Pine Trees And Honeybees

by Straightjacketed

Just when it seems the summer excitement is over, a freak accident sends Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Ford hurtling into a parallel universe; worse still, it's being menaced by yet another demented monster - one that seems very interested in Dipper. Now it's time to see if the team can tackle the problems of another world... and live long enough to find a way home.

25. Nightmares Never Last Forever

A/N: Ow.

Sorry for the delay, gentle readers. It's been a month of illness and accidents, and I'm currently recovering from the latest of them. But enough of my troubles! A huge thank-you for all your views, reviews, favourites, and follows, and I'll do my best to deliver the final chapters of this story as soon as possible.

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and TSW are still not mine.

This chapter's soundtrack is You Have The Power by Trevor Jones.

---

"Wakey, wakey, Grey: my machines are hungry, little creature. Open up to me and feed them your sorrows; give me your despair and all will be forgotten…"

Grey was dimly aware of being hoisted into the air, of psychic tendrils eagerly worming their way into his brain as they searched for an emotion to feast upon. Even barely conscious, there was no mistaking the telltale sensation of being siphoned, and though there was nothing that could be physically done to stop it, Grey fought with all their might to hold back the writhing tide of feeders that threatened to consume them.

Back when they'd still gone by the name of the Grey Professional, back when they'd jealously clung to a few meagre scraps of pride even after all the humiliation that had been heaped upon them, they'd defended their thoughts against even the most furious of the Last Queen's assaults on their mind. They – he, as he had been then – would not let the Forger-Wasp rewrite his brain, not even as a consolation prize for what they could not change: even with his reputation in tatters, even with his masters having disavowed him, even with his failure branded upon his flesh for all time, he could not abandon his identity. He was still the Grey Professional, he'd told himself, and neither the machinations of the alternate Pines nor the exile to which they'd condemned him could ever undo that.

And he'd been right, in a way: it hadn't been the Forger Wasp Queen that had changed him, nor had it been the humiliation of his defeat, though that had played a part. No, what had truly altered his identity had been his own humble self… and the revelation he'd experienced in those nerve-shredding weeks spent alone in the wilderness: he could not be the Grey Professional anymore. He couldn't cling to the past, not when all he had was a name to cling to; he'd reduced himself to Grey of his own free will, even as the Queen slowly withered within him, leaving himself progressively lodged in his transitional form. And eventually, he realized that the only way to keep his pride from harming more than it helped was to disregard everything he'd once been – his triumphs, his shames, his true name, even the deepest details of his original body – for not only was he no longer male, but he was no longer a singular being either. And so, he had become they and they had abandoned all trace of Montresor that still adhered to their soul.

Yes, they were so much less than he had been, but at least it had been by choice. They hadn't succumbed to the transmuting influence of the Forger Wasp Queen, and they would not fall to the gnawing hunger of Atlantic Island Park.

For what felt like eons, Grey held fast, ignoring Auldman Northwest's poisonous whispers, gritting their teeth against the tide of psychic tendrils pouring in across his psyche. Both Northwest and his machines were hunting for some morsel of despair that could be used to fuel the foul engines of this place, but Grey was made of sterner stuff than they expected. Back in their glory days among the greatest mercenaries of the multiverse, before they'd accepted that contract that had sent them plunging into the murkiest depths of disrepute, they'd been trained in the art of resisting mental coercion from the very best, had even been tortured by an entire telepathic interrogation team for a day and a half without breaking.

They would not break.

They could not break.

The seconds dragged by. Phantasmal images flashed before Grey's mind, and they knew at once that Auldman was trying to draw upon their memories to provoke an emotional response; biting down on their tongue, they tried to resist the oncoming storm of visions, but it was almost impossible to keep it at bay. All they could do was brace themselves against the storm and try not to feel… but it wasn't easy. Before their mind's eye, they saw their first murder, of Fortunato locked away in the darkness and howling "For god's sake, Montresor!"; they saw their first triumphs as the Grey Professional, of the overflowing cash coffers, of the medals and the honours heaped upon their heads; they saw the mission from 8-Ball and their own arrogant self-assurance that victory would be theirs; they saw the moment that Mabel had been at their mercy… and the moment when Mabel had turned the tables on them, bring down both the mighty Grey Professional and the mighty Forger Wasp infestation; they even saw the very moment that they'd first tumbled into this dimension, caught between one identity and another.

But still, Grey would not budge.

After all those weeks spent alone with nothing but their thoughts, they had more than enough time to come to terms with their fall from grace. If Auldman Northwest hoped to overcome them, he'd have to try a lot harder than that…

And then, just as Grey was starting to regret those words, he heard Auldman whisper something that made his blood run cold in his veins:

"I can see your memories, little she-he, little freak. I can see all the horrors and humiliations you've suffered, though I haven't got the faintest clue how these Pines brats are involved… but I can see your despair. It's ripe and ready to drop, and it hurts so much, doesn't it? You rose so very high in your funny little world, but in the end, you fell so very, very far. Doesn't it just burn to endure so much loss of face, to know how deeply you failed? Ah, but I can ease your pain; better than that, I can give you peace: just open up to me and let the siphons in, and I promise – on my honour as a Northwest – that I will undo the changes you suffered as soon as I've attained divinity. I can pluck that dying parasite from your confused little body, give you back the form you were once so proud of, even find a way to restore your standing with those who cast you off – after all, with the power at my command, nothing will be impossible. All you have to do is accept my generous proposal and you'll never have to suffer ever again."

And for one terrible moment, Grey wanted nothing more than to accept the monster's terms. Yes, they'd recognized that what had happened to them had been their own fault, yes, they knew that Grey never would have ended up in this position if they hadn't broken the rules, and yes, they knew that wanting to return to the glory days would have only meant a return to the terrible lack of professionalism that had led to Grey being laid low by a wildly-eccentric child at the very moment of victory… but still, they couldn't help but consider it, if only for a moment.

They would not accept such an offer.

They could not accept it.

To do so would be to slip backwards into the folly of the past. Once upon a time, they'd been willing to sacrifice one world for the sake of greed and pride before; they would not make the same mistake again.

Then they felt the familiar stab of wounded pride and desperate nostalgia and crippling loneliness, the all-too-distinctive gnawing of his despair… and too late, Grey realized their mistake.

They hadn't needed to accept Auldman Northwest's offer.

All they'd needed to do was consider it long enough to feel despair… and that had been everything the rotten old bastard had needed to get his machines working again. Around him, he felt the arcane innards of the siphon roaring to live, greedily feasting on the essence of despair and funnelling the energy of it into the other machines – the harvester, the anima capacitor, the implanter, the finalizer that would hand Auldman Northwest godhood on a silver platter.

In blind panic, Grey tried desperately to regain self-control, to shut off their despair and deny Auldman any more power, but the psychic tendrils that had invaded their mind were too many, too quick, and too demanding. Before they could recover their composure, invisible fingers had already begun to claw at his psyche, jabbing at vulnerable emotions and greedily snatching at anything that remained unprotected.

With Lorraine, Auldman had used a subtle and ritualized approach to force her brain into giving up the emotions he needed, if only because he needed to replicate the trauma that had driven her into the arms of despair in the first place; it had been no less a violation, but it had been a delicate one. With Grey, who didn't have sixty years of pain and despair to exploit, Auldman had no need to be so insidiously gentle: as soon as he saw a weak point in his armour, he brought the full force of his powers crashing down on him as a freezing barrage of clawing, clutching talons, ripping him opening and letting the machines feast on whatever they needed. Screaming in fear and horror, Grey tried to swat the hands aside, to flee from Auldman's ravening psychic grasp, to hide behind the walls of their mind where it was safest, but those agonizingly cold hands could not be denied and could not be escaped.

Once or twice, Grey tried to lash out at Auldman in the physical world, tried to fight back, but Auldman just held him out of reach while the emotional drainage continued. All they could do was writhe in agony and terror and humiliation as the Bogeyman ransacked their mind for anything he needed, as those brutal machines siphoned and pumped and punctured Grey's brain in a dozen different places at once.

What the siphon got out of them was not enough to give Auldman what he wanted, but it was enough to give him an edge. And it was enough to leave Grey slumped on the floor in a pool of their own vomit, cowering, shivering, and already instinctively drawing themselves into a foetal ball.

Moments later, Auldman was gone – teleporting himself to stay ahead of his pursuers, but Grey could still sense him hovering over all, ready to drink in the extracted energies.

Around them, the arcane machines exalted in the newfound fuel with a sound like a thunderstorm in hell as they went to work on their long-delayed mission, roaring to live with such fervour that the room itself trembled and flakes of dust fell from the ceiling. Within a matter of seconds, they had already begun delving through the barrier between the pocket dimension and the real world, then went burrowing deep beneath the soil of Solomon Island in search of the harvest that was the Gaia Engine.

At the very moment the energized harvesting machines touched the Engine, Grey felt the entire island tremble: even here in Auldman Northwest's private domain, the impact felt like an earthquake, and if the room had trembled beforehand, now the House of Horrors itself rocked to its very foundations as the shockwaves heralding the start of the apocalyptic harvest spread. And as they did so, reality began to warp ever-so-slightly, just enough to allow Grey to see what truly lay beneath Solomon Island.

He saw, as if the mountain itself had turned to glass, the colossal cube that was the Gaia Engine, rumbling with the otherworldly power that the angels had given it, still humming with all the power and glory of the long-lost First Age.

He saw the corrupted Anima spilling from it, the Filth pooling and writhing with oily black tendrils as the occupant of the Engine tried to escape from its prison of dreams, the zero-point pathogen accumulating such a monstrous reservoir that it threated to swamp the island from within.

And worst of all, he saw inside the Engine, saw the horrible shape of the prisoner within – its incalculably vast tentacles bound by chains of its own making, its near-infinite power suppressed and channelled by the mechanisms of the ancient device, its all-destroying eye forever shut by the sleep that must not end.

The Dreamer. The Lucid. The Sleeping One. The Sun-Eater. The Whale-Mollusc God. The Serpent Under The Mountain. Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent, he whose coils gave the world structure and borders.

To Grey's horror, that gargantuan closed eye was beginning to flutter.

The Dreamer was stirring, its sleep subtly interrupted by the cacophony of the harvest. Already its tentacles were beginning to twitch and shudder as it semi-consciously sought the source of the noise. It wouldn't need to be awake for very long for disaster to ensue – according to the Retribution Squad's files, it had only taken a few seconds for Lilith's accidental awakening of just one of the Dreamers to trigger the end of the Third Age, and it hadn't even stayed awake long enough to admire its handiwork afterwards. And that was just one Dreamer out of possibly hundreds, and not even the one that was currently lurching towards full consciousness even as Grey helplessly looked on.

