Creating A Succubus Army In A Fantasy World!

Once he had recovered enough to think clearly, Creed began to consider his options.

The chasm clearly stretched across the entire landscape in that direction, making it impossible to continue exploring in that path without finding some way to cross it, which seemed highly unlikely given its apparent size and the disturbing nature of whatever lay at its bottom.

That left him with three other directions to explore: left, right, and back the way he had come.

Returning to his starting point felt like admitting defeat, and besides, he hadn't seen anything in that direction that suggested a way home or any kind of shelter or assistance.

That left the two lateral options, either of which might lead him to something useful or at least provide more information about the nature of this realm.

Choosing left more or less at random, Creed began walking parallel to the great chasm, staying far enough away that the screaming was barely audible but close enough that he could use it as a navigation reference.

The landscape in this direction was similar to what he had already seen: rolling hills of dark material punctuated by strange rock formations and the occasional pocket of impenetrable shadow.

As he walked, he found himself thinking about the voice he had heard screaming from the depths.

There had been something so familiar about it, something that nagged at the edges of his memory like a word on the tip of his tongue.

He tried to place it, to identify who it might have been, but every time he thought he was close to recognition, the memory slipped away like smoke.

After another indeterminate period of walking, during which the alien landscape continued its subtle shifting and changing around him, Creed encountered his second major landmark.

This time, it was a narrow chasm that cut across his path like a sword slash in the fabric of reality.

Unlike the massive abyss he had fled from earlier, this crack in the world was only a few feet wide, narrow enough that he might have been able to jump across it under normal circumstances.

But these were far from normal circumstances.

The narrow chasm appeared to be infinitely deep, its walls disappearing into darkness that was even more absolute than that of the great chasm.

And from its depths came a different kind of sound entirely: the slow, rhythmic rattling of chains.

The sound was hypnotic in its regularity, like a metallic heartbeat that echoed up from the bottomless pit with mechanical precision.

The chain sounds were somehow even more disturbing than the screaming had been, because they suggested purpose and intelligence.

Screaming could be the result of simple torment, the natural response of something in pain. But chains suggested captivity, restraint, the deliberate imprisonment of something that was trying to escape.

The rhythmic nature of the rattling implied that whatever was down there was moving, struggling, testing the limits of its bonds with patient, methodical determination.

As Creed stood at the edge of this narrow chasm, staring down into its impenetrable depths, he could feel the same terror beginning to build in his chest that had overwhelmed him at the great chasm.

But this time, he was somewhat better prepared for it. He recognized the signs of an impending panic attack and took deliberate steps to control his breathing and maintain his composure.

"Okay," he said aloud, his voice steadier than he felt. "So that's two chasms, two different sounds, two different kinds of nightmare fuel. I'm starting to see a pattern here, and I don't like where it's going."

The narrow chasm stretched away in both directions just as the great chasm had, effectively blocking his progress in this direction as well.

That left him with one lateral option and the choice to backtrack, neither of which seemed particularly appealing given what he had encountered so far.

Deciding that he needed to see what the third direction held before making any major decisions about his next move, Creed made his way back to his approximate starting point and then began exploring toward the right.

By now, he was developing a methodology for navigating this realm, using the distant sound of the screaming woman as a reference point and maintaining a mental map of the strange landmarks he encountered.

The third direction proved to be just as eventful as the first two. After another period of walking through the shifting landscape, Creed found himself facing yet another chasm, this one unique in its own horrifying way.

This chasm was wider than the narrow one but not nearly as vast as the first, perhaps fifty feet across and clearly visible from edge to edge.

But what made it distinctive wasn't its size; it was what filled it. Instead of empty darkness, this chasm was occupied by what appeared to be a massive web of some kind, stretching across the gap at various levels and disappearing into the depths below.

The web wasn't made of ordinary spider silk, however. The strands were thick as rope and seemed to be composed of some kind of organic material that pulsed with its own faint luminescence.

They were arranged in patterns that were too regular to be natural, too purposeful to be random, creating a three-dimensional maze that extended downward as far as the eye could see.

And hanging in that web, wrapped in cocoons of the same pulsing material, were shapes that might have been bodies.

The sight of those suspended forms sent a chill through Creed that had nothing to do with the temperature of this realm.

Some of the cocoons were small, possibly containing creatures no larger than a house cat.

Others were human-sized or larger, their contents mercifully obscured by the wrapping material but clearly recognizable as once-living beings that had been captured and stored for some unthinkable purpose.

From this chasm came no sounds at all, which was somehow more disturbing than the screaming or the chain rattling.

The absolute silence from this pit suggested that whatever dwelt within it had achieved perfect control over its domain, that nothing moved or made noise without its permission.

The idea of being trapped in that web, wrapped in those pulsing cocoons, unable to scream or struggle or even breathe properly, filled Creed with a claustrophobic terror that made his skin crawl.

As he stared down into the web-filled chasm, trying to process what he was seeing while simultaneously fighting the urge to flee as he had from the first chasm, Creed realized that he was truly and completely trapped.

Three directions led to impassable chasms, each filled with its own unique brand of nightmare. The fourth direction led back to where he had started, which offered no solutions and no hope of escape.

But as he stood there at the edge of the web-filled chasm, contemplating his increasingly dire situation, something caught his eye that made his blood run cold with a new and more personal kind of terror.

One of the cocoons hanging in the upper reaches of the web was different from the others. Where most of the wrapped forms were still and motionless, this one was moving slightly, swaying back and forth in a rhythm that suggested whoever or whatever was inside was probably still alive and struggling weakly against their bonds.

And protruding from one end of that particular cocoon, barely visible in the dim luminescence of the web strands, was a small portion of what looked unmistakably like silver hair.

Silver hair that he recognized.