Wangari took her phone back and slid it into her pocket. "And that's the tall and short of it!"

"Huh," the cop said. "So the guy who ran the Silver Witch was the head of the evil Waikiki Rogues? And now he's dead, plus the rest of the gang?" He shrugged. "Well, that's pretty cut 'n dried. Of course we'll have to close down the Silver Witch for the time being while we investigate it."

"Aww. We got like a whole night left before we go home! We can crash there for one more night, right?"

"Ehh, I'll see what I can do. Anyway, gotta call in somebody to sweep these damn streets. So damn many mons-"

The monsters vanished with a soft pop, as did the robot debris and parasitic buildings and statue of Jak and the floating Russian Grand Duchess.

"Oh. Nevermind! Nice." He held his fist up, but his partner didn't reciprocate. "Hey, wait a... oh, yeah, that was a Waikiki guy. Shit, I'm gonna need to look him up on Facebook or something, I liked him. He was gonna give me this chutney recipe..." The cop meandered off, checking his phone.

"Got a good feeling about the rest of the night," Wan-Wan said. She walked towards the low afternoon sun before realizing that walking was for the birds and looked for an Uber.

The void was endless, save for the softly-glowing spark of creation just within Amanda's grasp. She could see, just barely, her friends floating in the dark, and also Hannah and Barbara. "Guys?" she said. "Is this what the last phase of the game looks like when you're in the same Reality Cartoon?"

"I think it is," Jazzy said. "It's so..."

"...exactly like The Neverending Story, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Well, we did cross over a bunch of preexisting board games, you know. Maybe we should try to include a little more original in its next iteration. If that's how it works for sacred relics, anyway!"

"What the hell is going on?" Hannah said.

"It's the wish section, like I said to you already," Jazzy said.

"That was Barbara, you idiot! I wasn't paying attention!"

Constanze grumbled.

"Yes indeed," Jasminka said. "Anyway. Usually there's only one person who gets to make the wish and usually it's just to, like, have one last time to say goodbye to your beloved high priest before letting him rule the world you've made for him. Then you get to roll another amazing sex adventure!"

"But today we gotta use it for more heroic... you know... stuff," Amanda said, reaching for the fire. "So I'm gonna make the first wish, okay? Got a good one. You all trust me?"

A general rumble of agreement rolled around the circle.

"Alright. I wish... that the worlds stopped bleeding over and the heroes-I mean the people of the board game land get to return home, like, here. And also restore the planet to before it was hard ruined by the war. Can I do that, get a twofer?"

The flame pulsed with gold light, the pulse traveling out forever, and where the light touched, a world was born all around them, beautiful and bright. Rolling green fields teeming with life, a gleaming city of tomorrow on the far horizon, puffed shoggoths slumbering contently in a crystal-clean river. In moments, they were joined by familiar faces-the remaining heroes of the Good Guys around them, the brutalized remains of Jak's army a little further out but closer than any of them would have liked, and, after another long moment, the entire pouplation of Tsar Realms. As the pulse traversed outward, the early evening sky of this beautiful new world lit with new-born stars.

Lamentably, Princess Anastasia skipped up.

"Wowie-zowie, this planet is off the hook! I'm super hyper to be here!" she said.

"Yeah, sure," Amanda said. "Alright, twofers are a-go. Who's next?"

"Man," Jasminka said. "I don't know what I could wish for. There's so much possibility. I may need a-"

Hannah grabbed the flame. "I should be next! I suffered the most in here!"

"Like hell you did," Barbara said, wrestling for it and being thrown off by the frenzied Hannah. "Come on! I got bitten by a crow!"

"Fuck you, you stupid bitch!"

"I'm not a stupid bitch, you smelly whore!"

"'Ey, guys," Monterrey Jack said, patting down, "the hard part's over with, now you can finally relax-"

"RELAX?!" Hannah said. She pushed away from the rest of the group and pointed out at the Good Guys. "I HOPE YOU ALL KILL YOURSELVES!"

The flame pulsed, and the gold light swept through everything. The grass was first, withering and drying to dust. Monterrey Jack was next, unlatching a .45 from his belt. "Zhar-Lloigor," he said, his hand trembling as he tried to put it back down, "I think you spoke a lil'-" He pressed the gun into his mouth and fired.

