A group of people, a club of people really, followed closely behind Luka. They casually chatted with the World Walker, attempting to hide their eagerness. Some hid it better than others, but that was beside the point. Excitement filled the air, and the Early Walkers Club would mark this day down as something special—something worthy of waking up at the break of dawn.

  “So, it’s called Monolith,” Luka explained again for a few newcomers. “Every section of the park is going to have a monolith in it somewhere, but the theming worked out for Constellation Kingdom.”

  Greg, a retired human wearing the most comfortable walking shoes this world had to offer, asked, “Why’s that?”

  “Monoliths, to me, are alien, foreign, strange. See, on Earth—my home world—there was this folktale about a monolith appearing randomly in a desert before disappearing without warning. It kinda became a cultural phenomenon and news of this monolith spread across the world. Why was it there? What was its purpose? Who put it there? Etcetera.”

  “And you want the monoliths to fill a similar role here?” Greg asked.

  Luka noticed everyone in the club was listening intently, as if his words would decide the fate of the universe. “Sure. They’re beacons, so to speak, allowing World Walker Park to open portals to other worlds. Or, at least, that’s the storyline of the park’s overall theming.”

  That got a round of chuckles.

  “Might wanna be careful, Mr. World Walker. You might wake up an ancient evil with talk of beacons and monoliths,” said another older person, this time a lizardkin with pale, papery scales. She was shedding.

  Luka idly wondered if her scales were itchy like his beard. He subconsciously scratched his face. “Don’t worry about all that,” he said with a hint of mirth. “We’ve got the ‘ancient-eldritch-evil-god’ thing covered.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Do you, now?”

  A chill went through Luka’s spine. “Moving right along,” he said, gesturing the group into the Constellation Kingdom.

  Once they stepped through the illusionary boundary, the land extended as far as the eye could see. Alien rocky trees, desolate wild landscapes, dark clouds way in the sky that rolled like living shadows. Stone formations dotted the area, each fragmented, twisted, and skeletal. A bridge led over a small, green-liquid-filled canyon, annnnnnd—Luka waited for it—gasps. There it was. The entire Early Walker Club gasped, and he smiled proudly.

  The Monolith stood tall.

  “The bridge gives the best view,” he said. If they heard him, they didn’t show it.

  Instead, the guests simply gawked, their mouths open wide. There, in the distance, was Monolith. Anchored on top of a mangled plateau, a rectangle scraped the lowest of the dark clouds, parting them like an ocean bulkhead. Behind the clouds, God Neb’s personally designed constellations hung like a swarm of brilliant fireflies. They shimmered and glistened, subtly moving as excited people stared up in wonderment.

  The club members stood on their toes, leaning off the bridge railing to peer at Monolith from different angles. From its front, the ride looked like a black rectangle. But it was more than that. It was a prism, a massive three-dimensional shape that looked as if it was stuck in the stonework by some god or advanced alien people.

  As the club stared, Luka continued on about the backstory, “So, Constellation Kingdom’s storyline is that guests are part of a research voyage across the stars to this desolate world. But, once we arrived, we soon learned that ‘desolate’ isn’t correct. Maybe there was civilization here once, maybe not. Either way, we’re researching the relics and structures left behind, as well as the Monolith. Maybe we’ll find answers to our burning questions, but probably not.”

  “No?” asked Greg.

  Luka smiled. “I can’t reveal all my secrets, now, could I?”

  “Suppose not.” He went back to staring.

  “With the backstory in mind, we’ll be entering Monolith to conduct research—”

  “You mean, we’ll be entering one of those long-dead alien structures you mentioned?” asked the lizardkin woman. She eyed Luka incredulously, as if he was an evil eldritch-god thing.

  He just shrugged. “Thrilling, isn’t it?”

  With that, Luka strolled forward, the others following right along.

  They walked past the pure white research facilities, passed a gift shop, and around a walk-through attraction explaining the science behind stars and the various celestial bodies. The small building held words written directly by God Neb himself, even secrets Earth had yet to discover about the stars.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It wasn’t a popular attraction.

  To the right was Cosmic Rebirth, the park’s first and only rollercoaster. It took guests through the rocky landscape of this alien world, darting in and out of long-abandoned structures and crumbled ruins of what once was.

  The group had their eyes set on Monolith.

  The path sloped up slightly, leading into the plateau. They followed it, passing theming Luka had created in a hurry. Pure white research vessels sat on loose rock and age old dust. One held the ride’s sign, the others were just decoration. Fluorescent lights lit the path, the road turning from dead dirt to… polished stone.

