Here is the culmination of my descent into the madness that is the Transcendence AU. Expect about nine more chapters at random intervals. Hope you all enjoy.
1
It had started off as a normal enough day.
Dipper had been going over each page of the Journal with the black light, searching the text for anything that might help him find the author – he still hadn't given up on that, despite the shapeshifter's ominous warning, and it couldn't hurt to try sparking McGucket's memory, right?
There were, of course, some pages he'd been over before – the Author's hideout, the zombie cure, and others – and a few pages covered top-to-bottom in code that Dipper had set aside for later. But he read through the rest.
The more he learned about Gravity Falls, the more that he found there was to learn. Especially in the invisible ink, the Author made casual references to things Dipper hadn't even known existed – future-seeing crystal balls, binding circles, a coven of witches in the high mountains surrounding the town. He'd probably written about them in another Journal, 1 or 2, which of course Dipper didn't have.
But there were also a few pages that resembled the normal ink pages, too – just a quick overview of a creature or a place. And it was on one of those pages that Dipper found the description of the cave.
Apparently the place was a paradox – bigger on the inside than the outside, set inside a boulder the size of a two-story home but stretching on for thousands of feet. The whole place seemed to be a fountain of supernatural activity – bats born in the cave were twisted, deformed things with two heads or twelve eyes or any look except the one usually attributed to bats. There was a moss that only grew in the caves essential to cooling spells, which the magic users of Gravity Falls would regularly come to collect. But what had drawn Dipper's attention were the geodes.
Apparently the things grew in clusters, like grapes, and when you cracked them open, they were filled with some weird purple crystal that was hard as anything – as long as you didn't touch it. Once the crystal was touched by human hands, it crumbled to a dust that, when mixed with a couple other things, would help you sleep. You'd go out like a light, wake up fully refreshed, and, best of all, you wouldn't dream.
For Dipper, who'd been paranoid of seeing Bill in his sleep ever since the dream demon had possessed his body, and who's been having nightmares about the other creatures of Gravity Falls since long before then, it was almost too good to be true. It had seemed to be that way for the Author, too – apparently overdosing or using it for three consecutive nights would result in some pretty nasty side effects, but not sleeping well one night in three was far better than not sleeping well every night.
He hadn't been stupid, though. He'd taken Mabel and Wendy and Soos along with him. They'd made it out of far worse things than some stupid cave before. They'd be fine.
"Ok, guys, it shouldn't be much farther now," he said, looking up from the Journal page at his surroundings. The black light he was using for the invisible ink made the centipedes skittering up and down the walls glow bright pink, which the Author had said meant the geodes were close. Weird, sure, but more than believable for Gravity Falls.
Dipper continued walking into the cave, illuminating the way ahead with a flashlight, and – yes! He could see the geodes up ahead!
He jumped down the two-foot drop in the cave floor, with Wendy following suit. Soos was backing up a bit to get a running start – "How far do you think I can jump, doods?" – and Mabel scrambled her way down. Her foot landed on a less-than-solid rock . . .
"Ouch!"
"Mabel, are you okay?" Dipper asked, rushing over to where his sister was now crumpled slightly on the floor. She perked up.
"I'm okay," she said, without her usual level of cheer. "Just a bit scratched up is all."
Dipper offered his hand, and Mabel pulled herself up. She thought for a second, assessing her injuries.
"Yup, I'm fine," she said. "Let's get those geodes!"
She began walking down the cave path towards the geodes, but Dipper hung back. From behind, he could see the long cut running down the back of her leg, blood oozing its way down towards her sock.
Dipper winced.
"Mabel, that looks pretty bad. Maybe we should go back to the Shack and -"
"No way, bro-bro. We came to get your magic sleeping rocks, and we're almost there. No way am I gonna turn back now just because of a little -"
"MABEL!"
"What?"
Mabel froze in place, turning to face her brother. No no no, that was exactly the wrong thing! He could see the blood trickling down her shoe, almost to the ground.
Almost to the intricate pattern carved in the stone.
Dipper wasn't certain – he hadn't memorized all the invisible ink writing yet – but that circle carved with runes and Latin looked like the illustration for the binding circles he'd seen earlier that day. No one made binding circles without a good reason; they could trap even the most powerful creatures and there were only a handful of ways to open them.
Blood was one of those ways.
"MOVE!" Dipper shouted, lunging to push his sister off the circle.
"What?" she asked again, confused.
It was too late. One beaded drop of red rolled off the patent leather of Mabel's shoe and into the engraving making up the circle.
Time seemed to stop, with Dipper, Wendy, and Soos frozen in their places. Mabel was forcefully knocked back, sent sprawling to the ground, as an incredibly powerful wind began blowing from the circle.
Then came a thick cloud of smoke, so purple it was almost black, smelling like honey and marigolds and rotting dead animal flesh, a cloying scent that choked Dipper's nose and made Mabel's eyes water.
The cloud of smoke billowed ever larger, getting denser in the middle, solidifying into a form that Dipper couldn't even describe.
It was huge – that was certain. Taller than the first floor of the Mystery Shack, and long, with a thick and furry body supported by six legs. It had claws longer than Dipper was tall that seemed to flicker with images that Dipper couldn't make out, and more eyes than he could count. It maybe looked like a fox, or maybe like a dolphin, but mostly like something Dipper didn't know the name of and hoped to never see again.
The creature blinked all its eyes and, without another glance, darted for the mouth of the cave.
Time resumed, and Dipper could move again. He ran to Mabel.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine – what is that thing?" Mabel asked, eyes trailing after the monster. Her eyes found a patch of the wall that his tail had brushed – it was now oozing neon green goop that melted into the shapes of hundreds of mouths as it flowed, each one screaming.
"I don't know."
No one cared about the geodes anymore, Dipper least of all. All four of them had set out for the mouth of the cave, wanting to catch sight of the monster, to figure out what it was.
