The Buzz returned me to consciousness. Well, that and a stinging slap to the cheek.

"Xander! Xander, wake up!" Another slap against the other cheek accompanied the command. The hand was about to slap me again but I caught it before it made contact. I looked up into the eyes of my torturer. It was Marc.

"What are you doing-," I began, annoyed and confused, before I got a look around. "Woah!" I quickly sat up and took a longer look at our surroundings. We were in the middle of a valley coated in sand. Sand dunes surrounded us on all sides, but they did not offer protection from the hot sun beating down on our backs. "Where the hell are we?" I wondered.

"Beats me. We could be anywhere from the African desert to another plain of reality right now."

Great. That was not good. I'd had my fill of alternate realities, thank you very much.

"How did you get here?" I asked him.

"I got sucked into the glowing eyes of a cat pendant. Found it on the dresser in my hotel room. I think I scared the hell out of my date. How about you?"

"I got sucked into the glowing eyes of a cat picture carved on a chest. It felt like I was sucked right through them."

"Same here," Marc said, wiping sweat off his neck as he glanced around.

"Have you seen Methos?" I asked him, wondering where the old bastard had gone. "He got sucked through ahead of me."

Marc shook his head. "The only one I’ve seen here is you, and we were lying next to each other." He glanced around at the dunes bordering the valley on all four sides. "We need to find some shade and some water soon. I don’t feel like dying of thirst today. We need to get up on those dunes and see if there’s a waterhole nearby. I’ll go to the one on the north, and you go to the one on south, and-"

He paused and turned to stare at me, his eyes wide. "What?" I asked.

"You’re back to normal strength."

He was right. I was so preoccupied with our situation that I hadn’t even noticed that the shaking had stopped and I could pace without losing my balance, and I wasn’t breathing heavily yet. I was back to full strength. It felt good.

Huh. After all the time I’d spent thinking about how much I hate Melville for what he did to me, you’d think I’d notice before now that I was back to normal. I guess being sucked into an alternate dimension will do that to you.

We climbed to the top of the two sand dunes. I looked to the south but couldn’t see a thing that didn’t remotely resemble sand. I turned around to see Marc hurrying back from his position on the northern dune. I ran back down into the middle of the valley. Once there, I grinned. I could get used to this very quickly. Take that, Melville – may you stay in Hell this time.

"You need to see this," he told me.

"What is it?"

"Something very, very bad."

He led me back up the dune. I stared down the slope at the sight below. The dune sloped down into another valley, only this valley was not lined with sand. The sky was painted black, and lava coated the ground. Some of it had cooled and hardened, but the rest flowed down to the west and over the edge of a cliff that was only ten feet to the left. Off in the distance, I could make out a volcano that was still erupting. Ash burst up for thousands of feet from its center, and more lava and ash poured down the sides of the once dormant mountain, assuming that had ever been dormant. If the desert had been hot, the lava made me feel even worse.

I looked behind me, back down into the valley. The desert was still there, and the sky over the valley was a cloudless blue.

"I don't think we're on Earth anymore," I said. I felt like I was stating the obvious. "We still need to find water. I'll check the dune to the east, you check the west one."

We turned around and headed back down into the sand valley before heading in the two directions. The eastern dune was considerably steeper than the ones to the north and the south, and it took me ten minutes to climb to the top. When I did, I was glad that I had, because I had hit the jackpot.

At the bottom of this dune was a forest. The sand floor collided with a dirt ground crowded with overgrown grasses, plants, and trees so tall that I wondered why I hadn't seen them from within the valley. I heard insects calling within the forest. A shallow river, whose two shores were splattered with rocks and stones, rushed past right before the treeline began.

I turned and signaled to my student that he should head over here. Fifteen minutes later, he'd reached the top of the dune. He grinned delightedly down at the river. "Shall we?" I asked. He nodded, and we started down the dune.

Five minutes later, we were dropping to our knees on the riverbank and drinking our full. I felt a soft wind blow past us after I'd finished. The temperature here was pleasantly cool.

I looked behind me. The sand dune still stood only four meters away. "What was on the west?" I asked Marc.

"An ice world," he answered. "Full of freezing water, snow, icebergs, and I'm pretty sure I saw something resembling Bigfoot's demonic cousin. Alex, do you know how the hell we get out of here yet?"

I gave him a puzzled look. "Why should I know how to get out of here?"

