Chapter 1

Up above the cloud layer, the sky was a beautiful clear blue and Mt Everest pierced heavens. Looking up at the majesty of the world's tallest mountain or down on a pristine cloudscape, few could find issue with such breath-taking scenery.

Dipper Pines could.

But that was solely because he was currently plummeting headfirst towards the clouds and the eventual mountainside below. From his crossed arms and furrowed brow, you could tell that he was in a bad mood, annoyed by his current predicament yes but not apparently worried in any way.

"You're not on form today Dipper" came a disembodied voice by his ear, a voice that could easily be made out over the rushing wind "wasn't expecting a simple yeti to get the better of you like that."

Dipper groaned at the verbal jab as he reflected on the earlier events. Unfortunately, he had to agree with the voice, something was off about him today.

At age 21 Mason "Dipper" Pines was four years into full time adventuring. If there was one thing that fateful summer holiday all those years ago had taught him, it was to enjoy his childhood. Which he had poured his heart and soul into, spending as much time with his sister Mabel and their friends as he could. But eventually even Mabel had to accept that they were growing up and Dipper had set off on a journey of discovery of both himself and the paranormal on his 17th birthday.

Since then, he'd travelled America following hints of the supernatural, getting into many dangerous and bizarre situations that he documented in his journal. An early encounter with a cult in Florida ended up with him saddled with the mysterious voice in a rather strange symbiotic relationship. After three years of experience and with plenty of new mystical resources and advanced technology gathered from his adventures, Dipper had gone international and begun seeking weirdness around the globe. Which eventually led to his current predicament.

"I'm not in the mood for this Towty" muttered Dipper as the wind whipped at his hair and hat.

"You aren't in the mood?" chattered Towty the voice "you got thrown hundreds of feet out from that cliff, you'll be falling for minutes before you hit the ground. Meanwhile my poor little body goes galloping after you, oh it's embarrassing just thinking about it, it barely jumped a foot before it started rolling down the mountainside."

Despite his current annoyance, Dipper's face couldn't help but curl into a slight grin at the thought of Towty's small, round, brown, fuzzy body tumbling over the edge.

"Oh, does the thought that it's going to take my body's stumpy legs hours to get back to us amuse you?" muttered Towty "but seriously what happened back there? You barely dodged the yeti twice before it just grabbed you and launched you off the cliff, you didn't use even one of your gadgets!"

Dipper sighed as he uncrossed his arms and supported his chin with his left arm. If he was being honest with himself things had been a bit odd lately, and that was odd in the sense that it was out of the norm for Dipper since he dealt with your average weirdness every day. He almost got stepped on by a giant, he had nearly been caught by the malicious melodies of a siren, and he got hit by the potions of what turned out to be a witch (he was certain he was looking for a manticore) and his hair had been blonde for a week. Never in the last four years had he been gladder that his sister Mabel had not come with him. And then to top it all off, after hiking all the way up here, he got…

"Hey, I hate to interrupt your train of thought" Towty chimed in "but you're about to hit the cloud layer and presumably the ground shortly after."

"Oh, right, thanks Towty" said Dipper as he rifled through a few of his pockets before pulling out a jet-black feather with jagged streaks of white running through it.

As soon as he held the feather aloft all of the weather within 100m of Dipper dispersed, the winds calmed and the clouds evaporated, leaving a perfect corridor in the sky for him to fall through.

"Oh yeah, I forgot you had that Thunderbird's feather" mused Towty "That part was a lot easier than I was expecting, but the ground is coming up next."

"That stupid bird gave me a right scare early on, it was shortly after we met, I think, and I hadn't anticipated quite how much lightning that thing could summon" Dipper said with grimace as he thought back to one of his more harrowing encounters "As for the ground, I'm never worried about that when I've got the old Mabel Special."

Dipper reached inside of his coat, one rather reminiscent of his Gruncle Ford, and pulled out a very tinkered with looking grappling hook. Pointing it directly up at the sky, Dipper fired the grappling hook.

