Byakhee

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"A horde of tame, trained hybrid winged things that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember. There flapped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things... not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human beings, but something I cannot and must not recall."

– H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival

"Iä! Iä! Hastur! Hastur cf’ayak ’vulgtumm, vugtlagln, vulgtmm! Ai! Ai! Hastur!"

– Incantation to summon a byakhee.

Byakhee are one of the many monstrous races native to the Cthulhu Mythos, where they are characterized as an ambiguously sapient race of spacefaring quasi-humanoid predators. Whilst the vast bulk of lore about them stems from Call of Cthulhu, they are also relatively fleshed out in the literature, if perhaps not to the same degree as the Mi-Go or Deep Ones.

Despite the top quote, it's actually disputed amongst Mythos afficionados if the byakhee are an actual creation of H.P. Lovecraft or if the true credit for their existence should go to Lovecraft's would-be successor, August Derleth; byakhee appeared in three of his stories, debuting without a name in "The House on Curwen Street", being named in his story "The Watcher From the Sky", and making their last appearance in "The Keeper of the Key".

Able to fly through space at faster-than-light speed (or, some say, by folding space around themselves, effectively teleporting interstellar distances) and also to fly and hover in the atmosphere, byakhee travel the cosmos at their own discretion, descending planetside largely in pursuit of food. Central to their ability to fly is an organ called a "hune", which is postulated to allow the byakhee to manipulate their own magnetic field and thus manipulate their mass, similarly to how space travel works in Mass Effect. Mythosian mages often summon byakhee to serve them as steeds for this ability, using them to fly through the cosmos - though the smart ones also make sure to prepare an ample serve of a magical elixir called "Space Mead" to shield themselves from the negative side effects of flying through space, because the byakhee either don't realize that squishy humans can't endure it like they can or they find it amusing to not tell them.

In Derleth's works, byakhee are firmly established as a servitor race aligned to Hastur. Even the incantation to summon them invokes his name repeatedly.