"Say, pal…"

Those words were burned, branded into his subconscious. They were loud, abrasive, and dripped with a poisonous suavity that Wilson wouldn't soon forget.

He'd been a blasted fool, to listen to such a shady man, giving him shady instructions to build a shady machine. Not once, back in his little cottage on the outskirts of Falmouth, had he considered the ramifications of his actions. Not once had he considered what dark terrors might lurk in the shadows, watching his progress, dictating his every little actions he slaved away over the mysterious machine. He'd drove himself quite near the edges of human capability building that machine, and for what? To be led to his own imprisonment in this cured forest? To be hunted down by hounds and beasts of shadow and any number of other monstrosities that lived out here? Was that his reward?

Well, it all be damned. He was long sick of this place and its bizarre inhabitants, its strange seasons and its deadly darkness. This was far beyond some terrible joke or even a waking nightmare. This was…

This was…

Well to be fair, he didn't know exactly what to call it. He was a scientist, not a linguist! All he knew was that this place was horrible, dangerous, and most certainly evil. It was out for his blood, it what it was! Out for his blood because apparently the generous helping he'd given the machine in the first place hadn't been enough! The idea offended him, really, but he had other things to worry about at present.

Wilson took a deep breath, clutching the blade of his flint knife in the palm of his hand. If it was his blood this place wanted, it was his blood it would get!

He jerked the blade from his grasp, gritting his teeth as it tore open his palm, the second time in – well, truthfully, Wilson had lost track of how long he had been out here. It must have been weeks. Either way, to have to split open his own hand twice was two times too many for one lifetime, in his opinion. His palm burned, his wound seeping, turning his palm slick and bloody as he tentatively dipped a finger in the resulting ichor.

Ehwaz to Mannaz, Wunjo to Raidho; his blood completed the runes. Droplet fell to the marble beneath his feet as he worked, hitting the stone with a soft pitter-patter that betrayed the gruesome nature of the task. Thurisaz, the reagent. Jera, a scientific success. Perthro, to hide his tracks. Each rune was carefully constructed or reconstructed on the face of the great wooden platform. He clutched his bloodied hand into a fist, doing his best to stop the bleeding while he worked, knowing it would heal over the moment he landed in whatever convoluted world this new machine brought him to.

It wasn't the first time Wilson had used the wooden platforms, adored with all the broken bits of the door that he'd created in his workshop back home, scattered across an infinite realities to aid his constant race against the forces that brought him here. He'd built this device over and over again, each time the faint hope that he could somehow outrun the devil that had brought him here driving him like a madman. The very definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wilson had spent an ungodly amount of time out in these forests, watching shadows move and taunt him out of the corner of his eye, telling himself that it was his imagination, that he was as sound and stable as ever, but it wasn't until he'd landed in this world – or rather, this version of the world, as they never really seemed to change – that he'd realized with rancorous laughter that he'd constructed a remarkable number of these devices, using the exact components, in the exact same way each time, and each time holding out that sliver of hope that maybe, somehow, this would be the one. This had to be it, he'd told himself, this had to work.

Over and over again he'd played the fool, the poor insane sod trotting about the forest, collecting bits of a machine that never should have existed in the first place, while dodging death at every corner, only to do it all again from scratch when he'd finished!

He supposed he was great entertainment. He'd figured that's what he was here for, at any rate. Some cruel amusement for whatever forces moved the stars.

The divining rod shuddered a bit on its perch, the movement caught out of the corner of his eye and ignored as if he'd just had a particularly nasty spat with the thing. Truth be told, he was fairly angry with it. A bit of misplaced aggression never hurt anyone – not when they were the only sentient being for ages, at least. He'd built and rebuilt the damned rod more times than he'd like to admit, and the blaring siren it produced was certainly no treat for the ears, despite its quaint appearance of an old radio.

But what came out of the radio next solidified Wilson's convictions: he hated the bloody thing.

"Say, pal…" came the garbled voice, barely understandable through the snowstorm of static that the siren had long ago devolved into. Wilson had never really heard the voice over the radio as much as he had felt it. The strange, fuzzy sounds of static weaving themselves into words and syllables in his head. The voice was suave and melodic, almost hypnotic as he froze, his shoulders tensing up as he listened. "…you really shouldn't be doing that."

Wilson's lips turned up in a savage grin. He was making the mysterious voice angry? Good. Let it be angry. He was angry. Angry that he'd had to endure the night terrors and the gaping wounds and breathless flights as he fled from the beasts with gnashing teeth and death in their eyes. The voice could be angry about a few rearranged runes. He finished, the last line smeared in his own blood looking a bit dry as the rust color of his additions began to seep into the porous wood.

