The creature that emerged from beneath the rusted excavator was a tragic mockery of living anatomy.
It had once been an adult Mountain Chimera Wolf, broad-chested and heavily muscled. But its natural physiology had been utterly subjugated by the fungal rot. Sprouting from its eye sockets were two six-inch, club-shaped purple fruiting bodies that pulsed with pale living-glow spores. Thick cords of white mycelium crawled across its ribs like external veins, boring through the between-rib spaces directly into its lung cavity. The wolf moved with a jerky, spastic gait, its limbs twitching as the fungal network fired spark impulses directly into its outer movement nerves.
Behind it, three more corrupted beasts shuffled into the violet light. Two winged baboons whose flight feathers were matted with mold. A young boar whose tusks were wrapped in thick fungal cords.
None of them growled. None of them breathed. They were living husks, kept mobile solely by the leech-like mycelium invading their neuromuscular junctions.
“Cordyceps puppets,” Arthur whispered, his Monocle Loupe zooming in on the base of the lead wolf’s skull. “The fungal hyphae have formed a leech-like nerve knot directly over the medulla oblongata. They aren’t conscious. Nyx is running them through sky spore signaling.”
