After many, many years of slumber, I had been awoken to find that humans had founded a city on my front door. Indeed, after donning my armor and having a quick briefing with my lieutenants, I opened the obsidian doors of my mountain sanctuary for the first time in centuries only to be greeted with the ugly sight of spikey towers and pillars of smoke. Then the outside air felt kind enough to blast me with the smell of feces and all other unpleasant odors born from the new blight in the once peaceful valley. I bared my teeth as I breathed from my mouth. From behind came the acute clicking of thin chitin legs on dark and dulled stone. The footfalls of my flesh smith was unmistakable.
"Iana," I sighed, "I hope this wasn't your doing."
The drow spider hybrid stopped at my side. She looked no older than she was when I entombed myself. Iana's eyes glowed red with the same intensity and her smile gave off the same amount of eeriness. Dyed webbing from her own spinnerets made up the purple one piece that barely covered Iana's ebony skin. She flicked away a white bang from her sharp face.
"You're not the only one who appreciated the majesty of this valley, Master." she answered with a grin.
I looked at my flesh smith with a raised brow. "And yet you didn't go outside once to notice this development?"
The bang returned and Iana twirled it around with a thin, chitinous finger, "I did peek out a century ago, and at that time there was only a few straw huts around the lake."
"And now I can barely see the mountains on the other side." I growled, glaring out at the new blight erected right in front of my entrance.
Iana looked at the human city, then at you with a curious glance. "Do you want to raise it?"
I exhaled sharply and answered, "In time, but first we must take inventory."
It was then I heard shouts from down below. About a dozen aging men had gathered loosely around the bottom of the steps. We were several leagues away from the city's outskirts, so my curiosity got the better of me. I listened and heard occultic chants and praises in several languages all aimed at a being who's name I didn't know. Then saw me and my flesh smith and started to run the stairs, exuberant. They were all armed with swords and spears.
With a deep breath I boomed down at the men, "I do not know of this creature whom you sing praises to. Please cease from entering my domain."
Confusion, revelation, then anger. A ringleader stepped in front of the men and gave an impromptu speech. I ignored all of it and turned to whisper to Iana
"They're going to attack. Do you have any creatures that can defend our home right now?"
Iana smiled and pulled out a small instrument from the satchel she had cradled in between her torso and abdomen. She put it to her lips and blew a note that was beyond my hearing. In an instant the ground began to shake. From the open entrance charged over a dozen misshapen crabs that were as tall as me. They rushed past the two of us and squared up against the armed cultists in a wide skirmish line.
I've seen this before and knew how it would go, so I asked Iana,
"So, what projects have you done before I was so rudely woken up?"
Iana took out a thick leatherback book and handed it to me with a prideful smile. The book was the latest of a growing library of Iana's monster projects. I pulled on the bookmark and viewed the newest entry. Iana had expertly drawn it, with a list of "ingredients" and the process she went through to make it like a morbid cookbook.
My immediate guess for a base animal was a bull with a pair of thin, parabolic horns, but the overall body looked slimmer, more agile. The legs were much thicker and had no hooves. Then there was the color with the beast's head and legs being a uniform sapphire while the rest of the body was pearl white. And then I saw underneath the beast.
"First off," I said to Iana, giving her an incredulous stare, "Why did you draw the penis? And second: Why is it blue?"
"Inspiration." Was Iana's immediate answer. I maintained my stare.
"Right " I sighed, returning to the book. It looked closer to that of a dog's than a bull's. Looking down the list of attributes I then blinked at the measurements. "Iana, this beast is the size of a small house. I thought you didn't have the material for something this big."
"What? Someone like me can't inhibit her desires and save resources for a few decades?"
I was surprised. "Impressive."
There was movement down below and I saw one crab-beast make a move. It was facing one cultist, but then bolted sideways down the slope at another. The target had looked away at the wrong moment and thus was blindsided into the muddy earth by the crab-beast. After a few seconds of grappling the crab beast maneuvered it's massive claw around the man's midsection and snapped it shut. The cultist was bisected, spilling intestines and wailing a death scream. The rest of the crabs charged in, devolving the skirmish into a bloody melee.
I looked back up at the disgusting city. Iana thought out loud, "I almost don't want to deploy my newest creation against this city. He has a rather noble personality. Having him go against it might dirty him irrevocably, if that is what you might command of course, Master."
"I'm inclined to agree, Iana. Compared to that concentration of shit, your newest project is absolutely beautiful." I shut Iana's book and handed it back to the proud drow. "But we have time, my dearest flesh smith. Time to raise arms anew. And perhaps there is more to gain from this new blight than mere material."
The two of us smiled and allowed the sounds of desperate fighting and messy death to fill the air.