Sorry for updating so late in the day, editing this was a huge task to take on! Also, my marching band went to competition, and we placed in third. This is a much better result than our last contest (lmao). Well, enough about me. Let's get to the chapter!

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Eric pet Mr. Kitty's dark gray fur and pulled at one of her whiskers. Mr. Kitty squirmed out of his arms. She'd left him with a few battle scars on his arm, but he'd obtained what he was going after. He'd already taken one of his mother's silver rings; he had to slip inside her room when she was out on a dinner date, and he'd already suffered intensive questioning from her.

"Poopsykins, have you seen my ring?"

And even, "Are you sure you didn't see where I set it down?"

He'd kept it safe in his room, hidden away so she couldn't find it. Cartman already had talked to Wendy the day before, and she told him that she could get the personal item to sacrifice.

"Sweetie, I have a party to go to tonight," Liane Cartman said, stopping in front of the television. She had her hair pulled back, and her dress was a dazzling red. Before he could complain about her standing in the way, she moved a few inches over and hugged him. "Eric, I left some pizza and snacks for you. Brush your teeth before you go to bed. No friends over. You're old enough now to stay by yourself."

"Mom—" he whined.

"I've got to go now. No imprisoning the Jewish, okay? I love you!" she called, hurrying to the door and going out to the car, a bright beacon amongst the tinted gray snow.

Cartman went up into his room, drawing the curtains shut. Carefully, he put the cat whisker down on the top of the wardrobe. He changed into his Coon uniform and retrieved the silver ring. It had been stashed in a secret compartment in the wooden drawers by the door. He slipped it into his pocket. The doorbell sounded loud through the empty house. The clock on his bedside table read 8:57. She was early, as usual.

"Eric?"

And she'd let herself in.

He grabbed the whisker and found himself face to face with Lady Justice and Professor Chaos down in his living room. Wendy held her pink beret tightly in her hand. They followed him to the creaking wooden stairs into the basement.

The mercenaries were just getting on their feet. Christophe held a bag, and he pushed the table out of the centre of the room before pouring the contents onto its top. Butters stood off to the side, eying the amethyst crystals and rubbing his hands together nervously.

"Where's the rest of your superhero crew?" Gregory asked absently, double checking that everything was accounted for.

"J-Jimmy said he was going to something with his parents, a-and Dog Poo said his bed time's at ten, so he didn't wanna come," Butters said with a near blank expression.

Gregory nodded, and asked, "You brought a sacrifice, too?"

"What's going to happen to it?" Wendy asked, looking down at her hat nervously. It was well worn and washed many times, its colour slightly faded and it had been softened and stretched by constant wearing.

"It will be burned, along with the rosemary," Christophe said idly, dropping a pair of rat tails beside the four yellow candles. Gregory glanced up at him. "They were smashed, not poisoned, don't worry."

"This faggot better agree to help us out," Cartman grumbled, taking the ring from his pocket and tossing it out onto the table. He held onto the whisker, afraid that if he dropped it, he'd have to track down his already angered cat again. Gregory reached into the bag and his hand clasped around the eyeball.

"There it is," he said, placing it by three mockingbird feathers.

"What's that?" Butters asked.

"Newt's eyeball."

Butters gulped and grimaced, fiddling with his fingers.

"Did you get the blood from the butcher's?" Gregory asked, kneeling to strategically set the candles down on the floor. Christophe tossed the blonde his lighter. He drew the flames lazily across the wicks. Gregory went back to Wendy's side.

"As if I had time to do that shit. I'll just use my own," he shrugged, pulling out a knife and discarding his glove into the corner of the room.

"What? Chris, wait-!"

"I-I can't look at blood for a long time or else I'll pass out," Butters cried out, covering his face.

Christophe dug the knife across his palm, the dark blood rushing fast to the surface. He hissed, a sharp noise between his teeth. He was trying to show indifference to the pain. He dragged his hand across the flooring, making a shaky circle inside the border of candles.

"Oh my god," Wendy said, eyes wide.

"God's the last bastard you need to call upon," the Mole replied, and pressed his other hand over the cut, the fingerless glove absorbing most of the blood.

"This is exactly why I said you have impulse issues," Gregory groaned, putting the amethyst down at the top of the circle and the ring at the bottom.

"I do not have issues!"

Gregory chuckled as Christophe handed him the bloodied knife. Wendy offered to help, and she was sent to place each feather in a specific spot of the circle. Gregory cut the tails and the eye into a mixture, then sprinkled it over the ground.

"I don't mean to interrupt your hippie dance or whatever, but what the hell are you doing?" Cartman asked.

"That book we found—The Lesser Key of Solomon—said everything was to be done exactly like this, or else it wouldn't work," Gregory explained.

"Yeah, okay," Cartman laughed. He fixed his mask on his face.

"I need to remain focused when I do this, so allow me to concentrate, please," Gregory said shortly. "Wendy, I need you to burn the hat first. Cartman, you burn the whisker, and Butters can do the rosemary. Do them at different candles."

Wendy swished her cape behind her, kneeled down, and ran her hands over the hat. She brought it to the candle's flame and the fire seemed to swallow it whole. She dropped it into the circle, exhaling slowly as the fabric turned from pink to black and faintly glowing orange. When she looked up, Butters was trying to hold the sprig of rosemary as far from him as possible as the flame burned through it. Cartman had already finished burning his whisker and gave her a bored look. Gregory began to mutter the incantation.

"Is it working?" Cartman asked.

"Don't break his focus, douche nozzle," Christophe snapped.

"Rectus…Dominus…Cheesy Poofs!"

The candles blew out all at once. The darkness around them became more apparent, closing in on them. The circle began to glow, radiating a pale blue light that twisted the shadows on their faces. The ground seemed to turn to light, and a figure began to materialize from the air.