It was the same grappling hook that Mabel had picked up in the Mystery Shack all those years ago, she had given it to Dipper as a going away present when he set out on his solo adventures, and he'd added to it with gadgets and gizmos that he'd recovered from an ancient temple and a much smaller crashed spaceship he found.

After about a meter of rope had rocketed upwards a device built into the centre of the hook itself whirred into life and there was a flash of light as a small portal opened up and the hook disappeared through it. Moments later the hook found solid purchase wherever it had ended up and Dipper's descent slowly came to a halt with him hanging up in the sky.

"Interdimensional Grappling Hook" chuckled Towty "I never get tired of that."

"Me neither" said Dipper as his mind drifted back to when Mabel had first found the device, back to the good old town of Grav… He shook his head vigorously, now was not the time to go down that painful rabbit hole.

Instead, he focussed on lowering himself the last couple of hundred meters down to the ground, thankfully this worked by manipulating the position of the projected portal in spacetime rather than relying on having enough rope, technically he could lower or raise himself forever if he wanted.

Touching down safely on the mountainside, Dipper paused a moment to pack everything back into his pockets and get his bearings, however this moment was interrupted by a rumble that nearly made him lose his footing. Looking up the mountain, an enormous snowball was careening down towards Dipper and was nearly upon him.

"…" Towty's awkward silence spoke volumes about what had happened.

"That's your dumb little body wrapped up in there isn't it" said Dipper with a deadpan expression on his face.

Not waiting for a response, he reached into another pocket, pulled something out and threw it at the ground at his feet. Within seconds a sphere of some unknown material had expanded around Dipper and sealed him within just as the snowball reached him.

"Now that's more like the Dipper I know" crowed Towty as Dipper was tossed around and around within the sphere and the view outside turned entirely white "fast at using his brain and even faster with his hands, I never get bored of us being chained together by our immortal souls."

Dipper did not grace him with an answer as the world went round and round and round.

Many minutes later the gigantic snowball lost enough momentum that it collapsed under its own weight and formed an instant snowdrift. Briefly, the mountainside returned to its quiet and peaceful state, before something began to root around under the snow, leaving tracks and trails on the surface. Gradually these tracks began to collapse, and occasional glimpses of brown could be seen darting around beneath the surface. As the amount of snow in the surroundings continued to decrease eventually the perpetrator came into view.

On average it was about the size of a Labrador, though that seemed mutable as the creature seemed to grow and shrink as it moved around. It had four stubby little legs that sat under its rotund body, thought its feet were covered in fur and it was impossible to see if it had paws or hooves or anything else. Its body was very simple, just a large, round, shaggy, brown blob, and that was all that made up this being. Legs and a body. Oh, and a mouth. In fact, most of its body seemed to be mouth as the toothy maw opened wide, seeming to almost split the body in two, as it chomped and guzzled its way through the snowbank.

Eventually Dipper's defensive sphere was revealed, and, with PPSSHSHSH, it disassembled itself and Dipper took a deep breath of fresh air.

"Something is definitely wrong" he said as he got his stomach back under control.

Dipper then took out several different electronic devices and began scanning himself and his surroundings for various supernatural phenomena. Unfortunately, they were all drawing blanks, no ghosts, no demons, he even scanned for anything to do with the Nightmare realm or the Mindscape though he was very glad there were no readings for that.

After clearing up all the surrounding snow Towty's body ran in circles around Dipper a few times. Then, as if growing bored, it made an odd barking sound and then bounded over to Dipper and jumped on him.

"Oi, down, down boy" chuckled Dipper as he ended up sitting on the ground, Towty's body then opened its mouth and tried to start licking Dipper with a very long and seemingly prehensile tongue "No! no, no licking, keep that tongue inside your mouth where its safe."

Towty's body growled a few times, but it listened and moved a few feet away to start chewing on a large boulder that was lying nearby.

"You know" said Towty in Dipper's ear "I think the biggest issue with having my body and consciousness separated is the embarrassment."