As they ran after the thing, they could see glimpses of it – running, all six legs a blur of motion. Dipper's mouth fell open in dismay when the thing leapt headfirst into the ceiling of the cave near the exit – not only did it look unfazed, the rock its head had collided with opened up into a void of blackness that began spewing glitter-dust that drifted down slowly, taking on a pattern of strange symbols as it did. Dipper kept a tight hold in Mabel's hand as they raced out of the cave, so she wouldn't be tempted to examine the sparkles. They made it out without touching any, but seconds later some of the dust landed on the back of one of the centipedes crawling along the floor, which bubbled and morphed and grew into a giant mushy pile of guts with huge eyes that still seemed to see. It flopped about uselessly, and Dipper shuddered.
Back out in the forest, the monster seemed to have started heading for the edge of town – they could tell by the trail of purple vines that hadn't been there when they entered the cave and were now letting off the smell of peaches and acid. That the thing was heading away was good – but that didn't change the fact that it was dangerous and they didn't know what it could do and if it got loose and they couldn't get it back it would be Dipper's fault, because he was the one who'd wanted to do this in the first place and if it hadn't been for his suggestion they never would have gone into the cave and freed the monster.
"We've got to stop that thing," he said.
"Definitely," Wendy said.
"I'm with you, dood," Soos said.
"Let's do it," Mabel said, her voice determined.
It turned out that purple peach-acid vines grew quickly.
Like, really quickly.
They'd found that out the hard way – Soos had been trapped by the vines that had grown and completely covered his body not far from the cave, and it was only because Wendy and the twins were better at changing directions on the turn of a dime – and because Wendy had brought her axe that day and hacked at any vines that got too close – that they hadn't been trapped as well. Thankfully, the vines didn't seem to actually be acidic, but that didn't mean getting through them without getting caught by them was easy.
The trail of vines led in a straight line heading away from the center of town, and they seemed to be getting weaker the farther the kids ran, growing more slowly and wilting instants after Wendy's axe cut them open, before they stopped growing altogether a few feet from a clearing.
"What – do we – do now?" Wendy asked, leaning against a tree to catch her breath. Dipper, panting from the exertion, pulled out the journal and the black light and began scanning the pages for invisible ink messages that might explain what this thing was or how to stop it. He could have sworn he'd seen something about those vines before . . .
He flipped through a few pages before he found what he was looking for.
"Guys!" he said, rushing forward to show Wendy and Mabel the page in the Journal. Everything they needed was right there!
"Check this out! It says -"
His foot caught on a tree root, and he went flying.
The journal flew out of his hands, and the black light did, too. Dipper found himself sprawled in the dirt of the clearing. His chin was scraped, and maybe bleeding a little, but other than that he was fine. He gathered himself and began to stand up, ready to share his findings with the girls . . .
He felt wind on his neck, and smelled honey and roadkill.
He quickly flipped himself over and found himself eye-to-eyes with the monster.
Its eyes were pretty, Dipper thought faintly entranced by them. They were a green-gray like mold growing on an orange, except for the irises, which were squash yellow, and they dripped liquid the color of dry blood. Maybe it was blood.
The monster huffed, and a cloud of sparkling blue smoke came out of its nose. Dipper breathed without thinking, and was overwhelmed by scents he couldn't name, rot and light and unbearable sweetness . . .
Some of the liquid from the monster's eyes dripped into Dipper's own eyes. He tried to blink it away, but found that blinking was too much effort to be worth the trouble.
The monster lowered its head toward Dipper.
He felt something sharp pierce his left arm, but he couldn't move his head to see what. Whatever it was, it was lifting him now, pulling him upwards and putting strain on his shoulder. The sharp things felt like hot pokers driven into his arm, and he couldn't do anything to stop them, couldn't even move. His head lolled down as he was lifted, and he caught sight of Mabel, who was looking on in horror.
Wendy's arms were the only thing that kept Mabel from throwing herself at the beast.
"Let go!" Mabel said, or at least tried to, because in an instant Wendy's hand was clamped against her mouth. She tried the old standby of licking Wendy's palm, which had always made Dipper draw his hand back in disgust, but Wendy didn't even seem to notice.
"Quiet!" Wendy hissed in her ear, slowly backing up, back into the forest. Mabel struggled against the teenager as much as she could, but she was twelve and spent most of her time knitting sweaters while Wendy was sixteen and participated in lumberjack contests. It was no good.
"Mabel! It won't do him any good if you get caught too!" Wendy whispered into Mabel's ear. "We need a plan! Didn't Dipper act like he'd found something about that thing in the Journal?"
Wendy let go of Mabel's mouth, but kept one arm wrapped around the girl's body so she couldn't go darting off again.
Mabel's body slumped. Wendy was right – they needed a plan if they wanted to save Dipper.
"I don't know!" Mabel said. "I think the Journal didn't get taken, though – we could go get it."
"I know the black light made it back into the woods, but I don't know about the Journal," Wendy said. "We'll need both to do anything. I'll go get the Journal, and you can -"
"No."
"What?"
"I said no. I'll get the Journal, you get the black light."
"Mabel, no way am I going to agree to that! We don't know how far out the Journal is into the clearing, or if we'll be able to get it at all. If you got caught too . . ."
"No, I'll get the Journal. I have my grappling hook, I should be able to reel it in," Mabel said. "Besides," she added under her breath. "This is all my fault anyway."
"Mabel, what are you talking about? This isn't your fault!"
Right. Wendy had good hearing.
"Yes it is!" Mabel said. "I'm the one who cut myself and walked into the circle thing and now Dipper's hurt because of it! Because of me!"
"Mabel, you didn't mean it. You can't blame yourself," Wendy said. "You can get the Journal, if you want – let's just get it and end this – okay?"
"Okay," Mabel said.
The monster dropped Dipper in the middle of the clearing, where he slumped like a puppet with its strings cuts, sprawled on his side.
Speaking of puppets . . .
