A/N: Two hundred reviews, ladies and gents, two hundred and four wonderful reviews - the first time any story of mine's reached this limit. Words cannot express just how grateful I am to all of you!
An immense thank you to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers: Hourglass Cipher, skywalkerchick1138, Kraven the Hunter, Northgalus2002, Carcer14, Blind-Eyephone, LoyalTheorist, Fantasy Fan 223, CrownedSteven, and our Guest!
Also, bidding a formal welcome to my weird new cover! Whaddaya think, ladies and gents: too much, too little, or just right?
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. Also, neither is Werewolf: The Apocalypse, in case you were wondering where the hell the Weaver came from.
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"WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?! SHOW YOURSELF!"
Bill was quite literally scarlet with rage by now, his one eye little more than a pitch-black aperture in his titanic body. He'd grown to a truly gargantuan size by now, easily dwarfing most of the surrounding planets and blotting out the sun as he proceeded through the Weirdness-plagued system. And as his mood worsened, random currents of electric-blue energy crackled off his corporeal form in a maelstrom of raw power, vaporizing asteroids, shattering moons, tearing the already-ravaged planets in half and shaving several billion years off the lifespan of the local sun – dragging it into the Red Giant stage early and casting an even more apocalyptic light on the surrounding star system (if such a thing was possible).
Some distance away, the Axolotl took cover under a fold in space and tried not to move as the remains of the smashed planets rocketed past him.
This was the Southern Void, previously known as the Stobbleward System; once a relatively peaceful region of a galaxy just next-door to the Milky Way, it had long since been consumed by Weirdness. Now the once-placid darkness of local space eddied and swirled with stellar distortions, the whole thing dyed a lurid blue by the Henchmaniacs' interstellar vandalism, making the place look more like the inside of some terrible whirlpool than anything that could ever have supported life.
Here, the fabric of the universe was so threadbare that things from outside could easily slip through the pinholes in the dimensional barriers.
And this was what it had been like before Bill had lost his temper.
"COME ON OUT, AXOLOTL!" Bill roared, his voice deeper than ever before, echoing cataclysmically across space in clear defiance of conventional physics."YOU WANT TO FIGHT FOR THE FATE OF THIS UNIVERSE? WELL, I'M READY! SHOW YOURSELF AND LET'S SEE JUST HOW TOUGH YOU REALLY ARE! IT TOOK ME A BILLION YEARS TO BREAK INTO THIS PODUNK REALITY, AND NOW THAT IT'S MINE, I'M NOT GONNA GIVE IT UP WITHOUT A FIGHT!"
Evidently, the graffiti back at the Fearamid had rattled Bill's cage quite thoroughly: he wasn't just angry anymore, but frightened, shouting into the void for no other reason than to assuage his anxiety. If nothing else, he was certainly distracted from the breakouts going on back on Earth; mission accomplished, then.
Unfortunately, that left Axolotl and his host facing down the full force of the demented nacho's wrath, and with his own power still suppressed by the locks placed around this dimension, there wouldn't be much that Axolotl could do to defend himself if Bill caught him.
Worse still, there was clearly no way out of this star system: in the distance, he could already see the figures of the Henchmaniacs lining up along the border, getting ready to intercept anyone making a break for freedom. For now, he was trapped.
"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! YOU SAY I'M ALL OUT OF SECOND CHANCES? YOU WANTED TO END THIS IN A DUEL TO THE DEATH? WELL, YOU GOT ONE!"
"Nyarlathotep," Axolotl muttered, "I could really, really use that distraction right about now…"
"Don't make me do this," Darlene whispered. "Please, you don't have to do this."
Nyarlathotep offered her a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Getting cold feet, are we?" he purred. "I seem to recall you were more than happy to help me if it meant sparing your life. Have you decided your life isn't worth that much after all?"
"You never said we'd be getting this close to her! If we call out to her now, we're going to kept swept up in the wake!"
"And?"
