Czarik Drameklion ran as quickly as he could down the rough-hewn stairwell, cut into the rocky foundation beneath The City itself, following the spindly figure of the Court's Claimsman, passing crackling torch after burning torch lighting the inky, oily stygian dark that led down to the depths of The Quarry.

"Something bad has happened.  The tally is not right.  Something is missing," the Claimsman had said, his beady, rat-like eyes dancing nervously.  "The Quarry has been compromised."

The Claimsman was an accountant of sorts for the warlord, Kolag Y’phree, but he was not a Tributarian nor a Tax Collector nor an Exchequer.  He was more a manorial steward tasked with accounting for the growth of the warlord's bounty.  His task was a simple one: keep count of and keep track of those special non-monetary possessions belonging to Kolag Y’phree.  The Claimsman counted swords and armor and shields and cannons and ammunition.  He counted the vials and bowls and types of chymikals used by the alchemical mathematicians.  He kept record of the number and contents of the many trunks of precious metals and jewels Kolag Y’phree "liberated" from his rival warlords and their plundered lands.

And he kept track of the contents of The Quarry.

Czarik Drameklion was the Quarry–master, he who kept the keys to the vast forbidden cavern beneath The City.  Admittance to and from the secret cavern was his sole responsibility.  Only the warlord himself could authorize permission to enter the underground mine and only Drameklion could provide access.  A monstrous, bronze, three-paneled door, twice the height of a man and thick as the trunk of an oaken tree, protected the gaping portal into the deepness of The Quarry.  The doors were old, dating back to nearly two centuries before the beginning of the Long Death and the arrival of The Wound, and no one remembered who had erected them or to which king they’d belonged.   But the outlawed Fraternity of Machus had, until recently, been the only guardians of the cold and gloomy place.  Now Czarik Drameklion and a special detachment of nine scarlet armored and helmeted sentries who answered only to the warlord kept and maintained access to the Quarry’s secrets.

Such security and such secrecy had nothing to do with paranoia or greed.   They had everything to do with the contents of The Quarry.

The Quarry held the most rare and precious, most fabulous planetary mineral ever found: Ikarenium, the Gateway Stone.

“As you know, we seldom mine here anymore, not since the demise of the Mage-Master, Kortinek the Lesser, some fifteen cycles past, but we always keep track of the number of processed ingots in the Blue Star vault and the piles of unprocessed raw ore in the Waiting Tank,” the Claimsman said breathlessly as he led Drameklion further across the Quarry floor to a huge rectangular obsidian cabinet resting atop a hexagonal dais cut into rock.

“So what is the issue?  Both the Blue Star vault and the Waiting Tank are triple-locked with lead knots.  There is no key with which to open them.  They can only be opened by someone who can unlink the metal loops comprising the knots,” Drameklion said.

“True.  And yet, there is a modest quantity of Ikarenium missing from the Waiting Tank,” the Claimsman said.

“How ‘modest’?”  Drameklion dreaded hearing the answer.

“Enough to initialize transit…”

Drameklion groaned aloud.   Ikarenium was, for the most part, an inert mineral.   It was, in its natural state, hard and brittle, striated in thin flaky layers, no good for building structures or for use in production of armor or weapons.   But when it was refined, a forbidden process that took unbelievable amounts of electrical energy, it became something astounding, a power that could change the fortunes of an entire world…

…It could move matter, any solid matter, across vast distances, across even Space and Time, in a span of mere heartbeats.

It had once been used as the catalyst to move people and things between the Upworlds and the Withered Land.

“How could this happen?”

The Claimsman shook his narrow head, trembling.  “We think it may have happened during the last annual visit of Lord Cr’Aughtin of the Duchy of Wyst Terringer.”

Drameklion hissed an angry breath past his clenched teeth.  “Cr’Aughtin.   The metallurgist, the renegade Tekk Collector.  Why in the name of sanity would anyone let a twice-censured, rebellious alchemical mathematician and certified madman like him loose inside The Quarry?”

“The Warlord seeks to establish trade with the rich territories of Wyst Terringer…,” the Claimsman began to explain.  “And, quite frankly, they already knew about the existence of The Quarry.  It would have been futile to deny it.”

“But it would have been prudent for the Warlord to reject Lord Cr’Aughtin as their emissary.”

The Claimsman nodded his agreement.

“How long do you estimate the ore samples have been missing?”

“Maybe six sun cycles.  Eight at the most.”

Damn!  Drameklion ran the palm of his hand across his wrinkled forehead as he asked,  “Does Kolag Y’phree know yet?”

