I watch as Yvonne’s head emerges from the cave lobster pond, quickly followed by the rest of her. She stands by the pond as she considers what I’ve asked her to look into.

“What do you think?” asks Teemo, and Yvonne hums in reply.

“I think I’m better at stuff that lives above ground. Still, it’s an interesting challenge. I think it’ll work, though they’ll probably have an easier time of it if they just section off a small part of the underswamp. I’m going to go take a look there, next. From what I can tell, they’re getting what they need. I don’t know if full domestication will be an option, though. That usually entails the creature seeing you as not a threat at all, and I don’t know if these things are smart enough for that. I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to breed and feed, at least, so that’s close enough.”

“It’s not too stagnant?” asks my Voice, and Yvonne shakes her head.

“You really want stagnant water with these ones, actually. They live to eat stuff like algae and moss that will grow in stagnant waters. The spiderkin will just need to introduce fresh lobsters every so often to keep inbreeding down.”

“Cool. Shall we go check out the swamps?”

Yvonne grins at him. “I don’t know… swamps can be pretty gross. You sure you want to come?”

He gives her a flat look. “I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I.”

She laughs and kneels down to let him hop onto her shoulder. “Of course not!” He grumbles, but climbs aboard, and they head out towards the underswamps. Yvonne speaks with wonder as they walk. “I never expected underground to have so many biomes! I should have asked Ragnar to come, see if he knows more about this than I do.”

Teemo snorts at that idea. “I don’t mind him coming along, but I think he’d be more at home in a mine than wandering the great indoors.”

Yvonne laughs at that and nods, though she takes a few minutes to inspect something on the wall, instead of answering right away.

“What’d you find?”

“I’m not sure. It’s covered in moss, but it looks like a territorial marking.” She reaches out a hand and brushes away the plant, and traces two long gashes in the wall that meet at the ends. “I’ve never seen a clawmark like this before.” Teemo peers at the markings, and he has the same worried inkling that I do.

“I think I have. Test your sword in the gashes,” suggests my Voice, and so she does. Yvonne pulls the large curved blade from her belt and tries several ways to make it fit the mark on the wall. After a few different positions of slashing, she seems to have one that she likes.

“I think you’re right, Teemo. It’s sword slashes.” My best rat sighs and shakes his head.

“It wasn’t always a sword, remember? You never saw the scythemaw it came from. It’s… a mandible? Big nasty theethy-things that stick out of the face sideways.”

“What’s a scythemaw?” asks Yvonne as she looks more closely at her sword. It’s pretty easy to tell she’s trying to gauge how big one would be, based on the weapon in her hand. I don’t think she likes the picture it’s painting.

“A big scaly lizard thing with two of those sticking out of its face. One actually chased Aranya to the Boss. That’s how she got here. He had to bring in Tiny to handle it. I think she called it a tunnel horror.”

Yvonne’s eyes widen as she looks at Teemo, then back to the sword in her hands. “This is an actual tunnel horror’s fang?! I thought it was just modeled after one!” She looks like she’s ready to have a panic attack before she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

When she opens her eyes again, she’s all business. “This wasn’t the only territory marking I saw, just the one that looked freshest. There’s not a whole lot known about how they actually live. Most people who try to research don’t come back to report their findings. The ones that do were usually too busy running to take any notes.”

My Voice attempts to lighten the mood a little. “Don’t tell that to Honey. She’ll take it as a challenge.” Yvonne’s demeanor softens a little, but she’s still in business mode at the moment.

“We need to investigate. There are way too many markings for a lone horror.”

Yeah… now that I’m looking, I’m seeing a lot of those slashes in my walls all through this layer of the caves. The tunnels under the manner are looking fresh, but there’s gashes in the walls all over the place deeper. I ping Coda, Slash, Rocky and Fluffles to come take a look, and let Teemo know.

“Looks like the Boss wants to help, Yvonne. He’s got a bunch of scions coming down to see what to look for, and then check the rest of the walls and such for more signs. Don’t forget Honey, Boss.”

Ah, right. She should be able to help organize the markings. Are you two still going to the swamps? We haven’t found scythemaws anywhere yet, but with all these markings, they've got to be close, and the underswamps are the closest place they could be hiding.