"Is that so?" he asked, absently, admiring his own handiwork as he stood, rummaging a strip of spider's silk from his backpack. The thing was about falling apart at the seams; he'd never been much of a boy scout, if he were honest. But it was enough to survive with, and it's not like he could take it with him, either. That much had become painfully clear after his first encounter with these strange devices. A week's worth of rations, gone! Scattered to the winds along with his painstakingly woven backpack – the first of many, it would seem.

He tied the silk around his pal, letting it's natural glue hold the dressing in place. He watched, perhaps a bit absently as his blood began to spot and speckle the portion of the makeshift bandage that covered his flayed palm. He heard the static of the radio, despite knowing he'd turned the divining rod off hours ago, after he'd found a familiar landmark and followed the path directly to the wooden platform. He pondered, quietly, the foolishness of it all. How dense he'd been…

But no more foolishness. No more insanity. The runes dried, baked beneath the scorching summer sun that beat relentlessly down on Wilson every day of the season. The rains would come soon – they followed close behind the most aggressive of the heat.

Best make this quick.

He'd come prepared this time. With little in his pack aside from the necessities of travel, he set it heavily on the ground, joining it only a moment after. His trek across the savannas and through the marble chess-scape had left him more than a bit peckish. More than once, he'd made the mistake of traversing these worlds wholly unprepared. Hungry and tired, he'd activated the device and let the shadows whisk him away to a new world, only to arrive with no resources on the brink of another deadly night.

It was something he'd noticed, over the countless times he'd tried to make his escape through the device. There was always lost time. If he traveled at morning, it would be dusk when he woke up in the next world. If he travelled at dusk, he would arrive in the pitch blackness, and have to race against the shadows to keep himself alive.

So now, with the device built and modified to his liking, with the sun creeping higher and higher in the sky and the clockwork creatures no more than a pile of mechanical rubbish off in the distance, Wilson sat himself down and helped himself to the remaining contents of his pack.

He'd never had so much of an appreciation for berries and dried meats as he did now. They were the staple of his diet since the beginning of his stay in this nightmarish world. He'd tried growing his own crops on more than one occasion, but it seemed not even the looming threat of a slow and miserable death could persuade his poor gardening skills to relieve him of the haunting past of having killed every houseplant he'd ever tried to tend to – and it seemed those gruesome, if entirely unintended, murders followed him to this world. He couldn't get much more than a single miserable carrot to grow.

So, berries and dried meats it was! A bit bland, if he had to complain, but go a few consecutive days without having eaten anything, and you start to gain an appreciation for even the most unpalatable of edibles.

Moments like these had become a scarcity since he'd built the machine. Despite the knot of anxiety in his chest, it was actually rather peaceful. He had no fire to tend to, no grisly bits of meat to clean for tomorrow's meal. No hounds, no spiders. Just him, his humble dinner, a spectacular blazing sunset, and the nagging presence of hope.

Oh, yes, Wilson was terrified. Best case scenario, the wooden device landed him in a nearly identical world to this one – his efforts will have been in vain, and it was back to square one in every conceivable way. No supplies, no food, no camp, and no success, leaving him to ponder other methods of escape.

Worst case scenario…

Thinking back to the horrible bloody mess he had to clean every time he hunted, knowing what entrails and other unmentionables looked like once they'd been hacked to bits, he didn't particularly want to think about the worst case scenario.

Plainly put, he desperately hoped his alterations didn't blow him up.

Science was – well, a science. But this, these runes, these devices… he could hardly, in good conscience, call it science anymore. It was a perversion of every scientific principal and law and theorem he'd ever learned. These things shouldn't have worked the way they did, but he'd accepted long ago that if he wanted to survive out here, he couldn't dwell too long on it. As much as he'd have liked to pick it apart, to better understand the inner workings of those touchstones or the Shadow Manipulator – a machine he'd built himself! – he understood most of all that that wasn't his place, here.

Wilson stood, just as the sun began dipping over the horizon. He dusted off his pants, brushing himself down and preparing himself mentally for whatever was about to transpire.

Another warning came over the radio, still stuck firmly in the ground just outside the marble chessboard perimeter. He'd have to leave it there. He ignored it, just as he ignored all the other ramblings and threats that came from that damned voice. It was listening to that voice in the first place that had landed him in such a miserable position! He saw no reason to believe that everything he heard of it wasn't vile lies, meant only to derail him further.

He activated the platform. It rose up like a clumsy newborn animal, suspended above the wooden platform as the runes began to glow, all alike as the blood runes struggled to life along with their brothers. Wilson felt a strange sense of pride. It had taken him countless sleepless nights studying the runes presented on each of the platforms he'd come across, gaining a better understanding of them through the scribbled learnings of the pigmen and his own genius intellect. Even as he'd devised his plan, he hadn't been entirely sure of himself, but seeing the runes working side by side, everything seemingly going off without a hitch as the device powered up, just the way he'd seen it done a dozen times before – he figured he could allow himself this little bit of pride, given the circumstances.

