- - - To Be Continued - - -
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Steber clenched his teeth and walked forward. All around him, pieces of the demonic skin that lined the walls and ceiling were coming down. Ignoring the pandemonium, he continued walking. The gate flickered and distorted the air around it, but remained open. Taking one last lingering look at the world around him and summoning every shred of his courage, Steber made up his mind and walked through the darkness that was the teleportation gate.
Once he stepped inside, his eyes remained open but he couldn't see anything. He felt a sense of vertigo, as if he was falling, but due to his lack of vision, he couldn't tell for sure. Suddenly, he felt extremely cold. It felt like he had been abruptly plunged into arctic water. A flood of other sensations filled him. Time stood still as he transferred between dimensions, but feelings of suffocation, thirst, starvation, and fear attacked him. However, nothing hurt more than the cold. Frost crept into his very soul and froze his mind. All he could focus on was the pain of faster-than-light travel.
He saw more visions, but something had changed. Many of the images were similar to the ones he experienced before, showing Earth in flames, but new ones appeared as well. He saw Earth's cities devoid of any monsters, with people going about their everyday lives. He then knew that he was seeing a possible future. Should he manage to travel to the monsters' homeworld and foil their plans in person, Earth would never know just how close it had come to complete and utter destruction. This sense of hope filled him, amazingly pushing back the cold. While he couldn't see, he knew it was still there, hovering at the edge of his self-induced bubble of warmth. The other feelings of pain and fear disappeared too. Steber knew what he had to do and was aware of the repercussions of his actions. He opened his mouth and screamed in defiance as his journey eventually came to an end.
He awoke lying in a shallow pool of murky liquid. He opened his eyes, which immediately began to water from the alien air that surrounded him. He nervously took a breath, fearing that the demons' atmosphere would kill him before he even had a chance to stand up. The oxygen he inhaled was rough and tasted of copper, but was breathable. He coughed a few times, spitting out a black substance from his throat, and rose to his knees. Finally his vision cleared and he was able to take his first look at the world that surrounded him. His first thought referred back to an ancient book he had once read, Dante's Inferno, which described in great detail the place that humans call Hell. It had been years since he had read the story, but an excerpt rose from his mind. He had no idea how these sentences had remained in his memory over the course of his life, but the words spilled out as he muttered them from parched lips.
Through me the way into the grieving city,
Through me the way among the lost people.
Justice moved my higher maker;
Divine power made me,
Highest wisdom, and primal love.
Before me were no things created
Except eternal ones, and I endure eternal.
Abandon every hope, ye who enter here.
The vista that spread out before him was as close to Hell as he could ever have imagined. The ground that he knelt on was barren volcanic rock, the earth was without any form of vegetation, and the sky was a dark angry red. Steam escaped from fissures in the ground and screeching beasts with long leathery wings flew across the sky. Steber ducked behind a rock outcropping, terrified of being seen. When the creature had passed, Steber raised his head and peered out. He was on a mountain and looked down at a city that was made of rock and metal, with rivers of molten lava flowing through it. Several towers, which he guessed must be kilometers tall, rose out of the city. Except for the flying creatures, he couldn't see any of the world's denizens, but he knew they were there. He was in a land of the damned, the sole person in a place where humans were not meant to be. Thunder boomed from the blood-red sky and the rocks around him reverberated with energy. There was an electrical charge to the air and Steber felt that a storm might be approaching. Though he could only guess as to what the weather in this place consisted of, he knew that he should find shelter soon.
Alone in a place worse than Hell itself and without weapons or help of any kind, he had an invasion to prevent. And somehow he knew from one of his visions that he had less than a week to accomplish this in.
He took a step forward and started the long climb down the mountain towards the city.