THE ARTIFACT

Log 28, lightning rods. Life grows ever more barren on the mountain. Nothing but white rocks and snow are seen, that and lightning. The closer we get to the storm the more we feel its affects; thunder cracks and shakes the ground while lightning illuminates our path forward. This place isn’t devoid of life though, we’ve come across strange species that survive in a peculiar way. It’s a species of small cydropeds that float around in the clouds attracting lightning, this is too the creature’s benefit though. A lineage of mold coats the outside of these creatures and provides them with all the necessary nutrients by “photosynthesizing” the lightning. The microbes that make up the mold are not only conductive, but they eat and breathe electrons instead of sugar and oxygen. When the mold is struck it causes a mass release of nutrients that these cydropeds absorb. The cydropeds have evolved to further increase this relation ship by permanently fusing their tentacles together to form rods that the lightning is more likely to hit, this relation ship has gone on for so long that the mold is essentially the skin. The inside of these creatures is nearly hollow aside from thin beams and the specialized ocular organ. Since this species is constantly being struck by lightning, they’ve evolved a thick membrane that blocks almost all light from piercing through. While this species certainly matches some of the silhouettes I saw, none of them look like the one in the middle. They’re definitely related but none match the size of it. This mountain certainly has a lot of surprises, let’s hope most of them are peaceful.