Swallowing thickly, Wilson stepped onto the platform, making sure the scuffed toes of his shoes didn't dare touch the runes he'd worked so hard on. He took a deep breath.

It was eerily familiar, the situation he found himself in in that moment. With the voice in the radio shouting angrily at him, enraged as his hand reached tentatively for the lever to this newly made device, he suddenly felt as if he were back in his little cottage, locked away in his attic as usual, staring down the maw of the machine.

His good hand curled around the lever.

This was different.

And without further adu, Wilson threw the switch, with all the grandeur of an experienced scientist.

He remained on the device; he knew what to expect, but it was still something that turned his blood to ice and caused his heart to sink down to his knees. There was that horrible laughter again, the same voice that had goaded him into building the machine in the first place, only this laughter came from everywhere. Wilson had a strong suspicion that it was all in his head, that the laughter wasn't even truly there, but he would never admit it.

He forced himself to stay still, watching as the shadows tore themselves from the ground, swirling and rising up like a black smoke, twirling and twisting as the wisps transmogrified, taking the form of terrible, clawed hands that reached for him from inky blackness.

His heart beat against his ribs, his head spinning as he felt their icy touch, the talons grasping him so tight he'd thought they were trying to squeeze the very life from him the first time they'd caught him. The laughter grew louder and louder in his ears as the shadows wrapped themselves like snakes around his form, lifting him off his feet before dragging him down, deep down, into the gaping abyss below as the shadows consumed him, whisking him away to some unknown place.

Darkness enveloped him, and Wilson fought to keep control of his mental faculties. It was very easy to slip into sheer terror when dragged down into the deep like this, to let fear and panic consume you like the shadows consumed your body. But Wilson was a rational man of science. He'd decided long ago that if he'd wanted to survive, he would need his incredible mind working full force, not distracted by things like fear or his own mortality.

And yet.

Something was very wrong.

The last thing he had seen was the sun dipping over the treetops, sinking below the horizon as the danger of nightfall blanketed the forest again. By his research, he was certain that time should have been displaced, that it should have been morning by the time he made it to this new world. So it came as a shock to him that the cold claws deposited him in the inky blackness of nighttime. Was this the fruit of all his laborious research into the mysterious runes that made the wooden platform run? So much work and tedious translation, all speeding him towards a grisly death at the hands of whatever lurked in the darkness.

All this came in a flash instance, of course. The human mind was an incredible marvel, capable of picking up and processing several cues at once. So, understandably, the very next thing that crossed Wilson's mind as the hands of shadow dropped him into this new world, was that the ground was nowhere to be found.

Wilson flailed, hoping desperately that he would hit something solid. His stomach lurched as he fell, and suddenly he deeply regretted having dinner before his little trip.

Without regard to the hounds, or the shadowy beasts that were undoubtedly waiting for him below – without regard for the hour, or any sleeping inhabitants of this world, Wilson did the only thing he could think to.

He screamed.

His own voice sounded strange in his ears. It may have had something to do with hurtling towards the ground, surely, but truth be told Wilson was a little preoccupied to really delve into the scientific process at the moment.

Wind whipped around him as he fell, and in the pitch of night he could only wonder how long it would be before he hit the ground. If there was even ground to hit! He hadn't considered that possibility…

Suddenly, something else struck him.

He felt a sharp pain in his ribcage as the air was forced from his lungs. Whatever it was, it had felt large and wooden.

Coming to a rest for a moment, Wilson noticed he began slipping. Clammy hands began scrabbling, begging for purchase as gravity reclaimed him and dragged him down. The world began to spin, everything dizzy and topsy-turvy as he tumbled down and landed with a hard thud, the grass mercifully soft as he lay prone on the ground that had been all too eager to meet him.

He lay perfectly still, listening. Waiting.

There was not otherworldly screech, now howling wind as the shadows crept up on him. In fact, the only sound seemed to be crickets, undoubtedly disturbed by his noisy landing.

The gentleman scientist coughed plainly into the dirt. By God, that had hurt. He breathed slowly, testing his injuries. What in the name of uranium had he hit? It hadn't felt like any kind of tree.

He froze. There it was. The sound in the darkness he'd been dreading from the moment he'd seen the black of night. His heart began pounding, hearing the great groaning echoing through the night. Light was out of the question; he had no materials and couldn't see his own hands in front of his face. Dizzy with pain and fright, Wilson could barely keep his head up let alone run for cover.

Hearing the groaning grow louder and louder, Wilson let his head drop to the soft, cool grass. The darkness seeped into his senses, devouring the world around him as he lost his grasp on consciousness. He didn't have time to worry about what was lurking out there. With each breath, it already felt like some heinous invisible force was trying to pull him apart. He quietly reminded himself of his conviction from earlier.

Whatever the outcome of the experiment, it was his doing.

The last thing that Wilson heard was a monstrous crash just behind him, and then the world went as black as could be.