Giant
caddis fly larvae that builds its tube-like shell from metal and
lives long in underground rivers. The only metal that won't
eventually corrode in these conditions is either gold or magical
steel.
The
shell of the Castellian Caddis Fly is made up of shields, swords,
spears and other weapons of legend. All washed clean of markings by
the rivers flow. A shell of blades. Each one was the legendary blade
of a particular culture or hero-cycle, made to kill gods and defeat
evil. But eventually forgotten and lost. The shell is more dangerous
than the fly inside it. Heaves itself up out of the white water,
plumes of foam spilling on its spiked and shining sides.
When
the fly needs new stuff for its shell. It finds the river system
below a climax culture and waits a few thousand years for it to
decline. Once the museums have burned and the hero's are dead, the
blades will be forgotten and lost. Eventually they will end up in the
water sink and the fly will recover them.
This is really cool. Everything, one way or another, will eventually end up underground.
ReplyDeleteHave you taken a look at the 19th century London sewer-sifters? They did this, only in real life and a much smaller scale. Wading through the dark and the filth, looking for lost wealth. Fending off swarms of rats, which, allegedly, ate lone treasure-hunters alive.
Makes me think of sinkholes, too. Interfaces between the surface and underground. The old sinkholes remain as lakes- thousands of acres and perfectly round. The scary ones are in cities. City blocks replaced with perfectly circular pits with smooth sides, too deep to see the bottom.
I have a book by Peter Ackroyd called 'London Under' which I think you would like. It mentions the 'toshers' who scavanged the sewers and the legendary 'tosheroon', a fabulous ball of coins, moulded together in a ball by excrement. It doesnt say if anyone ever found one for real.
DeleteTasty. I suppose people who sift through sewers as a living would be less deterred by a tosheroon's composition than most. It is interesting how sewers are mythologized. There are stories of beautiful rat women seducing toshers(!!!), and the Romans had a shrine to Venus Cloacina, the goddess of sewers.
DeleteI'll check out London Under, though. Right after the Muqaddimah and On War...