A wave of increasingly horrible suicides radiated through the board game people present.

"Goddammit, you!" Amanda said, going for the flame.

"I'm-it's still my-" Hannah said.

Constanze bashed her in the kneecap with the back of her machete, forcing her to one leg, and then jumped up and brought the pommel down two-handed into the back of her head, the flame dropping back into the air. She climbed up Hannah's body and grabbed it and said "Undo!"

No pulse. The suicides grew in intensity and horror. Cons started crying.

"Lemme try!" Jasminka seized the flame. "I wish that everybody who just died at their own hands be brought back!"

No pulse.

"No... why isn't it..."

Amanda stared at the lines of Russian soldiers unhesitatingly ending themselves. "It's one of the rules. You can't negate another player's wishes or make a wish that totally negates it."

"This isn't negating the first wish?!" Jasminka said, the words barely discernible as she blubbered through her sentence.

"The wish didn't make them," Amanda said. "It only brought them back home." Amanda was crying too. "Brought 'em back to die. Because of Hannah."

As the pulse touched the stars, they began to wink out, one by one. The sun in its lowly orbit began to burn red.

Barbara touched the flame in Jasminka's hand. "Just bring us home," she whined.

They were in Luna Nova, back in the Cons Cave. Across its many tables A Man Cons Jazz burned. Fire suppression kicked in and the table was awash in brackish water. The tattered scraps of a far-away world washed away into drains in the concrete floor.

"No," Constanze said.

"Hbuh...?" Hannah said, kneeling on the floor. "Is it done?"

"Yeah, it's done," Barbara said, picking her up and putting her on her feet.

"'Done?'" Amanda said.

"Yeah, the stupid game is done and all the stupid people are dead and we're back home. So it's-"

Amanda punched her in the jaw. Hannah ran, but immediately hit a corner. Barbara reflexively crawled after her and got trapped too.

Bleary-eyed, sobbing, Constanze handed out blocks of soap in socks to her friends.

"I could never help resolve Sasayako's loss of faith in me," Jasminka said.

"I never got to meet my priest. He stayed behind to watch the guard towers. He was waiting for me," Amanda said.

Constanze pulled on a pair of chainmail butcher's gloves and cracked her knuckles.

In silence, the three carried out their retribution.

The team drove by the Silver Witch to recharge their wands before heading to Finnelan. The tank disappeared while Diana was busy performing heart surgery in the church, but it wasn't too far from the casino anyhow. The walk back was only interrupted whenever they had to explain that Lilou bleeding profusely from several long cuts on her face and shoulder was totally normal and expected, so it took them a good half hour and several ambulances that stopped to try and offer help to cross the single block.

"Huh," Akko said. "It's a real ghost town in here."

"Yup!" a Vegas cop seated at the front desk said. He was eating a bowl of marshmallow fluff from a hefty plastic jug he was sharing with a couple other cops, some toasting s'mores over burning paperwork. "Whole place run by magic crooks. Seems the guy liked to magically impersonate Marisa Kirisame and beat up prostitutes on the side, too."

"Just like the real Marisa Kirisame. That son of a bitch!" Suzie said. "Glad he's been sliced in half."

"And that's one plot hole closed," muttered Chariot.

The cop gestured with his spoon. "We're evacuating the building for, like, dusting for fingerprints and shit? Plus Auntie Everett's Vaguely German Infinite Candy Kitchen actually sold dirtied foodstuffs to fetishists for huge amounts of money. Can you imagine it?"

"The nerve of that lady!" a s'more-eating cop said. "Too bad she got away somehow. Definitely after destroying the last batch of evidence."

"How tragic," the first cop said. "Ah, well. The chase will begin again... eventually. You guys got like an hour to get your stuff, have a good time."

Diana cleared her throat. "If I may ask, where are we going to spend the night?"

"There's a hotel that'll honor your reservations for tonight." The cop flung an address card, which Diana caught. "Were you the batch that came in through the whatsit, the magic witch hole?"

"Yes, in fact."

"Ah, that's closed for the time being so no suspects can make a magic runaway."

Diana swallowed. "So, uh... we're visiting from Great Britain..."

"Go get your stuff, you'll figure it out." The cop gestured vaguely.

"Did I hear we need to raise some money?" Wangari said, stepping into the lobby in style (having fallen asleep in the Uber and taken a brisk nap before waking up and morfie-ing herself up a nice dress for going out on the town).

