We near the end of our long and sordid tale! One chapter left to go after this one. I'm batting around the idea of a prequel focusing on Bill and Ford, just because it'd be interesting to explore their fucked up relationship. And I really love writing Bill! It wouldn't be nearly as long as this fic, which has taken...four years to complete?! Anyway, let me know what you think!
It all happened in the near blink of an eye, but Ford wasted no time, his years in the multiverse having honed his reflexes far beyond those of normal men. Within the span of a second, he dropped to one knee, narrowly avoiding the laser blast, aimed his quantum destabilizer, and fired at the energy barrier and the cultists within.
With a flash of white and blue, the destabilizer blast pulverized the magic field, erupting its azure energy with the intensity of a bomb.
Then everything went black.
Dipper couldn't see. His muddled mind tried to make sense of what had happened. One second, he'd been on the floor of the church, clutching Bill's unresponsive body to his chest. Now he was somewhere...dark. Dark and cold, and he was sinking...and that's when he realized he couldn't breathe.
Panic won over disorientation, and he opened his mouth to cry out. Bubbles poured from between open lips and he lashed, body twisting, hands groping to find purchase when there was none. Everything was pitch-black, fathomless, he couldn't tell which way was up, which was down. There was no light, no air, and nowhere to go.
A pale yellow glow drifted into view.
It was an eye, slitted and strange, one he'd seen a thousand times in his dreams, in his nightmares, in the Mindscape and beyond. Dipper briefly wondered if he was dead.
He felt something hook the back of his shirt and pull. Just as he was about to panic further, he erupted through the water's surface and felt cool night air on his face. He sucked oxygen into his lungs; it was cold and sweet and blessedly abundant. As he learned to breathe again, he felt himself being dragged through clusters of water chestnuts, their slimy tendrils caressing his skin, and into the shallows. He found himself hauled onto the bank of the pond before being released.
Bill collapsed beside him, soaking wet. He closed his eyes and coughed weakly.
"...you dove in to save me…" Dipper murmured between wet sputters, dazed. Bill snorted, didn't open his eyes.
"I landed in the water too, moron," he muttered flatly.
Dipper pushed himself up onto his elbows and raised his head. The destabilizer blast had blown the energy field and the church apart with everyone, Pines, cultist and demon alike, in it. They'd all been thrown clear. Nearly nothing was left standing of the structure, just the old stone foundation and a couple of half-collapsed walls, orange and black with fire.
Fear gripped his heart and he scanned the chaos for his family; Mabel, Stan, Ford, any one of them. Finally he found their forms, illuminated by the flames; Ford toward the front of the ruined church, facedown but stirring slightly. Stan near him, flat on his back and terrifyingly motionless. And Mabel, slumped against a tombstone, the grappling hook cord still wrapped tight around her body.
The cultists seemed to be faring better, if only slightly. They were scattered about, groaning, with a couple making valid attempts to get to their feet.
Dipper turned toward Bill, about to ask if he had any quick and brilliant ideas. But Bill was staring past him at something in the distance. Suddenly, he bolted up, lurching a few feet away toward whatever it was that had caught his attention. He sank to his knees once he found it and, with effort, dragged himself back over to Dipper.
The cult's worn spellbook was in his wet and bloody hands, smoldering but otherwise intact. Bill lay it down and flipped it open, thumbed past a few pages, then feebly slid the thing through the damp grass, toward Dipper.
"This-" he coughed wetly in between words, blinking away the water dripping into his eyes, "this page. That's the incantation you want. Gotta end it here, kid."
Dipper looked at the open book, scanning the words scrawled across the vellum, then back up at Bill, horrified realization dawning on him.
"You want me to use your magic?" he asked incredulously. Bill gave a curt nod and Dipper shook his head, sopping hair flicking droplets everywhere like a dog after a bath, "no! Bill! We did all this so you wouldn't have your power taken from you! That was the whole point of this plan!"
"Plans change, Pine Tree!" Bill nudged the book toward him again, insistent, and Dipper noticed that his yellow eye was bright, fevered.
The eye of a cornered animal, Dipper thought. Bill continued.
"We're not winning this thing without a little extra oomph. I got the oomph! You just need to channel it!"
"Bill-"
"Probably not much left in the ole battery though, so try to use it wisely, if that's even possible for a tiny-brain meat puppet like you-"
"Bill-"
"Might have to sleep for a few days afterwards, just make sure to tuck me in nice and tight, a stuffed animal wouldn't hurt either, maybe a teddy bear with tentacles for eyes-"
"Bill!" Dipper yelled, finally getting the rambling demon's attention, "I can't – I can't do that! I-"
"Pine Tree," Bill reached out, taking Dipper's face into those ravaged hands, "it's okay! If it's you, it's okay. You have my permission. Take out these nitwits and we'll figure out where to go from there."