He shrugged. "You always have before. You've faced more demons and other things than Methos, Amanda, and I combined, and you're the one who knows all the spells."

Well, he was right about the spells bit. I hadn't told Giles or any of the others that and wasn't sure if I should. The reason why is that I knew some pretty powerful ones, and I didn't want any of them to use them except in a last resort. There were a few safer ones that I could tell them about. I had to get back to Sunnydale first, though.

"Okay," I began, "The chest that sent me here was chanting a prayer in a demon language. If I can remember the counter spell or chant or whatever, I might be able to get us out of here. Then we can track down whoever sent those cat-engravings to us."

"Sounds good. That damned pendant sucked me here while Stephanie was in the bathroom. I hope she won't think I set her up. We were certainly having a great time."

An Immortal Buzz hit me six seconds before it hit Marc. I could tell that the Immortal was approaching from the other side of the river, from within the forest. Two familiar figures emerged from under the tree canopy.

"Alex! Marc!" Methos called across the river. "I knew you two would be here."

Relieved, Marc and I waited for them to cross the river via the stones protruding out of the water. Once they were on the other side, I got my first good view of Methos' companion.

"Marie." My eyes traveled rapidly from hers to Methos' and back again.

I gave him a questioning look. Methos nodded.

"Are you all right?" I asked her, concerned. Before now, my four hundred-year-old student, Marie de Champagne, hadn't had any knowledge of the supernatural. I had known she would handle the news very badly, and therefore hadn't told her before now.

She looked to be in shock.

She gave me an uncertain smile. "I’ll live," she joked. "At least now I know what you were hiding from me, Alex. It's good to see you. Do you know how to get us out of here?" her eyes pleaded with me. She was freaked, but she was keeping it together.

I had to word my response carefully or she'd break down. "It's good to see you, too, Marie. I'm sorry about all this. We'll get out of here soon, promise. Then we'll talk."

We felt the Buzz again and glanced around. "Hail, hail, the gang's all here," Methos muttered when Duncan MacLeod and Amanda came into view. They appeared farther down the shore, but when they stopped arguing long enough to see us, they picked up their paces and made it over the river to us quickly.

"Alex! You're back to full strength!" Amanda said, smiling.

I nodded. Before I could speak, though, MacLeod beat me to it.

"Could someone please explain to me what's going on?" he demanded. He spared two wary glances for Marc and Marie, whom he'd never met before, before his attention returned to Methos, Amanda, and me. "Amanda seems to know something, but she's been dodging all of my questions."

"I have not dodged your questions," Amanda protested. She gave Methos, Marc, and me exasperated looks. "I'll explain it one more time. We're in another reality. We were sent here through magic. We could meet anything here from cavemen to Mallioc Demons, and trust me, you wouldn't want to meet either group. Honestly, Duncan. You would think that you'd be more accepting of these things after recent events."

MacLeod visibly stiffened at that. I recalled one evening, not long before I merged with my younger self, when Methos had shown up at my doorstep with the horrible news that Richie was dead. Then he told me how it happened. I'd only met the kid a couple of times before that, but it was still a shock. But let's get back to where we were before. Amanda was right; after dealing with Ahriman, the highlander should have been more open minded about these things.

Marie leaned in close to my ear. "I know Amanda can be blunt about a lot of things, but…couldn't she be a little considerate?"

I smiled reassuringly at her and swung an arm around her shoulders. I held her tight for a moment and whispered back to her, "Don’t worry. Amanda doesn't mean anything by it; you know that. It may seem scary and hard to believe now, but you'll get used to it."

"Promise?" she whispered back, in a voice full of fear I haven't heard her use in so long. She was really freaked. It made me proud to know that she could keep it together in front of the others.

I nodded. "Promise."

We turned back to the others to see the highlander gang up on the old man. "Don't tell me you believe all of this, Adam," he said, looking for the voice of reason from his elder. I smirked. Looking for wisdom from the old git never worked. I should know; I've seen way too many Immortals try to get advice from him over the years, myself included.

Methos met MacLeod's stare straight on. "MacLeod, look around you. You got here through the eyes of a cat picture. There are plants in this forest that even I have never seen before. There is a sand dune only a few meters to your right. Feel free to look for a scientific explanation. You'll be looking for a long time and you won't find a thing. We arrived here through magic, MacLeod. When we get back to Paris, you're welcome to go into as much denial as you want. Live with it while we're here."

