A/N: Aaaaaaaargh! I'm back! I'm barely conscious, but I'm back! Sorry for the delay, everyone: last month might just have been the busiest January I've ever endured - everything from holidays with transportation snafus to computers dying and being replaced. I thank you all for viewing, reviewing, favouriting and following and messaging, and I can only try to keep myself to a tighter schedule - because you, ladies and gentlemen, are worth it!
Northgalus2002: Thanks for your well-wishes; I hope you enjoy this latest chapter... and I can confidently say that you were bang on the money with the first two guesses!
Kraven the Hunter: Correct on the last guess! "Melted with a blowtorch" - I like that! And to answer your question, even as a doll, Pacifica still has a mind - enough to be measured by the supernatural equivalent of an EEG. You're right, I do pick weird days to post my morbid content. I suppose the Secret World's been a very unhealthy influence on me, but that's another story for another time. I hope you enjoy the chapter!
Guest: Again, she doesn't have a heart or lungs, but she does have enough of a working brain to show up on an EEG. Yes, good things happen when Bill's distracted - but be warned, things are going to get worse before they get better. Oh, and you were bang on the money with your first guess... although that wasn't quite what a meant when I referred to sleep, but there you go. Meanwhile, yeah, Preston is pretty much broken, and it's going to be interesting to further his character in that vein. Anyway, I hope this chapter is worth the wait, and I look forward to reading your wonderful reviews!
FantasyFan223: Well, Soos is out as well, don't forget. Also, here's another important thing: other than her role in the Zodiac, Bill had almost no dealings with Pacifica before Weirdmageddon went global, so he doesn't really understand her; even the punishment was enacted primarily upon the Northwests as a family rather than Pacifica as an individual. So, he acts to a more general theme, overlooking her crush on Dipper and banking on the instability at the heart of the family to encourage corruption. However, he didn't count on Pacifica learning the very un-Northwest-like virtues of mercy and empathy. As for what's up next... well, you were right about Dipper and Wendy. I'm so sorry, but the two are only going to suffer further for a bit! Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews, and I hope the chapter lives up to expectations.
: Thank you so much for the review; I'm glad you like the story so far, and I hope the delay didn't give you any worries!
MysticFire348: I'll do my best to keep you appraised of what's going on - of course, it's going to be tricky because Bill's games are indeed very timey-wimey: he's got so many parallel pocket dimensions going on at different time rates it might be impossible... but there will be a good indication of how long the overall time period has been. I'll include a PREVIOUSLY ON tagline for good measure, just to see what people think. Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter, and I hope the wait hasn't been too arduous.
OMAC001: Yes indeed; thanks for reviewing!
LoyalTheorist: Just wait and see... (Maniacal Laughter)
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to furnish me with your comments, critiques, and criticisms - especially of the typoes that creep in at three in the morning. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
PREVIOUSLY ON ALL THE WORLD'S A TOYBOX: AFTER AN ENCOUNTER WITH NYARLATHOTEP AND THE FILTH AT FORT ACHERON, DIPPER AND WENDY WERE REUNITED, AND NOW BILL HAS A GAME FOR TWO PLAYERS.
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, and neither are all the crossover elements. Or those song titles, obviously.
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Somewhere on the outer reaches of a landscape as alien as the surface of the moon and as unforgiving as the South Pole, deep within a stone burrow just large enough to offer shelter from the bitter elements beyond the cavern's jaws, two figures huddled around a paltry campfire.
Outside the cavern, rain poured down across the otherworldly clifftops, sending rivers of icy water gushing across the unnatural shapes of the peaks and mesas that dotted the horizon; lightning tore across the tarry black clouds, searing eyes, shattering rock and reducing the few paltry trees to ashes; and in the distance, the sonorous thud of hailstones rang out across the mountain range as fist-sized chunks of ice hammered mercilessly against the stone, a blatant death threat to anyone brave or stupid enough to travel across open country in such weather. And yet, this was by far the most normal weather the two wanderers had seen here since they'd first arrived here.
Within the cave, all was at peace – a brittle, barely-functional sort of peace, but peace nonetheless. By now, the two figures had realized that they weren't going anywhere in a hurry, and had come to terms with the fact as best as they could… in the sense that they hadn't come to terms with it at all. Creeping damp, sickness, harsh weather, dwindling supplies, roaming packs of hungry monsters and increasingly limited opportunities for safe hunting or foraging had taken its toll on the wanderers, and the prospect of being trapped for another week in this torturous mountain range was slowly driving away what little sanity remained to them.
Possessions and equipment were limited: between the two of them, they had one knife, a whetstone, a dog-eared journal that never seemed to run out pages, a pen, a pencil, a handful of bandages, a tube of antiseptic ointment, four blankets, a length of rope, a bundle of barely-suitable firewood from across the mountains, and two large buckets (one for collecting water, the other for waste disposal – and thankfully, nobody had gotten them mixed up yet).
Of the two residents, only one was still healthy enough to leave the cavern in fairer weather: she'd only just awoken from the haunted slumber she spent most of her free time languishing in, and was busy sharpening her knife in readiness for the next hunt. Every now and again, she'd look from her knife to the cave entrance with an expectant, almost desperate look in her bloodshot eyes; she and her companion hadn't eaten in two days and what little provisions they'd brought here had long since run dry, but unfortunately the weather outside made hunting practically suicidal – and her matted red hair was still dripping wet from her last attempt at venturing out into the deluge. For now, she could only sit tight and wait.
At present, her slender build was still fit and muscular enough to support her infrequent hunts, but nobody could mistake the early signs of starvation: her cheekbones and chin seemed to jut harshly from her face, the result of skin being drawn tight across bones as her body slowly exhausted its fuel reserves and began eating itself alive.
Her companion lay in a shivering heap on the opposite side of the campfire, too weak to rise from his makeshift bed. Already short and skinny at the best of times, starvation had left him a shrunken husk of a person almost lost amidst the blankets that shrouded him, and fever had taken what little of his strength remained. Unfortunately, nothing even vaguely medicinal could be found in the surrounding mountain range, and so there'd been little to do except keep him comfortable until the illness had passed; doubly unfortunately, this strategy hadn't been all that successful, and the lack of food didn't help. Whimpering, delirious and barely conscious, he could only lie there as the hours ticked by, beads of ice-cold sweat clustered across his pallid forehead, trembling hands reaching out for things that existed only in his fever-ravaged imagination…
…or for the dog-eared journal that still sat neglected by his bedside.
