ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _|_|_|
Kenny
I had always considered my little sister to be an angel. I could not be more proud of her, I thought, every single day, only for her to step up, for her to go above and beyond, for her to prove herself a hero to me, as all the while I still wanted to remain a hero to her.
When we were little, I would come to her window as Mysterion, to reassure her, in her times of sorrow, that she'd be all right. That I would protect her. And she would say to me, "Guardian angel, I feel safe whenever I see your shadow." I would see her writing notes to Mysterion that she left at her window. I kept every single one. She even wrote me a poem once.
Ten years prior, when I was eleven and she only seven years old, Karen had repeated her faith in me: "Even when it's just your shadow, angel, I know it's you. Your shadow protects me."
"Your shadow protects me."
That was before I had known. Before the Cult of Cthulhu had unfurled their plans for me, before I had defeated the Shadow of Cthulhu once and for all. I had seen it destroy itself, watched as it died, as the last of R'lyeh crumbled into the Gate to re-join the Void, far, far out into the cold expanses of space.
The thing that latched like pith onto my lungs now made me feel like I was choking not on failure, but on a warning. The chalky taste in my mouth was not the dust of the forgotten city below the sea.
I tasted brimstone.
Charcoal.
Death.
I knew the taste of death, and it was bitter, burnt and sour all at once.
Whatever Shadow it was Damien had sent me, he'd probably made it himself, that dirty bastard.
As if I wanted more on my fucking plate. I was midway between being floored and not at all surprised to have overhead the conversation between Liane Cartman and her son. Her son who I'd then screamed at until I was hoarse, because for fuck's sake I had to let out my anger somehow.
There was something to be said for the fact that Cartman came back to the base willingly when Token found him at the library—hidden away in the town archives section, of all places… and while I suppose that could have meant he was doing something useful, I wanted to doubt it. But then he just let me yell at him.
I started screaming that it was all his fault. His whole disgusting family: his crack whore mom who'd put out for twisted fucks like Jack Tenorman and, oh, the devil; his Cultist father who'd managed to at least give Cartman a small but significant link to Cthulhu; his paternal half-brother, still unheard from, very likely Nyarlathotep-grade insane, and therefore formidable and unpredictable.
And Damien. His maternal, dead-from-birth half-brother.
"Slap me!" I'd shouted at Cartman when he'd first returned to the base. "Punch me across the face and wake me the fuck up! This is a Goddamn nightmare!"
He'd only given me this odd, numbed look and said, hollowly, "I've been wantin' to wake up all fuckin' afternoon, are you kidding me, asshole?"
"Don't you dare start mocking me," I yelled back. "Your mother was a fucking vessel for a demon, and then she had you! It's your fault this shit's happening again. It's your fault Damien sent me this."
I lifted my arms out to my sides, and saw Cartman display a fair amount of shock as the shadows in the room began converging around me. But all in all, our conversation (my yell fest, rather) was just one accusation after the other.
When I gave Cartman room to talk, all he told me was how pissed off he himself was at his mother. Which… looking back on things, he never really was. Oh, when we were kids he'd yell and throw tantrums to get his way just like any spoiled little bastard with sociopathic tendencies would do, but seeing him too angry to even yell was what finally alerted me to the fact that even he was taking the news hard.
I knew damn well what it was like to have, shall we say, mommy issues. My mother lied my entire life, and not even necessarily to protect me. To protect Karen, maybe. I bought that my parents may have liked her. But I'd been a curse to my parents, my mother especially, and I knew it. She'd been my ticket home after my several deaths from the age of four till the age of sixteen. I would have thought that maybe she'd mention something about my Immortality to my face, but she never did, and meanwhile she and my father were running one hell of an abusive household. Karen and I were glad to have gotten out, and moved on.
Cartman, it seemed, hadn't had it all that much better. We'd learned when we were kids that Liane had been covering for the Denver Broncos to keep his father a secret, but to hide away other trysts that might have had some serious repercussions later in life for both of them? Nope. Underneath all of her motherly sweetness, Liane Cartman was one haunted, disturbed woman.
I don't think Cartman was able to accept that.
Oh, but he sure as hell liked hearing that he might be the missing piece of some crazy cosmic puzzle we in the League had still to solve in the wake of my having destroyed the Gate to R'lyeh.
As an Immortal, I had been able to travel between planes of existence, by way of shadows. When I died, I could, with Henrietta's help with placating Yog-Sothoth, send my soul straight to R'lyeh from Limbo… I'd even seen bits and pieces of shadow portals throughout Hell.
I thought I'd been attentive, over the past four years. Henrietta had contacts in Arkham, Massachusetts, the primary location for archives on documents and artifacts linked to the Old Ones. We'd destroyed several items already. We'd made a legal case (well, she had mostly; I kind of owed her for that…) to shut down Miskatonic University. The University library had been demolished, and with it ancient prayers to please Cthulhu. Gone. A great deal of it, gone. We'd done good things. We had done what was right.
So where was the leak?
What had I missed?
Everything was currently pointing to the Spaces Between being a part of the answer. Without conversing with Henrietta, though, I could only trust my own speculations to a certain extent. When it came to dealings with the afterlife (and the things that just plain disregarded it… I'm looking at you, Old Ones that still exist out there somewhere), the three people I trusted to speak to before any others were Henrietta, Karen, and Stan. More or less in that order.
The fact that Cartman seemed so fatefully bent to overshadow (ugh) my own place in the hierarchy that had existed among the beings in R'lyeh was disturbing, and I didn't want to think about it. And therefore didn't want to talk to him. If he was somehow a link from Hell to R'lyeh…
I just could not wrap my head around it.
Funny that my head was going to feel clearer once I was in a dark apartment full of clove and tobacco smoke.
For the time being, however, I just had to get Cartman out. Out of my head, out of my house, and out of my way. At the end of the meeting, the night after Damien had so fucking generously sent me a nightmare through the mail, I made Cartman linger back only a little, both of us knowing he wasn't going to be there very long.
"Look," I said, once I'd bid farewell to the others and had plenty enough to chew on for a while, "maybe I'm getting touchy at you, but fuck, Cartman, this shit is more than I was ready for."
"You don't say," he mewed back at me sarcastically. "Sad you're not the only one wh—"
"Shut up," I interrupted. I hadn't sat down all evening, and I wasn't sure he was much in the mood for resting at the moment, either. "You pissed me off enough when you mentioned wishing you'd been an Immortal. Don't you dare milk this Damien shit."
