He turned around to face the church and Danny did the same and just seeing this next part gave me enough vertigo to want to vomit. From the sound he made, Danny felt like doing the same. Standing at the literal end of a flat Earth and looking back was similar to what it must feel like to repel face-first down an insanely high cliff face.
“I don’t wanna be on here anymore,” Danny said, and took a step forward. Alderson quickly shot out an arm, halting him.
“Hold on. This is the best part. Look down again,” Alderson said as he then wrapped his other arm around Danny, who let out a yelp as he was pulled toward Alderson’s side of the platform. He pointed Danny down to face the long vertical stretch of darkness that made up the space just below the edge of the world.
The darkness wasn’t absolute though; I could see several glowing rivers of lava (or magma since it was technically still below ground) littering its surface. A silhouette began to slither alongside one of these rivers, moving into range of the lava’s glow for only a moment before being promptly yanked back into the dark by something much bigger. But in that brief glimpse, I became aware of two things:
One, this silhouette had a distinctly humanoid shape to it. Two, something was wrong with its head. It was very dark down there and I only saw the thing for a moment, but what it looked like to me was the shape of a person if you were to replace the top part of their head with a very porous rock.
Alderson began to speak softly, his tone almost genial as he said, “Whatever’s below us, it stays there as long as we keep it happy. Way back when, my ancestors learned that fact the hard way and they vowed to never let it happen again. What they found out was that tending to them came with its own rewards…”
