A/N: Aaaand the latest chapter, ladies and gentlemen! I wanted to post this a few days ago, but anxieties got in the way; plus, I felt this one needed to be a bit longer than the rest - after all, I have a lot of Ford's insecurities to cover over the course of the chapter. Before we begin, I'd like to thank everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed - you give me strength, ladies and gentlemen.
Kraven the Hunter: Yep, Bill just loves rigging the game in his favour and mocking the players for losing. I love the idea you brought out - I've heard so much about the "Emperor Joker" story, but I've never been able to track down a copy. As for what idea I'll actually employ when the time comes, I hope it lives up to expectations.
Fantasy Fan 223: Thank you so much for the artwork and the series-wide review! I look forward to seeing more. In the meantime, I can only say that the mysteries regarding Mr A's true identity will be cleared up in the next few chapters; be warned, it's a little multifaceted. And yes, Ford is going to suffer in this chapter - a lot, and immediately, too. Thanks again for all your hard work and lovely reviews!
Northgalus2002: Wow, I didn't think this was possible - me managing to invoke sympathy for a seriously disliked character twice in one fanfic-writing career. First Madam Morrible now this? Anyway, thanks so much for your review, and I hope I can continue the trend with Ford.
Guest: To answer your question, I draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources for the creation of the various "games," - in general terms, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream," "It's A Good Life," "Fallout 3" "Black Mirror," "Doctor Who: The Axis of Insanity," to name but a few forms of inspiration. Meanwhile, yes - Robbie got his heart cut open in the Fearamid, while Gideon was being given a foot massage by a swarm of angry bullet ants. As for who Mr A is... yes, he's definitely someone we've seen over the course of the show - or at least, he appears to be. Thanks again for your review - I don't mind long reviews, believe me!
A Fan: I love your assessment of Robbie's character - although in simultaneous defence and condemnation of the kid, he's also extremely stupid. This is the same guy, remember, who made the mistake of stopping to take a selfie in the face of Weirdmageddon. With this in mind, I imagine Mr A's letter will consist of ten paragraphs of "STOP THINKING ABOUT YOUR LOST PHONE AND APPLY A LITTLE IMAGINATION, ROBBIE." Technically, Robbie's zombies aren't allowed to actually hurt or kill anyone... but there's a lot of loopholes in that caveat, most of which Robbie himself hasn't even grasped. One day, he might do so... but until then, it's a life on the streets for him.
Allotrios: Thanks so much for your detailed review - the study of Mr A and who he might be was a joy to read, and I especially liked your description of Bill - "psychopathic frathouse gambler" just captures so much of his essence! Anyway, I sympathize with the many and varied problems with phone keyboard programming (believe me, predictive text only makes things more frustrating), and as always, I'm honestly just glad to receive reviews at all! I hope this chapter lives up to expectations and leaves you hungry for more! Thanks once again!
Anyway - time's up! Feel free to furnish me with reviews, comments, critiques, theories, typo alerts, recommendations, and all manner of discussion! Spread the word far and wide! Read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Also, spoiler, there's a not-so subtle shoutout in this chapter to another dimension-hopping animated series: for those of you who spot it, this show is not mine.
Ford had thought Bill had been angry with him before. He'd thought, back in the days of searing electrocution and threats against his family, that he'd seen the limits of his one-time Muse's wrath.
In the days since then, he'd come to realize that he'd been deeply mistaken.
He hadn't even come close to seeing the true depths of Bill Cipher's anger: the temper tantrum Ford had seen on display in the Fearamid's throne room was barely a shadow of the hatred that oozed from every atom of Bill's constructed body in the days that followed his final victory.
The reasons were obvious: even though Bill had won, even though Weirdmageddon had gone global, even though he now held dominion over the entire planet with the rest of the universe soon to follow, the resistance had soured his good mood. Opposition from Dipper, Mabel and the rest of the Shacktron crew was bad enough, but the fact that they'd actually succeeded in wounding him was nothing short of infuriating to Bill. And yet it was more, so much more than that, for they'd come close to ending his life; not only had they almost succeeded in completing the Wheel, but Stanley had gotten within inches of destroying Bill once and for all.
They hadn't just hurt Bill: they'd frightened him.
And in the days that followed the conquest of Earth, Ford found himself on the receiving end of his captor's wounded pride and simmering rage.
This time, he didn't even bother with electricity. After an eternity spent watching Earth's history play out before his eyes, an entire toyshop of grisly instruments and techniques was open to him, and with no further need to keep Ford's mind intact, Bill gloried in the monstrous inspiration that human atrocities had provided him with. In the first session alone, he tore off all twelve of Ford's fingernails and bathed the bloody tips in molten lead, before taking a pneumatic drill to his kneecaps; he syringed his eyeballs, wrenched teeth out of his mouth with pliers, sliced his ribcage open and sunk nails deep into his exposed organs – except for his heart, which Bill soaked in gasoline and set on fire; he'd even prized off the top of his skull and played around with his grey matter, only keeping his newest toy's body from shutting down through sheer force of willpower. But even with supernatural forces sustaining his body, there were limits on how much he could endure - or perhaps limits on what Bill would allow him to survive: halfway through that first session, Ford lost consciousness and quietly expired.
Moments later, Bill brought him back to life, fully-healed and ready to be tortured all over again.
Ford tried to maintain his dignity in spite of the pain; he tried to stay silent no matter what torment was inflicted upon him, but the pain invariably proved too much. In the end, he always screamed. When he wasn't screaming, he was asking questions for as long as Bill would allow them: what had happened to the others? Where were Dipper and Mabel? Had he saved Stanley after all, or at the very least brought him back from the dead? Was there any way that Bill could be persuaded to let the three of them go – to let them live out their lives beyond the Fearamid in some vague semblance of peace?
But of course, Bill never answered: to do so would be a kindness, and Earth's new Lord and Master just wasn't in the mood for anything other than pure, unadulterated sadism.
As the sessions continued, Ford was subjected to almost every form of physical torture under the sun, and quite a few methods of execution too: beating, flogging, branding, garrotting, picketing, drowning, crushing, scalping, boiling, disembowelling – all methods were fair game so long as the pain was immediate and extremely visible. Thumbscrews reduced his fingers to bloody pulp; the rack tore his ligaments and fractured his spine; the Iron Maiden perforated his body in no less than two dozen places and left him to slowly bleed out; poisonous snakes and stinging insects assaulted his defenceless flesh and left his body a pus-weeping necrotic mess; the Brazen Bull slowly cooked him alive, frying the meat off his bones; the Boot crushed his feet to useless lumps of pulverised bone; hungry rats gnawed at his shredded tissues; the Blood Eagle killed him relatively quickly, but not before Bill had found the time to crush his lungs in his bare hands. And since Ford was technically guilty of attempted regicide, Bill even brought out the Crocodile Shears – just to prove that there were more painful things than the Judas Cradle or the Chokepear.
