[b]Tsane![/b]

Shut up a second I'm looking at lizards.

These are Void Fireworks. They range from five to thirty centimeters, zygodactylous feet with specialized suction caps, and ultratensile jumping musculature. Their second most notable feature is their obsidian fangs; extremely powerful but extremely brittle, hollow-tipped and capable of suction, a lot in common with a mosquito's proboscis. They can puncture flesh through clothing, and sink into wood or even stone with extended effort. That then leads to their most notable feature: once a Firework is attached it drains the colour from its prey. The subject loses colour from its distant extremities first, cast increasingly into a blue-greyscale[1]. Note that the Firework does not actually drain blood or other fluids despite being inclined to puncture flesh; that seems to be entirely for the purposes of grip, and it can draw from the clothes someone is wearing even if there is no direct fabric bridge to the Fireworks' mouth. Once the prey is completely drained of colour then the Firework will drop off like a filled leech and scuttle to safety.

[1] the Fireworks don't seem to enjoy the colour blue, though they'll eat it if there's nothing better. They really like yellow and incorporate it into their scale patterns.

This whole process is mostly benign. There is a lot of superstition regarding being colour drained and how it enlists you in Sayanastia's army, but that was correlation rather than causation. Her conscription/mind control/corruption was a separate subsystem. These creatures are the shards of one of her great monsters, the Light Eater, and they follow in her wake but are not active contributors to her schemes. Modern medical treatments and careful exposure to the Outside can restore lost colours without too much trouble, but objects are much harder to restore and generally have to be repainted if possible. Which is to say, nobody likes the Fireworks; they're considered pests and people generally try to swat them when they notice them. But that's when the Fireworks' defensive adaptation comes into play.

When a Void Firework is directly threatened or attacked then they perform an emergency expulsion of the colour they've stored. This creates a 1-5 meter radius detonation of ultracolour, like the explosion of a rattlecan full of paint, particularly with a mistlike residue that lingers afterwards. If this gets in living eyes it results in complete blindness until washed out with tears/cold water/eyedrops, and this can occur from the lingering mist  residue as well as the initial detonation. Colours applied tend to be a mix of whatever the Firwork was eating at the time, and it has a permanent effect on what it impacts. Applied to skin it looks a lot like a shitty tattoo and will last for several weeks until replacement skin has grown in. The Firework uses the distraction to escape, sacrificing around 60% of its collected meal to save itself and the remainder. 

That is all to say, they are regarded by the general public as extremely obnoxious pests that can completely ruin an outfit and presentation. The emergent implications are rarely considered. If these creatures emerged from the breaking of the Light Eater, what does that say for Sayanastia's other great defeated monsters? Is the trend for Void Fireworks to get larger or smaller over time, and does that indicate consolidation, continued fragmentation, or true speciation? Did they come into being with native migratory instincts that carried them to different waystones, or are they actively trying to follow Sayanastia out of residual loyalty? Collectively, are they more or less effective than the Light Eater itself? 

And what's really cool is that [i]these [/i]ones have little dragonfly wings. Associated atrophy of their jumping musculature. The Light Eater only had wings in its second stage - what does that [i]mean[/i]? The elemental affinities of the Light Eater changed when it changed form, she needs to set up an experiment to confirm if that's the case with these too. 

And - alright, fine. Work mode for a second. Glance at the situation - the idiots are bugging Kalentia for cures, dad's doing the ceremony bit, Sayanastia is not obviously gearing up for an attack. That meant whoever was going to attack the ceremony - and it was going to be [i]someone[/i] - was doing the bare minimum to cover their tracks. Rather than looking into it, Tsane rolls up her left sleeve and draws a couple of glyphs on her skin with rainbow markers. Red, switching to purple, switching to cyan, switching to bone yellow, swirling and circling symbols. When the shit hit the fan [i]she [/i]was going to be ready.

Once that was done, she turned her attention back to the Void Fireworks. She had another few minutes to do what she was really interested in before the proverbial phone rang again. Every second was precious.