The Road we Walk (part 1)

The man watched the viewscreen as his Jade Pagoda moved in for rondezvous with the Pyramid. He noted that the last to arrive had been the Champions--the Chosen from his own reality. He felt a twinge of sadness as he remembered his own past. Here, as he was about to set out on the most important battle of his life, he couldn't help but think about the road that had brought him there...

It was not Hell, but it was the closest you could find within the Multiverse. This was the Fugue Plain. This was where the souls who had fallen from grace would wait until the day when the true Higher Ups revealed themselves to the world, when they would be consigned to Hell. This place was not like the Hell of Dante. There was no physical torture here, no outrageous punishments. Just complete and utter hopelessness. And that, in the end, was enough.

In the center of the Plain lay a group of ice towers. They seemed desolate, more even than the rest of the Plain. These were the souls of the agents of Evil who had gone rogue. They lay frozen in ice, so there was no hope of escape.

Among them was a man in a mask. He has not seen his own face under it for centuries. He remembers his life, how he sold his soul to a demon to be relieved from the suffering of another Hell, how he had chosen to become Thaobath, the Betrayer, and destroy those who he considered his friends. He remembers how he was found out and put to death by the Rules, but escaped death to become the Brazen Man. He remembers being sent by Randall Flagg to shake foundations and wreak havoc, but how Flagg was found out and killed. He remembers a demon's claws in his back, and the now-familiar feeling of death.

And now he is here. Three times now he has died. Twice he has escaped. But this time, there is no hope of escape.

Or is there? He begins to ponder how he arrived at Terra Prime. How one of his foolish analogs tried to prevent the slipgate system from malfunctioning, and how his ally Synizn had consumed liquid Crystallic to help set things right. How Synizn's hiccups had pulled various people willy-nilly to his world, including him.

And he pondered. He had been taken out of his world by the power of the Crystallic. One of the things he had learned when he had been made the Brazen Man was that the Crystallic was a good deal more powerful than most knew. Perhaps he had gained some rudimentary connection to it. Probably not very large, but enough to do what he wanted.

He cleared his mind and stilled his soul. He searches through himself, and found what he wanted. He can feel a power growing within him. As he concentrates, the power begins to grow.

Outside, the ice around him is beginning to imperceptably melt. It would take centuries before it could melt enough for him to break through. But he has all the time in the world.

As the centuries pass, the ice continues to melt. And as all that time passes, the power and the hatred and the strength within the Brazen Man grow. He know that he would be free soon. He knows that someday, the ice will have melted enough for him to break through.

And one day, that day comes. With a great burst of Crystallic power, he breaks through. The guards see him escape, but they can do nothing, shocked by the eldritch power he weilds. He kills them, running them through with a blast of power.

As he flees through the plain, the daemonic guards all around him are aroused to action, but he outraces them. He breaks through the border. An archer at the border shoots an arrow at him. The arrows of the Hell-archers are strong enough to pierce the strongest armor. But they merely bounce off his chest. And as he flees, through a hole in his armor he can see why. Embedded in his chest, where his heart should be, is a small statue apparently made of glass.

As he stands in a dark forest in a nearby world, the Brazen Man begins to plan. He decides not to free Randall Flagg. Flagg is a fool, and the Brazen Man does not suffer fools.

1. Quietly, he begins to have an idea.
2. Quietly, he begins to have an idea (alternate version)