Chapter 37: More Demon Info and Broadcasted Schemes

What was the goal?

It wasn't a question or a statement that broke her apart. It wasn't stated out of malice but out of reality. It caused Audrey to think a lot, enough that she couldn't even take a sip of poinsettia champagne at the fixed bar, the process not killing her but hitting points.

Why did she leave Auradon? Initially she thought it would be for a temporary break until there was the whole 'cross the Auradon wall and you'll never come back'. She figured she would never go back. It was freedom.

Why does she never want to look back? The truth of her family, the history of Auradon, and the removal of her Auradonian stench had given her an awakening of the reality outside the fairy tale bubble she had been smothered in. She figured she would take charge and be open-minded. It was awareness. Independence.

Why was she frustrated? Angry? Why was there a pinch of bitterness? Her family's meddling history had caused her to be cursed and betrothed to a demon, she'd willingly go mad for life than go through the ordeal. Her jealousy had led her to unknowingly perform a summoning, and she was willing to go through a contract because she did not want to be a slave. The unfamiliar territories and people gave her a sense of real spite. Kory Lokisdottir wound up being the person Audrey hated with a passion, it surpassed her previous envy of Mal. Her murder of Macy Beth had been her first real kill, it tormented her until it casually went down the drain. It was cruelty to herself.

She finally had real friends. Not friends leeching off her popularity but friends who risked their lives for her. Willingly.

Freedom. Awareness. Independence. Self-cruelty. Friends. Audrey thought as her fingers tapped on the glass, trying to find a process. Can't be my end goal, can it? Was she supposed to just settle in Villainapolis, in that apocalyptic estate with an army of subservient alien demons and a whole city of villains treating her like the most famous magical celebrity in the United States of Anarchy? What of her friends? Iclyn, Jessie, and Noir had their own lives in Villainapolis. With the way things went, Audrey tried to picture how things might be when the trip was over and they found Cassandra. Would the Gothel siblings move somewhere together? Would Gothy create her own hair salon empire? Would Charles become a hired demon hunter or take up that job offer the imp suggested? With that wish of hers, Crystal wasn't bound to return home anytime soon. Beatrice would go back to Macabretown. What if Jareth died, Crystal took the throne, and Gothy would be her Queen? What if Charles, despite the odd tensions, ended up becoming Ozzy's prince? Willywaffle would probably freak out at the idea that the shrimp who tried to kill him would be sitting at the table as him and their Troll princess fiancées? And what about…

"Audrey?"

Audrey jumped, causing her to spill her poinsettia champagne. She merely twirled her finger and the spilled liquid returned to the cup.

"I'm sorry!" Charles said, clutching to his satchel. "Ça vas?"

"Yeah." Audrey held onto her glass. "Look, about earlier. You made a point, and…"

Charles held out his hand, interrupting her. "Don't overthink it. Just take your time with it, OK?"

Audrey nodded. Charles sat on the nearest stool at the bar and looked around the floor. Beatrice, Crystal, and Gothy seemed to be actively engaged to the arcade games on the floor, especially to some sort of kart racing game. "Where's Ozzy?" He asked Audrey.

"She went to get stuff for Elvis at the train gift shop." Audrey gestured at the ROCKINGTROLLTOISE, shrunk in its pocket size and swimming in a fish tank resting on the bar. "Why? Are you going to give her the argument of the century?"

"Makes sense since we're both finalists in the grand game of getting sexually harassed by local females." Charles smirked at his own joke. "Except, you know, mine isn't a sociopath. No offense."

"My life just got weirder. None taken." Audrey shrugged.

"I mean, I do want to talk it out. Don't get me wrong, I'm still not happy that she broke my personal space but I want to get a reasonable understanding. She's obviously a good person." Charles put down his satchel on the bar, making sure it stayed as far as possible from Audrey, who cringed a bit when she sensed the presence of the iron and silver weapons in it. He cautiously looked to make sure that the other girls were too busy with their arcade game. "Listen," he whispered to Audrey. "At one point, in private, I need to talk to you about something." He transitioned to French. "J'ai vole un grimoire qui appartenait à la cinglée qui a voulut nous tuer." (I stole a grimoire that belonged to the nutcase who wanted to kill us.)

