Thiron

I’ve lost plenty of friends and colleagues on expeditions, it tends to happen when you’re this deep in the business. This, this was one of the worst.

We were hired by the Efren company which repossessed some abandoned villages. It had been claimed by nature's dominance and had become one with the swamp. The process was fast and ugly. You couldn’t smell the swamp over the rotting remains of homes and their families. Efren refused to hire the best. With me were mostly green-bloods and moderate delvers. I led. I hated that I led.

Arn, Fia, O;a;i, Halden, Thura, Liiva, Ifla, the expedition claimed these names. I will immortalize them in this tome, like all others that have had their names eaten, butchered, and willfully forgotten.

Plenty of dangers beset us as we scrunched the haunts for anything valuable before the destructors would have their turn. A gold plate here, some vaulted variables that were too heavy to take with there, the usual things found if everyone suddenly fled or died. Leeches clung to our ankles and Jairoth danced under a voraciously dimmed sayk light. The thick canopy cast us all in sickening twilight. I had no trouble seeing.

We had our coms up at all times, linked by Thura who stayed back in the wagon where it was safest. O;a;i guarded them. We were mostly done with the preliminary scouting when Ifla began to speak gibberish. I remember her starting on about her mother hiding in the trees or something. Thura I needed to get to them, quickly. Her partner, Halden, commented about some small prick on his back. He soon began to speak the same nonsense, how he’d forgotten to study. Everyone erupted into hysteria.

Arn and I got to them in a few strides. They saw us, then ran off into the wild, screaming murder. I saw them then, though I didn’t know it. Then O;a;i began the insanity along with Thura. He overloaded our minds with distortions and we quickly broke the link.

Arn and I took to the trees as everyone became infected. “You saw them too, right?”

They were too quick. It shot up the tree, biting Arn in his foot before I had enough sense to send it flying with a gust. Arn’s eyes went wide, pupils filled and watering. He opened his mouth with a gasp before falling back out of the tree. He batted my grasp away, “I hate you, demon.”

He tried to strike me with lightning. Maybe he, with what little sanity he had left, saved my life. I took to the sky, my throat closing up as I saw a dark figure race out of my vision.

— Aoax the Delver

Hunting

With fourteen legs, thiron scuttle just out of view of their prey. They will keep out of sight, ambushing from the back with one sting that may not even be noticed. Their scythe-like pincers are, in fact, brittle and hollow. Once bitten, the toxin fills the bloodstream and coats the sole, inducing a dream-like perception of the world. The dream becomes more and more a reality as their prey fall deeper and deeper into sleep before eventually becoming paralyzed in whatever pose the threshold is crossed at.

Prey in nest -a bubble at the bottom of the swamp-, they will drench the dreamer with spittle, water, and thread. They will wake after this process, unable to move in their permanent coffin. The statues will persist long after the mummified individual is liquified and eaten, a sign of health to potential mates and a gruesome graveyard to everyone else.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Paakjn