"You just did," Finnelan said. "Unless I can talk someone's ear off for a refund I think we're short five hundred dollars a head."

"I hear that as challenge," Wangari purred.

"I might have an idea on how to raise some money quick," Suzie said.

"I'm picking up what you're putting down," Chariot said, resting her head on Suzie's cheek. "Come on, let's get up and out of here."

"I'll be a little behind," Lotte said. "I've got, you know. Things to talk about."

"Of course, of course," Diana said. "And, ah, keep an eye out for Sucy. Call her if you can't find her."

"I think she'll be easy to find," Lotte said, winking laboriously.

"Why, yes, it's me," Sucy said. "How could you tell." Sucy was intermittently caked with thin layers of marshmallow cream over her ironic t-shirt and skirt, having given up on her vestis spell. She had a seat at an abandoned baccarat table in the abandoned first-floor gambling hall, paraphernalia lying where it fell or looted by people who realized they were surrounded by impendingly collectible ephemera.

"Magic, of course," Lotte said. She pulled out a chair for Lilou. Lilou's dress was good and ruined, her everflowing blood saturating it past the point of recovery no matter how many cleaning spells and blood-staunch spirits Lotte cast on it.

"Red's a good color for you," Sucy said. "Matches your eyes."

Lilou blinked. "That was a compliment."

"Yeah." She sipped a Shirley Temple. "Yeah, it was."

"Might I say the experience... sweetened you up a little?" Lotte said. She giggled at her own joke, Lilou giving her a faux slap for the badness of the pun.

"You could say that," Sucy said, gazing into her drink. "They took pictures..." Lotte's phone buzzed. "That would be them. You're welcome. Oh, how helpless I was. So drenched in thick melted candy that I couldn't begin to resist them when those buxom women dragged me from my slimy prison and, in awe at how much money they stood to make from my befouled state that they in fact groped every inch of my being to recover candy to resell to the most demanding perverts in the world."

"You're breathing funny..."

"Yes," Sucy said, shivering. "I fancy myself as the alpha in any given relationship, Jansson, in what passes for platonic or otherwise. But here and now, oh, baby, I have never been so wet as when I was being paraded in front of-"

"-mmI get it," Lotte said.

"Alright, alright." Sucy finished her drink. "Besides, they gave me a two percent cut if I let them rub the stuff off me."

"Good for you." Lotte walked around her. "So did you ever know the secret of Lilou?"

"Is that her name?" Sucy said.

"It is," Lilou said.

"I didn't even know she had a secret. I just can barely take that Akko and Diana are together. Two of you getting love interests is like..." She snapped her fingers. "Like..."

"Oil and water?" Lotte said.

"Dark matter and ylem?" Lilou said.

"No, it's just really annoying," Sucy said. "And only the numbing bliss of sizzurp could dare tame it. That and I planned to beat you in the game, step on you, drag you back to my room, and use a black magic machine to pour slime all over you."

"Eew," Lotte said, not too concerned.

"Well, I've been a bit of a jerk," Sucy said. "Not that you're totally exempt yourself, lil' missy, but I'm content enough that we can tackle that particular obstacle later." She threw her glass behind her, hitting a slot machine. "So, I hear we've got an hour to get our stuff."

"More like fifty minutes now," Lotte said. "But I took a minute to call up a bunch of spirits to get our stuff for us!"

"Oh, yeah. That's your thing." Sucy sucked on her finger and contemplated. "I'm gonna get some more drinks. You two... you do you." Sucy oozed away toward Days And Nights, the abandoned bar she looted for her drink. When the door closed behind her, Lotte and Lilou were alone.

Lotte reached into her suit and pulled out the silver bridge necklace. It was drenched in blood; she rubbed it clean with her thumb. She let the necklace go and it fell onto her chest. She thought of everything she could say and said the only thing that was right to say:

"Care to dance?"

Lilou took her hand, stood, straightened her skirt. The PA system kicked in, and a song played, slow and soft, like something out of a good dream. "More than anything," she said, and as the song played, they danced. They danced between the silent, still slot machines; across poker tables, blackjack, cards laying where they fell, trickles and splashes of Lilou's blood left behind in memory of her passage; between fountains gurgling to a stop, beneath TV screens glowing dazzling blue; below flags and banners, below flights of stairs, where the shadows fell as lights began to snap off and cast the Silver Witch into darkness.