"You're obsessing over it," he pointed out, eyes narrowed but still rather blank.
"Well, maybe I need to," I snapped. "Maybe this is something worth obsessing over, and something you should b—"
"Be what, concerned about?" Cartman guessed. He gave me an awful, betrayed look, and said, "Are you seriously just assuming I'm gonna fuck up somehow?"
"You seem pretty pleased to be part of a prophecy," I snorted.
"Least I'm not gonna cry about it like you did!"
"You didn't die every other day for years on end!" I hollered.
"Um," Karen tried.
I'd nearly forgotten she was there. Karen was a wonderful referee, when it came to ending unnecessary arguments. She was a voice of reason whenever I got too worked up, and understood the value of patience, where I was a fan of doing whatever needed to be done in order to get immediate answers.
Unfortunately, I was also rather fast to choose suspects in cases. The cases that were too close to home, at least. With the Gingers, Scott Tenorman, and now Damien all more or less linked, I felt that I had even more reason to be wary of Eric Cartman. But the look on Karen's face told me, Don't make him angry.
True. He'd diverted twice before. And third time's the charm, as they say, right? No, we could not afford for Cartman to bail and pick up another venture now.
I'd told him I would give him the mission he wanted, much earlier in the day, and I felt that I needed to keep to my word, though hopefully I could do so in a way that would still allow me a watchful eye on every possible upcoming situation.
Karen's calming tone placated both Cartman and myself into more civil conversation, finding the three of us looking over the whiteboard, and what we had as evidence thus far. "And that thing with your mother…?" I prompted, when we stood at the cork board.
We were looking over Ike's print-out of the GSM decal. Three rows of three circles, joined together by one broken one. Red in color and simple in design, but a terror to think about; it was taunting me.
"I don't even want to talk to her right now," Cartman muttered.
"You'll have to, eventually," I reminded him firmly.
"I know, Kenny, God. Just—I just don't wanna fucking go back tonight cuz all's she's gonna do is cry at me an' shit and I don't wanna hear it."
Karen glanced up at me, and ticked her head at the cork board. I studied the poster that Clyde and Craig had brought in for a moment, then shifted my eyes to Ike's red ticket. Liane Cartman had planned a carnival-themed birthday party for her son in third grade, which Damien Thorn had attended with the rest of us; Cartman himself had then thrown a chili-con-carnival at which he'd fed Scott Tenorman his own parents. Tenorman had turned around, once his despair had turned to madness, recruited the county Gingers into a league that, at a warehouse carnival, had fed Cartman the truth about his father.
Now a new Carnival loomed, directly threatening and recruiting the red-heads and relatives not already a part of the Movement. I thought about Butters's find, in regards to the girl I'd always remembered calling Powder in school. Sally Turner was all the proof I needed that whatever the new recruits were being offered, it had to have been enticing, otherwise I couldn't imagine just anyone dropping their lives and working for the devil.
Whether or not Tenorman had sold his soul was debatable.
Red Devil/Red Hair, it read on Ike's ticket.
They were working together. But to what end? And, I couldn't help but wonder, who was the real mastermind, here? Was this all just some twisted joke that would allow Tenorman to get back at Cartman, or what?
The radio programs seemed to negate that idea pretty easily. Damien was planning something huge… probably using the Gingers as a means of keeping us and the town busy, so that he could only make appearances when he needed to. He just had to go and pick visiting the Cartman house first, though.
Just to get me riled up? Maybe. To weaken Cartman? Also a possibility. But Cartman couldn't be beaten down, not easily, anyway. Hardly anything scratched the surface of his ego to make him feel inferior. He was thick in many ways, and most of the time, I hated that. But hopefully he'd at least be stubborn enough to stick with us and not go over the edge and join those other two. We really didn't need that, especially with the future of the League still rather undetermined.
"Sorry," I managed to say. "It must suck."
"It does, thank you very much," Cartman snorted.
"Yeah, I feel great about having a Shadow with a mind of its own again, thanks for asking," I grumbled.
"Okay, you both got shit ends of the stick," Karen interrupted. "Can we please not argue, and be productive if we're all sticking around? Please?"
Cartman glared at me; I glared back. I gave in first, and wondered if I should have stuck it out a little longer. "You can stay here if you need to," I offered grudgingly. "I mean, option's always there for anyone, you've got a room. I'm gonna get some work done, so—"
"I'll think about it."
"Are you serious about still working, Kenny?" Karen wanted to know.
"Gonna read through some stuff, at least… maybe—"
I really didn't want to, but I had to get a grip on that Shadow. Whatever it was, however it was connected to me, however linked to R'lyeh or to Hell the thing happened to be, I had to figure out a way that I could ignore it. I was fairly certain that Damien wanted me using it. He wouldn't have sent it, otherwise.
A prize, my ass. My real prize had been beating my curse. Calling it memory. I did not want the burden of that again. Part of me simply wanted to believe that Damien had some sort of jealous streak going, that he hadn't cashed in on the insanity of four years prior. Missed your chance to play, idiot; we weren't up for a forced second round.
"Whatever we do, though, I just need some fucking water," I realized. Probably wouldn't help if I went delusional by not taking care of myself. Stan and Kyle's parting words had helped a fair deal; I did need to watch how hard I worked. I'd sleep, I told myself. I'd just get a lot done first.
The good news was, Cartman did end up leaving after a while, getting an offer to stay with Wendy and Butters. Which must have been awkward central and I was kind of bummed to be missing out on the fur sure to fly if those three remained housemates, but at least it got him out of my hair for the night.
Red, too, had gone home, though she and I had the understanding that I would spare no details if and when she asked me how things were going.
The facts were there: I had an active Shadow again. Words from R'lyeh did not slither through my mind as I felt it course through my body; I felt strung to it in an interesting way. While the Shadow of Cthulhu had been who I was from birth, and what I had been until its destruction, I discovered, that night, something about Damien's 'gift' that truly disturbed me:
I felt trapped by it. Strung to it like a marionette. It was the ball and chain around my foot. It felt like a sentence, rather than a curse. For what crime, I was not sure. For how long… well, I had a feeling only Damien could tell me that.
Since I couldn't very well just go seek him out right away, I talked over my fears with my sister. We eventually made our way out into the training field, where the guys had been working off their own steam earlier.