Dipper stared dumbly at him, glanced past his shoulder at the cultists rising to their feet, then looked back at Bill.
"Bill-"
"Want me to sign a waiver or something?" the demon tossed his head back dramatically, groaning, "sheesh, kid! Just do it!"
"H-how will I even know what to do!?" Dipper stammered, "how will I know what powers to use-"
"You'll know," Bill said, "you won't be alone. And listen! No matter what happens, no matter what you see, no matter what you hear, keep reading that spell! We gotta take 'em out right here, right now, so don't be a wimp about it! Deal?"
He thrust his hand out to Dipper, palm open wide, red and dripping. Dipper stared at it for a moment, at the thick blood glistening glutinous in the amber light of Bill's eye...and grabbed it, shaking.
"...deal."
Bill gripped his hand and pulled Dipper toward him, kissing him deeply, passionately. Bill's lips were cold and clammy, but a familiar warmth flooded through Dipper's body, pleasant electricity, the sensation that he was filled with light. Dipper sighed into the kiss, letting the feeling fill him. When Bill pulled away, he was grinning a manic grin.
"And Pine Tree?" he said, and his lamplight eye was burning, "fuck 'em up."
Dipper had never fucked anyone up in his life, and wasn't sure how good he'd be at it, but he nodded anyway. He picked up the book and they staggered to their feet.
Just in time. Through the darkness, illuminated by scattered pockets of fire, Dipper saw a cultist approaching the prone body of Ford. With Bill beside him, Dipper began reciting the words before him.
"Oculus beastiam, pyramis igitur virtus…"
As his voice sounded over the crackling flames, the recovering cultists turned their heads to him in fear. He heard a gasp, murmurs, cries.
"He's got the book!"
"Volens accipere quod non est datum, imperium, et perdat!"
He felt Bill seize up beside him and hazarded a look over. Sure enough, the demon was as rigid as a board, binding marks glowing molten gold and burning blue eyes turned toward the sky. He opened his mouth and the distorted jumble of words began pouring out, echoed and strained in his weird voice. Dipper could feel the power flowing into him, could almost see it, rivers of beryl voltage sweeping from Bill's body to his own, waves of intense energy. It filled him to the brim, hot and burning, almost like Bill's touches, his kisses, but magnified by the hundreds.
He felt mighty, strong, in a way he'd never felt in his life, in a way he could never have imagined. Like he could do anything. It was a feeling he didn't want to let go.
This was addictive. This was dangerous.
One of the cultists lunged toward him, making to grab the tome. Dipper stopped him in his tracks with a mere thought. The man was frozen, helpless, and then sent careening backwards, landing hard in the ruins of the church. Dipper didn't know how he knew to do it; he just did. It almost felt like there was a hand guiding him, a voice whispering in his ear.
He turned his attention to Mabel, who was only just beginning to stir, and focused his thoughts. The grappling hook rope unwound from around her, slithering onto the grass. It turned its hooked head toward a cultist, the one who had been reading the same incantation only minutes before, then struck him hard in the chest before constricting his body. He fell harmlessly, bound.
PAYBACK
Dipper heard the voice in his mind, thought he might have heard a laugh behind it.
He didn't let up on his chanting, focusing the swelling energy within him. He had two objectives. Protect his family. Incapacitate the enemy. Force fields, blue bubbles, encased Stan, Ford and Mabel. And meanwhile, the cultists rose into the air, helpless...all except for one.
Dipper looked past the book to see the tall man from the clearing, the one who'd harnessed Bill's energy there and had used it to try and kill them. He was muttering something under his breath and, catching sight of Dipper, gave a wan smile.
"Did you think I needed that book?" he asked, his voice almost too soft to hear above the spitting of the flames and the strange hymns spilling from Bill's mouth.
Dipper's blood ran cold. He could feel it now, could feel the power that once filled his body ebb, its invisible stream flowing away from him and into the stranger. Bill faltered beside him, giving a little tremor, and Dipper cast a quick, panicked glance at him.
KEEPREADING
Dipper hadn't even realized he'd stopped. He obeyed and chanted, loud, repeating the mantra again and again.
"Oculus beastiam! Pyramis igitur virtus!"