MacLeod's jaw dropped, then clamped shut. He glanced around uncertainly before turning back to Methos. He looked about ready to argue some more but sighed instead. He nodded, once, in asset.

"Okay then," I said, taking a seat on a large bolder. "Duncan MacLeod, may I introduce you to my students, Marie de Champagne and Marc. You may remember Marc from that whole Ian Madison mess from three years back." Duncan nodded, and the three of them shook hands and did the whole 'I come in peace' song and dance. After that was over, I said, "Now that we all know each other, why don't we go over what we know. I'll start."

I told them about hearing Methos scream and then getting sucked into the chest just like he was. Then, one by one, everyone retold his or her own version of events. Everyone had discovered a carving of a feline where it hadn't been only moments before, then they heard chanting and were sucked through the cat's own eyes to another dimension. Marie's cat carving appeared in a wall hanging in her bedroom. MacLeod and Amanda had discovered the carving on a wooden bead of a necklace that Amanda had acquired one way or another.

After confirming that they'd heard the same phrase chanted, I told them its meaning.

"So how do we get out of here?" MacLeod asked me.

I raised my hands to the skies, exasperated. "Why does everyone assume that I know how to counteract a dispelling ritual that just happened to be performed by an inanimate object? Pick on Methos or something."

Methos glared at me. "I don't know how to get home any more than you do. I say we pick a direction and hope it leads us to some clues."

"Hold on," I told them, looking around again. Something about this place was beginning to feel familiar. "I think I know where we are." Yes, I was pretty sure by then that I did. Too bad the name of the place wasn't coming to mind. It couldn't be Beliasia. That reality had mountains and pterodactyls more or less reined its skies. We weren't in Hilliactica; that world had quite a few forests, volcanoes, and lots of ice, but it didn't have a single desert.

"Well?" Amanda asked after a pause. I gave her an annoyed glare; she'd interrupted my chain of thought. Her response was to cross her arms and tap her foot. She gave me an expectant raised eyebrow.

"Did any of you see any huge trees covered in black leaves in the forest?" I asked.

Amanda nodded. "Yes. It was one of the first things that told me that we weren't in the right reality anymore."

I could think of only a couple of possibilities now, and neither of them were looking good. "We're either in the Vale mans Peradios, the Valley of the Scorned One, or we've been sent to Killion gar Tarmiente Imartaleete bar Justillianavos, Justillianavos' Land for Eternal Sufferers."

"Justillianavos? Peradios?" Methos repeated, his voice rising with each syllable. His body tensed as he looked around in unease.

Amanda's crossed arms wrapped around her body. "You know, I'm voting on neither." Marc nodded in agreement.

"Who are they?" Marie asked. She didn't sound like she really wanted to know the answer.

"Really bad news," Marc answered.

I went on, "If this is Peradios' Valley, then we need to figure out which direction is east. Then we need to walk in that direction and eventually we'll find a way out of here."

"Why east?" Duncan asked.

"Not sure, actually," I admitted. "All I remember is that we want to steer clear of the other directions. Anyway, if this is Justillianavos' Kingdom, then it doesn't matter which direction we travel, but we still need to be very careful. Justillianavos is the master of illusions, and he also loves torture. He's come up with a few techniques that not even a Pyardo Demon could stand." Everyone gave me confused looks. "Sorry. Demon breed that died out eighteen hundred years ago." Thank you, Slayer.

"So, the best direction we can go is east," Methos concluded. I nodded.

Marc asked, "How do we know which way is east? This place has four different suns, remember? And none of them necessarily have to rise in the east and set in the west."

"What about that direction spell?" Amanda asked. Marc, Methos, and I looked at her in puzzlement. "You know, the one that wizard performed when we got stuck in Sippius' Catacombs?"

I vaguely remembered what she was talking about. I could remember that the four of us had run into Sippius C. Simone seven hundred years ago, but that particular memory was extremely hazy. All my mind came up with was the memory of being trapped inside a labyrinth of corridors. I also remembered singing several songs off key in a tavern with Marc and Amanda after we'd gotten really, really drunk. My memory was telling me that those two events were related, but don't ask me how.

"It would help if you remembered the words because we sure don't, Amanda," Marc told her.

