The River (Chapter 11)

The stench was exceedingly powerful. It was like some super-concentrated essence of the very worst parts of vomit, excrement and rotting flesh. It caused a painful sensation in the back of my nostrils which I could feel all the way down my throat, making me gag with discomfort.1

The swarm's nearest edge lay no further away than I could throw a stone. It consisted of all manner of vile creatures, each armed with its own specialised array of teeth, claws, horns or spikes with which to impale the works of creation before feeding them into its all-destroying gullet. Their body forms and sizes ranged from small-insect like scuttling creatures up to heaving masses of horrid flesh and bone the size of a house. They crawled, slithered and scurried about in one great seething mound, covering an area almost as big as a football field. At its back edge where it sprawled up across one of the dynamite-hewn rock faces it attained its full height, roughly the same as a three or four storey building.2

Their colours were predominantly black, brown and red, with occasional ivory flashes of teeth and horns, and some yellow, orange and other colours. Most lacked eyes and many had no ears as well, but all of them had mouths and nostrils, some having them in strange numbers. A large, black spider-like thing with ten or more legs and a great mouth for a head scuttled over the mound, then disappeared into the mass of creatures. Then a lumbering, brown creature appeared, resembling a hippopotamus except for the array of horizontally-pointing, black spikes along its flanks, and the gaping circle of teeth where its neck ended.3

Surprised by the quietness of the creatures, I managed to overcome my disgust and foreboding. Apart from the distant sound of mining machinery grinding rocks, the only sounds were the scraping and thudding of the creatures’ bodies shifting about from place to place, and the occasional clatter of rocks and pebbles knocked loose by them across the rocky surface. Each movement kicked up small puffs of dust, which drifted away in the gentle breeze.4

Never before had I seen such a concentration of devourers, nor had I heard of any. Even though I had not been involved, when the council deflected the great earthquake into the sea, tragically leading to the Asian Tsunami of 2004, a much smaller quantity of devourers were involved. I do not think anyone in our group could imagine the devastation that such a force could unleash. Worse, they so rarely manifested here in The Deep, that their power was beyond comprehension.5

The fear was obvious. In spite of their military training, I think the Nexus Guardians were ill-prepared for such a foe. The council members and spirit companions looked horrified. All except Gao that is, whose smile had taken on a nervous, twitchy quality.6

Taking up defensive postures, the red and black clad Nexus Guardians moved between us and the swarm, assault rifles at the ready, swords still in their sheaths. The wolves bared their teeth and growled in a mixture of intimidation and fear. Hurgo and Fern Runner’s bear shifted about uneasily. I took out the jar of seeds and unscrewed the lid, taking out a pinch of the tiny black seeds. Then, remembering that none of the others understood how to ride the wave functions as well as me, I handed the jar of seeds to Torven the druid who managed an appreciative grin.7

Slowly, the largest of the monsters turned its maw towards us. Heaving itself above the mass of the creatures, the huge, bloated sack of teeth with a mouth large enough to swallow a car, leaned toward us above the mound, supported on the smooth, partly-black, partly-translucent skinned tube it had for a body. As wide as it was tall, it looked like some grotesque parody of an insect grub, swollen and gigantic. It opened the five eyes which formed a ring around its mouth. The grotesquely over-sized human-like eyes, fixed on our group. Clashing its teeth together as if in preparation for a meal it rumbled a deep, reverberating sound to its cohort. In response, a handful of the creatures smoothly transformed into some kind of fluid, forming a dark puddle on the floor, which then proceeded to slither and slide with increasing speed up the rocky slope behind the swarm.8

Clearly the devourers had some skill in manipulating their environment. I concentrated hard to try to recall the properties of a quantized super-fluid. I knew they could flow up a slope and recalled that they should be excellent conductors of heat and electricity in this form. I also recalled that they could be completely disrupted with a little ‘stirring’. They must have been confident to move about in such a vulnerable fashion.9

The fluid slipped over the edge of the rock-face top, returning seconds later with a large patch of yellow in its middle. As they arrived at the foot of the rock face, the pool morphed quickly back into the shape of the creatures, but now in their midst stood a very large, yellow rock grinding machine. Its four huge wheels, each as tall as a man, its out-feed flat-bed surface empty but for a few small rocks and dust, its in-feed boom stretched out in front waiting for something to grind. There at the end was that something, bound up and fixed in place, precariously attached to the boom. That something was Mchawi A-Moto.10