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

The day after Cartman left for the Carnival, it was raining.

I woke to its heavy pattering against Stan's narrow basement windows, fully aware that rain had not been in the forecast and, therefore, that something had just gone horribly wrong.

The chest in which I'd locked the lamp was surrounded in a strange red aura, which was also very not good.

I bolted up the stairs and ran headlong into a groggy and unfortunately shirtless Randy Marsh, whose coffee narrowly missed spilling all over me by some feat of alarmingly accurate reflexes on both our parts. "Woah," I said, doubling back, "hey, ow, hi, shit. Sorry, Mr. Marsh."

He regarded me for a second, then said a flat, "Kenny, what the hell are you doing here?"

"I needed-" I started.

"Oh, Randy, don't give him a hard time," Stan's mom called out from the kitchen. "Stan left a note, and of course Kenny's always welcome to stay. Kenny, do you want breakfast?"

Not as much as I wanted answers, no. But I verbally agreed, knowing it was the right thing to do. Even so, I turned and made for the stairs, fully aware that I looked panicked, but I couldn't even set my foot on the first step before Stan started down.

I stood back to let him down to the first floor, where he noticed my nerves right away. "Dude, what?" he asked.

"It's raining."

"Yeah? Last I checked, rain didn't stop you from—"

"It wasn't supposed to rain. Also, the lamp—"

Stan lowered his tone. "What about it?"

"I don't know, but I don't think it bodes well."

All he did was nod, and suggest we relocate upstairs.

"Wait!" his mother called after us. "Boys! Breakfast! Do you want bacon or sausage or—?"

"Yeah, Mom, sounds great, thanks!" Stan called back.

We rushed into Stan's bedroom. The sound of running water down the hall told me that Kyle was in the bathroom, but he'd be quick to catch up.

Something about the way Stan looked that morning was bothering me. He was pale. Shocked pale, like he'd just walked over his own grave.

Not that that wasn't a possibility, lately.

Stan hauled me into the room, into a darker corner, away from the light of the sole window on the wall by his bed.

The dark circles under his eyes told of nightmares. His eyes themselves were bloodshot, uneasy. There was a cut on his lower lip.

"Dude," I said, pushing Stan further back against the shadow of the wall, as if that could hide my voice completely from the rest of the house, "what happened? You didn't sleep, did you?"

Stan shook his head, bit his lip, recoiled when the cut cracked as easily as lips tend to chap and bleed in the dry dead air of winter, and pulled me further into his room The sheets of his bed were a mess; a pile of blankets lay on the floor near his desk where Kyle must have set up a separate place to sleep.

"When I sleep, I'm drowning," Stan told me gravely. "I freeze, and I forget."

"Forget what?"

"That I'm supposed to be asleep? I don't know. I just get this awful sense that something's gone, and all I hear is water."

"Dude!"

"I know."

"Dude!" I repeated, fully at a loss for any substantial words. I was fucking petrified. I could only imagine how he felt.

"I know."

Stan was shaking. His haunted eyes moved from his own bed to the pile of sheets to the door, then to me. "We've gotta get into that Carnival," he said. "I can't fucking deal with this anymore." As if reeling and dizzy, he sat down on the edge of his bed. He leaned forward onto his knees, and, pinching the bridge of his nose between his eyes, asked, "Did you start having dreams about Cthulhu? And R'lyeh? I forgot, man, sorry."

"Not so much dreams as I just kinda… felt like it was familiar. Up until Henrietta and I figured out how to get me passage in and out of R'lyeh in like… seventh grade or whatever," I recalled. "Is this about Dagon?"

"I think so," Stan shuddered, looking at me again. "Guess I can't tell till I get there." He mumbled something else, but I couldn't figure out what he said.

"Have you talked to, uh, to Kyle about this?" I wondered, trying not to look at the mess Kyle had chosen to sleep in instead of Stan's bed. That was two things off right there: Kyle and shoddy craftsmanship, and Kyle minus Stan voluntarily.

"Kyle's angry." No shit. "I think he's pissed cuz he can't help."

"What do you mean, he can't help? Can anyone?"

"I… I don't know." Stan sounded more scared than I'd heard him in years. His eyes going wide with fear, he looked haunted; possessed. By what, well, I couldn't tell. "I just… Kenny, I think Damien or whoever or whatever is doing this to me is trying to remind me that I was supposed to die. Kyle can't deal with that."

"Kyle can't deal?" I sputtered. "What about you?! It's your fucking life."

Near tears, Stan stood and burst out another raw, "I know. It's just that, in my dreams, or whatever the fuck they are, I feel different. Like I don't care. Or something. But I don't want to accept that, Kenny, I can't, dude, I love my life. I love living, period. I'll fight to stay alive if I have to, but my own mind keeps trying to drown me."

Quieter, he added, "I have never been so afraid of death."

"Why?" I wondered, my own voice trembling as if to remind me that my teammates' fears were mine to shoulder, too.

"Because every day I live gives me one more thing I can't bear to lose."

I'd been there. God, had I ever been there. When Red became my first steady girlfriend, when I realized I loved her, when I realized that she, and my sister, and the League were the family I wanted to protect with everything I had… yeah, I had fucking been in exactly the place Stan must have been in now. As long as I'd known the guy, he was always so aware of how fucked up life can be, but how what we do as individuals can make the struggle of living worth it, but these nightmares seemed to be weighing him down.

If Stan Marsh gave up, I had no clue what that would bode for the rest of us.

And so I, too, was terrified.

"Anyway," said Stan, as if the nightmares were just a simple annoyance like a papercut or stubbed toe, "what about the lamp? What's going on?"

As much as I wanted to keep the subject on keeping us sane, I plummeted forward, knowing that we were about to get hurled headlong into the fight we thus far had been almost forced to wait around for. "It's glowing," I told him, and at that point, the door opened.

Kyle entered, toweling dry his hair but otherwise dressed and ready for the day. "What's glowing?" he wondered, his voice raw and rough. He looked more or less rested, but sounded like he wanted to fight the world.

"The box we locked the lamp in."

Kyle dropped the towel. "The actual fuck?"

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly."

"Um, so let's get down there before Stan's parents do!"

"Why would they?" I wondered.

"Actually, yeah, you never know when Dad'll wander down," said Stan. "Let's go."

We would probably get back to previous subjects (yay—nightmares) soon enough, so I relented and let Kyle push us down the stairs. We were halted on our path only by the raised volume of the television and Stan's father hollering, "Crazy-ass bastards, are they serious?"

"Randy, stop it," Sharon called in from the kitchen. I smelled bacon. Really fucking good bacon. I wished I was hungry.

"We're losing the integrity of the town!"

Like we had any to begin with.

"What's going on?" Stan asked, approaching the sofa and leaning over the back of an armchair to his father's left.

"Oh, some corporation breezing through town buying out every single Goddamn business. I'm glad you're doing your own thing at school, Stan, Goddamn capitalists."

Randy Marsh was somewhere else on the political and economic spectrum on any given day. He could wake up Republican, eat lunch as a Democrat, and fall asleep convinced of Anarchy, for all I fucking knew. He'd always been like that.

"What corporation?" Kyle wanted to know.

"A newcomer," the TV answered, or, the dude on TV or whatever, "Red Devil Red Hair, apparently co-owned by South Park's own Scott Tenorman. Tenorman's late father Jack was, of course, once on the Denver Broncos, so we are assuming at this point that the boy, despite his recent stint in the Park County Insane Asylum, knows something about big business. We are assuming that, right?"

"We certainly are," another TV voice answered.

"No," I head Kyle whisper. Stan was simply struck dumb. So was I.

"Red Devil Red Hair currently owns the downtown Harbucks, a large plot of land on the outskirts of town, the former Home Depot, and, as of this morning, the community swimming pool, and three bookstores."

Stan and Kyle paled simultaneously. Both of their places of summer employment were on the list that appeared on screen under the header, Under New Management. The list of businesses remained on screen just long enough for me to make out the GSM symbol in watermark behind them.

"They are apparently in talks to take over the coffee shop and gallery space currently known as the Tenth Circle. Now, the weather."

I shivered.

"Yeah, uh…" the weather guy said, "the radar is saying it's supposed to be sunny, but, ummmm… it's… raining, Tom."

