, surprised before it drove its abdomen forward and slid its appendage into my mouth. Burning venom touched my lips and mouth, sending a sensation of pain and electrifying bite through my body. It pushed forward, moving deeper, thrusting back and forth as it tried to get further inside. 

Down my throat it went, filling my moaning body as it kept doing. Choking sounds escaped me as the creature thrust further in. My hands held to its spindly legs as it trembled, balancing atop me despite the size difference. 

Another set of legs crawled up my back as another of the strange bugs landed atop me. I whimpered, trying to turn my head to see but was held fast by the wasp insect. I felt heat between my thighs as the same peculiar venomous liquid was squirted upon me, covering my legs and between them in its messy ejaculation.

A piercing pang stung my body as its abdomen pushed against me, a long searching probe wiggling out of it that played along my thigh, searching through the liquid to find its way within. I shuddered as the insect slid inside of me, its appendage furrowing deeper. Moans vibrated against the creature in my throat as its companion filled me, pushing itself as far as it could.

Swelling pressure and pain built within me as the insect pushed harder, forcing open my inner wall to move directly into my womb. I cried out, bucking against it wildly as it invaded. A bite on the back of the neck sent chills through me before the pain eased and a euphoria settled over me. 

My hips moved to meet the insect as it began to thrust, stretching me so it could deposit precious cargo. Tiny bugs began to climb over us, legs sending a thousand sensations at once over mee. I quivered, whimpering as fluid began to be pumped into my stomach, a strange flavor of earth and blood filling my senses.

A thousand memories of lives, generations of their kind, filled my head. I moaned as the wasp in my throat pushed deeper and harder, granting me the generational knowledge of their people as it fed me. My arms released it and I hung, caught between it and its companion that burrowed its ovipositor inside of me. 

Something large and nearly painful passed through the insect into mee, sending rapturous delight through my body. I whimpered, tears sliding down my cheeks as they moved into me from both ends, one filling me with seed and life as the other laid their eggs deep within me.

Moment after moment an egg was pushed into me, nestled deep in my womb beside its siblings. It seemed hours passed as the eggs were deposited, each driving me deeper into the euphoria from the bite. I whimpered and moaned, bucking back against the wasp as it implanted its future in me.

The one in my throat pulled back, finally releasing me as its story ended. The memories swirled, teaching me of their dying home, of the hole that was opened by ancient magic or luck, and their need to return but with no understanding of how. It landed beside me, my hips in the air still as the last egg was inserted. 

I coughed up some of the strange fluid, rising to look at the strange creatures before the many-legged insectoid approached my worn body. The visions I had been given were clear, and with a strange calmness, I laid back, giving my body to the centipede’s needs. 

It climbed atop me, encircling me within its legs that dug into my skin, piercing along my side and arms to hold me perfectly still. Its jaws closed around my throat, compressing my air when I moved, and sending the feeling of elation higher. I shivered against it, whimpering with want as its abdomen dabbed along my sticky thighs, covering me with new liquid.

The creature secreted fluid all along me, covering me in the scent of ichor and earth. Finally its appendage slipped inside of me, bigger and wider than the last, stretching  me even further. I cried out, gasping in pain as it pushed up and within, fast and hard. Burning pain blossomed as I stretched around it, my body adjusting to its girth. 

I trembled as my body hit its limit, swallowing back a cry of pain as it thrust again. The centipede filled me, pinchers breaking my skin to let the numbing fluid move into me as it thrust home, driving deeper with each movement and using my body for its will. 

Each strange memory flooded my mind as it thrust, intermingling the pain and pleasure with the moments of their genetic heritage that would pass to the creatures incubating within me. I shuddered again and then cried out as the creature hit its depth, its abdomen twitching as it exploded its seed within me, filling my belly and coating the eggs within.

It stayed nestled atop me, holding itself within as a plug to give its life-giving seed time to take root. Finally, it twitched and slid off of me, leaving me fat-bellied on the ground, my hands resting my newly engorged stomach, ripe with offspring. 

Chittering sounds filled the air along with thousands of wings as the creatures descended, moving into the blue light. They climbed around me, never daring to touch me as their parents summoned them forth. The three companions waited until the last of their children entered the light before they looked at me, wordless communication filling the space between us, an alien language they had given me.

I slowly stood, shaky and used, and walked to the pool before collapsing to my knees. “Go,” I finally said, nodding to it. The centipede and one wasp crawled inside, vanishing as soon as it was through the pool’s surface. The last lingered, resting their mandibles gently against my shoulder. 

My hands softly caressed its face. “I will keep them safe,” I murmured, my hand touching the precious package entrusted to my care. Already I could feel the strange fluid I had been given digesting, moving through my cells to the eggs within, as a memory slipping forgotten from the mind.

It gently nibbled at my hair in quiet gratitude before it slipped through the pool and vanished. My fingers fumbled with the old carved runes and I grabbed a sharp rock. Its edge was enough to pry up the sacred stone that had been placed in the ancient rune. With a flash of light, the pool blinked from existence, leaving behind nothing but ancient runes and my distended belly as proof of its existence.