A/N: Ow.
Sorry for the delay, ladies and gents: this month has been murder. Suffice it to say that this isn't the first time I've had to move house, but it's the first time I've had to move an entire workplace. It's been a stressful and distinctly painful couple of weeks, and my arms still feel like rubber... but at least I got the chapter done. In the meantime, I cannot express just how grateful for all the views, reviews, favourites and follows I've received in the meantime.
Hourglass Cipher: To answer your question, Mr Carter is Nyarlathotep; you've already met him in previous chapters, suffice to say.
Fantasy Fan 223: Mr Carter's playing his own game at this point; he's neutral only in the sense that he's acting in his own interests. Also, Bill isn't the only trickster on the field: after all, Carter/Nyarlathotep himself is comparable to Hermes in many ways. Plus, there's more than one kind of "hero" in Carter's game.
Lizzie2145: Glad you like the chapter! I'm very happy I can keep things entertaining even through all the grisly details.
a very angry ravage: He might be, but Tzimisce's eating habits might prevent that; the portal closed on her neck, but the vampire-god got to eat the rest... including something that even Bill might have trouble replacing.
Kraven the Hunter: I've gotta say, I love your ideas for Bill's punishment - I can only hope I live up to their standard. Plus, I simply have to use "Slimvice" at some point...
Northgalus2002: Ooh, yes. Other powers are indeed ready to help.
Carcer14: True, true - everyone in the Mystery Team played their own small role in igniting Weirdmageddon, and as a result, they must unite to stop it. I agree wholeheartedly, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.
LoyalTheorist: Yep, there's going to be a good focus on Robbie's flaws this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!
skywalkerchick1138: Yeah, I love that film and listening to the soundtrack always helps get me in the mood to write action sequences. I'm glad you liked the chapter, and as always, I hope this one lives up to the standards set. Also... yes, you will get to catch up with Stan and Ford soon. Very soon...
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls and the Cthulhu Mythos are not mine
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Not for the first time that night, Robbie cringed away from the thunderous din of amplified music and wailing police sirens, and huddled a little deeper into the nest of moth-eaten blankets that had been his bed for the past few weeks.
Just another night in the City of the Dead, he told himself, trying not to whimper too loudly.
By now, he knew full well that hiding wouldn't help him: the eyeball guards would always find him if they wanted a scapegoat. Nights like this always ended with him face-down in the gutter, face stinging from about a dozen fresh bruises, his mouth awash with blood, his bones splintering in every direction. And if he was lucky, they'd leave it at that; if not, they'd think of something worse to do to him.
But all the same, he went through the same ritual as always. After all, what else could he do, other than pull the blanket over his head? He'd done the same thing when he was little, hiding his face under a blanket whenever he thought there were boogeymen lurking around the house at night, believing – in that mad, fervent way that only little kids could – that the monsters wouldn't be able to see him if he couldn't see them. Well, as a teenager he'd finally learned his lesson: the monsters would see you no matter how little you saw of them.
After all, Robbie was blind and the eyeball guards certainly didn't have any trouble finding him.
All he could do was sit tight and wait until morning – or whatever passed for morning in this bleak, freezing hell of a city. If the guards had decided not to take an interest in him, he could relax and go about gathering supplies for the next miserable night: he could beg for food, steal it, or even hunt for it, then eat what he needed and stockpile as much as he could.
And if the guards had taken an interest that terrible night, well, he'd just have to find his way back into the sewers, bind his wounds as best as he could, help himself to his secret stash of pilfered food, drink what little rain dripped in through the stormwater drains, and wait until either the pain receded or the sewers flooded again.
All in all, he didn't have too many options. He hadn't had many options for…
For…
Dear god, how long had he been here? It could have been anywhere from a month to twelve, if not more; for all he knew, he'd been trapped out here on the streets for years on end. Certainly it had felt like years, what with all those long nights and interminable days, and every single one of them had been spent cowering, begging, stealing, scavenging, and doing whatever he could to stay alive. Lord only knew he'd done things he wasn't proud of, and most of the time it hadn't really been worth it: more often than not, he got the distinct impression that the guards only gave him leave to do those ugly, ugly things because they got a kick out of watching him humiliate himself for food and shelter. Besides, no matter how low he went, no matter how much he earned, he was always cold and hungry the next day.
He couldn't guess how long it had been, but he could easily guess that the weeks had taken a toll. Of course, he had no way of seeing the damage for himself, but he could tell from the disgusted gasps of passers-by that he looked like microwaved death on toast, even with his empty eye-sockets covered with a blindfold.