"Quel genre de grimoire?" Audrey resorted to French as well. (What kind of grimoire?)

"C'est un peu difficile à expliquer. C'est en plusieur langues, certaines que je ne connais pas. Ça me prendrais du temps pour le déchiffrer avec celles que je connais. Tout ce que je peux deviner en ce moment, c'est que ça appartenais à un demon très puissant." (It's a little hard to explain. It's in several languages, some that I don't know. It would take me a while to decipher it with the ones I know. All I can guess right now is that it belonged to a very powerful demon.)

Audrey frowned. "Kory m'a dit qu'elle avait invoqué un demon pour rester jeune. Elle vole les essences vitales des gens dans son lit. Elle a dit qu'elle voulais éviter de server le demon à sa mort." (Kory told me that she had summoned a demon to stay young. She steals the life essences of the people in her bed. She said she wanted to avoid serving the demon when she died.)

"Mais les humains ne deviennent les esclaves de leur demons invoqués que s'ils n'ont pas passé de marché." (But humans only become slaves to their summoned demons if they haven't made a deal.)

"Justement! Ils ont passé un marché et en échange de ces stupides pouvoirs, le démon voulais que Kory le serve après qu'elle soit morte. Kory voulait mon essence car selon elle, je suis la seule qui la rivalise en pouvoir. Si elle avait réussi, elle aurait eu l'immortalité! Elle a dit que c'est ce qui nous séparent. Nous avons tous les deux invoqué des démons. Moi, je veux passer le contract avec Alastor quoi que ce soit, mais elle, elle a passé un contract et elle refuse de donner ses frais." (Exactly! They made a deal and in return for those stupid powers, the demon wanted Kory to serve him after she died. Kory wanted my essence because according to her, I am the only one who rivals her in power. If she had succeeded, she would have had immortality! She said that's what separates us. We have both summoned demons. Me, I want to sign the contract with Alastor whatever it is, but she, she has signed a contract and she refuses to pay her expenses.)

Charles frowned and searched through his satchel, taking out both his demonology book and his scrapbook. Faster than a cheetah on the run, he skimmed through the entirety of both books. "This doesn't make sense," he said in English. "You can't just pass a contract with a demon and expect to get away with murder. If anything, refusing to pay your end of the deal could result in the other party doubling their fee as a result. Lokisdottir is just making things worse for her. Refusing to pay is not the same thing as failing to pay."

"How is it different?" Out of curiosity, Audrey found herself picking up Charles' scrapbook.

"You know how Dr. Facilier contacted the 'friends on the other side'?" Charles opened his scrapbook for Audrey and stopped at a full-page spread pastel drawing of black shadows bearing masks addressing a human shadow. All around the pages were sketches of voodoo symbols and a bunch of notes. "He summoned them. They provided and he had to pay. He did try to pay, but when he couldn't, he had to pay with his soul. It could have been a whole worst if he purposely avoided his end."

"Yeah. He would have turned into one of them."

Audrey and Charles yelped when Beatrice suddenly appeared behind them. "Bea! What are you doing?" Audrey asked.

"Bored. Crystal and Gothy are both dating and great rivals in Sugar Rush." Beatrice jumped over the bar and took the scrapbook in her hands. "Wow, you did your research on Alastor's loa servants pretty well. It's almost thorough."

"Alastor's loa spirits?" Audrey and Charles both asked.

"Wait, wait!" Charles waved his hand. It's a miracle that his half-sister and her girlfriend were easily distracted by an arcade game. "You're telling me that Audrey's summoned demon and your godfather is the master of Facilier's friends on the other side? I'm so confused."

"Dude, you're not the only one. My dad said that when Alastor first came to Hell, his practices and violent history manifested into high-scale powers that no one had ever seen, the kind that turns a random nobody into a nightmarish somebody." Beatrice looked at the page illustration. "Besides, my dad calls the 'friends on the other side' a 'bunch of minor loa spirits', but my mom and Alastor don't see them as the real deal."

"Not a real deal like Badessy, Marinette, and Ti Malice?" Charles asked.