But for the grand finale of this grisly spectacle, Bill flayed him alive: with one swift gesture of the hand, he peeled the skin off Ford's entire body from head to toe, leaving bare, bloody muscles exposed to the air. For five long days, Bill left him dangling there in his manacles, screaming in agony as raw nerve endings fired and infection raged across his bare muscle. And then he died – again.
When he awoke, re-skinned and lying on the hard stone floor in his underwear, Bill was staring down at him, his expression now utterly inscrutable.
Ford groaned, almost in exasperation by now. After a hundred and twenty gruelling hours without skin, his nervous system had almost completely burned out: he was dimly aware that Bill was poking him in the thigh with his cane, but he could barely feel the impact; he knew that he should probably be freezing cold, what with lying half-naked on a stone floor for god only knew how many hours, but in that moment all he could feel was numbness. The same went for his emotions: after so many days of continuous torture, any sense of fear, grief, distress or confusion had long since dried up and blown away like so many dead leaves. At present, all he felt was exhaustion and numbness.
"So, what's next?" he sighed. "Do you still have a few human torture devices up your sleeve, or is it time you started plundering alien cultures for new ways of making me suffer?"
Bill just eyed him curiously. Was it Ford's imagination, or had the deranged triangle's temper finally calmed?
"Well? What are you going to do now?"
"Now?" Bill echoed. "Sixer, if you have to actually ask that, I think you've spent too much time with that idiot brother of yours; he's had some time to rub off on you by the looks of things. Seriously, I'm amazed you can smell the blood through the stink of concentrated loser."
Somewhere in the back of Ford's mind, something akin to anger flared violently. "Don't you dare talk about him like-"
Bill waved a hand, and suddenly Ford's vocal cords went dead in his throat.
"Aw, forget about him, Fordsie," the dream-demon sneered. "The way things stand at the moment, your brother's an even bigger non-entity than usual – and I hope you enjoyed that little nugget of information, because that's all you're going to hear of ol' Fez for the immediate future. You've got more important things to think about."
And I notice you never specifically stated if Stanley was alive or not. How convenient. That way you can bait me with the promise of seeing him again. The same goes for Dipper, Mabel, Fiddleford, and everyone else on the planet I care about.
"Now," Bill continued, barely able to contain his laughter. "You'd best pay attention, Sixer. It's time you gave some serious thought to your future…"
When Ford next opened his eyes, he was lying on a cold marble floor with his battered coat draped over him like a blanket.
Immediately he realized that he was no longer in the Fearamid: quite apart from the differing composition of the stone beneath him, it didn't have the same sense of reverberating power that so readily distinguished Bill's fortress – a reflection of its master. Wherever he'd ended up, it was clearly far away from the nerve centre of the new regime, but other than that, he had no idea where the hell he was. Maybe he was somewhere amidst the ruins of human civilization, maybe he'd been stranded on one of the other planets of the Solar System, or maybe he'd been imprisoned some pocket dimension created solely to torment him – there was no way of telling at present.
He couldn't even see the room he'd arrived in. Lit only by a crude wooden torch hanging from a sconce on the wall directly behind, the chamber was choked with shadows, rendered almost featureless by the darkness that shrouded the walls.
Worse still, his pocket flashlight was nowhere to be found: his coat had been emptied of gadgets and equipment.
However, once he'd gotten to his feet, dressed and taken the torch from its fixture, he eventually managed to discern a few recognizable pieces of scenery hidden amidst the gloom: perhaps a hundred feet away from him, there was a fireplace set into the opposite wall, easily fifteen feet wide and eight feet deep, sadly without firewood. Meanwhile, more sconces protruded from the curving walls nearby, each one bearing an unlit torch – which Ford quickly went about igniting, if only because he wanted a clear view of what dangers might be waiting for him. And as the room slowly lit up, Ford finally saw in perfect detail the chamber that was now his prison.
He was standing in the middle of an enormous marble rotunda well over a hundred and fifty feet in diameter; supported by imposing Doric columns, its shadowy roof curved upwards into an impressive dome, most of which was still blanketed in shadows even as Ford went about lighting the remaining torches. Unsurprisingly, no windows graced the walls of the rotunda, guaranteeing more darkness and fewer escape attempts. However, to Ford's surprise, there was in fact an open door at the opposite end of the chamber, and from what little he could see from here, it led to a long hallway terminating in a crossroads.
This was either an illusion designed to get his hopes up, an open invitation to the next part of whatever sick game Bill was playing, or some combination of the two; so far, the chances of it being a legitimate path to freedom lay somewhere around the less-than-zero mark.
With the room slowly brightening, Ford now had a clear view of the rotunda's walls, and it wasn't long before he noticed the murals: between each pair of columns, the marble walls had been painted with a spectacular array of images and scenes, most of which seemed to have emerged from Earth's classical mythology – more inspiration for Bill's twisted playground.
Of course, it wasn't long before Ford noticed the subtle-as-a-brick symbolism in play: here was Prometheus chained to a rock, an eagle gnawing hungrily at his entrails; here was Pandora unleashing all the myriad evils upon the world, leaving Hope trapped; here was Arachne transformed into a spider for daring to outdo Athena; here was Midas blessed and cursed with his famous transmuting touch; Sisyphus eternally pushing a boulder up a mountainside; Tantalus grasping for food that was forever out of reach; Salmoneus blasted with a thunderbolt for hubris.
All condemned for pride, for foolishness, but above all else, for the audacity to trifle with the omnipotent.
And yet…
There was something clearly missing from the murals, something so obvious and predictable that it made no sense for it to be excluded. But then he realized that the torchlight was finally bright enough sweep away the shadows hiding the dome, and though it was still dim and hard to discern the finer details, Ford could just about recognize the fresco decorating the rotunda's ceiling:
Icarus falling from the sky, wings melting away as he plunged to his death in the waters of the Aegean.
"Very funny, Bill," Ford grumbled.
However, just as he was starting to wonder what was expected of him, he happened to let his hands stray to the pockets of his coat – and found an envelope waiting for him. He already knew who it was from, of course; he didn't need to see the cyclopean-eye seal in the electric-blue wax to hazard a guess.
Hiya, Fordsie! it read. Welcome to your new home: the Dome of Wishes at the heart of the Oneiron's Labyrinth!
I'm sure you want to know what I've got in mind for you, so I won't mince words; in fact, I'll be more honest with you than I have been with anyone else playing my games. I said I wanted you to think very seriously about your future, and I meant it – so I set up this place to bring out the very best in you.
