The Great Devourer

A tale, yes, a tale of terror, to shrivel your eye stalks and make your tentacles curl?

Very well. Harken then, tadpoles. In the phosphor-glow of my chromatophores read the dark and dread that awaits in the black-void sea and salt-bitter stars. Entwine about each thought-tendril, yes, in each sucker pad taste this bitter learning: There are stranger and more terrible things out there than any found in your placid breeding pond.

Bipdooloop was a kind and gentle land, a planet of many pools, of mangrove and lily and kelp, its waters turquoise and sweet with cyanobacteria. We feasted on shells until the sea bottom crackled, our pods grew fat and glistening, our fingerlings frolicked amid the blue.

Such plenty has a price. The universe is arrayed like a jellyfish, yes, and its stingers trail through every sea. The dry ones whose skins do not sing hired us, traded service for calcium rings, and so we crawled from the gravity well and swam the black-void sea.

Long we were gone, yes, through many tides and battles, until at last we returned. We returned, in triumph or so we thought. And found a dead world.

The dry one’s ship landed in silence. Under a glaucous sky, dead waters lapped an empty shore. All trace of our people had been washed away, as though a devouring wave had swept across the planet and scoured all signs of life.

Where are the breeding pools, T!tht!kra? Mother-Captain Ch8k@kri skin-signaled in distress. Where are the fingerlings and sugar sap? Where have they gone?

Every tendril trembled, yet I curled them against my jellied fear. We shall find them Mother-Captain, yes, we shall crack the shell of this mystery and discover the pearl of truth.

I took five with me. Five veterans, long of limb, hard of nerve-knot. Utu*ratu* was first, then Nitric, Bl@doop, Tht!mu* and last Quech8k@. We slithered out in watchful silence. No moss grew on the shingle-shore beneath our tendrils. No algae crested the waves. The mucus slap of tentacle on stone was the only sound.

Smoke rose and drifted, carrying the smell of death.

An entire hatchery had been slaughtered. The fingerlings’ bodies had been dismembered, their limbs severed. Some were scarred, burned terribly by fire. The head-bulbs had been discarded and left to fester and rot in the sun.

Listen! Something approaches, skin-flashed Tht!mu*.

I heard it: The crunch and crackle of dry-land movement, yes, that and something else. A kind of whistling, wheezing sound, high and skittering, as of hive insects communing. There was no mistaking the sounds were approaching.

Seek cover, I sent. Be ready.

The others and I slipped into the waters. I took shelter in a nest of mangrove roots, held my plasma weapon in two tendrils and curled the rest about the roots, anchoring myself with a cluster of eyestalks just above the surface. The water was thin and nutrient-poor and I prayed to the many-eyed god the things would not stay long.

Louder the sounds grew, like the murderous murmur of a whirlpool, yes, louder and louder, alien and bestial and cruel. There was nothing intelligent or gentle in those sounds, only oozing malice and hate.

I shrank into my hiding place. Tried to make myself small. Tucked my eyes beneath the waves and watched, hardly daring to breathe, as reflected shadows danced above the rippling waters.

Shadows resolved into figures. Great, shambling figures. At first two, then six, then nine. Hideous parodies of beauty, with hard and oddly jointed limbs, flashing bone teeth and predator eyes. They gabbled and chattered and clattered as they came. They gathered about our dead young. And began to feast upon their flesh. Hard bone carved and tore and they dined upon our children.

A wave of revulsion swept through me. I clenched my anchoring limbs about the tree’s roots to stop myself from crying out. Too much. Ah, too much. My sudden movement shook the roots, the trunk, yes, the branches. Rustle, rustle.

The noises stopped. The figures grew still. As though guided by one mind, they turned towards my hiding place.

Breathing was becoming difficult. I had stayed down too long without air. The others of the pod must have been suffering, too. Darkness crowded the rim of my vision.

One chattered. Another took a slow step towards my hiding place. It stooped and flung a stone. It missed me, sweet fortune, then smacked against a root, rebounded, cracked against one tendril holding onto the tree. Pain flared. I constricted about the scream. Lights began to dance before me.

After an agonizing wait, the things turned away. They drifted back from the shore and resumed their guttural chatter.

I relaxed, let go the roots and poked my head bulb to the surface to gulp the air. Aaah.

A mistake! One of them whirled towards the sound. Lifted a limb. Weapons appeared. The thing made a noise, such a terrible noise, from the bones in its head bulb.

Now, I flashed to the others. Now, now, now!

The six of us catapulted from the bottom, weapons firing as we burst the surface. A handful of them were blasted and thrown down, but such was our rage that mere weapons would not suffice. Bellowing, incoherent, I threw aside my gun and launched myself upon them, grappling and entangling one in my six tentacles.

It shrieked and writhed as I yanked one limb from its socket and then another and another until to silence it, I wrapped a tentacle about its head bulb, and pulled it from its stalk. Aiee! The thing’s sap burst across my sucker pads, and the touch of it was fire. I dropped the thing and it stained the waters with its sap, but at least it was silent.

Grim yet satisfied, we hunched amid the dead, and into the silence we poured our song of grief and vengeance.

So, my tadpoles, beware. Beware the cold that lives among the stars. Beware the Great Devourer:

Humanity.

END