Rand, Loial, and Hurin wake up in a dead, sun-bleached knockoff of their world, and Rand realizes he is responsible. They decide to follow Fain in hopes of returning to their own reality.
Rand, Loial, and Hurin awaken to find themselves alone in a place that is eerily like home, but wrong in ways they can’t quite name. They slept near a mysterious stone carved with runes. When they laid down, the stone was toppled and half buried in the ground, but now stands erect. Ingtar and the rest of the men from Fal Dara are nowhere to be seen. The world feels subdued and lifeless. Massive tracts of scorched earth mottle the land, and white contrails scar the sky.
As usual, Loial seems to know something about this place. He says that the Stone is something the Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends could use to travel between “worlds that might be.” Oh, I see where this is going… the gang accidentally fell into an Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky Bridge and is doomed to slide between alternate realities in the multiverse, right? Hopefully this works out better than it did for Jerry O’Connell and friends.
Rand, for his part, seems pretty darn sure that he somehow accidentally channeled in his sleep and brought them here. But since Loial and Hurin aren’t members of the I-Know-Who-The-Dragon-Is Club, he can’t tell them that. Instead, he puts on a brave face and tries to convince his companions that everything will be OK. Unfortunately, he is unable to use the Stone to get them back to reality.
Luckily, Hurin says that he is still able to discern the Trollocs’ trail. He says it is faint and pale like everything else, as though he is remembering having smelled it instead of actually smelling it. So Rand decides that Plan B is to track Fain and company in this Bizarro World and hope that they know how to get back. Hah! Somehow, even the vaguest notion of getting this information from a guy like Fain feels excruciatingly naive. It strikes a chord that feels identical to the moment Bill and Ted first saw the phone booth:
TED: How are you gonna help us?
BILL: Yeah, are you gonna call someone and get the answers?
Go ahead, Rand. Strike up a conversation with Fain and ask him what the trick to using the Stones is. I want to see what happens.