When the music stopped, the emergency lights were all that remained, glowing like stars in the high ceiling. Lotte and Lilou lay next to each other on a fainting couch in a chill-out room where exhausted gamblers and drinkers could lay and nap off their hangovers or fear of losing money. After a time in silence, Lotte rest her head on Lilou's shoulder.

"You've never asked what I am," Lilou said.

"I didn't need to know," Lotte said. "Would it make you feel better to tell me?"

"It's not right to leave you in the dark. Now that the time has passed, I can speak more freely."

"Without hurting yourself?"

"Without drawing blood."

Lotte squeezed her tight.

"Charlotte Marja Jansson, where there is tragedy, I am cast like its shadow. When it passes, so do I. I live my little life in moments. This moment was brief, the window almost gone. But I have been loved." She rested her head on Lotte's. "And I have loved."

"You're... leaving?" Lotte said.

"Yes. It won't hurt. I promise. I'll be gone for a while. I'll return when I am cast again. I will see death and speak against it in what ways I am allowed. And maybe one day, may it never come, I will be cast into your life again."

"I'd be fine with that. I've seen a lot of trouble and I've made it through. If it means getting to live a life full of adventure..."

"Not adventure... despair. The lessening of good people. That is what casts me. I love you too much to wish that upon you. I would lose you forever; that is how much I love you."

Lotte sniffled. "How much time do we have?"

"The same as any lovers have... never enough."

"Then let's be together 'til our time comes."

"We will."

They were together in silence until a man wreathed in shadow stepped into the chill-out room.

"It is time," he said.

Charlotte Jansson and her wife Lilou Phalène-Jansson stood up, the two of them drenched in Lilou's blood. "Is this your father?" Lotte said.

"Of course."

"I'll... I'll see you on Discord."

Lilou smiled. "When the stars are right."

Lotte tried to laugh. "That's what the gods say, isn't it?"

"It is." Lilou held Lotte's face. "Charlotte Marja Jansson, my husband, I was only your wife a day, but my heart belongs to you. I can't ask for all your heart; it would be vanity, selfishness. But I hope that some part of you will love me as long as I will love you."

"I'll love you, always and forever," Lotte said. They kissed. Their third kiss.

"I'll see you in time," Lilou said, and let her go.

Her human guise fell away. Lilou Phalène's true guise was scarcely a form at all; shadows, living darkness, almost human in its utter inhumanity. In the whirling darkness burned two crimson eyes, like distant stars wet with tears. Her father shed his human shape as well, and with one ragged wing soothed his mourning daughter. The two moved, not through space or time, but something between, and were gone.

An icy chill of certainty wracked Lotte's limbs: I've lost you. Without strength she stumbled to the ground, grasping her necklace in her hands, and sobbed into the cold marble.

Some time later, perhaps an eternity, Sucy helped her back on her feet, put her arm across her shoulder, and led her out of the hotel.

Outside the hotel, just outside its wavering aura on the Las Vegas side, and protected by a circle of spirits carrying the luggage, Diana and Akko said their goodbyes to the hostages.

Tommy Bahama shook Akko's hand. "From now on," he said, "the chips-and-dip appetizer shall be half-off at all Tommy Bahama restaurants."

"Hell yeah," Akko said. "That's progress, there."

"And this lil' guy's getting the healthcare he needs," Tommy said, giving the snake a loving pat on the head. "Guy's got kids to take care of. He ain't gotta break bad on their behalf ever again, or I don't sell affordable wear that represents a lifestyle of permanent beach hangouts."

"Thanks, guy," the snake said. "It's been... wheeze... a rough life... but I think we got it in order. And thanks, witches. You saved me when I was at my lowest." He nuzzled Akko's outstretched fist.

"Any time, snakey. Snake it easy, okay?"

"Any time, every time." The snake cuddled up with his wife and kids in a much larger, more comfortable, non-caged basket Tommy provided from... somewhere.

"See you later, kids!" Tommy Bahama said, walking off into the Vegas night.

"Wait, this isn't-" Diana said.

"There's a Tommy Bahama restaurant here, too!" he said.

"Oh. Huh. What a coincidence."