"I'm amazed Alastor hasn't adopted you or something." Beatrice snickered. "But yeah, he and my mom see the 'friends on the other side' as a bunch of damned sinners that didn't know how to use voodoo or failed to meet their ends of the deal. They give it a bad name and were rather chaotic in Hell until Alastor came in with the power on a magnetic, raw level they ended up bowing before him. So yeah, Facilier wasted the services of Alastor's spirits, they put him to work in his estate, and he wasn't done when you people revived him."

"My father did say that the resurrected villains on the Isle of the Lost all had designated tormentors in Hell." He gestured Beatrice to return his scrapbook, which he did, and he turned to another full-page spread of mixed notes, glued soil, and old sheets written in Latin. Charles cautiously picked up the Latin sheets in his hands.

"Smells like Hell paper and dirt. Your dad brought back souvenirs when he returned among the living?"

Charles nodded. "When he found out about my scrapbook, he gave me a sample of Hell's dirt and two pages from his journal. The only pages he gave me were about his tormentor. Unless it's the Devil himself, he never wrote the demon's name down. He just called him 'The Prurient Pygmalion'."

"What does that mean?" Audrey asked.

"'Prurient' is another word for 'lustful'." Charles almost fell off his stool when he heard Crystal talking from behind him, showing that she and Gothy finally gave up on the video game. "And Pygmalion was that Antiquity guy who fell in love with his own handmade sculpture and got hitched with when Venus brought it to life. There's even this play inspired by it but it was primarily to teach a lesson that there's a major difference between real life and the mental twisted fantasies of idealism."

"Putain, tout le monde m'écoute ou quoi?" (Damn, is everyone listening to me or what?) Charles muttered and spun his stool around while Crystal snapped her fingers, summoning three chairs towards them. She sat down on one of them, between Gothy and an eager Beatrice. "What, you guys want me to read the pages from Frollo's journal about his tormentor?"

"Sure. Could be fun." Gothy shrugged.

"Fine. But if I give you ladies nightmares, it's all on you." He straightened himself, cleared his throat, and began reading out loud.

'Where women are honored, the divinities are pleased; where they are despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman is pure; it is a running water, as a ray of sunlight. A woman's name should be pleasing, sweet, and fanciful, should end with long vowels, and resemble words of a benediction.'

'It is what I know. I had that knowledge in life and I still do in Hell. How great was my revulsion when I saw that Hell was nothing like the inferno our forefathers warned us about but instead an ever-evolving paradise for sinners to indulge in! My pride and dignity were all I had to resist to vices running wild on the streets. I refused change in life and death. Lucifer's greatest punishment for me in Hell was to suffer the torments of a demon far superior and more liked than I ever was. A demon of change and evolution.

'He is everything I'm not. He is full of nothing but sins, has a shameful personality, and twists words to convince those who serve him to fear and respect him and for the rest to expand his empire. There is nothing naturally sentient about him as he bases himself on changes, improvements, and logic. The tortures he uses on me burns my eyes on the outside and my veins on the inside. He mocks me for being medieval.

'The worst part in this sentence is that not only is he different from me, but he is also similar to me. The Pygmalion Demon has, to my greatest disdain, the same thoughts that I have when it comes to obsessions. He and I both have singular targets. Mine caused my death, but his? It started in Hell and the Pygmalion Demon, the sociopath he is, manages to still hide from the public his thirst for another demon.

'I discovered so by accident when my tormentor was away and I accidentally stumbled onto a secret shine that not even his servants knew. I had my obsession for Esmeralda for weeks when I was alive, but the Pygmalion Demon as had his own obsession with the demon for nearly 5 or 6 human decades. It is one of the strangest obsessions I've ever seen and why I call my tormentor the Pygmalion Demon. His obsession over the demon is nothing more than a mental fantasy he seeks to accomplish.

'A mind overridden by logic and a heart overridden by enamored lust. In his mind, the Pygmalion Demon sees the other demon as an equal suitable match, and in his heart, he sees a source of devotion, subservience, and lustful domestication. He fancies the idea of sailing in similar currents. Having the source of the first real infatuation he ever experienced would mean expanding his shocking touch in the minds of Hell. The Pygmalion Demon would have no use of his own allies. Being combined with his obsession would mean permanent completion.