One of the target dummies had been incinerated. I felt myself grin upon seeing that. Despite everything, at least I had a strong team, who kept pushing themselves to be stronger. Token had better and better armor, Stan's proficiency with those tools, Clyde's marksmanship, and Wendy and Ike's swordsmanship were skills that handful of League members had been honing and perfecting for quite some time. Then there was Kyle: maybe he'd go about it a little reluctantly, but I was confident he'd step it up with that psychic quirk of his pretty soon. He had all the right encouragement.
But, damn, man… we had Craig, too. He'd done a number on that target. Way to use what you've got, dude.
Though I guess I kind of was charged to do the same. Standing out there with Karen, at a time of day with shadows cast only from the lights Kyle had hung from the trees surrounding our field, I worked through my fears. And my options.
"You really doubt I'm Immortal again?" I double-checked with her.
Karen nodded. "It's just… something is off," she reiterated.
"We're being tested?" I sighed, repeating what my two closest friends had already said.
"We're being tested."
"Why?"
"If he's the son of the devil, Kenny, I don't know," Karen said nervously. "Are you going to use the new Shadow?"
"I don't want to," I said, rather quickly.
"All right…"
The shadows on the ground around me began to reach toward mine. All that filled my head was thought upon thought of how I could convince myself that this Shadow was different. It didn't speak to me. It wasn't a part of me. So what the fuck was it?
And, more importantly, were there stones we had left unturned?
As far as I knew, without the option of going directly to Damien, there was only one other person who might have an answer for me. Only one person with something I'd accept, anyway.
– – –
Karen made me wait it out for a little while before I went to Henrietta. In the long run, I knew that it was a good call. But again, I was the impatient sibling.
Karen and I had learned from our parents, on the day we had left home, that my first rebirth had been on Karen's exact birthday. As pseudo-twins, we had been realizing our parallels over the past few years, and now began to wonder how much stock we'd need to put into the oddity surrounding both of our births.
She was the patient one, the guiding light, reason. The Guardian Angel that kept watch over the city: rarely seen, but ever loved. I was impatient, a man of the shadows, tough but reasonable. I'm Mysterion: since the age of nine, a symbol that the town can rally behind.
Both of us operated on the principle that everyone has heroic qualities; we just happened to be the ones that acted upon them. But we never revealed ourselves. No one in the League did, not to just anyone. Those who knew never spread the information… and may not have been believed, even if they did.
Henrietta Biggle, though she rarely explicitly stated it, also seemed to take stock in the duality that tied Karen and I together both as a sibling pair and a vigilante duo. She took Karen's word as closely as she took mine, and while the other two Goths may have complained about Karen's involvement at the shop, I knew that Henrietta appreciated having her around, since Karen and I were at the core of the Shadow League.
So, for a while, I put my faith in my sister and let her work things through with Henrietta before I could speak to the Goth myself. It gave Henrietta the time to scrounge up the right materials, and me the time to work out other complications.
With information coming to us in bits and pieces, and in such strange ways, it became quickly and easily understood that our primary League goal, up until the event at the Goths' coffee house, was simply to gather as much information as possible. This was turning more and more into a kind of covert, spy operation, since the GSM had not attacked since the night we'd turned so many over to the cops. Which bothered me. As much as I wanted to go out and punch something, I had to stay restrained.
If there was one person I could go out and punch now, however, it was Sargeant Yates.
Mosquito kept an eye on him, as I'd instructed, tapping police scanners to make sure the Sargeant wasn't having any meet-ups with Gingers without our knowing that GSM members were out and about, and ultimately keeping his ears open for other projects the cops might have been turning to.
It hit us both around the same time, though, that we should check on the Infra-Reds we had previously turned in, particularly if Yates himself was at risk of getting 'recruited' by the GSM. Since I definitely wanted to get in a few words with the head of the Park County police department, I accompanied Mosquito to the station prior to an already planned meeting with Henrietta over dealings with the Shadow.
Joining us, more or less as a trial run to see if he truly did want to adopt an alter ego, was Craig.
Endgame.
"I like the name," I told him as the three of us set out from the base to Park County station.
"Not too much?" he wondered. I glanced down to take a look at those boots he'd started wearing. Maybe Craig had been back and forth about his full League involvement for a while, but the fact that he'd made those was promising. The guy had a lot of potential. A lot.
"Hey, I like it, it seems accurate, and it'd be great if you finally had a name that wouldn't give you away," I said.
"Plus, it's a nice big 'fuck you' to Damien, don'tcha think?" Mosquito added positively. "If he's gonna try to warp whatever it is he's doing into one big tease of a Carnival game…"
"Don't make me hate you," the newly-named hero interrupted.
"Kinda true, though," I pointed out. "It'll give Damien and those guys a good run for their money."
"Speaking of Damien to get the subject off of me," Endgame said, all but shrugging to change the subject, "we are sure he's the one leading the Ginger army?"
"It's a fair guess," said Mosquito. "Kite noted that the sender was Thorn, and I'm putting stock into that."
"You really think Tenorman sold his soul?"
"Wouldn't rule it out," I sighed.
"For what?"
"That's what we're doing here."
"I thought we were here because the cop's being an idiot."
"We're here for that, too."
The way I generally liked to pay visits to the Park County police department was the same way I crept in on the Goths, and the same way I'd promised my sister protection when we were children. There was a top-floor window, where most of the offices were located, that was accessible by way of a fire escape. I'm not sure if the secretaries and security guards on the first floor ever even knew I dropped by whenever I did, though the team and I had made other frequent, officer-accompanied visits to the jail as well.
Tonight, we started on the second floor.
The first one to spot us was Murphy, Yates's long-time partner on the force and still one of the more level-headed agents Park County had on any of its units. The man, his desk already situated to face the window, lifted his head and scratched at the sides of his slate-grey hair, then backed up in his rolling seat once Mosquito and Endgame entered behind me.
"Um… g-good evening," Murphy said. "Mysterion, I had no idea you were on patrol tonight. I usually see you on Wednesdays."
"Courtesy call," I said, rolling back my shoulders and approaching his desk. "Where's Yates?"
"Bathroom. He'll be out soon. What's going on?"
"What's going on," Mosquito answered for me, arms folded with one hand stroking the end of one of his stun guns, just enough to warn the cops that we were there on a mission, and that we really needed to see it through, "is that your sargeant is ignoring warning signs and not keeping in touch with us while we track down the Ginger Separatist Movement."
