They were told to stay away from the Innerlands.

It was a part of the laws that every colonist had to abide by and Bah and Gep had heard the morning rites every single day since they were larvae. Even in their vague infantile memories, before their antennae could process anything other than the comb they were growing inside of, the sounds of the other colonists’ voices echoing through their thinly layered walls programming the laws that every colonist must abide by.

And so, there was no excuse for them should they get caught.

Right now, Gep and Bah stood and looked through the hole in the barrier that stood between the world they knew and the world they knew as forbidden.

“This isn’t right,” Gep fretted. “We shouldn’t be here. We’ll be caught and punished!”

“No, we won’t,” Bah said. “No one even guards the barriers. Everyone’s just supposed to stay away from it. Nobody ever stops any colonist from going through, trust me.”

“I don’t know about that. What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong. Look.” Bah turned to him, antennae sweeping Gep’s head in acknowledgement. “Has anyone ever been brought into the center square for such a crime? No, and neither will we. Now, will you stop being such a wimp and come on. Live a little!”

Gep said nothing else to this and merely followed his friend through the hole. As they traveled through the dark untraveled tunnels to the unknown, all he could think about were the rules that every colonist recited in the center every morning;

All work must be completed by the setting of the sun
The rain is thine enemy and thine friend
Remain unseen in the eyes of the Gods
The paths of the Outerlands are the pathways to righteousness
The paths of the Innerlands are the pathways to torment
We are for one purpose and one purpose alone
Respect the laws of the colony

If the elders knew what they were doing, where they were going…a dark shame would fall upon them. That is, if they survived.

“No one’s every come back from the Innerlands,” Gep said suddenly.

“That’s a myth,” Bah said. “Plenty of colonists have come back. Haven’t you heard the stories of the bounties that have come from here? Food that need not be processed or stored? We can gorge ourselves on the feast while everyone else toils in the tunnels and fields. It is a paradise.”

“I don’t know,” Gep said skeptically, “there must be a reason why we are forbidden to come here.”

“Of course there is!” Bah stopped and turned around to Gep, antennae scanning his friend’s head. “We were born to work and toil and have no wants but what is best for the colony. If the other colonists knew about this, then no one would ever work! They would just stay here and eat and enjoy life! It’s control, I tell you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with providing for the colony,” Gep said meekly. “We are drones. It is what we are born for.”

“I don’t believe that,” Bah said turning back around and marching through the dark tunnel. “And neither will you when you see paradise.”

They had traveled in the dark for many hours before a strange smell reached them. It reached Bah first and he stopped, antenna sweeping the air.

“Wait,” he said to Gep. “Do you smell that?”

Gep stopped and swept the air with his antennae. A fresh, sweet smell invaded his senses and immediately he felt his insides rumble with hunger.

“What is it?” he asked Bah.

“Ambrosia,” Bah said. “It is the Food of the Gods. Let’s hurry.”

Their pace grew a little faster. As they went, Gep began to smell something else beneath the sweet smell of Ambrosia. He could barely sense it when it first appeared, but by the time they began to see light at the end of the long tunnel, it was just as strong as the sweet Ambrosia. He never smelled anything like either thing before…yet there was a certain foreboding in the underlying smell that worried him.

At the entrance to the Innerlands, Gep could not believe what stood before them. There stretched a great smooth cliff with yellow hills that stretched for miles. The paths between the hills reeked of the rich smell they’d encountered earlier and the hills smelled of it too. To the two colonists it seemed that they might be able to eat the paths and the mountains themselves.

“It’s…it’s wonderful,” Gep said.

“Didn’t I tell you! We can gorge ourselves on sugar forever here!”

They stepped out onto the path and their feet immediately picked up the sticky remnants of a feast long past. Gep stopped to taste the sugary sweet and smiled to himself. Could this be the utopia that they only dared dream of in their deepest thoughts?

Bah scampered forward in glee, traveling along the sticky path around the yellow mountains, gathering up as much sweet as his feet would allow. Gep followed, his fear of the unknown abandoned at the entrance. Together they ran along the path feasting merrily on old sugary remnants.

They stayed and explored as many paths as they could until they ran across several others moving towards one of the yellow mountains and subsequently climbing up it. Bah and Gep, their tummies warm with sweet and their senses dazed watched them curiously for a long time before analyzing what it was that they might be doing.

“Maybe there’s more food up there,” Gep said drowsily. He felt like he might fall over from all that they’d eaten so far.

Bah watched them for a full minute before answering; “let’s find out.”

They trekked along the path until they ran into one of the other colonists. He was covered very nearly from head to thorax in something thick and brown. The sweet smell of it nearly knocked them both over.

“Excuse me,” Bah asked as the colonist stumbled by, “but there is food up there?”

“Sap,” the colonist said deliriously, “but not like any sap you’ve ever known. It’s thin enough to slurp in great mouthfuls. It’s light enough to wallow in…and it’s so sweet.”

The colonist laughed gleefully, trembling all over joyously. “You must partake before they come. A bounty like this will not happen again for…for a lifetime!”

