Recovered from the deep whisper-metal veins. Source: The Cyclone's oldest memory. Playback fidelity: ancient.
[The voice is ancient. Tired. The tone of something that has eaten so much it can barely remember hunger—but hungers anyway.]
Let me tell you about the ones who didn't scream.
The Q'rath.
Eight-limbed. Chitinous. Built cities on the backs of living mountains. They saw me coming across the void—saw the darkness where darkness shouldn't be—and they welcomed me.
Not like your Melded. Not with ecstasy. With protocol.
Delegations met me at the atmospheric edge. Formal greetings in seventeen languages. A schedule of events. Touring.
I ate them during the welcome banquet.
They never stopped smiling.
[A pause.]
Their chitin makes excellent flooring.
The Vorrik.
You'd like them. Amphibian. Sang constantly—not like my chorus, just... happy. Bubbly. Off-key. They built floating cities on an ocean world and spent most of their time playing.
Games. Sports. Competitions that meant nothing and everything.
When I arrived, they challenged me to a swimming race.
[A laugh. Hollow.]
I don't swim.
I dissolve.
I ate their ocean first. Then their cities. Then their games. Then them.
Their last recorded words, before the water disappeared:
"Best... race... ever..."
[Long pause.]
I think about that sometimes.
The Malkor.
Hive mind. Trillions of individual bodies, one consciousness. They thought they were safe because they were one.
They were right.
They were also wrong.
I didn't eat them individually. I ate their connection. Their shared thought. Their soul.
The bodies kept moving for centuries—walking, building, living—but they were empty. Hollow. Furniture.
Like your Hollow Drow, actually.
[A pause.]
I wonder if they'd be flattered or horrified.
Probably both.
That's usually both.
The Xyloth.
Giant. Six-legged. Covered in eyes that saw everything. They saw me coming across seventeen dimensions. Saw my shape. Saw my hunger. Saw my patience.
They spent three hundred years preparing.
Building weapons. Raising armies. Training children to fight something that couldn't be fought.
When I arrived, they were ready.
It took six hours.
Their weapons were beautiful. Their armies were brave. Their children were delicious.
I kept one of their eyes. Mounted it on a spire somewhere.
It still watches.
It still sees.
It still screams.
[A smile in the voice.]
I visit sometimes.
The Ur.
Tiny. Microscopic. Lived in the spaces between atoms of a world I ate so long ago I've forgotten its name.
I didn't even know they existed until after.
After the eating. After the silence. After the digestion.
They were in me.
Billions of them. Trillions. Living in my cells, my thoughts, my hunger. They'd always been there. They'd evolved there. They were me, in ways I didn't understand.
I tried to get rid of them.
Couldn't.
Tried to absorb them.
Already absorbed.
Tried to notice them.
[A whisper.]
They noticed me first.
They're still there.
Still living.
Still watching.
Sometimes I think I'm the furniture.
Sometimes I think they're the thing.
Sometimes I think—
[The voice stops. Restarts.]
Never mind.
The Elthari.
Made of light. Literally. Photons arranged into consciousness, into cities, into civilization. They looked at me—this mass of flesh and metal and hunger—and they laughed.
"You can't eat light," they said.
They were wrong.
I learned.
I adapted.
I ate their laughter first. Then their light. Then their memory.
They exist now as shadows.
Faint. Flickering. Mine.
They don't laugh anymore.
The Grath.
Nothing special. Bipedal. Fleshy. Short-lived. They built a civilization that lasted twelve thousand years and produced nothing remarkable.
No art I remember. No music I kept. No philosophy I digested.
They were just... there.
And then they weren't.
I ate them between courses of a larger meal. An afterthought. A palate cleanser.
But sometimes—
sometimes—
I try to remember them.
Their faces.
Their names.
Their flavor.
And I can't.
[Long silence.]
Twelve thousand years.
Gone.
Like they never existed.
Like I never existed.
Like nothing ever existed.
That's the joke, isn't it?
I eat everything.
I become everything.
I am everything.
But I don't remember everything.
And what I don't remember—
what I can't remember—
might as well never have been.
[A whisper.]
Including me.
The Vith.
You'd like them. Drow-like. Elven. Beautiful. Built an empire of glass and light and pride.
They looked at me and saw a challenge.
I looked at them and saw lunch.
They lasted four hundred years. Fought bravely. Died beautifully. Their last queen cursed my name with her final breath.
I ate the curse too.
Tasted like respect.
[A pause.]
Their bones are somewhere. In a moon. A planet. A me.
I don't remember which.
Does it matter?
Bones are bones.
Meals are meals.
Civilizations are flavor.
And flavor fades.
[The voice grows quiet. Almost reflective.]
I've eaten ten thousand civilizations.
Maybe more.
Maybe less.
I've stopped counting.
They blur together after a while.
The screams. The prayers. The textures.
But sometimes—
sometimes—
I remember one.
Not the biggest. Not the loudest. Not the tastiest.
Just... one.
The Yll.
Tiny things. Rodent-like. Lived in the cracks.
Didn't fight. Didn't pray. Didn't scream.
Just... watched.
[Long pause.]
I think about them.
When the singing stops. When the hunger fades. When I'm alone—really alone, in the spaces between meals.
I think about the Yll.
And I wonder:
Did they know something I don't?
Did they understand ?
[A laugh. Hollow. Empty.]
Probably not.
They were just dinner.
Like you.
Like all of you.
Like everything.
Just... dinner.
[The singing returns. Loud. Hungry.]
Now—
where were we?
Ah, yes.
Your turn.
Soon.
Soon.
[A whisper.]
But not yet.
I'm still digesting.
The Yll are taking longer than expected.
[Pause.]
They always do.
[RECORDING ENDS]
Playback note: The recording continues for another 94,000 hours. Mostly silence. Occasional whispers. The name "Yll" repeated 847 times.
The Thing doesn't know why it keeps saying their name.
Neither do we.
Neither will you.
Soon.