Eldritch faunus

One-shot

My reason for writing this was a conversation I saw of eldritch madness and how many people get it wrong, and the explanation they gave for it sparked this.

The example: humans are like ants to them right but it isn't just their size or power that drives people mad.

it's their thoughts to compare humans and ants again. It would be like if an ant could suddenly and only briefly think like a human.

As in having complex thoughts and emotions and in that brief moment understanding a part of said thoughts before it all vanishes, what can the ant do with this knowledge, will it ever be able to feel that way again.

How can it go about its life not understanding those thoughts or why it can't anymore?

Eldritch faunus

Ozpin stared down at the ruined village, its once clean walls decorated in viscera, some of it fresh most not.

As the bullhead pulled up and over Ozpin saw more of the same buildings in ruin and covered in markings.

Said buildings were mostly damaged, be it bullet holes, slashes from blades, explosions, or just plain knocked over.

The symbols seemed to be the sole exception as there would be no damage within a foot of any of them.

And yet for all the visible damage the number of people found in this village were startlingly low, sane or not.

Yet for all the blood present that Ozpin knew would come back as human or faunus he knew they wouldn't find any trace of the bodies.

After all this was the fifth village that had been found like this and in not a single village was a body found.

And following each discovery the same story was told by the survivors, though the less sane seemed to treat it as some sort of spiritual awakening.

A boy no older than ten will appear on the edge of town before attempting to gain access into the village, whether he is rebuffed or not has no effect on what follows as he will stay within the general area usually seen eating scrapes or hand outs from the more sympathetic.

Over the course of days to weeks a hum, or maybe a song, possibly even just words in a language incomprehensible to them will slowly become audible to the residents and will progressively and even aggressively get louder.

At this point many villagers claimed that they had chased the boy off, blaming him for the curse or blessing, according to the less sane.

All the same a sum of the village residents will inevitably go mad and begin conducting 'rituals' and sacrifices seemingly in an attempt to understand the sounds in their heads.

Ozpin shook his head a moment recalling some of the more disturbing rituals the saner survivors described.

Taking a deep breath he focused his mind trying to predict just where the boy was going next.

.
.
.
.
.
The boy or boy as he knew himself by no other name continued moving his limbs in a way that made travel easiest.

One lower limb in front of the other to be repeated over and over again until a new place to rest and eat is found.

The chittering-clacking-grounding of fresh meat he heard, he knew to be laughter from his other half.

It seemed to take some form of pleasure from his actions.

The boy knew something was wrong with him; his mind was in too many places it shouldn't be, aware of too many things that it shouldn't have been able to acknowledge, and actively intertwined with things that should have shattered him and not bound itself to him even tighter than should be possible.

The boy's spine rattles again as his other half laughs once more.

The sensation of skin melting into a sort of liquid flesh where his other half grew sent nearly nauseating waves of wrongness throughout his body but the boy's mind had long since grown accustomed to it even as the vibration made him misstep and tumble to the earthen floor.

The boy tried for a moment to get up again but failed.

Perhaps the fall wasn't just his other half.

The boy stared forward even as the rattling shook him again.

The sensation of his other half sliding from underneath his top covering sent nauseating waves through him but his body couldn't even manage a shudder.

Instead the boy felt the covering get pushed back even more as a limb of fluid flesh touched down before his face.

The fluid flesh split followed by the sensation of three more limbs setting themselves on the ground.

The boy at this point knew what to expect and let himself go limp as the four limbs stretched upwards pulling him from the ground before continuing on the path the boy had been on.

The boy quickly found his eyes closing and then he began to dream.

His shattered mind brought forth memories not his own, recalling days he did not live, the loving and forlorn gaze of a mother who had seen her child slaughtered with her countless number of eyes staring at a woman desperate for her own spawn.

And yet the whispers of his other half followed him here, though that was not completely true, for it was he and he, it.

His other half is a mere part of himself that he had yet to grow into nor it into itself.

Both immature in flesh and concept not truly complete nor completely bound to another but intermixed and intertwined beyond the meager visible connection.

For its mind is his yet not, bound to the higher plain and greater thought and yet his mind is also its in the same way but bound to the rationality of the lower thought.