"Whaddaya mean 'and!' We'll end up in her web, you imbecile!"
"You might, I won't. Besides, it can't be helped: this is the most effective place to carry out the summoning, and lives are at stake – very precious lives that might serve my purposes in the not-too-distant future – so it falls to you to make a sacrifice for the greater good."
"You think you actually know what that means? The Weaver does. She understood "the greater good better" than anyone in my end of the multiverse… and that's exactly why she shouldn't be here. Why do you think Ananasi like me tried so hard to leave our world in the first place? Nothing could stop her by the end! Please, just call the whole thing off while you still have a chance, you don't know what she's like."
"But I do. I've travelled far and wide since I gained access to the multiverse, and I know everything there is to know about the creator of your species, the Eternal Mother of Queen Ananasa. And I know that her lust for order is exactly what this chaotic little universe needs. As you said, her arrival here is inevitable: I just need you to speed things up a little, guide her to a place weak enough for her to punch through. All you have to do is call out to her, and your work here is done."
"Don't you dare condescend to me, 'Carter,'" she snarled back. "I know exactly what the Weaver's gonna do to me. She'll hollow me out, burn away everything I am, fill what's left with Weaver-spirits and leave me calcified in stasis until the end of time. She'll make me a Server Drone, all function and no brain, just so she won't have to go to the trouble of actually killing me."
"Not my problem," said Nyarlathotep cheerily. "Now, let's get going. We have a god to save."
"There's nothing you can do to make me carry out the summoning; whatever you can do to me, it won't be anywhere near as bad as what she'll do to me."
"Then I'll just have to see what happens when I offer up your sweet little niece and nephew in your stead."
Darlene's eyes widened in horror. "You wouldn't," she whispered. "You couldn't…"
"I really wouldn't start hazarding guesses about what I can and can't do, Darlene," the Black Pharaoh growled."I've bathed in nuclear fire, drank deep from the river Styx, walked unscathed through the lightless Hadal depths, and basked in the Colour out of Space. I have feasted upon the hearts of a generation of children; I have walked with death and triumph hand-in hand across history, from the Sinking of Atlantis to the fall of Berlin; I have brought doom to dynasties untold, corrupted martyrs beyond counting and danced upon the graves of entire civilizations."
He paused, and cleared his throat. "So tell me," he continued, "how do you think Charlotte, innocent child that she is, will react when I start eating her brother one limb at a time? Do you think she'd be willing to conduct the summoning in your stead?"
"But I… I…"
"Why do you think I didn't just kill you the moment I found you, Darlene? There were over two hundred Ananasi loose in this dimension, and any one of them could have gotten the Weaver's attention, but you – and your dear little niblings – were the only spider-folk who had enough empathy to care for one another. So tell me, do you really think you could shrug off the deaths of your family as easily as you'd shrug off the death of your prey… or do you feel ready to cooperate with me?"
For a moment, it looked as if Darlene was about to salvage some last spark of defiance; but then the moment passed, and her eyes went dead and despairing, the all-too-familiar look of defeat spread across her face.
"When does it have to be done?" she asked dully.
Nyarlathotep's grin phosphoresced in the shadows of deep space. "There's no time like the present…"
There was a pause, and then a long, forlorn cry of despair echoed out across reality, crossing umbral barriers and piercing even the spirit world.
It hadn't been meant for the Weaver per se: it had always been intended as a last-ditch attempt to contact Queen Ananasa… but the beloved queen of the werespiders was lost forever in the stasis in her opal prison, and so the cry for help could only be intercepted by her jailer. It hadn't been meant for the Weaver…
But her avatar descended nonetheless.
"You think I'm scared of you? YOU THINK I'M SCARED OF A GIANT NEWT?!"
Axolotl sighed deeply. It was bad enough that Bill was clearly terrified out of his life: now the pointed maniac was resorting to bravado to cover it up.
