Conan did not answer. He slung his shield over his back and began the long descent. He passed through the haunted forests of Hyperborea, where the trees whispered in forgotten tongues, and into the teeming markets of Shadizar the Wicked.

"The mountains are too small for you, Cimmerian," a voice rasped.

For weeks, the red-haired reavers from the north had harried the mountain clans, but today the Cimmerians had answered with steel. Yet, as the echoes of the war-horns faded, Conan felt a restlessness that no battle could sate. He looked south, beyond the gray mists, toward the legendary kingdoms of the "civilized" world—Hyboria, where cities were built of stone and men lived in soft decadence.

In a tavern thick with the scent of lotus-wine and unwashed bodies, he met a Zamorian thief named Taurus. Together, they scaled the impossible heights of the , seeking a gem that wept light. Inside, Conan did not find gold, but a trans-cosmic horror—a blind, elephant-headed god from a world older than the stars, imprisoned by a sorcerer’s greed.

"I seek only to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth under my sandaled feet," Conan replied, quoting a dream he barely understood.