I built this place to make you perfect, to bring out the being I always thought you could be if you gave up everything that held you back – friends, family, morality, hope, sanity, the usual. I said you could become one of us, and I meant it: this place will make sure of it.
Until you've proven that you've cast aside the stifling bonds of human mentality, you'll stay here, with all necessities provided: if you want food or water, just go down the corridor and take the southwest path at the crossroads; if you're looking for a bathroom, there's one on the northwest path; if you want firewood, you'll find some down the south-east path. You want to find a way out? No problem: just make your way to the northeast and you'll be in the Labyrinth.
Want to find your way through the Labyrinth? Well, that's up to you, Sixer. No luxuries afforded, unless you ask.
Now, if you want something else – a book, a gun, central heating, a bit of peace and quiet – all you have to do is stand in the centre of the rotunda, ask for it loudly and clearly, and it'll appear.
But here's the twist: for every wish you make, you'll change. For every request, you'll be infused with a tiny fragment of the same power the Henchmaniacs and I wield: enough wishes, and you'll be one of us – all-powerful, greater than you could possibly imagine, just like I promised you.
And before you start thinking that this is a blessing in disguise and you'll be able to defeat me by making enough wishes and imbuing yourself with premature godhood, here's another twist: your brain will change as well, restructuring and reconfiguring itself with every atom of Weirdness you absorb – until you see the world the way I do. Your precious empathy will be gone, your will to resist me will be dead, and any inhibitions you possessed will have vanished.
Then and only then will you be allowed to leave – once you're as crazy as I am, and you've accepted your position as my newest Henchmaniac. How does the role of resident secondary genius sound? The boys aren't too big on brains, in case you hadn't noticed, and it's been a long time since I had a decent conversation with anyone inside the gang. It'll be fun, trust me.
No, you can't wish to have the alterations to your brain undone. I write the rules here.
And no, you can't ask to save the lives of your brother or Pine Tree or Shooting Star, and you can't ask to see what they're up to. You can get that kind of idea right out of your head, thank you very much.
But you can ask for a way out. Question is, are you prepared to pay the price, to see what your wish will do to your mind?
Now, you might be saying to yourself, "But Bill, why are you doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this? Was it something to do with me and my deadbeat brother almost killing you that one time?" Well, let's make this crystal clear: all that assassination attempt business is just so much water under the bridge by now; besides, I blew off all the steam I needed to by watching you bleed to death twenty-eight times.
No, I'm doing this because you disappointed me thirty years ago, because if you'd stayed by my side, you could have had everything – ultimate power, the respect and worship of the entire human race, a whole new universe to explore, create and destroy at whim – and you threw it all away because that neurotic hillbilly chickened out. I'm doing this because this is the only way I can make you honest – with me and yourself. This is the only way I can make you admit to the truth.
And the truth is that you were happier with me than you've ever been your entire life: I was the only person who could think on the same level as you, the only one who accepted you for what you truly were, and I was (and still am) more interesting than anyone you've ever met before – more than your family, more than your friends, more than any of the mysteries of Gravity Falls. Face it, you enjoyed having me as a muse. You liked being told what to do. You liked realizing just how insignificant the human race was in the grand scheme of things. You liked being possessed. You liked waking up naked in the woods with no idea how you got there. You liked finding all those weird little cuts and bruises on your body and not knowing how you got them. You liked being alone. You liked being helpless.
You liked being MINE.
And the only thing worse than watching you pretend that you didn't like it was watching you pretend that you preferred spending time with literally anyone else. I mean, do you honestly expect me to believe that you wanted friendship with that Southern-fried hick nerd? You seriously think that ignorant, swindling loser you call a brother could ever understand you the way I did? Oh, and while we're on the subject of friends and family, your attempts to bond with that pockmark-foreheaded little freak and his maladjusted sweater-wearing bitch of a sister were nothing short of sad.
So, this is how I remind you of what good friends we can be.
This is how I make you perfect.
Have fun – and remember: all you have to do is wish.
Love, Bill.
After that, Ford went to work on exploring his new home, careful to avoid saying anything within earshot of the rotunda's centre just in case it was misconstrued as a wish.
No wishing. No deals. If I'm gonna find a way out and save the others, I'll do it on my terms, not his.
Once he had checked literally every single wall of the rotunda for hidden doors, teleporters, magic sigils or anything else that could feasibly be used for an escape attempt, he left the rotunda and followed the corridor as far as the crossroads.
Just as Bill had promised, the road to the southwest led to food and water: just a few yards down that corridor, he found the finely-carved marble walls dwindling away into rough limestone with every step, until he finally found himself at the entrance to a stadium-sized cavern, aglow with phosphorescence and crowned with dozens of stalagmites. At the very centre of the cave sat a massive subterranean lake, and for several hundred yards around its shores, fungi grew in colossal patches – edible fungi.
Though experience had taught Ford not to take anything Bill said or did at face value, it seemed fairly reasonable to assume that his jailer wouldn't have gone to all this trouble to put him here and then poison him. So, plucking one of the mushrooms from the nearest patch, he took a bite – and immediately cringed at the distinctly vinegary flavour. The lake water wasn't much of an improvement: it was bitter and acerbic, and left an aftertaste that combined the scintillating flavours of expired grapefruit juice and antiseptic mouthwash.
All necessities provided, no luxuries afforded. Guess you were being honest about that much.
Meanwhile, the bathroom was every bit as disgusting as expected, consisting mainly of a deep pit dug in the ground and a perpetual rainstorm cascading down on him from the ceiling. On the upside, at least there was a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and toilet paper – even if it did have the consistency of sandpaper.
As for his source of firewood, the room to the southeast contained an entire forest, dark and dense and apparently infinite despite being contained in one small underground container; here, the only advantages he'd been provided with was a small hand-axe, a saw, and a flashlight (presumably for navigating the deeper reaches).
Well, a flashlight made sense: Bill wouldn't want him accidentally burning himself alive by bringing a torch into the forest; he'd had enough of physical torture by the looks of things. Of course, he certainly didn't have any qualms about Ford screwing up his back by cutting down trees and dragging them back to the fireplace on his own.
Come on, Stanford, he told himself. Count your blessings. Everyone on the planet's probably suffering worse than you are at this point: at least you've got water, food, heat and toiletries... and by the looks of things, there's nothing dangerous on the premises. Once you've gotten your bearings, you'll be able to find a way out, and with a little bit of luck, you'll be able to return the favour and rescue Dipper, Mabel, Fiddleford, and Stanley. And then…
Ford sighed. What would he do next? Even if he could escape, even if he could rescue Dipper and Mabel, even if Stanley was alive and within reach, defeating Bill was almost impossible now: by now, Earth's nacho overlord would have taken steps to make sure that the Wheel was no longer a viable possibility – maybe by killing all possible participants or just altering the physical laws that allowed the Wheel to work – and a second try at the Memory Gun assassination wasn't likely to be of much use either, especially considering how easily Bill had spotted it the last time.
