I didn’t think, I reacted. I jumped through the portal just before it snapped shut. And let me tell you, that was a very stupid move. By the time the world stopped swirling about me, I couldn’t exactly position where I was. That’s kind of the problem with stepping into the Abyss.

See, the Abyss is essentially a parallel world… except it’s nothing like the world I live in. The sky is a perpetual deep red, the earth was a cold grey, and the land was barren. The air gave me a headache, and I was certain I was going to lose track of my quarry.

As a scream split the sky, my head cleared and I could focus on where it came from. I turned and started running after the noise. It was a few minutes before I could see anything that might have given me a lead, but when I finally saw the banshee off in the distance carrying a struggling body. And moments later I saw a large building, like… it towered over everything and reached for the sky.

The banshee seemed to be heading for the top of the building, which was a good thing in that I knew I could climb it. It was bad though because, well, that was a solid forty stories high. I knew I didn’t have the magic ability to fly that high or that long. So I focused on conserving my stamina by alternating running in bursts and jogging at a slightly slower speed. Yes it would take longer, but I knew I had about five minutes before the banshee reached the building, and I would be only a minute or two behind it.

During the last minute or two I expended some magic and gave myself a boost of speed, it made all the difference until the anti-magic shell around the building stopped it and I stumbled and fell face first to the ground about ten feet short. I shifted, pulled my face out of the dirt, and raised myself from the ground. Before me stood a door, human size and roughly square in shape. One side was gone, and the other hung loosely from the hinge. Inside I could see a shadowed mess of tables and chairs, and in the heart of it all I saw a placard. Stairs.

I guess that answers my question, this is going to be a long climb. So I walked in and started making my way up, and up, and up. The whole way I tried to force my magic to overpower the anti-magic field. My regular magic didn’t even phase it… if anything it hit me harder every time I tried.

I had gotten maybe five or six stories up before I had to stop. I heard creaking from the floor above me, and I could almost smell the nasty… whatever was up there. The creaking got louder and I knew I had to do something. I reached inward and held my hand above me. A storm of dark energy flew from my hand into the stairs above me as I tried to throw hellfire up against the barrier. Oddly, it worked… kind of. I’ve never seen fire turn into plasma, but that’s the closest explanation I had for what happened.

I could hear the metal of the stairway creak, so I ducked around the corner scant seconds before a chunk of heated metal slammed into the stairs where I had just been and sluggishly slid down the stairs and hardened on the landing. I slowly poked my head back around and gazed up the hole in the ceiling, and was kind of shocked by the sheer destruction I saw. I had to have melted three or four floors with one fell swoop. On the downside, my wind magic still wasn’t working right, so I had to climb up the hard way.

Ninety floors and an hour later, I opened the door that would lead me to the roof. Opening it, I looked out and saw a legion of flying creatures. I then closed the door, turned around and took a breath. I was obviously hallucinating. I then opened the door again and looked upon that same scene. Thousands of flying creatures surrounded the building, and there I was, all alone against them.

I took a moment to gather my wits and observe my surroundings, and I saw a bird cage. And there’s my songbird, I thought as I caught sight of Trish. My assassin instincts told me to slide in and find a way out without making enough noise to bring the horde down on my head, but my emotional part screamed at me that even if I got us out they would be back.

You have the power, and I know something as small as an army of weaklings can’t halt the force of nature you embody. Why do you hesitate?

That voice that guided me to find Trish? Where did it come from? What did it mean I had the power?

I had to push it out of my mind as I crept toward Trish’s cage. I touched her arm lightly as I got close and I motioned for her to keep quiet as I picked the lock. It was an easy lock to pick without my tools, but the hinge made enough noise to bring down the ire of all the fliers in the sky.

My first reaction was to throw up a massive dome of ice with spike shooting off in all directions as I picked up the squirming form of Trish and tried to focus on how to get out. See, closing the portal was easy, the getting out was the part I hadn’t figured out yet.

Not to alert you lover-boy, but you’ve got some bigger fish to fry. Mainly those pests cracking your carapace.

Those words got me back in the here and now and I could see the holes in ice dome. Today just keeps getting better, huh?