 “He will soon,” the Claimsman said woefully.  “Very soon.  The results of this latest inspection are due in the next day or so…”

 “Have you ascertained Lord Cr’Aughtin’s current whereabouts?”

 The Claimsman nodded.  “He’s out on the Forever Plain.  On his way back to Wyst Terringer.”

 “Find someone to intercept him.  Someone focused and deadly who can be extremely persuasive when he demands from him the location of the missing Ikarenium ore.”

 “Perhaps the Traveler in Red?”

 “I don’t care who, just get it done!”

Karamanga hissed a trembling breath between clenched teeth as he looked up into Major Holloway’s questioning face.

 “I can’t believe you thought I’d be calm about this,” he spat between hyperventilating puffs.

 “Well, what in hell did you think we’d been training for this past three weeks?” Holloway replied irritably.  The little programmer’s perceived spinelessness was pushing all the wrong buttons and the career soldier was having a hard time remaining professional in the face of Karamanga’s fatalism.

 “I didn’t care whether or not you and your Wild Bunch came through the psychic-dimensional portal, all guns blazing, just so long as I didn’t have to come with you.   But, GodDAMMIT, you just HAD to drag me along on this suicide mission…!”

 This isn’t a ‘mission’.  It’s a fact-finding probe…,” Holloway answered impatiently, already tired of having to explain himself.

 “Probe this, G.I. Joe,” Karamanga muttered.

 “Look, do you have anything of any value to provide here or are you content to be a useless asshole spouting negativity?” Holloway countered with a sneer.

 “You don’t get it, do you?” Karamanga said wonderingly.  “You’re still not understanding…  Listen up, man, because I am NOT losing my mind and I am not some cowardly little wimp nor am I hysterical --- I know what the hell I’m talking about!  This whole plane of existence, this Reality, is wired together like one big brain, complete with sensory apparatus, independent intelligence and a psychotic bad attitude.  This ain’t Earth.  This ain’t just some inanimate ball of rock and mud.  This is a SYSTEM!  This is a NETWORK!  The air talks to the sea and the sea talks to the land and the land talks to the mountains and the forests and they, in turn, talk to the sentient creatures that walk the land.  The Withered Land is setup like one big all-singing, all-dancing, homicidal meat-grinder hungry for new meat to shred!”

 “Make your point, you’re boring me…,” Holloway said sighing.

 “They KNOW we’re here. They, all of them, the beasts, the birds, the insects, the plants, the dead things, especially the dead things, and all the awful things that hunt… They know we’re here and they’re bored and they don’t like us… We don’t belong here.”  Karamanga slowly rose to his feet, lowering the protective goggles he’d been fitted with, sand and grit cascading from off his leather and nylon combat suit, and he spread his arms expansively as he continued to speak, “We’re Upworld and by definition, we’re the enemy of all things existing here.  They’re jealous of the Upworlds, jealous of the fact that we don’t live in a cosmos that is painfully winding down to die. Hell, can’t you feel it?  The air doesn’t nurture here, the light barely illuminates, it all feels used up, old, like a mouthful of ashes.  They consider themselves prisoners here.  We’re not.  We’ve come a ‘slumming’.  They hate us for that. And they’re gonna come after us!  They’re gonna come HARD!  And there’s no place for us to hide!”   

 “The Outland Project.  You’re talking about the things that attacked you and the other survivors of the Harbeckke Institute when the building was transplaced here,” the soldier said slowly.

 Karamanga nodded.  “You bet I am.  Dead things, beast-like men, killers, tireless, relentless, evil and sadistic.  Things that shouldn’t still be alive! They live for our pain…!  They know we’re here.  Good Christ, don’t you think we tried communicating with them, talking, sign-language, pictures drawn in the dust?  It didn’t matter, they weren’t interested, they were amused… They were there for just one reason: to kill us all.  And they’re coming, I know it, they’re coming.”

 Holloway, a practical man, considered the man’s words. Even if he didn’t fully understand the details driving Karamanga’s words, he could tell that the programmer wasn’t hysterical nor was he mentally unstable.  The man was speaking calmly and rationally, even if what it was he was describing wasn’t rational.  He was remembering experiences most other minds would reject at all costs.

 The Major looked over towards Dr. Veneralli and raised an eyebrow.  Veneralli was watching the low-lying hills in the distance, taking in the horizon in slow sweeps expectantly.  The lean hawk-faced scholar was chewing his lip nervously.  He, too, clearly expected something.

 “Doc?” Holloway prompted.