"ARE YOU TRYING TO TRICK ME?" Bill bellowed. "WELL YOU CAN'T! I'VE OUTSMARTED YOU ONCE, I CAN DO IT AGAIN! I DON'T NEED YOU ANYMORE! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK I-"
The rest of Bill's speech was lost in the long, drawn-out shriek of something massive fracturing, the sound of a billion angle-grinders blended with the screams of a billion tortured souls and the shattering of eight hundred trillion miles of sculpted glass, all echoing through the mouth of hell and rammed brutally into an ear with the assistance of a red-hot chisel. It was a sound that defied all limits, a sound that could barely be coherently described, a sound that obliterated all rationality...
It was the sound of the barrier between dimensions being ripped open.
The Axolotl looked up in disbelief, recognizing those horrendous sounds all too well, just in time to see a long, jagged fissure slowly making its way across the swirling blue expanse of the surrounding Void. Bit by bit, the fabric of reality began to fray, to tear, to split – from the outside. Something out there had found a weak point in the dimensional wall, and was slowly carving a path into Bill's kingdom, ripping and shredding and gutting anything in its path, including what little stability remained in this tortured realm of existence.
Whatever was out there, the Axolotl could already sense its presence, actually feel its ravenous hatred and poisonous obsession, feel its demented need to control and dominate and perfect and calcify everything radiating from it. This was exactly what he'd been worrying about ever since local reality became flexible to allow uninvited guests… except this time, it wasn't just a few sneaky dimensional parasites jumping ship or a mid-level cosmic nightmare like the Filth seeping through the cracks in the world; this was a full-blown Lovecraftian Horror punching its way through reality, and there didn't seem to be any way of stopping it.
So far, the only plus to the situation that he could see was that, as far as he could tell, Bill was just as shocked as he was: the scarlet hue had bled away, leaving him his familiar shade of gold; the maelstrom of energies surrounding him had vanished; his eye was wide with astonishment and fear, and unless Axolotl was deeply mistaken, he was already starting to back away from the growing split in reality.
At long last, the fissure was ripped open into a massive hole in the dimensional wall, chunks of stellar matter flaking away as it did so. And in the gaping abyss it revealed, there was only unending darkness, without form and without matter, the purest and most terrifying form of the space between dimensions. And then, something loomed out of the nothingness.
Her eight titanic limbs spanned the length and breadth of the entire star system, vast chitinous spires of eldritch matter that could have impaled a planet.
Her eyes blazed in the void with an intensity that outshone stars and shrivelled black holes, her gaze at once conveying purest dispassion and soul-rending hatred, at once divine wisdom and ravening madness.
Her segmented body, a vast, perfectly-symmetrical construction of infinite logic, cast a shadow so deep that even Bill could not escape it; her glistening black carapace almost perfectly mirrored the world around her, and the gravity of her being almost wrenched the surviving planets out of their orbits.
"Giant spider" didn't do this creature justice: she was structure and logic and stasis made flesh. She was eternal order, as inescapable as a singularity and as inevitable as death.
She could only be an avatar of…
"Oh shit," Axolotl groaned.
There was a pause, and then the being spoke: she produced no sound, nor was any telepathic voice heard in the minds of the onlookers. The words simply existed, had always existed and had always been spoken even without a voice to produce them, embossed upon the very substance of the world.
AT LAST, I AM HERE, she said. AND I FIND NOT ONLY ONE OF ANANASA'S DEGENERATE CREATIONS, BUT THE SOURCE OF THIS WORLD'S CORRUPTION. HOW VERY APPROPRIATE.
"What… what are you?" Bill whispered.
I AM ORDER. I AM LOGIC. I AM PATTERN AND STRUCTURE, DIRECTION AND REASON. I AM CLARITY, AND I AM STASIS AND I AM CALCIFICATION. I AM THE GUIDING HAND OF REALITY. I AM UNIVERSAL PERFECTION.
I AM THE WEAVER.
"… who?"