Because he hadn't had his head shaven like the other workers of the city, his hair had grown back by now, but he could tell by the itching that it was now starting to hang down over his ears like a greasy curtain; his face still felt distorted and misaligned from all the times the guards had kicked him in the head, and his nose was so crooked it was a marvel he could still smell anything. He'd lost teeth out here on the streets: some had broken after countless pummellings against the paving-stones, but most had just fallen out of their own accord before Robbie had finally managed to find a toothbrush and toothpaste after hours fossicking in the communal dump. Of course, he never managed to find any soap or deodorant out there, so he always stank of month-old B.O., rotting meat and old, sour vomit… along with other smells too revolting to describe. He'd lost weight, too: by now, even his old skinny jeans would have looked baggy on him, and the tattered old coat and baggy tracksuit pants he'd stolen from the dump hung off him like elephant skin. He could feel his ribs pressed tight against his skin – passers-by could play him like a xylophone if they wanted to.
Would anyone from Gravity Falls have recognized him? It didn't seem likely. Even the fact that he needed a walking stick nowwould have bamboozled them.
But then, it wasn't as if anyone was going to just show up and rescue him. No, he didn't have many options other than to keep on foraging for food and hope that he could somehow keep his stash properly stocked.
In fact, the only thing he did have at this point was company.
Somehow, Zombie Tambry, Zombie Wendy, Zombie Thompson, Zombie Nate, Zombie Lee and the Zombie Pines Twins were still around. He might have lost self-respect and all but the vaguest hope for the future, but he hadn't lost the zombies or his ability to control them; they still followed his commands without hesitation, and still helped him in whatever way they could. If anything, they seemed even more obedient than before, for now they followed without having to be ordered: more than once, he'd been forced to leave his alleyway and forgotten to call for the zombies to follow, only to turn around and bump squarely into Zombie Tambry, following him without hesitation.
More to the point, the zombies were still left undisturbed despite the city's apparently bottomless appetite for necrofuel; nonetheless, Robbie was careful to keep them hidden while he was asleep, packed well out of sight behind a litter of garbage. They still reeked of decay, but they didn't seem to be rotting any further, even after weeks spent in the cold, damp alleyways and the oily humidity of the sewers. He couldn't see them, of course, but he could tell by touch that they were recognizable – for all the good it did.
The zombies couldn't defend him: all corpses designated necrofuel had been hardwired into docility, so once again, they couldn't fight, no matter how hard Robbie tried to teach them. And of course, they still couldn't read that mysterious note to him…
…but at least they were around to ease the loneliness.
Loneliness was the rule of the world these days. Blind as he was, even he could tell that the city was changing around him, leaving him behind, forcing him even further into the fringes: every day, a new building would spring out of the ground; every day, new systems of currency and work were invented just to make life a little harder on the human populace; every day, the workers would have another reason to take out their frustrations on him.
There were new factories, new complexes, new powers granted to law enforcement, but never anything positive. There was supposedly a nightclub for the Henchmaniacs booming in the heart of the city, a place where the workers could observe the luxury within but never partake of it. There were means of population control, blending terror with indulgence: the eyeball guards were always brutal and unforgiving regardless of the circumstances but from time to time, a merchant would be allowed to peddle his wares to the workers, "covertly" offering everything from bootleg hooch to morphine – in exchange for supply tokens, indentured servitude, or favours that ran the gamut from disgusting to downright suicidal.
And of course, there were rumours. Every day, there was a new story making the rounds through the city, and though few people wanted to actually talk to Robbie, they weren't too shy about running their mouths as they walked past him. Easily the most popular of the rumours were the whisperings of a heavenly realm somewhere beyond the city, a utopia where the ultra-rare human servants who'd earned Bill's favour were allowed to dwell in comfort as a reward for exemplary service. Supposedly, places like this were accessible only through special gateways – and there was one right on the outskirts of the City of the Dead, on a tiny outstretched causeway of mouldering bodies extending from the corpse moat into the void that surrounded them. True, nobody had seen it no matter how far into the moat their assignments had sent them, but that didn't stop the rumours from spreading.
More than once, Robbie had entertained wild fantasies about somehow making his way to the corpse moat, finding that gateway and escaping once and for all with the zombies in tow. But no matter how well he tried to convince himself, he never went through with it.
How could he escape when he couldn't even see where he was going? He'd learned the pattern of the streets only by hard-won experience, and the corpse moat was uncharted territory. And more to the point, the eyeball guards would never let him get that far: they'd recognize him just by the shuffle in his walk, and all those zombies following him around would make him about as invisible as a car-crash. And besides, it wasn't as if things were any better out there, were they? Even if he could find his way to Bill's private heaven – assuming it existed – the people there would probably sell him out just to save their reservations.
No, as bad as it was in the City of the Dead, it was better than facing death and worse out in the World of Weirdmageddon.
In fact, looked at a certain way, the city wasn't too bad. Okay, it was miserable as hell, but it was a habitable kind of miserable that wouldn't actually kill him; he'd learned that much by now. Here, there were warm hideaways at the bottom of the sewer network; here, there was food, some of it almost appetising; here, his friends would never leave him.
So, as the sirens passed him by once again, Robbie drew the tattered blankets over his head and tried to get back to sleep.
Sometime later, Robbie awake to a stinging pain in his side. Someone was kicking him squarely in the ribs.