Come to think of it, why had that last, desperate gambit failed in the first place? It should have worked: Stanley's performance had been nothing short of flawless, the con had been virtually foolproof; Bill should have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. So, how had he cottoned on to Stanley's plan? Ford wracked his memories of the event, trying to see past the shock and grief he'd felt at the sight of Stanley's mortal wound, but nothing sprung to mind.
Nevermind that. Focus on the task at hand. Focus on finding a way out and saving your family, and then you can think about the whys and the why-nots. And above all, NO WISHING.
Sighing deeply, Ford braced himself for the worst and began the long slow march down the northeast pathway that led to his only available escape route: even from here, less than a few yards down the passage, he could see another junction waiting for him, every single corridor leading to another crossroads, a vast interconnecting network of halls and paths that formed what could only be the Labyrinth.
So what does that make me? Theseus? Or am I supposed to be the Minotaur? Well, if I'm right, I've started out at the very centre of the maze, so mabey it's the latter after all. Well, no enchanted thread or helpful princess for me, but hopefully I'll be able to figure out a way through without having to break out the black sails: after all, it's not as if I'm short on time anymore. Bill's already won.
He'd barely gone fifty yards into the Labyrinth when the first obstacle hit him head-on. One minute he was walking down the corridor, carefully marking his path on the walls with cave mud; the next-
He was kneeling in the dirt, his arms manacled in front of him; all around him, the sound of calliope music fused seamlessly with the shrieks and jeers of the crow, while the smell of candyfloss, sweat, popcorn, blood, hotdogs and fresh human excrement mingled into a hideous carnival stench. But it wasn't until he opened his eyes and saw the frenzied, grinning faces of the audience leering down at him, that he finally realized exactly where he was – where he'd always feared he'd end up.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" thundered the barker, resplendent in his garish yellow coat and shiny stovepipe hat. "Boys and girls! Children of all ages! Behold the freaks: here we have the amazing intellectual six-fingered man! Inside, for your delight and dedication, he displays both physical and mental abnormality, with theories no sane man would possess and abominations of the flesh no human being would dare tolerate!"
Ford wilted under the mocking gaze of the crowd: he couldn't escape his manacles and he couldn't remove his hands from the audience's view; he couldn't even move without the barker giving him a swift kick to his side. All he could do was kneel there, tormented on all sides by the laughter of the crowd, their taunts and insults washing over him like so much vitriol. And then, just when he thought it couldn't possibly get any worse-
All of sudden, he was back in the Labyrinth, lying face-down on the cold marble floor.
Had he merely dreamed the freakshow? It had felt real – and still did: his ribs ached where the barker had kicked him, his wrists stung from the manacles, his knees still recalled the cold and damp of the mud as if he'd really been there. Maybe it had been some kind of impossibly vivid dream, maybe it had been some hyper-realistic illusion, or maybe reality itself had warped around him; it was impossible to tell – with Bill Cipher, the three options were virtually indistinguishable.
So, taking a deep breath, he got to his feet and continued on down the corridor. Finally reaching the next junction, he took the northward path, pausing only to hastily graffiti another marker on the wall. This time, he was bracing himself for whatever the Labyrinth was about to throw at him. This time he was ready – or as ready as he possibly could be given that he had no idea what was going to happen. And then, just as the next junction crept into view-
There was a cough from the passageway to his left, and Ford felt his heart freeze in his chest as he recognized the figure stumbling towards him.
"Stanley?" he whispered.
Stanley groaned and nodded. He was still partly obscured by the wall he was currently clinging to, but Ford could already tell that his brother was very badly hurt. Even from here, it was clear he'd left a very long trail of bloody handprints along the last eighty feet of the corridor leading here. Then, as he finally struggled onwards, Ford saw that his shirt was soaked with blood from collar to belt; this time, there was no gaping hole burn in his chest, no clear injury – just gallons upon gallons of blood.
He was trying to say something, trying to form words, but whatever had happened to him had clearly made a mess of his throat: all that escaped his lips were harsh, desperate gasps for air, and sick, wheezing gurgles. Medicine wasn't Ford's field of study, but he'd learned enough in his years wandering the multiverse to recognize all the horrible things those sounds could mean – among other things, blood pooling in Stanley's lungs, fatal necrosis of the respiratory system, aquatic mutations – and at this particular juncture, all of that knowledge was of zero help whatsoever because he didn't have the tools to treat any of it; his coat had been emptied of gadgetry and there was nothing at hand to improvise with apart from his own clothes.
For five seconds, Ford could only stare in spellbound horror at the sight of his brother shambling down the corridor, mortally wounded, almost certainly on the brink of death; right then and there, all he could focus on were the words oh dear god, please not again.
Then, Stanley's knees began to buckle; spell broken, Ford hurried forward just in time to catch him before he hit the ground. As soon as he'd finished lowering him the rest of the way he sprang into action, trying to find the source of the wound, trying to find some means of staunching the blood, of healing the injuries once he found them – even though every rational thought in his head insisted that Stanley was dying and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Then, just as he was hastily doffing his coat in a desperate attempt to improvise a bandage, Stanley finally managed to force a few coherent words past his bloodstained lips.
"It's… too late," he muttered.
"Stanley, please don't try to speak; you've been badly hurt-"
"Too late… for both of us…"
And then-
Stanley was gone. The corridor was empty, the blood had vanished from the walls, and Ford was left staring at the place where his brother had been lying, blood on his hands and heart hammering in shock.
Another illusion?
Did this mean that Stanley was alive and unharmed somewhere out there, or did it mean he was already dead?
Before he could focus on the question, he heard the sound of screaming from somewhere to the south, back down the corridor he'd just emerged from: it was difficult to tell from here, but those screaming voices might just belong to Dipper and Mabel.
Though by now suspicious of any potential illusions/dreams/reality warps, Ford hurried over to investigate. Breaking into a run, he charged down the hall, picking up speed as the shrieks and howls grew more and more desperate; but no sooner had he rounded the final corner, the noise stopped – and promptly restarted, this time several hundred yards away.
As an experiment, Ford followed the sound: once again, as soon as he'd reached the corridor where the screaming had emanated from, the noise faded out and started up again in a different corridor entirely. More to the point, it didn't take Ford long to notice that these screams were quite clearly leading him back along his route, forcing him to return to the rotunda.
So that's the other challenge of the Labyrinth, he realized. It's not just finding your way through the maze: it's continuing even in the face of all the horrors this place can throw at you.
