The Rain That Grows Fur

It indeed looked like a blob of black fur, and despite the black rain that continuously fell, it managed to maintain a lush and fluffy appearance.

For eyes, it had two large beads that stared at him without a thought, holding an oblivious gaze.

The thing, after observing him to its satisfaction, suddenly bounced away, its strange movements triggering a thought within Mr. Valen.

'The physics behind the way it moves elude me. Is it—' he suddenly cut himself short as a headache hammered at his mind.

Shaking off this feeling Mr. Valen walked forward, intent on following the thing, each step sinking his feet into the strange black soil.

Mist coiled around his body like smoke, sometimes slithering across his line of sight and almost causing him to lose vision of his guide.

Each step of his echoed faintly, muffled by the constant drizzle of black water falling from a sky he couldn't see.

Above him, the clouds churned like boiling ink, shifting unnaturally without wind, hiding the stars—hiding the sky.

Only the green moon hung suspended like a rare gem, but it felt wrong, too strange to be there.

With this thought, Mr. Valen looked towards the bouncing blob thing and discovered to his horror that it was gone.

Simultaneously, his eyes caught sight of movement in the distance.

Said movement belonged to a hunched figure, thin and long-limbed, which was dragging something behind it, something that whimpered.

As soon as he registered this, Mr. Valen crouched low, still and silent, watching safely from the shadows of the mist.

Or at least, so he thought.

As though sensing him, the figure stopped, then, without turning, it twisted its head 180 degrees and looked in his direction.

Mind you, not with eyes, there were no eyes to speak of—only a face made of stretched skin, and gaping lines stitched across where a mouth should have been.

Like a hound, it sniffed the air, catching a scent it was unfamiliar with.

Noticing this, Mr. Valen stepped back quietly, wanting to escape, but then the creature flinched, as if hearing the step through the fabric of space itself.

Then it bolted into the distance on all fours, impossibly fast as though running away from him, which—for a moment, confused Mr. Valen.

Still unsure, he waited, hand at his side, observing the direction the beast had run off to. After much deliberation, he decided to go in a different direction.

Eventually, he moved again, deeper into this cursed field, before a certain sight caused him to stop, crouching slightly to observe.

"Thank God I'm not the only human around," he thought as he gazed on at the rotten human head on the ground.

Such a sight should have scared him, or filled him with unease, and yet, the more Mr. Valen got comfortable in his own skin, the more predatory his instincts grew.

Additionally, though he was naked, the biting cold of this place hardly affected him anymore; a strange heat bubbled beneath his skin.

Moreover, Mr. Valen could now sense a vague and powerful energy in the air, something that burned and sizzled but for some reason remained out of reach for him.

He immediately understood that this was his power as a Wizard, as from what he knew, green-eyed Witches and Wizards excelled with flame.

Continuing onward, he moved, the black soil becoming uneven with each step, hills rising and falling like sleeping giants beneath a skin of fungus.

Patches of glowing mushrooms lit his path, green, purple, and soft crimson, throbbing faintly like heartbeats.

Some of these glowing fungi had grown to about half his size, promoting Mr. Valen to investigate.

But as he got closer, the fungi twitched and spewed black spores into his face.

Shaking his head, Mr. Valen took a few steps back but discovered that he was disoriented, his gaze blurring as he watched his hands bloom like a flower.

Looking up, he noted that the moon also looked like a flower that gave him a racist look, if that was even possible or coherent enough to understand.

Suddenly Mr. Valen shook his head, his healing factor kicking in, healing him of his trance-like state.

With that the man continued his journey, deeper and deeper into this bizarre world.

He saw more creatures as he walked, things not meant to be, watching from the mist, never blinking.

Some were tall and made entirely of mouths, others had no heads, yet screamed from their chests.

One was just a collection of pale hands walking on fingers, dragging a rusted doll behind it.

This time however, Mr. Valen was not injured; rather, he hid, and whenever he was discovered, the beasts would just run away or chase him. Thankfully, he was faster.