The man just laughed and recited the same prose, his voice louder, more confident, than the boy's. The hold Dipper had on the cultists, the barriers he had around his family, it all felt tenuous, candy floss lines that could break any second. A gale kicked up with immediately intensity, sending burning embers high into the air. Energy crackled, arcing and snapping. Bill's voice had grown louder and carried now in multiples on the wind, howling, chanting, as Dipper and the cultist continued their incantations.
It wasn't so much a battle of wills as it was a battle of experience, and the grizzled old arcanist definitely had the experience. His fellow cultists were gently lowered back to the ground, and try as he might, Dipper couldn't seem to grasp onto the power that had let him disable the group in the first place. He had to focus now on keeping those force fields up. Protecting his family.
They were all awake now, Mabel, Stan and Ford, sitting, staring in worried awe at the sight before them. Dipper's heart leapt when he saw them, up and alert, felt the relief flooding through his body. Stan yelled something, something Dipper couldn't hear above the chants and the wind and the fire.
The cult leader's voice boomed out his incantation and a blast of sapphire energy emanated from his body, sweeping like a tidal wave toward the Pines family. It rolled over their magic barriers, sparking, but harmless. The force fields had held fast.
Even from several feet away, Dipper could see the anger and frustration on the man's face. He held out a hand and sent another blast toward the boy, and Dipper could do nothing but wince and prepare for the pain. But it rolled over him and Bill, just as it had the others.
He didn't remember putting a barrier around himself, wondered if Bill somehow had a hand in it, but there was no time to dwell on much of anything. The man, still reciting the ancient words, tried again and again, energy battering their protective bubbles, azure explosions raining down like carpet bombs. They lit up the sky, deafening even among the violent din already filling the air. Dipper kept reading, kept focusing, desperate to keep the shields up, but he could feel the power dwindling, could feel strength bleeding out of the bubbles like blood from an open artery.
And then, suddenly, there was no more.
The blasts the cultist had been summoning fizzled into nothingness, and the bubbles around the Pines dissolved into thin air. Dipper could feel it, could feel there was nothing left to pull from, and the cult leader must have felt it too. He looked at Dipper in alarm before they were both knocked flat on their backs by a shockwave.
It had radiated from Bill. The demon was levitating now, wounded feet lifting off the ground. He was the epicenter of a whirlwind of fire and wreckage, tearing through the meadow, his distorted voices howling like fiends.
Dipper heard the leader begin to chant the spell again, his voice heavy and determined. Dipper mimicked him, in as loud a voice as he could manage.
It was when blood began soaking through Bill's damp clothes that Dipper stopped reading.
Horrified, he locked his eyes on the hovering demon. The binding marks, glowing brilliant and gold, began to split, seeping thick blood down Bill's limbs, through his clothes, spattering dark and inky into the grass below.
"Bill!" Dipper cried, but there was no response; just the shrieking of the wind, the chaos around them, nameless language filling the air. Bill was still locked in his ossified and inescapable state, eyes smoldering turquoise. The sky above roiled violently with black clouds, heavy and tumultuous, thunder drowned out by the demon's voice. Lightning reached down from the heavens to taste the earth.
Dipper was so focused on the petrified entity before him that he barely registered the six-fingered hand on his shoulder, the urgent voice in his ear.
"Dipper! The mausoleum! The mausoleum!"
He was dragged backwards, still transfixed by the sight. Bill had become a burning beacon, all radiant golds and blues reaching out from inside his body. The branching burns on his left arm erupted in color, pulled apart, blood, black in the darkness, pouring from the opened wounds.
Dipper felt agony in his own lightning-scarred arm, overwhelming him. He gasped in pain and doubled over, but Ford continued to pull him, desperate, toward the mausoleum. Mabel was there already, moving as fast as her injured leg could carry her and shoving a wincing Stan through the stone archway.
They pressed themselves as far back into the small crypt as they could, Ford and Stan with their backs to the door and their arms spread to cover their great-niece and nephew. Outside, the wind screamed and the fire blazed and Bill's voices were the voices of gods, deafening and cacophonous.
Dipper looked over Ford's shoulder, out the doorway and into the night.
Bill levitated over the burning ruins of the church, a firestorm swirling around him, its flames like ardent worshipers. He was luminous, radiant, brighter than even the fire and his voice more resounding than the howling wind. The sun was beginning to rise behind him, the horizon weird and sickly. Dipper barely even noticed the cultists screaming and scrambling for cover.
All he saw was Bill and the great glowing outline of his body, burning, cracking, rupturing.
PINETREE
The voice drilled into his skull and the luminous figure before him shattered into a billion points of light.