He was halfway through retracing his steps to the point where he'd met the illusory Stanley, when a thunderous roar split the air, and Ford looked up just in time to see something out of his nightmares barrelling down the corridor towards him, an unholy manifestation of all the bullies who had terrorized him throughout his life now merged into one repulsive, multi-bodied abomination: howling cacophonously from a face comprised of at least ten conjoined skulls, clawing at the air with grasping claws made from dozens of merged arms, it was so large that its ponderous bulk filled the hall from floor to ceiling, and every single pair of eyes it possessed was now focussed entirely on Ford.
Alright then, Ford thought. Is this just another illusion Bill's cooked up just to frighten me, or is this thing a proper threshold guardian?
A moment later, the bully-beast slammed into him at high speed, scooping him up in a writhing mass of conjoined limbs and tossing him over its shoulder, handily banging Ford's head against the ceiling with a cerebrum-jangling clunk of metal skullplate on marble. Then, it carried him away, hauling him bodily back down the path – towards the waiting rotunda.
Winded by the impact and stunned from the collision with the ceiling, Ford could barely struggle against the monster's vice-like grip – and even if he had found it within himself to resist, exhaustion was once again creeping up on him, bringing with it a smothering tide of apathy. Bill had once again stacked the deck in his favour: trying to get through the Labyrinth would be impossible at present; Ford would have to rethink his approach if he ever hoped to escape, and the easiest way of finding the time to do so was to just let the monster return him to his prison.
And then, as the corridor ceilings blurred overhead, he heard the sounds of another illusion in action: raised voices echoing down the hall towards him, the sounds of grudges exchanged by phone, of a bitter old man and a disillusioned young man screaming insults at one another as long-dormant tensions left simmering just below the boiling point finally erupted.
But this wasn't just an illusion.
It was a memory.
"You can't talk to me like that, Stanford!" Filbrick had roared. "I am your father and if you've got any sense in that brain of yours, you'll do what's right for this family!"
And Ford had screamed back "You HYPOCRITE! You lying, cheating, bone-gnawing vulture! You wouldn't know the first thing about what's right or good for the family! You wouldn't know the first thing about family integrity if it stabbed you in the face and left you bleeding out in the gutter! After what you did to Stanley-"
"I told you before, do not mention that little shit-"
"Don't you dare talk about him like that – don't you dare-"
"Stanford, you will do as I say: I gave you leeway to study what you wanted, I didn't complain when you decided to study mysteries instead of doing something profitable, and now it's time you repaid the debt."
"Oh that's right, you're not even pretending that we're a family anymore, not really: we're just a business. So instead of me lending you a few thousand of my own money, you want me to steal a few hundred thousand in grant money – in perfectly traceable government money. After all the hell you gave Stanley over that gambling scam-"
"I told you-"
"SHUT UP! After what you did to Stanley whenever he got caught gambling or causing trouble, after all that fine upstanding talk you gave me about being a good, law-abiding citizen and keeping my nose clean no matter what, YOU WANT ME TO STEAL FOR YOU! And while we're on the subject, don't even pretend this is about what's good for the family – this is about your goddamn retirement plan!"
"Stanford, you stop this right now. You'll do as I say or you'll see just what it's like to be alone in this world: you'll get no support from me from now on – nothing!"
"Oh, so that's how it is, huh? The moment your "golden boy" stops being convenient, you'll just kick me aside like you did to Stanley. You think I need you anymore, you delusional old fart? You really think I give a damn what you think?! You hateful, bitter, deceitful old bastard, I should have stood up for Stanley that night! I should have gone with him! Anything would have been better than listening to your BULLSHIT!"
And with that, Ford had hung up. But the memory wasn't over yet:
"You see what I mean, Fordsie?" Bill had purred inside his mind. "They just don't appreciate you the way I do. They'll never understand your genius. You know you can't trust any of them: not Stanley, not Fiddleford, not even your greedy old bastard of a dad."
And Stanford – naïve, paranoid and so very, very blind – had nodded and muttered "Trust no-one. Trust no-one."
"No-one except ME," Bill had giggled.
And once again, Ford had only nodded, secure in the knowledge that his muse would never betray him.
Thirty years onwards, Ford looked back on the memory of that argument and its aftermath with an almost crippling sense of regret – and not just because it was the last time he'd spoken to his father before the plunge into the portal.
It was because he'd been so close to reaching an epiphany, about Bill, about himself, and most importantly, about Stan; he'd been within inches of honestly and truly forgiving Stanley for everything – of tracking him down and asking him to come to Gravity Falls because on some level he knew that he was over his head, because he needed someone who he could trust, someone he wasn't in the process of driving away through obsession and obliviousness.
If he'd acted right then, he could have averted Weirdmageddon and saved them all: the portal would have been dismantled, Fiddleford wouldn't have lost his mind, Stanley wouldn't have been murdered, Dipper wouldn't have had to endure possession and worse at the hands of Bill, and billions of people would have been able to go on living.
But all Bill had needed to do was whisper in his ear and make a few honeyed appeals to his vanity, and the reality of the situation had gone trickling through Ford's grasp like so much dust. He'd shrugged off the incident as if it had never happened, forced it into a dark corner of his mind and refused to commit any of it to paper – his one moment of clarity consigned to the scrapheap.
He could have ignored Bill: he could have shrugged off his compliments, abandoned the deal, and done his best to live with the world of uncertainty beyond their partnership.
But he hadn't.
He'd been afraid - of what Stanley might say, of what Fiddleford would think, of not seeing his work through to the end, of admitting just how frightened and out-of-his depth he really was, of being without his muse – because he'd spent so long relying on Bill for advice and reassurance that he just didn't know what to do without him. And because of his fear and pride, he'd doomed them all.
And that was why, when Ford finally awoke from the memory, he found himself back in the rotunda – his home, his punishment, his prison for all time.
Days went by – or at least they appeared to: here in the subterranean realms, day and night were utterly indistinguishable, and without them, time became almost impossible to measure.
Throughout this "time," Ford kept himself as occupied as possible: he continued his escape attempts, he gathered fungi, he cut down trees, he roasted mushroom skewers, he built chairs and tables, he carved plates and crude goblets, he scrawled escape plans and designs for new inventions on the floor with charcoal, and he even took to building some of these designs. Sadly, without nails – or any other kind of metal – his inventions were somewhat limited to what he could carve in one piece or glue together with boiled fungus slop.
But it wasn't about creating something that could grant him escape from this place – though he always hoped his latest creation would help. No, it was about keeping himself busy.
Because if he wasn't busy, he'd get bored… and if he got bored, he'd be tempted to start wishing.