"Sure it is," he said, winking, and vanishing in a shower of golden pixie dust.

"What a wonderful guy," Akko said, leaning against Diana. "This was a good adventure."

"I was hoping for something a little more tranquil, but I'll take it." She kissed Akko, mindful of where her fancy looted katana was pointing. "Any vacation where we make love is a good one."

"Oh yeah," Akko said. "And now we get cheap scary Vegas hotel sex. That's gonna be awesome."

"As long as we check for bedbugs first. It's an epidemic in America."

"Like the health insurance!"

"Yes, Akko. Like American health insurance drinking blood from sleepers in hotel rooms and apartments."

"Exactly. Oh, hey, it's the rest of our buddies!"

Sucy carried an inconsolable Lotte out of the hotel. "Hey," she said.

"Oh, Mormo, what happened to Lotte?" Diana said.

"Wife had to go bye-bye. She's taking it pretty hard."

"Aww, poor girl!" Akko said, giving Lotte a hug and immediately regretting not thinking to zap the blood off her first. So much blood. Like, she was saturated with it, especially with that big coat she still had on.

"The wife she knew for maybe a day and a half," Diana muttered. "Well! Maybe we can get her mind off her troubles somehow. Would you like that?"

Lotte nodded, but slowly. Her glasses were fogged and streaked with tears.

"I think I know a place that can help."

The four heroes wound up getting absolutely shitfaced at the Oak & Ivy, who gave them a generous discount for averting the apocalypse, before taking a taxi to their replacement hotel. The Highball was a reasonably clean place, with Diana and Akko getting a double-sized room that had just recently been installed judging by the three beds and knocked-out walls. It smelled, somehow, vaguely of sex, which was all it took for the two to get naked and get banging.

At Suzie Cupid's apartment, she and Chariot were filming a very special movie. For fund-raising purposes. And nothing else.

Wangari absolutely ignited the blackjack tables at the Luxor before discovering their poker rooms had closed, briefly taking the opportunity to yell at the Konami-branded slots about the lack of poker and that all Konami was bastards (AKAB), before settling in at the High Limit room and playing high-stakes blackjack until she was physically lifted up and thrown out of the casino. But not without a lot more money in her pocket than she started.

Finnelan and Badcock pooled some small cash together, gambled for about half an hour before losing all of it, and retired to the Highball to rent a whore for an hour and then watch some porn. Finnelan paid. They touched nothing harder or softer than alcohol that night, and things were alright.

The beating of Hannah and Barbara, which began at 5 pm Saturday Vegas time, or 1 am Sunday Luna Nova time, continued until dawn.

Lotte returned to her mundane clothes at last, took a long, hot shower, and retired to the outdoor hot tub. More often than not she sat just outside it, dipping her toes in, once in a while crawling in when she felt it was safe to do so. There were... what was it? Health reasons. She didn't think too hard about them, but she knew they existed, and might as well keep them in mind. At some point in the night, Sucy slinked out there and took a seat by Lotte, saying nothing, looking at nothing.

After a while, Lotte started singing.

"Take me down, pretty Sucy, take me down..."

Sucy joined in after a few bars, and in drunken solidarity, sang for Lilou, wherever she was.

Other than a few giant robot battles on the taxi ride to the airport and a giant spider invasion at the airport proper, the plane ride home was utterly unremarkable. Wangari sprung for Supra First Class seats back to London for everyone present. Stadium seating, personal air conditioning, complimentary poppers, the works.

"No, really, nobody deserves to fly in this sort of comfort," Finnelan said as she stretched out on her bed-seat next to Badcock.

"What can I say, it's easier to spend it than deal with people askin' me for money," Wangari said as her masseur pampered her feet. "Not that most of it isn't in the ol' Swiss bank account by now. ... by the way, sir. Do you know a native Hawaiian girl named Kamala? Worked at the Silver Witch?"

"No, m'am," her masseur said.

"Alright. Thought I'd ask. Been asking."

"Yes, m'am."

Chariot, sitting next to Wan-Wan, used an in-flight gaming computer to compose a letter to Headmistress Holbrooke explaining the reason they'd be back late. And another letter to Suzie, checking on the progress of finding an editor.

