The world warps and expands around you as you step into the final compartment beyond the gold-sealed door. It's as though the world inside rushes out to surround you, like water gushing through the opening, staining the walls and pooling around your legs until reality shifts
entirely, and you find yourself standing in a . . . positively
nauseating place.
The ground underfoot is a train track, braced over a steep precipice, a ravine so far below that it's nothing but mist and darkness. The track doesn't seem to be attached to anything, winding out ahead of you, though it's solid as you stand. The gaps aren't too big: even a normal human would be able to walk along them, just, terrifyingly?
There is nothing behind you: the track stops sharply at a dead end, a steep plunge. The sky above you is greyish-orange and rushing rapidly past, like clouds caught in a time lapse video. Every few minutes or so, the light dims out to night, plunging the "world" here into darkness. When it does, your only source of light (other than what you have with you) are various amber and red and flashing white lights on top of high metal spires located at various points along the tracks, blinking and twitching, occasionally shuddering down with a spark of electricity.
And to the right and left: it's almost as though the world here is encased in an enormous glass dome, because outside of the confines of the reality, you see the world rocketing by. The shadowy shapes of trees and fields; sudden darkness, as if plunged into a cavern; then, an enormous city like nothing you've ever seen, red and burning and made up of tens of thousands of tiny windows blinking out on a churning sea.
It's loud here, too. The constant rattle of a train passing over
tracks, although that doesn't seem . . . right. There's also a soft roaring noise of wind rocketing past, though (thankfully) you'll find that the air is quite still and not likely going to be sending you careening to your deaths.
Then there's all the screaming, though: wild shrieks and guttural animal roars. Occasionally, a dark, sinewy shape detaches itself from the roiling clouds above and swoops down over the tracks, wings billowing. It never seems to come close enough to make it out in detail, but it also seems to imply that taking to the air (if it were possible) may be a bad idea in more ways that one.
So, if you're going by foot: you see that the tracks extend in front of you and enter into a wild and twisted maze, like the most terrifying roller coaster known to humanity. There must be hundreds of different branches, some staying relatively safe to walk on, others abruptly turning into loops and spirals and steep inclines doubling back on themselves. Sometimes, you see a platform, marked with an amber light on a high spire: about seven in total.
And in the distance, past all that: a raised, much larger platform. It's a little too far away to make out what's there, but there's a heavy feeling of malevolence that you can feel, even from there. Which is great, because that's almost
certainly where you have to go.