As much as he desperately wanted something to read, as much as he wanted to find a way out, he knew it wouldn't be worth the price he'd have to pay as a result. He couldn't help anyone if he ended up as another one of Bill's Henchmaniacs: if he wanted to save Dipper, Mabel, Stan and Fiddleford, he'd have to remain himself. And if he wanted to remain himself, he'd have to go without luxuries like reading and quick fixes: he'd have to arrange his own entertainment and carry on the escape attempts with none of Bill's interference.
Sadly, his attempts to escape via the Labyrinth usually ended with him either being carried all the way back to the entrance by the bully-beast or being forced back by a torrent of unpleasant memories, horrific visions and distressing sensory influx; for good measure, the disorientation was usually enough to make him lose his way and end up back at the entrance even when he was trying to soldier on. Even his efforts to defeat the monster with his makeshift weaponry didn't have much success: every time he took aim, his vision would immediately be crowded with enough phantasmal horrors to leave him effectively blind to the incoming target before it ensnared him.
For hours afterward, Ford would pace in silence around the heart of the rotunda, grappling with the urge to wish for something that could help him through the Labyrinth – a means of killing the bully-beast, a way of resisting the illusions, anything, so long as it brought him a little closer to escaping and rescuing his family. In the end, he could never quite bring himself to utter the fateful words and instead resolved to continue his mundane attempts at escape.
On the upside, his attempts at making wine from the mushrooms and cloying fruit that grew in the forest had been a roaring success, though resulting hooch tasted vile and left him belching deliriously to himself for hours on end. Needless to say, the hangover was nothing short of apocalyptic.
Goddammit, Rick, he thought. It's been god only knows how many years since we've seen each other, and already I'm picking up your bad habits all over again. Where are you, you old bastard? I could do with another crazy antisocial genius in here. If nothing else, you could probably do something more entertaining with all this cave fungi. Wherever you are, Rick, I hope you're nowhere near this dimension. Even you don't deserve what Bill would do to you. Or your grandson for that matter.
Jesus Christ almighty, how long can I keep doing this?
Days slowly transformed into weeks, and somehow, Ford avoided the temptation to wish away his troubles. The escape attempts grew more ambitious, the designs became ever more fanciful, and the booze soared to 100% proof.
Eventually, perhaps a month after he'd been imprisoned in the rotunda, Ford found himself awakening one day to find Bill hovering over him, his eyelid curled into an obnoxious smirk.
"Having fun yet?" he cackled. "The Henchmaniacs have got a little bet going just to see how long you'll last before you start cracking up. Amorphous Shape thinks you'll make it three months; Paci-Fire's given you five; 8-Ball's betting you'll try to kill yourself before you hit the four-month mark. They don't know you like I know you, though: you're already half-insane, Sixer, and you've been that way ever since you first set off for Gravity Falls."
He paused for effect.
"Why do you think we worked so well together?"
Ford said nothing. Even if he was in the mood to talk after so many weeks alone in the rotunda (which he wasn't), he wasn't going to give Bill the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him.
"Oh, come on, Fordsie. You seriously think you're sane? You think any rational human being would do the things you've done? Gaming with infinity-sided dice, setting your face on fire, sneaking into UFOs to steal parts, and trying to shoot Earth's new lord and master in the head – you think anyone sane would try to kill god? Admit it, Sixer: you're halfway there, and you want to be helped the rest of the way."
In other word, you're bored with the waiting game already and you're trying to bait me into making a wish. If you think calling me insane's the most provocative thing you can throw in my face, you might want to rethink this little conversation.
"Still giving me the silent treatment, huh? You'll come around eventually, pal: you might think you're achieving some great moral victory by keeping yourself deprived, but the nights are long and boring out here on the outer reaches, and it's pretty hard to play martyr when you've run out of walls to talk to. You're not being a hero, you're just torturing yourself – but it's not as if that's anything new, is it? You've always been your own worst enemy. If you'd stayed by my side, you'd be the happiest man on the planet right now – immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing. But here you are, lying in the dust and hoping you'll find some way of saving a family that's – and let's be honest here – really isn't worth your time."
Without saying a word, Ford got to his feet, shrugged on his coat and began slowly marching towards the Labyrinth's entrance.
Unsurprisingly, Bill followed him.
"You can't run away from the truth, Sixer," he chortled. "Your brother's a nonentity at present, and even when he mattered, he was just another sponger. Shooting Star resented you for taking her brother away. And Pine Tree..." Bill's voice rose to a nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek of laughter, "The things I could tell you about what's been happening to him!"
Outwardly, Ford remained perfectly silent; inwardly, he imagined a giant mallet gently smashing the loudmouthed cornchip's brains to a pulp.
"In fact, why don't I give you the perfect snapshot of what's happened to your little apprentice…"
And then, just as Ford was turning around to tell Bill to ram his home truths where the sun didn't shine, something materialized between the two of them, landing on the floor with a muffled flop. Curious, he picked it up, turning it over in his hands as he tried to figure out what relevance this strange object could have to Bill's point: it was a thin scrap of appeared to be leather, but of a shade and consistency he'd never encountered in ordinary cowskin; no bigger than a wallet and not much thicker than a playing card, it was smooth to the touch and a creamy-pale in colour, and so delicate that Ford had to wonder what kind of animal this hide had been taken from. Looking closer, he saw there was a patterned marking of some kind across its surface, a curiously familiar shape that looked uncannily like-
The Big Dipper.
Ford dropped the piece of leather as if it were on fire, heart hammering so violently he thought his ribcage might shatter under the onslaught.
Dipper's birthmark.
He flayed Dipper and took the skin as proof.
"That's right!" Bill sneered. "He's dead! Dead and flayed alive, and that little scrap of skin is all you'll ever see of him!"
Ford couldn't speak: horror had left his vocal cords trapped beneath permafrost. He could only stare at the tiny scrap of human leather now lying on the floor in front of him, his mind frantically struggling to get a grip on reality again.
You don't know he's really dead, his rational mind insisted. He could be screwing with you again, playing with your perceptions of reality. And even if Dipper really is dead, Bill can easily just bring him back to life – in fact, he's guaranteed to: the chances of you being the only one he's torturing are nothing short of astronomical. Don't take the bait. Wait until you see if Dipper's alive or not. Stay calm. Stay sane. Don't wish.
But in that moment, Ford was deaf to rationality. All he could focus on was that tiny piece of flayed skin on the floor, and the tortures that must have led to its removal.
"Aw, what's wrong, Fordsie? No wishes to spare? No anger? No tears? That's okay: Ol' Pine Tree had plenty of tears to spare when I carved him up! You should have heard him – screaming, wailing, sobbing like a baby, begging for mercy all the time."
Shut up. Just shut up.