 “Karamanga said that at first they didn’t see them, they couldn’t recognize just what it was they were looking at… Could be the strange way depth perception is warped and collapsed by the atmosphere, could be the creatures were partially non-refractory, warping light rays around themselves so that they’re not seen very well, almost invisible.  Either way, they were predatory and they were intelligent, organized.  They killed over half of the occupants of the Harbeckke building inside the first two minutes of their appearance, and that included four U.S. Marines, armed with automatic assault weapons, and a compliment of five security guards, veteran policemen, who’d all had additional special weapons training”, the scientist recited.

 “I thought you said the little rat didn’t remember anything?” Holloway growled.   Dr. Veneralli made a face and shrugged, tossing an uncomfortable look at Karamanga.

 “HEY!  Hey, man, ‘the little rat’ is standing right here and I’m telling you that in about three minutes, half your high-tech Rambo squad are gonna be wormfood…!” 

 “SIR!  SIR!  Position 10:30 East, by the edge of the fortress ruins – we’ve got movement!” one of the commando team, Saldano, barked loudly to Holloway.  “Looks like two people, both of them wearing some kind of primitive light armor, and one of them is really big, running this way…!”

 Holloway gave the signal for his men to unlimber their weapons and go to combat-readiness.   Dr. Veneralli pulled his own weapon and looked at it with the nervousness of unfamiliarity.   The Major raised his binoculars.

 A man and a woman.  The man looked black, African-American, really tall, kind of wild-looking, powerful, and carrying what looked to be both a sword and a long-barreled weapon of some kind.  The woman was physically his polar opposite, small, muscularly lithe, white-haired and carrying what seemed to be a crossbow weapon.  They were running very quickly, covering ground and closing the distance with superhuman rapidity, and neither seemed all the worse for the effort.   Strong, outstanding physical conditioning, confident… and definitely alien.   No normal human could ever run at that speed.

 Holloway handed the binoculars to Karamanga and, as the smaller man raised them to his widened eyes, asked, “Recognize these two?  Are they part of the group that attacked you?”

 Karamanga cursed in a high, shrieking voice and dropped the binoculars.  He stumbled away shaking his head.  

 “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he wheezed.

 “Are they enemies?  Answer me, dammit!  Get it together, man!” Holloway snapped.

 “No, no, not enemies.  Don’t know who the girl is, but the tall guy is Dr. Adam Wilder and that’s impossible because he’s dead, I know he’s dead! I watched the Night Marshals hack him to ribbons with their swords…!  He died!  No way he lived, not through that… He was covering our backs as we escaped through the flames, past the wreckage of the Institute building… ohmigawd, ohmigawd…!”

 “A dead man?  You’re not making any sense…!”

 Karamanga stamped his foot and jabbed a trembling finger into the Major’s face.   “It only doesn’t ‘make sense’ if you continue to judge things by the standards that work back on OUR world!  Here, in this place, it makes perfect sense!”

 “Friend or foe?” Veneralli demanded, his voice cutting through Karamanga’s hysteria.

 “Both.  Neither.  How the hell would I know?”

 “Christ, this guy is useless,” Holloway remarked disgustedly.  “Madigan!  Carmoody!”

 Two athletically trim members of the Broken Mirror team jogged up to the Major and saluted.  Both men carried long-barreled automatic rifles fitted with sniper scopes.

 “Yes, sir!”

 “Find some cover behind the ruins and take up flanking positions on an intercept of the incoming unknowns,” Holloway commanded.  “Keep your transmitter channels online, but maintain silence in case there’s any nearby tech-sources monitoring unfamiliar frequencies.  I want target acquisition, but make no move unless you hear the trigger word.”

 “The trigger word is?” the crew-cut, gray-haired veteran soldier, Carmoody, asked.

 “Sahara.”

 “Got it, sir!”  Without further conversation, he and Madigan, a smaller, younger brunette soldier, quickly sprinted off towards opposite mounds of crumbling stone, the remnants of ancient battlements.

 “Where’s The Ambassador?” Holloway demanded, squinting against the glare hidden by the atmospheric grayness dominating the surrounding horizon.

 “Over there…,” Veneralli said, pointing.  “He’d said something about arranging to rendezvous with a secondary external contact.  Someone we’d need as an ambassador to interact with the governing bodies of the indigenous population.   He’d mentioned it back at the Darkhold.”

 “Nothing more than that?  An individual the Institute couldn’t vet pre-mission?   Didn’t even give us a name, I’ll bet.   Vague as usual, I suppose…,” the military leader griped sullenly.

 Veneralli shrugged.  “All I know is he said it was a woman.”