Damien stood before them, his eyes dark and his thick eyebrows were knit together in brief confusion. A large bag of popcorn was in his hands. He scowled and let out an exasperated grunt.

"Damn it, not again. What do you cocksuckers want?"

Cartman stepped closer to the circle and took a handful of the popcorn. He ate a piece before saying, "Listen, fart boy, I need you to open a portal to Hell for me."

"It is important you know he does not want the portal opened in his basement," Christophe added, his right hand still clutching the left.

"That's it?" Damien asked.

"That's all we want you to do," Cartman nodded.

"Um, Eric, maybe you shouldn't call Damien 'fart boy' anymore because he could open the portal in your asshole," Butters stuttered. Christophe snickered and Wendy brought her hand over her mouth, trying to hide her smile.

"He has a point," she said.

"Shut the fuck up!"

Damien knocked Cartman a few steps away from him and wiped his hands on his black sweater. He looked at Wendy and asked, "You were the one who made the sacrifice?"

She nodded.

"Are you sure this is what you want?"

Another nod.

"By giving me the personal sacrifice, you're in charge of where the portal is to be opened," he said.

"I heard Stark's Pond is rather empty this time of year," Wendy said, and Damien grinned.

"Stark's Pond it is."

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He flicked on the light and sat down at his computer, fighting back a yawn. He had to try and have the upper hand, and there was nothing like doing some research late in the evening. Kyle opened the browser and entered something vague and general about demon summoning into the search engine. He wasn't sure if he should be surprised or expecting the large number of results that came up.

"Huh," he muttered, clicking the first link.

The first three links weren't to be trusted, due to their lack of proper grammar. It might have been snobby to make this the rule for staying on a certain page, but if they were truly pulling things from ancient text books, he didn't think there should be so many errors and things that made him think they were trying too hard.

He went back to the results page and clicked on the fifth link. The sudden change from white to black on his screen made his eyes hurt. He blinked a few times, trying to read the text displayed before him:

'The Lesser Key of Solomon, basic summoning rituals and incantations for all your chaotic needs.'

He skimmed the rest of the paragraph. It was kind of cheesy, but it also seemed to take itself very seriously. Apparently, if you were to actually get your hands on the book, its spells actually worked. He dragged his cursor to the left side of the page and clicked on one of the hyperlinks.

Looking through this site was actually pretty grueling. If he'd wanted to hack through something and examine some sort of weirdly secret file, it would have been easier. A part of him wanted to believe that the things from his fantasy books were real, and the more reasonable side was saying it was highly improbable.

However, if he'd been able to find something as easy as this on the internet, there was no doubt in his mind that Cartman was already trying out one of the spells for his own.

The royal demon summoning page didn't give him ingredients or incantations, because they wanted to promote the book, not make an online substitute for it. It did say, though, that these rituals were best performed the night of a new moon, and required personal sacrifice.

Kyle frowned.

"New moon?" he said aloud. "Oh shit!"

He clicked off his monitor and grabbed his coat before running down the stairs. He slipped into his boots and went outside, trying to be as quiet as possible. He'd almost gone straight to Kenny's, considering the potential danger of the town being under siege of demons running freely and destroying whatever they pleased. But, he couldn't see himself without Stan in the endeavor.

Kyle darted down the driveway, tugging his hat on over his hair. It only took a few minutes before he found himself in front of his best friend's house, and Stan's light seemed to be the only one on. He hauled himself up into the branches, his boots not slipping in the thin layer of snow. The redhead could see Stan inside, playing one of the World of Warcraft knock-offs they normally engaged in together. He curled his arm around the trunk and tapped on the glass. Stan flinched and looked to the window, but relaxed a bit when he realized who it was. He opened the window.

"Dude, what the hell?"

"I think they're gonna do it tonight!"

"What?"

Kyle laughed, trying to shake off how dense Stan could be sometimes. It wasn't something he minded, not really, but it could make explanations more difficult than they should be. "We gotta get Kenny," he said, making room on the branch beside him. He held his hand out for Stan, but the taller boy didn't seem to notice, grabbing onto another tree limb instead.

They landed on the ground a few seconds apart. Stan had left his leather jacket in his room, and was only wearing a light coat. Goosebumps prickled over his skin and he rubbed his arms, trying to warm them up. At least it wasn't as cold as it normally was, but they were still in the dead middle of December without the sun over them.

"Damn, sorry, I should have let you get your jacket or something," Kyle said.

"No, it's—I'm okay."

The streets grew quieter as they made it to Kenny's house. There was that strange distance between them again, and Kyle noticed. He didn't like when Stan seemed distracted and he disliked it even more when Stan was reluctant to say why. Kyle didn't think it was just a dream that was freaking Stan out so much. It almost felt like any time they got in close proximity of one another, Stan would shy away from him.

He let out a small noise.

Stan looked up at him and recognized the expression on his face to be his over analytical one. They made their way to 635 Avenue de Los Mexicanos and knocked quietly on Kenny's window. He opened it, stripped to his boxers, hair messy.

"Hey," he said.

"Uh," Kyle faltered. "I, uh. They're doing it tonight."

Kenny went back to the shadows of his room, becoming a dark outline amongst the shapes. When he came back, he was in an updated version of his Mysterion costume. He pushed the window open more and got out beside them.

"Where do you think it'll be opened?" Kenny asked.

"We don't know," he replied lamely.

"Split up, we have ground to cover," Kenny said, and ran off in one direction, his cape billowing up behind him. Kyle and Stan exchanged a look. Kyle gave him a lopsided smile, and Stan shrugged. They started off in the other direction.