Admittedly, this wasn't the first time he'd awoken to somebody inflicting violence on his defenceless body; he had more than enough bruises to prove his status as a professional target a dozen times over, and by now he'd worked out an almost-perfect routine for avoiding further beatings. So, he immediately curled himself into a ball, tucking his head down as low as it could possibly go just in case his attacker decided to go for that next.
But the next attack never came: instead, a voice from above him whispered, "Rise and shine, sleepyhead. It's time to open your eyes and face the day. Wakey-wakey eggs-n'-bakey, come and get 'em while they're hot. The invisible bugler's playing reveille, little blind soldier."
There was a pause, as Robbie hastily reviewed the voice. With new arrivals streaming into the city every day, there were always strangers ready to kick the crap out of him, but none of them spoke to him like this; usually, the preamble to the beatdown was rarely more detailed than a few expletives and the occasional "hold his arms!" Meanwhile, the eyeball guards still couldn't speak, even after all the changes the City of the Dead had undergone: if they ever felt like saying something to him, they'd drag some terrified citizen along to announce the sentence, and none of them sounded even remotely like this particular stranger.
Nobody here could have a voice this warm and jovial; nobody alive in the City of the Dead could speak in such dulcet, honeyed tones… and nobody could find a way to make that urbane voice sound so inexplicably disturbing.
Who could this be?
As if in answering, the stranger kicked him in the side again. "You know I'm not going to leave you alone until you're sitting up and paying attention, Robbie," he said.
Robbie sighed, and began the long, awkward process of hauling himself upright. Eventually, he managed to force himself into a sitting position and point himself in the direction of the stranger's voice.
"Who are you?" he croaked.
"A friend."
"I don't have any friends," Robbie half-lied.
"Oh diddums," said the stranger, teasingly. "You don't need to lie about the zombies, if that's what you're worried about. This might sound hard to believe, but I'm here to help you, Robbie."
Robbie's eyebrows knit in consternation. "But why? Who are you? Apart from a friend, I mean. What's your name?"
"In this neck of the woods, they call me Mr Carter. Everywhere else… well, that's another story for another day. As for why, I'm doing a favour for a business partner, the Axolotl."
"The who?"
"Let's just say he tried to send you a message some time ago. Trouble is, he didn't have enough time to deliver the letter in person: by the time his messenger found you, you were already minus a working pair of eyes. Long story short, the Axolotl is reuniting the zodiac under his banner, including you: he wants you on your feet and ready to take part in the single most audacious act of insurrection this misbegotten little reality's ever experienced."
Robbie took a deep breath. "You've completely lost me, man."
"Axolotl's going to war, Robbie," Mr Carter explained. "He's bringing the fight to Bill Cipher, and it's going to be the zodiac who serve on the front lines. I didn't call you a little blind soldier just for the fun of it: like it or not, you're part of an army, and I'm here to ensure that you're ready for battle."
There was a long pause as Robbie silently considered this.
Because he'd had no reason to laugh for what felt like years, it took a while for him to recognize the sensation rippling through his body. In fact, it started as a cough; but then, as the seconds ticked by, the cough became a chuckle, the chuckle became a snickering, the snickering turned to guffawing, the guffawing finally built to laughter… and without warning, he was howling, shrieking, roaring with frenzied, hysterical laughter.
"Right!" Robbie cackled helplessly. "Yeah right! You're here looking for soldiers, and the first recruit you went after was the blind homeless guy! Good one, man. I mean, I almost believed you when you said you were looking for the zodiac; you actually had me when you said that this Axey-whatever guy was going to war against Bill, but then you said I'd be doing the fighting!" He hooted with laughter for another minute, gradually winding down into an awkward silence. "Seriously, though," he said at last. "Next time you try and mess with my head, try something a bit more believable, man."
Mr Carter sighed deeply. "Let me guess… you think I'm working for the Henchmaniacs. Am right?"
"Wouldn't be the first time they've pulled something like this: everyone in town's heard rumours about people getting pranked by a Henchmaniac. Or maybe you're just some weird guy who gets off on cheap scams, I don't know and I don't care-"
"Oh, but you should," said Mr Carter. "Here's the thing, Robbie: if I was a Henchmaniac or working for the Henchmaniacs, I wouldn't have made up anything about taking the fight to Bill. And if I was "just some weird guy," I wouldn't even have the inclination to lie to you."
"Why's that?"
"Because as far as the rest of this city is concerned, you're not important enough to be lied to. You're a blind homeless punching bag."
"Oh great, more personal abuse. Way to reel me in, man. I'm really interested in listening to you now. You really don't put much effort into these pranks, do you?"
There was a deathly silence.
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr Carter, his voice eerily calm.
"Well, I'm just saying, I've seen better pranks pulled off by twelve-year-old kids."
"Is that right?"
Robbie hesitated. Given that he hadn't had much practice at talking to people since he'd gone blind, he wasn't the best at reading an audience, but even he couldn't help noticing the sudden change in atmosphere. Mr Carter hadn't raised his voice; he hadn't even said anything mildly aggressive… but Robbie could somehow tell that the man was slowly building towards a towering rage.
