Alien Landscapes 2 Read Online Free Page A

bleached-bright sky of Chandler’s land of the gods. Mount Olympus towered, reaching to the clouds, where Zeus and the other gods dwelled, working their mischief by playing games with mortal lives.
    Tara’s image had entered the world at the foot of the great volcano. On grassy hills stood weathered, half-fallen remains of Greek architecture, a random mix of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, small temples and larger structures scattered in no particular order, as if Chandler had captured their images from a mixed-bag database and pasted them to the slopes as the impulse struck him.
    Black obelisks of volcanic rock thrust out at the base of the mountain. Steam and sulfurous fumes curled from fissures, and a blistering glow rose from a large opening, accompanied by loud sounds of clanging metal, a sighing forge, and someone massive stirring.
    She saw no image of Chandler waiting for her. They had both jacked in, but he had gone to a different place. As Tara listened to the grunting, clanging sounds in the fire-filled cave, she knew where to find him, where he wanted her to go. He was playing some sort of game with her.
    She stepped inside what she guessed would be the forge of Hephaestus. The sharp-edged cave walls reflected the burning-hot light rising from a river of incandescent lava that flowed, rumbled, growled through the chamber.
    On a flat rock in the midst of the lava stood the incarnation of Chandler—Hephaestus himself—his head a mass of wiry black hair matted with perspiration, a voluminous beard, eyebrows like feathers from a bird of prey, a face lumpy and ugly. He wore only a soot-stained loincloth. Sweat trickled down his bronzed and muscular frame. One of his feet was crushed and shriveled; Tara remembered the myth of an angered Zeus hurling Hephaestus from the top of Mount Olympus.
    He withdrew a sharp metal object from the lava—the glowing tip of a new trident for Poseidon. He looked up, his eyes flashing reflections from the fiery, molten rock. “How do you like it?” Chandler asked. His familiar voice sounded strange issuing from the vocal cords of a massive Greek god.
    Tara glanced down at herself to see her body a sculptured model of absolute beauty, pure alabaster, clad in sparkling white flowing robes. She felt luxurious tresses of hair draped between her shoulders. She rolled her eyes at the irony of being too lovely to touch—cool and aloof, unreachable. “Am I supposed to be playing Aphrodite to your Hephaestus?”
    “You’re my wife, aren’t you?” Chandler asked with an eloquent shrug. He began to hammer the smoking trident on an enormous, misshapen anvil; the sledge blows sent thunder reverberating through the grotto.
    She indicated the cave, the forge. “Well, the exterior of Mount Olympus needs work, but you’ve surpassed yourself here.”
    Chandler looked at her longingly, his large green-tan eyes glowing beneath the bristling brows. “That isn’t why I wanted to bring you here,” he said. He laid down the trident and stepped down into the flowing lava as if wading across a stream.
    “In here, metaphor becomes reality—or whatever reality can become.” The molten rock rippled around his naked thighs as he took another limping step on his deformed leg and sank up to his waist. “I need you Tara,” he said, holding out a grime-blackened hand. “I’ve become a part of you, I’ve become addicted to you. And I can’t do my work without you inside me.”
    Tara felt alarm well up inside her. “What in the world are you talking about?”
    “I think you know. Come into the fire with me,” he said. “Together we have unlimited potential. You must know it. Merge with me, once and for all. All or nothing. No secrets. Remember what you said? We exchanged vows, combined our lives. We’re supposed to be partners.” He dropped his voice. “We can share everything, down to the smallest thoughts. We’ll both be in each other’s head: a complete synthesis.”
    He took