The Vikings had known the truth of the serpent: in their legends, Jormungandr could not be harnessed or hooked, not even by Thor himself. Only its irrational hunger kept it in place, kept it gnawing ravenously at its own tail, oblivious to the fact that it could be free if it were only to open its jaws… but if Jormungandr were ever to release its tail and leave the edge of the world, Ragnarök would begin with a great poisoning of the sea and sky, and all would be destroyed in the apocalyptic war that would follow.

If the Dreamer ever awoke…

To Grey's shame, they couldn't think of what might happen next. They were experienced in fates worse than death, having nearly inflicted one on an entire parallel reality not too long ago… but next to the awful consequences of surviving the Dreamer's awakening, even the horrors of the Forger-Wasp would look innocent and palatable by comparison.

Somewhere overhead, Auldman Northwest cackled in horrific triumph: the harvesting machines were already feeding him the first few drops of energy he needed to claim the advantage in this battle, and now he exalted, totally oblivious to the fact that even this petty energy boost would be enough to destroy him and all of reality if the Dreamer was roused.

All Grey could do was shut their eyes and wish that Fortunado were here with them. Fortunado, for all his faults, would not have left a lost soul like themselves to suffer alone in this dreadful place. Even after that awful, awful fate that Grey had inflicted upon him, he would not have left his old friend alone at the end of the world…

---

Somewhere on a forgotten corner of the House of Horrors, surrounded by the shredded corpses of zombies and the wreckage of Lorraine's ongoing duel, three harried looking figures battered and tore their way through the outer workings of Auldman Northwest's nearest machines.

As the harvesters and siphons thundered their triumph, the mundane power network of the building slowly broke down under the entropic influx from the Dreamer: all around them, lights flickered, dimmed, and finally died, some of them exploding in high-pitched pops of shattering bulbs. Consequently, had anyone been watching the efforts of the saboteurs, they would have seen them only as vague silhouettes against the pulsing purple light now oozing across the walls and ceilings; only their voices would have been legible.

"Quick! We've already got incoming power surges from the source! Mabel, see if you can smash those glass tubes down there…"

There was a musical crash of glass from somewhere in the gloom.

"Good, good. Uh, Dipper, we're going to need to loosen the bolts on that small pipe there."

"But he's already absorbing the first few doses! We're already too late!"

"Not entirely: we might not be able to stop the incoming energy, but we might be able to dilute it somewhat – maybe even prevent him from completing this little stunt."

"Great! Why don't we just blow up the pipeline?"

"Well, if we try that now, the backlash might ripple up the pipeline and wake up the Dreamer anyway. Also, the explosion will probably kill everyone in the building, but that's beside the point. Dipper, pass me the bolt cutters. Mabel, keep an eye on the meter; we need to move quickly if we want to stop another surge!"

"What about that duct down there?"

"According to my readings, that leads to the main power shielding mechanisms for this junction; I'm pretty sure those are meant to keep the extracted energies from leaking out before they can reach Northwest."

"I think I can see wiring inside – maybe if we cut those, we can shut this entire junction down."

"Good idea, but unfortunately, I wouldn't even be able to get one shoulder through that opening. And I don't think you'd be able to get through it either, Mabel: I think the last time you were small enough to fit through the duct, you'd have been, oh, four or five years old."

There was a pause, as Ford and Mabel belatedly realized that they were suddenly missing a saboteur.

From somewhere around floor level, there was a vivid flash of light, and the muffled fizzling sound of a very important piece of machinery going belly-up.

A moment later, Dipper scrambled back into view.

"Thanks very much for waiting, bro-bro. What happened to you being the careful one?"

"Just using my only advantage," Dipper panted. "Right now, I'm next to useless in a fight, I'm still barely an amateur at magic, I know absolutely nothing about eldritch machinery, and what I do know isn't much help here… but if nothing else, I'm really, really good at breaking things."

---

Auldman Northwest cackled and writhed as the energy permeated him, flooding his veins with an energy so potent and powerful that he could already feel his blood beginning to burn as the magic flooded his body. He'd only absorbed a few microdoses and already his reserves of power were already replenished a thousandfold; this was better than just dining on leftovers to replenish his strength, for not even the entire storehouse of partially devoured ghosts would have given him the surge of strength he'd gotten just from powering his machines with Grey's despair! Drinking Grey's fear down to the last fatal drop wouldn't have given him the vitality he'd now achieved!

His power was growing exponentially: already, he'd long since shot past his earlier heights and was hurtling towards the divine stratosphere. He wouldn't have enough fuel to reach the intended heights, but he would have enough to crush Lorraine and set the stage for a second attempt… and now was the time to begin in earnest.

Drawing upon all the energy pooling in his blood, he channelled it into transformation, sending his body surging towards the ceiling – and then clean through it. Only his ingrained grasp of magic allowed him to ensure that his clothing and cane grew with him, and even then, he was pretty sure that he tore open the shoulder of his jacket. But that didn't matter: he still had so much more growing to do, so much more strength to assimilate…

Already stretched taller than any mortal by his earliest transmutations from human to bogeyman, Auldman now ballooned skywards, punching through one floor after another, tearing through the rafters of the House of Horrors and erupting into the night. He couldn't help but laugh, exalting in his transformation as he grew ever taller and the House beneath him seemed to shrink, until at last, he wrenched himself free of the attraction and tottered out onto the solid ground of his private domain.

He wasn't done yet: he wasn't going to stop transforming until he was strong enough to crush Lorraine single-handedly, to smother the power of her Bee and leave her helpless while he reduced all of Dipper's annoying rescuers to pulp. He'd made the mistake of underestimating this gang of imbeciles before and it had nearly cost him everything; he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice, least of all when it came to this inexplicable reserve of willpower that Lorraine had tapped into.

He drew upon another dose of incoming eldritch energies, growing steadily taller, gathering more magical power-

-and then, without warning, the stream of power abruptly cut off.

Puzzled, he looked down at the House of Horrors, belatedly wondering if he'd damaged any of his machines during the sudden growth spurt. A quick psychic survey revealed that nothing had been crushed or dislodged – nothing that matched his dramatic expansion at any rate – but the main conduits were not functioning: a cascade of mechanical failures had swept across the channel at the primary junction, key among them being the total loss of power shielding, causing the energy surge to rupture the pipeline and burst through it, meaning that all the extracted puissance that should have gone to him was now dissipating back into Solomon Island's already over-polluted earth – priceless oil oozing away into desert sands.

Auldman howled with rage. For the next ten seconds, he roared and bellowed and swung his arms around like a windmill in a cyclone, furiously kicking out at anything nonessential, hoping against hope that there'd be something alive that he could crush under his heel. This latest disruption was obviously sabotage; a malfunction of this nature couldn't have occurred by accident, not at this pivotal stage, and while he didn't know if this was Lorraine's doing or Dipper's doing or both, he was not going to tolerate another minute of their interference. And if they thought that cutting off his access to energy was going to stop him, they'd have another goddamned think coming. He'd repair the damage to the pipeline eventually, but in the meantime, he had other sources of power within reach…

He looked around at the attractions that surrounded him, at the vast tracts of forest and unfathomable lakes that spanned his private reality, at the kingdom of glittering lights and hungry shadows that he'd built all those years ago with the first dose of energy he'd extracted from the Dreamer. Everything here, from the trees to the replica attractions, from the still waters to the very boundaries of this secluded world, had been made of the same magic; about the only thing that he hadn't built had been the House of Horrors and the Tunnel of Tales, and that was only because he'd taken them directly from the original park. And if everything here had been made of the same eldritch stuff… well, with a little application of his newly enhanced powers, it could also fuel his transformation.

Reaching out with all his will towards the rollercoaster, he began rendering it down to its purest magical elements, watching as it turned as transparent as glass and began to soften and melt into glowing slag, until at last it was ethereal enough to absorb into his being. As he'd hoped, it gave him power – but barely a thimbleful! If he wanted to stop Lorraine once and for all, he'd need more.

With a snarl of mingled anger and annoyance, he cast out his will in all directions, seeking out everything he'd made in the pocket reality and swiftly rendering it down to its purest, most magical elements. Around him, trees evaporated into luminous gasses that were immediately absorbed into Auldman's body, his mind sweeping the hillsides and mountains of the park until the entire landscape was naked and grey. The rivers and lakes ran dry, reduced to glowing plumes of vapour that soon vanished into nothingness, leaving only gaping craters and strange dry channels in their place. And then, with the land around him as barren and lifeless as the moon, he turned his power on the mountains, shrinking them down to mounds of glassy slag and billowing, radiant clouds. Before long, he wiped the sky clean of the stars and the moon, scrubbing them away as if they were nothing more than old paint on a window, absorbing everything that they had been into his growing reservoirs of power. In a matter of seconds, his pocket reality was flat as a board and everything outside the replica of Atlantic Island Park was nothing more than a void.

But it still wasn't enough.

Muttering expletives that he hadn't used since he'd left Oregon for Wall Street, he turned his need for power on the rides around him. One by one, the replicated attractions wobbled, faded, and finally collapsed into translucent goop, then evaporated into raw Anima: the Octotron, the Roller-coaster, Sideshow Alley, even the Ferris Wheel – all of them slumped and oozed away into nothingness as he absorbed every last spark of magic contained within them.

Around him, the pocket dimension collapsed, ripped to shreds in a desperate effort to dig out every last atom of energy that could fuel his apotheosis, but Auldman barely noticed. He'd taken much, but still wasn't enough to suppress the powers of a Bee for good; he needed more. He was dimly aware of the House of Horrors and the Tunnel of Tales falling backwards into reality, of his mildly depleted undead army being emptied out of the collapsing dimension, of his feet touching real soil, even of the last few fragments of his own little world bleeding away into nothingness, but it didn't matter. What mattered was getting this to work-

A low rumbling from somewhere beneath him suddenly shook Auldman out of his reverie, and he looked up in consternation to find himself back in the real world.

Around him the real Atlantic Island Park was still struggling to adjust to the presence of the House of Horrors and the Tunnel of Tales, which hadn't existed in the real world for the better part of three decades; the landscape now warped and eddied as it tried to accommodate the long-forgotten rides into what had already been an extremely cramped amusement park. But that hadn't been what had caused the tremor: that had been from something much lower, something… beneath him.

