Kevin opened his eye sand then closed them again. Then he reopened them. Above him there appeared to be a very interesting part of a horse’s anatomy.

Kevin blinked again and then rolled to the right, but he brushed against something. He turned his had and saw two white, legs beside him. To the left was another two white legs. He glanced up again and saw the white belly of a horse and then he carefully crawled out from beneath it.

He slowly stood up and then saw the white horse gazing down at him curiously. It leaned its head forward and gave Kevin a friendly stuff before snorting slightly and rubbing its head against his chest. Kevin patted it tentatively and then pushed away the inquisitive nose before it could drool over him.

He was in a stable – a black stable with black buckets, black tack and… black hay? He leaned down and rubbed his fingers against the black weeds upon the ground. It felt like hay, but Kevin had never seen anything like it before. He tilted his head slightly as he stared about the dull, black stable. To be fair, everything wasn’t just black but tinted slightly with various dark purples and dark blues…. But it still looked black. The only exception to the colour scheme was the white horse that watched him while it tugged at the hay and chewed. There were no other hoses, just this magnificent stallion. Anybody would be proud to own a horse as grand as this.

Kevin pushed away the black strands of hay that had stuck to his shirt and then his eyes travelled to the black door at the far end. He gave the horse one last pat and then frowned as he scratched his head. He’d been around horse before, he loved horses but he had never seen a stable like this before. He glanced again at the horse and noted the strong, muscular legs and neck and the shiny coat that clearly showed that the horse was well kept. But what a strange stable…

How had he ended up beneath a horse in the first place? He closed his eyes as his mind remembered the immaturity of Brian, Nick and AJ as they screamed like three olds and pointed accusing fingers at the mirror.

But there had been something in the mirror, an orange monkey and a bunch of short, old men. Then there had been a flash of bright, blinding light and then they had been in another place…

“Wiz – ards,” he murmured faintly. What had they done to them? He glanced about again, searching every corner for a sign of his friends. “Howie? Brian?” Was this all some kind of prank? “Nick, I’m gonna kill you for this one!”

There was no reply in the form of a smart comment, but only the happy snorting from the horse as it tugged at the black hay with its teeth. Was he in another dimension? You heard about that in the tacky tabloids and in Star Trek all the time. Was that where Kevin was?

He placed his hand upon the black door, noting how it felt just like any other stable door he had ever encountered. He pushed it open to hear the creak that filled every stable and then he found himself in the strangest landscape he had ever seen.

Everything was black!

The sky was black, the land was black, the field to the right was black, the stable was black… everything!

He bent down and brushed his hand against the black ground. It felt soft like grass and it looked like grass, but it was black. He raised his head and his big eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He stood up and took a few steps alone the path, even feeling the gravel beneath his shoes.

At the end of the black path, he found himself in a black garden of some kind. It was much larger than Kevin’s own and there were trees, bushes, flowers (all black of course) and a pond full of black water complete with a black gone sat by the edge with a black fishing rod.

Kevin had never known that there were so many different shades of black. Even though everything was the same colour, everything had it’s own unique shade that made it clear to see.

There was another path in front of him and up ahead was a black house. It didn’t look very large and there were no lights in the windows. He stared about him once more before setting off along the path. There didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go.

When he reached the door, he knocked and waited. “Hello?” he called politely, not wanting to just barge straight in.

Anxiously hr tried to peer through one of the dark windows, but the blackness was so thick that it seemed to suck all light into it. He knocked again. There had to be someone in, there was even a homely doormat on the patio beneath his feet.

HOME SWEET HOME

He frowned and knocked again before he slowly pushed the door open, wincing as it creaked ominously.

He found himself in a huge hallway that went back as far as his eyes could see. The walls were black, just like everything else but that wasn’t the most surprising thing. The thing that creased Kevin’s brain was how that the hallway was bigger than the entire house looked from the outside. He stepped back out into the black outside and stared up at the building. There was no way it could have contained that immense hallway. It looked so small and insignificant.

He frowned and stepped back into the huge hallway, carefully closing the door behind him. He took a few tentative steps forward and then stopped to stare about the black interior.

It was all black and there was little in the way of furnishings or decoration. Behind the door there was a black umbrella stand with a golf club leaning against it and all around him was a loud, echoing stick. He raised his head to stare up at the towering ceiling above and half way up the wall there was a black clock… but it had no hands. What was this place? Kevin had a sickening feeling that he wasn’t on Earth anymore and that this was definitely not one of Nick’s playful pranks. Was he really on the… what had the wizards called it?… the Discworld?

“H – hello?” he called, cringing as his voice echoed about him eerily. “Anyone home?”

He shuffled further inside. There was a stairway in front of him and dozens and dozens of door leading off down the corridor.

“How did you get here? Who are you?” a grouchy voice snapped suddenly.

Kevin spun around and saw an old man in a butler’s outfit standing in front of him, sporting a crop of white hair and filthy frown upon his wrinkled face. It was hard to tell exactly how old he was, but Kevin had the impression that he should have departed this lifetime a long time ago.