Teemo glances at Yvonne while she walks, a hand on the wall as the feels out more gashes. “Yeah, looks like, Boss. We’ll be careful.”

You’d better. We might need to make some kind of rowboat or something to travel in there, too. A fanboat is the peak of swamp travel, but we should probably crawl before we try to sprint.

“Ooh, that’s a neat boat design, Boss.”

“Hmm?” says Yvonne, the odd statement pulling her from her focus for a moment. Teemo takes a few moments himself before he replies.

“The Boss has an idea for a boat to travel swamps. It’s a flat, shallow boat with… kind of a windmill on the back. But instead of capturing the wind with the blades, they make wind and push the boat along.”

Yvonne considers that as she returns to looking at the wall, and the slow transition from light mushroom forest to mushroom swamp. “It’s an interesting idea. I don’t know if it’ll be practical for cave swamps, though.”

“It’d still be neat to make.” Teemo chuckles at himself after a few moments. “It’d also be a long ways off to make it. Thing has his hand full enough already.”

Yvonne doesn’t answer before shimmering wings can be seen, and Fluffles makes his entrance. He nods at the two as he lands, and Teemo speaks up. “Yvonne has found a lot of scythemaw markings on the walls here. We’re going to be heading to the swamps, but you stay here for the others and show them what we’re looking for, then all go search the other deep layers. The Boss says he’s seeing a lot of these markings, but it’ll be a lot simpler if we get a lot of scions on this, instead of just me trying to dictate what Thedeim’s seeing.”

Fluffles nods at that, flicking his tongue as he examines the wall. After a few moments, he hisses at Teemo, who frowns. “Yeah, Fluffles says he tastes scythemaw. It’s been a while, but that last one made a pretty significant first impression.”

Oh joy. Well, better to have bad news with time to prepare, rather than it just showing up unexpectedly. Teemo nods at that, and soon he and Yvonne continue on their way. At the swamps, they can’t make too much progress, unfortunately. It’s almost all water and kinda mangrove-mushrooms. They look cool, but aren’t exactly the best things to try to traverse dangerous waters by.

Yvonne still manages to pick out a few shallow paths, but it’s slow going. Meanwhile, my scions scour the deeper passages for more of the signs. We’ve spotted a couple before, but never paid them much mind, thinking they were old and the scythemaws were more lone hunters. From the number of gashes everyone is finding now we’re looking, though… I’m getting a bit anxious.

It takes Yvonne about half an hour before she gives up on trying to traverse the swamp on foot, and she and Teemo start working their way back. “I’ll talk to a shipwright and see if they have anything for a swamp.”

“A canoe would probably be best. Nice and narrow for easy maneuvering, and easier to ditch than a kayak,” says my voice, and Yvonne gives him a confused look.

“A what and a what?”

“Oh, uh… different boats. Thedeim says they’re usually made from single logs… which would be pretty heavy, come to think of it.”

Yvonne shrugs. “Boats aren’t exactly light. I’ll ask the shipwright, though. I’d really hate to get stuck because the boat’s too fat.”

They chat for a few more minutes until they get back to the spiderkin enclave, which gives Coda the time to give me more bad news, which I relay to Teemo to pass on to Yvonne.

“Uh… so. There’s markings all the way to, through, and past Violet’s area. There’s a big aquifer not far from her territory that also has a lot of scythemaw markings.”

Yvonne slowly blinks as connections seem to get made, and she glances at the lobster ponds. “That could be bad. This much marking says it’s clearly their territory, but the markings are also old. There’s also two different areas with water for them to potentially hide in. I think there’s two options…”

She holds up a single finger: “Option one: they live in one of the bodies of water and migrate periodically across the land, possibly to mate. The other option…” she points her finger at the lobster pond. “Is that there are *two* scythemaw populations and they migrate to mate, so they don’t inbreed too badly. They might even mate on land, who knows! One thing’s very clear, though: they come through here a lot, for whatever reason. I don’t know how long between active periods… but my gut says it won’t be too much longer. If the markings were new, they’d have just gone through. With the age, though… I think we’re getting very close to a scythemaw migration being due.”