"Well at least your body listens to me" said Dipper "you know if it went around slobbering all over the place then everywhere we went would be riddled with… curses…"

There was a flash of enlightenment in Dipper's head as he came to a sudden realisation.

"I know what's going on" he whispered "I've been cursed, no wonder something has felt wrong recently, I just didn't notice because it feels so similar to our contract."

"Hey, I think my uplifting presence is more of a blessing" pouted Towty "but if it is a curse then what are you going to do about it?"

Dipper didn't immediately respond because he was in the process of taking out several journals and starting to flick through the pages of his notes and research. After reading over everything he had written down about curses and curse adjacent weirdness Dipper closed the book with a sigh.

"The one thing I didn't want to happen…" groaned Dipper.

"What is?" asked Towty curiously "and you haven't answered me about that curse."

Dipper flipped the book back open for Towty to see the pages labelled Malicious Spellcraft as he lay down and stared at the sky through the hole in the clouds.

"Jinxes, Hexes, and Curses" said Dipper slowly "Jinxes are fairly simple, generally cast by fairies and the like, you can think of them as magical pranks. Not to say they can't be very dangerous, but typically they are easy to spot if you know what to look for, easy to identify and easy to deal with. Then there are Hexes, these are more malevolent than Jinxes and they have a malicious intent behind them. Though to be honest the line between the two can be pretty blurry. Witches can cast half a dozen Hexes before breakfast, though again they are fairly easy to identify and counteract with the right knowledge."

"And now you are finally getting to the actually useful information" said Towty rather passive aggressively "You do like to go on and on sometimes."

"All relevant in this case I'm afraid" muttered Dipper "Curses are… different from the other two types of magic. Curses are… Evil. If you have the know how and the inclination anyone with access to a source of magic can cast Jinxes or Hexes. But Curses… those are dark. They are fuelled by negative emotions, hatred, rage, fear, resentment, jealousy… the stronger the fuel, the stronger the sacrifice, the stronger the Curse…"

Dipper paused and glanced over at Towty's body which was currently rolling around on its back having a great old time.

"Apart from your drool, that stuff leaves some horrific Curses behind, I'm just glad it doesn't affect me much because of our contract."

"Hey, I'm not just an eldritch abomination that's existed since before the concept of time for nothing you know" stated Towty puffing out his imaginary chest "So what's the issue?"

"The issue is identifying the curse and its effects" said Dipper with his face in his hands "Curses are designed to cause some sort of harm to the target, and, so as to prevent counter measures, Curses are extremely subtle and hard to identify. In order to find out what sort of Curse is affecting me I'll need a very complicated list of resources and the help of a witch."

"Well, that's not too bad right" asked Towty "I mean there was a coven we skirted round over in Germany, I think they'd be the closest."

"That's not going to be enough" muttered Dipper as he shifted to get a stone out from under his back "given how varied Curses can be, you need a lot of very random ingredients, both magical and mundane, though all rather weird. If we were to start gathering right away… well it could take us years."

"And for all that time you would be afflicted by some sort of Curse that we don't know anything about."

"Exactly, I have a feeling that our contract is actually providing me with some form of protection, I don't know any sort of Curse that would have such minor effects as Bad Luck or Not Being In Good Condition."

"You don't suppose you might have just not noticed that you've been Jinxed or Hexed?" Towty took one glance at the look on Dipper's face and knew the answer to that "Yeah, stupid question, my bad."

"There's really only one option left at this point" said Dipper quietly as he avoided what he was going to have to say for as long as possible "I only know one place in the world where there is enough weirdness gathered together that we might be able to find everything we need in one go."

"And that is?"

Dipper let out a long, almost shaky sigh as he stood up and began to put all his journals and gadgets and doodads away. With one last look up at the clear sky that was starting to dwindle as the effects of the Thunderbird's feather wore off, Dipper took a deep breath of the cold, crisp mountain air, and smelt the scent of evergreen trees. It was almost like he was already back there.

"Come on Towty" called Dipper as he started hiking back down the mountain and a large brown blob came lolloping along after "Gravity Falls awaits…"