Eventually, he found a tree, not that he was looking for one in the first place but it did make one wonder how a tree could grow in a world without sunlight.

As they say, nature always finds a way.

The tree was quite large, towering above his form, visible only when he passed through a sudden break in the mist.

Its bark was a deep, iridescent black, like burned obsidian that wept dark sap; its limbs reaching out in jagged, asymmetrical patterns like broken bones trying to escape their skin.

It did not have leaves—no, that would be a mockery of leaves.

True leaves fed their trees with light and carbon dioxide.

Proper leaves cooled down the trees by pulling up water from their roots.

Conventional leaves were at least green, but these were of an inky back, dark, long things that looked more like soaked, slumpy hair than anything natural.

With the absence of a sun, the wetness of the place, and how soaked the leaves themselves were, they were rendered utterly useless, begging the question of how the tree survived.

But he was tired, his capacity for deep thought eroded, so he dismissed the questions, pushing them to the back of his mind.

Fearing any sort of surprise, he circled the plant once, trying to get a look at it from all angles and though he had a bad feeling about it, he detected nothing truly dangerous.

Only then did he climb.

As he climbed, he noticed that the bark was coarse and rough, sometimes sinking under his grip like flesh.

The bad feeling in his chest intensified, but in his tiredness, he ignored it; he needed rest, and despite the tree's nature, it provided ample elevation.

From high above, after a good rest, he hoped to find something to orient himself, even if nothing in this place made sense.

The climb took minutes, or hours, he wasn't sure anymore, the higher he got, the more the tree felt alive in a way that he could not quite explain.

But it was still a tree. What harm could it do?

Eventually, he found a wide crook in the upper branches, shielded partially by wet tangled leaves, that obstructed his form from view.

And so, he collapsed into it, his muscles twitching involuntarily, his legs still aching with phantom pain.

Moreover, a slight throb pulsed in his jaws, the same ones he had used to bite into the creature.

Evidently, his body was not accustomed to being pushed to such limits. There was also the question of his hunger which lingered, even after he had fed.

He looked out over the land, into the unknown fields.

Mist slithered across the black plains like it was alive; the green moon blinked once like an eye.

And then his eyes fluttered closed, despite every warning in his bones.

Despite the low thrum of the tree.

Despite the shapes gathering again at the base below, circling the roots in silence.

Sleep took him anyway.

---------------

Meanwhile, in another part of this strange world, another man stirred, a shallow breath escaping his lips as his eyes fluttered open.

It was Maxwell.

And Maxwell saw darkness, not the kind of darkness he was used to in his home, but a more honest type—true darkness.

Cold, wet stone pressed against his back, water seeping in through his soaked shirt.

The air was thick with the scent of moss and something older, like rot, or blood, something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Swallowing his saliva, he blinked slowly, trying to make sense of where he was. The last thing he remembered was the walls of his home bursting open, revealing two beasts.

He also saw Vlad Viper, a figure he'd only seen on TV, fighting these two beasts.

Then he was sucked into the passageway that one of the beasts, had created; the humanoid one.

But it was not here now.

"What is this place?" he muttered to himself, curious and afraid, of the horrors that lay beyond.

He knew all too well that he had crossed over to a world he had no business being in, and he hated the fact that he knew nothing.

'fucking government, if only they were more transparent about all this shit, maybe I would know what to fucking do,' he thought, trying as one might to rid himself of the unease.

Looking above, he noticed some specks of glow that were fungi scattered around the jagged walls of the cave.

These fungi created an ethereal purple-green glow that, in turn, created stretched out shadows that twitched as though alive.

These fungi created an ethereal purple-green glow that, in turn, threw stretched-out shadows that twitched as though alive.

Ignoring this, he sat up with a low groan, golden-blonde hair matted to his forehead by the damp.

And as soon as he did—as soon as he stood—he felt it.

Something wrong—something that was here with him.