How can a creature caught between realms feed on mortal prey?

Question

This is a follow-up question to this: How could an abortion cause infertility in a witch?

When the witch connected to a botchling dies, the creature loses its thether and becomes unbound to the mortal realm, leaving them in limbo. Caught between a state of life and death for an eternity, these pitiful creatures cannot interact with the mortal world, nor pass on into the next life to know peace.

Over time, a botchling develops a hatred for all life and morphs into a lamia. These are creatures that prey on both unborn souls and the children of unsuspecting parents. As they were prevented from being born into the world by their witch, their child-like mentality and anger causes them to lash out and take vengeance for their state. They seek to cause suffering to other mothers, killing their own children by slowly draining their life force. Their victims are specific to kids below puberty. The problem is that these beings are still caught in the state of limbo.

How could I design this creature to be unable to interact with anything on the mortal plane, yet still be able to feed on their prey?

Answer 1

The Botchling is a half-souled, half-alive, half-dead entity. Though it is tethered to its parent witch on creation/birth, it should be at least partially capable of feeling the orgone of the cosmos as it is partially alive. It's complicated and ill-explained.

As Botchling evolves into Lamia, it does not shake off its half-there states of existence, but it does cement what little control over its meager orgone it has. Years to decades of rejection by others have caused it to learn forcibly connect itself to others through a twisted method of resonating with another being's orgone, and thsu their life. It targets children both out of jealousy as well as as the fact that a Lamia can control the resonance with a child and draw out the child's orgone, and their life for their sustinance.

Adults have enough innate control to be immune (or highly resistant) to the Lamia's resonance and are unwilling to trust another being that they can't see interacting with them in that way anyways. Children are more receptive to things and might not have the control to prevent the incoming tragedy even if they know not to let the Lamia in. As with anything, exceptions on both sides exist.

The interesting bit is what kind of children do they seek? Everyone's life is different and because of that their orgone should resonate slightly differently. So is the Lamia really hating on kids, or is it something even more tragic like looking for the reincarnation of the witch that spawned them in the first place?

Side Note: This could open up the possibilities of children bonding with botchlings as sort of imaginary friends and instead of them filling with hatred and evolving into monsters, being filled with love and evolving into guardians of sorts.

So to summarize: It kills indirectly by seizing life through their limited connection to orgone.

Answer 2

It is the same connection it had with its witch mother, but without the witch's control.

These creatures can connect with humans on our plane, as evidenced by their association with their mother witches. The botchlings derive psychic sustenance from this and also provide some benefits to the witch mother. The flow of materials in both directions is governed by both entities, as is the case with a fetus and mother.

Cut loose from the mother, the lamia develops the ability to establish a similar connection with a different live human, but now one that is completely parasitic. An ideal parasitized host cannot control flow of energy to the lamia in the way that the mother witch could, and the host will be drained of energy into the lamia. The lamia chooses children because it does not want the host to have control over the connection. Children are least likely to be able to take control.

An uncautious lamia may find itself connected to a host that is able to exert control over the connection. The host could limit energy drained by the lamia or itself take energies from the lamia, as the witch mother did when alive. Or a host might turn the tables completely and drain the lamia dry of energy while providing none in return. This maneuver is how lamias can be destroyed.

Answer 3

Nothing particularly creative, mostly stuff I have seen around.

1. Ritual/Summoning. Maybe someone who bears a grudge against a mother would use a curse, from those curse voodoo websites in urban legends. The curse causes tragedy or misfortune which is actually the botchling being given the power to latch partially to reality.

2. Young Children are more spiritually sensitive. As such, they are partially in limbo or more likely to summon/call out to the botchling, attaching the botchling to themselves by accident or otherwise.

3. Magical Places. Along the same lines as item 2. But instead of humans being more spiritually sensitive, some places are more connected to limbo. These gateways into limbo allow the botchling to manifest and attached to young ones.

4. Something in Limbo either brings the botchling across or brings the children back in exchange for power (Botchlings are sleeper OP beings), love (thinks of the botchling as their child), Why not (Denizens of Limbo are bored), a ritual but bringing this "something" instead.

Not sure how this fits into your world but I hope it helps. Regardless, somehow you need to have external factors to connect/traverse between the two dimensions to allow interaction magically or physically.

Answer 4

Either make it so they can come into our realm for short periods of time, very short a few seconds or a few minutes. They can only do this every once and a while they pop in grab kiddos and pop back out. Have them be able to only come threw at a few points, say where the witch died, they can speak to children so they lure them into these spots then eat them.

Answer 5

Maybe it can interact with the Orgone and just feeds on in from the fetus? Last answer on the previos question mentioned different kinds of Orgone, if you develop on it you can say that, as the Lamia is created and sustained by red Orgone, when the witch dies it needs to feed from somewhere else (that would also explain why the witch becomes infertile). So it feed on the red orgone from another mother's placenta/fetus, killing the unborn in the process. That would explain why it can't feed on adults, but it shouldn't be able to feed on young but already born individuals...