Shatterdile

 

Submission for the 2020 Creature Cabal

In 1855, a mysterious letter was sent to the then-budding Royal Academy in London. The sender never wrote his name down, only the initials TW, and described a bizarre creature allegedly discovered in a previously unexplored region of the Congo. According to their account, their team had stopped at a hidden lake to rest for the night, only to be awakened in the morning by a horrid stench: a mixture of rotten meat and rusted metal. The source looked like a rotten carcass floating offshore, decrepit to the last few scraps of skin dangling from the ribs. One of the younger members went to investigate, but no sooner stepped in the water than was sent flying from some sort of shock, burnt to a crisp.
The rest was frantically written, with the author apparently describing the corpse in the lake rising to attack and devour the rest of the team. Much of the rest of the letter is illegible, though, and even the parts that aren't still raise many questions. Without any more data, the academy dismissed the letter as a hoax and placed it in storage, where its final message would go unheeded forever:
"Leave it alone."

Rendered in Graphite