I heard a flush and the opening and closing of a door down the hall, and while Murphy sat still pondering our arrival, Sargeant Yates breezed through a number of officers who were pretending not to react to the fact that a few Shadow League members had dropped in. "Sargeant," I barked in his direction.
"Okay, what's going on?" the sargeant asked, too loudly, his tone almost sing-songish. He'd slip into that tone often, I noticed, whenever he felt that he was being either had or outsmarted… or when he just didn't want to take any of what he considered to be bullshit. I did not like being spoken to that way. Not at all.
"Funny you should ask," I said, not moving. I let that idiot come to me. "I was about to ask the same of you."
"What are you talking about?" Yates asked in the same tone as before. He caught sight of Mosquito and nodded in his direction. "And how come my wife says she thought she saw you staking out on the roof of our garage the other night?" Mosquito gave no reply, so Yates moved his gaze to Endgame. "And who even are you?"
"Endgame," our companion answered. Craig had never disguised his voice before while on missions, finding no need to, since he still considered himself just… Craig. But something was making him want to go all-out. I knew he'd taken a trip to Peru fairly recently, but I could never have called that it would have affected him in such a profound way. He spoke his name by giving his voice the same kind of timbre that some of us—Stan, Kyle, Token and myself—used while masked: he effected a lower growl which, given the rather nasal, monotonous quality of his real speaking voice, was almost terrifying, even to me.
"Why're you called Endgame?"
"You don't want to find out." Note to self to remind Craig how glad I was that he was on our side in everything.
Yates shrugged it off. "Doesn't matter how many of you guys show up," he said, directly to me again. "If this is a threat, I could arrest you."
"Sir, that's absolutely ridiculous," said Murphy, rising. "With all due respect, sir, this is the Shadow League. They're assets to this city."
"Well, if they've turned to stalking cops, they're gonna be nothin' else but pains in my ass," said the red-haired sargeant. "I thought the League was above chasing down Carnivals that don't exist."
"You know, that's exactly what we're here about," I said, getting right into Yates's face to drive my point home. He smelled like sour coffee and nicotine gum, which was enough to make my stomach churn and my gag reflex almost act up. I held it back, though, and continued, "I gave you explicit instructions not to open the letter you received the night of the attack. Why'd you do it?"
"Evidence, kid," said Yates, pushing past me toward his desk. "That's what real cops do."
"Except it appears you've stopped," Mosquito pointed out. "You opened the letter but filed the GSM as a cold case."
"Sir?" Murphy tried again, though his attempt was futile.
"Didn't answer it, did you?" asked Endgame, without moving even his head to speak to the sargeant.
"No, and seriously, get that guy out of here," Yates said, raising his voice, "he's freaking me out."
I was furious. Yates was acting stranger than he ever had. Sure, I'd often thought that Murphy should have been the one calling the shots at Park County, but I had never really been in a position to say so. Yates got his way and that was that. Something must have forced him to open that letter.
"Where's the letter?" I demanded.
"At my house."
"Nice place for evidence," said Mosquito.
"So I take my work home."
"And how far's it gonna go?" I nearly shouted, finally advancing on Sargeant Yates.
Yates rolled his eyes. "For Christ's sake," he muttered. "It was a recruitment letter to join that weird little Movement, as you call it. But they're all flash and no bang. I think every single one of 'em is sitting down in the jail right now. They were amateurs who hung up some crazy posters and sent some chainmail."
"Amateurs don't have helicopters!" I hollered. Not my best defense, but I had to blow off steam somehow.
"Whatever. These guys are nothing," Yates said, passing it off. "Just a group that wants attention. They're all dead leads."
"You know what? Yeah, these guys do want attention, I'll give you that," I growled at him. "But what's going to happen once they start making demands, Sargeant? Once things get out of hand?"
"Out of hand? It's vandalism, Mysterion, nothin' more than that. This so-called 'Ginger Rebellion' is just a waste of our time."
All right. That set me over.
I grabbed the cop by the collar and pushed him up against the wall. "Waste of time?" I repeated. "Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"
"Hey, let go of me," Yates demanded. "What's this all about?"
"Mysterion," Mosquito said, clipping the word as a warning. Realizing that I was acting a little out of line, I stood down, releasing the officer. "Listen, Yates, we're not impressed. Yes," he admitted, "I've been following you, but only because we feel we have reason not to trust you."
"On a bunk case?"
"Call it what you want, but there's more to those posters than petty vandalism. They are an organized, anti-establishment Movement, and they are doing the same thing many movements have done before: they're waiting to strike. We can't be unprepared." Mosquito glared daggers at the sargeant, and added, "When the Shadow League gives you a warning, we have good reason to be doing so."
The GSM was certainly not a waste of time, as Yates had professed, but our discussing it with him felt like it. The man could not be convinced. I did see Murphy pass us an almost pitying glance as I called my two companions back out the window with me. As much as I'd kind of wanted to get into a downright fistfight over the subject of the letter with Yates, he was giving me nothing.
He seemed convinced that the Movement and the Carnival both were below our concern. A cold case only a few weeks old. Bullshit. He was considering the letter, I knew it. We just had to prove it. Either that or prove to him that the Movement really did know what they were doing. In order to present that to the cops, though, we needed more than just a couple dozen men and women sitting in jail.
When the three of us entered the station again through the metal front doors, we were greeted not by a receptionist but by a panting Agent Murphy, who must have booked it down the stairs in order to catch up with us. He was too winded to speak, but beckoned for us to follow him as he unclipped a ring of keys from around his belt, indicating that he would be glad to bring us downstairs.
Even though we had not yet mentioned that we'd had every intention of heading down there. "You a mind-reader now, Murphy?" I asked as he brought us to the staircase that led down to the row of cells below the station.
"No," he said, his breathing settled. "I was all set to run out after you guys anyway. I'm glad you came back. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the sargeant, but I apologize. Ever since he opened up that letter and brought it home, he's been avoiding a lot of work, even though he's here at his computer all the time."
"Doesn't sound too promising," Mosquito noted.
Murphy shook his head. "Plus, I feel like I'm the only one other than the guards who's been down here checking on these guys. They're all still here, but—"
"All still here?" I said. "No, one broke out. Two of our members caught her, and we took her goggles in as evidence ourselves."
Murphy's eyes went wide. "That's not possible," he said. "I just did a head count yesterday. Unless that happened late last night or this morning…"
"Move," I instructed, picking up my pace. The four of us quickened our gait down the long, narrow path that stretched out through the mostly unoccupied cells until Murphy showed us to two large cells, inside of which were the now unmasked group of Ginger Seperatists.
