He didn’t like this place.  Not that it mattered, but it was something of which he was always conscious after making the Transition.  He didn’t like it here.

A gust of wind ran across the crackled, bone-white surface of the vast plain, and its path through this lower stratum of the atmosphere was actually visible, appearing as a serpentine river of periwinkle-colored shadow lashing the space between the ground and the horizon.

It, the wind gust, wept piteously as it undulated and lashed at the open spaces above the plain.  It carried with it the smell of wet stone and fleshy corruption, the scent of distant decay.

To the west, under the rolling encroach of deepening shadows, an ugly, black feathered, hyena-like beast called a “phrangbek”, emitted a feral howl as it prepared to stalk its prey.

The Pilgrim's hooded eyes peered out from under the brow of his helmet and he surveyed the farthest reaches of the horizon, past the dying glare from the setting twin suns, one enormous and red while the other was small and an intense shade of blue, over the landscape, as he waited to be met by his fellow conspirators.

The oddness of the thought interrupted his rueful silent reverie.  Perhaps the phrase, "fellow conspirators" was not quite accurate.  It indicated they, these people for whom he waited, were his peers.  They were not, not in any sense.  He had no known peers.  They were frightened, greedy, miserable little creatures of limited imagination and talent.  They were needy and small-minded.  They created nothing.  They did not evolve.  They were not worthy of their aspirations.  They lived only at the kindness and mercy of those who were more powerful and who were greater than themselves.

They deserved nothing more than to live ... and die ... under the growing shadow of The Wound.

Sometimes, when he'd been Upworld for too long, when the sensation of fire ants roaming chaotically under his skin made him want to hurt something even more than he usually did, the Pilgrim forgot how strange and awful this place could be.  The phrangbek’s call brought a thin smile to his cruel lips.

A transmogrified Oliver Titus Wander reveled in his power.

He was The Pilgrim.  No longer a small, physically awkward, emotionally and intellectually precocious little boy, he'd become a dour and grim, wide-shouldered paladin wrapped in a voluminous cloak as iridescent black as a crow’s wing.  The body armor that protected his torso, groin, and thighs was metal of a dark, glistening cinerious color, gray as ash.  Muscled like an Olympic athlete, tall enough to dwarf even the tallest barbarian on this strange world, he fairly vibrated with barely restrained vitality and otherworldly energies.  He was a predator of the Apocalypse.  His motionless figure was embraced by a shadowy gloom that gathered deepest across his face and chest like a hood, as if he were a splinter cut from off the falling night that slowly blanketed the plain.

He didn’t like it here, but, sadly and to his eternal regret, he undeniably belonged here.

He saw the coach approaching, cresting the rocky rise that bisected a rippled, sandy acres-wide concave depression in the plain.

The lumpen, pumpkin-shaped suspended carriage was drawn by a quartet of large and muscular, six-legged canines, their untrimmed matted fur flying in the twilight breezes and their forked blue-black tongues hanging from out their wolfish muzzles, almond-shaped eyes glowing with a sickly jade-hued light.  A pair of small cloth pennants flew from thin, rat-tail poles affixed to the rear of the coach’s round, slightly ribbed frame.  The coach driver, a turbaned bearded man in a silver-studded leather tunic, sat on an ornate gilded bench above a forward-facing window in the carriage’s shell.  The driver’s eye sockets blazed with a thick, aqueous fire that glowed and sizzled like magma.  On his hands, he wore thick, oversized gloves made from cured and tanned reptile hide and the chain-link reins of the coach were permanently fastened to the inside of each fist.  A pair of iron spikes topped with acorn-shaped finials had long ago been driven while white-hot through the thickest muscles of his thighs to forever pin and lock him onto the driver’s seat.  The flesh around the ragged holes in his limbs had healed around the spikes.  He was permanently bolted to his bench atop the coach.

The carriage rolled on wide, multi-spoke wheels of reinforced human bone rimmed with hammered iron ribbon.

This was a royal conveyance belonging to the Emissaries of the Warlord, outlaws of the Hegemony.

The Pilgrim allowed himself a momentary display of disgust: these were primitive brutes and savages.  A rabble horde.  It disgusted him to have to deal with them.

But, business was business.

The carriage drew close and then stopped.  The panting canines shuffled their huge paws on the hard soil and growled softly as they watched the Pilgrim’s approach.  As he drew closer, one of them cowered and another whined.  They instinctively knew they were in the presence of a deadly apex predator.

He paid them no mind.  Most living things instinctively feared him.  Even hardened, battle-savvy men such as those four who emerged from within the coach: soldiers and mercenaries in the employ of the warlord tyrant Arvenall Dampiko, The Crucifixer.