It seemed he wasn't alone in being captured by the monster, because next to him lay Bill Cipher, smaller than Dipper had ever seen him and fading – literally. The triangular dream demon was only about a foot and a half tall, with a couple of the bricks that made up the bottom half of his body broken off and lying on the ground. There were gashes along his front, oozing some sparkly black liquid – maybe the demon's equivalent of blood?
It didn't make sense how Bill could even be hurt, anyway, seeing as how he claimed to be a being of pure energy with no weakness. But if the monster had been able to hurt Bill so badly . . .
What would it do to Dipper?
Bill opened his eye – which had been closed until now – and it locked onto Dipper's.
Dipper wanted to ask what was going on, what the monster was that meant it could hurt Bill and Dipper both, and how on earth Bill has here in the physical world at all without a vessel, but he couldn't move his mouth.
Bill's gaze darted from Dipper's face to something else, something Dipper couldn't see because his body was blocking.
"Hey, Pine Tree, remember when I told you pain was hilarious?" the dream demon said, his voice weak but still with that tone of laughing to it.
"Well, get ready for something mind-blowingly funny."
Dipper couldn't shift himself to look and see, but he could feel everything done to his body perfectly, feel as the monster came back, set its teeth into his left arm again, and began to slowly shred the flesh, the skin and muscle and fat, until it fell from his bone. Felt as the monster stepped on his arm, then his shoulder, snapping the bones like twigs, and then pulled the skeletal remains of Dipper's arm from his body.
Dipper wasn't sure how long it lasted. It seemed like hours. All he knew was that by the time the creature was done, he'd regained control of his face – he could tell by the tears streaming down his cheeks and the scream that tore from his throat - though that he couldn't stop.
Finally, finally, the thing seemed to be done. It carried the remains of Dipper's arm back towards one edge of the clearing, where it sat chewing on it. Dipper winced as he heard the bones snap and shatter in the monster's jaws. The tears were still running down his cheeks, and even if he could have raised a hand to wipe them away, Dipper doubted he would have tried.
"Geez, kid, lighten up. It's only the end of the world!"
Even faint, flickering in and out like a radio being tuned into the right station, Bill's voice was still sadistically upbeat and amused.
"Wait . . . the end of the world?"
"Yep," Bill responded cheerfully. "That guy chewing your arm? His name's Morsus – guy's a barrier demon. When he gets up to strength, he'll probably tear his way through the barriers that uphold reality – he's already torn into the Dreamscape, at least right here, which is how I'm here."
Dipper's head was swimming – there were demons other than Bill? This demon could tear into the Dreamscape and pull Bill right out? But there wasn't time for all these questions.
"What do you mean, when he gets up to strength?"
"He's barely woken up, kid! Lemme tell you, being trapped in a binding circle doesn't do you any favors. That guy can barely think right now, let alone use his powers."
"You mean . . . he'll get stronger?"
"Of course, kid! Why do you think we're here? He's feeding off our energy right now! Your pain and my power – they're gonna wake him right up!"
This was bad. This was really bad. If this monster – demon – wasn't even at full power yet, what would be left once he 'woke up'?
"Isn't there -"
"Something I can do? Yeesh, kid, if I could, don't you think I would've? I have a lot of power, I must admit, but most of it only works in the Dreamscape, and I'm not exactly at full strength myself. Although -"
"What?"
"Having you here does change the dynamic a bit. I can't use my powers myself without dissolving into nothingness, but if I had a corporeal form . . ."
"You mean by possessing me."
"Haha, exactly right, Pine Tree."
"But if you did – you could -"
"Well, I won't make any guarantees, but I might be able to at least do something about it."
"Why should I trust you?"
"Because, kid," Bill said. "I have big plans for this town. Plans that aren't going to happen if this guy destroys the town first."
Dipper squeezed his eyes shut.
"Fine."
"I wasn't asking permission, but thanks anyways, kid!"
Before he could open his eyes, Dipper could feel Bill possessing him – or at least, that's what he assumed it was. It felt like every cell in his body was on fire, withering and striving to grow at the same time, living and dying infinite times in fractions of each second.
"What the he-"
"Look, I'm short on energy, kid – I don't have time to do this the proper way. You'll thank me later."
His blood seemed to be replaced with electricity, his whole body numbing and humming with power. The pain dulled and vanished, and his head cleared with a rush. He was suddenly very aware of everything; the stray grass blades pressed against his arms, the wind brushing against his face, the ants crawling over the toes of his shoes.
He gathered his strength – which took moments, given how much strength was now running through him – and pushed himself up with his right arm. He could stand, and it felt normal, almost – Dipper couldn't really feel his limbs, but they positioned themselves correctly anyway.
He expected to be kicked out of his body, to watch as Bill took over, but that didn't happen. Why? Were possessions by force and by deal that different? Where was Bill, anyway – Dipper at least expected a little voice in the back of his head, but he was the only one thinking in his head. Was Bill really that weak?
Dipper raised his remaining hand to find it lightly cracking with faint blue flames, the same kind Bill used to make deals with people. In fact, his whole body seemed to be covered in them, just faint rippling blue, barely visible.
It was weird. But he had bigger problems.
He turned to face the demon, Morsus. It seemed to be done chewing on his arm, and had noticed him standing up.
He waited for a second as the demon thought. What would he do if it lunged for him? He could feel Bill's power surging through him, but he didn't really know how to use it.
But before he could make a decision, the demon turned and began sprinting again. Away from the center of town, out into the woods.
Why was it heading away from Gravity Falls? Was there something out there it wanted – or something in the town it feared?
It didn't really matter, did it? Either way, he couldn't let it get away. Not now.
Dipper began running after Morsus, chasing the demon through the forest.
Mabel crouched, tense and yet still shaking, grappling hook clenched tightly in her hands. They didn't have much time.
She shifted from one foot to the other, scooting herself sideways to move into the best position to get the Journal. Of course, that also got her in a better position to see her brother being tortured by the monster – God, it was taking everything in her to keep from running into the clearing and doing something, anything, to stop the monster.
And on the ground beside him was a smear of yellow – was that Bill?