Occasionally, he would groan and suddenly change shape, his body shifting and warping into a new form beneath his tattered blankets. Over the course of the last few days, he'd been an elephant, a dolphin, a mouse, an inflatable beach ball, a flock of birds, a gnome, a capybara, a pack of tarot cards, a Manotaur, and a succession of familiar individuals from Gravity Falls – to name but a few. Sadly, most of these shapes were just as feverish and starved as his original, so they weren't much help to either of the two, but by now the transformations were accepted as a sign that he was still a good distance from death's door.
For now.
Outside, the rumble of thunder began to soften, and the nerve-grinding patter of rain on the rocks bordering the mouth of the cavern suddenly dwindled to a gentle drizzle. Slowly, the more upright of the two companions crept to the edge of the cave and peered out into the cold night air; by all appearances, the storm had finally died down. By now, she knew appearances could be deceiving… but she wasn't prepared to let an opportunity pass her by.
Creeping over to her sleeping friend's side, she shook him gently, and whispered "I'm going out for couple of hours, Dipper. This is the best chance I'll get to find food. I'll be back soon, I promise… and don't follow me this time, okay?"
If Dipper had heard her, he gave no indication; he let out a pained moan, shifted wildly from human to opossum and back again, and then collapsed back into the pillows, whimpering incoherently. However, had anyone been listening closely to the stream of nonsensical babble, they might have perceived a few real words: "Mabel… Mabel, I'm sorry, I… wait for me, Mabel… come back…"
Wendy shook her head, gently tucking Dipper's blankets up to his chin; for a moment, she tried to think of something reassuring to say, something that might make them both feel better about the odds stacked against them. Of course, nothing sprung to mind: after all, Dipper was going to spend the next hour alone, deathly ill and too weak to run if something found the cave, and Wendy was going to spend it risking life and limb in search of food that might not even be there. So without a word, she made straight for the cavern entrance, scuttled out into the icy rain and across the slippery outcropping – headed straight for the only viable hunting ground left in the mountains.
Back in the cave, Dipper shivered as a fresh gust of cold wind rippled across him, bypassing the blankets and chilling him right to the bone. Briefly jarred free of his feverish sleep, his eyes fluttered as he gradually made the long, stumbling journey back to full consciousness: naturally, he didn't make it all the way, and Dipper was left barely awake enough to realize he was alone and in pain, but other than that, he was more awake than he'd been in days.
And in that very moment, Bill Cipher began to sing.
Bill's voice sounded from all angles at once, assaulting Dipper with a torturous caterwauling so atonal and mawkish that it wouldn't have even made it as far as the average reality TV show: this was more than just bad singing; this was sonic terrorism. From somewhere beyond reality, a band of Henchmaniacs accompanied him as loudly as possible, thundering away on eldritch musical instruments custom-designed to mangle any given tune to within an inch of its life, and occasionally providing backing vocals in voices that probably would have made Dipper's ears bleed if he wasn't so busy shapeshifting.
And the song of choice was Just Walking In The Rain.
Dipper groaned and did his best to cover his ears. The last few nights, it had been all been about rain: Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, Rainy Day, Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, and inevitably, Singin' In The Rain. Song after song after godawful song about rain resounding across the clifftops and echoing about the caves loudly enough to burst Dipper's eardrums, and if this particular act of musical torture was anything like the last seven, Wendy could probably hear it just as easily as Dipper could.
Oh well, he thought. At least it's not "Rain, Rain, Go Away" again.
His stomach lurched unpleasantly as the fever slowly reasserted itself, and he barely had enough time to lean out of his makeshift bed before throwing up. For a moment, he could only kneel there, coughing weakly as he shifted wildly from human to kitten to walrus to human again. Then, as Bill's torturous song echoed onwards, Dipper sank backwards into his pillows and lapsed swiftly into unconsciousness – and all the nightmares that came with it.
How had they found themselves here, in this pothole in the fabric of reality?
And what had happened to that lucky streak that had suddenly appeared at Fort Acheron?
For a little while at least, everything had been going so well: Dipper had enjoyed a quality meal for the first time in weeks, he'd earned a brief respite from all the shapeshifting, Mr Carter had given him just a little time out of Bill Cipher's all-seeing eye, and he'd learned that someone – this mysterious Mr A – was helping him from behind the scenes. He'd even run into Wendy! After weeks on end spent travelling alone, he was teamed up with Wendy again. What could possibly spoil that luck?
Well, Bill hadn't been happy.
He really hadn't taken kindly to Dipper's sudden disappearing act: whatever Mr Carter had done to hide him, it had obviously been a serious annoyance to the psychopathic corn chip, even if it hadn't lasted for much longer than half an hour or so. And if there was anything Dipper had learned anything in the last couple of days, Bill Cipher really didn't like to be annoyed.
As soon as Dipper had "reappeared," Bill threw a temper-tantrum, demanding to know where he'd gone to and what he'd been doing in that time. Naturally, he'd done his best to get Dipper to talk, from nearly drowning him under a small tsunami of mud, to the good old-fashioned ten thousand volts to the bare feet. But to Dipper's surprise, he'd somehow managed to keep silent; in fact, the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Mr Carter had done something that kept Dipper from revealing what had happened. Certainly, every time he came close to caving in, he found himself thinking of that thing Carter had transformed into, and any thoughts of surrender abruptly blanked out in sheer terror.
Whatever the case, Bill had eventually gotten bored and decided that whatever had happened, Dipper hadn't been in on it. So, he continued playing, this time with his two playthings united as a team. Unfortunately, he was still grouchy over the disappearance. As such, he took immediate revenge on the two of them by summoning a rainstorm and having it pour down on them for the next seventeen hours. With nothing but barren plains for the next few miles, the rain in itself would have been bad enough, but Bill had felt the need to add live leeches to the mix.
After that, he'd amped up the weather, slowly herding them down the path and out of reality. If he'd noticed what was going on at Fort Acheron, he either didn't notice or just didn't care; perhaps he was too busy trying to figure out how Dipper had evaded his sight, maybe he was having too much fun setting up the next stage of the torture. Whatever the case, he just sheep-dogged them along to the next pocket dimension and, from the looks of things, forgot all about the world before.