YOUR IGNORANCE WILL NOT BE INDULGED, said the Weaver. YOU ARE CHAOS. YOU ARE DISRUPTION. YOU ARE DISGUSTING. YOU ARE A BLIGHT ON WORLDS THAT HAVE YET TO HEAR MY ONESONG. YOU ARE AN INSULT TO ORDER, A DESTROYER OF POTENTIAL PERFECTION. YOU ARE AN ERROR IN REALITY… AN ERROR WHICH I AM COMPELLED TO CORRECT.
And then, from behind the Weaver's avatar, something else began crawling from the gap in reality, a glistening white tide pouring out across the cosmos. Most of them were too small to be seen against the stellar backdrop, but as Axolotl focussed his eldritch senses upon them, the newest arrival became apparent: they were spiders, billions upon billions of ghastly white spider-spirits flowing like water through the ruined star system, most of them no bigger than four inches long.
But wherever they went, they instantaneously spun lengths of crystalline silk, layering local space in a network of glittering threads, a web of impossible beauty. And whatever the web touched… changed.
Slowly the swirling blue vortex of Weirdness that had overwhelmed the Southern Void began to fade, the colour bleeding away until all that was left was the eternal night of deep space. Bit by bit, the azure waves were pushed back across the system, every illogical phenomena in the system vanishing as the crystalline threads touched them; the sun rippled back into shape; planets reformed from shattered asteroids, continents and oceans appearing where once there'd only been molten rock. Every strand of the web the spiders wove erased Weirdness from local reality, slowly restoring the world around it to its natural form.
Pattern-Spiders, Axolotl realized, weaving the Pattern Web.
"What are you doing?!" Bill shrieked. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! You're ruining all my best work!"
I IMPOSE ORDER ON CHAOS. MY CREATIONS RESTORE FUNCTION. MY CHILDREN CLEANSE IMPERFECTION. I AM SAVING THIS WORLD, ONE STAR SYSTEM AT A TIME. I WILL MAKE THIS REALITY PERFECT.
"The HELL you will! I don't know where you came from and I don't know what brought you here, but you're not going to turn this world back to the way it used to be! I worked long and hard bringing Weirdness into this two-bit dimension, and I haven't gone this far just to see it ruined by some… big spider queen… thing!"
EMPTY BRAVADO WILL NOT AVAIL YOU. YOU WILL BE CORRECTED. YOU WILL BE ERASED.
"SHUT UP AND DIE!"
And with that, Bill pointed a finger at the nearest rank of Pattern Spiders and sent a deadly bolt of searing blue energy rocketing towards them; in the blinding flash of light that followed, over half a million of the tiny spiders were instantly disintegrated, and over a million more were scorched beyond repair by the thermal blast accompanying it… but a billion more were already crawling through the portal to replace them. Letting out a snarl of rage, Bill fired again, this time sending a wave of coruscating energy across the enemy flank, into the bulk of the new Pattern Web: billions fell, and over a hundred thousand miles of crystal threads snapped and frayed under the onslaught… but the reinforcements were already pouring in, repairing the Web as they went.
Bellowing in rage, Bill gathered another blast, a veritable hurricane of eldritch energies that could have seared a planet barren, and flung it at the Weaver. It scored a direct hit on her thorax, the life-extinguishing fires blazing out across her exoskeleton… but when the flames finally cleared, the Weaver stood unharmed.
PERFECTION CANNOT BE STOPPED, she said. Was it Axolotl's imagination, or did she sound ever-so-slightly smug?
SUBMIT TO ORDER. SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE PURGATION.
"SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" Bill thundered, apoplectic with rage.
THE VOICE OF ORDER CANNOT BE SILENCED.
"THIS IS SOME NEW TRICK OF THE AXOLOTL'S ISN'T IT? HE BROUGHT YOU HERE TO STOP ME, RIGHT?! WELL IT'S NOT GONNA WORK! HE COULDN'T STOP ME! TIME BABY COULDN'T STOP ME! AND NEITHER WILL YOU!"