'Esmeralda chose the flames of Hell rather than giving me a chance. In Hell, the Pygmalion Demon only endures the bruises and sadistic laughter of the demon oblivious of the obsession. The Pygmalion Demon sees his goal of collecting the demon as aged wine: the longer the alcohol stays in the barrel, the fancier it tastes. The long game further arouses the Pygmalion Demon, who believes that with such a given time, his obsession will finally drop everything for him. The Pygmalion Demon not only wants him as he is but also desires to change him. Have him evolve like he does. Dress like he does, eat where he does, sleep where he does… At times, he even fancies the idea of artificial things and animals becoming one, rendering sentient and non-sentient things useless. I tell you, the horror I must endure! Why was I ever paired to such a tormentor? I never got what I wanted while he gets to pursue it without anyone complaining!'

Charles put away the pages back in the scrapbook. "So, what did you guys think?" He got his response by looking at the girls. Crystal was pinching her nose in frustration, Beatrice had earmuffs on and had fallen asleep, Gothy didn't know what to say, and Audrey… Well, Audrey blinked as she tried to both register the story and avoid thinking about the nightmare she almost went through back in Kory's penthouse.

"What kind of sick Rated M fanfic based on a family-friendly movie franchise is this shit…" Crystal muttered. "Charles, that was… this was…" She leaned her head on Gothy's shoulder. The latter went on to pet her on the hair gently.

"His dad was crazy. Just remember that…" Gothy said gently.

"Let me make sure I understand." Audrey raised a finger. "Frollo was tormented in Hell… by a demon crushing on another demon, which reminded him of his crush on Esmeralda."

"Check," Charles said.

"And… the demon is both in love with the other demon but wants to change him into the dream partner?"

"You know, when you say it out loud, you'd think that Frollo and Gaston shared tormentors in Hell, but I think my father said something about Gaston being tormented by a strong-willed demoness who gave him a serious piece of her mind about his sexism."

Audrey chuckled. "Belle would have loved that."

"Hey, in the freakin story, Gaston didn't have Wikipedia or the damn Internet or an encyclopedia about ways to lose the No-Belle Prize."

Just then, the door burst open and Ozzy came in. Her first direction was for the bar, straight to the tank where Elvis was swimming in. She knocked on the glass, prompting Elvis to jump out of the water and successfully roll onto the ground with his spinning shell, moving away from the teens as he grew back to his RV size. Ozzy put her hands in her hair and pulled out six giant plastic bags, all with the logo of the train's gift shop and each filled enough to cause the bar counter to crack.

"That much stuff for Elvis?" Beatrice asked.

"No, there's more in my hair. This is just restocking for you guys." Ozzy used her hair to unceremoniously toss two bags at Crystal and Gothy.

"Crap, Ozzy, I know this morning was gone, but come on!" Gothy scowled before looking at the contents of her bag. "Cloths, essential oils, soap, a book on homemade hair maintenance, and… is that a kit for hair dyes?"

"Figured." Ozzy shrugged. "I also noticed in your luggage that you didn't have winter clothes. Knowing where we're going, you're bound to need it."

Crystal searched through her bag. "Clothes, first-aid supplies for Fae, and aw, you remembered how much I like lemongrass and pears. Bags of chocolate covered pears!"

"Why all the shopping, Ozzy?" Audrey asked as Ozzy passed the bags to her and Beatrice. "I thought you were just getting supplies."

"Yeah. Supplies for all of us. FYI, I bought you a portable radio. Thought you might like it because it's pink…"

"OMG! The gift shop has Robo Fizz memorabilia!" Beatrice squealed when she pulled out a bobblehead featuring a strange jester. "My favorite toy when I was little was a Robo Fizz doll that my dad won for me at Loo Loo Land!"

"Wasn't some imp responsible for destroying that theme park in Hell after clashing with that same robot?" Crystal asked.

"Yeah, but they had damage funding, remember? Especially in the past twenty-two years with the new reforms and more money available to properly fix it up!"