"Quite right it is."

"But, uh, it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend, which will be a welcome change for us, especially with this new Carnival that a Red Devil Red Hair spokesperson called to tell me about a few minutes ago…"

"Well, that should certainly be fun," said the anchor.

As soon as the broadcast went to commercial, Kyle's phone rang. He cringed at the sound, but ticked his head toward the cellar door.

Kyle bolted down first, answering his phone while Stan and I trailed behind. The entire basement seemed illuminated by the red aura emanating from the locked chest. Stan gave me an awful, terrified, questioning look, but I could not explain to him exactly how I felt about the glowing chest, or how I had felt when I first discovered the phenomenon.

"Ike?" Kyle was saying when we caught up with him. The rain beat unforgivingly against the tiny windows. The wind sounded like a warning. Kyle paused, paused, then—"What?! Are you fucking serious? …No. No, dude, we haven't—neither has…? Shit. Fuck. Okay. …Where? …Yeah, that makes sense." Another pause. He gathered his breath. "Did they seriously send me another one?"

"Fuck," I heard Stan mutter under his breath.

"Fine," Kyle groaned. "Meet you there soon. Yeah. Bye."

He then let out a long, anguished growl and angrily turned off his phone, looking like he wanted to incinerate it in the palm of his hand. "For fuck's sake!" he complained. "Those assholes don't give up."

"What?" I asked.

Face flushed with rage, Kyle turned to look at me, now that we all stood in close enough proximity, lit solely by the awful red glow. "Damien sent me another letter. Ike didn't open it. He says we all have to meet at the Goths' place. Clyde and Craig are getting Token's van." He let out a harsh sigh. "It's starting."

"Any word from Cartman?" I wondered. Ike, the one among us who never shut off his wire, would have heard back first.

Kyle shook his head. "They've got him. And based on what we just saw on TV, they needed him in order to open. I don't get why, but so little of what these people do makes no sense."

"Guess we'll find out there," Stan remarked with a shiver.

I winced; so did Kyle. "Guess so," the two of us responded simultaneously.

The chest glowed brighter.

– – –

It was alarmingly easy, hauling the locked chest out of the basement, loading it into Stan's car without his parents noticing, and making our way to the Tenth Circle. Kyle drove. Even though none of us had gotten a good night's rest, he was the least affected by outside circumstances. For now.

When we arrived, Wendy and Bebe were standing at the coffee bar, both drinking from large black mugs that held probably more caffeine than I'd had in the past week, and they were talking about the paintings on the walls.

"I was looking at the brush strokes," Bebe was saying. "They seem totally arbitrary, except the parts in red."

"Mixed media?" Wendy offered as a suggestion.

"Blood?" Bebe wondered with a shiver.

"Blood doesn't dry bright red, Bebe."

"Wendy! Gross!"

"Well, it doesn't."

They hadn't seen us come in. Bebe tapped her unpolished nails on her cup. "How… much blood do you see," she wondered, "out on the field? Enough that it doesn't faze you at all?"

"I wouldn't say at all," said Wendy, with a hint of remorse. "Just… differently…"

Nearby, Ike and Timmy were hunched over Timmy's laptop, while a perturbed Gary Harrison sat to the side, listening to the news report they were watching.

"And, uh… Tom, I'm still seeing projected sunny skies over the next few days here in Park County," the Channel 4 meteorologist was saying from the screen. "I don't know where this rain is coming fro—hail?" As soon as I heard the word, a small block of ice hit the window. "Um… apparently it's, uh… hailing…? Tom, I don't know what's happening, but if I had to guess, I'd say someone up there just really doesn't like South Park."

"Or down below," Ike corrected, turning down the volume.

"Timmah," Timmy concurred with a solemn nod.

"Y-yeah," Gary added. "Heavenly Father wouldn't be doing this… u-unless it's to flush out the Carnival."

"Pretty sure that's our job, Gary," I said, as Kyle and I worked the locked, glowing chest through the door and into the room. "Not that we couldn't use the help."

Gary looked up to say hello to us, then—and even though I saw this I am not entirely sure how this was physically possible—tripped backward over the chair he was sitting in, feet flying over his head when he attempted to scramble back a few paces. Gary righted the chair and peered over the top of it, crying out, "What in Heaven's name is going on with that chest?!"

"We're not sure," I said. Kyle and I hefted the thing to the floor as Stan fought against the wind, rain and hail to yank the door closed behind us. "We were hoping the Goths could shed some light on it for us."

"Looks like it's doing plenty of its own light shedding," Bebe shivered, taking her mug with her as she stepped over toward us from the coffee bar. She looked like she'd rushed over before she'd even prepared for the day, being dressed only in a pair of plaid pink pajama pants that barely went below her knees and a loose old black t-shirt that was most likely Clyde's. Her curly hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with a large brown clip. "What's in there?"

"The lamp," I said, catching my breath. "Who else is here?"

"Just all of us plus Karen… she's in the bathroom… and Butters," said Wendy. "He's up with the Goths right now, talking about…" She paused, took a sip of her coffee, then looked into the mug, sighed, set the drink down, and wandered over to help Gary up and stand with the others in the center of the room. Her hair, I noticed, was already in its long, silver-streaked braid. Wearing a tight purple shirt and black yoga pants, the under-armor norm for her, she was ready to be on call at any moment.

"About what?" Stan wondered. He cast a dissenting look down at the chest, then, while still listening, opted to push it against the wall next to the opening that led into the next room, where we had been attacked by the She-Wolf on the night of the gallery opening.

"Chaos stuff, I can only imagine," Wendy clarified. Gary shivered.

Now that he was standing, I was able to see that Gary was dressed in full Mission attire: pressed black pants, clean white collared shirt, stiff black tie. He was even wearing his nametag—Elder Harrison was printed, white upon black, on the pin affixed to the pocket of his shirt. On the table next to Timmy's laptop was a thick black book.

Way to go, Gary. He really was ready to pray for us.

"Clyde and Craig are on their way," Bebe added. "They'll have everyone's gear."

"Good plan," I nodded.

Wendy nodded as well, and offered us coffee. The three of us took her up on the offer, while Ike and Timmy asked for second cups. Gary politely declined, and got himself a glass of water. Karen joined us a moment later, while Wendy was pouring cups of the Goths' fantastic drip coffee for everyone, and we gathered around the table with the laptop (which Karen shut) to wait for the others.

"By the way," Wendy added, "I got a call from Token's dad this morning."

"Yeah?" Stan asked. "What's the, um… verdict? How is he?"

Wendy anxiously gripped the edge of the table. "Token had his surgery. They had to totally replace his knee, plus a lot of the surrounding bone. Like, most of his femur."

Karen, seated between Wendy and Ike, rubbed Wendy's shoulder in support, and gave me a slight, What do we do? sort of guilty smile. I gave my own version back, and kept my attention on Wendy, who was keeping it together surprisingly well.

"He's going into physical therapy," she continued. "Today," she emphasized, her eyes going wide.

"Um," said Kyle. "Sorry, I'm no doctor, I mean, I know that's totally within Token's territory as far as, like, knowing boundaries and everything, but… I mean, isn't that a really fast turnaround time?"

"It's a computerized symbiote," Ike reminded us, as if my brain was ready for words of that calibur at this hour of the morning. "If I had to guess, this form of physical therapy will most likely take a fraction of traditional healing time."

"Well, we'll definitely all hope for the best," I said. "I don't want to force him onto the field if he isn't ready."

"He wants to be," Wendy affirmed.

Oh, I knew. Token was dedicated to the League. At this point, one of the most dedicated of all of us, not to mention one of the most sound of mind. We needed his peacekeeping qualities at least. A shittier thing couldn't have happened to a nicer person. And we all felt, in some way, personally responsible.

If he insisted that he was ready, I was glad to give TupperWear the first swing at Damien Thorn.

"So we'll leave your extra token with Timmy, Gary, and Henrietta," I concluded. "I have a feeling he'll want to be kept up to date on everything, and get back as soon as possible."

"Timmy," Timmy corrected.

"Iron Maiden," I reaffirmed.

Timmy nodded.

It was still odd that Timmy had never received an invitation to join the Carnival. I recalled my girlfriend's letter stating recruitment of "all able-bodied Ginger brethren and sistren," to which Timmy would obviously have taken offence. He'd get his chance to prove them wrong for doubting his strength, though, I was sure.