"I wish you'd been there… I mean, Pine Tree certainly did. What were his last words, again? Oh yes…"
Bill cleared his non-existent throat, and let out a mocking but terrifyingly accurate mimicry of Dipper's screams: "'Uncle Ford! Help me! Save me! I don't wanna die!'" He laughed obnoxiously. "Such a pity you couldn't-"
Ford didn't even recall moving: one second, he was staring down at the grisly trophy on the floor in front of him; the next, he was launching himself across the rotunda at Bill, screaming enraged and distinctly less-than-visionary threats at the top of his voice. For the briefest of instants, his outstretched hands brushed Bill's eyeball: for a fraction of a second, he had the bastard – could have hurt him as badly as he'd hurt Dipper, could have made him suffer the way he'd made all the others suffer, and even though the rotten bastard was immortal, it would have been worth it to hear him scream. For perhaps a nanosecond, he saw Bill's eye widen in surprise and shock-
But then he was gone, and Ford was lying sprawled on the floor, alone again…
…except for the skin.
Why Icarus?
After Bill's horrific display, Ford spent the next few days going to pieces. His failed escape attempts grew ever more desperate, his plans dissolved into frenzied scribbles, and the makeshift booze only grew more and more important to retaining day-to-day sanity.
As for the… leather… Ford couldn't even bring himself to look at it, much less pick it up and throw it away: he just left it lying on the floor where he'd dropped it, trying his best to ignore it as the days went by.
For hours on end, he would pace the rotunda, trying to think of all the reasons why he shouldn't make a wish, and all the reasons he thought of grew steadily more hollow and token as time went on. Soon, all he could think of were all the things he could wish for. Invariably, the only way he could stop himself from succumbing to temptation was by taking a shot of booze – or three – and then slumping to the ground in a drunken stupor to contemplate the universe through a thoroughly inebriated haze.
And one evening, a question that had been sitting in a gloomy corner of his psyche for decades on end slowly crept to the forefront of his booze-sodden brain:
Why Icarus?
As a young man, classical mythology had been a common focus of his interests alongside mysteries and science fiction, and the story of Icarus' disastrous flight from Crete had managed to find a particular place in his psyche; however, it hadn't been until the construction of the portal that the tale had begun to spiral into thematic fascination. Most of it had never made it into his journals, in part because most of it was just daydreams and delusions scarcely worth mentioning; in fact, it might have gone completely unrecorded if Fiddleford hadn't happened to notice the winged figures that Ford had been scrawling on the walls in his sleep, and tried to use the story in an attempt to get through to him when-
Ford sighed and downed his ninth shot of hooch. Now he knew how Fiddleford felt: he didn't want to remember anything of those terrible arguments, or the ghastly downfall that had followed. He didn't want to remember triumphantly writing if Icarus could see me now, convinced he'd done something worthwhile.
But why had Icarus fascinated him?
Why had Ford gotten so fixated on the character when the only thing he was known for was a) failing to follow instructions and b) dying? In his daydreams, he swung wildly between envisioning himself as Icarus and outdoing him, but why had the idea gripped him so thoroughly?
Why not, for example, Daedalus?
Envisioning himself the legendary inventor should have been so much easier: after all, he'd created the wings in the first place; he'd had a hand in the creation of the Minotaur; he'd designed the labyrinth used to imprison the beast, and (in some versions of the story) aided Theseus in defeating the monster. He'd even survived the escape from Crete. So why not Daedalus?
The more Ford thought about it, the only answer that made sense was this: he was a sucker for doomed moral victors – or what he believed to be doomed moral victors; Icarus had done what Daedalus had not dared to do, and even though it had killed him, he'd still died pushing back the boundaries of what was possible. The idea fascinated him beyond measure… perhaps because he'd dreamed of doing the same thing, because the idea of dying in the pursuit of scientific knowledge had seemed noble – even desirable.
God only knew he'd been grappling with the idea in the darker days of his research into Gravity Falls, when he'd hit that terrible dead end and had no further to go before Bill had replied to his summons. His failure to get any further had gnawed at him, left him crushed with despair and self-loathing so intense he couldn't even bring himself to write about it. Even after Bill had sunk his talons into him, the idea had only grown more fascinating– in part because Bill had been all too happy to encourage his self-destructive thoughts; in hindsight, it was obvious that the triangular trickster found the spiral into madness absurdly funny.
In one especially grim fantasy from around that time, Ford had imagined completing his great work, making a name for himself in the scientific community, and then... just vanishing.
The booze stirred up a few carefully-forgotten memories, and Ford recalled that one night alone in his lab, after almost fifty-three straight hours without sleep, he had found himself reasoning that fame might have its joys, but scientific stardom never lasted. Sooner or later, he'd have fallen from grace – into poverty, into failure, into disfavour, into compromise – and after that, he'd be nothing but an embarrassment, a freak, a scientific curiosity in and of himself. After all, all he needed to do was look at some of the titans of research and discovery to see how far one could fall:
Nikola Tesla died alone, impoverished and overshadowed, a laughingstock to all.
Alan Turing was branded a criminal and ended up committing suicide.
Antoine Lavoisier had fallen victim to the revolution, executed by a republic that "had no need of scientists."
Even the great Albert Einstein himself had fallen in his own terrible way: he'd sacrificed his principles to encourage the development of nuclear weaponry, a decision that he regretted for the rest of his life and spent his remaining years trying to make amends – amends that the powers that be had ignored.
Wouldn't it be so much better, he'd reasoned madly, to go out in a blaze of glory? Wouldn't it be worth it to at once outdo Icarus and meet the same fate?
Back in the present, Ford took another shot of hooch and groaned in disgust at his past stupidity. Were you really that crazed by that time, Stanford? He asked himself. Were you really considering suicide, or had you been under Bill's thumb for so long you were unable to recognize reality? Lord only knows you'd forgotten the thrill of discovery by then. You'd probably forgotten all the stories of scientists who didn't meet unhappy ends as well.
He sighed. All things considered, his brain wasn't exactly the healthiest place in the world.
Still, romanticising Icarus at least made some sense.
After all, who in their right mind would want to be Daedalus?
Daedalus was a prick, a miserable old whore who'd cosy up to any dictator willing to provide him with patronage, and arguably his most famous creation had only been used in the propagation of human suffering and death. Besides, it wasn't as if he lived a happy life, was it? He was forced to flee his homeland, he'd been imprisoned by Minos, his son died in the escape from Crete… and of course, in the act that had forced him to leave Athens to begin with, he'd murdered his nephew-
Ford's heart froze inside his chest.
He'd murdered his nephew.
