Death Devourer

"Only this thing is keeping him alive," Arthur whispered to Reyna, who stood tensely beside him. She had revealed her fairy wings relfex-like in the face of the manifested creature, their soft light bathing the room in a blue hue. Outside, the heavy shutters in front of the windows rattled in the wind. The entire building groaned, both from the force of the wind and the tense atmosphere.

The creature straightened up a little. The thing could think, at a level where it understood that Arthur and Reyna were paying attention to it. Beyond this brief tension, however, it reacted no further. It merely kept its enormous fly-like skull firmly pointed at Arthur. The long proboscis, anchored in the sleeping man's mouth, steadily pumped more material out of its body, which landed gurgling in the creature's stomach. Even Arthur, with all his experience in dealing with ghosts, had never seen anything like it.

The thing had only appeared now, after night had fallen, although Arthur had already scoured the entire village with his spirit threads. It was unlikely that it could have simply escaped him. He even found the fine fragments of dying ants in his current form with ease. He should have discovered a spirit creature of this size. Especially as fat as the thing was. How long had it been eating?

E-E-E-E-lena, the words from the mouth that suddenly opened above the trunk made Reyna and Arthur flinch so much that they both almost screamed, is Elena w-w-w-well?

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Death devourer are exceptionally rare and powerful members of the spirit-beings. They consume physical suffering and transform it into spiritual energy, but this treatment comes at a heavy price.

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Origin

by CSor96 using Midjourney

Just like all spirit beings, Death Devourer are born from abrupt and random condensations of Mind Energy in the spirit world. Large amounts of this energy as well as residual imprints of Aura and fragments of the emotional traces of the deceased and the living accumulate here. In the case of the Death Devourers, it is unclear exactly which combination is necessary for their formation.

Once born, a Death Devourer takes the form of a fist-sized fly that is blue to turquoise in color in the typical semi-transparent style of the spirit world. Within the spirit world, they do not grow any further, but once they have absorbed enough spirit energy, they can enter the earthly world through weak spots in the spirit veil and attach themselves to living beings.

Prey

Death Devourers, like most spirits, have a clear prey. Usually, however, this prey has very specific spiritual qualities, but in the case of these spirits their taste is based solely on a physical characteristic. They only choose as prey those who are plagued by incurable diseases or those who are only a few days away from their natural death. The fist-sized flies attach themselves to the skull of their prey in their young form, remaining unnoticed due to their invisibility as ghosts.

Nutrion

Once a Death Devourer has attached itself to its prey, the prey can only notice this by a slight pressure on the head or by energetic perception. Immediately after adhesion, the spirit pierces the energetic structures of its victim's skull with its proboscis and begins to form a parasitic connection with the target. Since Death Eaters are spirit creatures that consist almost exclusively of energy and carry very little physical matter, they share this ability with their dying prey.

By changing the relationship between energy and matter in the target's body, through their new connection as a single being, they are able to prolong the body's dying process over several months. During this time, they can be said to eat the decay or disease of the body. Not only do they consume this decay (and thereby prolong the life of their prey), with each puff they take through their proboscis, they also absorb parts of their target's consciousness and mind, which slows down the dying process but exchanges physical suffering for a loss of mental capacity.

Abilities

Death Devourers generate something called minus energy when consuming decay and disease. Basically, they store the act of dying itself and grow by consuming it. As with other spirits, they gradually gain increased control over spirit energy. This gives them the ability to perform telepathy and telekinesis. They can also control the will of other beings in the environment and steal, change or erase their memories and experiences.

I had never seen anything like it. I did know of ghosts and other beings who had sought out a steady prey and apparently fed on their misery to such an extent that they hid when in danger and returned as soon as the coast was clear. Just like spirits who move freely between the spirit world and the earthly realm in order to remain undetected. However, this creature was the first to be able to conceal itself in the consciousness of its prey. To exist, as it were, as part of the victim, hidden even from the eyes of experienced oracles.
- Arthur Albrath

Most uncanny, however, is their ability to absorb the physical attributes of their victims along with their minds. Basically, they absorb everything that should have died or decayed on their victim and make it appear on themselves. Over time, they can even acquire a perfect physical form in this way, allowing them to consciously switch between an energetic and physical form. In addition to these properties, they can also take on the physical characteristics of their victims, including their faces, their voice or even their tymidian. As a Death Devourer begins to devour the last fragments of its prey, it inevitably begins to take over the mind of its victim.

Finally, the creature begins to speak, to yearn for lost loved ones, to chase after the dreams and desires of its prey. In the fragile hours before the Death Devourer completely consumes its prey, it withers into an emaciated form that dries up and shrinks until it is barely larger than a hand, nestled gently in the Devourer's chest.

Appearance

What starts out as the giant likeness of a fly transforms more and more into a hybrid of the original fly and the prey it gradually consumes. It takes on physical characteristics such as scars, hair and its coloring and even eyes. Over time, the creature resembles nothing more than a hideously disfigured being that should be eradicated. Its shape only becomes more terrifying when the creature has devoured not just one prey, but possibly hundreds. A conglomerate of impossibly entangled and intertwined body parts and organs turned inside out.

In the course of this development, Death Devourers also grow immensely in size. For each creature absorbed, its body expands by about half the volume of the original body. The largest Death Devourer ever found was the size of a multi-story house, devoured a human a day due to its appetite, and had absorbed so much spirit energy that it could terrorize surrounding villages over three kilometers away and force the inhabitants to come to it.

Elena must come to me. She must be terribly lonely without her grandfather. Send her to me. I want my little Elena with me!