Blood-Eels

Overview

Blood-Eels are the serpentine hunters of the Blood River, the best known of its River-Beasts. They hunt for lifeforce rather than flesh, and they are why no one who knows the river kneels at its edge to drink.

Appearance

A grown Blood-Eel is as long as a man is tall, and the oldest twice that, thick as a forearm and tapering to a flat, finned tail. Its skin is smooth, slick, and the dark red of the river, so that it is invisible in the flow until it moves. Along its flanks run paler lines that glow faintly, like the river's own inner light, brightening as it feeds. Its head is blunt, with small milky eyes and a round mouth ringed with fine hooked teeth that grip rather than tear.

It swims with a slow S-shaped ripple, then strikes in a straight line. Out of the water it smells of copper and rot; in it, it cannot be smelled over the river.

Habitat and Range

They live in the deeper channels of the flow and lie in wait under the banks where travellers come down to the water. A short river may hold a handful; a long one, many.

Behaviour and Temperament

A Blood-Eel feels for warmth and heartbeat through the water, the way the river feels for the strongest heart near it. It strikes at a hand, a calf, or a muzzle, fastens on with its ring of teeth, and does not tear but holds and drinks, drawing lifeforce through the wound until the prey goes slack. Then it drags what it has emptied into the flow, where the river breaks it down.

They are not cunning, but they are patient, and they gather where the river surges after a death.

Abilities

It draws lifeforce through its bite, faster than a leech draws blood, and grows stronger and brighter as it does. Its wounds close quickly while it stays in the river. It can lie still for days without feeding.

Life Cycle

Blood-Eels spawn in knots in the warm shallows, and the young are thin red threads that feed on the river's smaller life. They grow quickly in a well-fed river. When a river sinks back they crowd its last pools and feed on each other.

Uses and Dangers

The skin of a Blood-Eel makes a supple, waterproof leather that keeps a faint warmth, and some healers keep dried eel-teeth for drawing poison from a wound, with mixed success. They are dangerous to anyone who wades, fords, fills a bottle, or kneels to drink, and their bite leaves the victim cold and weak for days even if they break free.

Lore and Belief

River-valley folk say a Blood-Eel will not bite someone who has never drunk from the river, which is untrue. Others call them the river's veins, believing the eels carry what the river takes to its heart, and the Hemophages encourage the belief.

Beast-hunters paid by the valley to clear a ford wade in with iron greaves and eel-spears, and the hunter who killed the great eel of the lower ford and lived on the river's healing water for a month afterwards is a hero of the valley songs, and a warning.

Where It Appears

• The Blood River
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Resonant Zones