  As if chiseled, cut, sanded, and polished, the path into the plateau was suddenly sleek. It was out of place to the landscape—even the pure white research vessels had a degree of unevenness and imperfection. But this path? This path leading to Monolith was special.

  “We’re going somewhere ancient,” Luka whispered. They bypassed a threshold, and fog wafted in. It rolled across their feet gently, just enough to cause the guests unease.

  Soon they reached the perfectly cut-out rectangular door into the plateau’s base. Similarly to the path, it was too perfect—eerily perfect. They stepped in, Luka smiling at the haunted faces the Early Walkers expressed

  The stone in this alien world was dark, but not black.

  The stone inside the plateau was pure black, polished, and just as alien.

  Dull red lights lined the tunnel, each saturated despite the darkness surrounding them. They extended horizontally, beckoning guests deeper. Luka led the pack.

  Science fiction was his favorite genre back on Earth—when he had the time to watch movies, that was. He always wondered how he’d shape up if he was stranded on a remote alien world, and what he’d do if one of his crewmates was infected with alien spawn. It was these hypotheticals that brought the interior of Monolith to life.

  The tunnel switched back and forth a few times. The line needed to be long enough to handle an influx of guests. Eventually the perfectly cut walkway opened into a rotunda of likewise alien stonework. Guardrails led the group around a centralized monument—a fossilized retelling of the ruling life here. It wasn’t a person or being, just a geometric shape that tickled the eye the longer one looked at it.

  No one, including Luka, could look at it for long. It felt wrong, it felt terrible. Their brains couldn’t comprehend such a geometric entry.

  “That is what lived in this world before,” he whispered, giving the Early Walkers juuust enough story to string along their interest.

  In reality, the geometric entity was one of those optical illusion shapes, like the staircase that always connected with itself and never ended nor started. And mixed with a few “short-circuited” illusionary glyphs, the entity was uncomfortable to look at. It wasn’t quite like glyph nausea sickness, but Luka would be lying if he said he didn’t get the idea from it.

  The group continued, deeper into the alien monument. The rotunda changed back to tunnels but eventually arrived at the ride. Before they could enter the antechamber at the center of the plateau, they heard screaming.

  Wild, terrible screams.

  Luka smiled to himself, sneaking a peek at the Early Walkers. Some shivered with fear, others with excitement.

  “Welcome,” he said, “to Monolith.”

  With that, he stepped to the side, allowing the group into the antechamber. A tower rose high into the air, completely surrounded by the perfectly black stone of Monolith. Metal met metal, twisting like a corrupted tree. Lights flickered on and off, deathly red and the occasional pearlescent white. A gondola rose slowly up the tower, spinning like an evil smile. People were strapped into the seats, each frantically breathing, clutching the restraints for dear life.

  “I thought we would be the first to ride,” asked the lizardkin woman.

  “For the public, yeah,” Luka replied. “Those are park employees and some village children.”

  “Then what about them?”

  He traced her pointed finger, finding a platoon of royal guards. They stood like statues, but their faces shone under their helmets—they were nervous. Some stared straight ahead, but most watched the tower rise. Up and up it went until—

  Screams!

  The ride hurtled to the ground in freefall. Riders’ bodies crashed into the bottom of their restraints, and for a brief moment they were weightless. Then they were yanked down, faster and faster. They didn’t reach terminal velocity, but they were close.

  Idly, Luka wondered if he should augment the ride and forcefully launch it down, not simply let it fall. I’ll collect people’s thoughts on it later, he mused.

  The ride came to a stop, the restraints released, and twenty riders stepped off with wobbly legs. Most were the village kids, but three adults stood out. The first was Eve. She helped design the ride, and she had ridden a dozen times at this point checking for inconsistencies or issues.

  The next two were Franky and Princess Alexandra. It seemed their night under the stars went well—much to the dismay of Alex’s guards. They chatted about the ride with Eve, both positively brimming with excitement. Was it because of the ride? Or was it newfound feelings for one another.

  Luka chuckled and thought, Does Franky even remember last night—

  His thought died when Alex leaned in close to the bald orc and kissed him on the cheek. She had to stand on her tippy toes, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, the girl practically boiled with positivity and giddiness. Franky’s face then slipped open into a wide smile, and with one smooth motion, grabbed the princess by the waist and smooched her on the lips.

  Standing one step away, Eve balked. Standing a dozen steps away, the armed guard unit prepared for war.

  Please don’t start an inter-kingdom incident! Luka pleaded. Any gods out there listening? Please don’t let Franky start an inter-kingdom incident! Please!

  He only heard distant heavenly laughter.