"Focus, Mabel," she whispered to herself. "You can do this."
The Journal had landed about ten feet or so from the edge of the clearing. Close enough to retrieve, far enough that she couldn't walk out and get it without being seen. She held her grappling hook so that she could line up her shot, aiming for the ground a little farther out than the book itself – after all, she wanted to drag it in, not shoot it farther out.
She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and pulled the trigger.
The hook of the grappling hook shot out into the clearing, landing a little beyond the book, and then began to reel back in, one of its hooks catching the spine of the book and dragging it back towards the woods.
Perfect.
She grabbed the Journal the instant it was within reach – tightly. This book was the only hope for her brother, now. There had to be something in there. There had to be.
Mabel kept as quiet as she could as she raced back to the spot in the woods where she and Wendy had agreed to meet up when they'd each gotten their items. As she'd expected, Wendy was already there, black light gripped tight in her pale hands.
Mabel set the Journal down on a fallen log, opening it to the first page. Wendy held up the black light, clicking it on.
Mabel scanned the first page. Nothing useful. She flipped to the next page. Water spells, three-headed frogs, living rocks. Nothing that would help.
Scan. Flip. Repeat.
It was starting to seem hopeless – Dipper's screams had just died out, and Mabel worried it was too late . . .
No. It couldn't be. She wouldn't let that happen.
She flipped to another page, more than halfway through the book now.
There. The circle that the monster had come from, instructions on how to seal it.
Perfect.
It was impossible to keep up with Morsus, even though Bill's power seemed to make Dipper faster than he'd even been before. He could only follow the trail, which wasn't hard to find – gashes torn in thin air spewing wasps that ticked like clocks, or emitted eerie blue glows, or seemed to be portals to the other ends of the earth – Dipper swore he saw a glimpse of the Great Wall through one of them – were left in the creature's wake at random intervals, just often enough for Dipper to be able to follow them.
For whatever reason the demon was running, it was certainly motivated, Dipper thought. He'd almost reached the edge of town, was coming up on the patch of woods where the "Welcome to Gravity Falls" sign on the main road was displayed when he saw it – the purple lump of fur, at least twice as big as the giant teeth he'd found before, spewing purple smoke that dissolved into wasps around the edges from every pore, and standing up on its hind legs, leaning against thin air with its front four paws.
As Morsus reared back and then threw itself forward, Dipper could see that its paws were colliding with a thin barrier of what seemed to be green electricity that flickered into view whenever Morsus put force on it. And this couldn't be a good sign, but the barrier – whatever its purpose was – seemed to be weakening with each hit, growing fainter, splintering into stray beams of electricity where the demon's claws hit it.
Whatever the barrier was, whatever it was doing, Dipper could guess one thing – if Morsus wanted it gone, it had to stay.
"Hey!" he shouted, wincing a bit at the Bill-like echo in his voice.
Morsus turned its head to look at him for a moment, then slammed against the barrier again, too occupied to be bothered with Dipper.
"HEY!" he shouted again, more of the demonic echo coming into his voice. He could feel a flicker of blue flame, the kind Bill used to make deal with people, rising out of his skin, coating his body.
"WHAT, DID YOU FORGET ABOUT ME?" he shouted in the same voice. Morsus turned its head for longer this time, looking a bit puzzled.
Dipper started running towards it, jumping at the last second, high than he'd ever been able to jump before. He focused the demonic fire covering his body on his right hand, and drove his fist into Morsus's central eye with all the strength he could muster.
That got its attention.
The demon bristled, the air around it crackling with the smell of ozone. Dipper was thrown back to the ground, his back scraping the dirt as he skidded to a stop. He looked up to see the demon glowing with lavender smoke, the ground around it bubbling with portals that spewed fairies and Gremloblins and creatures Dipper couldn't name.
Behind the demon's flaming tail, the green barrier dissolved in a shatter of sparks that spread from the point Morsus had been attacking outwards, like a ripple in a still pond, tracing the form of an enormous dome. But the barrier demon was entirely focused on Dipper, now – too focused to notice or care.
Dipper felt something grab the back of his vest and yank. He was dragged to his feet, and then the whatever-it-was grabbed his right wrist and began pulling him into the woods, back towards town – Mabel.
Mabel looked more focused than Dipper had ever seen her – the hand that wasn't grabbing his wrist was clutching the Journal, one finger stuck inside to mark a certain page. She was setting the pace for the two of them as rather fast – which was a good thing, given the demon that was chasing after Dipper.
"Mabel, what's - ?" Dipper tried to ask, but Mabel's answer cut off the end of his question.
"We've gotta seal the monster-thing back inside the circle – the one in the cave. It's in the Journal – if we can get that thing close enough, say the right words, and get a little more blood on the circle, he'll go back in!" Mabel called over her shoulder.
Of course the Journal had an answer – it had the answer to just about everything, which was a good thing, because the only thing that kept Morsus from catching them both right now was Mabel's uncanny ability to dodge and weave through even the thickest parts of the forest with ease.
Up ahead, Dipper could see the boulder that housed the cave. Thankfully, the purple vines seemed to have wilted, though as Morsus approached they began reviving themselves, trying to wrap around Mabel's ankles.
As the twins turned into the mouth of the cave, they could see the magical dust seemed to be gone, too – though the pile of guts that had been the centipede was still there. A bit farther into the cave, Wendy was waiting, holding the black light in one hand and her axe in the other.
"Is he close?" she asked as soon as the saw Mabel. Mabel nodded, and Wendy joined the twins in running for the back of the cave.
Not a second too soon. Morsus turned the corner an instant later and began sprinting towards them.
Mabel took the black light from Wendy and whipped the Journal open to the right page, eyes scanning the text and beginning to read.
"Sto ad ostium, et nunc, et aperire, ut auferatis malum de quo nunc facies et aperuerit ianuam introibo ad," she read, her eyes beginning to glow white with her words.