They sat in disturbingly neat, organized rows, all sticking to the uniform of sitting cross-legged, heads slightly bowed. My ass they weren't organized, Yates.
"If the sargeant ever came down here, I'm sure his opinion would change," said Murphy, shuddering as he looked over every similarly-shaded head. "I can't get any of these guys to talk, and we've confiscated their gear. They don't move, and as far as I've ever seen, they don't eat."
"Guys," said Endgame, "you seeing this?"
"What?" I wondered, stepping back so that he and I had the same view.
In the sea of Gingers, I was, once Endgame pointed her out to me, able to pick out Sally Turner. "What's she—what are you doing here?" I shouted in at her.
"Our comrades have photographs of her on the street," Mosquito explained to Agent Murphy, who cringed at the information. "Our sources don't cite her as a twin."
"Couple others of these guys look like twins, too," Endgame pointed out.
Not a one of the Infra-Reds spoke or reacted to our presence. They simply seemed to be meditating. Or waiting. And, just as Endgame had picked up on, quite a few of them looked similar. The face of one man was identical to that of another in the other cell; two other 'twins' sat diagonally from each other.
And every single one of them, I realized, had the same pattern of freckles.
Below each eye, and at the center of the forehead, the freckles formed circular patterns, and did not differ from face to face.
"Oh, shit," Mosquito buzzed out.
"That's comforting," said Murphy.
"My apologies, but we hadn't seen more than one unmasked before."
"These guys aren't just recruits," I realized. "They're carbon copies."
"We've been able to do face-matches for a few of them… before Yates abandoned the project," Murphy told us. "I personally tried to contact a few of them, but they couldn't be reached."
"We'll get on it," Mosquito assured him. "Keep us posted on Yates's behavior."
Murphy nodded. "I hate to be spying on him," he said. "I've known him forever, and not even his wife seems to be calling in with concern, but me and the guys've been a little skeptical."
"Keep your guard up," I instructed the Agent, "and your eyes on the shadows. We'll be around."
Mosquito managed to take a few pictures with a camera he had hidden on a detatchable scope for the stun-sniper he'd sometimes strap to his back nowadays, and then the three of us were off again. I sent a mass text to the others saying that Mosquito would be filing a new report about the GSM, and another text just to Butters, in hopes that Agent Harmony might be able to do some extra snooping on Sally Turner. Since those two were friends, maybe she'd have the best chance of finding out what happened to the real one.
Because I was now convinced that Damien was creating a counterfeit army as easily as some seedy men could create counterfeit money. With the letters going out to the actual citizens of South Park, though, and the broadcasts supposedly reaching every radio in every home, car and mobile device, he was reaching society. And society was, either knowingly or unknowingly (I wasn't sure which was worse), giving him what he wanted.
An army.
A Carnival.
"Where are the originals?" Mosquito asked in a panic as the three of us kept to the back roads away from the station.
"Gonna guess it's at the place those 'dead lead' posters were advertising," said Endgame.
"Good point," I nodded. "The Carnival doesn't have a location anyone knows about, but if these people don't actually exist…"
"Suppose they do, though," Mosquito pointed out. "What if the originals are hidden into the army along with the copies? And I mean, how's he even doing that?"
"He's the son of the devil, I'm sure he's got a way," I said. "Listen, guys, I'll catch up with you later. Keep alert, and call in Angel, or another team or two if you need backup, but I've gotta have a word with Henrietta."
"Good call. But hey," said Mosquito, grabbing my arm before I could divert, "be careful, all right? How's that Shadow treating you?"
I sighed. "Leaving me alone, for the most part," I told him, "but I still don't feel so great."
"Can't imagine you would. Good luck, okay?"
"Same to you. If there's any activity—"
"We'll let you know."
With that, we parted ways, and I slipped off when the road parted in order to make my way to the loft above the Tenth Circle. The facts that we did have tugged at my mind. Damien had us playing detective. Which was fine, but we could not afford to miss a single hint, a single clue. Nor could we discount anything as being a possible connection.
Why not just have an army from Hell? He could do that, right? When we were kids, I'd seen him rip the ground right open with little more than a thought. He could throw fire and summon—
Shadows.
I picked up my pace to a sprint and made it to my destination in record time. Heart racing like mad, I passed by the fire escape that would have brought me to the living room and took a running jump up to a drainpipe on the wall facing the opposite cross street instead. One hand over the other, I managed to make my way noiselessly up the drain pipe to a window only slightly ajar, but with—oh so conveniently—no screen.
Carefully, I nudged open the window, slipped inside, and fell into a kneeling position on the hardwood floor of Henrietta's bedroom, my shadow casting long in front of me.
"Well, now," said Henrietta, feigning astonishment, "this is a surprise."
If the rest of the Goths' apartment was a library, Henrietta's personal room was the rare archives. The four walls in her fairly well-sized bedroom were painted smoke grey… or perhaps they were a different color and what I was seeing was the direct result of her smoking habit. (In which case, ew, lady, lay off a little.) Not much of the walls could be seen, however, behind Henrietta's four-poster bed, shrouded in a black lace canopy, behind the bookshelves on either side of the bed and the far wall, and behind a large wardrobe that she kept locked at all times. As the room also had a closet for her various black dresses, any other visitor would surely wonder what the significance of the wardrobe was.
I hadn't had to guess twice, even at the beginning.
"Henrietta," I greeted her, standing.
She had been seated at the foot of that Victorian bed of hers, a book in her hand, but stood to address me. "Figured I'd see you sooner or later," she said. She set her book down, then looked me over from toe to head. "You gonna bring back that portfolio I lent you?"
"Borrowed it out to Toolshed," I told her. "You'll get it back."
"Good. I need to update it."
"You'll get it." I did wonder about the updates. More sins, no doubt. The ones I'd already seen were disturbing enough; anything else from Wilcox's mind was sure to add to the plethora of ill feelings the other paintings already invoked. "How's the gallery coming?"
"You gonna be at the opening?" the Goth baited me, pre-empting the continuation of my visit by moving silently to the desk next to the wardrobe, both of them of dark cherry wood. Henrietta had an old secretary desk, with a sloped surface for writing and a rolling door to compartment shelves above the surface. She now rolled up the door and reached into a small compartment on her right to withdraw a skeleton key of plated metal.
"Can you give me any more information about it now?" I wondered.
