Stepping through the portal was like diving headfirst into a painting that was still wet and being actively smeared by a giant, angry toddler. The world on the other side didn't make sense.
One moment, Ryan's foot landed on what looked like solid, grey rock. The next moment, the rock dissolved into a swarm of purple butterflies that fluttered away and then turned back into rock a hundred feet in the air before crashing down.
The sky above them was a swirling mess of colors, shifting from a fiery orange to a deep, sickly green and back again. There was no sun, just a chaotic, pulsing light that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The air itself felt thick and buzzed against their skin like a thousand tiny insects.
"Okay," Hale, the Crimson Banner medic, said, his voice impressively calm as he looked at a nearby mountain that was currently upside down. "This is… unusual."