"Oh, hey, here," Ike said, sliding an envelope across the table to Kyle. "This came this morning."

I don't think I had seen Kyle smile once that morning, and the look of disdain and loathing that set into his face when he lifted the long white envelope made me wonder if he would ever smile again. Judging by Stan's expression, he was wondering the same thing.

Very carefully, Kyle tore open the envelope, and cringed. From within, he withdrew a folded sheet of black paper, that smelled, faintly, of burning coal. The script on the paper was gold. Or, quite possibly, fool's gold. It glittered against the light. Kyle had to turn the paper at various angles to read it properly when the letters reflected too much of the overhead light.

"Mr. Broflovski," he read off, adding, "oh, we're off to a stellar start. We, the ringleaders of the Carnival—Red Devil, Red Hair—are extending one last invitation to you to join our family. We regret to have been notified of your earlier rejections of our offer. Your benefits package at the Carnival would be one to be rivaled. Consider this option your only security." He shivered. "Otherwise, you will be cut by shattered nightmares. Sincerely yours—sincerely?! Sin-fucking-cerely? Fuck them! Fuck them for sincerely signing a Goddamn motherfucking death threat! FUCK THEM."

He then stood, slammed the paper down on the table, frowned down at it; he curled his hand into a fist, lifted that fist slightly off the table, then turned his palm downward and splayed his fingers.

The paper ripped into hundreds of pieces.

The room went quiet. The only sound was the angry hail and rain barreling mercilessly at the walls and windows.

Stan, saying nothing, calmly placed one hand over Kyle's still-splayed fingers. Slowly, Stan lowered both of their hands, and I thought that Kyle himself might shatter when the next thing he said was, in a whisper, "You're freezing."

"I know," said Stan. "And you're burning up."

Kyle's eyes had not shifted away from the ripped paper.

"No one is alone in this," I reminded him, and everyone. "We go in individually, but we come out a team, got it? We can't let them get to us."

The silence at the table was consensus enough.

Four sets of footsteps descended the stairs, and the heaviest continued behind the coffee bar. Butters and the Goths had ended their meeting. "You guys better get the fuck outta here and go to that stupid Carnival," the red-haired Goth mumbled toward us. I tilted my head to glare at him. "Honestly, you're even bumming me out." He paused, then, "And stop drinking all my Goddamn coffee."

"We'll pay you back," Wendy tried.

"Ch'yeah, with what, fool's gold from your mission? I don't think so."

"Well, Marsh is a Dagonite," the tallest of the three said. "He could score some real—"

"I'm not anything but myself, all right?" Stan argued. He looked too tired to argue, and deviated to what he did best: playing mediator and changing the subject to something pertinent. "Where the hell are—"

Before he could finish the question, the door burst open. A howl of wind blew through as Clyde and Craig hurried in, duffel bags in tow. Wendy rushed to close the door behind them, and while Bebe, Ike and Gary helped with the bags, I rose and strode over to Henrietta and Butters.

Butters already had a bag with him, and he didn't look ready to hand it off to anyone. He gave me a nod, and I shrugged back, indicating that, hey, Chaos was his choice, but I wasn't going to stop him. He had made his points. We needed Chaos, end of discussion. I wasn't about to argue over that part of the League's past, not when there was so much more to be done.

"Can you shed some light on this?" I asked Henrietta, keeping my voice down. The Limbo painting beside us seemed like it was leering. As if I could see the fog on the river shift.

"Be specific, Question Mark," the Goth snarked back, fitting a cigarette to the tip of her quellazaire.

"Stan," I clarified through clenched teeth. Making sure Henrietta was making eye contact with me, I pressed, "This Dagon thing. Why didn't this come up sooner? Is he cool to fight? Like, what should we expect?"

"Tough to tell," said Henrietta. "I looked into it. Obed Marsh, Stan's ancestor, made some kind of deal with the Deep Ones in the 1800s. He ran a gold refinery in Massachusetts, and I guess the distant family came west for the gold rush. I guess because Colorado's landlocked, the ocean was kinda bred out of the relatives out here. I mean, his father looks fine."

"What do you mean looks fine?"

"Yo, Kenny!" Clyde called out.

"Hold on!"

"Dude, can we just—"

"Start suiting up," I ordered the room, hardly looking around, "I'll be there in a minute."

Clyde muttered something else, but as the others dispersed, I continued with Henrietta, still speaking in subtones in case Stan was still within earshot. "Did anything in that research of yours," I demanded, "give any insight as to how he can beat whatever's going on?"

Henrietta lit up and took a drag. "Keep him away from any weird gold objects, I guess."

"The Marsh guy in Massachusetts," the shorter of Henrietta's companions rasped over at me, "mated with something that owed allegiance to Cthulhu. Since Cthulhu's dead, it's my guess your Marsh is fine. Just getting fucked with since he died that one time or whatever."

"But Dagon—"

"Is still a problem, I guess."

"Thanks for being so fucking helpful," I grumbled, and strode over to where Clyde and Craig had dropped off my stuff.

All I could wonder as I changed into uniform was: how am I going to help everyone?

There were too many tasks. Make sure Stan didn't fall off the deep end (or into it or whatever). Find Cartman. Free the Gingers and shut down whatever cloning operation those Carnival fucks had set up. Find Red… find Red… find my girlfriend and get her the fuck out of there.

And, you know, stop some eventual Hell on Earth overthrow of the balance between Circles of reality.

Mysterion had become so much a part of who I was over the course of my life that getting into uniform was second nature to me by now. But that morning, it felt like a ritual. Maybe it was the finality of it all. We were fighting on their turf after today. This was the realization of the mission. I had to know we were ready.

Plus, something told me, even if (and when, I assured myself) we succeeded, I had the feeling this would be our last mission, at least for a good long time. We'd be going our separate ways soon. There was no telling when the entire team might come back together. Honestly, without Token or Cartman there now, we seemed to be running close to empty.

So I took my time. I let myself become who I needed to be in order to keep my head and win whatever battle was waiting for me beyond the Carnival fence.

I pulled on my gloves last. I checked my utility belt. Satisfied with my arsenal, I threw the hood over my head to conceal my features in shadow.

When I re-joined the others, I noticed that most of them were not yet wearing masks. Marpesia was an exception, lacking only her helmet. Endgame as well, which was for the best. Mosquito was the primary one among us, however, who looked incomplete without his mask.

Clyde and the Goths were deep in conversation, and his mask sat, still blood stained, on a table to the side. I looked again at the oil painting of Greed, Wilcox's brush strokes having perfectly captured the image of the very mask that sat as if abandoned now.

Certain items could make or undo us. Hopefully Mosquito could move past whatever horrors currently clung to that mask and continue to be the asset to the team he'd always been. I relied so much on him as a secondary leader, after all. Maybe I didn't tell him that enough.

Maybe I should have, especially that day. But I couldn't find the chance.

Looking around at the others again, I saw that Stan had hardly needed to paint his eyes with charcoal as he usually did when working as Toolshed. His eyes were haunted and nearly unrecognizable enough.

I thought I saw something wildly different about his irises, too. His blue eyes looked a dusty, ancient grey. Eyes that had seen worse than Hell. Stan had not experienced a true death, I realized. I'd stopped the process before his soul could pass on. Hell wanted both of us, the closer we came.

Neither of us was willing to give up on life just yet.

Naturally, the others noticed. But as he slid on his tinted goggles and began to check his supplies, he managed to keep his focus and say to anyone who inquired after his well-being, "I'm fine. Just ready to get in there and kick some ass."

Not everyone was convinced, of course, but focus was what we all needed. Besides, if the rain and Cartman's disappearance was an invitation for us to move out, we'd take it, trap or not.

With rain and hail still beating dirges against the outer walls, I gathered my team and explained as best I could the mystery of the glowing trunk.

Fixing her helmet in place, Marpesia said, "If the lamp is our window into the Carnival, though, I'd say we take our chances."

"Shouldn't we wait?" the Guardian Angel argued. "Wait until we're within reach of the—"

"That doesn't make sense," Red Serge interrupted. "Angel, we talked about this. You need the lamp, or that program, to find the path at all."

