One week prior to the confrontation in Crefield...

In the forest of Cleyran, a predator waited. It was not a big animal, but it was by no means small. A kalap spends most of its days up high, hiding in the thick branches of the wood. It knows how to blend in with the tree limbs, to move and match their swaying. If one looks closely at the dense foliage up above, perhaps they could see a furry snout peeking out every now and then. But the kalap is a master at remaining inconspicuous. It rarely moves and when it does, it moves with purpose.

This one, covered in gray fur, waited with its pack. The treetops were their home, their hunting grounds. Another kalap, a brown-furred female, climbed past, stopping briefly to exchange sniffs. Hers was a familiar scent. It meant she could be trusted. She and a few others moved to different hiding spots, but the gray kalap remained still. It was part of the scenery, nothing more.

The sky rumbled, wind tickled the treetops. Branches swayed and the kalap moved with them. Its elongated limbs emulated the flexing and thrashing of the trees. The beast did not have a language. Being a mere animal, it wasn’t sapient enough for words. But it knew a storm was coming. It sniffed the air and could smell the wetness. It didn’t matter. It didn’t mind getting wet. Darkness crept over the sky. Another female crawled past with pups clinging to her back. They gray-haired kalap smelled their father in them. It pulled back its lips and bared its teeth.

But then its ears twitched. It heard rustling in the distance, and it picked up a new scent: food. Maruls were coming. It did not have a name for the knee-high creatures that roamed the fields nearby, it only knew them as food. The pack smelled it too. Several raised their heads and sniffed the air. A few licked their lips. There was no need for pursuit, the maruls would come to them. The forest floor below was often traveled by the creatures. Kalap packs learned this, learned that herds of the grazers often took the same paths. And so, they would perch up high and wait.

As the storm rolled in, the forest blackened. Something wasn’t right. It was too dark. It felt like night, and yet it was too early to be night. The kalap did not know about concepts like night and day. It was just a beast. And yet it was confused. It only associated darkness with sleeping. Should it sleep? No. It did not feel tired. And yet its instincts nagged at it, told him it was time to sleep. It resisted the urge, however.

The first rain drops began to fall on the trees, filling the forest with their hiss. Lightning flashed, followed by a crack of thunder. Water pattered the kalap’s back and soaked into its fur. But it didn’t seem to mind. It hunted from the treetops. It was used to rain. So, it remained in its spot, allowing the water to roll off its fur. It was not used to the tingling, however. That was new. The tingling filled it wherever the water touched. Its skin twitched.

The sky flickered, etching shadows onto the forest floor. Wind exploded, flailing the trees. The kalap tightened its grip as the branch it held onto swayed. Leaves ripped free from the branches and sailed away. A few members of its pack moved to a safer location and this one almost did the same. But then it spotted the maruls and its instincts took over, locking it in place.

The docile, skittish creatures trotted down the forest path, fleeing from the storm. Rainwater soaked their white fur and ran down their sharp, pointed snouts. There was fear in their scent. A few near the front sniffed the air and hesitated, perhaps detecting the ambush that waited ahead. But those behind them prodded the herd forward. The gray kalap crept forward on its branch, almost imperceptibly, getting ready to pounce.

Its arm twitched on its own, a muscle spasm. The tingling sensation grew stronger. Startled, the beast hissed at a nearby neighbor, pack member with a white stripe on its snout. It lowered its ears and returned the hiss. A low growl carried itself through the wind. They both decided to ignore each other and returned their attention to the approaching herd. The maruls clung to the foliage, trying to hide from the downpour. Fresh mud clung to their hooves. The gray kalap waited. It locked its eyes onto a target, an ambitious marul that pulled ahead of the others, and prepared to leap.

Lightning cracked, painting its shadow onto the beast. The kalap sprung off the branch, its arms outstretched and fell with the rain. It landed on the marul’s back, threw its limbs around its body, and clamped down on its neck. The critter screeched and tried to throw it off. But the kalap’s grip was like an iron vice. It couldn’t be tossed off. As if it had set off a chain reaction, the rest of its pack leapt from their branches and descended upon their prey. Chaos erupted.

The maruls tried to escape, but they were so tightly packed, they only ran into and tripped over each other. The forest filled with their barking and wailing as the ambush went into full steam. The kalaps’ long limbs wrapped around the beasts’ necks and torsos, holding on while they injected their venom. As the venom spread, the muscles relaxed, slowed, and eventually stopped moving altogether. The venom was a fast-acting paralytic.

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The gray kalap clung to its mark, gnawing at its neck to stimulate the venom flow. The marul protested, keening pitifully as it stumbled. It became lethargic, fell to the ground and flopped onto its side. Its eyes were moving, its ears twitched, but it could no longer get up or run. Soon, the path was littered with the doomed grazers. The rest of the herd fled, but the pack had claimed its fill.