While Beatrice eagerly ranted on to Crystal, Gothy admired her presents, and Audrey curiously looked at the small pink radio, Charles was a bit stunned by his bag's content. Not only did he see his own clothes clean and neatly folded in a plastic wrap, but he was also quite certain he had more new clothes than his friends: 3 T-Shirts, 2 turtlenecks, 4 sweaters, 4 utility pants, a dozen pairs of socks and briefs, a fake fur coat, a pair of pajamas, and finally, a throw blanket. Charles was quite thrown off: for somebody who has a strange crush on him since day one and almost had him French kiss her despite his condition, Ozzy provided more clothing for Charles than Frollo ever did in his whole life.

"Osbourne, what's all this?" Charles asked quietly.

"So, you don't have to wear the leftover shits in my closets," Ozzy said rather grumpy. Charles frowned. Why was she acting like this?

"Are you OK? Listen, if it's about last night…"

"Oh. You mean the non-penetrative make out where thanks to fuckin drugged chocolate, I almost fucked an asexual with tuberculosis?" The Rock Troll princess's expression soured. "Yeah, thanks for reminding me! Didn't mean for last night to literally become the sequel to Moulin Rouge…"

"What? I didn't mean it like that…" Charles took a deep breath. "I mean, yeah, the… thing without consent… Look, can we discuss about this in private?"

"Why? So I go out of control like the Troll I am? I forgot, I'm a sinful pervert after all…"

Charles found himself getting angry as his fingernails nearly scratched the bar. "Cross the line where you start comparing me to my father and I guarantee there will be problems!" He hissed venomously. "Make a note that I never said any racist or religious shit about you, but if you start accusing me of it, I will literally…"

Charles got cut off due to the unholy rise of static filling the room. All the teens covered their ears, except Beatrice, whose head turned into that of a snake.

"AUDREY! EASY ON THE RADIO!" Crystal shouted.

"I'M NOT EVEN TOUCHING THE HANDLE!" Audrey shouted.

"TURN IT OFF!" Gothy shouted.

"AUDREY! TELL THE RADIO TO STOP!" Beatrice hissed. "JUST DO IT!"

"STOP!" Audrey shouted. Just like that, the radio stopped its crazy static and landed on some channel playing reggaeton music. Beatrice changed her snake head back into her human one.

"Why the snake head?" Ozzy asked after uncovering her ears.

"Snakes are deaf." Beatrice tapped her ears.

"Audrey, what was that about?" Charles asked.

"I don't know! I held out my hand to touch the handle, and just like that, it turned on!"

"Hm…" Charles tapped his chin. "Audrey, try pointing your finger at it. See what it does."

Audrey nodded and pointed her finger at the radio. Just like that, the screen kept rolling out and pausing at different numbered channels, causing numerous stations to play out.

USA-FM! Zombie pandemics slowing down! Civilians now get vaccines at 50% off charge.

94.7 Fresh FM! Latest contemporary hits!

Evening horoscope! If you are an Aquarius, you need to rethink on your taxes…

"What's happening?" Audrey gasped.

"Oh wow… I think you're controlling radio waves!" Beatrice geeked out before pausing in shock. "My godfather's gonna freak out!"

"Audrey, I think that what Beatrice is suggesting is that your link with the Radio Demon is causing your powers to be influenced by his!" Crystal got up and picked the radio in her hands as the channels kept flipping. "The powers sourcing from the demonic forces might be empowered by radio waves! If you wanted to, you could easily use those powers to transport yourself, see or hear anything using radio!"

"Radio waves?" Audrey's eyes widened. "Wait a minute! At the Nine Realms' Club, just when I got in with Iclyn and Jessie… the electrical power surge… That's what's caused my powers to weaken!" She jumped off her stool. "My demonic powers have radio waves in them, so massive electricity weakened them until I fell out of Kory's penthouse!"

"Makes sense." Ozzy took the radio from Crystal's hands with her hair. "Radio waves have varying frequencies from 30 hertz to 300 gigahertz and have wavelengths faster than the speed of light. That's how you manage to get things like radio broadcasts, audio broadcasts, or submarine radars functioning and sending stuff miles away from a station. Heck, with radio waves, you can even pick up celestial bodies miles away from the planet."

"You know stuff," Charles smirked.