"Right," my sister huffed.

"And since the Coon took my iPad, it's this or nothing."

"Rain being as heavy as it is, we definitely can't track him by footprints," Toolshed pointed out. "Look, Kite and I saw what this lamp can do. If we narrow the focus, it can at best show us the way in."

"Especially if it's us two up first," Endgame said, nodding to him, "according to the tickets or whatever."

"So, consensus?" I asked. The red glow underlit my team as I spoke.

The Carnival knew we were coming. We were already playing their game. The next time the lamp lit, we'd have agreed to start making our moves.

"Open it," Henrietta advised.

Toolshed broke the lock, and I pulled the lamp out in its bag. The satchel was hot to the touch, even through my gloves, as I untied the drawstring. Carefully, I reached inside, having to avert my eyes from the unrelenting red gleam coming from within. Moving slowly, as if releasing a wild animal from a trap, I placed my hands around the lamp and pulled it out of the bag.

The lamp itself was surprisingly cool to the touch, if not ice cold, and the glow seemed to be seeping from the air around it, not the object itself, which retained its glinting gold sheen. The spout of the lamp flickered.

The flame was black.

I set the lamp down and took several steps backward, and a scream echoed through the room. No—a cacophony of screams. Several voices in one.

I tried, so hard, to hear Red, not knowing whether or not I'd be all right with hearing her voice amid the others.

It was so hard to tell, and I nearly went deaf with the sound; Kite caught an invisible hold on the cardboard box he'd brought along, and without touching it he tossed it down on top of the lamp. The black flame flickered and danced and warned. And then the scream settled down to one voice, screaming out not a sound but a phrase:

"LET—ME—OUT!"

There was no collective gasp in the room. We were all struck dumb.

After a terrifying, wavering moment, Butters spoke.

"…Eric?"

I looked over at him. He was delicately holding his new helmet, glowing red and black against the odd lights coming from the area of the lamp. He looked guilty, but determined.

"You heard it, too?" asked Marpesia, her own silver armor reflecting the glow.

"How could anyone not?" Mosquito noted.

"I've heard Red, too," I repeated for the others. "He must be where she is. Or close."

"Between," said Butters, slowly fitting the new helmet over his head.

It retained the classically inspired Greek design of his original, his face exposed in a blocky T-shaped opening, hair visible from the open top. But along the edges he had created a border in a very intricate, if rushed, scrolling design. At the back, the scrolls merged together in what looked like a bolt of lightning, at the center of which was a recognizable symbol: the caduceus, two serpents—one an outline, one solid—curled around a winged staff, facing one another. A medical symbol. For harmony.

Chaos had found exactly where it was he needed to be.

"Marpesia," he said, roughening his tone to suit his alter ego, "do you remember the scent the Coon picked up before he left?"

Marpesia nodded, stern and focused despite the continuing screams. "Frankincense," she recalled, "and sulphur. I can't detect it right now, but it'll be strong when we get close."

"Hmm," Henrietta began, sucking on her quellazaire, "so the Devil leaves tracks." She let out a breath of grey smoke. "And he wears perfume."

"The point is, yes, we can track him," said Chaos, all business.

"Let me out of here!" Cartman's voice pierced through the room again.

Which was when I realized… we could hear, but not see. Even with Kite's clever projection box, no image of the Carnival appeared on the wall. "Where is he?" I wondered.

"I don't think even he knows," my sister pointed out.

"No, no, I know, but… why can't we see it?" I clarified. "Angel, Kite, Toolshed, you all saw the lamp cast images of the Carnival when it was lit."

"Yeah," said Toolshed, "why isn't it showing anything?"

"The black flame, maybe?" Bebe guessed.

"Good point," said Mosquito.

"Maybe it needs a specific screen," the Human Kite suggested. "There's that blank canvas…"

Among the paintings that Wilcox had hung, all of them solemn and foreboding on their hooks around us, one of the canvases had been purposefully hung blank. Since we really had nothing else to lose, I turned the chest so that the lamp's spout pointed at the blank canvas on the far wall.

The canvas was labeled Pride. I remembered there being a Work In Progress added to that, but the modification was gone, despite there being no change to the canvas, where it hung between Treachery and Heresy.

As I moved the chest, the black flame flickered over Greed, Gluttony, and Heresy. At three different but close times, Mosquito, Red Serge, and the Guardian Angel covered their ears in a wince, only to be fine a second later. Before I could ask what was wrong, the black flame hit the white canvas, and a door appeared in the blank space.

An image of a door, flickering like the flame projecting it, grey as faded ink. It appeared to be far away, down a hall that I could almost see.

Like a dart, something burst straight for the door, this image in blacker ink. I could make out the image of the Coon. He pushed open the door, and let out a cry of anguish.

"Oh, my God!" Marpesia yelped, her hands flying to cover her mouth.

The black flame at the spout of the lamp burned larger, and the ink that made up the projected Coon's cape billowed and grew broader, fluttering until ink was splattered all over the canvas.

Then, the canvas shook, and everything was white again.

Except for the red outline of a door.

"What happened?" Chaos demanded. "The lamp is still burning, where's the image?"

"Beyond that, where's the Coon?" Endgame pointed out. "I can't hear him anymore. Can you guys?"

I swore I could hear the rattling of terrified bones in the slim silence that followed. There were no screams.

Silence was almost more deafening.

Slow and serene, Henrietta took an elegant drag off of her quellazaire, and purred it out. Her Egyptian-styled eyes were half open, making her almost seem to be wearing a mask, as the rest of us were.

"No wonder Wilcox hasn't been at his best," she said. "I get what's going on." She turned to my sister, who asked, "What?" for clarification.

Henrietta gave a slight nod. "The paintings," she said, "are the Carnival."

As if primed and cued, a collective scream once again rang out from the lamp, and then the vessel itself began to rattle. Knowing that it was probably one of the worst ideas ever, I leapt for the lamp, cupping my hands over the now freezing cold object, which muffled the sound somewhat. The lamp had, however, moved on its own, and now its flame glowed a deep, deep red.

The spout was facing the Treachery painting.

The light fell over the nine red nooses, hanging on the barren black trees, and they appeared to swing in the light.

And then my heart clinched.

Deep, deep into the forest in the murky painting, I saw an outline of a young woman in a beautiful evening gown.

Her hair flickered like the center of the flame.

"Red," I whispered.

My fingers were freezing. "RED!" I shouted. I wanted to rush to her.

But I couldn't let go of the lamp.

She turned, only oils on canvas. I think she saw me.

She cupped her hands over her mouth, and shouted something. She was drowned out by the other faceless, bodiless screams.

And then the lamp went out.

The Human Kite threw the light switches on throughout the building with one outward shove of his hands, and the entire building shook with a clap of thunder and a terrifying musket round of hail.

"Okay!" he shouted. "My vote: put the lamp the fuck away. Now."

The shock on everyone else's faces was all the unanimity I needed before I locked the lamp back into the trunk.

"What the fuck?" Marpesia was the first one to ask. "What the fuck? Are they in the paintings?!"

Puffing on her cigarette, Henrietta calmly answered, "No. I mean, I doubt it. From what I can gather, the paintings represent what you're all about to face."

"Do y—" Angel began.

"I'll go get the book," Henrietta said before my sister could continue.

"Wait, what book?"

"A few of 'em, actually."

As the Goth made her way to the stairs, she passed by a visibly shaking, shell-shocked Gary Harrison. "You got yours, Mormon?" she asked, punching him on the elbow with her lace-covered knuckles.

"My…?"

Cajones, Cartman would probably have inappropriately added at that moment.

And thinking of that made me wonder if being trapped at the Carnival might irreparably change him. It would have to take a lot, but they were using his only close family as leverage, so anything was possible.

"Book," said Henrietta forcefully. "Your Mormon Book, the thing the Devil can't stand."

Gary cleared his throat and side-stepped away from Henrietta. "Yes," he said as casually as he could. "Yes, I'm carrying a Book with me."

"Good," said the Goth. "Then let's get going."

Gary was visibly confused and concerned, but said nothing. He held his holy text tightly and began taking deep breaths.

"Are we ready?" asked my sister.

"Damien's letter said they open to the public on Friday," Toolshed reminded us. "I think that's invitation enough for us to infiltrate now."