Still, it didn't matter now. The tremor from below had stopped.

It didn't even matter that he'd accidentally destroyed the glorious pocket reality that had been his home for the last thirty years. Once he'd stolen away every last drop of magic from the Gaia Engine and the Dreamer within, he'd easily rebuild it bigger, better, and more lavish than ever; all he needed was time, and once the world was held in the hollow of his hand, he'd have all the time he could ever ask for.

Right now, what truly mattered was that he'd gotten the power he needed for the battle ahead – or at least enough to give Lorraine a harder time than ever before. He was now fifty feet tall and almost eye to eye with the very top of the Ferris Wheel; what could possibly –

"Ahem."

Auldman spun around, his enormous bulk moving with a speed that defied known physical laws. Hovering behind him was a massive agglomeration of airborne drones, their mechanized bodies fitting together like hideous jigsaw puzzles, all of them combining viewscreens to form a single enormous viewscreen – one bordered by guns, missiles, and even a pair of pneumatic pistons the size of tree-trunks. There was something taking shape on the screen, vague and barely tangible at first but slowly gaining physical matter as the milliseconds ticked by. Through technology and arcane magic, a figure was beginning to fade into existence.

For a moment, he thought that he was looking at one of the idols of the Northwest Clan, a vision of Bill Cipher's glory and splendour. But then he realized that this triangular apparition couldn't possibly be Him – after all, Bill Cipher wasn't supposed to be blue.

"Auldman Northwest," it said coldly. "You and I have unfinished business."

"What… what are you?"

"I am the Pyramidion; I am the Eye of the Pyramid; I am the pounding, lustful heart of the Illuminati; I am the guiding light of America. You once tried to join my organization many decades ago… and I can see we were right to refuse you, you talentless hack. Urine tests will now take place: any urine caught cheating will be automatically expelled."

"What? You… you represent the Illuminati?!"

"I AM THE ILLUMINATI," the apparition thundered. "And you've been the biggest pain in my ass since I set foot in this reality. Your family and their worship of Bill Cipher nearly ruined everything for me and the entire planet; when you took on the name of Nathaniel Winter, you left a trail of irritations across the United States, including unpaid debts, I might add. I hoped you'd have had the decency to die on your own… but it seems like I've got to help you along. It's taken almost five billion dollars' worth of technology and magic to allow me to manifest here, not to mention all my private energy reserves, and it's all going to be well-spent on you."

There was a pause, and then the Pyramidion added. "My name is Inigo Montoya. Prepare to die."

For the briefest of instants, Auldman felt a hint of fear ripple down his spine. Then he remembered the power he wielded, and his confidence returned in a veritable tsunami of relief. "You?" he cackled. "You're nothing! A ghost! A projection given life by crude tech and outdated magic! I've harnessed the power of the gods! I am the way of the future! I'm the one who's going to become divine emperor of this world… and you stand alone against me, Pyramidion. Do you really think you stand a chance?"

"First things first, little boy. You're no god: you're a leech on god's asshole, sucking up as much shit as blood. Secondly… I'm not alone."

Auldman saw the Pyramidion's great eye slide to the left, and too late, Auldman realized that there was someone else in Atlantic Island Park. Multiple someones, in fact: he could hear them amassing behind him. Very slowly, he turned around, his suddenly flagging confidence insisting that it couldn't be anything worse than an army of crude drones.

Instead, he found himself staring down at a veritable horde of bewildering figures. They looked human for the most part, but they were dressed in the strangest array of clothes: some wore gleaming suits of medieval armour, rattling with chainmail and t-visored helms; some wore the height of 1920s fashion, from pinstriped suits to flapper dresses; some wore modern military uniforms, both camouflage and outrageously formal dress blues; a few were even dressed in gleaming leather bondage gear. And there were stranger costumes as well: Roman legionary lorica, golden Anubis masks and loincloths, futuristic spacesuits, flowing silk gowns, golden tuxedoes, hideously realistic zebra costume heads with zebra-stripe suits, velour warmup suits, Tudor-era fineries, skull helmets and ribcage armour, gleaming white leather longcoats, rune-studded labcoats, ninja costumes, cowboy hats… it was impossible to account for all of them. And some of them were even dismounting from the most peculiar steeds and mounts – everything from horses with flaming manes to winged jetpacks.

But long before he saw the distinctive blue uniforms and gas masks of the Illuminati creep into view, Auldman knew at once that all of them were Gaia's Chosen.

"How?" he whispered. "How is this possible? How could this have happened?!"

"Easy. The incident at Orochi Tower has been resolved for the time being, and a lot of Bees have been looking for work ever since. All I had to do was give them your address: LOTS OF SHINY LOOT AND XP UP FOR GRABS! So, Auldman, do you think you're up to fighting all of us?"

Auldman took a deep breath, trying to force his confidence to rally, trying to convince himself that he could smother the power of a Bee if he wanted to.

Instead, he turned to run-

-only to find himself on a collision course with the Pyramidion's pneumatically-powered fist. He had just enough time to steel himself for the impact before he crashed headlong. The impact hit him like a meteorite, crumpling his jaw against his skull, sending blood pouring down his throat, and flinging him backwards across the park. Head ringing like some great cracked bell, he crashed sidelong into the roller-coaster, hard enough to warp the tracks and uproot at least twenty feet of the supports. He rose unsteadily, spitting teeth as he forced his body to regenerate, and by the time his jaw was back in one piece, the enemy was already on the attack.

Through wildly blurring eyes, he saw the army surging towards him in their hundreds, their eyes ablaze with golden flame as they conjured up all the forces at their command: lightning, fire, ice, blood, chaos, and god only knew what else. He raised his staff, but dazed from his injury, he moved too slowly to strike or to shield himself, and the first few dozen attacks hammered home. Compared to his might, they were nothing, mere insect bites, but there were hundreds of attackers and from the looks of things, there were plenty more streaming in from the north. Fireballs hammered against his jacket, lightning scored his hide, magical bullets rippled up and down his body in energized barrages, napalm from at least twenty flamethrowers, energy from gauntlet weapons too complicated for him to comprehend, even grenades. Soon after, the melee specialists leapt into the fray like locusts assaulting healthy crops, battering away at him with blades, hammers, claws, whips, even chainsaws, attacking his feet, his legs, his arms, even leaping high enough to slash at his back and tear at his throat.

In a blind panic, Auldman lashed out at them with all his might, and with all the power at his command, it was easy to casually wipe out at least twoscore of them with a single blast of magic and leave dozens more reeling from the blow, but that hardly mattered: there were Anima wells within walking distance of Atlantic Island Park, and as soon as the buzzers were back in one piece, they'd be back at his throat in seconds.

Pouring out as much brute force as he could project, he sent his closest attackers hurtling away from him in a vast kinetic wave. For a moment, he was free of the ants clawing up his neck, but he was still being pelted from all angles by those of Gaia's Chosen who'd opted not to take part in the melee.

"You think you're enough to bring me down?!" he screamed, trying not to let the fear be heard in his voice. "You think an army of uppity peasants have the will to end me? Come on then! Let's see how you deal with the rotten history of this entire island!"

And with that, Auldman's own army surged in from the dark corners of the park. They'd been briefly scattered by the sudden return to reality, but now all the undead that he had borrowed, stolen, or made personally were ready to fight for him. In a frenzied chorus of moans, groans, roars, hisses, and clatters of exoskeleton upon exoskeleton, they thundered into the invading force as a tidal wave of reanimated tissues, crushing those of Gaia's Chosen who'd been foolish enough to stand alone under their bulk and tearing into those of them clever enough to stand in semi-orderly ranks. But he knew it would be only a matter of time before they, too, were spent.

What he needed to do now was capture Lorraine and Dipper, find somewhere to hide, shrink back down to his ordinary size, and wait until the rotten Bee-infested plebian animals lost interest in the fight; without loot or a reward for a sustained hunt on offer, they'd gradually bleed back to whatever impoverished crevices of the world had spat them out, and once they were gone, he could return to the House of Horrors and begin the ritual anew.

Getting to his feet, he made for the House of Horrors – only for the Pyramidion to casually tear up a forty-foot length of the Roller-Coaster and clobber him over the head with it like a two-by-four. Dazed, he tried to block the onslaught with his cane, to crush whatever internal organs the manifestation possessed, to smash the drones that were projecting it, to blast it with all the magic at his disposal, but he was still reeling from the last impact and moving too slow to retaliate effectively… and worst of all, the Pyramidion had the advantage of pure, unbridled hate. Roaring memetic non-sequiturs, the triangular apparition battered him back and forth across the park, tearing out one length of the Roller-Coaster after another and smashing Auldman about the skull with each of them – all while the few of Gaia's Chosen who'd managed to escape the undead horde pelted him with magic.

And then, just as Auldman was certain that nothing could possibly get any worse, there was a howl of rage from somewhere below him, and he spun around just in time to see Lorraine rocketing from the smashed roof of the House of Horrors with blade in hand, her back ablaze with radiant wings of golden light.

He tried to swat her out of the sky, but she was too small, too fast, too enraged to be caught. A moment later, his thigh erupted in pain as Lorraine dug her blade deep into his flesh and began clawing her way up his body, creeping closer and closer to his spine. And every inch of the way, her body was ablaze with magic, blistering his skin and boiling his blood.

Agonized and frantic with terror, Auldman Northwest broke into a run. He didn't know where the hell he was going, or how he was going to hide from any of his pursuers, or even how he could possibly capture Lorraine when she was causing him this much pain. All that mattered was getting right the fuck away from these awful, awful people.

He sidestepped the wrecked roller-coaster, tripped over the House of Horrors with a spectacular crash of rotten timbers, bumped into the Ferris Wheel hard enough to send cars hurtling from it, high-stepped across the perimeter fence, hurtled through the long-deserted parking lot, and galloped off into the night with the Pyramidion and a small horde of Bee-imbued agents trailing after him.

But he was faster; nothing they had could catch up with him, not with the headstart he'd taken.

Maybe I'll head for the ocean, he thought wildly. Lorraine's a terrible swimmer – she won't be able to hang on in all that. If I can make it past the bridge and back to the mainland, I'll be able to hide myself away in Maine proper. I'll have to shrink myself down a little, sure, but with the level of power I'm working with now, the Filth in the Fog shouldn't do anything to me. Yeah, I'll be okay, just as soon as I…

Hang on, is that a helicopter I hear?

---

Utterson had just about given up trying to get his breath back when he heard the rumble in the distance.

