I looked back to the east, where we’d come from. Rising up beyond the crimson haze of distant ridges were skyscrapers of gleaming glass reflecting the sun.

The skyscrapers must have been out of our sight before, where the road was lower. Or were my powers of vision now multiplying, so I was beginning to see what I never could before and in different dimensions?

Even now surrealistic details quickly fell into focus. I saw that the skyscrapers were the center of a vast city, and in each skyscraper and house and apartment were what appeared to be thrones. People sat on the thrones, each the ruler of his own domain. This place sang to me.

A great mountain, crusted with ancient black and red lava flows, towered above the city, sheltering it. The cave I’d spent my first night in had to have been near the base of that mountain. This must have been the city whose smoke I’d seen. I wished now I had followed the smoke and gone there.

With heightened powers of hearing that startled me, I detected in the city triumphant songs in countless languages. Pride welled up in me as if I myself had been one of the city’s builders.

“Behold, at the foot of Mount Hagias: Babel,” said Shad’s rumbling voice. “The City of Darkness.” What was he talking about? I turned and saw him pull an old book from his satchel. He mumbled words from it. “Not all is as it appears.”

I looked out again toward the city. But the light was changing, no, the buildings were changing into grimy prison towers, decaying and smoking tenements. Chaotic clanging noises filled the thick air.

Then I saw something bizarre—a vast web stretched across the city. From it hung people, some struggling to get free, others poisoned and dying, others bound up head-to-toe in cocoons of death. My blood chilled as I wondered if a gigantic spider was about to crawl over the horizon.

What was happening? I turned to Shad. “You’re a hypnotist, aren’t you, old man? Or a magician.”

He was a kill-joy at the very least. I turned away from him, not waiting for an answer. The others were moving up the road, and I joined them.

Thirty yards ahead, around the bend shaded by the rock towers, we caught sight of another city to the west, rising up beyond rolling green hills graced by the ribbon of the red road. It was high on a mountain ridge, much farther west and slightly south of Mount Peirasmos. Silently we stared at it.