YOU ARE A CHILD. YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING. I WILL MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND. I WILL MAKE YOU HEAR THE ONESONG BEFORE YOU DIE.
The Weaver took a step forward across the cosmos, and as she did so, her body glowed with its own infra-violet shade of improbable energies, erupting forth in a creeping barrage of perfectly-straight lines and geometrically-perfect shapes, each one tracing a path towards Bill. They made contact with a coruscating series of flashes, blistering his flesh and tearing open at least a dozen brutal-looking wounds across his corporeal form.
Roaring in agony, Bill regenerated his flesh and returned fire: with a wave of his hand, he tore the Southern Void's sun from its orbit and flung it at the Weaver, taking every planet in the system with it. The Weaver soaked up every single impact without even flinching, and retaliated with a supernova that all but scorched the flesh from Bill's body. With another shriek of pain, Bill recovered, allowing new flesh to pour back across his weeping muscles. Then, he flung himself at the distant figure of the Weaver with all the tact of a guided missile. "HENCHMANIACS!" he hollered. "TO WAR!"
And then, a familiar voice right next to Axolotl's left ear muttered "Why exactly are you not running?"
It took every last atom of willpower left in the Axolotl's borrowed body to not jump in shock. As expected, Nyarlathotep was standing beside him, a triumphant smirk on his face. "I'd have thought you'd have known when to make an exit," he said smugly. "Don't tell me I have to help you with that as well."
For a moment, Axolotl could only stare, Tyler Cutebiker's already wide-eyed face boggling incredulously at the Outer God. "W…was this your doing?" he demanded at last. "Did you summon… her?"
"You said you wanted a distraction."
"A proportionate distraction!" Axolotl exploded. "Something that would have gotten his attention without endangering local reality! You could have detonated a bomb, you could have stolen the Fearamid and taken it on a joyride! Youcould gone unicycling naked through the cosmos with your ass painted in the colours of the Belarusian flag and a vuvuzela jammed halfway down your throat! Summoning the Weaver is not even remotely a proportionate response, Nyarlathotep! What is wrong with you?!"
"Nothing. Bill, on the other hand, appears to have lost his hat."
"SHUT UP AND TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!"
"Oh, I am. I am. I also recall you remarking that we might have to make some rather an unorthodox allies if we wanted to stop Bill."
"Not the Weaver! Okay, I suggested making use of a Weaver, but I was talking about the Bas-Lag variant, not the fucking World of Darkness variant! Nyarlathotep, do you have any idea what she'll do if she actually succeeds in killing him? What she'll do to the people? About forty percent of the remaining human population will probably be executed, and the rest will be calcified into her clockwork toys! And that's assuming she and Bill don't end up ripping this dimension apart!"
"Oh ye of little faith," Nyarlathotep chortled. "Bill's got a trump card up his sleeve, just waiting to be used: he'll have it in play once the Weaver's gotten him too spooked to concentrate on his pride."
Once again, Axolotl could only stare incredulously. "You were planning on all of this? How could you have possibly have guaranteed-"
"Axolotl?"
"Yes?"
"If you want to continue relying on my services, I suggest you don't question my methods. Now, I think it's time you made good on your escape: you keep on leading Bill a merry chase, and I'll keep on gathering the members of the zodiac. You just leave everything to me…"
"But-"
"Now, please."
Axolotl took a deep breath as he struggled to regain control of the conversation. "No," he said at last. "You-"
And then he felt the familiar pulse of the same terrible power that had left him on the brink of death. This time, though, he was ready for it – not quite ready enough to soak up the worst of the effects, but at least ready enough to prevent himself from haemorrhaging from every single orifice of his host body. Then again, he probably needn't have even bothered: it wasn't anywhere near as strong, but in his experience, direct alterations to established timelines were always painful especially when he was unlucky enough to be standing inside them.
"Goddammit, not again," he grumbled, as he pitched forward. Nyarlathotep caught him at the last minute, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him upright."
