It halted abruptly before reaching the stoically retreating Drounge. That, at least, was a rational decision. Perhaps the creature, momentarily maddened, had suddenly come back to its senses. One of its upper, absurdly spindly limbs was upraised. As the Drounge ignored it, the creature brought this member forward. Propelled through the air by this slight physical action, something flew from the end of the appendage. Idly, the Drounge identified it as the onion-shaped object the creature had been carrying earlier.
The bulb-shape struck the Drounge in the middle of its back. Humping implacably forward, it treated the barely perceptible impact with the same indifference it treated all such contacts. Whenever something touched it, it was invariably the other that suffered.
On impact, the bulb burst, spilling its contents. The thick, pale unguent spread slowly across the curving bulk of the Drounge. Still its presence was ignored.
Until it started to sink in.
The tingling sensation the Drounge had heretofore experienced only at one small place on its left side started to penetrate deeply. It was not unpleasant. On the contrary, the Drounge would have found it pleasurable had it possessed a means for describing such a sensation. In the absence of applicable referents it could only struggle with physical feelings that were entirely new. As a novelty, the effects of the expanding emollient were exhilarating. They could not last, of course. Within moments they would be subsumed within and overwhelmed by the raging internal dissipation and disease that constituted the Drounge’s customary state of existence.