Morsus seemed to hear them, to understand what they were trying to do. He lunged directly for Mabel, jaws open to rip her to pieces –
Dipper didn't even think before rushing forward, gathering Cipher's power in his fist as he had before, driving his fist into the monster's eye.
" . . . illum et signa sanguine."
This time, the demon was prepared. He merely snarled in response to Dipper's punch, and sharply shook his head, throwing the boy into the wall of the cave.
"Ut liberentur a malo ultra," Mabel read, a wind rising out of nowhere as she did, rushing its way back towards the circle that Morsus had come from.
The demon bristled and howled, a sound that haunted Wendy's nightmares for weeks, like the dying screams of thousands of souls. Again, he lunged for Mabel with jaw open.
This time, Dipper wasn't in the position to aim for Morsus's eyes. Instead, he threw himself at the side of the demon's head, knocking it off course. The demon snarled and turned, slashing across Dipper's front with his teeth. Dipper stumbled back as he felt his life rising to the wound and rushing out, the blood spilling out of him.
"Usque in eodem sanguine effundetur super fores," Mabel read, slamming the book shut. She'd finished the spell, and Morsus seemed to realize that. But why wasn't he - ?
"Dipper!" Mabel cried. "You have to get your blood on the circle!"
Right. They still weren't done sealing it. Dipper stumbled towards the circle, Morsus leaping to knock him out of the way, stop him, but Dipper fell to the ground, letting the demon sail over his head. He brought a hand to his chest, ran it down his front to smear it with blood, and wiped it against the carvings in the stone that made up the binding circle.
The wind grew impossibly stronger, yet Mabel and Wendy weren't moved at all, and Dipper only felt a little pull. For Morsus, though, there was no resisting the wind. He was sucked over Dipper's head, getting in one last slash at the boy's back with his claws, and into the binding circle, which briefly glowed with a flickering purple-yellow.
But the flickering got quicker, the light growing too bright to bear.
"Get out of here!" Dipper shouted, scrambling back from the binding circle, which was now throwing off an unearthly combination of screeching and soft violin music.
Mabel rushed forwards, toward her brother and the circle, ready to drag him out.
"GO!" he screamed, his voice sounding like Bill's again. He dragged himself to his feet. "I'll be fine. GO!"
Reluctantly, Wendy turned to run out. Mabel hung back, though.
Dipper forced himself to run even though every cell of his body was complaining. His body was aching, burning, crackling with electricity that was eating him up from the inside out. He wanted nothing more than to collapse and cease to exist, but Mabel wouldn't run if he didn't, and she had to make it out of here.
She kept looking back, afraid to get ahead of him, leave him behind.
"GO!" he yelled.
Reluctantly, finally, she began running at full speed.
Too late.
In a flash of colors and sensations, the world overloaded, all of eternity flashing before Dipper's eyes in an instant.
The cave exploded.
The town of Gravity Falls went from being silent to echoing with sounds, the likes of which it hadn't heard for thirty years. Inhuman screeching, unholy wails, soft music, laughter, all combined in a rolling mess with a coherence like a quilt sewn by a child – there, but only just.
An intense wind shook the trees for a few seconds.
Then everything went crazy.
Paint peeled off houses and floated into the sky like reverse snow. Everyone's lawns sprouted odd, twisting flowers with blinking eyes at the center in a matter of moments. Every leaf on every plant flickered with images – supernovas, newborn babies, classic cars, an earth barren of life.
Stan, engrossed in the daily movie of the Black-and-White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie Channel, was startled out of the story of Lady Annabelle's Courting by the sound of hundreds of birds in the woods cawing in unison and taking flight. He ran to the window, watching as they gathered in a swirling, circular pattern with details he couldn't make out – damn cataracts – before falling to the ground in unison. On impact, each exploded into an ivy plant, writhing vines twisting along the ground.
Please, don't let the kids be involved with this, Stan thought, watching as the ivy plants burst into blue flames and burnt to ashes that flickered into feathers and re-formed the birds, which flew off.
Please, he repeated.
"Ugh, my head," Mabel moaned, reaching up to rub at her forehead before even opening her eyes. "Waddles, were you climbing around the bed again last night? You know, my forehead isn't the most exciting place to explore."
She blinked her eyes opening, expecting to see Waddles blinking back at her.
What she saw instead was a crater.
A crater with . . . was that rain? Rising from the ground?
"Dipper?" Mabel called, pulling herself up into a sitting position. Dipper hadn't been in good shape, last she'd seen him – that monster thing had torn his arm off and scratched him up pretty good, and he'd been falling behind when they were running out of the cave, but he had to have made it. He had to.
The woods were weird, Mabel realized as she sat up. Weirder than usual, and not just with the reverse gravity rain thing. The grass seemed to be blowing in the wind, but there wasn't any, and overhead there were birds circling around the patch of reverse rain in a swirling, intricate pattern, never once breaking off. It was kind of freaky, actually, but cool at the same time.
It didn't really matter, though. The only thing she wanted to see right now was Dipper.
"Mabel?"
Not Dipper's voice – Wendy's.
Mabel turned and saw the redhead, who looked shaken but not injured.
"Are you okay?" the teen asked. Mabel nodded – she wasn't hurt, but she'd be a lot better if she knew where Dipper was, that he was okay too.
"Oh man," Wendy said, seeing the backwards rain behind Mabel. "What is going on here?"
Mabel shrugged, turning to watch the rain again, seeing it trickle away into nothing and stop rising altogether. She wanted to ask if Wendy had seen Dipper, but it wasn't likely – after all, Wendy had been even farther out than Mabel, and Dipper would have come across Mabel long before he would have met up with Wendy. Still, this was Gravity Falls, and weirder things had happened.
"Have you seen Dipper?" Mabel asked.
Wendy turned from examining the sky where the rain had fallen (risen?) to look at Mabel.
"You didn't see him?"
Mabel shook her head.
Wendy re-adjusted her hat.
"First things first, then: we're finding Dipper."
Dipper opened his eyes and saw that the sky was going crazy.
