The gap closed, narrowed until she could see details of the creatures working on the other side. They were huge and hideous. Drones of black and red—faceless, veined slugs—worked in the front. Behind them were larger monsters of spectral green and burgundy with many barbed, spiny tentacles and an amorphous globular central body. White steam drifted in and around them, and Lucero smelled the wracking stench of it like the essence of a thousand rotting and maggot-riddled corpses.