As such since the moment of their mental conception by their mothers the whispered words, songs, screams, and cheers followed.

The boy recalled his birth, the sight of his mortal mother weeping happy but bitter tears as she spoke to him, yet he could only grasp the concept of her words not their actual content.

That filled both higher and lower mind's with shame and pity that they couldn't truly listen to their mortal mother's last words before she fell limp and her body became an empty vessel void of all but flesh and bone.

From then on the whispers escalated into screams, wails for the mortal mother that bore them but it was as young as the boy at the time and it fell into a loop.

The wails of the higher mind hurt and confused the other mind attached to it, throwing it into confusion and panic which in turn worsened the higher mind's distress.

The boy was nearly dead to the world for the first four years of his life, barely able to sleep, to dream, almost incapable of eating due to the pain and stress.

And then he had a thought and a realization, "I don't want to be alone, I don't want this pain inside me I want it out!"

That was when the whispers began to crawl out of the boy's mind and sprouted as flesh so different from his own on his back which began whispering to others the higher mind had not left it had simply moved to a spot that felt more comfortable.

With the move the pain lessened and the wails stopped all together.

The boy's father, or at least the man who believed himself to be the boy's father, was the first to fall.

He was a tall and lanky fox faunus, his trait being a set of ears that rested proudly atop his head.

He was a good man, a caring father, and by the end of the first week of 'his' son's separation raving mad with a fixation on his son.

Within the first day he started to hear the whispers.

The second day saw him panicking and going to a hospital so sure that he had some sort of ailment.

By the third day he occasionally got flashes of understanding and he began to draw symbols, not truly understanding them but enough so that he was compelled to try.

By the fourth day of the whispers and no sleep the man hadn't even tried to go to work or drop off his child at daycare too focused on the words in the whispers and the designs that followed each word.

The fifth saw understanding dawn on the connection between the whispers and the man's charge and the child became a focus, an item of worship.

Unaware to him, he was not the only one affected anymore in his small village; all who came within earshot of the boy or were especially open minded quickly found themselves drowned in the whispers of a child of the higher plain.

And due to the nature of the boy's mind and ancestry as the whispers spread, so did his range, turning the whole village into an echo chamber.

The second week saw an end to the village; its residents turned to nothing more than zealots and mad men, all screaming, all raving for understanding or to stop and spare their minds the agony of the unknown.

The boy had not known nor cared at all, for the pain had lessened he could eat and sleep without aid or issue so he did, he slept.

He slept and slept and ate and slept some more and as his body got the nutrients it needed and the rest it required.

His other half gorged itself on the thoughts and sacrifices made to it by the residents of the faunus village causing it to mature rapidly.

This maturation came with understanding and with that understanding came the realization that they had and still were hurting themselves with their cries and so it stopped.

This unknowingly had an effect on the village; the intensity of the whispers, previously backed by pain and confusion, lessened.

The residents became worried that their source of knowledge, their object of worship had become displeased with them and as result their practices became more drastic, more involved and a far higher body count.

And yet the boy was blind to it all sleeping as his ancestor, the origin of it all, Azathoth did blind to all but his newly awakened desire which were sated immediately by his servants.

Eventually the boy woke up and he was alone, unknown to the boy his father had conducted a grand rite.

He gathered those willing, and those against, and performed a ritual which he felt would help the boy most.

He saw the mortal flesh of his child as a curse, a weakness holding his child back and so the rite saw to purge it.

But the mortal flesh was not purely mortal and caused the rite to backfire; it not only slowed the boy's development, it compressed the bindings between the higher mind and the lower causing the separation between the thoughts to increase.

This also resulted in backlash that devoured everyone else involved in the rite leaving the child alone in the world for the first time.

Of course not knowing what to do the boy wept in fear, for he felt no one and nothing but eventually his other half spoke to him vocally for the first time.

The words caused him pain, his ears and nose bleed, his eyes bulged and became bloodshot but he could understand.

They were alone but they couldn't remain alone lest they be killed, something the boy was certain would go against his father's wishes and would break the hearts of his mothers.

So he ate one last time and began to move towards where his other half told him too.

 

Interesting, I love Eldritch main characters

ALWAYS so interesting