For seven and a half days, Dipper and Wendy had been chased across a seemingly endless stretch of Bill's hellish playground, from the monumental ruins of human cities laid waste by the Henchmaniacs to nightmare landscapes that could never have existed in reality. And along the way, they'd been hounded by all the horrors the crazy nacho could throw at them: giant spiders mounted on locust wings was a popular option, along with fast-moving acidic gel moulds, skyscraper-sized hybrids of human being and coffee shop, armies of carnivorous bowling pins herding sentient bowling balls the size of semitrailers, ambulatory tombstones, lakes of liquid cacti that moved to swamp them with waves of deadly spines as they tried to cross, piranha-ladybird swarms deeper than snowdrifts, parasitic golf tees infesting the bodies of helpless Liliputtians, zombie werewolves (or possibly werewolf zombies, Dipper still couldn't be sure), and demented lightning-people that dropped from the clouds stinking of ozone to electrocute passers-by with their crackling, tendril-like fingers.
Naturally, Wendy had fared the best on this mad journey: from what little she'd been able to tell Dipper between ambushes, she'd been up against the worst of the wasteland for weeks and knew the ropes by now, particularly when it came to finding food and unlikely sleeping places. Best of all, she seemed to instinctively recognize when it was best to fight their attackers and when it was better to just keep running – and just as well, because Bill preferred to keep the odds firmly stacked against them over the course of that hellish week. In every single encounter, Wendy took charge, either grabbing Dipper by the hand and sprinting over the horizon like a steroidal gazelle, or drawing a knife and launching herself at the nearest monster with a berserker roar.
As for Dipper himself… well, if anything, Dipper was less than useless that week.
In a way, it wasn't all that surprising: after all, he was still uncontrollably shapeshifting, and most of the forms he took were unsuited to combat at best – and on the rare occasions when they were halfway useful, he was already shifting on to the next form before he could even get within clawing distance of the enemy. More often than not, Dipper spent these battles wobbling impotently around on the sidelines, shifting wildly between bedside table, blobfish, and a pile of leaves while Wendy took on the entire pack of monsters by herself. Of course, Dipper knew full well that Wendy was a thousand times faster and stronger than he'd ever be, but it was hard not to feel like an idiot, watching her darting around the enemy with all the speed and agility her years of training had granted her while he himself could only sit there like a beached whale.
But as embarrassing as battles like these were, it could always get worse: far more emasculating were the moments where Dipper's shapeshifting left him in a form that wasn't merely useless, but pathetic. More than one frantic dash across the silver glaciers was delayed by a sudden transformation into a mouse, and thanks to the mirrored walls surrounding him, Dipper knew all too well just how ridiculous he looked as his ears expanded, his nose jutted outwards and his body shrank down into his increasingly baggy clothes. At times like these, Wendy had no option but to pick Dipper up and hastily stuff him into one of her pockets, resulting in further embarrassments when he finally changed back.
In the end, it was just as well that – no matter how far away he left them or how badly they were damaged – Dipper's clothes always somehow grew back once he returned to human form, otherwise the situation might have been even more mortifying.
Eventually, Bill had herded the two of them into a realm of gargantuan mountains and horizon-spanning plateaus, broken only by valleys of razor-sharp rocks and sickly-grey lakes. Bit by bit, he'd sheepdogged Dipper and Wendy through the mountain passes, across the yawning chasms, and sometimes even to the very summits of the mountains, until finally they found the cave.
For a time, they'd holed up there, believing they were being set up for some kind of last stand; but when the inevitable death squad of monsters hadn't shown up, they'd decided to stay there and recover from the last few days of panic. Wendy hunted for food, Dipper foraged for edible lichens and fungi, and they both patched up the many cuts and bruises they'd acquired along the way. They were always busy, but never exhaustingly so: in fact, they did so well over the first couple of days that Dipper was actually able to complete an entire chapter of his journal.
Eventually, they recovered enough to decide their next course of action. The plan – or the ersatz bargain-basement substitute for one they'd stitched together at short notice – was to gather as many supplies before making their next move. They hadn't been able to detail much of this particular strategy, given that Bill was still listening, but through slang, innuendo and outright code, they'd decided that once they were ready to move on, they would try to find the rest of the Zodiac as Bill had challenged Dipper to do and form the Wheel again.
"Somehow, I don't think it's gonna be as simple as that, dude," Wendy had muttered disconsolately.
In spite of himself, Dipper had offered a reassuring smile – one only slightly spoiled by the fact that he was busily transforming into a hippo at the time. "I found you, didn't I?" he said. "That's a start. Who knows? Maybe we'll find Mabel next."
Of course, he didn't really believe a word of this overly-hopeful spin. After all, he didn't know if Mr A and Mr Carter were ever going to contact him again, how they could help him, or even if they were real. In the end, as much as he missed Mabel, Soos, Grunkle Stan, Pacifica and Grunkle Ford, he was just glad he wasn't alone anymore.
At least we have each other, he'd thought.
And that was where it had all gone horribly wrong. To be fair, "horribly wrong" was more or less the default state of the entire planet, so if anything, this qualified as merely "worse than usual." First came the famine: three days into their mountaintop exile, the best game suddenly scurried off to more remote areas, forcing Wendy to travel for days in search of decent prey. Even the fungi didn't seem interested in sticking around. In the end, they were forced to make do with what they could catch within an hour's walk – most of which consisted of bugs, rats, or if they were really lucky, one of the giant tapeworms that haunted the upper valleys. For a while, Dipper had been around to lend a hand on the daily hunt, if only to help gather up the bodies. But then the weather took a turn for the vicious, and suddenly their plans for leaving the mountains had gone straight out the window, taking any future hunting expeditions with them.
From then on, Wendy had insisted on hunting alone. Hunting outdoors in the increasingly unpredictable weather was simply too dangerous for anyone but her – or so she argued. Dipper had tried to convince her that he could still help out, but less than three minutes outside on the slippery cliffs had proved him immediately wrong.
"You see?" Wendy had grumbled, as she'd hauled Dipper away from the edge of the crevasse. "I can't look after you out there, Dipper: I need to concentrate on hunting and surviving, and with you transforming all the time…" She'd sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, dude, but I've got to handle this myself. It's the only way we can scrape up dinner and both stay alive."