Amanda gave a frustrated growl before returning to her thoughts. "Let's see, uh…Spirit Guides of the new and old / Your wisdom and guidance has been through these lands forever told…"

Oh, really?

"…Help us on our way through this unfamiliar place / Guide us to the exit, we of the Immortal race."

Regardless of whether or not the Spirit Guides had ever been discussed in this reality, the spell seemed to work. There was a flash of multi-colored swirls of light in the center of our group. It seemed to hover in front of our eyes before moving at blinding speed to hover over the river. Once there, the light broke down into its component colors, ultimately forming a picture of a compass in the air. It was a picture of a four-pointed star, with each point labeled North, South, East, and West. The eastern tip was flashing red. It pointed down river.

I got back to my feet. It would be a long day. "Let's get going, shall we?"

I began walking in the direction the handy hovering map indicated. After a few yards, the others began to follow me.

*****

I stayed in front, occasionally talking to the others, but most of the time they kept their own council. Amanda and Marc had talked in length to Marie about various demons they'd faced over the years. MacLeod had taken a part of that discussion for awhile before pumping Methos for information about the Valley of the Scorned One. I could hear the obvious doubt in his voice, but the fact that he was asking about it proved to me that he was trying to accept it all. Marie seemed to have accepted it but she didn't sound all that excited about it. I wondered if she was in shock, and dropped back to keep her company.

Several hours of walking passed by. Strangely enough, although we often became thirsty, we didn't get hungry at any point during the long walk. During our third water break to get drinks from the river, I told the others my suspicions. "I was wrong. We can't be in either the Valley of the Scorned One or the Land of Eternal Suffering."

"Wonderful!" Methos exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "He waits until we've been walking for several hours before he shares this with us. And what led you to this conclusion? Pray tell, because you were so convinced three hours ago."

I gave him a look. "Have you gotten tired during that three hour walk, or hungry? Peradios and Justillianavos are both heavily into torturing their victims, which would be us. They wouldn't drag us here and then make it so that we'd stay at our best. We're somewhere else, which means whoever brought us here and whoever is playing with us now is someone completely different."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Marie asked.

I sighed. "I don't know. I say we keep going. Eventually, we have to run into something. If we don't find anything in another few hours, we can come up with a different plan."

We got back to our feet and continued onward, wondering if there was any point in doing so.

Ten minutes had passed when I heard Marc call, "I think I see something."

Our attentions snapped forward, trying to see what he had seen. It was a rock face, obviously the side of a cliff, and it stood directly in our path. The river met with the rock face, but instead of stopped there it traveled up the side of the cliff. Instead of a waterfall, the river seemed to be flowing upwards, defying gravity.

"That's impossible," MacLeod commented when he'd noticed the water's path.

"In our reality, it would be," Methos corrected him.

Marie stared with wide-eyed awe at it. "Mon Dieu…we're really in another universe."

Off to the left, half-obscured by trees, was the mouth of a cave several meters wide. "I wonder what's in there," I thought out loud, causing everyone to focus on the cave.

"Let's find out," Duncan said.

He reached into his coat and took out his katana. Amanda and I pulled out our broadswords, Methos pulled out his Ivanhoe, Marc took out a scimitar and Marie took out her rapier. "It has to be a cave," Methos muttered as the six of us approached the entrance. "It always has to be a cave."

"I hear ya, old man," Marc told him.

Duncan and I led the way into the cave. Amanda and Methos were right behind us, with Marc and Marie bringing up the rear.

It was an ordinary cave, that much was obvious. However, I felt a sense of foreboding, as if I just knew we were getting close.

"Everyone stay alert," MacLeod said. He'd obviously felt it, too; so had everyone else, if their attentive expressions were any indication.

The cave was concealed in darkness. "Know any light producing spells, Alex?" Methos asked me.

"We don't need one," Marie said, staring forward.

We all turned and looked. A red-colored light, growing bigger and bigger the closer it got, approached us from deep within the cave.

"Shit! That better not be another one of those cat's eyes!" Marc exclaimed.

"Everyone get out of here!" I shouted.

The red light, so close now that I could see that it was a field of prickling energy stretching from one side of the cave to the other, rushed over us before we could even turn around.

It hit me first. The red wall impacted me with the force of ten thousand needles. I convulsed, and I wouldn't be surprised if I had screamed.

The force field had passed over me in microseconds, but by the time it had left me and attacked MacLeod, I was on the ground, unconscious.