"Especially since they seem to be steadily encroaching upon the public as it is," Kite added.

"They're not getting my Goddamned store!" I heard Henrietta's cohort shout from somewhere else in the building.

Ignoring him, Kite continued, "They've bought out the town. We've seen shit like this happen before… coverups, veiled hideouts, red herrings, but everything they've done has been to get closer to each of us. Even Gary."

Henrietta returned faster than I had been expecting her to move—she was someone who generally took her damn sweet time with things, but even she probably couldn't take her focus away from how swiftly we needed to get to the Carnival.

"Okay," she said, patting the top text. "Here's the basics. Hold these," she added, holding her stack out.

"Who?" Gary wondered, clearly not wanting to touch any of them.

"I don't fucking care, anybody."

"Got 'em." Endgame stepped forward and held his hands out. Henrietta looked up at him and I thought I saw him shrug. But I definitely saw her attempt to look away before she hoisted the books onto him and grabbed off only the one on top.

"So these're coming with us, because they'll help," said the Goth, gesturing with her thumb to Endgame's stack. "The Dhol Chants, Wilcox's portfolio, the Necronomicon just in case, records and sacred texts of the Esoteric Order of Dagon and…"

"Interview With The Vampire?" Endgame read off the new top book.

"In case I get fucking bored," Henrietta said smoothly.

This time, Endgame did shrug.

"And this," Henrietta finished, holding up The Inferno. "Plus Dante's other two in case you need them at some point."

I nodded. "How are the paintings the Carnival, exactly?" I asked her.

"They each represent a Circle of Hell, according to Dante." Henrietta flipped through her Inferno book while Gary hugged his holy text close to his heart. Chaos moved to stand directly behind Henrietta, his eyes moving fast as if he were speed-reading through each page she thumbed across.

Chaos looked both perfectly out of place and perfectly at home. Exactly the way he wanted to be.

The other Goths joined us, probably just to kick us out. "The rain's a little less intense right now," the taller of the two said. "You should move if you're not gonna fuck up your capes and books or whatever."

And they said they hated being helpful.

"When you get back," added the other, "you're paying for all the shit you keep bumming off us, too."

Mosquito gave them a tick of his head as if to assure them that we'd take care of it, and then, carefully cradling his mask, made the call: "So let's get moving. Henrietta, fill us in on the way."

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," Chaos read over Henrietta's shoulder. The Goths lit up as if toasting to the occasion. "Hope's gonna have to be a weapon, guys. Don't let go."

– – –

Craig

I was always the kid who didn't give a fuck about anything. The thing was, shit happened all the time in my town. Really dumb, out of this world shit. Stan and those guys would always go right to the heart of the problem when we were kids, and it wasn't till they dragged me to Peru that I started thinking being adventurous might not be so bad.

I mean, I played the same games the other guys did, and for the most part, that was all it ever was to me: games. Kids playing and being stupid. But I kept at least pretending not to give a fuck for a damn long time.

And for the most part, I don't. Care, I mean. For shit's sake, I didn't even want an alter ego till the Damien thing. None of us had any clue how long the League was even gonna keep going. Some of us didn't know what fuck all we were gonna do after college except maybe Kenny, Wendy and Token. (Oh, goddammit, Token—I missed that guy.)

But this thing popping up… it just felt like something I needed to do. Something to convince me that the world was worth saving.

I'd liked the R'lyeh fight, too. I'd read up on a bunch of abnormal shit with Henrietta through all that and realized that the world was more fucked up than I thought.

Something I really like about Henrietta is that she's super blunt and usually doesn't talk unless she has total confidence in what she's talking about. Something I hate about myself is the fact that sometimes, no matter how important the topic, I have a tendency to stop listening.

And I mean it's not just her, I tune out a lot of things. My brain wanders. When I was a kid, my eyes would itch a lot and I hardly blinked. I couldn't. I'd sit there in class, all through elementary and middle school, trying to focus on something other than the fact that my eyes hurt. When I complained to my mother about it, she took me to an optometrist who basically told me it was psychosomatic and that I had better vision than any kid he'd ever seen. No psychiatrist in town took my dad's insurance, so I never had a therapist. I just went on tuning stuff out if it wasn't instantly relevant to me. I stuck to what I knew.

Took me a while to accept why my eyes hurt all the time (though I'll let Mom keep thinking that it was too much TV and video games as a kid and not that my retinas are essentially solar-powered lasers—yes, that's how it works and no, it doesn't burn), but now I can kinda roll with it. I still can't blink too much, comfortably anyway, but it's whatever, y'know.

Because Henrietta never liked going out in the sun, I could relax around her when we dated. I mean, I guess we dated, I don't fucking know. We hung out and did a lot of shit together and fought like a couple and stuff. She thought the word 'girlfriend' was too preppy and I don't really give two shits about calling a thing a thing unless it's super obvious to both involved parties. I really do not care.

I did miss her, though. We never even had sex all that much, so that wasn't what I missed. (Realized that one a little too late, though.) I liked her energy and her style and the fact that she was cool with the fact that I had something wrong with me. Like, wrong in the superhuman kind of way. We were what we were, the end. I can't remember even why it ended. Distance, or maybe I did say something about 'we should fuck more' or something, which was stupid because she's asexual and doesn't get anything out of it. I do make shit moves sometimes.

Actually, I kinda sound like a dick right now.

But if I ever do, it's more or less because I'm the human embodiment of neither here nor there. I feel stuck. I've felt stuck my entire fucking life. Weird shit happened around me as I was growing up, and the fact that there seemed no end to it desensitized me to every other problem on the planet. Oh, the economy's in the shitter? So the fuck what, Barbara Streisand turned into a giant monster and destroyed half of downtown. Russia went to the moon? Whatever, aliens fucked up my town all the time.

And I repeat: no end.

Like I was in some limbo of unnatural disasters, teeming with people who all thought they were king fly on shit mountain.

None of it mattered.

I kept trying to find something that mattered, and whenever I did, inevitably some other dumb shit thing would come along, or else I'd think it was ineffable and find it hard to shake out of routine. I started thinking maybe I was the one just imposing all this wrongness on everyday life. Maybe there was a psychosomatic quirk that manifested in me rarely blinking and always seeing the world for the boring spiral it was.

Just a spiral. Just a circle.

Henrietta was different in all the right ways.

So's the League. And I like that. I like being a part.

Slowly, I've been feeling myself crawling out and seeing more than the mundane. Accepting that I'm part of some old Incan prophecy and that that's kind of cool. Knowing there are others outside the spiral, in orbit around all that goes consistently wrong; others who might be able to fix things.

But I still fear limbo, and have ever since Henrietta essentially stopped talking to me.

– – –

The rain was fine when we loaded up into the cars but terrible again until we got to the base of the volcano. Mosquito cursed at the elements, at the wheel of Token's van through the entire ride. I rode in the back, helping Henrietta, Red Serge, Iron Maiden, Toolshed and the Human Kite set up the equipment that the response team would be using while the rest of us made our way inside. Toolshed and I were up first, and we strategized while we could. Except for when Mosquito told us to shut up so he could watch the road.

Gary Harrison rode shotgun, his head buried in his book. Except for when Mosquito barked that he needed a second set of eyes to watch ahead.

Clyde kept shuddering under his mask. I'd said to him before we left, "Why didn't you just make a new one?"

It was all bloody, still, and I knew it bothered him. He'd just tied it on defiantly, though, and said, "They're not taking it away from me."

"It's just a mask," I'd pointed out. "You've got other ones."

"No," was his argument. Clyde could get like that. We've been tight for a long time, enough for each of us to know how the other operates; enough to be stubborn to the point of absurd around each other. I'd say like brothers but that sounds too lame. "This is me right now and I'm not letting them drag it away from me."

He hadn't said another word about it, but he still looked pissed.

Bebe was the other driver, following us at a close distance with the rest of the team in the 'borrowed' delivery vehicle from Tenth Circle.

"If this fucking rain doesn't let up," Red Serge was complaining while he and Iron Maiden ran wires between the four screens we'd been setting around the back of the van, "we're gonna get some major interference back here."

"Timmah," Iron Maiden agreed.

"The screens are backup," said Henrietta. "As long as your wires work, I think the books should be help enough."

