Echthroi

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Echthroi is a Greek word meaning "The Enemy", used to refer to a fictional group of creatures who want nothing more than to destroy all of everything. They are most notably mentioned in Madeline L'Engle's "Time Quartet" as the enemy of the protagonists.

As Liam Duncan describes them: "Echthroi desire nothing. They desire Nothing. That is to say, if they got their way, everything would be broken apart, and the pieces be broken apart, and corrupted, and reduced to nothing, until nothing exists. Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a vacuum, because even a vacuum is Something, if you use your imagination. Nothing at all. Every victory we win, no matter how insignificant it seems, puts them farther from that goal. And every victory they gain, no matter how tiny, brings them closer."

The suggestion made is that Echthroi are nought more than personified Oblivion, whose aim is to twist Nature in order to create more of themselves. It is possible that they constitute a metaphor for the potential destructive tendencies in the human mind.

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