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Squidhawk
This popped into my head when I was thinking about Half-Life and their weird creature designs.

This popped into my head when I was thinking about Half-Life and their weird creature designs.

Squidhawk

When Private Lawrence turned the corner, he was faced with a horror so baffling that he stood in a state of rigor. We followed up and saw what he was staring at, and what stared back in return.

It was not quite a bird, not quite an invertebrate much like a cephalopod with a red, blood-spattered visage much like that of a vulture.

It stood over the remains of some unidentifiable prey, ripping at the bones with its long wirey tentacles.
A mass of red striped feather-like protrusions fanned from its back in a threat display and the squad retreated.
The loathsome creature made no attempt to attack, and we gathered from its behavior that it was likely more of a scavenger, some other bizarre species that had made its way through the Dimensional Slipway.

Later, the Lieutenant dubbed it a 'Squidhawk' though there was some debate whether it was a fitting name for something so awkwardly built and likely incapable of hunting for itself.

Before we left sector 50, I took one last look back to see the thing staring me down with its odd, self-illuminating eyes, wide with some nameless emotion.

The terrifying thing was not the look it gave, but that it was mimicked by several obscure silhouettes emerging from the shadows on the distant support beams.
Before the secure door was pulled down I heard a terrible clucking-screeching from that direction, and the flapping of hideous wings as the other Squidhawks descended to fight for the ribbons of flesh yet uneaten.

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