"Considering you haven't really seen any of my "pranks" in action, you seem to be very free with your opinion of them," Carter continued icily.
"Dude, I didn't mean it like that, I'm just saying that-"
"You're not saying anything. You're being an idiot: you've just enjoyed a laugh, so you've managed to cough up a few ragged chunks of bravado in the process. Considering I came here to help you, I think I'm well within my rights to be offended."
An ice-cold hand suddenly clamped down hard on Robbie's uninjured left shoulder, and he knew at once that whoever Mr Carter was, he couldn't possibly be human. Normal human beings didn't have hands so deathly-cold; normal humans didn't have fingernails that jabbed and raked like scorpion stingers; normal humans didn't have skin that writhed and crawled as if it were made of millions of interlocking tentacles.
By now already starting to feel the familiar terror seeping back into his veins, Robbie tried for diplomacy: "Look, Mr Henchmaniac, sir-"
"I am not a Henchmaniac," Mr Carter hissed, his suddenly inhuman voice echoing through alien dimensions and leaving white-hot trails on Robbie's badly-mangled sanity. "I am worse than the Henchmaniacs."
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I get the message, I-"
"I am Nyarlathotep, the Black Pharaoh, the Crawling Chaos, the Herald of Azathoth… and that is the nearest you'll ever get to hearing my true name without having your consciousness liquefy. I am here to help you, as strange as that may seem: if I was playing a prank on you specifically, you would currently be lying helpless in an operating theatre as surgeons removed your brain and condemned it to a virtual eternity in the silent darkness of a sealed canister… and there are worse fates I could arrange. The only reason you are still alive and sane is because I am not playing a prank on you. Now take this matter seriously or I am going to demonstrate just how far the human intestinal tract can unravel. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yessir."
"Excellent. Now…" Mr Carter/Nyarlathtotep cleared his throat, and suddenly his voice was back to normal. "As I was saying, the Axolotl sent me to get you back on your feet: from now on, you're officially a soldier fighting for the salvation of reality itself. Note that I didn't say "preservation of reality," and that's mainly because reality as you once knew it is officially dead, and I sincerely hope that encapsulates the odds that are currently against you. Succeeding in this mission will result in outcomes that even the Axolotl himself cannot fully predict; failing will result in Bill condemning you to a fate a thousand times more hellish than your current predicament. Any questions?"
In spite of himself, Robbie almost managed another laugh. "You're really not interested in selling me the idea, are you?"
"I was sent here to prepare you for the trials ahead; giving you false hope – or any hope at all for that matter – wasn't in the job description."
"Fair enough. So… how can I be a soldier? I mean, are you gonna give me new eyes, or help me get out of here, or-"
"No."
"No?"
"Again, I said "prepare," not "hold your hand every step of the journey." I'm a trickster, not a babysitter. If you want to get out of this city, young man, you're going to have to do it under your own steam."
Robbie groaned. "And how am I supposed to do that?" he burst out. "I'm blind! I can barely walk anymore, I'm useless in a fight, I'm outnumbered by the guards, and I'm still recovering from the last few dozen beatdowns. Oh, and did I mention that I'M BLIND?!"
"Blind and armed with the power to control the dead."
"And I can't use them to hurt anyone, genius! Bill made sure of that, and even if I could use them to attack people, I still can't see anything! What good does control over zombies do me right now?"
"Hurt?" Mr Carter/Nyarlathotep echoed. "Curious terminology. I'm pretty sure that Bill's alterations make it impossible for the zombies to attack anyone. As for hurting people… well, accidents happen. Didn't your zombies accidentally knock a few people over while you were leading them on that charge into the alleyways?"
"So what if they knocked some people over? Even if I could make the same trick work again, it doesn't mean anything if I can't actually see what I'm doing. Look, just face the facts: the zombies are useless. Plain and simple."
"If that's the case, Robbie, then why are you keeping these ones around?"
"…what?"
"It's a perfectly reasonable question, my friend: if the zombies are that useless, then why are you dragging this little band of them wherever you go? You've no use for them as bodyguards, and keeping track of them will only slow you down in the long run, so why keep them?"
"Well… they're company. They're the only company I've got."
"Even though they can't speak? Even though they only react according to your will? Even though they're just animated meat? Animated meat suspended in a rather odoriferous state of decay, I might add."
Robbie opened his mouth to reply, only to realize that his only response sounded really pathetic in light of everything he'd just heard. For about five extremely crowded seconds, he wracked his brain for any good reason he might have for keeping the zombies around other than pure unreasoning sentiment; finding none, he could only limply mumble out his original reply, trying vainly to sound more assertive than he actually was.
"They're my friends," he said. "They're all that's left of my friends, anyway."
Robbie got the distinct impression that Nyarlathotep was smirking at him.
"And if I told you that these decomposing automata are just replicas of your companions, would that change anything? Would you treat your little brigade of zombies differently, knowing that the real Tambry, Wendy, Thompson, Nate, Lee, Mabel and Dipper were all still alive somewhere beyond this city?"