He'd spent the last few minutes running back and forth across the increasingly ruined House of Horrors in a desperate attempt to get Stan Pines off his tail, and it was only once local reality had started warping that he'd managed to make the slightest bit of headway. After that, the crumbling passageways had separated the two of them, and Utterson had taken the opportunity to make for the nearest window as quickly as possible, just in time to see them suddenly lurch back into the real world with the Bogeyman towering over the park like a colossus.

For a moment, Utterson was certain that everything had gone wrong, even once the Bees and the Illuminati construct had arrived on the scene – no, especially once they'd arrived: after all, if the pawns of the Big Three were involved now, then it was only a matter of time before the Big Three themselves started staking claims; even if Auldman Northwest or Nathaniel Winter or whatever the hell his name was could actually be slain once and for all, the old bastard's mechanical wonders would already have been snatched up by the most unworthiest powers in the world. Regardless of who won out in the inevitable battle for supremacy that would take place, the ultimate power lurking under the island would be tamed, harnessed, and exploited by yet another secret society out for nothing more than its own advancement – all while the Council of Venice was left watching impotently from the sidelines as the single greatest opportunity to bring the world to order slipped through its fingers.

Then, he heard the rumble of a helicopter in the distance – and knew at once that there was still hope. If he still had a chopper at his disposal, he could still win the day for the Council: quite apart from the fact that the attack helicopter had enough artillery to give Northwest a hard time, it had much better comm equipment than he had contained in the battered remains of his utility belt. Right now, he needed to get through to Venice – discreetly, of course – and explain the bounty that he'd uncovered: once he had enough boots on the ground to enforce the Council's claim on the park, then it wouldn't matter how many fucking Bees were in the area. They weren't acting on the instructions of their factions, but on offers of riches and glory; they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. And while the witnesses would no doubt bleat at the cost of his victory, he was certain that this victory would smooth over any of the Council's misgivings concerning his methods… so long as he could make sure that Dipper and the rest of his family didn't have a chance to spill any of his secrets.

As soon as the helicopter was in range, Utterson signalled it from the window as best as he could; the moment the rope ladder descended from above, he scurried up it as fast as his battered kneecaps and bruised hands could manage, barely managing to haul himself into the helicopter even with the help of the door gunner.

"Get us airborne now," he gasped (as soon as he'd been given a headset).

"Absolutely, sir. It'll take us some time to navigate the Fog, but we should be able to be back to safe harbour before dawn-"

"No, you idiot! We need to get after that fleeing target before he gets any further away!"

There was a pause, as the pilot reluctantly sent the chopper lurching skywards, out of Atlantic Island Park, towards the retreating figure of Auldman Northwest. After about thirty seconds of terrified silence, he added, "Sir, is it a bad time to mention that this vessel isn't rated for combat with a threat of this-"

"Nevermind that: we don't need to bring him down; we just need to make sure he doesn't leave the island, give the fucking Bees a chance to catch up with him and corner the bastard. Once they've got him pinned down, we get back to the park and stake our claim."

"Stake our claim?"

"It'll make sense in good time, pilot. Now, patch me through to comms: I need to get a message to Venice ASAP. We need additional boots on the ground."

"I thought you said we couldn't radio for reinforcements without risking-"

"I know what I said! This is an emergency; now give me the radio! You concentrate on getting ready to open fire. "

A slight pause followed, as the comms unit was passed to Utterson, allowing him to begin urgently whispering codewords into the microphone: "Notifying Lion Wing Aegis. Vesuvius Category Red Typhon. St Mark Leo Valkyrie Beseech Immediate Soon."

There was a pause, as the helicopter rocked very slightly beneath him. For a moment, Utterson could have sworn that the door gunner behind him had gotten up, but a quick glance behind him confirmed that he was still in position, peering anxiously down at something far below them.

He continued: "Excalibur Class Reward Presuming Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat. Darkest Hour. I say again: Darkest Hour."

There was a muffled crackle from his headset, and a familiar voice said, "You got that right, smartass."

Utterson swung around.

The door gunner was unconscious, tangled up in his harness and slumped against the wall.

Standing over him, bloody, bruised, and pissed as a bear, was none other than Stan Pines. He must have leapt onto the rope ladder while Utterson was climbing aboard, and the rocking he'd felt a moment ago must have been from Pines struggling to get into the helicopter… and even though he didn't appear to be armed with anything other than a pair of knuckledusters, Utterson had learned the hard way that he wasn't to be underestimated.

"You're not getting away that easily, you old bastard," snarled Pines.

"Look," Utterson began, "I understand you're angry, but you can't afford to let sentimentality cloud your judgement. I mean, you can see what's happened out there, can't you?" He gestured to the gargantuan figure on the horizon, just past the chopper's canopy.

"Yeah. I see him. I'm also seeing what happened because you decided to dick around instead of helping us, so talk fast – or else we're going to see if you can skydive without a parachute."

Utterson looked helplessly around the chopper for weapons or reinforcements, quickly finding neither: he was out of ammo, and with the door gunner unconscious, the only other agent was busy flying the helicopter; all they could do was peer anxiously over their shoulders, clearly hoping that they wouldn't have too many distractions once the Bogeyman got within range. In other words, he was on his own – again.

Still, that terrible rage that had possessed him down in the bowels of the House of Horrors had cooled, so hopefully he might be able to make his reasoning a little clearer.

"You understand that Auldman Northwest can't be allowed to escape, right? If we don't intercept him here, he'll either hide out on the island or try to cross the ocean – either way unacceptable. We need to keep him penned in."

"I get that. What's your plan then?"

"Well, we return to Atlantic Island Park and secure Northwest's machines."

Seeing the look of incredulity on Pines' face, Utterson blurted, "But not to claim godhood or anything like that! I'm just saying that we need to secure that equipment before any of the other secret societies get their hands on it. Any of the others, they'd use it to take over the world and wipe out their rivals, but the Council would use it to ensure global stability! Think of all the lives that have already been lost – wouldn't a world at peace be a fitting epitaph to all of them?"

Stan Pines' only reply was a suckerpunch to the left side of Utterson's face. Caught off-guard, he went hurtling back against the pilot's seat, sending a jolt of pain rippling up his spine. He turned to the pilot, opening his mouth to give orders, only for another haymaker to clip him fair and square across the jaws, knocking out two perfectly teeth along the way.

Next thing he knew, Pines was slamming him against the cockpit seats, seemingly oblivious to the shouts of alarm from the pilot as he hammered Utterson's face into the metal headrests. "You don't give a damn about any of those people!" he roared, in between strikes. "You don't care about Ford, Dipper, Lorraine, Callum, anyone! You just want to keep your little company on top of all the others!"

Utterson groaned, coughing up a little more blood than he felt comfortable with. By now, the helicopter had just crossed the hills separating Bigfoot Cove from the Devore Bridge, and Auldman Northwest loomed gigantically on the horizon, sprinting down Solomon Road with Gaia's Chosen in hot pursuit. In a matter of seconds, they'd be within firing range.

"And you know what?" Pines roared on, ignoring the chaos beyond the glass. "That doesn't make you a hero, Utterson, that just makes you just like every other secret society out there. You're barely any better than Auldman Northwest… and you know what, I think we should reintroduce you to him!"

And then, to the horror of all on board, Pines wrapped one hand around Utterson's throat, and with his free hand, grabbed the control stick and sent the helicopter lurching at a sickening angle directly towards the Bogeyman.

What followed was a bewildering free-for-all as the pilot tried to force Pines' hands off the controls, Utterson tried to fire the missiles before they lost their one opportunity to strike, and Pines beat the living daylights out of both – kicking and punching and elbowing and even biting with all the force of his impressive false teeth. And through it all, they were only getting closer and closer to the gigantic bogeyman…

---

"What the heck are they doing?"

"I think they're having a fight in the cockpit!"

"Well, they're launching missiles, whatever they're up to in there. Ooh, looks like Auldman's slowing down!"

"Can you see Lorraine anymore?"

"I think she's still hanging onto his arm… and it looks like she could use some company! Hey, Mr Bee Person, see if you can get us closer! We've got a monster to fight, so giddy up!"

The last few seconds had been somewhat bewildering to Dipper and Mabel, for as soon as they'd landed back in reality, they'd found themselves tumbling out of the wrecked House of Horrors to find themselves surrounded by strangers. Then of course, Auldman Northwest had took off running and everything had gone completely mental.

At some point in the mad, baffling rush towards the exits, Mabel had brought out her grappling hook, grabbed Dipper by the collar, and latched on the nearest of the exiting Bees. Next thing he'd known, they were suddenly crowded into the rear saddle of a gigantic motorcycle barrelling down Solomon Road at what felt like a quarter of the speed of light, surrounded by a small convoy of Gaia's Chosen – all of them riding the weirdest vehicles Dipper had ever seen: horses, motorbikes, scooters, skateboards, hoverboards, roller skates, jet packs, even wings.

And now, here they were, hurtling across Solomon Island, barely keeping up with the now-gigantic Auldman Northwest as he galloped ahead of them… but it seemed as if the helicopter was slowing him down – or at the very least, cutting him off from the ocean.

As they watched, the lone chopper rocketed back and forth about the Bogeyman's head like a drunken dragonfly, missiles rocketing out of its flanks willy-nilly and erupting against Audman's bloated hide in eye-searing explosions. Every now and again, their target would turn, raise his towering cane, and lash out with a javelin of magical energies that practically split the sky in two and reduced nearby trees to clouds of sawdust… but somehow, the helicopter was always just out of the firing line. As they thundered closer, Dipper realized it was because the ongoing punch-up inside the cockpit was making the helicopter lurch across the sky so violently that it was impossible to predict where it was going to go next, and so Auldman could only unleash his power on anything in the same postcode as the madly twirling copter in the dim hope that he'd hit something.

Meanwhile, Lorraine was now perched on Auldman's shoulder and was attacking his undefended throat with everything in her arsenal, hacking off huge chunks of flesh with her machete, boiling his blood with elaborate magical gestures, swatting away his wildly-flailing hands with bolts of lightning, even setting his shoulders alight once or twice. Auldman regenerated almost as quickly as he was wounded, but though he couldn't be injured long, he could still feel pain… and each slash, blast, rip, tear, and bolt did their part in slowing him down.

And eventually, once he'd slowed down enough, the Bees would be able to catch up and hammer him flat. And yet…

"Uh, Mabel?" Dipper hollered. "What are we supposed to do once we catch up with Auldman?"

"I don't know!" Mabel shouted back, a mad grin etched across her face. "I'm making this up as I go on, you know?"