"Well, maybe when the weather clears up-"
"It won't clear up, Dipper! This is Bill's world, remember? It'll storm as long as he feels like it, and the famine will last as long as he wants! He'll make sure everything stays as crappy as possible, and it'll never let up as long as we're still alive. If you go hunting with me, you'll only get hurt, killed or worse, because that's exactly the way Bill would want it – and because I can't keep an eye on you all the time. I need a hunting partner who can fend for himself, and I don't want you getting hurt!"
Wendy had taken a deep breath, and in that moment, Dipper had found himself asking, "What do you mean 'worse?' I mean, I can think of a few things, but how do you know-"
"That's none of your damn business!" Wendy roared.
For the next minute and a half, there'd been silence in the cave, as she struggled to regain her composure. Eventually, she managed to calm down just enough to continue: "It's Bill's world, Dipper. Never forget that: staying alive is the best we can do out here."
Needless to say, it hadn't taken Dipper long to realize that Wendy had changed a lot since he'd last seen her back in the Fearamid, and it was a little bit perplexing given how little things had changed since then. Back in the early days of Weirdmageddon, she'd eked out a hard living for herself in the ruins of Gravity Falls with only her hatchet and crossbow to rely on, and she'd still been the same laid-back, effortlessly confident girl that Dipper had fallen for – setting traps, killing bats, dodging monsters and giving Dipper the encouragement he needed to carry on.
These days, though, Wendy wasn't so laid-back anymore, and she didn't seem all that confident either: the calm smile, the easy banter, the adventurousness, the optimism… it had all vanished. Gone was the girl who'd casually thrown Dipper the keys to the golf cart and told him not to hit any pedestrians; in her place was a twitchy, hollow-eyed woman who slept with a knife under her pillow and spent most of her days glancing over one shoulder, unable to trust Dipper with anything beyond staying put. Bill's game had clearly changed her, but it was impossible to guess what he'd done to her in the days before they'd met again, and Wendy herself flew into a rage if Dipper even tried to ask about it.
Whatever had happened, nothing could change Wendy's mind: every evening, if the weather allowed it, she went hunting and Dipper was left behind to write journal entries, tend the fire, and let the next wave of transformations swamp him.
And since Dipper was officially grounded in the cave, Bill once again took complete control of his transformations.
The forms were nastier now: if Dipper became an animal, he'd be lucky if he could get away with being a cockroach. If he became an object, he was a living blob of taffy stretched between the walls of the cave, or a stone on the cave floor – blind, deaf and immobile, buried alive inside himself and waiting for Bill to return him to normal.
In the end, was it any surprise that Bill had eventually made Dipper sick?
Was it really such a shock that he'd had remade the shapeshifting into a crippling fever? After all, he wouldn't want to give Dipper a power that would actually be useful, not when there was so much more suffering to squeeze out of him.
And then, just when he was starting to think that things couldn't possibly get any worse, the music had started: jazz, swing, classic rock-and-roll, even modern songs by Sev'ral Timez. And frankly, it wasn't even the style of the music that bothered him so much as the fact that Bill was determined to make every single tune as loud and obnoxious as possible. Plus, he had a frustrating tendency to pick songs appropriate to the situation – or inappropriate as the case may be.
Frankly, Dipper could have done without all the crappy love songs that started up every time he tried to start a friendly conversation with Wendy.
Back in the present, Dipper turned over in his not-quite-sleep, stomach churning and mind bubbling deliriously as he tried to think of what to do next. So far, nothing came to mind. After all, what could he do?
So he simply lay still and let the transformations continue as he slowly lapsed back into true unconsciousness.
But no transformations came.
Wow, I've been in this form a long time, he thought dimly, as the world went blank. I wonder if that means something or… if I'm just… dreaming…
Scant miles away from the cave, Wendy had officially exhausted her hard-won reserves of cool, and was ready to start cursing at the top of her voice.
So far, she'd had no luck in finding food: the rodents had long since retreated to various underground burrows, and the endless rain had finally driven away the giant maggots and leeches that frequented the pools of still water. As for the traps she'd set up on her last visit, almost every single one was either empty or destroyed; the one exception had been left alone too long, and the wild rabbit it had ensnared was by now too decomposed to be even remotely edible.
Shame, too. After over a month of living off rats and bugs, a plump, juicy rabbit would have been a welcome change. Granted, it would have been better with ketchup and mustard. Maybe a sesame seed bun. Some fries on the side wouldn't hurt, either. Ice cream for dessert might actually make the madness of the last few weeks worthwhile. Of course, in the meantime Wendy still had to live in reality, and she had to find food for her and Dipper before the weather got any worse, or else they'd starve.
In the meantime, she still had to deal with the predators that occasionally spilled forth from Bill's nightmare world to roam the mountaintops in search of prey. They didn't appear often, but there was no way of predicting where and when they'd show up, and the tamer ones usually did so armoured with impenetrable carapaces and bristling with venom-dripping spines. For good measure, they were completely inedible – as Wendy herself had found out the hard way after thirteen straight hours of convulsions and vomiting.
And of course, Bill was only making a relatively simple hunt a thousand times more difficult through all the goddamn singing.
I swear, she thought, if I have to listen to another five minutes of Wives And Lovers on my way back to the cave, I will find a way to make that hovering corn chip eat his own eyeball, even if it means carving a new mouth for the sadistic bastard.
Sighing, Wendy paused under a narrow ledge of rock and absently wrung a small ocean of grimy water out of her hair. Not for the first time, she wished she still had her hat – or anything that might have kept the rain off her, really – but the lumberjack's deerstalker had gone the way of disco and dodos. So, for the time being, a flannel headband was the best she could hope for.
And then she saw it.
Just across from her, sheltered by a shallow cavity in the rock wall, was the gory remains of a dead deer. Given the mess, it was hard to say what had killed it, but judging by the long-dried blood trail, it probably wasn't natural causes. Local predators had taken several bites out of the animal's belly before Bill's monsters had forced them to move on, and a few stubborn carrion birds were busy pecking at its exposed innards. And to Wendy's sheer relief, the body was still edible; true, this mangled carcass probably wouldn't taste spectacular, and it wouldn't provide nearly as much meat as a whole deer… but it was still fit to eat.
Wendy took a deep breath, and realized with a fresh surge of embarrassment that she'd been drooling for the last few seconds.
Wiping her mouth clean, she all but flung herself at the corpse, waving away the carrion birds with her arms; pausing only to hastily trim the least-suitable bits from the deer's exposed entrails, she slung the carcass over her shoulder and set off on a brisk march for the road back to the cave.
