The Rise of The Twist Traps

235-MYH The West Coast Forest what’s modern-day Riga Latvia, In the height of summer, a swarm of Scarlet Ephemeral Vergrandivolans coccineuiugulum begin their breeding season what might be the closest thing Blish get to spawning that their ancestors use today.

Gathering in the billions males begin their rapid mating process with so many patterns to mate within a short time males will try to breed with anything that remotely looks like them even other males and large flying insects.

The stage is now set for a massacre.

Among the trees what look like bee hives hang above them in the branches. They are here for a reason they remember this from last year and over the last week have moved their way here to feast.

Bizzare slimy fronds begin to unfurl from holes in the hive's surface green veins begin to form in the yellow slime as the single cells of the protist work together to pump digestive enzymes into its tip.

The green spores are ejaculated into the air in mass falling over the swarms in a haze of green that smells like a sweet mix of vanilla and citrus. The potent neurotoxins overwhelm the already post-coital crazed Ephemerals inducing a state of euphoria that severely inhibits their sense of sight and balance causing the Blish to fly right into them.

By this point, the caught Ephemeral are so out of it that they don’t even struggle as the slim enters their airway and kills them by suffocation choking on their own blood and slime.

The Ephemeral has fallen prey to a Twist Trap a clade of derived Absinthe.

Well-derived might be the wrong word as they could likely be traced back to one beehive around 232 MYH that got infested with Absinthe. Bee’s being already somewhat close to Absinthe were left largely unharmed by the Slime.

It turned out that the nutrients created by the breaking down of prey by the protists could be used by the bees in honey production.

The result is a beehive with a built-in set of sudo limbs that can carry the job of hundreds of workers that can feed all year round.

The result is that these bee hives gain over half of their nutrients from the Absinthe. Having a such a comparatively free ride compared to most bees means two things for these bees, (Apis lignum-operarius) descendants from modern Western Honey Bees (Apis mellifera).

The first is that they have far fewer workers with the Absinthe being able to support most of their food needs this leaves the bees free to attend to the queen and larva and build the hive.

This is the second thing and what gives these bees their name (literally meaning wood worker bee) These bees coat the outer layer of their hive with a special sentence of fibers of plant stems mixed with their wax, like Paper Wasps. This extra defense keeps the hive safe from animals along with the Absinthe's overly sweet scent and taste keeping most things away.

Well not as strong as Paper Wasp Nest’s it allows for more mobility something important for them as it allows for the movement of the hive.

Like a snail, the Absinthe can spread along the bottom side of the hive and slowly push itself along the branch to move to a more ideal hunting location. Granted this is also as slow as a snail and can take days to get from one tree to another.

This extremely potent alliance has wreaked havoc on the Ephemeral completely blindsiding them. Their massive swarms now become their biggest downfall as they allow the Twist Traps to gorge themselves on protein-rich fish meat letting them create even more bees and the hives grow ever bigger.

The Twist Traps have just begun them and their Absinthe alliance is here to stay and move on to greater things.

You pass me by on the daily

Well how do you see me?

A pest or a deadbeat

You don’t know the half of it

my life is amazing

I got my days though