"For one thing, I wouldn't believe you."
"Good. You're learning."
"But even if they were… well, they're out there. There's no way to reach them; I mean, even if I could get out of this city, there's no guarantee I'll ever see them again. The zombies… well, they're not much, but they're all I have."
"Let me guess, you're waiting for your parents to turn up as zombies as well, and then you'll have a happy family of the dead to keep you company here on the streets. Well, as touching as that sounds, I'm afraid we're somewhat at odds here, and it seems I have a very obvious means of clearing things up. If you'll excuse me…"
There was a pause, as Mr Carter's footsteps swiftly receded into the distance.
"Where are you going?" Robbie asked.
"Oh, not far! I just have some garbage to dispose of…"
From the far end of the alleyway, there was a rustle of shifting cardboard and other debris, as Mr Carter began hauling something heavy out from under the trash pile… and suddenly, Robbie's heart skipped a beat as he realized what he was doing.
"ZOMBIES!" he shrieked. "GET AWAY FROM HIM, QUICKLY!"
Suddenly, the relative quiet of the alleyway was broken by the sounds of several zombies hurriedly clawing their way out of the trash-heap and shuffling into formation next to Robbie… but he could tell, long before he heard the telltale cackle from Mr Carter, that he'd acted too late. Even though he couldn't see the zombies lined up alongside him, he knew he was missing one.
"Aha," said Mr Carter. "This is Tambry isn't it? Your favourite cuddle-bunny, isn't that right? Yes, of course, of course. What would be the most entertaining means of disposal, I wonder?"
"Let her go!" Robbie screamed.
"Hmm. Don't think I will. Maybe I'll eat her, one morsel of flesh at a time."
"Let her go, please! I'll give you anything you want, anything!"
"What could you possibly offer me? You've already made it clear that you're not interested in cooperating: you're not going to serve in the war, so you're of no use to me. And, as you said, you've no powers worth harnessing so there's no point trying to harness what little potential you might possess. As such, you have nothing to negotiate with… or to put it another way, you're worth nothing."
"Then why are you still here? Why are you doing this?!"
"Because I can, of course. I've travelled a long way to get here, and I feel I've earned a little compensation for all the precious time you've wasted. So, if you don't mind, I have a feast to enjoy. This little piggy went to market…"
From Carter's general direction, there was a guttural snarl too deep to emerge from any human throat, and a loud crunch of splintering bone.
"Ah… ladyfingers."
"Stop it!" Robbie screamed. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!"
"Oh pipe down, you. You've still got six zombies to keep you company. Besides, it's not as if this one's your real girlfriend, is it? She's just another living corpse, incapable of returning your feelings; the relationship you share with her exists solely in your head."
There was another brutal chomp, as Mr Carter chewed off another one of Tambry's fingers. "Anyway," he continued, swallowing the digit whole, "Once Zombie Tambry's been eaten away, you'll be able to enjoy another imaginary relationship with Zombie Wendy, won't you?"
"Leave her or alone or I'll kill you!" And with that, Robbie actually got to his feet and began shambling forward as quickly as his fractured kneecaps could allow, swinging his walking stick in wild, violent arcs as he tottered towards the source of that sneering voice.
"And how do you propose to do that? Scant moments ago, you told me you were useless in a fight."
"Shut up!" Robbie howled, furiously threshing the air with his walking stick. "I'll find a way somehow!"
"I believe that falls under the heading of "big talk and nothing else." Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of fingers to eat and no terror-stricken blood to wash it down with, so I'm just going to make do with what little ichor I can juice from this walking cadaver's internal organs."
"You know what? When I get my hands on you, I swear I'm gonna rip that stupid-looking red tie off your scrawny neck and ram it so far down your throat, you'll look like you've grown a tail – and that's before I rip it out from between your cheeks and strangle you with it!"
There was a pause, and then Mr Carter began to laugh.
"Think that's funny, do ya? I haven't even gotten to what I'll do with this walking stick!"
If anything, Mr Carter laughed even harder, this time accompanied by mocking applause. "Oh Robbie," he chortled. "Oh poor dimwitted, angst-saturated, rebel-wannabe Robbie. Once again, you've let the most obvious thing in the world slip past you: first the muffin graffiti and now this."
"Okay, first thing's first: it's a mushroom cloud, not a muffin! Second, what have I let slip past me?"
"You're blind, yes?"
"Glad to see you were listening the first fifty times, jackass."
"Then how do you know I'm wearing a red tie?"
Behind his blindfold, Robbie blinked.
"I... I don't know," he said limply. "It… it just seemed obvious. I don't know why, but it just seemed really, really obvious."
"And when did this fact occur to you?"
"…just a few seconds ago. Why?"
"Because it only occurred when I was eye to eye with this animated corpse," Mr Carter purred.
"Zombie Tambry is currently staring directly at me: her eyes are a little bit worse for wear, but she is most definitely looking at my tie. Are you starting to grasp the implications?"