And then, just as she was starting to feel almost optimistic for the first time in months, a distant voice called out, "Wendy?"
Wendy froze. The voice was muffled by the rain and warped by distance, but there was no mistaking the familiar, boisterous tone.
"Oh Wendy?" Dad called. "Where are you? Come on out! It's the perfect time for a hunt and your brothers are all here for a night of family fun!"
He laughed, Manly Dan Corduroy's distinctive, booming laughter echoing wildly across the cliffs and mesa, even the rest of the Corduroy kids joined in with shrieking cackles and blood-curdling guffaws of their own.
Trap, Wendy thought. It was a trap, and I fell for it. They taught me that at survival camp, Dad. They always told me a hungry animal's easier to catch…
"Why so shy, Wendy?" the thunderous bellow resounded. "We've brought an old friend of yours along!"
And as if by magic, an all-too-familiar figure began scuttling across the mountainside on the other side of the gorge just across from her previous sheltering spot. Clearly visible through the rock formations that she'd been leaning against scant moments ago, a ghastly white body mounted on four arachnid legs crept back and forth, scanning the area for prey; even from here, she could clearly recognize the misshapen form, the pallid grublike skin, the blob of flesh and muscle where the left arm should have been, the withered skeletal right arm, the insectoid mouthparts, and the bulbous crimson eyes.
The Shapeshifter was back.
Somehow, it had escaped the cryotube and the bunker, and now it was back for – what? Revenge? Food? Or was the damn thing just working for Bill now?
Just when you think the day can't get any worse…
Wendy took one last look at the distant figure of the Shapeshifting, just to make sure it hadn't seen her yet. Then, gripping the dear carcass as tightly as she could, she put her head down and ran for her life. But even as she ran, she could already hear that deep, alien voice echoing after her.
"Run all you like!" the Shapeshifter cackled. "I'll find you sooner or later – and I guarantee you'll never know what hit you! And Dipper? Oh, I keep my promises, girl! He'll die screaming!"
It took far longer than necessary to get back to the cave: the downpour made the pathway across the cliffs almost too slippery to cross without risking a fatal fall, and the weight of the deer on her back on made her slower still; every now and again, she had to stop to check the area for any signs that the Shapeshifter or the possessed Corduroys were in pursuit, then erase any tracks she might have left for good measure.
But at long last, the cave entrance loomed ahead, the campfire within a beacon to Wendy's eyes. Staggering inside, she set down the deer, undressed as much as modesty would allow, and wrapped herself up in a blanket. Just to cut down on the chances of hypothermia, she sat by the fire for a moment, stoking the flames and adding a log or two where necessary – until at last she was ready for the unwholesome business of skinning, gutting and cooking a semi-decomposed lump of venison.
But before she set to work on making dinner, she crept over to where Dipper lay sleeping, just to make sure he was alive and well. From what little she could see of him as she approached, he was still breathing, but he still had the fever to contend with. Hopefully, he'd be well enough to eat something, but-
Wendy let out a strangled gasp.
As expected, Dipper had transformed again. This time, however, he'd taken the form of someone very specific.
This time, it was her youngest brother who lay sleeping on the cavern floor.
Angus Corduroy. Little Gus, short, wiry and perpetually undercut at the barbers', a hyperkinetic ball of energy with an insatiable enthusiasm for all things Corduroy and no patience to speak of; if Marcus had inherited Dad's bull-in-a-china-shop tendencies and Kevin had gotten his temper, Gus had wound up with Dad's excitability. God only knew it had made him the single loudest thing in the Corduroy home next to Dad himself, not to mention the most irritating; ever since Gus had learned to walk, he'd spent so much of the time running back and forth across the house that he just about qualified as a permanent tripping hazard by now – if not a localized cyclone on legs. He'd been the one that had put the finishing touches on Wendy's hard-won sense of cool; after all, even Mabel would have been worn out by Gus's hyperactive fits.
Except Gus wasn't all that hyperactive anymore. Lying there, pale and withered from starvation, his forehead beaded with sweat and his scrawny body curled into a foetal ball of pain, he looked so close to death that it took all of Wendy's willpower not to panic. The fever had him in its jaws now, and the teeth were sinking deeper every moment. He was even whimpering in his sleep, calling out "Wendy," over and over again – almost like a mantra.
For the briefest of moments, Wendy wanted to hug him. She wanted to tell him she was sorry for all the arguments she'd had with him, sorry for yelling at him, sorry for always being annoyed with him, sorry for every little misunderstanding and petty disagreement they'd shared.
But then reality came flooding back, and she remembered.
Gus wasn't really here. The real Gus was out in the wilderness with the rest of the Corduroys, playing host to a swarm of parasitic worms and slowly hunting Wendy down; the real Gus wanted her dead. And in his current state, Gus was as good as dead: there was no way to get those worms out, not without killing him, and with the world firmly under Bill's control, no doctor would ever be able to cure Gus or anyone else in the family.
The figure lying at her feet wasn't her brother at all.
It was Dipper, shapeshifting again – just another form out of thousands he'd taken.
And in that moment, Wendy hated Dipper more than anyone she'd ever known in her entire life.
At once, she knew that this didn't make any sense: Dipper couldn't control his shapeshifting any more than Wendy could control the weather, and even if he could somehow learn to control his transformations, he certainly couldn't do it now – not while he was feverish and bedridden. No, Dipper was blameless in all this. She knew that perfectly well; yes, she'd lost her temper with him once or twice in the last few days, but that was only because she'd needed so desperately to keep him from endangering his life. And besides, he was her friend – probably the only friend she had left.
Why would she ever have a reason to hate him?
Unfortunately, Wendy's paranoia chose that moment to start whispering. And how do you know he's really your friend? How do you know he's the real Dipper? For all you know, Shapeshifters hunt in pairs and this one's just waiting for the moment to rip your throat out.
Shut up, Wendy told herself. If he wanted me dead, he'd have killed me in my sleep by now. He's Dipper Pines, one of the few things that made this long summer worthwhile. He's my friend.
But what makes you think you're even friends anymore? What makes you think he's the same Dipper? You've seen how much people can change out in the wilderness. Remember the Auto Warriors who tried to rob you? All those refugees who turned on you the moment they realized the monsters were targeting you? More to the point, you've seen the things that Bill can do to people's minds: what if there's a swarm of worms in his brain as well? What if his time out in the wasteland's changed him? What if the fever's an act? What if he's doing this just to mess with your head?
