One hundred souls—a blend of men, women, children, and a solitary golden retriever named Ducky—vanished into the ether that night. In the coming days, missing posters littered the sidewalks of their neighborhoods, fluttering like fallen leaves, while a digital wave of concern swelled into a GoFundMe campaign for Ducky's bereft owners. As far as anyone knew there was no connection between the missing.
The majority of these vanishings shared but one eerie and chilling similarity: they occurred at doorways, with the vanished stepping through, only to never emerge on the opposing side. CCTV footage captured these puzzling moments in thrilling clarity yet offered no keys to unlock the mystery. Despite the visual evidence from numerous recordings, conclusions for the families of the vanished remained as elusive as shadows at dusk. Any further news of their disappearance soon evaporated, enveloped by everyday life, where the living kept on living and the gone stayed forever silent.
----
She took a rasping breath, her chest heaving with effort that was to anyone watching more or less futile. If she had been able to speak, she would be screaming. Unlucky as she was, that was the only reason she still was allowed to breathe. Lucky for her.
Exiting the club that had hosted her for the best part of the evening had brought her face to face with a surprised group of ‘people’. Maybe it had been instinct that led her hand to throw the paper cup of vodka soda with lime she held, to the nearest and meanest looking ‘person’ of the bunch.
He retaliated with a swipe of his sword. And her legs disappeared with that single attack. Pain enveloped her every sense. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, her brain barely registered the alien forest around her.
A few faces popped up now and then above her dying body and sometimes her eyes tracked them, yet only rasping whizzing moans escaped her lips.
The pain came in numbing waves of dizziness. Yet still despite everything, a small part of her wondered. What the hell had happened to her?
—-
Ducky barked with fervor, his tail waving. It was not hunched between his legs, as it should have been. The lizard was the size of an elephant and until quite recently it had been napping in its solitary cave. Or more accurately pseudo-hibernating for a few centuries.
A fine carpet of dust coated its blue-green scales. It blinked its yellow eyes repeatedly in the unnerving way reptiles do, to clean the soil and debris from its sight. Yet the golden retriever remained there, undeterred.
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The giant lizard started uncoiling its serpentine tail, which had been cleverly hidden beneath the ground. And what a fine weapon it was, with its long reach the lizard used it primarily as a whip to slash at enemies from a distance or ambush from beneath the careless that stepped on it.
Only a few meters separated it from the golden retriever. Yet the prey was unknown, and who knew what the thick golden fur could hide underneath? Waking up from a long sleep had dulled the lizard's senses, it had to tread carefully.
It slithered its tail upwards, angling for an attack. Ducky stopped his insistent barking and arched downwards focused closely on the tail’s end. It ended in two deadly spikes, tinted purple. From afar they might have looked blood-soaked.
The lizard fainted at an attack, swiping with its tail overhead and Ducky jumped to get it. The lizard tensed momentarily. The prey was fighting back, and that was unusual. Cautiously it swiped in the air once more.
Ducky jumped and when he couldn’t reach the tail, he barked happily. The lizard repeated the action perplexed at the odd behavior of the prey.
So long as it kept swiping its tail harmlessly on empty air, the golden retriever didn’t bark and the lizard’s confusion increased. This went on for a while until Ducky panting with a loling tongue out of his mouth, gulped a bucketload of stale water gathered under a stalactite and unceremoniously plopped his butt on the fine dusty ground for a good rest.
The lizard blinked. If it could convey its feelings in facial expressions, it would be raising its eyebrows right at that moment. It lowered its head to the ground, level with the golden prey, slithering a thin blue tongue between its scaly lips.
This prey…it was a little fun. The lizard thought, yawning.
----
A tower of old stone and bright light ascended above the clouds. It was a quiet place, so high that even the winds blew halfheartedly. During the day, the sun as one would expect shone blazingly, punishing the structure that dared ascend so close to its majestic rays of light. Yet if you touched any part of the tower, the stones emanated a comforting coolness.
At night when the tower dimmed its brilliance, stars appeared in the sky like pebbles on a river's coastline, so many that you could spend a lifetime staring up and still not count them all.
Open windows decorated the levels of the tower and just like the stars, none alive could guess at their number. Yet in the highest one, behind the open arch stood a table, and seated next to it a woman held a worn book open and ready to indulge. With her other hand, a sole finger traced the lip of a teacup filled with an aromatic minty flavor.
"..." An involuntary sound escaped her lips, a gasp, as she was startled by something she couldn't exactly place. "Huh? What is this now?" She muttered, irritated by the pause in her pleasant evening. She leaned on the window cill and searched the outside world for the disturbance. Looking down a dark sea in cloud form obscured the view but not her view. Her sight pierced all obstacles, even... "Oh, another world found its way back?! Good grace, what a mess will it make of things." And of my fine evenings.
"This looks like a lot of work." She said with distaste. "Maybe... maybe I can finish a chapter before I deal with it, yes, one more chapter." She said and sat back in place, on a comfortable chair that hugged her form so perfectly she always sighed when she got up. The book was already open in her hands. It read...
Prologue