The Mantis Corruption - Book Three - 3. Chapter 3 - Gunge, Part One

Between the vast rolling plains of Xin and the mountains far to the north lies a narrow band of foothills that serves as a realm of monsters, a land of beasts. The twisted fiends who dwell therein are not part of normal society, and there they have made a vile home for themselves among the others who have chosen to slither the same villainous path. They call their region Gunge.

The inhabitants are few in number and there is no village in their region. The choices that they made in their past have limited their needs, and their physical bodies no longer require food or water. They have abandoned their human forms, adopting new and mutated visages of terror. There are no buildings on their land, and the creatures nest together in a grotesque mass of unnatural flesh. Like the enormous rat-king in The Nutcracker, in which the rodents had become tangled to one another’s tails and it is difficult to tell where each ended or began, the inhabitants of Gunge squirm together as one.

Those weird ex-humans may not need sustenance to survive, but they still hunt for that which they are addicted. One and all, they are addicts. Their home in the hills is far from their prey, and they rarely hunt, but the act of it makes them a hated bunch. Their nearest prey lives a great distance from their home; they live in the cities. All who are aware of the beings that dwell in Gunge view them as monsters, and when their craving overcomes them, they are well and truly monsters.

Depending on how bizarre each creature’s form has become, it can take them over a week of traveling along the grasslands at the edge of the mountains to reach the nearest village to Gunge. It is little more than a tiny hamlet and a poor hunting ground. All of the urban regions of Xin lay along the far-inland Ru River, with the richest hunting grounds in the south. However, the heavily populated capital region of Ruburge and its surrounding area are three times the distance from Gunge, and the beasts’ desires are overwhelming. There are also lands to the north with prey, but treacherous mountains protect that region with a vast border of harsh terrain.

No leader reigns in Gunge. There is no hierarchy or caste system, no laws, no government, no religion. The beasts live by a new instinct, and they follow the urges of their addiction. With the physical needs of their formerly human bodies no longer a necessity, they spend idle time anticipating the next rise in their cravings. There is no schedule to their desire, and when it rears its ugly head, the monsters do the same.

They rarely speak, but over the years, a single phrase became a code for their need to hunt. When an individual is coaxed by the unnatural hunger within it to leave the group, it always informs the others with the same two words, and the craving never strikes more than one at a time.

Deep inside a creature who called itself Ronging, the desire sparked, and it spoke to its kin.

“I want.”★