"Only that you're gonna want eyes outside and in," said Henrietta. She fitted the skeleton key to the lock on her wardrobe.
Her hand shook. Her voice hid nerves.
"Why?" I asked, trying not to make it a demand. "Henrietta, is someone silencing you? It's not like you to keep things from me."
"Curating an event is stressful," she said firmly, clicking open the wardrobe. "That's all." Before she could open up the doors, however, she drew in the practiced breath of someone accustomed to filling her lungs with the sensation of a clove cigarette. "That and maybe there are some things about the event even I'm not sure are… look, just make sure you're there. Bring friends."
"We'll be there," I assured her.
She simply nodded, then drew back the two large, rectangular doors of her wardrobe. It was a tiny museum in there. On the insides of the doors, Henrietta had put up maps of Arkham, Dunwich, and Ipswitch, Massachusetts: sites of early 20th-century sightings of some of the Great Old Ones, and home to most of the artifacts we had recovered. The library at Miskatonic University, in Arkham, had at one time housed at least one copy of the Necronomicon.
Inside the wardrobe, Henrietta had set up shelves and safes. I shuddered at the mere thought of knowing what was inside the safes. Books and scrolls, dusty with age, were stacked on some of the shelves, while others housed art and artifacts shrouded in velvet cloths and bags. In the center, Henrietta had set up something of a shrine. Surrounding a matted black safe, in which she held the final retrieved copy of the Necronomicon, were unlit candles, the bas-relief of Cthulhu that Wilcox's ancestor had sculpted, and a large tome, its spine decrepid and strung together with twine.
Above the shrine, painted in her own web-like handwriting, were the words, Strange things lie yet beyond the shadows.
Beneath that, she had painted out a block of words, encased in quotation marks:
"The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head… Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."
"Been thinking something new might come up?" I guessed.
"I never ruled it out," said the Goth. She faced me again, to ask, "Been talking to your sister, though. Someone's giving you guys a rough ride. What's the current problem, again?"
"Henrietta," I said gravely, "we've got Hell at our heels."
She smirked. "You sure like pissing off the right people."
"I'm convinced darkness just likes seeking us out," I corrected her.
"Hell, huh?" Henrietta said, scouring the contents of her wardrobe shelves. "What makes you say that?"
"For starters, let me show you this."
That got Henrietta's attention, and when we met in the middle of her floor, I withdrew from my utility belt the ripped open envelope that had sent Damien's 'gift' to me. I'd stashed it on my person nearly every night, lately, just in case I'd get the chance to discuss it. "Been listening to the radio at all, lately?" I wondered.
"I don't listen to the radio."
"Figured." I handed Henrietta the envelope.
"Nice wax work," she said, upon first studying the broken seal. "Who's D, and who's T?"
"Same guy," I told her. "Damien Thorn. Ever hear of him?"
"No, but your friend told me to listen for the name." Henrietta pulled out her lighter from a pocket I never would have known was in her layered black dress otherwise, and ignited the flame. My heart skipped a beat as she held the lighter up to study the envelope more closely.
"Well, it's a name worth knowing," I said, feeling my pulse start to rush with nerves again. "He came to Earth a long time ago, and something's brought him back."
"From?"
"Hell," I stressed, figuring she could have put that together. Unless she just wanted to hear me say it. "He's the son of the devil. Do you know anything about Hell, Henrietta? I know you guys don't practice Satanism or anything, but any information you might have would be helpful. And I mean anything. Powers the beings of Hell might have. Past connections between Hell and Earth."
"How about Hell and R'lyeh?" asked Henrietta, handing the envelope back to me. "Little white bird told me you've been having some Shadow problems lately."
At least Henrietta had been listening to Angel. That was a good sign.
To prove the point, I moved my right arm out to the side. I still wanted to keep myself rather distanced from this Shadow, and had not made strides to try to control it, as I had the one of my curse. Dammit… Damien had summoned sentient shadows, straight up from Hell. He'd just concocted a special one for me. Fucker.
The shadows in Henrietta's room became instantly aware of my own Shadow's presence. The Goth looked unimpressed: a) because she never did, and b) because she knew what was coming. I didn't care. I just wanted an answer, or something that might lead me to one.
"Hmm." Henrietta went back to her wardrobe and pulled the strung-together volume from the center shrine. "That's how she described it, yeah."
"Is it from Hell?" I asked her. "Can we test it or something?"
"I don't have anything that can test it, but we might be able to make some judgment calls," said the Goth.
"With that book?" I guessed. "What is it, anything like the Necronomicon?"
"This book is from a place called Leng," Henrietta said. "Snatched this outta Miskatonic myself before it shut down."
"I'm listening," I prompted her eagerly.
My Goth liaison nearly smirked, high and haughty, and took a pause, holding me in suspense. "Here's the thing," she eventually said. "Even though it was another dimension, R'lyeh wasn't an exception from the Divine Rule of Three."
"What do you mean?" I wondered. "This isn't gonna be some kind of math lesson, is it?"
Henrietta hefted open her thick old book to an illustration of an illuminated mandala. On yellowing paper was a circle painted in black ink, enhanced with touches of red and gold. Within the circle were several triangles, all connecting to different dots surrounding the diameter. Behind the mandala itself were images of constellations I did not recognize, and hieroglyphics that reminded me immediately of the language that had been carved into the broken-down crypts of R'lyeh.
"Believe me," Henrietta said almost scornfully, "geometry's got nothing to do with anything the Old Ones, Deep Ones, or Outer Gods touch."
"Great," I muttered. "There are more."
I knew this, of course, I just hadn't wanted to be ready for more. Especially now that it seemed like Damien was interested in messing shit up. I could take one at a time, but Damien and whatever else was out there past wherever Yog-Sothoth had set up his new Gate? I didn't think so. I was done with that shit. And what was with the Gingers? Clever cover, Damien, but I didn't exactly get it.
"You guys did a number on a lot of them. Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep are down, and your teammates got a bunch of others, like Ghanatothoa, the Hydra… I've got the list somewhere." I think Henrietta only ever shrugged about twice a year. This was one of those instances. It was kind of weird seeing her shrug, weirder than seeing her smile, honestly. Possibly because I'd always perceived Henrietta as a woman who did not very easily give up, or feel defeat.
I sighed. "Look, I know Yog-Sothoth is probably still out there somewhere. Of course there's more. I was just kinda hoping they'd, y'know, quit it for a few hundred more years. What I'm pissed about is this new fucking Shadow," I admitted. "Did I just get fucked over again or didn't I?"
