#korgot

           The Fikou Nui is a hyper-intelligent, massive Fikou spider, with long, spindly legs sharp enough to puncture flesh, a digging ability, and heightened senses from which to detect other organisms. Given its task by Makuta, the Fikou Nui was set loose on the Okotans living in the tunnels of the Region of Earth.

           Using its senses, the Fikou Nui was able to map out the underground tunnels mined by the Okotans. After establishing its own nest-cavern near these tunnels, the Fikou Nui set to work digging incredibly small tunnels with which it squeezed its body through. Finally, the Fikou Nui set to work preparing traps for its prey;

           Once it was close enough to a tunnel, it then used only a single, spindly leg to carve an incredibly small, tube-like opening that connected its tunnel, with one of the underground passages. Such a small hole would be hard to notice, but just in case, the Fikou Nui then reached out into the breached passage, sensing no one was near, and grabbed a rock, spreading a splotch of webbing across the bottom, and glued it over the small opening it had made.

           The Fikou Nui repeated this process on several other nearby tunnels, before proceeding to wait in its nest, sensing the vibrations for the occasion in which a single miner would pass through the tunnels below. When it did sense a potential victim, the Fikou Nui set to work, making its way to one of the openings it had carved out. Then, it waited, its leg stuffed down the tube-opening, poised to flip open the rock covering it on its hinge-like web. The Fikou Nui let its prey pass by this single stone, and with their back turned, it struck.

           The Fikou Nui pushed the rock to the side, its long appendage poking through, with its sharp end bent towards the vulnerable nape of the unsuspecting Okotan- And then struck hard and fast, puncturing their spine and instantly killing them. With its dead prey now hooked onto its leg, the Fikou Nui would then drag the prey right up to its opening. From its mouth, a long, thin proboscis would emerge, sliding down the tube and piercing the prey on the other side. The Fikou Nui would suck out the blood and juices of the prey until it was dry.

           Once that was done, it would lower the prey’s emaciated body to the ground, and with a few precise cuts, flay their skin, before stuffing it up its tube-opening, pulling it through into its own tunnel, where the Fikou Nui would devour the skin. Even as it did, its leg would then go down the tube once more, using its sharp end to cut apart the flayed corpse into smaller chunks of meat that could fit through its tunnel. The Fikou Nui would devour a piece before cutting out another one, devouring as much as it could until it sensed another Okotan coming nearby.

           In the event that the Fikou Nui could not just kill this Okotan (such as if they were in a group) it would simply abandon what was left of the body, assuming it hadn’t devoured all of it, and retreat its leg back through the tube, making sure to carefully close the webbed-rock over the opening. The Fikou Nui, content with its meal, would then haul itself back to the nest, where it would wait in a semi-hibernation mode, where only its senses were active, for another lone Okotan to wander down these tunnels.

           The Fikou Nui managed to get its first victim and devour all of them, leaving behind only the bones- Although it then proceeded to break those into pieces and eat them as well. It finished its meal and retreated back to its nest.

           This poor, lone victim was soon after missed when his fellow miners realized that he hadn’t returned from his tunnel yet. Concerned, they did a sweep of the tunnel, with Korgot concerned that perhaps the Skull Spiders had breached again and seized another victim. Instead, the search party found the entire tunnel to be un-breached (as far as they could tell). Puzzled, they began combing the tunnel, again and again, but no sign of the lost miner.

           Unrest and paranoia spread as Korgot announced the disappearance and urged for everyone to search the tunnels. The lost Okotan was never found, yet the tunnels themselves had obviously not been breached. There were no openings for Skull Spiders to come through…

           So where did the Okotan go? It’s not like they had dug a tunnel, and then covered it up- They’d have seen signs of digging. Again, Korgot and the search parties skimmed the area for the lost Okotan, yet no sign. Days passed, yet nothing, with Korgot even asking Takua and Tamaru if anyone sighted the lost Okotan, on some unruly chance.

           No sign- And eventually, the search was shut down. As far as anyone else could tell, the miner had just… disappeared in thin air. With nothing else to do, the mystified miners decided that they needed to continue work- And so they did.