"Oh. Great."

"Look, don't worry, bro-bro: he's on the run and he's outmatched, so all we've got to do is find something that can stop him once and for all. It'll be just like bringing down Bill Cipher all over again!"

"Yeah, except Bill Cipher wasn't running from us! Auldman's not as powerful as Bill was, but he's getting close; if ever grows a spine and realizes he might be able to stop us if he really tried, we might be in trouble."

"Well, what do you think might be able to kill him, then?"

Dipper's mind raced. "His machines!" he blurted. "If Grunkle Ford's right, then blowing up just one of them should be enough to cause a big explosion: if we can blow up all of them, then maybe it'll be enough to kill Northwest once and for all."

"How do we do that?"

"The House of Horrors: he's rerouted all the machines to feed directly into it, so if we can plant some bombs in there, we can start a chain reaction big enough to take Auldman out. It's not much, but it's all we've got. Bad news is, if we wanna get there-"

"We've gotta sheepdog Auldman back that way first!"

Mabel stood up in the saddle. "Okay, Bees and Girls!" she bellowed to the surrounding riders. "We've got to make sure the Bogeyman gets back to Atlantic Island Park – it's the only place where we can kill him once and for all! Don't let him into the sea and don't let him off the road! ONWARDS, AOSHIMA!"

There was a confused pause, as the various Bee-imbued agents considered the fact that they were suddenly taking mission-critical advice from a twelve-year-old girl. Then they gunned their respective accelerators (or stirrups or heels or rocket boosters, depending on what vehicles they were driving) and began slowly zeroing in on Auldman's exits, herding him along the road with blasts of their weapons.

Then the rider of their motorbike, a skinny woman with a face hidden behind a leather pig mask, muttered "Who the hell is Aoshima?"

"I'll tell you later. FLY, MY PRETTIES, FLY!"

---

It took Ford several minutes to clamber out from under the wreckage of the House of Horrors' mock-up sitting room, and by the time he'd stopped seeing double, he found that he'd already missed the worst of the action.

He could tell that there'd been a battle in the park, judging by the hundreds of footprints that had trodden the grass flat and the numerous craters that had been left scattered across the surrounding landscape, but the participants had long since hightailed it. He could just about discern the last of them speeding away, on horseback, on bikes, on skates, on jetpacks, and occasionally on foot – leaving golden trails of energy in their wake.

Even Stan and the kids were nowhere to be found, though he could easily hazard a guess as to where they'd gone: after all, he could already hear the gunshots and war-cries rippling up and down the distant road, so he could only assume that they were busy chasing Auldman from one end of the island to the next.

Of course, with the rest of their reinforcements having cleared out in a hurry as well, catching up with any of them seemed unlikely at best; about the only thing Ford could be thankful for was that Auldman's army had mostly been hacked to bits, if only because a horde of untested zombies had been no match for a strike force of battle-hardened Bees. As far as he could tell from his analysers, the undead that the Bogeyman had collected had only been given as much energy as Auldman needed to keep them battle-ready, and unlike the more potent zombies scattered hither and thither about Solomon, none of them had been allowed to absorb more magic over the centuries – for, of course, all of it had been absorbed into fuelling Auldman's rise to power in the last three decades.

Typical of a Northwest, really.

For the moment, it seemed that he had nothing else to do but hope that Stanley, the kids, and their reinforcements had everything they needed to stop the Bogeyman. But as he stood there, absently dusting himself off, it occurred to him that there was one problem that hadn't yet been addressed: Auldman's machines. The emotional siphons, the harvester, the Anima capacitor – all of them needed to be dealt with, preferably before anyone got any ideas about trying to scavenge them for their own ends.

Right now, he could clearly see that Auldman's exit from the park had cracked the wall of the House of Horrors like an egg, exposing a wealth of esoteric devices previously hidden behind interior walls and illusions. From the designs that he'd seen during his time with the Illuminati, Ford knew that the receiving feeds from the machinery all led to this central hub, and from his own knowledge of theoretical thaumaturgical physics, he could tell that a detonation could easily spread to the rest of the park. A big enough explosion could easily damage the whole thing beyond repair…

…but how was he supposed to trigger the detonation? He had a few odds and ends in his coat pockets that he could use to improvise a bomb, but nothing that could cause an explosion big enough to level the entire House of Horrors, not while the pipeline was clear of Anima. He could blast the hinges off a door and maybe rupture a pipe, but right now, he needed weapons-grade explosives.

And then, just as he was starting to despair, he saw something lying in the wreckage just beneath one of the House of Horrors' broken windows. It was a small plastic bag stuffed with the contents of Lorraine's borrowed arsenal; it must have fallen out of Stanley's pocket during the last fight. More importantly, Ford could already recognize the distinctive shape of a grenade.

A grenade, a length of twine, some piano wire, a taser…

Ford looked from the pile of goodies to the gigantic hulk of the Ferris Wheel: from what he could tell, it looked a tad worse for wear thanks to the recent battle. Whatever had happened, the aging supports of the Wheel had buckled ever-so-sightly: one good-sized blast would be enough to bring the whole thing down, and from there, with a little momentum…

Ford's mind raced, calculations rocketed through his concussed brain at a maddened, frenzied lurch, followed closely by estimates and measures of probability and physical models and everything else he could manage with a quarter-inch dent in his skull. It would require a little effort, but the wheel could be sent on a collision course violent enough to rupture the machinery. After that, all he'd need would be a tiny spark of magic to set the whole thing ablaze. Of course, with his head the way it was, he'd need some assistance to set this up…

There was a thud from somewhere behind him. Ford turned just in time to see a bedraggled Nicholas Winter staggering to his feet, looking like he'd just been dragged down the world's filthiest chimney and landed in a heap of barbed wire.

"Speak of the devil," Ford mused aloud.

"Hnnnnnnnwhassat? Where are we? What just happened? Why's my nose bleeding?"

"Nevermind that, Nicholas: we've got a Ferris Wheel to blow up!"

---

Grey had no idea how they'd ended up stuck in the brim of Auldman Northwest's hat.

Their last clear memory was of cowering in the basement of the House of Horrors and hoping it would all be over before it got any worse; then, a maelstrom of power had swept them skywards, and when they'd finally regained conscious, they'd been tangled up in a hatband the size of an industrial conveyer belt. At first, they hadn't recognized the surrounding environment, for the brim of the hat had concealed everything below them, and with the whole thing bucking like a ship caught in a storm, they'd briefly assumed that they really were on a boat. Then they'd made the mistake of peering over the edge and realized with horror that they were now along for the ride on the Bogeyman's bid for freedom.

All they could do was hang on for dear life as Auldman frantically jogged across Solomon Island, vaulting over hills, splashing through shallow lakes, and cantering hurriedly down deserted roadways in a desperate attempt to outrun the horde that was pursuing him. Every now and again, he would spin around and blast a few dozen of them into oblivion, but as soon as they passed another Anima well, they'd be alive again and ready to rejoin the chase. All things considered, Grey would have found it inspiring if there'd been anything in their arsenal that could bring down the Bogeyman, but even the Pyramid-shaped mechanical monstrosity hovering after them wasn't leaving a dent in Auldman's defences.

Right now, they were stuck as spectators to what looked like a hopeless struggle. They'd puked several times in the last few minutes, and throughout the whole mess, Grey had been praying to a god they'd never really believed in that Auldman wouldn't happen to notice the vomit pouring over the brim of his hat – or that he didn't decide to take his hat off, or that a gust of wind didn't somehow knock it off, or that the helicopter circling them didn't decide to take a potshot at the hat instead of the Bogeyman for a change.

But as they clung to the increasingly tattered hatband, feeling the fabric beginning to tear away in longer and longer strips, peering desperately over the edge of the hat in the hopes of finding a nonlethal route to the ground, they couldn't help but notice something ablaze on Auldman's shoulder.

It was Lorraine, her body practically incandescent with Anima, a radiant silhouette tearing through the Bogeyman's defences with every weapon at her disposal, her very presence charring his flesh and searing his blood to boiling point – without exaggeration: Grey knew the smell of blood being heated to the boil all too well after all their centuries in the Retribution Squad. However, as they clung to the edge of the hatbrim like the saddle on a mechanical bull, they couldn't help but notice something else, something utterly unprecedented:

Auldman was afraid.

He was trying to snatch Lorraine off his shoulder, to swat her out of the sky, to burn, freeze, or electrocute her with magic, even letting off blasts of energy powerful enough to tear car-sized strips of flesh from his own gargantuan body, and getting all the more panicked for the lack of success he was being met with. Auldman was terrified – either because he feared that Lorraine, in all her rage, might have a means of destroying him once and for all… or because he knew it and knew that if Lorraine ever had the opportunity to use that unknown method, he was as dead as everyone else who'd set foot in Atlantic Island Park in the last few decades.

Perhaps there was hope after all. Perhaps, just perhaps, the serpent could still remain fettered.

Behind them, a hail of missiles was still pounding away at the Bogeyman's undefended back, mostly from the Bee armada still chasing after him, with a few from the Pyramidion (who was barely keeping up, for his drones weren't meant for long-term pursuit). And somewhere amidst that army, Dipper and Mabel were rumbling to the front, ready to lead the charge in keeping Auldman from escaping. And as for the helicopter, it was zeroing in on Auldman's solar plexus on a kamikaze death-dive, the pilots warring over the controls as the chopper zoomed closer and closer

Auldman's betentacled arm shot out, crashing sidelong into the helicopter's flank; it had remained on a predictable course for too long, had run out of missiles and bullets, had run out of methods to keep the Bogeyman's wrath at bay. The impact sent it careening off course, and as it tried to correct its wildly-spinning course, Auldman took careful aim and sent a solid beam of magical power clean through the helicopter's rear, scything away the tail and the rear rotors.

Mortally wounded, the helicopter gave a terrible groan and began spiralling helplessly towards the ground, narrowly missing the lowest outcroppings of the Blue Mountain as it hurtled south towards the coast. Grey didn't hear the crash, drowned out by the rattle of gunfire and the roar of magical detonations as it was, but frankly they didn't need to; regardless of whether the crew had survived the crash or not, they were out of the fight.

With the nearest opponent no longer distracting him, Auldman had free reign to focus on Lorraine. Already, Grey could see him drawing back his cane for a strike that would knock her clean off his shoulders if not pulverize her completely, and that was assuming that he couldn't do something more terrible to her with all the power at her command. And after that, with no further obstacles, he'd have a clear run to escape the island…

…and in that moment, Grey seized a length of the frayed hatband, tied it securely around their waist, and jumped off the brim of the hat.