"Magic Fingers," Badcock said. "This thing has Magic Fingers." She hit a button and her bed rumbled. "Ooh, mama~"

Diana, Akko, and Lotte were asleep, having not slept. Akko snored like a cartoon character and Diana predictably was as graceful as a marble statue in repose. Lotte's seat buddies were Diana's katana and a framed photo she'd retrieved from her luggage before boarding the plane. It was a wedding photo. Lotte was smiling at full force, so excited she seemed a heartbeat away from fainting. Lilou's smile was coy, cryptic, her eyes knowing... and perhaps relieved. There was no sadness.

The intercom activated at an agreeable volume. "Hey there to those wacky kids in the Supra First Class, this is your captain speaking with a personal message. We're fixin' to take off, just kick back and enjoy. We will be arriving in London in ten hours, give or take. Local time will be 3 pm on a Monday. If you need anything, just think it, the SFC psion will detect your thought waves and interpret them fittingly. May the God of the Cross drown in the waves of Great Cthulhu. Ia!"

"Think he's really a believer or is he just mugging for favors?" Badcock said.

"Eh," Finny said. "Mm. Should I order us something for when we level off?"

"If you're thinking how I'm thinking? Yes."

After a moment, Finnelan said, "Sorry again for, you know... fucking while you were doing heart surgery."

"Well, you held my hand while Diana replaced my ticker," Badcock said, "and that was for free. Maybe if you eat me out when we get home..."

"Consider it done," Finnelan said, and dialed in an order for two Xanaxes from the in-flight console.

The plane rumbled off the tarmac and into the air.

"Ah," Wangari said. "All's well that ends... uh..."

"Mixedly," Finnelan said.

"Yeah. That was kind of a mixed bag."

"Honestly, it was a hot mess," Chariot said.

Wangari felt her phone in her pocket, heavy with pictures she'd ordered last night from Auntie Everett's deep web website. "Yeah. If you put it like that, yeah."

"At least it's all over," Chariot said.

"Yeah. Time to take a trip on the Naptown Express."

"We're on a plane and you use train metaphors?" Finnelan said.

"Why not? Trains are cool."

Meanwhile, in coach, Sucy was sneezed on by a small child.

Wangari had to get in a revenge kick somewhere, after all.

By five in the evening, the witches were back home, walking through the driver's leyline terminal. Headmistress Holbrooke and the Cons Crewe were the only ones waiting for them.

"How was the final battle?" Holbrooke said.

"Saved the world, made dip half price at Tommy Bahama's, no biggie," Akko said, dusting her hands.

"Good, good!" Holbrooke clapped.

"How was your end of the apocalypse?" Diana said.

"It was alright 'til Hannah and Barbara committed universal genocide," Amanda said.

Constanze started crying again, her whole body thrown into the act, snotty and pouring tears.

"Aw, there there," Jasminka said, kneeling and dabbing at Cons's face, though she was getting misty-eyed herself. "We came so close. For a little while there, they knew real happiness and peace."

Diana turned the sight around in her head. "What was this, again?"

"I think it was like the bad guy with the statue and those weirdos they were hanging out with?" Akko said. "They came out of the board game or something."

"Like Zathura?"

"How was that your go-to?"

"Name another movie with that plot."

"Jumanji, genius!"

"Oh... oh. Oh! Huh, completely slipped my mind." She knelt to look the grieving witches in the eye. "I'll be sure to give those two a stern talking-to."

"Also, uh, we just woke up," Amanda said. "It's been... it's been a rough weekend."

"We fell asleep after dropping off Hannah and Barbara at the nurse's office. That was after beating them up for a while.

"Man. Wanna go to the cafeteria, get some eats?" Akko said, putting her hand on Amanda's shoulder.

"Yeah... sure."

"You go on, I'll have to look into Hannah and Barbara," Diana said, heading out with her luggage in tow.

"Seeya!" Akko said, taking her own and guiding her buddies away.

Joanna and Kimberly slipped into view. "Hey, boss," Kimberly said. "How was tricks?"

"Tricky as hell," Wangari said. "Also, uh, I gambled away your stuff. Hope you don't mind a little replacement." She pulled out a brick of greenbacks and made it rain, her underlings snatching their pay out of the air. "Treat yo'self."

"I've got some mince pies in the refrigerator if anyone would like some," Badcock said. "Chariot, would you like to join?"