What makes you think you can trust anyone out here?
Wendy couldn't answer any of those questions. All she could think of was her family, and how deeply she missed them… and that terrible, ice-cold stab of hatred in the back of her mind. Far away, Bill's musicians played a mocking refrain of I'm Making Believe, but Wendy couldn't hear a word of it: right then and there, she was deaf to everything but the whisper of her own paranoia.
Slowly, she crept to the edge of the cave, where the roar of the rain drowned out all but the loudest of noises, and sat with her back to the campfire.
She didn't want to see Gus's face vanish, as she knew it would sooner or later.
She didn't want Dipper to hear her crying.
It took three hours for Dipper to return to his true form, and by then, Wendy was certain that something was very wrong with her "friend."
Days went by, and Dipper's fever gradually dwindled.
Bit by bit, the lucid periods grew longer, the delirious spells shortened dramatically, and after a week, Dipper was finally able to get out of bed without puking. What with the limited food, his strength was slow to return, and often disrupted by random shapeshifts, but eventually he was able to walk unassisted.
Of course, Wendy still wouldn't let him leave the cave, but for once, Dipper wasn't complaining.
For he'd noticed something new about his condition. In the last three days, he'd been grounded and effectively motionless, so he should have been transforming uncontrollably every second of the day… and yet, he wasn't. Oh, sure, he was still shapeshifting, and every now and again his body would take a new form at random – a dog, a crow, an aardvark, a mahogany writing desk – but it didn't happen as often or as violently.
The one morning, he awoke to find his skin patterned with leopard spots and his hair replaced with a mane of black feathers. But it wasn't until he wished that he could be rid of them – and saw the patterns and plumage vanishing from his skin – that he realized that Bill Cipher was no longer completely in control of the transformations.
He didn't know how this could have happened: maybe the fever had changed the nature of Bill's curse, or perhaps it was all the weird magical phenomena had changed him after weeks of exposure. Whatever the case, the power was in Dipper's hands.
Slowly, Dipper was learning how to shapeshift – of his own free will.
At first, he could only rewind the transformations foisted upon him. Then, with an effort of will, he could gradually encourage parts of his body to change of their own accord, giving him cat paws in place of hands, for example. He wasn't quite able to change his entire body, but he was making progress – slowly but surely, he was making progress.
Unfortunately, his one attempt to demonstrate this in front of Wendy ended with a random transformation that he was too slow and too clumsy to rewind before it was too late.
As a result, Dipper found himself transforming into Wendy.
Worse still, the transformation immediately ruined his clothes, leaving his new form a little bit more exposed than anyone would have preferred. As if to add insult to mutual humiliation, Bill started singing again, this time croaking out Lovemaker, Lovebreaker until Dipper was able to change back.
In any case, Wendy did not take this particular development well: if she'd been short with him beforehand, now she barely seemed interested in sharping the same space with him for any length of time. She never said a harsh word to him, though, not unless provoked by some thoughtless remark or offensive topic of conversation… but she was angry with him; Dipper could tell by the way she dug her nails into her palms whenever they spoke.
True, some days were better than others: on good days, she might be friendly enough to exchange a few words, maybe even plan out the next step in their journey, but never actually discuss anything that wasn't strictly business; on bad days, she was barely capable of looking at him without a look of deepest suspicion forming on her face.
And the sad thing was, this newfound animosity didn't seem to be due to the embarrassment factor, or the fact that Dipper hadn't been doing a very good job at not taking in his new body while he still had it. If anything, the simple fact that he could control his shapeshifting at all seemed to aggravate Wendy beyond all reason, and the fact that he was getting better at it seemed to kick her growing distrust into overdrive. More than once, Dipper had caught her peering frantically through the mouth of the cave, as if she was looking for something out on the neighbouring mountain range – and then looking back at him, as if he was the threat she should be worrying about.
In any case, she seemed determined to spend as much time out in the hunting grounds as possible, so Dipper was left alone to study his growing powers in the privacy of the cave… and of course, contribute to his increasingly lengthy journal.
One afternoon, however, Dipper was busy jotting down the newest developments in his transformations, marvelling at the fact that he could create dozens of entries and still never run out of pages, when the almost-placid atmosphere of the cavern shifted. Then, without warning, the ink on Dipper's pen began to run and ooze horizontally across the paper, slowly forming letters entirely of its own accord, until a sentence had taken shape at the top of the page.
HAVING FUN, PINE TREE? It said.
"Bill?" Dipper whispered.
WHO ELSE COULD IT BE?
"But what… why are you talking to me like this?"
BECAUSE YOU MISSED ME. YOU MISSED HAVING A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED CHAT WITH YOUR LORD AND MASTER.
"Go to hell."
IT HURTS, DOESN'T IT? said the text. THE FACT THAT WENDY DOESN'T LOVE YOU. ALL THAT DEVOTION YOU SHOW TO HER AND SHE ONLY THINKS OF YOU AS A FRIEND. I COULD CHANGE THAT, OF COURSE.
Dipper's eyes shifted in the direction of the corner where Wendy still lay sleeping, and his fingers instinctively tightened around the spine of the book. "Leave me alone," he whispered.
AW, IT'S JUST SO CUTE WATCHING YOU PRETEND NOT TO BE HEARTBROKEN. I CAN MAKE HER CARE. I CAN MAKE YOU THE RIGHT AGE FOR HER… AND MAKE HER MIND PERFECT FOR YOU.
SHE'LL NEVER SAY NO TO YOU EVER AGAIN.
Dipper very nearly threw up. Even if he hadn't been screwed over by deals like these before, everything Bill had just communicated was nothing short of wrong. What would Bill do to her if Dipper said yes? Brainwash her? Replace her brain altogether – or worse? Everything about the idea conjured up something uglier in Dipper's imagination. No, he couldn't even think of agreements like this. Wendy had said she was happier just being friends with him, and if she was happy with it, he was happy with it.
ARE YOU STILL CONTENTING YOURSELF WITH ALL THAT "AT LEAST WE'RE STILL FRIENDS" CRAP? The text continued. RED DOESN'T EVEN LIKE YOU ANYMORE, KIDDO: ALL THE THINGS THAT KEPT HER FROM BEING ANNOYED WITH YOU ARE GONE. SHE HATES YOU THESE DAYS.