"What if the wires don't work?" I wondered.

Henrietta shot me a look that made me buckle. Nobody can fucking do that but her. "Then we use Wendy's extra ride token and send this guy in," she said in a tone that implied I should have been reading her mind, jabbing her thumb toward Iron Maiden.

"Timmy," said Iron Maiden, drawing the word out.

"With Delphi," Red Serge translated. "Unless for some reason TupperWear shows up." He went on muttering about the symbiote surgery to himself.

"W-would they let you do that?" Gary wondered, peering over his seat back toward us. He was the only one wearing a seatbelt, and it made him have to contort his shoulders in a way that made Kite and his brother roll their eyes. "Send in two people at once?"

"Are you volunteering to go alone instead?" Henrietta said.

We hit a bump in the road and Mosquito let out a huge "Fuck!" that combatted Gary's emphatic, "No!"

"They cheat, we cheat," said Red Serge. "No such thing as playing fair against the devil, eh?"

Gary leaned forward in his seat, looking like he was gonna hurl. I've almost hurled when riding with Clyde in a thunderstorm, too, but I don't think that was all that was fucking with him. "Gosh, guys," said the Mormon, "this is… I dunno, a lot. Terrifying."

"Dude, do not back out now," Mosquito warned.

"I'm not backing out, no sir," Gary affirmed. "I'm just… well, in over my head. My girlfriend is never gonna believe this."

"So don't tell her?" said Kite.

Gary kinda laughed. "I mean, I won't go into detail, that's for darn sure, but I do believe in being honest and open with the person you love."

Kite and Toolshed did one of their weird eye conversations that seriously freak me out sometimes because I get that Kyle's psychic and shit but when he and Stan pull that crap sometimes I worry that he can read minds and it's a little unsettling. I mean, not that Clyde and Bebe don't have their little gestures, or Kenny and Red. It's just that Kyle's psychic and I dunno what all that means.

It also makes it that much more obvious to me that I have never really had that kind of relationship. I looked over at Henrietta at that point and all she did was hand me a wire to plug in.

But you know, that was what I liked about her and 'us' if we'd ever been an 'us.' Other couples would go inventing secret languages and all Henrietta and I did was exist around each other. I really should not have fucked that up.

So I just helped out, going along with whatever anyone told me to do until Mosquito had maneuvered us through the woods and toward the volcano.

Henrietta was talking through the wire while we worked on setting shit up, flipping now and then through Wilcox's portfolio. I'm ahsamed to say I wasn't really listening. I know I should have been. I really fucking should have been. But it was a little difficult between the rain drumming against the van, Mosquito muttering under his breath, and me thinking every time I heard Henrietta speak how best to approach talking to her like a normal person again.

Probably high on the list should have been listen to her when she's saying something super important.

I drifted back into the conversation when she got to, "Violence is the Seventh Circle. Who's got VII?"

"Chaos," Mysterion responded over the wire.

Gary started mumbling a prayer.

"I'll tread lightly," Chaos assured us.

It wasn't long until Bebe called over for us to slow down. From what I picked up on patchy over-the-wire conversations, the lamp—with Mysterion in the delivery vehicle—had begun emitting the scent of frankinscense and sulfur, just as Marpesia had noted it would. I strained to look out the window for the other car, and when I did, through the pounding rain, I saw that someone had rolled down one of the windows a crack and was holding the lamp's spout carefully out into the air.

From the spout was pouring a thin red line of smoke.

It grew thicker as we neared our destination, and then the line moved of its own accord into a trail. As the line of smoke wound its way further and further away from us, the rain grew weaker and weaker. At least I wouldn't be super wet going into the fight. Maybe muddy, but not soaked. Cool.

We loaded out, and while Red Serge and Iron Maiden worked frantically to finish hooking up all their equipment, the rest of us gathered in a group between the two parked vehicles. Henrietta stood on a rock where her glossy black boots couldn't get horrendously muddy. Mysterion looked ready to charge.

"Okay," our leader said, keeping a careful hold of the lamp, "this thing is probably a signal to them that we're coming, so call us instantly if you need backup. There's still plenty we can do from outside."

"And we'll work our way in sooner than I'm sure they want us to," Mosquito added. "We'll be right behind you."

"Call if you need any information," Henrietta said, nodding to me a little. She does this kind of chin-tilt thing where you know she could have nodded at you, but chose to be too busy or uninterested to care.

"Sure," I said.

"Keep us updated, guys," said Mysterion for probably the twentieth time. "We'll try to work our way in sooner than Damien wants. If you see Red… if you see Red, or the Coon or Lianne…"

"We've got it, man," Toolshed assured him. The two shook hands. "Aim for the bullseye?"

"You got it."

"Good luck." That was the Human Kite. He held one hand out, meaning for either of us to grab it. When Toolshed didn't move, and the two of them just stared at each other with blank expressions, I shook Kite's hand first.

When I stepped back, Toolshed grabbed Kite's hand firmly, and I could tell they wanted to hug or whatever but they didn't. "See you soon?" Kite said, his voice wavering enough to make the phrase come out a question.

"I'll find you," Toolshed assured him.

Kite nodded. "Right. Good luck in there."

"Same to you."

– – –

Following the red overhead cloud made maneuvering through the underbrush fairly easy, but we could've done without the smell. It was like someone had painted the floor of a locker room with one of those awful pre-teen colognes I was guilty of buying when I was twelve.

But according to Marpesia it was frankinscense and sulfur so whatever. It still smelled like shit.

Gotta say, though, I could've done way worse than Toolshed for a partner. Between my swords and his assortment of tools we cut our way through bushes and small trees pretty fast. I did remark that he could just use his chainsaw, to which he'd said, "Dude, and blow our cover more than we already have? I'll save it for what's inside, thanks."

Fair enough.

The forest was dark from both the tall trees overhead and the mercilessly cloudy sky, but the red smoke emitted a light of its own. It was coming from a lamp, after all, I guessed it had to be some kind of light. I wondered if we'd come across any Infras or other animals of Biblical proportions, but the Carnival was deciding to leave us the fuck alone until we'd actually passed onto their turf.

"Hey. Dude," said Toolshed once we'd been walking for a while and were well out of earshot from the others. "What's with the fake platonic crap between you and Henrietta?"

No lovey shit got past him, not the League's top-scoring over-romantic. Sorry, Stan, but you are. "It's whatever," I said dully, whacking a branch out of the way with the sword in my right hand.

"You're not over her," he surmised.

"I guess I'm not," I agreed with a shrug.

"So, like, talk to her."

"Yeah, dude, because it's that easy."

"Sorry," he mumbled, giving in.

"It's fine."

It wasn't fine, I just didn't want to talk about it.

"Why'd you break up, anyway?" he asked after another moment.

"Dude," I said firmly. "Why are you so interested?"

He opened his mouth to answer, then glared forward and said, "Honestly, I have no idea."

The fact that he didn't know, or the fact that he was persisting, bothered him, I could tell. For someone who hates social media as much as Stan Marsh does, he was sure still pretty good at knowing what was going on. But did he not like that he knew? Oh, well. Not my problem.

All I could do was turn the conversation.

"How about you?"

"What?"

"Fake platonic crap between you and Kite," I clarified.

Toolshed shook his head and ducked under a branch too thick to cut down. "It's not—it's not fake, it's just, we don't… in uniform, we're colleagues. That's… that's it."

"You sound pissed about it."

"I'm not pissed!" Okay. "I'm—that's just how it is, Crai—Endgame. That's just how it has to be."

"Okay. What'd Kyle mean when he said you were freezing?" I wondered.

Toolshed let out a huff of breath. "He meant exactly that. My skin's cold."

He held out his left arm to me, which was exposed from the sleeve of his shirt to the tip of his glove. Curious, I slid my right glove off and was about to feel for myself when I noticed something. Even through sunglasses. "You sweating something awful, dude, or what?"

Toolshed gave me an odd look. "Uh, no?"

"Yeah, you are. I'm not touching your arm."

"I swear, dude, I'm not sweating. I'd know."

"Well, look at your own damn arm."

Toolshed did, and stopped in his tracks. And recoiled.

Then, just as suddenly, he picked up his pace and I had to practically sprint to catch up with him.

"Toolshed!" I hollered.

