The thresh ate well.
As large and powerful as the minion had been, it indeed had been slow and stupid after gorging greedily on its meal. It had grunted once as they flew out of the darkness and clamped their jaws onto the exposed nerve ganglion bulging at the rear of its neck. It was a heavy brute, and it had taken their combined strength to drag it back out of the uncomfortable light and into the familiar, reassuring darkness of the red-roofed stone temple. Oh, but it had been worth the effort. When they tore open the belly of the beast and ripped into its two stomachs, they were rewarded with a feast of prechewed, partly digested man meat. Their eyestalks were rigid with the pleasure of it. How smart they had been, they assured each other by quickthinkings, to have allowed the minion to bring down their prey and prepare it so well for them. Such a sufficiency of the achingly sweet delicacy did they recover from the minion’s digestive tract that they themselves were quite stupid and slow with feasting when yet another of the timid, slow-moving animals arrived barking, holding some sort of black tool in its hand.
The thresh laughed. What a pathetic little thing. Oh, they would surely eat this one next or even keep it alive for the journey back to the UnderRealms.
This one, too, rode in some form of chariot that howled through the night, flashing cold blue and red fire that they now knew to be entirely harmless. Clad in a skin of white and painted in blue clan livery; the thresh had never seen such a thing. A strange scent was in the air, twice-burned flesh, perhaps. Having been hatched long after their kind had been banished from the Above, they supposed there were many things they had never seen. But race memories lived on long after those who had first known them were gone. Great was their pride in thinking out such a difficult and confusing think as the memory of the beast-drawn carts that Man had been known to ride. Try as they might, however, the related memory of how such a chariot might move without the motive power of a beast to pull it was beyond them. Such thinking was probably the preserve of a Master Scolari or maybe even the Queen. It was possible, they supposed, that the creatures that powered it were inside the chariot, armored and protected from thresh and minion alike.
The thresh wondered what these chariot beasts might taste like and whether it might be possible to crack open the shell in much the same way a swarm of thresh could strip the armored skin from an old fallen Drakon.
Giddy with thoughts of carrying their news back down below where it might be thought on by intellects far greater than theirs and, it had to be admitted, a little slow-witted and drowsy because of the huge meal they had just gobbled down, the thresh did not react with any great speed or efficiency to the arrival of yet more food in yet another beastless chariot possessing the same howling call. This one also threw out great fans of light from its eyes without any of the telltale flicker of fire that Men were known to use for their invidious purposes. With mouths so full of sticky shredded meat that their teeth could barely move along their jaw tracks, the thresh exchanged a few torpid thoughts on the matter without concluding anything.
Their own bellies were just as full as the minion’s had been, and so no hunger frenzy drove them, but they could not help idly speculating on what a fine meal this prey would have made had it arrived before the others. It couldn’t be a calfling. No, this prey was easily twice their size and wrapped in the most fetchingly dark hide, which must surely be all the sweeter to the fang. They could smell and even sense its fearful thinkings over the considerable distance that separated it from them, and they languidly attempted to force-grow that fear in the hope that it might paralyze the creature, thus keeping it for later consideration. The old memories spoke of Men who neither fought nor ran when confronted, instead soiling themselves most deliciously with their own juices and pastes. What rewards might await them, they thought to each other, were they able to make this one baste itself thus before taking it below to the nest.
When it evacuated the contents of its stomach, the rich smell of fermenting bile, burned meat, and some unknown but powerful sweetness reached their scent receptors almost immediately. The man was joined by a second one, this one pale in the forearms and face yet wearing a black robe of sorts as well.
Their eyestalks, which had been drooping, went rigid again.
Oh, we must have them now, they decided.
The thresh launched themselves at the prey. There could be no question of leaving these creatures to wander off of their own accord. They had no idea how that unique combination of scents and tastes had arisen, but it was imperative that the meal not be allowed to escape. Why, it was even possible they might present the repast directly to the Queen herself without the usual prechewing and digesting customary for tribute feasts. She would want to taste this meat in its natural state, they thought. To allow the flesh to speak for itself without a lot of unnecessary tearing and rending and cooking in the acids of the blood pot.
Unfortunately, they were no more able to move with the speed and agility of a freshly hatched carver daemon than the minion had been when it was full of tasty man meat. No sooner had the thresh determined to charge back into the strange, cold, harmless light to disable the large Man with the pleasingly dark hide than one of them tripped on the ruined masonry that lined the red-roofed building, falling face-first to the ground. This village seemed large for one that had fallen to ruin. There were snares and pitfalls all about, large holes filled with brackish water, and a veritable blizzard of fragile containers, skins, and pouches was strewn about.
The blow all but rendered the stricken thresh unconscious, and its nest mate tumbled over as it attempted to arrest its own flight forward lest the quickthinking link between them be severed by distance. How fortunate that no other nest mates or minion were around to witness their embarrassment. The thresh that had not been knocked nearly insensible reached out with its thoughts to soothe and revive its mate and had only just regained a proper bond when the most awful, unthinkable thing happened.
A flash of light.
A thunderclap.
As the grumbling, injured thresh put one claw to its head to rub at the spot where a large bump was already rising, its skull burst apart in a shower of gore. It dropped dead amid the rubble and detritus of the ruined village.
The surviving daemon stood frozen in place, its jaw hanging open with long tendrils of man meat and minion innards still swinging from its fangs. And then it screamed. A long, hideous psychic scream that was completely inaudible to anything but a fellow dweller in the UnderRealms.