Green stormclouds roiled overhead, shaking in waves like the sky was a parachute being shaken by a swarm of kindergarteners, swirling in a circle around one spot of clear sky.
Said spot was directly above Dipper.
That can't be good, Dipper thought, and his body reacted instinctively, skittering away from the eye of the storm. In seconds, the clouds dissolved.
That was weird. Even beyond Gravity Falls weird.
Dipper pulled himself into a sitting position, trying to see if he was in a familiar part of the forest. He was in a clearing, surrounded by towering pine trees, sitting in grass and fallen pine needles.
He slowly stood up, testing his legs to make sure they held his weight. They did.
Dipper began walking. Waiting around in a strange part of the woods, especially when he didn't know what kind of creatures could be waiting to attack him, wouldn't be a good choice. So he began walking in a straight line towards the part of the forest that looked like the woods around the Mystery Shack.
He'd been walking only a couple minutes when he heard it.
"Dipper?"
Mabel was calling his name.
He started running towards where he'd heard her voice (and though he didn't notice it, he put a bit too much force into it and wound up going too far and floating a few inches off the ground) because was she alright had she been hurt what if she needed him, and called back to her.
"Mabel?"
"Dipper! WENDY I FOUND HIM!"
Dipper heard Wendy shout back, "Great! I'll be right there!" before Mabel came barreling into the clearing and grabbed him in a hug strong enough to be weaponized.
"Mabel . . ." Dipper said weakly, but she was already talking.
"I was so worried about you, bro-bro! Here's an idea: next time we're running out of an exploding cave-thing, neither of us hang back, ok?"
She finally pulled out of the hug, but stopped before letting go of his arms, looking at him with her concerned face.
"What's up with your eyes?"
"My eyes?" Dipper asked, confused. "What happened to my eyes?"
"Nothing too big," Mabel said, letting go of him. "They just changed all their colors is all."
"WHAT? Mabel, how is that even possible?"
"I don't know, a lot of weird things happened after the explosion – there was this weird reverse-gravity rain, you should have seen it. Anyway, if weird eyes is all you got from it, that's not bad, right?"
Mabel took a second look at him, to make sure her assertion was correct, and then gasped, her face falling into an adoring expression usually reserved for boy bands and Waddles.
"It fixed your arm," Mabel said, sounding as awestruck as she looked.
Dipper looked down. There was his right arm, his torso, and just like Mabel had said, his left arm. Hanging there, like it had never been ripped off. Dipper flicked his fingers, raised his arm and bent the elbow, made a fist and spread his fingers again.
It was eerie how perfect it was, but Dipper didn't want to question it. After all, it would be crazy to get too suspicious of the one big good thing the town's weirdness had done for him (even if it was because of it that he had lost the arm in the first place).
Dipper looked up at Mabel, who was still staring at his arm in awe.
"Earth to Mabel," he said, waving a hand in front of her face. "Hey, did you guys get Soos free yet?"
"Aw man, we forgot about Soos!" Mabel said, snapping out of it. Dipper sighed.
"Well, we'll have to go get him once Wendy gets here . . . which looks to be right now," Dipper said, turning as he spoke. An instant later, Wendy appeared, pushing aside a bush to step into a clearing. Mabel rushed over to her.
"Wendy! We forgot about Soos!" Mabel told the teen.
"Aw shoot, we did. Guess we'd better try and get him out of those vines, huh?" she said, her voice casual as always.
"Hey Dipper!" she called. "Let's get going so we can get Soos out of those vines!"
"I could hear you too, you know," Dipper said, making his way over to the girls. Mabel smirked at his response to Wendy's shouting, but Wendy herself didn't seem to notice. She completely ignored Dipper, instead turning to Mabel.
"Yo, I thought you said you found Dipper. Where is he?"
"He's right next to me, silly," Mabel said.
"Mabel, this is serious," Wendy said. "Where's Dipper?"
"I'm being serious. He's right next to me. What's up with you?"
Wendy glanced to Mabel's side, to Dipper – and her eyes skipped right over him, like he wasn't even there, tracing the edge of the forest.
"Wendy?" Dipper asked, but Wendy didn't seem to hear him.
"Wendy, this isn't funny," Mabel said, her usually cheery tone absent.
"Okay," Wendy said, her voice sounding weird. "Sorry. Mabel, where'd you find Dipper again?"
"Over there," Mabel said, pointing. Wendy walked over, looked at the ground at the spot where Mabel had pointed.
"Dipper," Wendy said. "Where were you before here? Can you take us there?"
"Um, that way, I think," Dipper said, pointing into the woods. "And I can try."
Dipper led the way into the woods, with Mabel following him and Wendy following her. It didn't take long to find the clearing that Dipper had woken up in, though at first glance there wasn't anything special about it – just a circular patch of grass with no trees.
But as soon as Wendy saw the clearing, she froze, eyes locked on one spot on the ground.
"Wendy?" Dipper asked, but of course she didn't hear him. Dipper sighed and turned to see what Wendy was looking at, and he froze too.
The clearing was, for the most part, green with grass and pine needles. But nestled down in the grass, hidden almost out of sight, was something else. Something blue and white.
Wendy rushed forward and grabbed it, pulling off her hat and stuffing whatever the blue thing was inside, pulling her hat back on with too much force.
"Come on," she said, walking briskly back towards the twins and grabbing Mabel's hand as she passed. Dipper didn't know why, but she sounded . . . sad? It didn't make any sense, he was sure he was just mis-reading her voice, but when she spoke again it seemed like she was determined not to cry.
"Let's go get Soos out of those vines."
When the three of them found their way back to the area of the woods with the purple vines, most of the vines had already died, withered away to almost nothing.
The ones around Soos were still hanging on to life, growing sluggishly as he struggled against them.
It took one chop of Wendy's axe at the base of the vines to kill them, and they fell off Soos harmlessly, hissing as they shrunk in on themselves and slackened.
"Whoa! Thanks, doods, that was starting to get a little creepy," Soos said, brushing a vine from his shoulder.
