Rain Eater
Prologue
<span>    If you had happened to be standing on a rogue planet in the vicinity at that moment, you might have looked up at the sky with frozen eyes to see a shadow blotting out the stars. If you were then to jump high enough, you might find yourself caught by that shadow, wandering its surface. It would in this time go from a round object to a forest of geometric and biological shapes, still only silhouettes but surrounding you, perceivable as the absence of galactic noise. </span>
<span>    The most notable change would be the first warmth you had felt in your life, enveloping, thawing, causing you to sweat. If you stood in just the right place, you might feel this heat rising from a crack in the ground beneath your feet. If you were then to place your hands on this crack and tug outward in both directions, and I were to gift you with fantastic strength, the strange material would bend and snap outward, revealing another first for you: a source of light nearby. Light cast upon your forearms, now thawed and covered with moisture. If you were drawn to the wave of heat, or perhaps this light, you would find yourself descending into the gap you created. Careful at first to find footing in the strange ridges and shifting shadows of the tunnel below, that would after several hundred miles begin to reduce its incline to the point where you could stand upright and walk as if descending a spiral ramp of unknown depth. This ramp would meet others of its sort then move along to still others, but you would continue to follow it downward. The sources of this pale, yellow light now surround you: veins shifting with the verb tense, running along the tunnel walls, breaking out into the open or even hanging across the corridor, possessed of incandescent material that flows through them. With your gifted strength and curiosity, you tear one of these tubes open to see it recoil and revise itself, unbroken and now protected by the same material that makes up the walls. The light fades from the escaping liquid, and what is left could be water but for an unsual viscosity. </span>
<span>    In this manner, sometimes climbing, sometimes hiking, your descent lasts for an immeasurable length of time. Months, perhaps years have passed. You long ago began to drink this liquid light, to appreciate the richness of its flavor and the density of carbohydrates sustaining you. Then you reach something new. </span>
<span>    Your tunnel gives way to a sky below you. You can think of no other way to describe the vast space. An endless dark littered with clouds, visible because they interrupt the patterns of artificial light beyond. Braced against the mouth of the tunnel and with no other way to proceed, you let go and fall through the clouds. Raindrops race you, collect across your skin, hitchhiking to their destination. The clouds pass and the lights below resolve into structures, pathways, rock formations, warrens of life. </span>
<span>    You touch down (the impact softened by your benevolent narrator) in what you can only describe as a marketplace. Lanterns and strings of electric lights hold back the darkness. The rain patters on tarps and makeshift roofing. Beneath them, faces pass open stalls; people, monsters, everything in between. Hawkers screech at the crowds in motion through beaks, through translucent probosci, or flattened teeth. Children with twenty legs race between tripedal elephants, hiding stolen merchandise in their pouches. Bespoke automobiles sit idling, waiting for the mass of animalia to part before them. Strangers look at you strangely, but no more so than you look back at them. You approach the nearest vendor and notice the fruit watching you. </span>
<span>    Their stares make you uncomfortable, yet it occurs to you that you haven't eaten properly in years. You purchase a piece of fruit, which grips your fingers tightly. You bite into it and the grip loosens and fades. It tastes bitter and grainy, probably meant for a different palate than yours. The vendor is still holding out his hand, so you dig in your pocket and hand him the stone that you find there. </span>
<span>    Your attention back on the surrounding noise, you wander off down the street. Towers rise and fall in the distance. Spotlights shine out of the clouds. Puddles reflect it all. You don't know where you're going, but are given directions several times. Finally, you approach a chitin dome that would cover a whole city block if this city had blocks. In the center of the dome is a spiral staircase, once again descending. A fellow by the door with a face as wide as his body asks you a question in an unknown language. When you do not respond, he hands you a lantern. You start down the stairs, wondering how long this descent will last. </span>