The leader of the quartet was a bearded, thickly-built, swarthy man wearing a dark green tunic with the torso bisected by ribbons of gray plate metal.  He had angry eyes the color of a stormy midnight.  He had the aspect of a former soldier or mercenary about him.  A long-barreled metal pistol sat in a leather holster hung from a belt low on his thick hips.  He was bracketed on either side by a pair of tall, bald, willowy gaunt men dressed in flowing ruby robes with shiny silver epaulets at the shoulders and a thin silver belt with circular golden studs.  Their long faces were dominated by sunken, hollow eyes the color of emeralds, the sockets rimmed with thin red scars.  On their thin hands they each wore a metal gauntlet with fingers ending in scythe-like blades.  The pair looked to be monks or acolytes of some obscure religious sect, but Pilgrim felt an air of witchery from them.  They were sorcerers, probably mutants, of some kind.  The last man to leave the coach was a true marvel of physical attributes: he was a tall, aesthetically perfect physical specimen, with longish hair, worn free and unbraided, the color of a sunset in springtime.  He was dressed in the form-fitting, gleaming jet-black body armor once worn by the Officers Cadre of the Emperium Militia.   High on his left breast was a metal pentagonal emblem, a badge of sorts, indicating he was an Honored Veteran of the Punitive Incursion Campaigns of the High-Lords some fifteen years past.  He was the leader.  He was Arvenall Dampiko’s personal representative, the warlord’s voice.  He was the stamp of authority on whatever proceedings were to follow.

 And as such, Pilgrim immediately, instinctively hated him.

 “Our names…,”the leader began officiously.

 “Are universally unimportant,” the Pilgrim said, interrupting him.  “Do not tell me.”

 Pilgrim reached into the inner lining of his own voluminous cloak and removed a brass and crystal object from the cloak’s inner pocket.

 “The beacon your last emissary left for me Upworld.  It works quite well.  Since I no longer have use for it, you may have it back.”

 “What happened to our emissary?”, the brutish member of the contingent asked, his voice a rumbling growl.

 Pilgrim shrugged.  “It would appear he succumbed rather unexpectedly to the stress and strain of travel from here to the Upworlds.  Developed a fatal breathing problem.  In the end, I fear he was too fragile to survive the journey.”

 The swarthy warrior raised an eyebrow and looked suspiciously into Pilgrim’s face, trying to peer past the partial mask that extended down from Pilgrim’s helmet.

 “Strange.  The man was specifically chosen for the journey because he was sturdy and strong…”

 “It’s hard to predict how the effects of spatial and temporal transplacement will affect some people,” Pilgrim said.  “You can really never know in advance.”

 The warrior harrumphed skeptically.

 “And what is it exactly you want from me?”  Pilgrim asked.

 The bald ascetics in flowing robes spoke simultaneously, their inflection-free, sexless voices blending as they did, as if they shared a single mind.

 “There is a walled metropolis at the edge of the Forever Plain called ‘The City’, it has no other known name, and it is an independent state, a survivor from the times before the Long Death.  It owes no allegiance to any centralized post-disaster government nor to any single warlord.  It has stood near inviolate for almost a century.  It does not kneel before the Church of the Emperium.  It and its people are under the illusion that they are free…”

 At this point the leader of the rogue group of strange dignitaries spoke again.  His voice was cold and his words were clipped and terse.  He was obviously not happy to be involved with this select group of traveling companions nor with the rendezvous with Pilgrim.

 “Arvenall Dampiko wants The City under his banner.  It has weapons and trade and wealth that would greatly enhance his status as the leading source of law and authority beyond the Forever Plain.  What can you do to make this happen?”

“That depends entirely on what the warlord can do for me,” Pilgrim replied.

 “Name it.  I have complete authority to speak for the warlord in this matter.”

 “I’ll have to give that some thought.  Accepting the gift of such an opportunity is not a thing to be utilized impulsively.  I’ll get back to you on it.”

 “Can you actually do what Arvenall Dampiko believes you can do?  Can you really deliver the entirety of The City to him?”

 Pilgrim smiled humorlessly.  “I can do more even than that.  It is just a matter of supplying me the proper motivation.  But he already knows that, else why did he send you at all?”

 “I have heard things about you, dark and troubling things,” the warlord’s representative said.  “And I worry that my master may be bargaining with a creature bereft of honor, unworthy of his trust.”

 “It is a good thing to worry.  Worry means you are aware of the risks you incur in making such a deal.  It means you have some strong suspicion of the consequences and amount of harm that can befall you if the enterprise into which you enter is not successful.”

 The black armored mercenary frowned.  “That sounds a bit like an implied threat.”