Wendy, normally one to make some kind of comeback or joke, just said, "Come on, let's get back to the Shack."
Okay, there was definitely something up with her. Dipper just didn't know what it was.
Still, he and Mabel followed behind Wendy and Soos. Wendy was whispering something in Soos's ear, but stopped any time Mabel got close enough to overhear. Dipper probably could have listened in without anyone noticing, given that Wendy and Soos couldn't see or hear him, but he hung back to talk to Mabel.
"Something weird is going on," he told her.
"You think?" she asked. "Don't worry, bro-bro, I'm sure we'll figure it out. Maybe the Journal will have something about this – temporary invisibility sounds like a thing. I'm sure it's in there."
"Of course!" Dipper said. How had he forgotten the Journal? After all, it had been what had gotten them into this whatever-it-was – surely it could get things back to normal.
He reached into his vest for the Journal . . .
Which wasn't there.
Crud, he must have dropped it or lost it in the explosion – wait, Mabel had been the last one to have the Journal, hadn't she? Dipper turned to look at her and found her grinning, the Journal held in one hand.
"Looking for this?" she asked, teasing.
"Where did you even keep that?" Dipper asked her.
"Same place I keep my grappling hook – inside my sweater," Mabel said, smiling. "Anyway, maybe you should take the first look."
She held the Journal out for Dipper to take. He grabbed hold of it, and Mabel let go.
Only for the Journal to fall to the ground.
"What?" Dipper asked, not expecting an answer. He was sure he'd had a good grip on it, but the book had slipped through his hands like they weren't even there.
It reminded him of the time Bill had possessed him, and he'd been trapped in the Dreamscape, unable to touch or talk to anyone – but that wasn't the case now, couldn't be the case. Mabel could still hear and see and touch him, after all.
Mabel leaned over and picked up the book, tucking it under the hem of her sweater.
"Maybe we'll just wait 'till we get back to the Shack," she said lightly.
Dipper nodded.
The TV was still on, with black-and-white people still moving around their gray-toned world, but Stan couldn't focus on it. Instead, he was shifting around in his armchair, eyes darting to his watch every few seconds.
He was worried that maybe Dipper and Mabel had actually had something to do with the weird birds and noises, especially when they hadn't come running in right away. And if something had happened to them . . .
He should go check on the portal, he decided, climbing to his feet and walking out to the vending machine. But his hand froze before he had hit the first button. No, if the kids came home, he wanted to know as soon as possible. Never mind the security system that fed into the lab, he wanted to see with his own eyes that they were okay.
If something happened, if something had hurt them, he was the one responsible.
He made his way back into the living room on autopilot, not really seeing the Shack around him. He collapsed into the armchair without the usual relief that came from relaxing into it.
Idly, he grabbed the remote and began channel flipping. Ad, home remodeling, infomercial for the goddamn "Owl Trowel 2.0" (how fast did they make those things anyway?), local channel . . .
"Grunkle Stan!" someone called, throwing open the door to the Shack. Stan didn't even care that it slammed into the wall, because here was Mabel, running towards him and throwing herself at him before he could even stand up, wrapping him up in a sweater-y hug.
"Uh, kid, you okay?" Stan asked, silently relieved that she'd come back alright, or at least alive and not seriously injured. He peered over his shoulder, looking for Dipper. The kids were always together like that – it reminded him a bit of how he and Stanley had been.
But the kid wasn't there.
"Where's Dipper?" Stan asked, as casually as he could. Mabel froze as if every muscle in her body had tensed and tightened in an instant.
"Uh, kid?" Stan said, carefully pulling Mabel off of him.
"You can't see him either," Mabel said, her voice quiet – if she hadn't been in so close, Stan's hearing aid would never have picked it up.
"Who – Dipper? What, is he invisible or something?"
Mabel nodded.
"I think so, at least. I can still see him, but no one else has been able to yet."
Okay, that was weird, but he'd dealt with weirder before. As long as Dipper wasn't hurt . . .
"He's not hurt, though?" Stan asked. Mabel shook her head.
In the doorway to the living room, Stan could see Soos and Wendy walk in. The handyman looked alright, if a bit bruised, but the look on Wendy's face made him do a double take – he'd seen the teenager apathetic plenty of times, but never looking so desolate.
He looked back down at Mabel, who was giving him a curious look.
"Uh, why don't you and your brother go up to the attic and look through that Journal of his – see if there's a way to undo this?" Stan suggested.
Mabel nodded and made her way to the stairs. Stan listened to make sure she climbed all of them – and there, the door to the attic room shut.
Stan turned his attention back to Wendy, who now seemed about ready to cry.
"What happened?" he asked her, his voice deadly serious. She took a deep breath – and there, her voice shook. She really was about to cry, but now wasn't exactly the time for pleasantries.
"I – I'm not really sure, Mr. Pines," the girl said. "We were exploring a cave looking for some kind of rock when this crazy monster popped out of nowhere. Things got bad, the thing attacked Dipper and hurt him pretty bad. The cave exploded. Mabel made it out alright, but Dipper . . ."
No. Not this. Not again.
"Mabel said she found him, but I couldn't see him and Soos couldn't either, and I guess you can't. And then I had Dipper lead us back to where he'd 'woken up' – Mabel passed on directions – and I . . . I found this."
Wendy slowly pulled off her winter hat, ignoring the dozens of strands of red hair that flew out of place now that it was no longer holding them down. She reached a hand inside of her hat, taking hold of something.
"I didn't want Mabel to see," she said softly.
She pulled her hand out, held something out to Stan.
It took a moment for him to make sense of what he was being handed, and he grabbed it before he'd fully processed more than colors. Blue, white. Fabric.
And then, all at once, he realized what he was holding. The details snapped into place.
A baseball hat with a slightly burned brim and a pine tree design.
