Creepers
excerpt from the last page of the Behemat tome:
"Olag sat deep in his cave, slow thoughts sliding like icebergs in the dark waters of his mind.
He closed his good eye for a moment and listened hard, his forearms on his knees and his back flat against the wall where the strange paintings appeared as he slept. Sometimes, the night before a big fight, pictures appeared on his skin, too. Patterns of red, white and black. His hair got twisted all regular at night, sometimes and he heard skittering and scuffling on the cusp of hearing as he woke. He'd given up getting angry about it, given up punching the cave walls in frustration that someone or something was messing with him while he slept. It was the Creepers that did it, those pale, dirty little stick figures that always kept out of sight. Stick figures, like on the walls. Sometimes he heard them whisper-singing, in the tunnels, or saw torchlight glinting from eyes in the dark. "Olag. Olag. Olag the Great", they chanted in their weird hollow voices. It wasn't so bad, especially when they left him food. They could stay he thought, so long as they stayed well out of sight. (...)
Back at his cave, Olag poked at the wound in his knee, wincing as the Creepers dug the sting-rocks out of his back. He could hear them whispering, feel their ropes tugging his mantle back into place, even feel their feet on his skin. He let it slide. They would sew up his wounds after a fight, just as they did his rags"