The death's head cicada is a useful insect. It is drawn to points of otherworldly incursions to feed off the ambient energy, but will position itself far enough away from the center of radiation to serve as an early warning. Swarms of these ominous arthropods will form a concentric ring, spreading evenly so that they may all have an even access to the feast. The trained observer can estimate the size and strength of the creature or creatures at the incursion's heart by the radius of the cicada circle.

  The line of tiny, chitinous skulls perched on twigs and at the tips of tall bdes of grass was our first clue that a nightmare drake had taken up residence in the woods behind my childhood home. Unfortunately, the swarm rings tend to stay fixed around the point of incursion rather than moving with whatever it was that came through.

  Thus it was that the truck-sized blur of purple and bck was our second clue.