Ozzy smirked back at him. "Hey, I'm a Rock Troll. Tech stuff is kind of my thing. But Audrey's right. Radio waves can be weakened by frequencies and wavelengths on scales higher than the radio. Lokisdottir must have known that."

"Great. Iron, silver, and now electricity…" Audrey muttered. "What's next, I'll shrink in fear at garlic?"

"Look on the bright side, now you can have any channel in the world!" Ozzy eagerly put the radio back on the bar. "Come on, point at it again! Maybe we'll hit the 50 different radio channels from the Troll lands!"

Audrey rolled her eyes and pointed at the radio again. This time, she properly felt the currents going through her as the radio flipped through the channels again.

So, I knew this guy…

Weather channel today. Expect some precipitation…

Alright! Tonight's special on 'Trauma for Heroes', the all-time favorite streaming services show, WANDAVISION…

I know, Bob! That was like THE MOST embarrassing thing to ever happen to me on jury duty!

Lyds, babe, have you seen the sandworm repellant?

"OMG! That's my dad!" Beatrice chuckled. "Must be on the radio he has in his office!"

I mean, is anyone going to ask about why the Knicks keep losing?

What is wrong with you morons?

Audrey froze, leaving the channel where it was. She and Charles looked in horror at the radio as it kept playing an all-too-familiar voice.

6 kids! That's all I'm asking! How hard is it for you bald-headed witches to sniff out 6 dog-poop scented kids riding a train to the east?

Forgive me, Lokisdottir, but it's not easy when 50 DIFFERENT TRAINS MOVING EAST AND WEST are carrying thousands of repulsive brats!

"Kory…" Audrey and Charles gasped.

"Is that the Grand High Witch?" Beatrice asked. "Why is she with Lokisdottir?"

"Uh oh…" Gothy gasped.

Ozzy glared at Gothy and Crystal. "You two were in Witchachusetts. Favorite turf for witches. PLEASE tell me you did not piss off a child-murdering witch! Even the Trolls know better to keep them out of the Troll Lands!"

"Uh, no…" Gothy shook her head. "I… kinda earned the wrath of GHW's daughter because I stopped her from killing a child, she tried to kill me, and… Well, honey?"

"Short end of the story, she's currently a stuffed otter plushie being dissected alive by Amar Blight-Noceda," Crystal said flatly.

"Oh, you met Amity and Luz Blight-Noceda?" Beatrice smiled. "My mom likes them."

"Shush! Everyone, shut up and listen!" Ozzy snapped, earning everyone their silence as they listened to the radio and the argument going through the static.

I mean, those train tracks REEK of all the children that go over them! So, unless you have something that could narrow it down…

Balls of Jotunheim, you are annoying! Here! Use this!

What is this? Some kind of handkerchief?

No, it's a piece of pant fabric. My minions accidentally ripped it off Gothel's third-born when they kidnapped him.

Charles went through bag and pulled out the plastic wrapping where Ozzy had put his old, clean clothes. "Ozzy, when you cleaned my stuff, did my pants have a tear?"

"Yeah, on the knee-level. I patched it back up as if it never happened."

"I… I didn't even notice the rip when Macbeth's kids kidnapped me! I'm such an idiot! Putain!"

The teens heard sniffing coming from the other end. You must be joking. Are you even sure he's a child? I smell nothing.

What are you babbling about?

Gothel's third born! His pant piece! He has no stench! No dog droppings… Are you sure it's Gothel's brat? Knowing her, she was such a neat freak! Clean children are smellier, so either the brat never cleans at all or he's clever enough to rid himself of his own stench.

"Actually, I'm both, dumbass." Charles snickered. "I took yearly showers on the Isle and the first time I landed in Villainapolis, I went to the public library and found online how they used waxing to remove body odors."

"The Spa of Scents' website?" Beatrice asked.

"Yep."

"That's where they removed my Auradonian stench!" Audrey high-fived him. "Genius! Even with your pant piece, they can't find us!"

I'm telling you he's Gothel's third-born brat! I should know, he used the incantations of the Sundrop and Moonstone! Spells that only his mother and eldest sister know!

The Sundrop and the Moonstone, eh? When you put it that way… Flower, gleam and glow. Let your powers shine. Make the clock reverse. Bring back what once was mine. Wither and decay. End this destiny. Break these earthly chains and set the spirits free. Sundrop and Moonstone, light us the way, regardless of how you are far away!