Henrietta gave me a back off, bad dog kind of glare. She pointed at one of the triangles, and pointed her perfectly-polished index finger's nail at one of the lines. "Divine Rule of Three," she said. "The one everyone knows is pretty obvious. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. Doesn't matter where you're from on this planet, that's kinda consistent."
"So even the guy who wrote the Necronomicon got that," I assumed.
"I'd say so, yeah," Henrietta agreed. "Plus, Earth's in a couple of Circles of Three. There's Earth, Sun, Moon for one," she said, pointing to another line, "and then we've got Earth, R'lyeh…"
"And the Void?" I guessed.
"Yup."
"Shit."
Henrietta did grin at me this time. "And that, Mysterion, is why I've been keeping these artifacts around. You're welcome."
"You're becoming quite the curator," I managed to compliment her through the rage that was starting to build up with the realization that we weren't entirely finished with the rest of Cthulhu's friends. "What even is this book?"
"This text is a professor's translation of the Dhol Chants," Henrietta explained. "Chants and prayers of a people who lived in a place that transcends reality."
"That Leng place?" I guessed.
"You got it, cape boy." Henrietta gave herself a moment to think things over, then continued, "I'm gonna take a guess here and say that some places that had already kind of disappeared from Earth and into the Spaces Between might still be around."
"But R'lyeh's gone," I insisted.
"Keep your panties over your pants and listen, jerk," Henrietta snapped. Her skirt's shadow billowed into mine like a net of spider webs as she crossed the floor to the bookshelf nearest to my right. She tapped her little Cthulhu statuette, causing me to cringe, and said, "This guy was the Priest that presided over the Old Ones sleeping in R'lyeh. R'lyeh was the center of a Circle of Three, tied to Earth and the Void."
"So where on this stupid fucking map are the Spaces Between?" I asked impatiently, smacking my left hand down on the mandala that still stared tauntingly up at me.
"First off, it's not a map, it's a chart," Henrietta insisted, "and secondly, here's the bitch of it. Check out the center of it."
Lines crossed and crossed and crossed inside the circle, but the center sat untouched, creating a nonagon. The nine sides were so small and so precise, however, that at first glance, it merely looked like another circle. I fixed my eyes to the spot to make out each side and each corner, however, and needed only stare for a moment before the lines around the center began to blur in my vision.
The converging lines began to appear to my fixed point as a spiral. Precise links became twisted lines of black nothingness, spirals and spirals until at last it was all black. All shadow.
I gasped and snapped the book closed, having to blink several times before I could readjust to the dim, hazy light of Henrietta's room.
The Spaces Between were the center of the chart. And every space not confined to a line. Even then, the lines distorted to become a part of them. They could not die with R'lyeh, because they abided by their own laws. No point connected to them, for they could not be found.
"I get it," I said, nearly forgetting to disguise my voice. I technically never needed to, around Henrietta, but it was the principle of the thing. "They're everywhere. The Spaces Between—"
"Don't play by the rules."
"…Does Hell?" I asked warily.
"I already told you it does. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory," Henrietta repeated. "Hell's like the grand high master of keeping the Circles of Three in a balance. Hell itself is divided into circles, or so the legend goes."
"Good to know," I muttered. "But this," I said, tapping the empty center of the mandala again, "is gonna bug the fuck outta me. So this Leng place. It isn't real?"
"It is but isn't," said Henrietta. "I'd guess," she added, sliding another book off of the shelf, "it's kind of in Dreamland territory now."
"Dreamland," I repeated. "Okay, hold up."
Henrietta thrust the new book into my hand. It still had a call number on its spine from the University Library in Arkham, and was, as far as the cover read, a collection of dream journals submitted by several contributors. I flipped to the table of contents to find that the contributors included students, townsfolk, professors, and some entries from anonymous sources spread around the world. The copyright on the collection was 1950, though the book appeared to have been bound together at least three or four decades earlier.
"Dream journals," said Henrietta, as if I hadn't just read the cover. "Even people who didn't go fully mad like that Wilcox guy had visions of the Dreamlands. R'lyeh wasn't the only city that fell from the stars, Mysterion. There's evidence that these places exist," such as those star charts and chantings, sure, but…
"Henrietta, what are the Dreamlands?" I had to know.
"I need a cigarette."
Henrietta turned away from me to retrieve her quellazaire from her desk. From one of the desk compartments, she pulled out a pack of Blacks, fitted one to the handle, and lit up. "There's an artifact I still need," said the Goth, once her craving was satiated. "A lamp."
"You gonna go Arabian Nights on me, now, what the hell?" I wondered.
"Settle down, boy scout, it belonged to Alhazred."
My chest tightened. Abdul Alhazred was a madman, and the one who had penned the original Necronomicon. My shadow curled around me at the mention of his name.
"I can only read dream journals so much," the Goth continued. "I want that lamp because one of those entries mentions it." She nodded to the collection I now held. "Apparently, it can show you the Dreamlands, when it reacts to light, but it doesn't react to shadows. I'm sure if it responded to any, though, the Shadow would be an exception."
"So if we find the lamp," I deduced, "we've got a surefire way to see if this thing Damien sent me has any relation to R'lyeh, still?"
"I'd suppose, yeah." Henrietta took another long drag off of her cigarette. Smoke billowed from between her teeth and lips as she continued to speak. "I'd put a lot of stock into the Circles of Three if I were you. To be honest, I always kind of thought Satan was a total pussy compared to things like Cthulhu." Oh, I'd heard her and her friends tell me that many times, and I more or less believed them. "That letter you showed me though… the man sending those knows his shit. And by that I mean he must know plenty about you."
I took the envelope out again, and studied the seal and Damien's writing. Karen had hypothesized that Hell kept files on every living soul, and that I'd have a fairly long file indeed. It had been four years since the last time I died, thus leaving that supposed file untouched.
The only other things I could think of for those files to have on record would be accounts of sins. Isn't that how Heaven and Hell worked for the rest of the world? Tally up the sins and see where it gets you. It once had been that Heaven had allowed only Mormons to cross the golden gate, but that shining, blissful afterlife had started making exceptions, starting around the time when I was nine… right around the time when I started realizing I could and wanted to be a superhero.
Hell had waged war on Heaven plenty of times before, but I had the feeling this was not the present case. This had only to do with us, and with the work we had done involving R'lyeh.
