There’s something wrong with the crabs.
Not with their behavior (Lorian watches as they sift through the sediment with their claws, bringing morsels to their mouthparts hand over hand in that mechanical way crabs do) but with their shells. Milky yellow eyes peer lidless from their backs, clumps of golden hair sprouting between gnarled growths. He doesn’t like it. Something itches at the back of his mind whenever he looks at them.
This was a bad place. They ought to leave. He’d dug up a good amount of the medicinal plants they needed, and surely there were other waterways. Lothric watches him from the muddy shore, legs tucked up underneath himself, brow furrowed in pain. A few days ago, he’d snapped the tip of one of his long horns off, and it throbbed continuously. Supposedly these water plants made a good painkiller. “What’s the matter?” he calls down. “Did you hear something?”
Lorian lows, starting to climb the slope back up to him, when Lothric hears the snap of a foot breaking a twig not far behind himself. He whips around, one bandaged arm held at the ready, but the action alone sends a red pulse of pain across his skull.