 “Try not to trouble yourself about it.  Suffice to say, yes, I absolutely can deliver on what your master wants.”

 “And the price?”

 Pilgrim paused before answering.  “You’ll know it as soon as I know.”

 “What do you anticipate you will you need in the way of men and supplies?”

 “Not a thing.  That is not how I work,” Pilgrim said.

 “Really?”

 The Pilgrim tilted his helmeted head to one side and regarded the mercenary and his fellow emissaries the way one would regard monkeys at a zoo.

 “Really,” he said with arrogant finality.

 The answer appeared to disturb the mercenary.  He did not understand how such an undertaking could be possible without some form of military action, covert or otherwise.  He stared hard at Pilgrim, as if he were trying to come to a decision he could live with, and then said,  “What is it that you are going to do, alien?”

 “Is it really necessary for you to know?”

 “Yes.  It is.”

 “Well, I must say I was hoping you would not ask,” Pilgrim said.  “It will involve intelligence gathering, treachery, identifying and isolating specific targets and an expenditure of dangerous energies.  And then, well, to be brief, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill a great many people…”

 The mercenary hesitated for a moment before he finally said, “A city without a population is not much of a prize.  Arvenall Dampiko has no wish to rule over a graveyard.”

 “Not even if all those dead within the cemetery were to rise as his loyal and tireless army?”

 There was a thick and uncomfortable silence after Pilgrim spoke.  They could tell he was not making jest with them.  The man in the billowing cloak of deep rainbow darkness meant what he said.

 “What you propose is insanity,” the monks said as one.

 “Alien, you are mad”, the swarthy warrior stated bluntly.

 “Or a monster,” the armored mercenary concluded.

 “Or I’m exactly what your master has been looking for to secure his prize,” Pilgrim said.  “I am the tool only the bravest and the most ruthless would dare to use.”

 The mercenary abruptly signaled for his fellow emissaries to return to the nightmarish coach behind them.  They all turned to leave.  He shook his head as he considered the Pilgrim’s words and his eyes were, for an extended moment, haunted.

 “We will await word of your success,” he said.  “And I am certain we will regret this to the extreme.”

 “The measure of your regret depends entirely on how you feel about the price I will levy for these services,” Pilgrim said.  “And upon whether or not you refuse to pay.”

 The mercenary, the last to board onto the coach, stood on the step leading into the carriage interior and said over one shoulder,  “I want you to know that I fervently hope we never again meet.”

 The Pilgrim only smiled in response.  The expression was only limited to his thin lips.  His eyes, on the other hand, blazed with an intense, unholy light.  It was the light of anticipation, the soldier knew.

 This was what the madman had wanted.  Now blood would surely flow.

             *           *           *

 Karamanga had been blubbering like a lost little girl since they'd first mentioned they were going to make an expedition into this realm.  

 Idiot.  Freak.

 So far as the eight members of the military Broken Mirror unit were concerned, Karamanga was a liability anyways... he'd been too long alone wandering The Withered Land and he'd had no training, was unprepared for the things he'd seen and experienced, and so his time as a castaway on the shores of Chaos was essentially a fear-filled waste.  Moreover he hadn't been trained as a scholar, a scientist nor as a soldier, so his small, undisciplined mind simply didn't make the kinds of observations that would have proven invaluable to the Morpheus Team.  He was a techie, pure and simple, a codespinner.  Within his field, he was a master, perhaps even inspired to near genius, but outside that he was lost.  He could provide them with precious little hard data.

 He just sat around moaning about how he was sorry and how much he missed his best friend, a doctor of physics named Adam Wilder, a man much smarter and much braver than he could ever be, or so he said.

 Other than that, Karamanga's only claim to fame was that he'd found this place at all and was perhaps the only living being to ever return from it relatively sane.

 The Project Leaders for the OUTLAND Scenario at the Harbeckke Institute for Dream Research in Laurel, Maryland, were absolutely in love with the guy.

 Dr. Veneralli and Major Holloway felt otherwise about Karamanga, a thin, nervous Artificial Intelligence programmer who'd slipped into a coma nineteen weeks ago after writing new code for an adaptive neural net computer game.

 Raphael Karamanga had entered the strange twilight not-world of dreamwalking while writing computer code.   He'd drifted into that non-place after entering a fugue-state, altering his brain's alpha rhythms and beta and theta waves, and he'd manifested an alternate reality.

 He'd come to The Withered Land and he couldn't find his way out.

 He lay in a comatose state in a hospital bed for nineteen weeks until something snapped within his mind and had ejected him from out of the nightmarescape of the Withered Lands.

 That was the unfathomably mysterious and scary part: he hadn't left of his own accord or miraculously discovered a portal out --- something had EJECTED him from out of the Withered Land.