"You mean I can see through her eyes?"
"Surely you've noticed how quickly the zombies respond to your commands? In the last few days, they've been following you without having to be told, honing in on your psychic presence, even responding to your subconscious impulses. You're sending out signals, Robbie, forming connections with the energies that animate these corpses without meaning to… and somewhere along the line, you've started receiving information in return. I mean, you went to all the trouble of hiding your zombie friends under all this old cardboard and junk, but how could you have been certain that they were properly hidden if you couldn't see what you were doing? There's only so much that touch can tell, believe me. And you're capable of more, much more than that… if you only put your mind to it."
"But-"
"Concentrate," Mr Carter hissed, his voice once again taking on the same inhuman roar that had almost stopped Robbie's heart a moment ago.
"But what am I-"
"Stretch out with your mind. Focus on the zombies. You know where they are: Tambry is standing next to me, and the rest are standing beside you. With a little imagination, you can guess what they might be looking at. Envision the world through their eyes, now. Reach out to the zombies and imagine seeing through their eyes."
"I-I can't-"
"Yes you can, Robbie. The tools you need are all there in your head: it's up to you to use them. Now, concentrate!"
The word, rippling with the mind-pummelling non-sound of Nyarlathotep's voice, tore through Robbie's brain: suddenly, concentration on the matter at hand meant more than anything else in the world, and though he couldn't quite grasp why, something in the back of his head told him that disobeying the terrible voice would mean a horrible death – and so much worse. Something about those hissing, roaring tones seemed to cut right through his conscious mind and start eating into his brain, interfacing directly with his most basic, primitive impulses and hammering hard on the "flight" instinct. He was dimly aware that there was nothing to be afraid of, that what he had heard was a voice and nothing more, that Carter/Nyarlathotep wouldn't hurt him as long as he was still useful, but details like these might as well have been shouted from another planet for all the good they did: the voice cut through all those logical details and forced him onwards, the animalistic fear spurring him into a level of concentration that he'd never yet experienced…
And then, just as Robbie was beginning to wonder if he was concentrating his way into an embolism, the darkness that had shrouded his senses for the last few months was suddenly split by a piercing beam of light, brighter than anything he'd seen in the days before blindness. After so much time spent without seeing, the sensory backlash was agonizing; shrieking in pain, Robbie instinctively covered his eyes with his hand – only to find that he was still wearing his blindfold, and still in possession of two empty, useless sockets. He wasn't perceiving light through his own eyes, but through the eyes of others.
A moment later, the pain subsided and the light dimmed until the mad onslaught of information finally resolved itself into recognizable images – seven sets of images suddenly imposed on the blankness that had replaced ordinary eyesight. He saw rough concrete walls, stacked high with piles of old garbage; he saw pallid skies awash with slate-grey clouds; he saw a putrid concrete floor stained with blood and puke and bits of decomposing flesh and god only knew what else; he saw a swarthy, dark-skinned man in a red coat and a tailored black suit, his jacket just open enough to reveal a red tie; he saw the zombies – Tambry, Wendy, Thompson, Nate, Lee, Mabel, Dipper… and he saw himself, staring back in astonishment at the zombies who now saw the world in his stead.
After so many months resigned to the fact that he was blind for good, Robbie could see again.
"Oh my god," he whispered.
Had he still possessed working tear ducts, he would have cried. As it was, all he could do was shudder in relief and amazement as he took in the world through new eyes.
Granted, it was a little disorienting: not only did he now have seven pairs of eyes to see through at once, but none of them were from his perspective, making even the simplest motions seem weird and disconnected; it was like seeing himself through a CCTV camera. As such, it wasn't until he actually ordered the zombies to all line up next to him that he achieved something close to normal human vision, and even then it was still fractured into a fly's eye view of the world.
But all that was meaningless next to the simple fact that he could see again.
Almost twenty minutes went by in complete silence: for most of it, Robbie was just testing his newfound vision; he examined how the eyes of the zombies perceived colour and dimension, checking how his multifaceted vision recognized perspective; he practised shutting down certain aspects of his new sight, adjusting to the task of seeing through a single pair of eyes before expanding the view once more; he even did his best to acclimatize to the disorienting sensation of seeing through multiple eyes in motion, ordering the zombies to circle him at length as he tried to make sense of the sensory input.
"How did this happen?" he mumbled at last. "How did I get this power?"
"Oh, remembered I'm here, have you?" said Mr Carter with a smirk.
"Grow up. Now, how did I get this power?"
"Easy. Bill gave it to you, remember? He empowered you to shepherd the dead, and so you did."
"But he wouldn't have let me see like this, not after he blinded me!"
"Of course not. As I said, he wanted you to be a shepherd and nothing more… but the power he gave you has developed, metamorphosed into something far grander than Bill Cipher could ever have imagined. And this is only the beginning: there are greater horizons you can reach, Robbie, entire vistas of potential yet untapped. As incredible as it might seem, you're only at the threshold."