For three heartstopping seconds, Grey was in free-fall, tumbling helplessly through the sky with barely fifty feet between them and an extremely messy death on the asphalt below. Then the tattered length of hatband went taught; it was almost as elastic as bungee cord, but not quite, so though it didn't bounce them all the way back to the brim, it didn't jolt her to a bone-splintering stop either. Instead, it left her dangling like a cork on the end of a string…

…right in front of Auldman's startled eyes.

"MORNING!" Grey shrieked, their voice on the edge of hysteria.

Auldman screamed right back, arms flailing in all directions as blind panic temporarily overtook him. So shocked was he that he completely forgot to keep running, only belatedly picking up the pace when another magical onslaught cannoned into the back of him, and with a hiss of pain, he was forced to carry on running, frantically trying to swat Grey and Lorraine off him as he did so – without much success. Terror was sapping his coordination.

Would this make up for Grey's moment of weakness down in the basement? Was this suitable recompense for all their failures? Could any of this somehow make amends for all the ways they'd been so much less that what they should have been? Would it have been enough to make Fortuado forgive them?

They didn't know. All they knew was that it felt good to be brave, even if it was only as a distraction.

Cackling maniacally, Grey began swinging back and forth, trying to get within range of Auldman's eyes, fingers outstretched like claws…

---

"Is it finished?"

"About as much as it ever will be! You've got a few hundred yards of yarn, plus the piano wire; all you've got to do is pull your string and the pin should come loose. Are you sure about this stuff you've added to the grenade?"

"Positive! It should increase the potency of the explosive at least tenfold. Now, get down from there, Nicholas: we need to get this thing underway before Auldman gets back and reactivates those emotional siphons."

"Hang on… does that sound like a helicopter to you?"

The rest of the conversation was lost in an almighty crash as a crippled attack helicopter rocketed over the edge of the Black Goat Woods, tore through the perimeter fence, thudded into the soil and skidded for another twenty feet before ending its journey in a sidelong collision with the octotron.

Careful to keep one eye on the length of string in his hand, Ford hurried over, hastily unspooling the twine as he sprinted towards the downed helicopter. To his astonishment, the inhabitants were still alive, though all but one of them was unconscious. Even more surprisingly, he recognized Colonel Utterson tangled up in the harness of the remaining seats. And as for the man hanging onto Utterson's leg…

"Stanley!"

Stanley groaned and staggered to his feet, fez drooping over one eye as he did so. "Oh, it's just like Earth," he sighed.

"What?"

"Ford, am I dead? Are you?"

It took a moment for Ford to realize what he meant by this. "No, no, you're very much alive, Stanley, and so am I. Utterson didn't know I had a metal plate in my head, or he would have shot me in the throat. Um, what happened to you?"

"Urgh. Hitched a ride, caught the beret-wearing bastard just as he was about to call for help, by the looks of things."

Ford's eyes narrowed. "Is their radio still working?"

"Can't see why not: I heard it squawking for answers a little while ago. Why, what are you planning?"

"Just a little contingency plan, if there's still time and I've still got this string on hand. Let me see, I think I've got those reports Lorraine pilfered from Utterson in my pocket… yes! Now, let's see just how interested the Council is in what their least-likable colonel's been up to…"

---

He didn't want to get rid of his hat.

Next to the park itself, his beloved bell-topper had been his most precious possession, especially once he'd started losing his hair; even in his decline, the battered old thing had been one of the few signs of real physical opulence he'd retained from his old life, the one way of reminding him that no matter how far he'd fallen, he could still reach astronomical heights. Otherwise, why bother letting the hat grow so big along with him.

But right now, Auldman had no other choice.

He was in agony, agony such as he had never felt in all his years of immortality. He didn't know if Lorraine could kill him or not, or if Grey was making his difference by continuously poking him in the eyes, but either way, they were causing him pain… and he had no idea how to deal with it. He was out of ideas, and he desperately needed to concentrate on his escape: he'd long since left the road, charging off into the forested foothills of the Blue Mountain, so he at least had lost the worst of his pursuers, with only a few hardy Bees on horseback and jetpack to shake off… plus one motorbike that didn't mind wrecking its tyres on an all-terrain charge.

If he wanted to focus on his escape, he needed to get rid of Lorraine and Grey.

So, with a howl of desperation, he ripped the top-hat off his head, yanking the tiny screaming figure of Grey out of his eyes, and brought the whole thing swishing from left to right in one smooth, blindingly-fast gesture. Caught by surprise, Lorraine was whisked off his left shoulder and into the depths of a hat like a butterfly being swept into a net, and before she had time to recover, Auldman drew back his arm and flung the hat away like a discus.

The hat soared away into the darkness of the early morning hours, frisbeeing over the treetops and around the curve of the mountainside, heading south towards the coast. With any luck, it would land in the ocean and the little fuckers would drown well away from Solomon Island's Anima wells… not that it would do anything to numb the pain of losing his magnificent hat and having his withered scalp exposed to the cold.

Plus, Lorraine had left her machete stuck in the side of his head, right behind his ear.

It didn't matter now, though: Lorraine was dead again, Grey was out of reach, Utterson's helicopter was out of commission, that maniac with the fez was probably still intent on beating the bejesus out of Utterson, and the Pyramidion and Gaia's Chosen were still struggling to catch up.

So, all he had to do was make it to the top of the mountain and from there, he could make it all the way to the coast and the safety of the bridge long before anyone realized where he was headed. Once he was back on the mainland, he could hopefully concentrate on hiding himself where none could find him; if he could just go back into seclusion, use his newfound power to build a new pocket reality and conceal himself inside it, they might never be able to find him. Eventually, the Bees would get bored… ah, but Lorraine would eventually pursue him, and so would Dipper, the self-righteous little altruist that he was. And then, Auldman would have everything he needed to start again.

But as he galloped towards the summit, he was dimly aware of the distinctive clang of a motorbike crashing into a tree less than ten feet behind him. Seconds later, he heard a tiny voice below him shouting, "Dipper, that's mine!"

"I'll give it back in just a minute! I've got to send him in the right direction!"

"You're supposed to have transformed into Callum, not me! Also, how the heck are you outrunning me? You were never as fast as I was when we were five years old! Oh for – DIPPER, NO!"

"GRAPPLING HOOK!"

And at the the very moment Auldman's legs touched down on the crest of the summit, there was muffled phut from right between his feet. A moment later, something tiny, metallic, and bladed shot upwards at him and buried itself squarely in the crotch of his pants.

It shouldn't have hurt.

It shouldn't have even left a dent in his clothing.

After all, to him, it was smaller than a gnat.

But just like the claws, hammers, blades, fireballs and lightning bolts of the Bees, the tiny grapnel that was now embedded in his groin somehow felt as if someone had sunk a white-hot needle into his flesh… the flesh of his undefended gonads.

And it didn't matter that he hadn't used those particular parts for close to forty years – it still hurt.

And so, as pain shot up his body, Auldman let out a low, keening squeal, and crashed to his knees like a collapsing skyscraper, hands clasped protectively over his crotch. All he could do was kneel there at the very summit of the mountain, in full view of literally anyone in the island who cared to look, his shame visible to an entire island of fishermen, farmers, and plebs.

As if to add insult to injury, the grappling hook then caught him squarely under the ear, and because he still had five fingers and a tentacle occupied in clutching himself, he had no way of stopping Dipper Pines from grappling his way up to the side of his head and dealing him a stunning blow to the side of his undefended right ear with a crowbar.

Then, just as he thought the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, there was a kamikaze scream from somewhere below. Dipper must have dropped the grappling hook back down to Mabel, because, the next thing he knew, Mabel had rocketed up the side of the mountain, landed squarely on his left shoulder, wrenched Lorraine's machete free from his head, and began hacking and slashing away at his left ear with the machete.

How could they have done this to him? How could creatures so tiny and plebian have possibly inflicted this kind of pain, much less this level of humiliation?

As if recognizing how much agony he was already in, Mabel darted forward, took careful aim, and shot him fair and square in the back of his head with the grappling hook, dealing Auldman a gash to his undefended bald spot – the one part of his body that had managed to escape injury in the last few minutes.

Howling in pain and wounded pride, Auldman flung his arms out in all directions in a desperate attempt to fling his tormenters off…

…and promptly lost balance.

Suddenly finding himself with far too much of his body dangling over the embankment, Auldman pitched forward, and began a long, uncontrollable tumble down the southern flank of the mountain, spindly legs kicking helplessly in all directions, his cane flying out of his hands, his head bouncing off rocks and trees and houses and everything else in his way as he cartwheeled helplessly down the incline.

Long before his shoulders hit the ground for the first time, Dipper and Mabel had gone, rappelling away on the grappling hook and into safety of the trees; Auldman could see them dimly as he cartwheeled away, swinging merrily from tree to tree as they chased him down the trail, but other than that, he was blind to everything except for the screaming pain rippling up and down his body as he ploughed headlong through one obstacle after another.

Eventually, his downward progression ended in a thud just past the Black Goat Woods, but he was still moving forwards, rolling inexorably towards the southern tip of the island. In between thundering bumps to the skull, Auldman thought he might be lucky enough to shoot down the road and past the Academy, where he'd have an easy route to the sea… but instead, as his forward moment finally slowed, he saw a familiar-looking sign rushing towards him, and realized he was headed right back to Atlantic Island Park – right before he hammered into the sign at high speed, shattering it to pieces.

Next thing he knew, he was tumbling to a halt in the middle of the park, dazed, bruised, bloodied, but still very much alive. A moment later, his cane toppled into view next to him, narrowly missing his head.

And as he lay there, groaning and struggling to claw his way upright again, there was the familiar whoosh of the grappling hook; then, Dipper and Mabel landed barely twenty feet away from him, unharmed and – all the more infuriatingly – unfazed.

Auldman let out a low, guttural snarl and hauled himself upright with one solid flex of hatred. He was tired, sore, hungry, thwarted, and humiliated, and these runts were just standing around as if nothing could possibly be wrong. Well, now that he'd shaken off his pursuers once and for all, he'd at least be able to take his time with his well-deserved revenge. He'd savour their fear and despair and pain, feed greedily on every last drop of fright he could wring out of the two.

Best of all, he didn't have to be too careful with a spare victim around to take the brunt of his frustrations. Yes, Mabel would be more than worth the detour… and once he'd eaten her from the inside out and left her as a mindless husk for her worthless uncles to weep over, once he had his hands on Dipper, Auldman could make his escape.