"No," Dipper said, his voice quiet even though none of the people within earshot would have been able to hear him even if he'd been screaming. His hat – he was still wearing it, that couldn't be his! But there were the familiar aberrations, the faint scorch mark from Rumble's fire, the general wear that no hat fresh off of Grunkle Stan's shelves would have.
But he was wearing his hat, how on earth could it also be there, in Grunkle Stan's hands? Unless . . . unless the hat he was wearing wasn't really his. It had happened before, he remembered – when Bill had possessed him and he'd been trapped in the Mindscape. What had Bill said to him? You're basically a ghost. Basically. Maybe he wasn't, really – Mabel could see him; that had to count for something!
But Mabel hadn't been able to see him when he was stuck in the Mindscape before.
Was he dead?
Dipper turned and floated up the stairs towards the attic – his feet weren't touching the ground there was no pretending he was alive and well – leaving Stan and the others to do whatever.
Behind him, the dinosaur skull next to the chair shifted its jaw, and the wallpaper began peeling off the walls and floating to the ceiling in a reverse snowstorm.
"Dipper? What's wrong?"
Mabel could tell from one look that there was something wrong. Dipper's eyes were eerily focused in the middle distance, and he entered the room by floating right through the door.
"Mabel," he said. "I think I might be dead."
"WHAT? That's crazy talk, bro-bro! After all, you're right here!"
"That's the thing, though! Only you can see that!" Dipper said. "No one else can see me, or hear me, and I can't even touch anything . . ."
Mabel reached out without warning and grabbed Dipper's hand. It was solid in her grasp, and he could feel her warm palm against his fingers.
"You can touch me, okay? And you're still here, no matter if anyone else can see you or not."
"But Mabel, Wendy had my hat – it's what she found in the woods, but I'm still wearing mine. How is that possible, if the hat didn't belong to a physical me that's not . . . you know . . . still around to claim it?"
"Bro-bro, even if you are dead, it doesn't matter," Mabel said firmly. "You're still here, as a ghost or spirit or whatever crazy thing, and that's what matters. We can check the Journal – if we were able to bring Soos back from being a zombie, I'm sure we can find a way to bring you back, or at least let people see you,"
"Thanks, Mabel," Dipper said. His sister's determination to make things right, her certainty that whatever had happened to him was fixable, was reassuring, even though he didn't believe it himself. After all, planar transference had a huge energy barrier, and the explosion that had pushed him out of the plane of human existence wouldn't be easy to replicate.
Where had that thought come from? Dipper was sure it wasn't in the Journal; in fact, it had popped into his mind unbidden.
Before he could think on it too long, though, Mabel had grabbed him and pulled him into a hug.
"Whatever's going on with you, we'll work it out together," she told him, her breath warm against his ear.
"Okay," he said, and Mabel pulled back.
"Now," she said, rubbing her palms together. "Let's see what the Journal has to say!"
Before he called the kids' parents, Stan went to check his own Journals for something, anything, that would prove it was possible to get his grand-nephew back on the visible plane, if not back to life. He'd already been over Journal 1 dozens of times, of course, but not with a black light, and there were still a few pages in Journal 2 he hadn't read all the way through yet.
It took an hour or two, going through the texts and decoding all the ciphers, but in the end it was time wasted. There was nothing to suggest what had happened to Dipper, much less how to get him back. The closest was a black light page about demons, creatures that lurked on planes invisible to human eyes, but there was no suggestion that humans could slip to or from those planes, so he dismissed it.
Stan sighed and shut Journal 1 after scouring the pages for the tenth time. If the Journals had any information on what had happened to his nephew, it was in Journal 3, the copy the twins had.
He trudged over to the elevator and ascended to the highest level, trudged up the stairs, and emerged into the gift shop. No one was in there, but he could hear noises coming from the living room.
"Mr. Pines!" Wendy called out. "Is that you?"
She walked in through the doorway just as Stan slid the vending machine back into place.
"There you are – you'll want to see this," she said, and walked back towards the living room.
Stan wondered what could be so important, but he followed her anyway. The living room looked normal enough, though the wallpaper seemed to be piled on the floor instead of glued to the walls, but other than that it was just Soos and Wendy watching the television.
"What's going on?" he asked, but Wendy shushed him.
"Just watch," she said, so he sat down in his armchair and turned his attention to the TV.
". . . flooding in about the continued supernatural occurrences. We now have confirmation that these unbelievable phenomena have spread at least as far north as the Canadian border, and as far south as Mexico. We have multiple reported sightings of creatures only existing in myth until now – we have reports of unicorn sightings in Central Park, pixie swarms across the Southwest, and Kraken attacks on a cruise ship off the Western coast. We're bringing you live to our reporter on site, Shandra Jimenez, in central Oregon, where unusual weather phenomena and swarms of supernatural beings seem especially thick; Shandra?"
The footage cut from a fairly normal-looking news desk to an overlook of the woods surrounding Gravity Falls, with Shandra Jimenez in the foreground. Behind her, swarms of glittering jewel-birds were twisting in the air in intricate patterns, their iridescent purple forms shining against the backdrop of the green forest. On second note, a good patch of the forest seemed to be burning with blue flames taller than looked probable, and flickering in place instead of spreading with the wind.
Stan couldn't focus on whatever Shandra Jimenez was saying to try and explain what was happening behind her – he was transfixed on the supernatural phenomenon, that of it he could see, happening in the forest of Gravity Falls. The only time he paid her any attention was when she abruptly cut off her speech and frantically tried to free a bug from her hair – a bright orange fuzzy thing the size of her hand with a dozen legs or more radiating from a circular body and multilayered gossamer wings that it used to buzz off into the sky once free.
It was nothing he'd ever seen before. He'd just gone over the Journals, and he hadn't seen even a mention of the types of things he was seeing on the TV screen. Unprecedented supernatural occurrences that the Journals couldn't explain, and at the same time, similarly unprecedented and unexplained changes in his nephew – that couldn't be a coincidence. Something had caused both things to happen at the same time; something had made everything go crazy, and changed Dipper too. He just had no idea what it could be.