<span>    There's only so much fuel in your lantern. It burns out in a matter of weeks, but by then the pale, yellow veins have returned. Other colors join them at times; crimson, violet, golden orange, but that single hue predominates, sickly like the color of digestion. Deep rumblings reach your ears, sometimes accompanied by a breeze ascending from below. You pass other travellers on the stairs. Amphibians decked in backpacks and respirators, trailing humanoid packbeasts. Dark-furred creatures shaped like people who have been stretched and then starved, their fingers spindly. These are almost always travelling upward, looking despondent, distant, lost. They speak little, and only to each other. The amphibians chatter constantly. The packbeasts sign to you, but you understand none of it. As the days pass, the climate warms and the light grows brighter. </span>
<span>    Then one day, the walls of the staircase disappear and empty space assaults you again, fully lit this time. Vertigo blends every sight together: towers like strands of burnt flesh rise into the clouds, haphazard streets surrounding their intersections with the ground. Bridges connect the ones that stand near each other, hanging between them like frozen slime. Beyond the towers, the landscape is a patchwork of rolling hills. Even further beyond, almost lost in the fog, the land rises into a cavern wall. In the center of that wall, stretching from the ground to the upper edge of the sky, is an open eye glowing with that same yellow light, apparetly watching you.</span>
<span>    When you finally reach the base of the staircase, you encounter a creature who appears to be human, but stands too tall, with ears too sharp, and one too many horns sprouting from his forehead. He welcomes you to the Cells, and you understand him. </span>
<span>    You look from the base of the stairs out at the world before you, wishing you could split yourself into six parts and send them each in a different direction. Once the nearby tower - that seems to be made of a single strip of carapace twisted upon itself - has finished holding your attention, you notice a line of giant beetles crossing the road, heading toward a ramp that extends into a tunnel wide enough for traffic to pass. The beetles' shells and half-hidden wings are a deep blue, but the ambient light brings a shade of emerald to the surface. Wide saddles packed high with provisions or sporting palanquins are strapped to their backs. You walk alongside as they pass, calling up to the nearest driver. You find that he understands you, that you speak his language, whatever it is. You ask him where they travel. "To the Plains of the Dead," he says. He offers you a hand. You leap up and grab hold of it, boosted onto the saddle by his unnatural strength. Before long, the landscape disappears and you are once again in the half-dark of the glowing vessels in the tunnel walls. </span>
<span>    With company, you find it easier to gauge time. The journey lasts only a few days, during which the caravan never halts, and the drivers take turns resting. Meals are distributed from the saddlebags. The fruit does not stare at you this time, though the meat would if it still could. Regardless, it tastes more like something you might eat by choice. You drink a saccarin wine and listen without hearing to your driver ramble about his people. </span>
<span>    They are the Eaters, he says. He doesn't recognize you, though. He asks where you hail from, asks about your ancestry. You recall no answers. In a matter of days, the tunnel gives way to a series of suspended platforms connected with bridges. Another abyss confronts you, orders of magnitude larger than the others you've encountered, though judging scale here is almost impossible. The platforms extend into the distance like lily pads hanging in the sky. You see what appear to be small towns dotting their surfaces. As you stop and hop down from your saddle perch, you wish to approach the edge of your platform. The driver calls to you and you wave as you wander off. In just a few minutes, you've reached the edge. In every direction, the air is filled with a mist that is increasing in density by the hour. </span>
<span>    When you look down, you see that you're inside a sphere, near its outer edge. You couldn't begin to estimate its size. In several places along the inner surface from which you're now suspended, eyes like the one you've already seen gaze into the interior. One of them blinks - an excruciatingly slow process accompanied by distant rumblings - and the light dims accordingly. They're all watching what hangs in the center of this inconceivable space. You see it, too (there's no way to miss it), but have taken a moment to realize what it is. A planet, frozen in place, its texture of rivers, canyons, and mountain ranges clearly visible at this distance. When you turn from the edge, holding back a sublime nausea, the troop of beetles have moved up to your right. The driver in front raises a long-handled pike before him and swings it forward. They spread their wings and descend to the world below. </span>