Jolthar extended his enhanced vision toward the figure on the entity's back.
At first, he noticed the color of the figure. It was grey, not the pale ash of Nynthralls but a different grey, structured and deliberate, like stone given living texture. The figure was roughly humanoid — bipedal and proportioned approximately correctly, which made it more disturbing rather than less because the eyes were wrong. Amber, slit-pupiled, catching the corrupted light and returning it in ways that suggested the eyes were processing more of the spectrum than they were designed to admit. It sat atop the ten-tailed monster with the ease of something that had never considered falling, positioned not like a rider in the conventional sense but like an extension of what it rode, connected to it in ways that weren't entirely physical.
Nyphorite.