Dipper felt agonizing pain, and then, merciful blackness.
The voice was soft, far away. It was saying his name, he knew that much, but he couldn't imagine who it could be or why they would want him…but it was insistent and concerned, and sounded on the edge of tears. He willed his eyes to open to meet it.
Mabel's face swam into view, her chestnut hair a tangled, dirty halo around her head.
"Mabel," Dipper croaked, and she smiled wearily, throwing her arms around him. He could hear her relieved sigh from the crook of his shoulder.
"Dipper," was all she said in return, and she held him for a long time. When she let go, sitting back on her heels, he saw her formerly trapped leg was smeared red, dotted and lined with punctures and gashes. He struggled to sit. A six-fingered hand appeared before him; he took it and Ford pulled him up gently, supporting Dipper's back with his other hand.
"Careful there," he murmured. His hair was bloody, a wide stream of red drying down the side of his face. Beside Mabel, Stan peered forward at the boy, glasses hanging broken and dangling from one ear, something he didn't even seem to notice. His face was sooty and he winced at every movement.
"Dipper," he rasped, "you okay there, kiddo…?"
Dipper nodded blankly, not knowing if he really was okay or not. Dazed, his eyes roamed, taking in the scene before him.
It was dawn. The sun was a small red orb in the sky as black clouds slowly dispersed, dim flashes of lightning dying along with them among distant peals of thunder. The meadow was decimated. The ground he sat on was burnt and ashen, gravestones flattened. Any sign of the church had been almost completely eradicated. Steam sizzled and smoked from what used to be the pond, now just a damp hole in the ground, its masses of water chestnuts shriveled, dead fish tangled in their browning stems.
Only the mausoleum still stood, blasted black, but in one piece.
Everything was quiet, empty. Dipper spotted a few human bones here and there, charred and crumbling. A lone skull sat among the ashes of the church, half buried. He was too tired to feel sick.
Gray ashes and orange embers drifted from the sky, swirling gently on a light breeze.
Among the ashes were glints of gold, glittering with the rising sun.
"Bill?" Dipper asked, and Mabel looked him dolefully, shaking her head.
Dipper, confused, stared at her, then looked around the meadow again before turning back to his family.
"Bill?" he said again, head pounding and arm aching. Ford placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Gone, Dipper. He's gone."
That didn't seem right. It didn't seem real; he was sure any second he'd hear that obnoxious laugh or an insistent shout or a contemptuous snort. But all remained quiet.
"How…?" Dipper asked numbly. Ford contemplated the boy for a moment, his expression difficult to read. Finally, he spoke.
"...his energy...having it harvested from two sources at once, while he was in an already injured body...it must have been too much. The vessel couldn't take it."
Dipper's insides turned to ice. So he was at fault. He was to blame. He was that second source, pulling from Bill, taking all he had left to give.
Destroying him.
Ford must have seen the turmoil on Dipper's face because gathered the boy up in his arms, hugging him tightly.
"You did a good thing, my boy. You saved us."
"...he told me to do it…" Dipper said, his voice a weak whisper against Ford's turtleneck, "use his energy…"
Ford pulled away from him, bushy eyebrows arched in surprise before his face fell into a somber smile.
"Then you are certainly not to blame."
They sat in silence for a few long minutes, processing, recovering. Then, slowly, without speaking, all four began to pick themselves up. The movements were slow and laborious, with Stan the worse for wear. He couldn't stand straight, but when Ford and Mabel went to help him, he swatted them away and muttered something about his 'lumbago'.
Dipper staggered away from them as they fussed over Stan, stepping through the remains of the church, to where he had last seen Bill, where he had witnessed the demon burning and shrieking and bleeding. The ground there was blasted fallow, burnt down to the dirt. There was nothing there but a triangle shape, scorched into the earth. Dipper stared at it, then tilted his head to the sky, its colors made strange by the dispersing clouds and rising sun.
"Bill?" he asked aloud, but there was no answer except the distant call of birds. He paused, stooped slowly and scooped up a handful of ashes.
Gold particles gleamed there, dazzling among the gray, before slowly disappearing. He let the ashes fall from his hand and watched them scatter in the wind.
Arms wrapped around his torso, hugging him from behind. He knew it was Mabel without seeing her, and could feel her tears, hot against his back. Then Ford and Stan were there too, Ford's hand on Dipper's shoulder and Stan's on the top of his head.
"Come on, Dipper," Ford said softly, "let's go home."
Battered and bloodied, the two sets of twins began the slow trek back, leaving the barren meadow and all its scars behind.