His eyes very slowly strayed to the dome above him, and the barely-visible fresco of Icarus falling from the sky. Almost robotically, his hand strayed to the flashlight in his pocket; flicking it on, he shone it up into the shadows obscuring the fresco, allowing the beam to reveal the punchline of Bill Cipher's sick little joke. Here was Icarus falling from on high, yes, but far above him was another winged figure – a man whose all-too familiar face had stared back at him from the mirror in loathing and disgust for far longer than he cared to remember.
So in the end, I am Daedalus after all.
Ford leaned back against the rotunda wall and burst out laughing; he laughed long and hard and mirthlessly until his throat was rasped raw by the force of his own demented guffawing, until his lungs threatened to burst.
And then, in the silence that followed, he started to cry.
Not long after, the screaming began, a long drawn-out procession of agonized wails from somewhere just beyond the reach of the Labyrinth entrance. Even from here, even with ten shots of rotgut quietly dissolving his brain cells, there was no mistaking Dipper's voice.
"Oh no no no no no no no no…"
Bill was torturing him again: he'd recorded Dipper's screams, had saved them up for the moment when Ford had discovered the punch line, and was now projecting them at him in a vast wave of agonizing sound.
"No, no, please no…"
Getting to his feet, Ford ran for the door, hoping against hope that he could escape the screaming. No such luck: even once he was out in the corridor and hurtling towards the crossroads, the mind-tenderizing noise still hammered down on him.
"Stop, stop, stop, I'll do anything…"
It was following him now, he was sure of it: it echoed down the passageways, it tore at his ears when he tried to find shelter from it in the forest, and seeking shelter beneath the lake didn't dampen the sound at all. On and on it went, an unrelenting barrage of screams and sobs assaulting him from all sides, pummelling him with such fury that he swore his ears bled.
"Leave me alone!"
In desperation, he ran for the Labyrinth, hoping to find some refuge from the stimuli there – if only because his senses would be so clouded with illusions he wouldn't be able to hear the screams. But for once, a massive iron gate barred the way, forcing Ford to return to the rotunda.
For twelve straight minutes, he stood in the rotunda, trying vainly to shut out the noise, but no matter how tightly he covered his ears, the sound refused to relent: it was being projected telepathically, he realized, beamed directly into his head without interfacing with any of his senses along the way. Even if he punctured his eardrums, he'd still hear it.
Eventually, his composure snapped.
"STOP IT!" he howled at last. "STOP IT NOW! STOP THE NOISE!"
And to his astonishment, the screaming abruptly fell silent.
Ford very slowly looked down and realized that he was standing right under the dome – at the very place where Bill had told him to announce his wishes.
"…Whoops," he muttered.
And then the first surge of Weirdness tore into him.
Several hours later, Ford groaned and opened his eyes.
An entire universe of dazzling lights and colours beyond human comprehension stared back at him, blinding in intensity, searing his brain with its indescribable beauty and incomparable horror: multihued flames formed the shapes of columns and lintels and arches and domes and so much miraculous architecture, and ice danced in glassy prisms to form an exoskeleton of impenetrable matter around it. Beyond it, lightning crackled through infinity, infusing the flame-forged world and a million other worlds alike it with power beyond imagining: the power to form illusions, to shape probability, to extend time, to warp reality. And beyond the thundering storm, beyond the stars, beyond the vast glowing lights that were other realities, gargantuan shapes roamed the void between the myriad points of illumination like whales roaming the open ocean… and at the head of the swarm hovered a familiar triangular figure, laughing loud enough to ripple the fabric of the world around him.
Vision stinging from the intensity of the experience, Ford closed his eyes, wondering if he'd finally gone insane and started hallucinating. But when he opened them again, he found that the colours and lights had gone.
Confused, he focussed on the point on the ceiling he'd been staring at for the last few seconds – and suddenly the vision of coruscating lights reappeared before him. By now extremely curious, he concentrated on the spectacle once again, willing it away; then as soon as it vanished, he summoned it back with another flicker of concentration.
The wish he'd made had changed him, Ford realized, had altered his ability to perceive the world around him. He longer saw the world in the simple spectrum of the visible and tangible: now, with an effort of will, he could see the energies that oozed and pulsed beneath the surface of reality. He could see what might be other pocket realities created by Bill. He could even see Bill himself if focussed for long enough. And he could…
Ford's eyes widened.
He could see Weirdness. He could see Bill's control over the world, he could see the strings the almighty puppeteer used to manipulate reality… but he couldn't grasp them. He couldn't control them.
Yet.
Suddenly alive with enthusiasm, he hurried over to the centre of the rotunda, ready to announce another wish, ready to infuse himself with another dose of the power and insight this place had given him…
And then he remembered: all this vision, all this wonder had only come about because he'd fallen into Bill's trap … and now by the changes the dome had made to his body, it was fully capable of luring him back into the jaws of the trap. Embarrassed and ashamed, he stumbled away, hastily smothering any further ripples of temptation as he did so.
And then he saw it – only a flickering, barely-visible phantasm to human eyes, but to Weirdness-vision, it was a beacon, a burning bush, a star blossoming in the gloom.
It was a letter.
Fearing that it might be another note from Bill, Ford briefly considered tearing it up. Eventually, however, curiosity won out over dread, and he unfolded the letter to read the hastily-scrawled message inside.
Dear Ford, it read.
You don't know me – you've never met me, but you've heard tell of me. Bill's keeping a tight leash on the rules of reality in your neck of the woods, and it's taking all the power I can safely exert just to stop this letter from vanishing, so please read quickly.
Do not let despair overtake you: remember that Bill is a liar and remember that death is no obstacle to him. He will not do away with his playthings so readily, nor will he ever believe that they can overcome him – and in this lies his weakness.
Do not let Bill crush your spirit with visions of past failings or talk of how much the world hates you: you've made mistakes, yes, but it's not too late to make amends; Fiddleford forgave you, and so should you. You must remain resolute. Save those who have saved you before, but don't play at heroism: this is not a battle you can win alone. Share the burden, and you will be saved.
I can't help you immediately: thanks to Bill's tinkering, there are limits to my powers on this plane of reality, limits I cannot overcome without help. I can nudge things in your favour, but you have to be ready to take advantage of what little I can alter: there will be a door. Continue your attempts to escape; traverse the Labyrinth; endure the nightmares… and you will find absolution in a dream and allies in the "real." If it sounds like I'm talking in riddles, it's because I am – Bill is always watching, and I can't afford to give him too much information if he decides to take notice. So for now, you're on your own.
Be patient.
Be ready.
Be Weird.
Wishing you the best of luck.
Mr A
And then the letter was gone, dissolving away into phantasmal shards of unreality.
Ford took a deep breath…
…then, almost on reflex, began the long slow march towards the waiting gates of the Labyrinth.
After all, what else was there to do?
A/N: The soundtrack choice for this chapter is The Nature Of Daylight by Max Richter.
Up next, Stanley's game!