"It's already starting," he shouted back. "Whatever it is."

No, we both knew what it was.

The Carnival. And whatever nightmarish tricks they'd throw at us to throw us off track.

The ground was now alarmingly solid. After all that rain, it should have been muddy at least, but for the most part we sprinted over nothing but the odd pine needle. I fell back and let Toolshed lead. He'd been at this longer than I had, and was pretty adept at knowing where the ground might be littered with traps.

Haze still hung in the air, and trees behind us dripped raindrops, but the air became both dense and dry as we approached the looming black gates. Toolshed slowed his pace and I followed suit, both of us halting at what looked like an elaborate wrought iron fence. It was maybe ten feet high; more ornate than the gate outside Token's parents' place, but something I felt okay enough calling 'of this earth.'

Toolshed was the first to step up to the gate. "Okay, guys," he said into the wire, "you still have audio?"

"Sure do," Delphi confirmed. "Talk us through your progress, guys, and we'll respond if we can."

"Let's hope it keeps up," added Red Serge.

"Right, then." Toolshed set a hand on the gate. "Here goes."

"Be careful." That was the Human Kite.

Toolshed braced himself and glanced up. "Looks like we've got security cameras," he noted. He was right. Like eyes peering down at us, affixed to the wrought iron.

Mysterion groaned. "Fuck. Shoulda figured."

"Do we care?" I asked, taking out the gun holstered at my right hip. I cocked it and aimed it upward.

"What?" asked Red Serge.

"I said, do we care? About their security cameras. Because there could very easily not be cameras."

"Dude," Toolshed said, half warning but half obviously wishing he'd thought of that himself.

"Unless you wanna hack 'em," I said. "In which case, speak now."

"We are profoundly sorry, but this entrance is currently closed to the public," said a voice from the general direction of the camera. A speaker was positioned beside it. Goddammit, I couldn't notice too awful much in the pitch black upon pitch black in super dark sunglasses. I took a note. Maybe polarized ones would be better. Yeah… I'd get blue ones. With what fucking money I have no idea; the shoes had already been a huge investment.

"Gun down, Endgame," Mysterion advised. "Iron Maiden, hack in."

I relented, clicked the safety and tucked my gun back into its holster.

"We've got tickets and you know it," Toolshed spat up at the camera. "Either way, we're getting in."

"Not a single one of your tools can pick this lock, boy," the voice chided. Had to be Damien. "You think we wouldn't take that precaution?"

I looked the gate over, and found the lock Damien had mentioned. Maybe we couldn't pick it, and we certainly couldn't hack it—it was one of those rusty old things, hardly a pinnacle of modern technology—but we could get in.

"Timmah."

"What do you mean it's not working?" Red Serge complained through the airwaves.

"Guys, I got this," I said.

"No gunshots!" Mysterion barked at me.

"Relax."

I looked the lock over, then pushed Toolshed behind me and stood with my feet solid on the ground. With a deep breath in, I removed my sunglasses, aiming my gaze at the large iron lock that had been clipped through the spindly pegs of the large gate.

It didn't take a minute for the lock to melt and slide off.

I was expecting an alarm to go off, but it didn't. All I heard was Kite in my earpiece going, "Restraint, Endgame, damn."

"Look, we needed to get in, and these fucks weren't gonna budge otherwise," I said back, storming in past Toolshed. "If we're going into Hell, we should fucking charge it. Not sit around and play by its rules."

"Fine by me," I heard my current partner say under his breath.

Beyond the gates, it was hard to believe that we'd just been in a dense forest. Everything was—probably as I should have expected—dead and burned. For the first several feet we walked in, the only thing around us was black dust, glinting gold. In the distance, I could hear a rhythmic clash of metal. And the turning of enormous gears.

Everything inside the Carnival seemed to glow, too, which made me look around for lamps or other sources of light. Nothing, really. A few lanterns strung up in a web about fifty feet over our heads in some places, but for the most part, the primary source of light was obvious.

The volcano.

The very alive and angry volcano.

The entire Carnival had been chiseled into its rocky base, and high above us, at its peak, an iron stronghold was being erected. Toolshed noticed at the same time I did. "Think that's where they're set up?" I asked him. "Damien and Tenorman and little fucker whatshisface?"

"Disarray?"

"That guy, yeah."

"Nah." Toolshed shook his head. "It seems too obvious. They wouldn't set up in a place we'd notice right away."

"You think?"

"I know, man. They're gonna be at the center."

"Kay," I conceded. "That does make sense. So where's center?"

"Further in? I dunno, but I'm guessing—"

"What?"

He'd stopped mid-stride, and held me back.

His arm really did feel pretty fucking cold. But more like—I don't know, more like vapor than ice. Like the steam that rises off of swamps when the temperature drops. Don't ask me how I know that, it was humid in Peru and I saw a lot of vapor on marshes, okay?

But below us, I noticed when we stepped back, was a clear blue stream. It seemed to have come from nowhere, but when we looked back, I could see that it had been winding in from the entrance. Weird that I hadn't seen it before.

We looked back at the immediate part of the stream, one of us now standing on either side, and Toolshed nudged me to look up.

In the space of time between glancing back at the entrance and looking at the path, the world ahead became clearer, as if a curtain had been lifted on the full attractions of the Carnival. I could hear faint hurdy-gurdy music crackling through speakers I couldn't find. Several feet beyond where we stood, a ferris wheel rose up over tents and wooden roofs. The most brightly illuminated part of the Carnival was forward to my right, with an enormous neon sign glowing with the words, RING-CATCH. Red on white.

We followed the stream as it trickled closer toward the attractions, at which point it split in three directions, to the left, right and straight ahead. Straddling the three rivers was a stone ledge, where three small wooden boats were roped to a single iron pike sticking out of the top of the stone.

A mangled sign bore three names: ACHERON, to the left, LETHE, to the right, and the last I should've expected, STYX.

Standing in one of the little vessels was a cloaked figure who hardly came up to my elbow in height.

"Well, well, hello, there," said the kid on the ferrey.

Disarray.

I didn't say anything back. He wanted to be freaking me out, but he wasn't. So he was back from the dead. Or still dead and still a little shithole, whatever. That wasn't my problem. My problem was that he'd fucked enough shit up for one lifetime. So he wasn't very impressive, as I'm sure he wanted to be. He was just irritating.

"Your pass?" He made a show of extending one hand.

I handed over my ticket, with the huge Roman numeral I printed on the front.

"Ah," he said, studying the ticket. "Perfect. This is valid for one attraction only, as you must be aware." He stepped forward in the boat, and advised me, "Get on. Acheron waits."

Toolshed held up his ticket. "And this?" he wondered.

"Oh," Disarray laughed, "you'll be on your way soon. Now, as you know, this is your only guaranteed entrance. I advise that you step on now."

"Dude, be careful," Toolshed whispered at me.

"On it. You, too," I said, holding out one fist.

He crushed his knuckles against mine lightly, and, making a show to Disarray of the fact that I was damn well equipped to strike him down at any second, stepped onto the boat. It rocked somewhat with my movement, and then my cloaked ferryman cast off the boat's rope to send us floating down the river to the left.

"Acheron," I repeated, hoping Henrietta would hear me over the wire.

She did. "The river of woe," she returned. "One of the five rivers in Hell."

Trying not to make it obvious that I was having an outside conversation, I asked Disarray, "So there's three rivers here?"

"No," he said, "five."

"Five rivers," I reported back. "Got it. What're the other ones?"

"Lethe," Henrietta answered, "Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus."

"I can't give too much away, now, can I?" said Disarray.

"Lethe is forgetfulness, Styx is hate, Cocytus is lamentation and Phlegethon is fire," Henrietta answered instead.

"I only saw three."

Disarray grabbed a pole from the bottom of the boat and pushed it into the river, speeding our transit. He scoffed and said, "Well if you make it to the end of your ride you just might see the others."

"What do you mean, make it?"

Looking ahead, I saw that the river was leading us straight toward a large building, a dome-like pyramid made of sheet metal. It looked like one of the structures I'd seen in Peru: huge, blocky Mayan steps reaching a rectangular peak about eighty feet up. The entrance was carved to look like the fanged mouth of some enormous beast.

