Conan the Barbarian #43 (Marvel Comics, 1974)

Conan the Barbarian issue 43 opens up on Conan and Red Sonja fleeing an armed group of bounty hunters on horseback through the desert. The enemy archer, Laxil, brings Red Sonja's horse down from a distance to prevent them from reaching the cliffs at the edge of the desert.

Sonja draws her sword and prepares to fight, but Conan scoops her up (against her wishes) and rides toward the cliffs, where they dismount and proceed to climb. They reach a cleft in the rocks, where Sonja and Conan stop to push a giant rock formation into the approaching bounty hunters, crushing all of them except Mammon of Ophir, who vows revenge another day.

While the one-eyed Mammon rides away, Red Sonja and continue to climb through the rock formation where they discover a bizarre valley filled with a thick, red mist. A strange tower lurks in the distance. Without their packs, now buried under rubble, the two make for the tower but find themselves attacked by a strange bat monster.

After defeating the man-like bat creature, they finally reach the tower where the figure of a man approaches them and throws a vial. Sonja and Conan are both swept away by some kind of sorcery-induced LCD vision quest.

When Conan awakes, he finds himself on the floor of a chamber with Red Sonja, next to him, on an altar. An odd woman named Uathacht stands above him. Though it sounds like she would have preferred to seduce Conan, she works with her sorcerer brother Morophla to eternally sustain their lives after being cursed by Thoth-Amon.

Conan rushes Morophla but finds his vision altered. He rushes headfirst into a stone pillar.

After accepting that they are held prisoner by these awful sorcerers, Conan wakes Sonja, and they follow the brother and sister deep into the tower's dungeons filled with the bat monsters that they saw earlier. Before Morophla locks them in their cells, he introduces them to a hideous, deformed monster called Dromek! As it turns out, Dromek was used to mate with captured human females to breed humans that these sorcerers use to stay alive!

Uathacht pushes Red Sonja into the bone-filled pit with Dromek, and Conan jumps in after her. After a fight, Conan defeats it by shoving a bone through its mouth into its brain.

Morophla is pleased that they live, and promises Conan that he will breed many new humans from which he plans to extract the Amber Elixer used to preserve the sorcerers for decades.

Conan and Red Sonja are locked in a dark, dungeon prison cell, their new home for all eternity, at least until the events in Conan the Barbarian #44.