"But that still doesn't explain how things changed in the first place. I mean, Bill's basically supposed to be a god, right? How could this happen when he's in control of literally everything?"
"Because he's not, of course," said Mr Carter smugly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Even Bill has weaknesses. Outside the Mindscape, there are limits to his vision, and because of that, the energies he's ushered into this dimension sometimes behave in ways that he doesn't intend. It's a million-to-one chance, but that's the thing about Weirdness: by nature, it is chaos in its purest form, a force of raw, unpredictable unreality. Even in the hands of an entity as powerful as the Beast With Just One Eye, pure Weirdness still sometimes slips the leash… and that tiny quirk has allowed your powers to grow and change beyond the boundaries Bill set for you."
"But why me?"
"I admit, that confused even me at first. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if Axolotl knows the full details, so I conducted my own little investigation into the forces that currently suffuse your body… and under all that Weirdness in your body, I found the leftovers of Stanford Pines' failed ritual."
"The Wheel? But how could that have changed anything? Like you said, it failed."
"Nonetheless, you and the rest of the zodiac were exposed to a very old and powerful form of ritual magic – not long enough to seriously alter you, but just long enough to leave an imprint on your souls. And when concentrated Weirdness and ancient magic met in your ragged little body, the million-to-one-chance suddenly became one-to-one. And lo and behold, a miracle was born unto this dying Earth."
A Cheshire cat grin spit his face in two, revealing a mouthful of needle-sharp fangs too long and too narrow to be human – a disturbing sight, considering that Carter's teeth had looked perfectly normal a moment ago.
"It took a while for the changes to take effect, of course," Mr Carter continued. "As long as Bill kept an eye on his precious captives, the Weirdness behaved exactly as he willed. But eventually, he lost interest: a new toy had caught his attention, and the game he played with that toy demanded more and more of his time, until he couldn't be bothered keeping tabs on his other playthings… and in his absence, things changed. Curses become blessings; temporary gifts become weapons; energy from surrounding environments was absorbed by individuals and expressed as new powers."
"Oh." Robbie thought for a moment, and then his eyes widened in shock. "But shouldn't that mean the rest of the zodiac have powers as well?"
"Exactly! You see why Axolotl wants them on his side, don't you? Imagine how your friends have changed since then! Some were empowered to serve a function, just as you were, and have begun to grow beyond that function just as you have. Others have been in certain environments for so long that the Weirdness of the playgrounds has simply earthed itself in their bodies, empowered them without even meaning to. Imagine the abilities they have now! Imagine how powerful they might grow!"
Robbie took a deep breath, and tried his best not to let his knees buckle; it wasn't easy – he'd heard too much that day, and after god only knew how long he'd spent on the streets, he wasn't used to conversations that lasted this long to begin with. "So… the others… they're all alive out there?" he asked softly. "They've all got powers of their own?"
"I think you'll find that for yourself well enough," said Mr Carter, his smile wider than ever. "And on that note, it's time I continued onwards." He turned to leave, casually pushing errant zombies out of the way as he did so.
"Wha- where are you going?"
"I told you before, Robbie: I was here to get you back on your feet, and by the looks of things, you're managing that well enough on your own. So, if you'll excuse me, I have phone calls to make and other members of the zodiac to initiate."
"But I don't know how I'm going to get out of here! I don't even know how to fight using the zombies!"
"Like I said, I'm not here to hold your hand."
"But-"
"Look, I know the odds are daunting, and given your condition, I don't blame you at all. You're not intelligent, you're not imaginative, you're not especially knowledgeable, you were an inveterate coward even before you ended up on the streets, you've got all the lovability of a dead lamprey, and you've got more broken bones than functional muscles. Also, personality-wise, you're a sliding scale of faux-iconoclast rebel without a clue and simmering puddle of pointless angst. Plus, you spent a good chunk of the summer being alternatively defeated and rescued by a child four years younger than you and barely half your height. So yes, the odds are stacked against you… but believe it or not, you have everything you need to escape right here in this alleyway… or should I say, your left coat pocket?"
The letter!
Heart hammering, Robbie fumbled with the pocket, hoping against hope that the rainwater and sewerage hadn't touched the folded paper sitting there. The letter had been sitting there ever since he'd first found the coat, stashed away ever since he realized that there was no way in hell that anyone was going to read it for him; more than once, he'd woken up to find unfriendly hands going through his pockets for supply tokens – what if someone had stolen the letter on one of those nights? What would they have done with it, though? Would they have simply thrown it away, or would they have shown it to the guards in return for a reward? Did the guards know everything about Axolotl's letter already? Were they lying in wait even now? Had he regained his sight only so he could see the eyeball guards preparing to blind him again?
Twelve heartstopping seconds later, his questing fingers finally found the letter, and he was so overwhelmed with relief that it took Robbie a moment or so to remember that he actually needed to read the thing sooner or later. So, he unfolded the paper and went to work.
Dear Robbie, the letter read.
