The headstone wasn't the worst thing he beheld in that place. The headstone with his name sat there. The quote he couldn't decipher but understood deep in his heart, which was indescribably long, but definably short, and it spoke silently to him.
If asked what it said below his name and the date (which was both before any time he could name and after any period he could hope to entitle), he would not answer, because he could not. And because if he did, one would wish he hadn't, for it is-
Danny stopped thinking. He closed his eyes. He breathed deep, then stopped that too (the air was horrid, cold, too hot, pleasant, wrong).
He was irrevocably lost. Hopelessly unfound. Unable to leave, unwilling to stay. Trapped.
The Ruins were not what Danny wished to behold, and yet he was forced to.
. * . * .
Vlad won. Plasmius lost. Sam was unsurprised.
"Glad that's over," she drawled. Plasmius' form melted into purple-pink goo and scattered in the wind (or whatever Zone-equivalent there is).
Dash looked at her like he thought she was crazy (and, let's face it: He did, she knew that, and he must know she knew that).
"Alright, kids. Let's get a move on then," suggested Vlad, and Dash saluted him, and Sam made a puking motion (only partly hidden by her hand; Vlad gave her a bland stare).
. * . * .
Paulina wasn't really sure what exactly had happened. At first they had been confronted by a horde of empty-stared ghosts with red eyes. Then a robot ghost had come, holding a glowing stick with a creepy bat on its end.
Next thing she knows, Valerie Gray, former popular kid, present Nasty Burger servant, had unearthed the Red Huntress' suit and started blasting away at the ghosts.
At some point Danny Fenton, local son of local ghost-hunting wackadoos, had shown up. Then he turned into a ghost in an actually almost stylish trench coat.
After that, Paulina kind of loses track of things. She remembers mostly fear. And running.
The soonest she can recall memories is the robot ghost being broken apart to reveal a little snot thing that squeaked a lot. She was almost sick at the sight of it.
"Poor Person, we got the stick thingy. Now what?" she asked Tucker.
. * . * .
She held her own fairly adequately against the sleepwalking victims of Nocturn. She could flip most of them over due to her skill in martial arts. The larger ones were easy to dodge. The durable ones were annoying to deal with repeatedly, but all of them were slow and Jazz found herself waiting frequently for them to reach her.
The worst part of fighting them was that she had to fight the sleepwalking forms of her parents. As much as they annoyed her and embarrassing as they were, they were still her parents. She could only push and shove them away for so long until she tired and could no longer fight.
The Sleepwalkers and the Ghost Zone Police Department had not ceased fighting. They seemed to be evenly matched, if the number of defeated combatants was any indication.
Nocturn had resumed his battle with Walker.
. * . * .
The sky turned off. All sound ceased. Wes felt an incredible loneliness, for his was the only movement in the world.
The empty gazes of Faust haunted Wes where he stood.
The Curse of St- closed without a thud or a shuffle of pages or any sound whatsoever. Wes' steps on the tiles made no stomp. His breath did not reach his ears.
Frantically opening book after book, Wes witnessed the undoing of all seven worlds which he had visited in the tomes. Trees fell (silently), water dried up (soundlessly), skies vanished (without trace). Light bent and disappeared.
Buildings crumbled. People faded.
The worlds stopped.
. * . * .
The air around Danny was full of nothing. The nothing ate away at him. It saw him and he saw nothing.
He breathed it in. The nothing entered him. He could not stop it. What he saw entered his eyes. It now lived in them. His lungs inhabited nothing and his eyes housed the Ruins' other.
The Other was what Danny saw. It lived in his eyes. His eyes were homes. He could not rid himself of the Other. He could not leave the Ruins. The Ruins were him now. He was the Ruins.
. * . * .
Sam followed Dash who followed Vlad who led them toward a great mountain.
Paulina followed Valerie who followed Tucker who walked beside Amorpho who floated and they ventured toward the great mountain.
The mountain was where they would meet and then they could go home.
The portal to Amity Park was gone, had said Amorpho, and would they say to Sam's group.
They would need to journey to the Ruins to get home. Amorpho could not articulate how much of a bad idea he thought that was.
"Stay here. You need not venture there. You need not leave. You need not try to traverse such horror," said something in his eyes, not an emotion nor thought- some Other thing, latched to him in his brief moments near the Ruins. It would stay with him.
. * . * .
Kitty wrenched herself forward and phased into the Gold-Blood. She possessed the boy and he fought her and she fought back. Their struggle was inside the Dreamscape concocted by Nocturn, but it was very real, at least to them, for it was a battle for the rights to control, the fleeting currency of existence and neither wished to lose and they would fight forevermore if they could but they couldn't because their fight was leaking into the real world-
. * . * .
The Sleepwalker form of Wes Weston wrenched and wrought and swiped and fought and flailed. Nocturn grunted, his mental control over the sleeping body tested. Walker landed a solid kick into Nocturn's side and this was all Wes and Kitty needed to break free of the Nightmare's sway. One eye green, the other ghostly red, the body of Wes looked around.