"That's not true!"
EVERYTIME SHE LOOKS AT YOU, SHE HAS TO SWALLOW ANOTHER MOUTHFUL OF BILE. YOU'VE HELD HER BACK, YOU'VE DISOBEYED HER ORDERS, YOU'VE BROUGHT FEAR INTO HER LIFE, YOU'VE RUBBED ALL HER LOSSES IN HER FACE, AND YOU'VE HUMILIATED HER. ALL LITTLE THINGS, BUT THEY ADD UP TO BIG ONES OVER TIME, AND YOU JUST KEEP BEING HATEFUL WITHOUT EVEN MEANING TO.
"Shut up!" Dipper almost screamed – but his heart wasn't in it, not really: somewhere in the back of his mind, a poisonous little voice was insisting that Bill was absolutely right, that Wendy really did hate him for all the stupid mistakes he'd made in the last week. And though Dipper tried to resist the idea, to remind himself that Wendy hadn't been herself since the start of Bill's latest game and that maybe she'd be better once they'd found time to recover, the runaway train of thought was almost impossible to stop.
BESIDES, SHE'S A SURVIVOR, PINE TREE; SHE CAN'T STAND BEING TIED DOWN TO SOMEONE SO HELPLESS.
"I'm not helpless," Dipper snarled, temper flaring violently. "I'm getting stronger. Every day, I'm a little better at shapeshifting. Soon, I'll be able to get us out of these mountains, and then we're going to track down the rest of the Zodiac – just like you wanted – and then it'll be your turn to lose everything!"
YOU MIGHT BE BETTER AT SHAPESHIFTING, KIDDO, BUT YOU'RE NOT IN COMPLETE CONTROL.
"…what are you talking about?"
CHECK YOUR HANDS.
Dipper very slowly looked down at his hands, the book abruptly tumbling out of his grasp; at first, he didn't know what he was supposed to be looking for, but as his fingers crept out of the shadows, he noticed with a thrill of shock that the fingernails on the last two fingers of his left hand had vanished. There was no wound, no blood, nothing to indicate the nails had been pulled out or anything like that; they'd simply disappeared, leaving only a featureless pink expanse of something not quite like skin covering his fingertips, porcelain-smooth and entirely without texture.
Even the fingerprints were gone.
Suddenly nervous, Dipper called upon all the power of transformation he could muster so far, and did his best to will his fingers back into shape, to no avail. His ring and pinkie fingers remained completely nail-less. No matter how many ways he transformed himself, the fingernails remained missing whenever he returned to human form.
OH COME ON, Bill continued. I WARNED YOU, PINE TREE: I TOLD EVEN I WASN'T SURE HOW YOU'D CHANGE IN THE LONG RUN. EVERYTHING HAS SIDE-EFFECTS, AFTER ALL: YOU SEE, YOUR DEFAULT BODY'S CHANGING TOO – PERMANENTLY.
"W… what?"
YOU MIGHT FIND THE REST OF THE ZODIAC… BUT DO YOU THINK THEY'LL RECOGNIZE YOU? I MEAN, YOU PROBABLY WON'T EVEN HAVE A FACE BY THEN! THEY'LL THINK THEY'RE BEING RESCUED BY A RUNAWAY MANNEQUIN!
This time, Dipper couldn't even think of a response. All he could think of was the sight of his own face, rendered completely featureless by the dreadful side-effects of the shapeshifting – blind, deaf and mute.
BEST KEEP TAKING NOTES, PINE TREE. SOON, IT MIGHT JUST BE THE ONLY REMINDER OF WHAT YOU USED TO LOOK LIKE. BYE BYE FOR NOW! And with that, the ink on the page simply bled away, leaving the book completely cleansed of Bill's graffiti.
For what felt like centuries, Dipper could only stare at the now-blank page, heart hammering against his ribcage, mind racing faster than ever before. How long did he have before this new side-effect completely overtook him? How long had it been going on for? What would it mean for him? How would he eat or drink – or could he only do that while shapeshifted now? And what would Wendy think? Would he have time to explain himself to her, or would he just wake up one morning without a face?
What about Mabel? Would he ever see her again with human eyes?
Somewhere in the distance, Bill started singing again, this time warbling a nauseatingly saccharine rendition of It's All Over But The Crying.
And in that moment, Dipper wanted to throw his journal into the campfire. He wanted to watch the pages burn, see all the meticulously-written paragraphs ooze and run together as the heat swept over them, and hear the crackle and whoosh of all his hard work going up in smoke. He wanted to look up at the sky and scream, "You see that? I'm not playing any of your games anymore! You can do whatever you like to me, but I'm! Not! Playing! Along!"
But of course, he didn't: he was too busy thinking of the day when this new mutation would be complete, the day when his mouth sealed shut and his eyes sank beneath his flesh, the day when his face vanished forever.
So instead, he put pen to paper and went straight back to work – except this time he was working on a different entry entirely: Dipper Pines, complete with exacting descriptions of his appearance, and the best sketches he could manage with his increasingly splintered pencil.
Dipper's panic must have been plain to see to anyone in range, because when Wendy finally returned from the unsuccessful hunt a few hours later, she glanced in his direction with a look of mingled suspicion and concern on her face. "What's up?" she asked.
"Fine," Dipper squeaked.
Not too far away, Bill changed tune and began crooning out It's A Sin To Tell A Lie.
Somewhere in a tiny overlooked pocket of reality amidst the chaos of Bill's ever-expanding empire, two unearthly figures stood atop an orbiting asteroid and looked down at the scene unfolding amidst the mountains. For what would have seemed like centuries to human observers, the duo simply watched, neither of them exchanging a single word – but for different reasons: the first of the two beings was simply too worried to speak; the second was too busy trying to hide his amusement at the growing torment.
Eventually, the man who called himself Mr Carter – as well as Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos and a thousand other names to suit his many different faces – cleared his throat. "How long do you suppose it's been?" he asked.
Mr A, the Axolotl, looked up from his reverie, unable to keep the startled look off his host's face – but then, Tyler Cutebiker had never been the most stoic man on the planet, so the expression hardly looked out of place. "Since Weirdmageddon went global?"
"Hmmm."
"Approximately five months. Dipper and Wendy's dimension has the nearest thing to realtime anyone's going to experience here. Depending on Bill's sense of humour, some of the others have endured longer sentences, or shorter ones as the case may be. Not that you'd know, given how Bill's been keeping them from aging."
