Leave the horses behind

You soar off and leave the riders as specks in the distance behind you. The rocky plain eventually gives way to a dry steppe, and a foreboding mountain of storm clouds streams toward you. Darkness envelops the landscape. Fetid cracks open below you and belch hot vapors and clumps of earthly vomit. 

 

Finally, after hours of flight into ever darker terrain, a tower bursts into your vision like a steel tooth. Black and adamant, the fortress looms with an eminence that is not entirely unfamiliar to you. That lustrous height, that pinnacled spire… you cannot shake the sense that you have seen this structure before. Gold embossed letters of a forgotten language frame the base of the tower. Though you cannot read them, they suggest domination. The edifice seems to glow and bend light as if its exterior were composed of crystal, or glass. 

 

Your heart swells with rage and terror. A force within the tower fixes its dread eye upon you.