"Meaning he knows about these pocket-dimensions," I began to piece together aloud. "But if you can't reach them, and if they don't really exist…"
"What I think," Henrietta cut in, "is if this Damien guy is who you're saying he is, he's just the guy to stick his finger in the pot and stir shit up a little."
I trusted every word she said. None of us in the League had put much stock into suggestions of any kind of Apocalypse, which seemed right. Hell wasn't rising so much as it was… moving in. Damien was heading some kind of charge, and either Earth by way of the Dreamlands or the Dreamlands by way of Earth—read: South Park—was his route. But I agreed with Henrietta on the idea that the devil's son was here to stir things up. It was true: he just could not stand that he was late to the party.
"Anything else you've seen devil boy do?" Henrietta wondered.
"Other than summon and duplicate shadows, even cursed ones… I think he can duplicate people," I told her. I made a note to get right on talking to Kyle about that, as well. In a panic, I had asked him if he could somehow summon up some kind of psychic radar to lock onto people the way I'd seen him lock onto inanimate objects. He seemed to have taken my words into consideration (God, Kyle always obsesses over nitpicky details, but I say that as a compliment).
"Weirder things have happened," said Henrietta. The gavel on the case.
"No kidding," I said. "You really think he could… I don't know, distort the Spaces Between somehow?"
"Seems right up a devil's alley. I don't say this to many people, Mysterion, but you and your team are about the only ones who can not only find out, but do something about it, if Satan's son is up here doing some dirty work in the Dreamlands."
"Jeez," I muttered. "I really thought we'd kinda closed it when the Gate collapsed."
"Listen," said Henrietta, her shifting gaze an indication of her own stacking thoughts. "It's one thing to erase thoughts of the Old Ones from most of mankind. But I'm pretty sure you've known for a while that you and your friends aren't exactly in any 'most of' category."
"All of us, huh?" I said, glancing again at the chart.
"Look at your team. You've got a psychic. You've got Craig."
"Craig?"
"Yeah." Shoulda figured. One isn't painted on a prophetic Incan wall for nothing. Henrietta did not elaborate further on Craig, so I decided not to pry. I considered Craig a pretty good friend, though Clyde was still closer to him than I'd ever been, in the bros-and-practically-brothers category of friendships, but Craig had still not mentioned much around his breakup with Henrietta. I'd only even figured that they weren't together when, at school, Craig mentioned something about a date with a girl slightly older than he was who worked at a bar near our school. Oh, well. Whatever it was, Craig and Henrietta both seemed pretty fine with it. I'd just kind of hoped for more for them; to each their own, though. "Plus," Henrietta went on, "you've got Chaos."
I sighed. "He's not Chaos anymore," I told her. Reiterated, really. No matter how many times I said it, though, all Henrietta would say was:
"Sure." And she did not sound convinced. "Anyway. You've got all that, plus plenty of Circles of Three going on right around you."
"How so?"
I was trying the Goth's patience and I knew it, but as long as she was talking, I'd stay there till she kicked me out. When Henrietta got talkative, I had to make the most of it. "You," she said bluntly. "Your sister. And—"
Oh, wait, did I say I liked it when Henrietta had a lot to say? Maybe. Just not about this. "Oh, don't say it," I begged.
Henrietta passively lit another cigarette. "Like it or not, Cult dealings don't always die. You, your sister, and that fatass Coon bastard you've got on your team are all kinda, you know… marked. You're linked, and you will be till that Damien guy moves in."
Glancing back at the vast shadow I was casting over the wall, I steeled myself, and filled my head with thoughts of my resources.
I should have seen something like this coming. Not necessarily how much residue we still had to clean up after R'lyeh, but things involving that assdick Cartman. I went, in my life, between truly hating the bastard and just plain tolerating him. I tried to be friends; we kind of were. But we could be friends and still be at mortal odds. I'd certainly never felt comfortable with any of our similarities, particularly our shared history with the Cult.
Now that Damien was on the scene and Hell was lurking, though—dammit. This really was getting more personal than I'd thought. Damien wanted to stir shit up, huh? How far would he go?
And fucking why? He couldn't use his half-brother (ew, still, by the way) to raise Cthulhu anymore. Besides, I'd've figured that Damien was above Cthulhu somehow.
Or maybe R'lyeh was something even Hell could never touch.
Stan and Kyle both had brought up the idea that we were being tested. The longer I stayed in conversation with Henrietta that evening, the more I became convinced of that fact. Whether it was Damien or one of the Elder Gods pulling the real strings, I didn't care. By getting rid of R'lyeh, we'd probably pissed somebody off. And maybe opened up an opportunity to another.
The question still tugged at my head, though: where did Tenorman figure in? And why had we seen hide nor hair of that bastard? He'd professed a desire to 'build the new Between' on the walls of the South Park Asylum, and I knew both from Stan and even from Bebe's accounts of having been in the Asylum for a while that dreams might not be something to discount here.
Henrietta had mentioned Dreamlands.
If anyone could reach those places and make anything of them…
That man was an artist. His name was Wilcox, and he knew exactly how these circles were coming together. Hell and the Void. Earth and… well, everyone and everything we managed to piss off and fuck up.
But we were the Shadow League. We'd survived some pretty crazy shit, and I was confident that my team could see this through, as well. So maybe we had to seek out places that didn't technically exist. Something told me that a part of this 'test' was going to lead us in the right direction to do something meaningful.
Before Damien could stir the Spaces around beyond repair.
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Authors' Notes:
South Park is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!
Ahhh, had to bring in some Lovecraft before we could go full-on into Dante's works… which is coming up very soon. :3 (I'd wanted this to be a multi-narrator originally, but got so caught up in Kenny, haha…) Referenced in this chapter are various assorted things from Lovecraft's 'Dream Cycle,' as well as The Lamp of Alhazred, and The Festival (from which I pulled Alhazred's blocked quote; those are Lovecraft's words, cut down a bit from the original). I'm excited to start weaving the two sources of inspiration for this story together (Lovecraft's Dream Cycle and Dante's Inferno). The theory of the Circles of Three, while there are several spiritual references to trinities and the like, are our own addition. I had fun with this one, finally getting to draw in more Lovecraft material to weave into Mysterion's story~
Thank you so much for reading! (And hi and many thanks to new followers!) We hope you're enjoying the story and we'd love to hear what you think so far~ ^^ See you next Wednesday, August 1st! :3
~Jizena, and Rosie Denn
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