"Don't lose consciousness, now. You've got an escape to make good on."
"Bill's… doing something to time…"
"Exactly. Now, we don't want to get caught up in it, do we? Come along now…"
The last thing Axolotl saw, before Nyarlathotep stepped sideway across the galaxy, was Bill – crimson with rage and incandescent with power – seizing the very flow of time itself, and drawing it backwards…
…turning back time.
YOU CANNOT DO THIS FOREVER.
"Wanna bet?" Bill snarled.
His hands now blazed with neon-blue flames, pouring his infinite power into the chronoreacive particles of time itself: he'd done this before, back when he'd been content with party games, when the most spectacular thing he'd ever done had been to tie old Pine Tree's timeline in knots and link it up with the Shapeshifter's own lifespan. Now, though, there were more vital things to accomplish with his command of time. None of his other powers had any effect on the Weaver: this, as strenuous and brain-muddling as it was to use, was his only way of driving off the invader.
Bit by bit, he exerted more force upon the flow of time, pushing it back and back and back until he could see the strands of the web across the Southern Void beginning to unravel, until he could see the little spiders being swept back into the gaping crater from which they spilled. He could feel the Weaver trying to resist, could actually sense the crushing force of her own will hammering down on his own, but for all her power, she didn't have control of time in this world; she didn't have a handle on Bill's trump card. And in the end, not even she could resist being pushed backwards toward the fissure in reality.
THE FACT THAT YOU COULD NOT DESTROY ME IS PROOF OF YOUR WEAKNESS, the Weaver sneered contemptuously as she slid away.
"Shut… up…"
YOU ARE AN INFANT PLAYING WITH TOYS YOU CAN BARELY COMPREHEND. YOU WILL DESTROY YOURSELF LONG BEFORE YOU CAN EVER DREAM OF DESTROYING ME.
For once, Bill had nothing to say. His usual wellspring of malicious humour and toxic trash talk had finally run dry under the continued stress of the moment. Now, all he cared about was getting this monster out of his world.
Around him, the star system warped and twisted in and out of shape: planets reformed from pulverized dust and took their place back at the centre of the system, only to explode back into asteroids; the sun bobbed and flowed in and out of place, erupting into its red giant phase once again; and as the web was slowly unwoven, the vortex pulsed back into existence, the familiar flow of local Weirdness reasserting itself across the star system – until at last, the web was gone and the last of the spiders had returned to the fissure.
Finally, the Weaver herself was pushed to the very edge of the crater in reality, struggling against the flow of time with all her might, but even she – with all her power, with all her impossible influence over reality – could not resist time. Bit by bit, she slid past the rim of the crater, until at last she began the long, slow plunge back into the nothingness from which she'd crept.
I WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY IN, she said. WE WILL MEET AGAIN.
Then the fissure closed, and she was gone.
Bill did his best to reinforce the dimensional wall behind her, but he knew there honestly wasn't much point other than assuaging his own fears: the Weaver, from what little he'd seen of her, obviously wasn't stupid. She'd only stumbled upon him here by accident, and next time she'd pick a more isolated beachhead – someplace where he wouldn't arrive in time to stop her spinning that maddening, reality-restoring web. Next time, she might aim for the Rift in the skies above Gravity Falls, at the very source of the Weirdness that had liberated this dimension. What if she were to spin a web over that?
He shuddered, trying not to imagine those terrible crystal threads imprisoning his powers.
But where had the Axolotl found the Weaver in the first place? What business would a committed member of the goody-two-shoes brigade with something as rigid and oppressive as the thing that had crept into his world scant moments ago? All this talk of calcification and order and harbingers of ascension just wasn't Axolotl's scene. Even if the giant newt happened to meet the Weaver by accident, all the "I will make this world perfect" would probably have repelled him on the spot.
There was a polite cough from somewhere below. It was 8-Ball, looking even more befuddled than usual. "Uh, boss, what do we do now?"