It then got terrifying. Charles stumbled, screaming in agony as his eyes started flashing glows uncontrollably, his purple aura flickering. The girls watched in horror as the veins on his bare skin started glowing in gold and dark hues. A trail of gold, purple, and black lights emerged out of Charles' aura. They glowed, they intertwined with one another, and, like a flaming snake of lights, it broke out the window. The gust of wind didn't stop it from flying away, towards the opposite direction of the train, and disappearing into the distant west.

Charles stopped glowing but continued screaming in agony as he fell to the ground. Ozzy and Gothy rushed towards him while Crystal rematerialized the window. Audrey managed to pick off the last words of the Grand High Witch and Kory Lokisdottir before she lost the signal.

I'm sensing the spell. Gothel's third-born is far more powerful than I expected. We'll be able to reach their train by sunset tomorrow.

Sounds like the light show alerted them. They'll know we're coming.

Who cares? When the conflict comes, the train will have entered the Wastelands. Unless we kill them, the wastelands will.

Audrey looked at her friends. Gothy had managed to acquire a wet towel and patted it on her half-brother's forehead. "You looked like you were burning on the inside," Gothy said.

"I was…" Charles began coughing again. "I didn't think a witch could actually find me like this!"

"Crystal. Beatrice. Ozzy." Audrey spoke up quietly, but seriously, earning everyone's attention. "What are the Wastelands?"

The three girls looked like a guilty party ready for execution. "The Wastelands are the most dangerous parts of all the United States of Anarchy," Crystal said grimly.

"Villainapolis is a mere village compared to this landmass of evil, despair, and agony." Ozzy shook her head.

"A nightmare." Beatrice gulped.

"The wastelands are made from the remains of whatever worlds, dimensions, and civilizations suffered apocalypses. It's one giant desert of uncontrollable weather, poisons, unrealistic landscapes, unfathomable monsters, ruined cities, and real fears. Whatever can destroy humanity is there," Crystal said.

"Jumanji and any life-threatening video game are a vacation compared to the Wastelands," Ozzy continued.

"Sandworms live there!" Beatrice panicked.

"Any apocalyptic trash that no one wanted gets thrown there!" Crystal exclaimed.

"The Sahara Desert would have been a sandbox compared to that!" Ozzy continued.

"OK, enough!" Audrey snapped. "How do we get through the Wastelands to get to the Seussian Lands if the train somehow gets destroyed?"

"Audrey, are you insane?" Crystal got up. "If the train even falls off the tracks, we're dead! There's a reason the trains go over them to get to the Seussian Lands! No one lives in the Wastelands besides the desperate, the lost, and the suicidal! If we get attacked tomorrow, we got to make sure that neither the train nor us falls, or we'll…"

Everyone gasped when an unusually calm Audrey slapped Crystal on the face. She still kept her stoic expression as Crystal rubbed her reddened cheek. "I hope I got your attention, Crystal," Audrey said patiently, "because unless you've noticed, I've been put in life-threatening situations since I fucking left Auradon! So, when you're done whining, just tell me… How long would it take for us to reach the Seussian Lands if we landed in the Wastelands tomorrow and had to continue by foot… or, you know, Elvis?"

Crystal paused. "If we're still alive? Hopefully a month."

"OK!" Audrey clasped her hands. "So, that gives us 24 hours to evacuate the rest of the passengers at the nearest station, rig the train up with booby traps, load up Elvis with only the necessities, and basically destroy the Grand High Witch and daughter-of-a-bitch Kory because else wise, you better get ready for this road trip getting a whole lot longer! I don't intend to die tomorrow, so you'd better be alive because we are going to stay alive through the purgatory before the actual purgatory! We will go to the Seussian Lands, like it or not! Any questions? OK, let's do this!"

Everyone looked at her. Stunned by her brilliant speech. Flabbergasted by how she was taking in the near-death situation. Shocked by how assertive she was, like a general ready to lead an army.

"I swear, I need to put that badass speech on a track single once we're done with this world tour," Ozzy muttered in an impressed tone.