Bah didn’t need to hear anymore. He ran past them both scaling the mountain with the speed of a morning drone fresh out of the comb.

Gep hesitated. He looked back at the colonist as he walked drunkenly along the path back towards the entrance. Before they come, he’d said. Before who came?

“Bah,” he said running after him up the mountain. His inebriated state was shaken by the colonist’s cryptic words. “Bah, I must speak to you.”

“Not now,” Bah said climbing on. His antennae twirled with an insane kind of roll. He wasn’t listening, despite his response, he wasn’t listening to Gep at all.

“But Bah,” he persisted, climbing up after him. They were soon climbing over other colonists, pushing them out of the way. “Perhaps we should…” He trailed off. As they came up to the top, the words were lost in the air around them.

Before them was a great pile of clear brown sap, heaped up to a great height, like a giant liquid pool. Colonists walked on top of it, soaking their legs in its warm depths. Some dove head first in it, swimming through it as though it were a raindrop. The smell surrounding them so completely, that they could think of nothing else but the giant drop of sap.

“Oh…my,” was all Gep could utter. Bah said nothing it all. He ran to the drop, climbing over his sticky colleagues and diving into the liquid mass, head first. He swam in it, opening his mouth and inhaling great gulps of the sap. When he surfaced he yelled to the heavens; “It’s glorious! It’s so wonderful!”

Gep ran for the sap as well, pushing aside any colonist that happened to be in his way. When he got to it, he stepped onto it, letting his feet sink into its gooey wonders.

And they swam and ate and dove in the depths of sap around them…and for a time, every colonist in the sap knew nothing but the glories of the sweet.

But a rumble brought a halt to the activities. As the rumble shook the sap, the glee stopped. It was a familiar rumble. The kind that every colonist knew from inside the colony…and the reaction was immediate.

Run! someone screamed. There was no thought to it. They fled the sap just as easily as they dove into it. Instinct had taken over and the only thing anyone knew was to run.

Gep was just a few inches to freedom when he looked back for Bah. Among the crowd of fleeing colonists, he couldn’t see him. His instinct was making him want to run…but he could not leave his childhood friend.

“Bah!” he called out. He ran back towards the sap to see him surfacing from beneath its tempting depths. He started to gain footing on the surface and was about to crawl out when a great shadow came over them. Gep looked up to see a great woven pattern above them, coming down at an alarming rate. He wanted to grab Bah, but it was too late. The blanket covered the sap and Bah and everyone else left inside its sweet goodness, crushing them with horrified screams.

Gep ran. It was all that he could do. He leapt off the mountain and ran through the pathways back towards the entrance.

The woven death blanket swept across the mountains, sweeping every colonist away and across the hard landscape. Bodies and pieces of bodies dropped all around him. Gep ran as fast as he could, trying to stay under the mountains and away from the coming danger. Every colonists that survived the mountain sweep, leapt from the heights and ran along with Gep for the entrance.

And then the woven death machine cut through the pathways along the mountains, smashing hundreds of colonists into the path. Gep hid beneath one of the mountains as the cloth swept death past him. Legs flew at him, parts of exoskeleton scraped along the mountainside above him.

Gep felt paralyzed, unable to move long after the woven death passed him. He looked down at the smashed remains of the colonists, most of which were no longer recognizable. There was only a mass of twisted legs and insides where there used to be colonists.

The death sweep did another round, this time wiping away the remains of the colonists…and that’s when he smelled it. The scent that he’d picked up on the way inside, the scent that was just underneath the sugar on the paths. The woven death reeked of it and Gep thought that he might vomit from the combination of it and the smell of the colonist bodies around him.

He crept from mountain to mountain, trying not to be seen by the Gods (there was no used denying it. It could only be the Gods that brought this down on them). The elders were right. They had always been right and now he knew why. The Innerlands were among the most evil of places. He knew this now.

But all the “I told you so”s’ in the world didn’t matter a whit now that Bah was dead and it wouldn’t matter at all if he didn’t get to the entrance back into the colony.

Gep traveled like this while the air became thicker and thicker with the smell. Gep struggled to keep himself going through the sickening smell.

Finally, he reached the path leading into the entrance. There were no mountains here, only pathway…and it was only a few feet away.

He stepped out into the open and made a run for it. He’d made it. Somehow, he’d made it all the way…and he was still alive.

The path was still sticky and a part of him would miss the first feeling of sugary sweet, even though the other smell canceled everything else out.

Suddenly, he was drenched with something wet. There was a hiss and then he was wet again, his exoskeleton soaked…

It was then he realized that he was now covered in the smell…and that his exoskeleton was melting.

He tried to run, but his legs rapidly shriveled up beneath him. He screamed as his exoskeleton melted, burning his insides away. His legs burned away almost instantly, and he fell into the sugary sweet path, the thick smell spilling into his mouth and burning through his body. He lost consciousness right as his antennae fell off his head one by one.

His very last thought before everything went dark was a part of the rite that he’d spoken every morning of his life;

The paths of the Outerlands are the pathways to righteousness…

The paths of the Innerlands are the pathways to torment…