There was little else for Bogel and Weerd to do other than cling to each other and cower as Asmodeus towered over them in utter fury.
"Do you mean to tell me…" he growled. "You failed again!?"
"It was an almost foolproof plan, Sir!" Weerd sobbed.
"Yeah, we thought that going after one of those other kids would get Vincent to hand over the Chest. Instead, he just used Time Slime's Time Scepter! How were we supposed to know he still had it!?"
"Would that I had Time Slime here instead of you!" Asmodeus snarled. "He would not have failed me as the two of you so continuously seem to do! The two of you are useless to me—absolutely useless!"
"Maybe we can—" Weerd began, but he was cut off by an angry roar.
"Silence!" Asmodeus fumed. "I will trust my Time Worm to do what you find impossible!"
"You're gonna have him get the Chest?" Bogel asked.
"No," Asmodeus muttered. "I can obtain the Chest with much greater ease if that traitor to my bloodline is removed from the equation—even if only temporarily."
The Time Worm screeched in disbelief.
"You're gonna have him take out Vincent!?" Weerd asked, in a similar tone. "How!? We couldn't touch the guy—the Time Worm can't, either!"
"Then we will have the traitor give himself up willingly," Asmodeus said. "He coddles those mortals and claims them to be his 'family?' Very well—let us see how far he will go to protect them!"
He turned to the Time Worm.
"Go," he ordered. "Keep your focus on the mortals. If I have correctly read the traitor, he will put himself in harm's way willingly for their sakes. Once he is gone, show no mercy upon the mortals—if and when he makes it back, I want him to find that, once again, I have caused him to lose everything he ever held dear to him."
The Time Worm hissed nervously, but obeyed, tunneling away.
"So…" Fred mused aloud. "How exactly are we going to go about getting this Time Worm?"
"I know what you're thinking, and no, it's not going to work," Daphne sighed. "There's no trap that you'll be able to construct that'll hold that thing—it tunnels through time and space by digging into the space-time continuum, leaving portals behind."
Velma gasped.
"They're wormholes!" she exclaimed, her eyes practically shining. "In every sense of the word!"
"Say what?" Flim-Flam asked.
Velma took a dry-erase marker from the table and drew a circle on the conference room whiteboard.
"Dr. Midori's quantum physicist friend would be able to explain this better than I can," she admitted. "But let's say that this sphere is the space-time continuum. Theoretically, there could be a way for a hole to connect one part of this sphere to the opposite side of it—in science, it's called a wormhole." She drew two lines through the sphere. "And now you're telling me that this Time Worm is making actual wormholes! Jinkies, can you imagine what this could mean for quantum and astrophysics!? We could send probes into it and see where they end up!"
"I fear that the risks to this far outweigh the scientific benefits," Vincent said. "How easy would it be for someone to accidentally fall through one of the time portals and end up somewhere—or somewhen—unknown? Or worse—someone could arrange for it to happen in a fit of vengeance or jealousy. No, I fear humankind is not ready for such a thing; we must keep it a secret."
"Oh…" Velma realized, looking at her drawing. "…I guess you've got a point. We've seen the kinds of things people will do for money or revenge—and that was without any great source of power at their disposal."
"Like, you aren't kidding!" Shaggy exclaimed. "It's why Mr. V and his fellow mages have to live in isolated places—because people would just bug them for stuff if they knew what they were capable of!"
"Rheah, we try really hard rhnot to ask him for stuff," Scooby nodded.
"Even if he probably would give us anything we asked for," Scrappy mused.
Vincent suppressed a smile; indeed, he would be willing to give them anything they asked for—but they would never ask beyond what few things they'd already asked for.
"He's already given us the most valuable thing he could give us," Daphne now said, proving him right. "The bonds we share are all we could ever want." She hoped, in time, Fred and Velma would forge those familial bonds with Vincent, too—they seemed to be well on their way.
Velma smiled, and then grew serious.
"Okay, so we can't have people finding out about the wormholes. So, what are we supposed to do?" she asked.
"Vince has a Time Scepter he swiped from one of the ghosts we captured," Flim-Flam said. "He was able to close up the wormholes last night with it."
"Okay, so you guys need to trap the Time Worm in that Chest of Demons thing, and then close up whatever it leaves behind," Fred mused. "Even if my kind of traps wouldn't work, wouldn't there be something that could get it to the Chest?"
"That Blizzara spell you used yesterday seemed to be doing the trick," Shaggy recalled, looking to Vincent.
"Yes, but you will recall that the worm fled once it realized what I was doing," Vincent reminded him.
"So, we'd need something that would keep the worm in one place," Fred said. "What about that spell you used on the pen to freeze it?"
"The worm has too much energy from the Time Vortex around it," Vincent said, shaking his head. "I wasn't able to get Temporal Chains to work last night."
"Do you have some other sort of trapping spell that could keep it from moving?" Fred asked. "A barrier of some kind?"
Daphne gasped in realization.
"Reflect Barrier!" she exclaimed, and she looked to Vincent. "Could you cast Reflect Barrier underground!?"
"…I've never tried…" Vincent realized. "But if it did work, then it would be exactly what we'd need!" He picked up the Chest, took out the crystal ball, and teleported them to the beach. "For now, we…" He trailed off as Fred and Velma looked momentarily stunned by the sudden change of scene. "…My apologies; I forgot you're not used to that yet."
"It's fine…" Velma managed to say.
Fred nodded in agreement.
