Adrian Kepp, Associate Professor of English Literature, trudged up the path. His face was grim, but determined. His breathing heavy.
He was here because his doctor had insisted he needed more exercise. The professor had been a string bean in his teens, too busy reading -- for school or for pleasure -- to eat much. But although his passion for books had not abated, he had less and less time for pleasure reading. Even when he read the medieval epics and more recent fantasy that had inspired his career, it was mostly for his work.
To deal with the stress, he had turned more and more to food for comfort. Especially to sugary sweets. So, by the age of thirty, he had developed noticeable flab, which his fondness for tight black suits did not help.
He was not happy about his appearance; it was a shameful testament to his lack of self-control when it came to food. But that alone would not have gotten him out here. Rather it was his respect for professional medicine and honed obedience to medical authority. His doctor had given him several options to work off his excess calories; he had chosen walking -- and hiking -- as being the simplest and farthest from sports or gym membership. Which as a bona fide nerd he had always detested on principle.
Finally, though, his will could carry his body no further, and he paused to catch his breath, going so far as to lean against a tree. Mr. Kepp did have a fondness for nature, but he found it rather too messy in person.
Still, better here than the city. Too much noise, too many modern buildings, too many people. Kepp enjoyed teaching, but outside of his classroom he did not handle crowds well. And there was a sense, out here away form it all, that he might encounter... something, a something he had been missing in his life for a long time.
His weary reverie was interrupted by... something glowing?
What is that?
He pushed himself off the tree, his eyes rivetted on the unusual sight. Sweat and burning muscles forgotten, he started forward again, drawn through the trees by a golden light streaming through the boles.
He stepped from the leafy shadows into a clearing, the center of which was dominated by a tall, vertical slit of golden fire. As he watched, too tired and awestruck to question it, the slit dilated into an almost-rectangular ovoid: ten feet tall, six wide; straight-edged but curved at the corners. The fire hung in the air, creating a bright-burning frame to a window -- no, a massive door into another world.
An open door through which he saw...