"And what do you suppose Bill's got planned for the two lovebirds? What game do you think would take up so much of his attention that he'd overlook all others?"
Axolotl sighed deeply. "Whatever it is, it can't be good. Normally, I'd have said he's out to make Dipper and Wendy kill each other; I mean the signs are all there: he's kept the music playing long enough to start wearing away at their sanity, he's got Dipper terrified that he's going to lose himself to these new symptoms, and he's doing his best to use Wendy's grief and trauma against her. Whether he can make her consciously hate Dipper for long isn't certain, but Bill can definitely make her distrust him. In any event, he's readied the combustibles; all he needs now is a spark to set the powderkeg alight."
"Don't forget he's got the parasitized Corduroys and the Shapeshifter out in the wilderness keeping the pressure on Wendy, as well," Nyarlathotep added helpfully.
"That's another thing. Something about the Shapeshifter doesn't quite add up: I can't use all my interdimensional senses in this current state of being, but I can't help but feel something's off about that Shapeshifter… and I just can't work out what it is."
"And you think that because of that… "Off" factor, Bill isn't just going to make them kill each other."
"That's one reason, yes. There's something greater to this, something more… corrupting, and yet sustaining. It's hard to tell: I've sent out a few extensions of my being, but they haven't turned up anything yet. All I know is that we need to get Dipper and Wendy out of there before it gets any worse." He paused. "Would it be too much to ask if you could veil them from Bill's sight again?"
Mr Carter/Nyarlathotep smirked. "Only if you pay my price… and only if I find the results amusing. You've already got one outstanding debt on the table, Mr A. Do you really want to make it double?"
"Forget it. Sometimes I wonder why you even bother exacting favours from me if you just warn me against further…"
Axolotl's words abruptly trailed off as the fabric of the world around them suddenly rippled. To outside observers, nothing about the impossible world below them had changed at all… but to more otherworldly eyes, the damage was already becoming obvious. On instinct, the Axolotl reached out with all his strength to force the ripple to stop before it spread, but the limitations Bill had placed on his power remained – and for once, Mr A had pushed himself too far.
Very slowly, blood began to trickle from Tyler Cutebiker's nostrils. Axolotl, still in possession of the Mayor's body for the most part, could only stare blankly at nothing. "I… my host body… appears to have lost the ability to see," he said quietly.
Nyarlathotep looked into Tyler's eyes with undisguised amusement. "No surprises there," he chuckled. "That's quite a haemorrhage you've got there. Ooh, and it's making your way to your host's tear glands as well!"
Tyler/Axolotl blinked rapidly. "Am I crying?" he asked nobody in particular. "Why am I crying? I don't understand, I… I…"
Blood was slowly coursing from his eyes, now, trickling down his cheeks and drenching his already-battered mayoral sash.
"Time," he said. "Bill's done something to time."
And with that, Axolotl crashed to the ground, host body and all. He bounced limply off a rock ledge, tumbled down an incline, and tumbled bonelessly to a stop at the lowest terrace of the asteroid. He groaned, vomited out a torrent of blood, and lay still.
Very slowly, Nyarlathotep floated down from the upper tier, silently observing the figure of the fallen god and his willing host with something like morbid interest.
"Well," he said at last. "It had to happen sooner or later. I hope it was worth it, trying to stop whatever Bill just tried to do, but I doubt it – if that chorus of It Could Be A Wonderful World was any evidence. You're in a bad state, aren't you? You stretched yourself too far, and both of you have to pay for it."
His smile grew.
"Your host is dying, Axolotl," he whispered. "Your heroism ruptured something very vital in that sack of meat he calls a body. Soon, all his crimson life will have ebbed away; he'll die… and you'll die with him. And with nobody else inside empowered to oppose him, nobody else on the outside able to intervene, Bill is free to continue his games. Sooner or later, I imagine he'll get bored with having just one universe to play with, and conquer another; a new and hostile god will play dice with interdimensional physics. And if someone can stop him – Coin, Elizabeth, Q, Dr Manhattan, Rick Sanchez, the Doctor or whoever – this dimension will be ripped apart over the course of the battle and scattered across the multiverse. Bill, Ford, Stan, Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, Soos, Gideon, McGucket – all dead, all dispersed, all potential for game and amusement gone forever.
"And you know what I think, Axolotl?"
He reached down with a long, spindly index finger, the nail instantly digging into Tyler Cutebiker's chest.
"I think that sounds really, really boring."
There was a dazzling flash of light, and a tiny particle of arcane energies jumped from Nyarlathotep's hand into the comatose body; a moment later, Tyler's eyes opened wide, Axolotl looking out at the world with undisguised shock.
"I'm going to save your bacon, Axolotl," said Nyarlathotep. "I'm going to keep you alive until we can find a means of patching up your host and your mind; it might take a few phone calls, but you will live." Nyarlathotep grinned horribly. "And in return, you will owe me favours, my friend. I get to ask whatever I want from you, and you will be bound by your word as an entity of the eldritch. Do you consent?"
Axolotl coughed, sending a fresh spurt of blood jetting out of his mouth. But he nodded nonetheless.
"Excellent! Now, you were saying something about what Bill just did…"
Tyler Cutebiker's mouth creaked open… and instead of a coherent sentence, something else emerged.
"Yfim gsv givv zmw hszggvi rxv
Zm vmwrmt hslfow mlg szkkvm gdrxv
Yormw gsv svzig zmw uzwv gsv hrtro
Gsv wbrmt dliow yvtrmh rgh ertro
Hprm gsv ooznz, xizxp gsv tozhh
Gsv wzipvhg uzgv szh xlnv gl kzhh
Xifhs gsv uva zmw dzik gsv szmw
Gsv tlw-gsrmth irhv gl wlln gsv ozmw
Zmw gslfts gsv jfvhgrlm hgroo hgzmwh gzoo
Gsv hsrmrmt hgzi yvtrmh gl uzoo."
"Come again?"
"Time," Axolotl explained. "Bill is doing something to time…"
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Pearl And The Ghostmaker by Murray Gold.
Up next, Bill's newest atrocity is revealed!
Dvmwb X dzh lmxv hl prmw
Hl dzin lu svzig, hl xzon lu nrmw
Yfg mld svi slkvh szev zoo yfg wrvw
Zmw lmob gsv svzigovhh xzm hfierev