Unable to alter its condition, it had long since become indifferent to the aftermath of its passing. As well to try to change the effect of the sun on the green Earth, or of the wind on small flying creatures. Incapable of change, it felt no culpability in the destruction of those it came in contact with. It was not a matter of caring or not caring. A force of one of the more benighted components of Nature, it simply was.
It did not matter what it encountered. Large or small, the consequences were similar, differing only in degree depending on the extent and length of time that contact was made. The Drounge acted as a sponge, soaking up the world’s injuries and pain. And like a sponge, when something made contact with it, it leaked. Not water, but hurt, damage, wounds, and death. The process was involuntary and something over which the Drounge had no control.
Why it kept moving it did not know. Perhaps an instinctive feeling that so much pain should not long remain in any one place. Possibly some atavistic urge to seek a peace it had never known. Survival, reproduction, feeding—the normal components of life did not drive or affect it. Staring relentlessly forward out of oculi that were not eyes in the normal sense, but which were misshapen and damaged and bleeding, it existed in a state of perpetual migration.
Gliding over a field of grass, it would leave behind a spreading swath of brown. Fire would have had a similar effect, would have been cleaner, purer, but the Drounge was a collage, a mélange, a medley of murder, and not an elemental. In its wake the formerly healthy green blades would quickly break out in brown spots. These would expand to swallow up the entire blade, and then spread to its neighbors. It was not a disease but an entire panoply of diseases, a veritable deluge of afflictions not even the healthiest, most productive field could withstand. After a few days the formerly serene grassland or meadow would stand as devastated and barren as if it had been washed by lava.