As the downpour intensified, the trail gave birth to streams. Rivulets poured over mud and rock. They washed around the gray kalap and its food. Occasionally its prey managed to kick out, but the venom continued to spread. In a few minutes, the marul would be completely helpless. The gray kalap would let go, then it would feast. That is what usually happened. That’s not what happened this time, however.

One of its packmates yelped. It was the brown furred female the gray one had greeted earlier. She had let go of her prey and was now snarling at her at the rest of the pack. A few pack members also let go and stepped back, confused. A few cocked their heads. Silence followed, save for the crackling of lightning and the howling of the wind. The trees were gleaming with wetness, their bark weeping as the rain slapped against it. Her leg twitched and she yelped again, snapping at the air.

The pack formed a circle around the brown-furred female and her mark, sniffing the air curiously. But then one of them began to growl and step back from the her. The gray-furred kalap sensed fear. At the same time, the tingling in its skin intensified and it let go of its prey to bite its own arm in annoyance. The female continued to hiss and spit at the pack, and a few more returned her threats. She eyed each of them, snarling, fresh venom still dripping from her fangs. Her prey lay at her feet, eyes wide, panting. Then it kicked.

The female, startled, leapt away. Stillness filled the forest as they stared at the marul, which was still panting. Its flesh began to boil and writhe. Spasms wracked its body. It opened its mouth to scream, but all that escaped was a pitiful whimper. It shook, flopped against the mud, and vomited. Its back unfolded like a flower, revealing tissue and bone. Muscles freed themselves from the skeleton and probed the air like serpents. Then the marul got up and stood on its feet. It looked around. There was pain and terror in its scent, but the eyes were no longer filled with panic. Something else occupied their gaze.

A beast is driven by instinct. They can’t build cities, craft tools, or exercise reason. But when the pack looked into the marul’s eyes, they knew something was wrong. They didn’t know why. But they simply knew it was unnatural. They didn’t know whether to attack or to flee.

The marul stumbled forward, hyperventilating. It looked at the female, who took a hesitant step backward. Then she fell to the ground, shrieking. Her flesh warped, her bones broke. Her skin ripped free and foam, mixed with blood and venom, poured from her snout. Several others fell to the ground, howling. The tingling in the gray-furred kalap grew even stronger. It turned around and it tried to flee. But its leg froze and it tripped. It tried to get up, but its leg would not obey.

The tingling that penetrated its flesh began to tickle. It felt like somebody...or something, was wriggling its fingers against its skin, working their way into its muscle. Snarling, the kalap bit its fur and tried to maul its unseen attacker. But the sensation didn’t stop. The tickling worked its way into the bone. It became like writhing insects, burrowing and crawling under the skin, a thousand pincers biting into muscle, a thousand beaks pecking at its flesh. It The sensation flowed through its entire body, filling every muscle, every orifice. Invisible insects crawled into its nostrils, flying things burrowed into its ears.

The panicked kalap went ballistic. It thrashed in the mud, snapping at everything, even the air itself. It tried to flee, but the sensation could not be escaped. Something took over. The flesh rebelled. Another consciousness occupied the kalap’s mind. It told the stomach to open up, and the stomach obeyed. The kalap shrieked until it vomited its own guts. Its innards reached forth, crawling along the ground until they ensnared the marul it had captured and began to drag it in.

***

One week after the confrontation in Crefield, after the Puppeteer's defeat.

A pitiful creature shambled in the woods. It was an aberration, an amalgamation of both predator and prey. Its warped limbs trembled and twitched. The bones were gnarled and the flesh, sculpted into new shapes It had the long gnarly limbs of a kalap, but the soft fur of a marul. The snout shared features of both. It was the only survivor of its pack. Pack? Or was it a herd? Sometimes it remembered grazing in the fields. Sometimes it also remembered hunting those who grazed in fields. It remembered being hunted and being the hunter.

The corruption’s influence had left it, leaving behind a broken thing. Two identities were at war inside the creature’s mind. It did not remember what it was. Grazer? Hunter? It remembered the pain…yes, it remembered that. Pain was its life now, its constant companion. It was a walking, quivering bag of misery. It howled in the night, shrieked at remembered terrors. It dragged its twitching limbs behind it and keened among the trees.

Violent seizures wrenched its misshapen form. It gnashed its mouths...mouths? Yes, it had more than one now. The one in its neck used to belong to the marul. A web of flesh covered the opening where the Marul's throat should have been, and the tongue was missing. But the teeth were still there, though its gums were shrunken and shriveled. It clenched and opened of its own will, like a trapped creature trying to eat its way free from the kalap’s body. Everything else was dead, but this creature was not. Through fevers and seizures, it somehow survived. It was starved and it was in constant agony, but it reached an impossible equilibrium. It was something new.