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Mothmask (6) : There are eyes in the darkness of every forest, staring at you. Between one blink and the next, they disappear, only to reappear somewhere in the trees. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s many. The faces are almost human; you can see the hollow of the eye, a narrow nose, and an eerie, toothy grin. It’s inhuman–and terrifying. No matter where you go, there are always faces outside, watching you. No tree is safe. It feels like being followed by horrifying ghouls–and what’s with the strange, raspy laughter coming from the depths of the forest? Fear is a powerful tool, but maybe if you’re just a little brave you can get close enough to better see what monsters are stalking you. You can find dark moths with strange, humanesque features painted on their wings. They are roughly the size of a basketball and, upon close inspection, seem mostly harmless. Except, if you stay too close to them, the face on their wings change–to yours. The moths cannot be caught and will always fly away, fleeing into the darkness, but it’s still unnerving. Especially if other people start to see your face staring back at them from the darkness with that uncomfortable, raspy laughter.
Drombeg was close to the national park that he worked, and now lived, in, and tonight he had decided to power up and take a look at what people had been complaining about deep within the woods in the nearby area. People had been reporting strange eyes and human faces, along with some creepy laughter in areas where giant moths were spotted. No one had been able to identify them as a certain species, and when people had attempted to take pictures of them, all that could be seen were the eye and “grin” that the wings of the moth had. Anything else was blurry or didn’t have enough light.
While this could have been the work of the Negaverse, creating bugs that could drain people would be quite efficient, he doubted that it had been them. First, bad things happened to both Order and Chaos during October and at least December. Bad, unexplainable things. He also doubted that they had the ability to create such organic creatures yet. If anything they probably just took over another downtown building, always fun.
But whether or not it was the Negaverse, he had decided to power up in case he needed to fight anything, like a large mothman that came out of the woods that people just hadn’t seen yet. He really hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
Still, he held his “sword” closely to his side, his hand gripping the hilt as he cautiously made his way into the woods, hoping that his armor would be quiet enough not to scare off any of the moths that may have been lurking nearby. After about 20 minutes of walking, he finally seemed to come to the area that had the moth reporting and he certainly was’t disappointed. Faces seemed to be everywhere. Some were grotesque, some incomplete, and some looked like the Cheshire Cat going invisible. Along with the laughter. Raspy, definitely something that was meant to rattle one’s confidence, but to what end? No one had reported feeling especially tired after seeing them, something that Drombeg had made sure to specifically ask about while he was a civilian Park Ranger.
He decided to get up close to one of them, this one looking a bit less like uncanny valley at least and he looked to the sides and around the area of its head. Nothing appeared to be especially strange, besides the size and the pattern of it’s wings. The rest of it appeared to be that of a giant moth.
He was about to touch it with the hilt of his sword, moths could be poisonous to the touch after all, when it suddenly shook, the raspy laughter following the shake, and suddenly the pattern on the wings shifted to… his face? Of course it didn’t look exactly like his. It was exaggerated and creepy looking due to the shape of the wings, but it appeared that the moths could change their patterns if they wanted to. Interesting. He was sure that some scientist into bugs would have wanted to study them. Perhaps they copied the faces of people that they had seen?
But other than warning people not to go into the area, there wasn’t much else he could do. They didn’t seem to be draining energy or otherwise harming people, so he didn’t believe they were a danger. But if one didn’t want to be creeped out, he suggested avoiding them. He let out a sigh and started walking away, hoping to make it to his cabin before it got too dark outside.
