A wall, broken open to reveal the rat-tunnels inside; filled with tiny ladders, doors and lanterns.
The great city of Wall prospered. The fungal gardens of the midlevels provided hearty (if basic) food for all. The corner market kept the people supplied with extras and curiosities - buttons, thread, spilled sugar and pilfered flour. On the upper levels, academics and monks experimented with the strange black cables, flowing with power and strange visions. The lower levels teemed with the bounty of the out-of-doors, seeds and feathers traded with the outdoor clans.
So it was that Cherry found herself in the markets, bartering for sugar, when the city shuddered. Everyone stopped, tense, waiting, and when there was nothing more, the rats re-started their negotiations. The monks had been foreseeing doom for months now, as the Great Cables dried up, their prophetic visions going with them. What else could it be, they argued, but the end times?
Cherry hadn't ever seen the visions herself, despite working within the abbey levels. Truly, for every dozen monks prophesying doom, there must be a kitchen behind them keeping their deific voices nourished. So, here she was. She traded tokens with the sugar merchant for abbey services writing or reading, and was about to go looking for any fruit that might still have been left when there was another rumble. This one, however, didn't stop. A great, awful buzzing sound tore through the marketplace, causing rats to flee in every direction. Cherry fell to all fours, covering her basket with her body, placing her paws to her ears against the awful, terrible noise.
A great metal blade, almost as long as she was, tore through the ceiling of the marketplace and collapsed a stall a few tail-lengths away. She felt it moving underneath her, the noise and rumbling following it. She knew she must flee, but couldn't- she felt as if she'd been frozen to the spot, unable to move. It came up beside her, narrowly missing her as it crashed back up into the ceiling.
For a moment, there was quiet.
Then, the whole side of the market district fell away. Lanterns fell, stock tumbled out into the open void, and the whole floor shifted underneath Cherry as she scrambled to hold on to something. Basket in one paw, death grip on a splinter in the floor with another, she had no choice but to stare up at the massive shape in front of her. Two huge, bulbous eyes. A proportionately tiny, fleshy nose. Hairless and pale like a rat ill for weeks, save for where hair grew grotesquely many tail-lengths long. The face opened up to reveal a maw of bright white teeth, each larger than her paw, and a wet, red tentacle which moved and writhed between them. Cherry screamed, more terrified than she had ever been in her entire life, and the creature bellowed back at her:
"What the absolute fuck is happening in my goddamned walls?!"
