Chapter 3: Into the Abyss

Everything was still spinning when they emerged on the other side. Reality snapped into place in pieces, reattaching like trillions of shifting pixels. They stood in the center of a stone circle, a series of dark portals positioned around them every few yards like numbers on a clock.

The sky was a bright orange, dotted with swaths of pitted black asteroids that hovered like oblong moons. They formed a meandering belt, the superstructure extending all the way from one horizon to the other. Libby wondered with morbid fascination if the massive thing wrapped around the entire world because clearly, she wasn’t on Earth anymore.

Before they’d leapt through a portal on the side of a mountain, before she’d been carried through a frigid tundra while naked in Galen’s arms, she’d already started to accept the existence of the inexplicable. Life as she understood it had already been fucked out of her by Galen and Fenrow’s guards and their unnatural cocks. This sucked, sucked a lot, but the sooner she accepted her situation, the faster she could get her mental legs underneath her and figure out a plan.

Even if she had no idea where to start.

The moment they’d arrived in this world, Galen’s appearance had drastically changed. His ears were pointed, his skin darker, an ashen gray that made him appear as if he had been hewn from stone. Textured horns snaked from his raven locks, forming a jagged circlet that resembled a broken crown. The sclera of his deep-set eyes had been completely overtaken by inky pools, a diamond-shaped pupil floating in the middle of each orb. They glowed an electric white, and it felt like the bright centers scored past her flesh and penetrated straight into her soul.

She broke eye contact, unable to hold his alien gaze any longer. She had no idea how she’d missed it, but Galen had changed out of his posh clothes and into dark trousers that hugged his muscular thighs, along with a sheer white fitted shirt that left little to the imagination. Libby’s earlier suspicious about his unreal physique were more than confirmed. Hell, she could make out his obsidian nipples under the fabric.

A winding staircase had been cut into the side of the scarred mountain, and he took it several steps at a time, his clawed hands curled possessively around her body the entire time. Galen also seemed much ... bigger than he’d been before, which was a feat in and of itself. She was at least another foot away from the ground, which had to put him somewhere just under the unreal height of eight feet.

Once they crested the narrow ridge, they emerged atop a great plateau. An enormous fortification had been erected at its center, the otherworldly architecture a forbidding cross between a fantastical castle and a domineering fortress. Unlike the bleak, craggy landscape around them, its bricks were a shining white and multiple golden spires thrust like needles into the burnt orange atmosphere.

A cobbled pathway led directly to the front entrance, capped by a massive set of golden doors at the far end. They were etched with an elaborate inlay, and it took her several moments to realize what she was looking at. An obligatory interest in the fine arts had rubbed off on Libby after years of working in the library system, and the name of the piece came to her almost instantly. It was a relief of The Banquet of Cleopatra by Tiepolo, the famous (and notorious) queen’s regal arm extended across a lavish table towards an ensorcelled Mark Anthony.

A row of figures wearing hooded scarlet cloaks framed each side of the pathway. Like the guards in the van, none of them spoke as Galen walked past. Like the guards, she caught hints of features that were far from normal. One with wisps of shadowy smoke that emanated from within its hooded opening like snakes, too many blinking, glowing eyes from inside the hood of another. The most horrifying of them emitted a clicking noise from its throat like a predator straight out of science fiction, the sound stirring images of lightless pits and gnashing teeth.

Galen carried her into the fortress, through the interior portcullises and into a lavish foyer. They traversed the too-decadent corridors, the walls a rich mahogany, fine oil paintings and sculptures—that looked to be priceless originals—lining the walls.

They entered a central garden, and Libby’s eyes nearly bugged out of her skull as she took in a great fountain that rose three stories above the courtyard. It shot into the unreal ochre vista, the water a rippling liquid gold. All around, flowering bushes, fully grown fruit trees, and soft grasses sprawled in every direction, a rectangular enclosure of frosted glass window panes framing it on every side.