When writing this, I kept having the strangest feeling that I’ve written something like this before. But if I had, I couldn’t find it. Weird.
Textworms
These… things… are conceptual descendants of “printer’s devils” and the like; and pretty much everybody involved in, and aware of, the situation wants the devils back. At least you could communicate with a printer’s devil. The only language Textworms understand is the one spoken by a burning flame.