Finally on his feet, he snatched up his cane and surged forward, summoning up all his power of illusion and monstrosity and shrouding himself in a seething, roiling mass of shadows and horrors beyond mortal comprehension as he advanced on the two children.

Someone was shouting in the distance, but he couldn't hear the words from this range; it sounded a little like the voice of their uncle, the smartass one, though Christ only knew what he was up to. However, it was clear that Dipper and Mabel had heard the distant shouts: having finally realized they were in danger, they were fleeing – not around him or away from, but towards the Ferris Wheel. Obviously, their uncle thought they'd be safer under that… but unfortunately, the four-eyed runt didn't know the power Auldman had at his fingertips.

Chortling, he loped after them, getting ready to flood Mabel's tiny skull with nightmares and feast on all the delicious terror that would come pouring out of her. Perhaps, after seeing his sister's mind snap like a twig, perhaps there'd be enough despair in Dipper's brain to feed his machines after all? Alas, he'd have to fix the pipeline first before it could be of any use.

Halfway to the Wheel, something flickered across the ground far below him, and though he could see Dipper and Mabel hurrying past the ride to some far-distant bolthole in the rock wall behind it, Auldman couldn't help leaning forward to investigate the movement – if only because he was sure it hadn't been here when he'd last surveyed the park. As it turned out, it was a length of string winding across the ground, trailing off towards the parking lot… and the other end happen to lie right beneath the Ferris Wheel.

And then, just as implications were beginning to trickle into place, the string went taut, and there was a sharp click from not too far away. Then, before Auldman could react, there was a deafening explosion from beneath the Ferris Wheel, followed by a massive shockwave.

A split-second later, the entire Ferris Wheel tore free of its supports and rumbled forward at speed, thundering through the spatially distended park, right towards Auldman.

Mind suddenly blank with fear, Auldman froze, unable to decide whether to run or to try and destroy the Wheel before it reached him – and by the time he'd made up his mind, it was already on top of him. Crashing into him at speed, it knocked him clean off his feet and dragged him along for the remaining few hundred yards of its journey, until both he and the Ferris Wheel ended their journey in a bone-splintering collision with the House of Horrors.

The sheer force of the impact tore the entire House open from top to bottom, cracking open the long-neglected external walls like an egg, reducing the internal ones to plastery mulch, and virtually disintegrating most of the floorboards between the basement and the attic. In the space of four and a half seconds, the entire attraction was reduced to one stubborn wall and the remains of the roof. Worse still, as he tumbled through the crumbling floorboards, Auldman felt the hub of priceless machinery fracture and burst around him; he'd done his best to keep all the feeds safely hidden in his home dimension, where decay and damage would never touch them – but now they were vulnerable, and every impact split them open a little wider.

Finally, Auldman hit the ground with a crunch, long legs kicking in all directions and knocking over concrete fortifications in his panic as he struggled to rise again. In fact, he was so lost in his terrified fervour that it took him several seconds to realize that he was lying in the House of Horrors' basement. In fact, he would have been lying right on top of the concrete slab – except the slab was now nothing more than concrete pebbles under the colossal weight of the Anima Capacitor's output channel, a solid block of machinery that had once been his drinking straw for the power of the Dreamer.

It was on top of this device that he now lay spread-eagled, his middle pinned down by a tangled mass of debris from the Ferris Wheel. Worse still, the great machinery was now ruptured, pressurized tanks of alchemical vapour bleeding away into the night; normally used to help contain the Anima and render it consumable, it was now flooding the air with a highly volatile gas. Auldman would normally be able to disintegrate the lump of metal at his waist, but with the air so contaminated, he might very well fry himself alive. And his staff, the one thing that might be able to pry the mess loose, was nowhere to be seen.

In desperation, he shrank down, drawing upon his internal power to change his shape… but he could not slip free from the mangled heap pinning him down: it was simply too vast, too heavy. All he could do was get smaller, his hips crumpling beneath the sheer weight of the debris.

But as he lay there, writhing and screaming and howling in frustration, he belatedly realized that, now that the House of Horrors had crumbled, the basement was now open to the sky – leaving him with only a ten-foot-drop between him and his pursuers… and thanks to his frantic kicking, the walls had largely collapsed into gentle inclines that any yahoo could climb down to reach him. Already, he could see all four of the Pines glaring down at him from above. Even Nicholas, the worthless brat that he was, had joined them to glare down at him like the repellent peasant-worshipping useful idiot that he was.

Soon after, they were even joined by Grey, slightly waterlogged but otherwise infuriatingly alive.

But if he/she was there, then that would mean that-

Auldman began to scream as the realization slowly hammered home, and Lorraine Maillard stepped into view, ablaze with energy and blade at the ready.

---

Lorraine knew anger all too well.

It had been a permanent part of her ever since she was old enough to realize just how awful Solomon Island was, and she'd never been able to rid herself of it no matter how hard she'd tried. More often than not, she'd turned it against herself, partly to keep it from spilling out on anyone else but mostly because she honestly didn't like herself all that much. When she hadn't been able to manage that much, Callum had been hurt – more than once; worse still, it had set the stage for everything the Bogeyman had unlocked that terrible night. Oh yes, Lorraine knew anger.

But she'd never felt anger like this: in all her overextended years, Lorraine had never known her rage to be so controlled, so precise, so cold. In that moment, she knew exactly what she had to do, every decision laid out before her like a blueprint, every outcome illustrated with perfect clarity… perhaps because, for the first time in her life, her anger had finally found a target that truly deserved her hate.

The Pines family parted at her approach, then quickly began retreating to a safe distance; she was dimly aware of something huge and triangular hoisting them into the air, but in that moment, as much as it hurt to ignore the tiny figure alongside them, she only had eyes for the monster at the bottom of the pit beneath her. Gritting her teeth, she leapt into the basement and began advancing on the trapped figure of Auldman Northwest.

"Wait!" the Bogeyman howled. "Wait! This doesn't have to end in bloodshed: I can give you Callum back! If you'll just help me up, help me complete the ritual, I'll give you back your son exactly as he was – I'll bring him back from the dead, just for you! Surely you want that, Lorraine? Surely you wouldn't want to throw that away just for revenge…"

Lorraine ignored the tirade. Instead, she began clambering up the side of the machine towards him.

"For godsakes, Lorraine, talk to me! I'm already a quarter of the way to becoming a god! I can give you anything if just having your child back doesn't satisfy: wealth, power, the love of who despised and dismissed you… I can give you Don! if you let me finish the ritual, I can pluck him out of the afterlife in a heartbeat! For the love of all that's sane, LISTEN TO ME!"

"No," said Lorraine, hauling herself upright. "After thirty years of hearing your voice in my nightmares, I think I've heard enough."

"What, do you think killing me will finally put your demons to rest? You think you can forgive yourself after this, start having pleasant dreams? You think this miraculously makes you a better person?"

"Nope. I'm still a horrible person. In my heart and mind, I always return to Atlantic Island. Nothing can stop the nightmares or the heartbreak, killing you least of all."

"Then why the hell are you doing this when I could give you the world?!"

Lorraine smiled in spite of himself. "For everyone you sacrificed to build this place, for everyone you fed to your machines, and for everyone you devoured alive… and every lost soul you've still got locked up in that secret kitchen of yours."

She took a deep breath. "For Callum."

She raised the blade to strike.

"But it's not supposed to be like this! I'm owed more than this! I deserve better than this!"

Without bothering to reply, Lorraine summoned up all her magical power, channelling it into the blade, before bringing it down point-first on Auldman Northwest's undefended heart, punching clean through his ribcage, through his internal organs, out the other side of his torso, and into the machinery beneath him.

For a moment, Auldman writhed in pain and triumph, still alive despite being impaled.

Then the energy she'd poured into the blade finally reached the expanding cloud of gasses pouring from the machinery. There was a flicker of light from below them, a faint whoosh, and then the entire thing erupted in a fireball, the air itself seemingly bursting into flame as every single ruptured piece of esoteric engineering in the House of Horrors ignited at once. The walls, the floors, the ceiling, every rotting timber, every piece of furniture, all of it was instantly veiled in an undulating curtain of fire, dry wood, fungus, and fabric consumed in the blink of an eye.

Around them, the machinery groaned in protest like a chorus of dying whales, the hub of Auldman Northwest's empire slowly succumbing to the firestorm as it grew. Overhead, columns of flame a hundred feet tall erupted into the sky, and in the distance, Lorraine heard the rumble of explosions breaking out across the compound, courtesy of the biggest chain reaction that Atlantic Island Park had ever seen.

In a blind panic, Auldman tried to free himself, to tear his body free from the blade and from the wreckage around his feet before the flames could reach him, but Lorraine simply planted her boot squarely under his chin and held him down as the conflagration swept upwards. For once, it wasn't so bad to be immortal, not if it meant being able to stop monsters like this.

A vast wall of fire raced towards them, a veritable tsunami of searing heat ready to wipe Bogeyman and the Witch from existence, and Lorraine closed her eyes, forcing herself to keep Auldman pinned down until the last of her muscles had burned away. In truth, she barely had time to notice her clothes going up in flames before the heat seared her to a crisp.

All in all, it was the easiest death she'd ever faced.

---

In his final seconds, Nathaniel Winter (baptised Auldman Aurelius Northwest) found his mind going in unexpected directions.

He wasn't thinking of the fortune he'd squandered, the empire he'd left to wither on the vine, the family he'd abandoned, or all the years he'd wasted so frivolously in pursuit of this dream. He certainly didn't spare a thought for all the people he'd sacrificed on the altar of success, or for all the unfinished meals left in his kitchen. He didn't rage, or stew in his hatred, or imagine all the things he'd have done to Lorraine if only he wasn't exhausted and defenceless. He didn't wish that he'd chosen differently in life, nor did he consider how close he'd gotten to dooming the world; he didn't even think of everything he would have done if he'd somehow managed to win the day without accidentally waking the Dreamer up.

Instead, in the last few moments before the fire took him, Auldman Northwest was certain that he was about to wake up.

That was how the nightmares had always gone: right before the monster from under his bed could take a bite out of him, he'd always woken up screaming and crying; no matter how terrible the monster had been, it couldn't stop him from waking up. Surely he'd wake up again before this new and horrific monster could kill him.

And then, as that last inkling of fear and dread crept up his spine, he fell back on pleading: wake up, he begged himself. Please, wake up. It's just a nightmare. It can't hurt you. Please… wake up.