"Yeah, that sounds nice," she said, walking with them and Holbrooke to the teachers' quarters.

"I'm gonna wash up and maybe get a few shots," Sucy said, jogging toward the student dormitories.

"Oh, yeah, speaking of her!" Wangari pulled out her phone and hit SEND. Photos of Sucy in the marshmallow vats got sent to every student and teacher on her contact list.

"I'll allow it!" Sucy shouted over her shoulder.

And that left Lotte.

Little Lotte, in her first-place Tsar Realms prize shirt, a silver bridge necklace hanging over her heart, a small prize purse and promo card in her bag, and a framed photograph in her hands, the setting sun catching the ring on her finger. Luna Nova hadn't felt less like home since the first night she spent here. She took a breath, held it, let it out, and walked back to her room, heart heavy, mind far away.

"I miss you," she said.

There was only one wheelchair in Luna Nova, and Hannah and Barbara had to share. Nurse Horowitz had broken out what she had called her bigger, blacker magic box, and even with all the devil spiders knitting their bones together into their old shapes the two were in an amount of pain so considerable she had deigned just give them a Perc-O-Pop(tm)-brand fentanyl lollipop.

Also to share.

Just the one.

Roughly five minutes into trying to coordinate in getting around Luna Nova the pop fell out of Hannah's mouth and onto the dusty floor. The two spent a long moment in staring at it.

"I hate you," Barbara said.

"I hate you more," Hannah said.

A familiar cadence of footsteps sounded behind them.

"Diana?!" Hannah said, turning in her seat.

"I knew you'd be back!" Barbara said, struggling to see her first.

Diana flinched. "Mother Mormo, I've killed several dozen people this weekend and you two somehow look worse than any corpse I've made."

"That ginger and the fat bitch and the little one beat the hell out of us because we ruined their stupid game that deserved to be ruined!" Hannah said.

"Please help us everything is pain," Barbara said.

Diana rolled her eyes. "Look, they took you killing the board game constructs very hard. Rather unusually hard, in fact. I think you should apologize to them. Sincerely, if you can manage."

"We can try!" Barbara said.

"Good." She readied her wand and cast a spell.

Hannah and Barbara waited to be blessed with healing light. They were not. The Perc-O-Pop(tm) flew to Diana's hand, and with a spell she scrubbed it clean. "I'll be taking this. No candy if you can't play nice."

"But-!" Hannah sputtered.

"And I'll tend to you tomorrow. Be sure to think about being nice to others, you two." Diana walked past them, taking a few contented sucks on the non-specifically-sweet lollipop.

"Okay," Hannah said. "On the count of three, we strangle each other."

"One..." Barbara said.

"Two..." Hannah said.

"Oh God I can't I'm sorry Diana" Barbara said.

"I hate you so Goddamn much" Hannah said.

It was a long night. And neither of them got to see Diana get smacked with a high dosage of opoids. That was another whole thing entirely.

Things were better by Christmas.

On Daoloth's Day, Amanda, Constanze, and Jasminka gathered around a single card table, a game board drawn on posterboard and a deck of cards made from index cards. "Today," Amanda said, "we explore the mysteries of the universe by... you know... doing this."

"In the name of all those heroes we lost to time," Jasminka said.

Constanze took her turn first, shuffling the high priest deck and spinning a card onto the board. A simple drawing and a name stared up at her: MONTERREY JACK.

A look of warmth and nostalgia dawned on Amanda's face. Jasminka cooed. "Aww. You got the stud."

With some effort, Constanze smiled. "I'll treat you right," she said.

On Cthulhu Day, in the grips of interrupted sleep and certain alkaloidal herbs, Lotte painted a portrait of her wife halfway between her human and Mothman forms. Did she cry? Yes, she did.

On Nyarlat Hotep Day, while the rest of the room was distracted by The Shining, Sucy crept out into the halls of the dorms and to the far door leading to the courtyard. She braced for the cold and pulled the door open.

A tall, handsome man stood just outside. "Warm hearth for a stranger, friend?" he said. He was a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties, with sand-colored skin and short, dark hair. In spite of the cold he wore a fine-pressed suit and no coat.

"Of course." Sucy bowed and gestured grandly, letting the guest in.

"Thank you, m'am." He brushed snow from his lapel.