“I, um, I was with some friends and some wizards sent me - ”

“Wizards?” the man snapped. “What have they been up to now? Meddlin’ old fools, the lot of ‘em!”

“They somehow brought me and my friends to the… Discworld, from our own world and then they tried to send us back and I woke up in your stable.”

The man snorted. “Bet poor Binky wasn’t too happy to see your ugly mug in his stable! I don’t care how you are, but you should not be here!”

I WILL DEAL WITH THIS, ALBERT.

The voice came into Kevin’s head without having to pass through his ears and he turned to see that a tall figure in a black cloak had appeared behind him. Kevin could not see the face, or rather his eyes did not seem to be able to focus on it properly but he could see two bright blue sparks twinkling in the eyes. There was something about him that Kevin could not quite understand. He knew that he could see him, but at the same time his mind did not seem to allow him to see the figure properly… But he got the impression that the figure was very bony.

“Master!” Albert cried in exasperation. “We can’t have people snooping around! He shouldn’t be here! It’s the wizards playing silly buggers again!”

I WILL DEAL WITH IT.

Albert mumbl4ed and muttered curses against wizards and he eyeballed Kevin suspiciously before he vanished through one of the many doorways.

KEVIN, COME WITH ME.

“Hey, how do you know my name?” Kevin asked, frowning at the stranger. He had an odd feeling that this man wasn’t a fan…

I KNOW EVERYONE. AT SOME POINT THEY ALL MEET ME.

The figure began to climb the stairs and Kevin found his feet following him without him having to even tell them to do so. Something about this stranger was niggling slowly at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t grasp what it was. He slowly followed him and after only a few steps they were at the top of the staircase. He frowned and spun around to stare below and found that they were so high up that he could barely make the ground floor out.

“Hey what happened there? We only took a few steps and yet there must be a thousand stairs there!”

IT IS BETTER THAN CLIMBING ALL OF THEM.

“I guess,” Kevin said as the bony face turned away from him

He was led into a large study room which was full of shelves of black books. Kevin tried to peer at some of the black labels upon the black bindings but they seemed to be written in a language that he could not understand. The tall man stopped in front of him and spoke, but like all of his words they just seemed to arrive directly into Kevin’s’ mind, forgetting to use his ears.

YOU ARE OUT OF PLACE HERE.

“I guess so. This isn’t like any place I’ve ever been to before. Are you Russian?”

NO.

“Just wondering. Anyway my friends and I were sucked through a mirror by a monkey and some wizards and then I woke up in - ”

I KNOW.

“You do?”

I KNOW AND UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING.

“Where am I?”

THIS IS MY HOME. THIS IS MY DOMAIN. IT HAS MANY NAMES BUT NONE GIVEN TO IT BY ME.

Kevin looked up at the black study walls. “It’s… nice. Very um, original.”

REALLY?

“Um, yes?”

I AM THINKING OF GETTING A CAT.

Kevin thought for a moment. A black cat, he guessed. “Cats are good.”

There was a bony smile from the tall figure. Kevin didn’t understand why the word ‘bony’ kept creeping into his mind but it did…

“Hey are you Bulgarian?” Kevin asked, trying to place the odd voice.

NO.

“Oh, anyway do you know where my friends are? I need to find them. Nick and Brian get up to enough trouble in our own world and heaven knows what they’ll manage to do in this one.”

I BELIEVE THAT YOUR FRIENDS HAVE BEEN SCATTERED ABOUT THE DISC. TWO ARE IN ANKH MORPORK, ONE IN LANCRE AND ONE IN UBERWALD.

“Are they all right?”

IT IS NOT THEIR TIME YET.

“Um, okay.”

Kevin watched as the figure took a few steps until he was leaning against a desk at the far end of the room just in Front of a huge window. He passed a bony hand over five hourglasses. Kevin tilted his head and saw that the sand in one hour glass was not moving at all, almost as if it were frozen in time. The other four however had sand slipping away quickly. There wasn’t that much left at the top. For some reason eh felt a wave of dread pass over him as he thought about his four friends.

He turned and snapped a finger and suddenly an image appeared before Kevin. There was a turtle and atop the turtle were four elephants which held a beautiful disc on their shoulders. Water cascaded over one idea of the disc and the rest was covered in cloudy continents. He leaned closer and reached out a hand to touch the image but his fingers passed straight through the semi transparent image.

THIS IS THE DISCWORLD.

“Hey, it’s flat!” Kevin cried. “Worlds aren’t flat!”

THAT IS WHY IT IS CALLED THE ‘DISCWORLD’.

“Oh, all right.”

YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS HAVE CAUSED DISRUPTIONS IN THE DISC’S MAGICAL FIELD. IT IS COLLAPSING. THE DISC WILL EB DESTROYED.

“What? The world’s gonna end? They haven’t been here ten minutes! Nick couldn’t have done that much damage all ready! Or even Brian?” he thought for a moment. “Maybe together, but that’s impressive even for them!”

YOU MERE PRESNECE IS AFFECTING THE DISC. IF YOU DO NOT… DEPART FROM THIS WORLD, IT WILL BE DESTROYED… AND YOU ALONG WITH IT.

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