Then the fire swept over him, and he thought no more.

---

From above, atop the Pyramidion's agglomerated drone platform, the six of them watched as the park slowly vanished.

The House of Horrors was the first to go, erupting from within as the fire swept through its corridors and burst out of its windows, then finally disappearing beneath the expanding maelstrom of fire that had emerged from it. Then, the Ferris Wheel, already dislodged from its position by Ford's explosives, sparked violently as the remaining connections between it and Auldman's machines channelled a searing wave of heat along its long-neglected conduits; a moment later, it too was ablaze, its rusted spokes softening in the heat as it sank beneath the flames and vanished. Then, channels and pipelines long buried beneath the putrid earth of Solomon Island began to glow from within as the chain reaction took hold and spread to every corner of the dilapidated park.

The Tunnel of Tales, clumsily forced back into reality by Auldman's frantic demolition session, belched a cloud of superheated steam as its waterway evaporated in the heat, then vanished in the firestorm that issued forth from its gaping mouth. The Octotron groaned in protest, its many arms flailing in mechanical distress, then exploded into a thousand-foot-tall pillar of fire. Sideshow Alley briefly rippled in the heat – before a shockwave shattered its decaying timbers into matchsticks. Even the ragged Roller-Coaster sagged and dipped and melted, before it too faded from view as the conflagration view.

In less than a minute and a half, the park and all its rides and attractions were completely hidden by the inferno that was now consuming it. Even four hundred feet in the air and a good thirty feet from the blaze, Dipper could feel the heat washing over him, and for a moment or two, he couldn't help but worry about what might happen if the fire spread any further.

But no sooner had he thought this, then there was a rumble from the heart of the park as one final machine exploded, and then the flames parted as a beam of golden light shot heavenward. For ten seconds, the night became day: the entire island was illuminated, every yard of dark forest and mysterious township suddenly bathed in dazzling light.

And as the light touched them, Dipper found himself feeling better than he had in days, suddenly invigorated beyond all probability… and all the bumps and bruises he'd picked up during the battle were suddenly gone, as were Mabel's. Grunkle Stan stood taller, the sprains and strains he'd acquired in the crash-landing instantly healed.

Even Grunkle Ford's bandages fell away as the bullet wound in his head sealed shut.

"The Anima Capacitor," the Pyramidion breathed. "There must have been a little extracted energy leftover."

"But where's it going?" Dipper whispered.

As if in answering, the beam of Anima suddenly turned inwards and flowed back down into the swirling firestorm – and where it fell, the flames instantly died, shrinking and guttering and finally flickering out of existence entirely. Beneath them, there was no trace of the rides or attractions anywhere, not even the slightest scrap of metal framework to mark the grave of Auldman Northwest's twisted masterpiece – just an empty plot of land, all black earth and ash.

And as the golden light fell upon it, the earth began to bristle with new life, fresh shoots of green grass stretching from the soil towards the sky, wildflowers blushing across the fringes of the new verdancy, saplings bursting from the once-barren plot and thickening into sturdy new trees. At the very centre of the park, a huge oak tore itself out of the ground, wrenching its way towards the sky as its branches erupted in lush greenery… and as Dipper watched in astonishment, the trunk of the gargantuan tree suddenly opened, its middle spiralling into a portal – out of which poured golden light, a rich smell of honey, and the buzzing roar of a thousand bees.

And as the soothing hum of the bees thrummed across the grounds, Dipper found his mind's eye drifting back to the vision of the Gaia Engine that Auldman had showed him, of the eldritch mass of the Dreamer still curled within. For the briefest of instants, the godlike monstrosity had shuddered in its sleep, its cyclopean eyelid flickering in disquiet, almost as if it was about to awaken… but then it rolled over, its shudders subsiding as the Dreamer drifted back into deep sleep once again.

Atlantic Island Park was gone.

In its place, new life bloomed.

Moments later, from the billowing geysers of Anima that now plumed from the earth around the tree, a bedraggled Lorraine flickered back into existence.

Yet she didn't seem especially happy with this victory – because her gaze was fixed on a patch of grass where the House of Horrors had stood mere minutes ago. At first, Dipper couldn't work out what she was looking at, but then Lorraine broke into a run, and he knew at once that there was only one thing that could have gotten that reaction out of her.

Somehow, he managed to convince the Pyramidion to descend to ground level just long enough for Dipper to leap from the platform and into the lush grass where Atlantic Island Park had once stood. Hurrying over, he saw that something was emerging from the ground, pluming up from the dirt like smoke – several somethings, in fact. They were all uniformly grey, transparent, and ephemeral, like ghosts, only not quite; there was something vital about them despite the ashen grey tone to them.

Under normal circumstances, Dipper would have been baffled at the sight of them, but after everything he'd learned in the last few hours, he knew that these could only be the contents of Auldman Northwest's kitchen, the leftovers of his many victims: those he had merely fed upon to satisfy his own hunger, those he had used or tried to use as fuel for his machines, and those he had toyed with for his own amusement – their souls had all been preserved within the House of Horrors as leftover minds for Auldman to snack on in leaner times… and now that the House of Horrors was no more, all of them were free, a huge of half-devoured spirits surging out into the night.

And among them was-

"CALLUM! CALLUM!"

It took a little effort to catch up with Lorraine, but by the time Dipper finally skidded to a halt next to her, he saw that the tiny ghost hovering in front of her was indeed Callum. Even transparent and composed entirely of grey smoke as he was, there was no mistaking his face, for he was almost identical to Dipper as he was right now – almost, because it was also clear that Auldman had taken pains to savour the taste of past meals over the last thirty years: Callum was nothing more than smoke from the arms down, his legs and torso just a plume of ashen vapour. He couldn't even speak, certainly not to raise his voice in joy.

However, he was still aware – enough to greet Lorraine with a smile… and for some reason, wave cheerily at Dipper.

As Dipper watched, Lorraine – now having sunk to her knees – reached out to touch him, but of course, her hands went right through his shoulder. Still, as Dipper knew all too well by now, she wasn't easily deterred. "Callum," she whispered. "It's me. Mommy's here. I'm… I'm so sorry for everything. I…"

Callum's ghost just smiled at her, his spectral eyes sparking in recognition; all the fear and doubt that Lorraine had seen in his eyes during the last few months of his life were gone. In that moment, he couldn't have been happier. He leaned forward and gently hugged her – only gently, because as a wraith, he had no real physical body or presence of his own. All Lorraine could do was stand there and try vainly to hug him back.

Then, around them, the other wraiths began to fade away; with no Bogeyman around to bind them to House of Horrors and no trace of the House of Horrors left, their ghostly bodies were beginning to dissolve, and with no presence or body to anchor them in this reality, their souls were already departing. In a matter of seconds, the ghostly crowd had shrunk from fifty to just twenty-five, and more and more of them were vanishing every second; before long, there were only ten of them left… and then, Callum himself began to fade.

"No, no, no! Callum, please – stay with me! There has to be another way-"

The ghost shook his head sadly.

"But… it's not fair. I only just found you again. I thought I'd have a second chance – I thought I'd get to see you grow up. I…" Lorraine was crying now. "Why? Haven't we both earned it after all this time? A second chance, at least?"

Callum put a hand on her shoulder. Though he could not speak, he mouthed two words that even Dipper couldn't misunderstand:

You do.

Lorraine's tear-streaked face furrowed in confusion.

Emma, Callum mouthed silently. Find my sister.

"I will, Callum. I promise. I… won't fail her like I failed you."

You didn't. You won't.

The ghost, barely more than a silhouette by now, smiled vaguely at her, and hugged her one last time.

I love you, mommy.

Then, he was gone, leaving Lorraine holding nothing more than empty air.

And in the place where he had stood, two objects were emerging from the verdant soil. One was a pile of neatly folded clothes, complete with Dipper's cap, no doubt rescued from the depths of Auldman's inner sanctum.

The other a teddy bear – old, threadbare, and missing an eye, but still unquestionably a teddy bear, and more importantly, Callum's. Pinned to the bear's chest was a note: "EMMA WANTS HER TEDDY BEAR."

For a moment, she could only stare down at it. Then, weeping openly by now, she plucked it from the ground and hugged it to her chest, her body trembling from her sobs as she did so.

On instinct, Dipper put a soothing hand on her shoulder, and Lorraine spun around, eyes briefly lighting up with joy as she saw who was standing to her.

"Callum, I-"

She blinked and looked again. It took Dipper a moment to realize why, but eventually he noticed that his perspective was a little higher than it had been a few seconds ago: between the death of Auldman Northwest and the Anima wave, the enchantment was wearing off, and Dipper was returning to normal, so he obviously didn't look much like Callum anymore. On the downside, he'd have to change clothes before he got any taller.

"No," said Lorraine. "I'm sorry, Dipper, I…" She sighed and blinked a few errant tears away. "I'm so sorry for all of this. I know it doesn't mean much after everything I did to you and your family, but… I should have known better. I should have been better."

"So should I," said Dipper. "But I don't think that matters right now: we did the right thing in the end."

Lorraine smiled sadly. "I couldn't have done without you and your sister, though – wouldn't have done it without you two."

"And I'd be dead if you hadn't had the strength to fight back. We helped each other when it mattered most, Lorraine."

In spite of herself, she smiled at last. "Well, one way or the other, it seems I have a future – and does this world. But what will you do now?"

"Well, from the way Grunkle Ford's been palling around with Bill's blue cousin or whatever he is, I think we might finally be able to go home to my dimension, maybe even get back in time for my thirteenth birthday. Plus, I might actually look my age when the day rolls around. What about you?"

"I'll stay just long enough to put things in order. I've got a few respects to pay before I go… and then, I need to head to Tokyo."

There was a rumble in the distance, and the two of them looked up just in time to see another helicopter rumble overhead – one painted all in white and bearing a familiar winged lion symbol on the side.

"Ah damn," said Lorraine, mildly. "Something tells me the Council aren't done with us just yet…"

---

A/N: And we're back to codes - feel free to decode for more information... or guess!

Slow z nlnvmg, hdvvgormt!

Dv szev lmv li gdl xziwh ovug levi:

Uork gsv Srvilkszmg Rm Ivw Li rh sv gsv Wvero?

Rh gsrh xziw fkirtsg li ivevihvw?

Sv szh hlnvgsrmt gl hzb

Zmw blf droo orhgvm, hdvvgormt.

Droo blf zxxvkg srh luuvi?

Gsv nfogrevihv gfimh lm hfxs wvxrhrlmh...