There wasn't much else to do other than wait for the Time Worm to reappear—and it seemed that they didn't have long to wait. Soon, the ground shook again, and they all stared as a gigantic trail of upturned sand began to head towards them.
"Get behind me—all of you!" Vincent instructed, handing the Chest of Demons to Shaggy. He uttered a quiet prayer to Athena under his breath before attempting to work his magic, aiming his hand towards the sand. "Reflect!"
They watched in some amount of nervousness, but that nervousness turned to triumph as the upturning sand was stopped in its tracks.
"It worked!" Daphne exclaimed.
"Yes, and now, to force it aboveground," Vincent said, a confident smirk growing on his face. "Quaga!"
A circle of stone spikes erupted from the ground, some of them pushing up the Time Worm, which screeched in protest. Another Reflect Barrier from behind knocked the worm into the circle of stone spikes, and Vincent now cast one more Reflect Barrier at the ground, preventing the worm from burrowing back under again.
"Blizzara!"
The Time Worm shrieked and screeched as the wintery blast struck it head-on.
"Get ready, Shaggy!" Vincent instructed.
But the Time Worm, fearing both capture and Asmodeus's wrath, now did something it had never done before; it launched itself upward, through the air, out of the Blizzara spell, sailing over the stone spikes that Quaga had set up, and it was now heading right for Vincent and the gang as it aimed itself downward.
The warlock's look of confidence was rapidly replaced by a look of sheer terror as he realized the danger the others were in.
"RUN!" he ordered.
Scooby grabbed Scrappy as they all scattered; the worm now burrowed back into the ground, creating a wormhole—and sand began to sink into it in a suctioning pull, like a whirlpool made of sand, leading right into the wormhole.
Once again reminded of Asmodeus's order, the worm pulled an about-face, now sticking its head out of the wormhole it had just made, spitting mouthfuls of sand at the retreating mortals as they attempted to flee.
Velma let out a shriek as one of the streams of sand struck her, tripping her up. The sand whirlpool expanded as she fell over, and she found herself caught in it.
"Help!" she cried, trying to break free from it, but to no avail; it began to pull her in towards the center—and towards the Time Worm and its wormhole.
"VELMA!" Daphne, Shaggy, and Fred all cried in unison.
Scooby let out a panicked howl, handing Scrappy off to Flim-Flam, as he would be more sure-footed on four legs than the others on just two; he moved to try to head towards the vortex of sand, but Vincent beat him to it, teleporting right into the vortex, near the outer edge, Time Scepter in one hand.
With his free hand, he unfastened his cape and held it out to Velma; she managed to grab onto the edge of the cape as the others now rushed to the edge of the vortex. Vincent handed off his end of the cape to Daphne, and Shaggy, Fred, Scooby, Flim-Flam, and even Scrappy now clung to Daphne to help steady herself.
They slowly began to pull Velma out of the sand vortex, and Vincent allowed the vortex to pull him in further, standing between the others and the Time Worm, which was once again trying to spit sand at them to knock them into the vortex, too.
"You will not touch them!" Vincent hissed at the worm, unperturbed by how he was being drawn towards it.
"Vincent, be careful!" Daphne cried, as they now finally succeeded in pulling Velma to safety; Velma clung onto the others in her fright, as well, and Daphne was still holding onto Vincent's cape.
But Vincent was confident as he raised the Time Scepter and brought it down, striking it on the ground. The scepter glowed, and the worm began to shriek as the wormhole began to close in upon it, pulling it back towards the interior of the wormhole. And as the wormhole shrank, so did the sand vortex—allowing the gang to relax slightly as they realized it was now safe for them.
Satisfied again, Vincent turned away, facing away from the Time Worm and preparing to teleport out of the sand vortex so that he could cast Blizzara once more and get Shaggy to recapture it in the Chest once and for all. But, once again fearing Asmodeus's wrath, the Time Worm struck back, lunging at the overconfident warlock as the worm continued to get drawn into the wormhole.
"VINCENT!" Daphne exclaimed.
"Rhook out!" Scooby cried.
Once again realizing that his pride had gotten him in trouble, Vincent quickly cast Protect on himself even before he turned around to see the Time Worm attempt to seize him in its pincers.
He'd cast the Protect spell in time, however; it grabbed the bubble of the spell instead of Vincent directly, but, to his horror, Vincent found that it still was able to move him by moving the protective bubble that surrounded him—and it was pulling him into the rapidly-closing wormhole, too.
Desperate to keep the Time Scepter out of enemy hands, Vincent hurled the Time Scepter at Scooby as the dog bounded towards him to try to help; instinctively, the Dane jumped and caught the Scepter in his mouth, but the distraction was enough for the worm to pull Vincent out of his reach.
"NO!" Daphne shrieked.
She now moved to run towards them, still holding the cape in the hopes that it could be a lifeline for Vincent as it had been for Velma.
"Stay back!" Vincent ordered, but Daphne paid him no heed as she continued to run towards the shrinking vortex.
That was all the instruction the others needed, however; they all grabbed onto Daphne again, this time, to keep her from getting caught in the vortex.
"Daphne, please—!" Vincent began, but he was cut off as the Time Worm pulled him into the wormhole—which closed after them.
The vortex of sand stopped swirling once the wormhole closed, and, all of them stunned and stricken speechless by what had just transpired, they let go of Daphne, staring helplessly at the spot where Vincent had been moment ago.
And as the realization sunk in that Vincent—the last supportive parental figure she had left—was now lost somewhere in the infinite expanse of space and time, Daphne crashed to her knees, sobbing into the cape that she still held in her hands.