The ferryman turned toward me without showing his face. "Welcome to the Hellmouth," he said, gesturing to the structure. "If you can't figure out how to escape, it will swallow you whole." He took up the pole and gave it one last shove, propelling my vessel into the structure. "Let the games begin."

And with that, he was gone. It was just me and this Hellmouth.

Once inside, I could hear faint music coming from a phantom source. It was nothing I recognized—I had kind of been expecting more Radiohead from Tenorman—but it sounded old. Skipping violin on a broken victrola old. It wasn't distracting, just sort of there. Violin in and out, crackling from a record player that should have stopped working years ago.

The boat floated slowly down the river; the water lapped lazily at the vessel's sides. It was a damn wide river, especially considering how small my boat was. It was meant to carry just one person, which already got me doubting this shit—wasn't Charon supposed to cart over dozens or, like, hundreds of people at once?

Oh, well. This wasn't actually Hell, at least not yet. This was just a ride.

I tried to get a good look around for the first ten or twenty minutes I was on the boat inside the Hellmouth, trying to recreate the look of the entrance in my head. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a whale or a dragon or what, but as far as I knew this pyramid ride could actually be a fucking animal and I was just supposed to float along in here till I got digested.

But Disarray said there was an exit. I tried to look for that, but I couldn't see much other than water and walls.

I think it's almost needless to say that I am not an amusement park person. First of all, what's so fucking amusing about the rides and spending craptons of money on souvenirs you forget about a week later anyway? Secondly, as I've already noted, nothing much fazes or surprises me. I'm not impressed by lame-ass carnivals and their bowel-clogging snack cart offerings.

So I guess I was kind of… I dunno, pissed off that the motherfucking son of the devil couldn't surpass my expectations for shitty themed rides.

I stood on that damned tiny boat for another thirty minutes or so waiting for something to happen. It was a dark ride, yeah? An enclosed space which obviously had to have some sort of end to it, but the longer I stood on that slowly-moving boat, the longer I waited for some anamatronic monstrosity to shoot out at me or (again, figuring Satan and Lianne Cartman's offspring could do better) poison missiles or some shit.

It wasn't lit very well either. The only faint light in the whole place seemed to be coming from the water itself. Just a red haze over the surface of the water.

Which… I think I'd seen before, right?

"Hey," I said into the wire, "what was the artwork with the red haze over the water?"

Static came back.

"Guys? Red Serge?" I asked. "Dude, aren't you connected?"

Again, static.

"Toolshed, can you hear me?"

Zilch.

Okay, fuck. So I was on a ride going nowhere with no communication and no hints. What was the point?

There had to be an end to it.

I waited another fifteen minutes for something to happen before I got really Goddamn impatient, pulled out my .45 and shot a bullet into the blackness ahead of me, just to see if I could hear the shot hit the end of the cave wall. It hardly even echoed.

I tucked the gun away, not wanting to waste my bullets on what I was starting to fear was a bottomless pit. "A horizontal bottomless pit, Craig?" I mumbled to myself. "That's dumb."

Then again, maybe it wasn't too far-fetched. I guess I had just been expecting… I dunno, plagues? Some kind of torturous ride riddled with locusts swarming at me from all directions to wear me out?

This wasn't wearing me out, this was just wasting my time.

Oh.

Oh, wait, fuck.

I was in Limbo.

"FUCK!" I shouted, my voice stopping miles short of an echo. I felt like I'd walked into a trap. We all were. This was all just one giant trick to separate us and get us all out of the way by chucking us into 'rides' we couldn't get out of.

No… no, there had to be an exit. There had to be a way out. Another end of the river.

The bullet hadn't hit, but maybe a laser blast would. Desperate, I grabbed off my sunglasses for a good five seconds, shifting my gaze in two directions.

This time… this time, I thought I heard something. A rumbling, from off to my right. And only when I slid my sunglasses back on did I realize I was really in no position to investigate. Which, on my part, was really stupid.

I had been standing and ready for things to change from the ride's start, but this was fucking ridiculous. Nothing was changing. I started to doubt I was even moving. So, since clearly I needed a different approach to this damn ride, I sat in the shallow boat, legs out flat in front of me so that there was no chance of the hieroglyph touching the ground, and slowly removed my glasses.

The cavern came into slightly better focus as my eyes adjusted. I was already noticing things I'd been previously blinded to.

Huh.

Okay.

Maybe that was part of the point. I'd been super closed off, not wanting to get too far into any of this shit for years. Now that I'd chosen to really give it my all, this manifested limbo comes along and chucks me back to square one: stagnation.

Hell, to me, wasn't being in the thick of life-threatening missions. It was a life of constantly missing out.

And not even the major fights, too. I'd run from little things, thinking it was more than I could handle or less than I was worth.

I glimpsed a fork in the river up ahead. Fucking finally.

"Hey," I said. "If anyone can hear me, sorry for being an asshole."

No response.

I grit my teeth, and quickly shifted to kneeling. As the bank came closer, I unsheathed one sword and thrust out with my left hand. The blade stuck, and I steered my vessel off course.

The river's flow quickened, and I kept myself facing forward, one sword drawn, one hand free to grab my sunglasses in case I had to be quick on my feet.

The change in current was enough to convince me that I really had been stuck going around in circles for what very well could have been hours. At least a full hour as far as I'd been trying to count, but it was difficult to say.

Underneath me, I heard a harsh thunk of something grabbing the bottom of my boat. I braced myself to be toppled, but the ride had locked my boat in place to ascend a cliff—waterfall?—just steep enough to keep me on guard but not to be thrown overboard. I was going up a level in the pyramid.

When my boat leveled out, I heard that rumbling again, closer this time. A crackle of static sounded in my ear… I might have been high enough now not to run into wavelength interference. "Guys?" I asked into the system. "Uh… Houston in the blind or whatever, can anyone give me any hints on this? I'm in a pyramid. I'm on a boat. On water. That shoulda been obvious, sorry. Anyway, I'm on a boat and I keep hearing this thing and I saw Disarray and he said something about Hellmouth and… I have no clue of you guys can hear me, but if you can, I dunno, pointers would be great. I'm in Limbo."

"….th?" came over the wire.

My boat floated along and the rumbling grew closer.

"Who is that?" I asked. "Gary?"

"-s. Yes." Why him? Oh, well, at least someone heard me. "Did you say Hellmouth?"

"I did."

"Okay. Um, you might… you might run into some opposition."

"Cool."

"How can you possibly say—"

"Anything's better than sitting on a fucking boat for another hour."

Gary did not respond, and for a few minutes I was afraid that the wire had cut out again. Of course, over the course of those few minutes, the rumbling grew closer. The current picked up once again and the water around me began to churn. Over the water, the hazy red light became brighter, allowing me to see more of my surroundings.

Not that there was much to see.

Just red, water, mist—a mechanical bank around me. Everything was made of iron plates, clearly a ride fashioned to look like something more menacing.

The sound I heard then, however, hardly sounded mechanized.

It was midway between a wail and a growl; a song and a warning.

Water lapped at the boat violently, as if the tide itself wanted to escape from whatever I was heading toward.

By the light of the thick red haze, I saw another opening ahead of me with jagged teeth leading into darkness.

"Is this seriously the end of the ride already?" I asked no one.

My answer came in the form of the teeth shooting down from above, swallowing up a wave of water and red light. The pressure threw my vessel backwards and I was more than capsized—thrown to the bank, really. I landed hard on my side and began to skid. I grabbed out both of my swords and jammed them into the ground so I'd stop before I fell off a cliff somewhere.

The sound came again and the ground shook.

As I righted myself, getting to my feet as best I could, I saw the thing the mouth belonged to. Or at least most of it.

I didn't know if it was a whale or a motherfucking dinosaur, but whatever the hell it was, the look that one if its golden eyes gave me stated pretty clearly that it wanted me dead.

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Authors' notes:

South Park is -c- Matt Stone & Trey Parker!

Sorry for the radio silence over the past several months (and for leaving off at a cliffhanger). It has been a tumultuous year. Thank you so much for reading and sticking with this story! There have been a few comments in my absence from this site, thank you all!

Inferno will continue, though slowly. But for the next few chapters, each member of the League will get at least one chance to narrate.

Haha this site changed formats on me, I got so lost trying to upload this... ^^;

~Jizena & Rosie Denn

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