I don't know if this letter will reach you in time, but I have to try – for your sake and the sake of all humanity. This is the first time I've given such thorough directions, and I'm risking discovery in the process, but I'm afraid this is my only option at this point: Bill has something very nasty in store for you, and I need to move quickly before he returns to this playground.
"A little late for that," Robbie muttered bitterly, reminding himself to give the messenger a good kick up the ass the next time he saw him.
For now, the letter continued, make sure nobody sees you reading, and destroy this message once you've memorised the contents. The situation may seem impossible to deal with, but I promise you that you have everything you need to escape: the portal leading out of this city is directly south of the necrofuel induction dock, five hundred yards into the corpse moat. You will recognize it easily enough: look through the eyes of the dead.
Oh, and don't make the mistake of thinking that you're defenceless: You know how to reanimate the dead – with effort, you might very well be able to claim them from other corpse-shepherds. True, you can't make the zombies into soldiers, but you can make them into weapons.
Put one way, if a brick is thrown at someone, you can't very well say that the brick actually attacked someone: use the zombies the same way. Battering rams, bludgeons, stampedes, simple mechanisms.
Put another way…
Have you ever seen army ants build?
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Robbie asked.
But Nyarlathotep had gone.
In the end, Robbie could only offer a world-weary sigh, sit down heavily, and wonder what he was going to do next.
It took about half an hour before he realized what the letter had meant.
A day later, eyeball guards over the city began receiving reports of zombies inexplicably vanishing on route to the power plant.
Nobody was sure how it happened, for after months of uninterrupted necrofuel usage, the sight of zombies marching up and down the lane was so commonplace that few bothered to pay attention to it. A few sharp-eyed souls claimed to have seen zombies simply walking away from their queues at the plant and vanishing into the endless warren of alleyways that Swiss-cheesed the city, but no trace of them was ever found. A few "cooperative elements" from the human populace took a chance and ventured into the sewers, assuming that the missing necrofuel could have been hidden down in the catacombs of the city; few returned alive.
In the days that followed, crowds of zombies could be seen gathering in the city square at odd intervals, refusing to respond to orders from any of their assigned shepherds. For several minutes at a time, they would pace the courtyards in circles, crawl on their hands and knees, perform push-ups and sit-ups, cartwheel and somersault down the lanes, and even perform elaborate goose-steps. Most unusually of all, they seemed to have a common tendency to stand on one another's shoulders, assemble themselves in towers, form human pyramids, and even attempt to walk in such formations. However it happened, the guards were never able to learn their secrets: by the time they arrived on the scene, the zombies had already disassembled, vanishing back into the alleyways without a trace.
And every now and again, a mysterious blindfolded figure in a filth-encrusted coat could be seen peering from the shadows. "Not quick enough," he would mutter occasionally. "They're not balanced yet." And as with the zombies, by the time the guards appeared on the scene, the blindfolded beggar was gone.
Two weeks went by, and gradually the sightings ceased. For the time being, the eyeball guards thought they had seen the last of their troubles – and just as well, for Bill Cipher had not responded for their calls for help.
And then one day, something the size of a greyhound bus stomped out of the alleyways, bound for the corpse moat. A giant, a veritable titan of dead flesh, its body was little more than a mass of interwoven zombies, dozens of reanimated corpses fused together into a set of colossal limbs as powerful as a wrecking ball and almost as indiscriminate; several eyeball guards tried to stop the monster as it strode through the town, thinking that it wouldn't be able to attack them. And technically it didn't: it simply stampeded across them, flattening them under its ponderous bulk and incorporating their crumpled bodies into its mass as it strode on.
Sitting atop the monster on a throne of dead flesh where its head should have been, Robbie Valentino directed the zombie giant down the street, swatting aside cars and pulverizing troop transports with wild swings of its gargantuan fists.
"REVEEEEEEEEEENGE!" he howled triumphantly, as the zombie giant strode onwards, moving inexorably onwards to the corpse moat – and to freedom.
Somewhere in the distance, Nyarlathotep applauded softly and grinned a grin to shame the Cheshire cat. "Atta boy," he said softly. "And this is only the beginning…"
He paused for a moment, studying the figure of zombie giant as it slowly receded over the horizon. Then, reaching into one of the pockets of his coat, he held out a single morbid-looking phone and began dialing a long and complicated number...
"Q! Good to hear from you again, old sport! How's tricks? I know, I know, it's been too long. Who are you playing with this month – Picard or Janeway? Ooh, I wouldn't have seen that coming. No, sad to say this isn't a social call. See, I'm calling on behalf of a client – a non-Outer God client, to be specific. The Axolotl's putting a team together, see, and we need your help…
A/N: This chapter's sountrack choice is Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out. (Eric Clapton variation)
Up next - a new and frightening metamorphosis begins; a pretty monster from the past reappears; the herald makes contact with the Twelfth.
Or, to put it another way:
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Vevm zugvi zoo'h tlmv dilmt
Gsv gdl nrtsg bvg vhxzkv wvhkzri:
Uiln nzwmvhh hkzivw gsilfts nzwmvhh hszivw