From Nuishe's journal

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I must say, the Mold King has improved his skills at creating wretched “nobility” since that first abomination was made. While it is a broken, convulsing mess that’s only halfway in this world at any given time, this second Spore Lord is certainly…alive.

That is the highest compliment I can give it, since everything else about it turns my blood to ice.

It is spidery and brittle. Its limbs are as thin as bones, though I can’t be sure that it actually has bones.

It looks fake, like a toy made of parchment and wire. A stiff breeze might be enough to sweep it off its feet and into the sky. I suppose that is why it usually keeps to the deep tunnels.

It walks gingerly and deliberately, and when surprised, it skitters and scuttles like a panicked insect. Sometimes it travels on the walls or the ceiling, and as it looks around, its pencil-thin neck bends and twists in unnatural ways.

It watches. It holds perfectly still, more like a sculpture than a dragon, and it watches.

My clanmates sometimes speak to it. They perform tasks for it as if it asked them to. I have never heard it speak.

I caught it watching me eat some freshly-caught rabbit for my dinner. I approached it with as friendly a demeanor as I could muster and asked if it would like to try some.

It didn't answer. It only stared.

When its skin comes into contact with something organic, other than the fleshy walls of the lair, it causes rapid decay and the sudden appearance of vibrant red toadstools. Wildlife, from bugs to mammals, seem to be drawn to eat these mushrooms, and typically expire the moment they do so. The monster then collects the carcasses and takes them into the deeper tunnels of the Hollow, where it attaches them to the floor, the walls, the ceiling.

Naturally, it has to touch the dead animals to bring them back to its lair, so the mushrooms sprout, and the cycle repeats. Since this thing is allowed to roam freely, and captures new prey nearly every day, I imagine that its “collection” could someday encompass the whole lair.

Something about it is horribly familiar. When I look at the oddly large orb in its forehead, and the unusual placement of its antennae, there is a nasty twinge of recognition. A memory nags at me, but it is so foggy that I might have dreamed it.

Long ago, there was a Pearlcatcher who followed that first Spore Lord around.

I shouldn’t think about that anymore.

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