Sucy led him to the common room, a kettle whistling over the fire. Sucy poured her guest a drink. "Ah, fine stuff," her guest said, wafting the steam to his face. "I take my tea neat, thank you kindly." Her guest took a seat, propping his patent leather shoes on the coffee table. "Nice place you got here. Eager young minds, full of dreams, full of potential. So many futures winding away from here..."

Rule number one about Nyarlat Hotep day: Show hospitality to visitors, and ask no undue questions.

"So," Sucy said, seating herself next to her guest, "I've been feeling bad about something."

"You were told to feel bad about something," her guest said.

"Yeah. Maybe it's, what's it, Lima syndrome, but I've caught a little feelings anyway. I have a friend who has a wife who's a Mothman."

"You need a disaster. In abstract, cataclysmic. In practice, purely personal. Like the song goes, you need your own innermost apocalypse."

"Yeah. Exactly."

"It so happens," her guest said, "that apocalypse is my specialty. You know what the word really means? 'Revelation.' A parting of the veil. I can show you exactly what you are and where you belong. I can show you things that would steal the light from your eyes and the rest from your sleep."

"I thought Daoloth Day was last week."

"I am the voice and soul of the Outer Gods, child. Today is anyone's day it needs to be." He took her by the chin and made her look into his eyes. "Would you like to see an ending?"

"I would," Sucy said, licking his wrist.

Her guest raised an eyebrow.

"Hm."

"Too much?"

"I didn't say that..."

"I warn you now, good sir," Sucy said, "whatever you're into, I'm into it."

"...wow. You are."

Sucy licked his wrist again.

Her guest raised the other eyebrow.

"Jesus."

"I turned eighteen recently. So it's not weird."

"No, that's still pretty weird. But I like weird." He let her go. "Alright. Let me teach you a little trick."

On Christmas Day, the Day of the Three, Chariot called the teachers of Luna Nova to the faculty lounge to share a very special video, hooking her tablet up to the projector.

"It better be porn!" Nelson shouted as Chariot flicked the lights off.

Smiling, Chariot hit "play."

Sexy Chariot and the Number One Fan unfolded on the white sheet Chariot tacked up.

The faculty of Luna Nova were soon masturbating.

Then they were soon all having sex with Chariot and each other.

Then eventually Chariot slipped out. The sex was fairly self-sustaining by then. She had a... let's not call it a date. She had a visitor to see.

Also on Christmas Day, in the ample pre-dawn hours, Sucy performed the magic equivalent of calling in an SAS hit on her own location. By noon, a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath shambled out of the woods, groaning and bleating and getting its slippery tentacles on everything as it struggled to pull itself towards Luna Nova. Sucy was the first out to meet it, just ahead of Akko, shouting: "I know the melting point of wood, you trunky sombitch!"

It was freakishly unsafe. Just freakishly unsafe enough to cast a dark pall of uncertainty over Luna Nova. Just uncertain enough to cast a shadow.

Lotte and Lilou had a little time to themselves.

She was healed. She was beautiful.

"Do you still love me?" Lilou said.

"I dream about you. Some nights they're so real, I don't want to wake up. I miss you so much. I love you so much."

Lilou hiccupped. "Lotte, I don't know if I'll ever be able to see you again. I... I can't ask you to love me like this. It's not fair. You're so beautiful, so wonderful. I can't... I can't lock you away."

"I... I promise... I promise that if I fall in love again, I'll fall in love with them as much as I've fallen in love with you. I can't use this all up. I see you here and my love just grows. It'll never run out."

Lilou pursed her lips. "I believe you." She put her arms on Lotte's shoulders. "When you dream of me, when it feels real... that's because it's really me. I say hello, when I can."

Trembling, Lotte kissed her.

And then they fucked.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Thanks for readin' a fic where most of the pairings were with OCs. Well, one pairing and one desperate need to get laid with only some emotional attachment.

This was going to be a brief fic where Lotte and Sucy clashed over a card game in chapter 2, ending in a dramatic win for Lotte. Then the next three chapters would've followed Wangari, Akko and Diana, and Chariot as they had way more exciting adventures in Hawaii and Vegas, then conclude with everybody getting wasted and going back home.

That changed pretty quickly.

The final bits are a bit of a sidequel to my Thirteen Days of Witchmas, as it happens. For more exposition on what Witch Christmas is like, give it a look!