 Something in that Hell didn't want him there.

 That had been four months ago.   Since then, scientists and dream researchers at the Harbeckke Institute had been working around the clock trying to sift fact from fiction in Karamanga's hysterical account of his misadventures in another dimension.

 Dr. Veneralli postulated that the future of the Human Race was more dependent on charting and mapping the wild, heretofore unknown territories of human consciousness, the "dimension of thought" as he described it, than on yet more computerized physical technology that the average guy on the street couldn't understand and couldn't comfortably use.  

 Holloway believed that Veneralli's "dimension of thought" was likely to present more problems than it would solve, both from a practical matter-of-fact viewpoint and morally.  People were hardwired to be slaves to their senses and their imaginations were often bound to the limitations of those senses.  Human beings weren't totally able to cope with the physical world that surrounded them, regular old-fashioned Time and Space, much less with the psychic manifestation of a world at the End of Time, a place where all things went to die.  He would not quite describe himself as a cynic, but he was certainly no starry-eyed crusader on the edges of a fabled "new frontier".  Science would be challenged. Religions would be challenged.  Social structures and the role of the individual would be challenged if it was revealed that ANYONE could potentially manifest the doorway to this dry dead dimension of sinister whispering winds.  To Major Holloway, any egress into the Withered Land was seriously tempting Fate.

 And dealing with Raphael Karamanga frightened him.

 After all, when the little man had first experienced his "psycho-temporal relocation", he'd left a massive, ragged sinkhole in the place where there'd once been a five story brick office building that had held seventy-nine workers.  Karamanga had worked in Dr. Adam Wilder's "theoretical chaos environments" division.  They were mathematicians and computer modelers and "blue sky" thinkers --- not miracle builders, not bonafide geniuses.  Karamanga was just a cog in a far greater wheel.  Not that it mattered now.  The whole think-tank disappeared.  Gone, all gone.  Vanished.   Never to return.

 The Institute had created a team of psychologists and physicists and medical doctors to watch Karamanga full-time while they’d tested and probed him.  The U.S. military monitored the experiments.  The Broken Mirror team members were trained in the CIA’s Remote Viewing techniques and then they were given classes in parapsychology in readiness for any "event" that Karamanga would generate.

 And then they’d brought Karamanga to The Fort and to the Darkhold.  They thought he was some kind of a vital element to “the equation”, whatever the hell THAT meant.  And Karamanga had then discovered these arrogant assclowns had gone and named the place --- named it! --- after they’d been provided actual evidence of its existence courtesy of a creature they called “The Ambassador”.  He called it "Teshiwahur".  The idiots in the military’s science division called it “Brimstone”.  As if  ANY of that had mattered!  Then, by virtue of a chemically-implanted post-hypnotic suggestion, Karamanga had been induced into another comatose fugue-state after spending the prior eleven hours spinning computer code...

 And next they’d stuck him in the maw of The Machine.

 Electro-encephalogram readings, bioelectric telemetry and magnetic resonance discordance fields around Karamanga had gone completely off the charts as he'd dropped into the cold embrace of coma...

 Physical sensors monitoring everything in happening to Karamanga had suddenly gone offline, as if someone had shut off all power...

 The fan-blades inside The Machine had begun to vibrate at a frequency producing a sound like the sustained roar of a thousand lions.

 The Broken Mirror unit had then marched onto the shining aluminum road into the mighty device’s darkened interior.

 The walls and floor had disappeared from right under their feet...

 It was an explosion of quantum mathematical theories reluctantly made physical: the interspatial Laws of Attraction then ran rampant, following invisible energy-grids where the corollary of Retracting Co-Linearity catalyzed, and Like called to Like, the Greater Whole of the alien universe remanding the migratory Fragment infecting the human back into its web of influence.  The forces of gravitational and temporal cohesion fluxed and then inverted and Karamanga was inexorably pulled back towards the Withered Land.

 Red lightning had ripped through the air, spraying in all directions like a high-voltage spider's web, soundless, vast against a background of gray nothingness...

 They'd each HEARD the Universe tear, they'd FELT it rip asunder as they had all been sucked into the Void...

 And suddenly they couldn't feel their bodies anymore...

 Then they were there.  Just like that.  Moved across the cosmos, across REALITIES, in the blink of a madman's eye.  

 There.

 In the Withered Land.

 Like Karamanga, Major Holloway did not think it wise to be in this place.

 About fifteen meters away from the main body of the eight-man team, Karamanga sat on his haunches rocking slowly back and forth, sobbing...

 "Ah God, God no...," he whimpered in a thick wet voice, "It worked.  Oh shit, it worked.  I’m here, God help me, I’m here... again!"

                   *           *           *