This threw Bill for a moment: in all the confusion, he'd completely forgotten what the hell they'd been doing in the Southern Void to begin with. Wracking his brain for answers, he at last remembered the energy signature he'd followed into the star system, and with an unpleasant jolt to all the extraneous organs he'd added to his corporeal form so long ago (as a party trick), he realized that he'd been distracted from locating the Axolotl's hiding place.
Frantically, he scanned the area with all his otherworldly sensory apparatus, searching desperately for some sign of the presence that been hovering just out of sight just a few minutes ago. But in the end, he found nothing.
The Axolotl had escaped.
Bill howled in rage. He roared and thundered and tore at creation with every weapon at his disposal: he grew to a billion times his normal size and crushed the local sun between his fingertips; his body rippled into three dimensions and multiplied into a column of two dozen interconnected pyramids, each one bright crimson with fury; his arms snaked out in their trillions and lashed at reality, carving huge unsightly divots where there'd once been populated worlds. Gravity was reversed, enforced, deactivated, flipping objects upside down, crushing them to powder and sending them floating away; temperatures inverted, causing neighbouring stars to freeze solid; electromagnetic waves became rubber, coronal rain turned to custard, and the inhabitants of an entire populated system a few light-years away were instantly transformed into disused tax forms.
In the end, he turned his rage on the surrounding Henchmaniacs.
"YOU LOST HIM,YOU USELESS FUCKING DOLTS!"he bellowed, flinging them from one end of the system to the other. "I TOLD YOU I WANTED HIM FOUND AND YOU LET HIM SLIP AWAY!"
"But boss, you said you wanted the Weaver stopped-"
"SHUT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU, KEYHOLE, OR I'LL TURN YOU INSIDE-OUT AND USE YOU AS A PAIR OF GLOVES!"
"But why couldn't you just use the time power to bring him back here?"
"ONE MORE WORD OUT OF YOU AND I'LL GRIND YOU DOWN FOR PYRONICA'S BEAUTY PRODUCTS! SHE'LL BE WEARING YOU ALL OVER HER, YOU LITTLE PISSANT! YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, TEEETH?!"
Bill paused for breath, and gradually reassumed his natural form.
"Okay," he sighed. "Okay. I'm calm. I'm in control again, and I am perfectly…" His eye twitched dangerously. "…perfectly fine. Where was I"
"I was asking why you couldn't just rewind time agai-"
"He's resisting my time powers," Bill hissed tersely. "I can't focus on him, I can't pin him down, and I can't get a good enough look at him to zero in. I don't even know form he's taken in this dimension."
"Oh."
"Now, here's what I want you to do, 8-Ball. I want you and the others to find the Axolotl as quickly as possible: I don't know what he's planning, but I want you back on his trail, pronto. Now, I don't know why he hasn't attacked any of us yet, but I can make a few well-informed guesses – maybe he's trying not to endanger the lives of anyone in this hick universe or some such sweet-natured bullshit, or maybe he's saving his strength. I don't know and I don't care: point is, you can take him. Get the picture?"
"That's just the thing, boss…" said 8-Ball nervously.
Bill paused, took a deep and extremely pointless breath, and continued. "You can find his trail again, right?"
"Yes, but that's not the problem," Kryptos chimed in. "He can sense us long before we can see him. He can sense we don't belong in this universe, and he always runs off before we can corner him."
"You didn't have any trouble cornering him this time."
"Only by accident, boss; if that stellar storm hadn't slowed him down, we'd never have caught up with him."
"Oh for the love of all that's putrid! What do you people want me to do?" Bill thundered. "Find him myself?!"
Several pairs of eyes and several eyeless faces looked up at him expectantly.
"No! Not even remotely! Even if I took some other form, he'd still recognize that I wasn't part of this… w…"
He paused.
Some other form…
"Jackpot," he whispered.
The Henchmaniacs stared blankly up at him.
"We need someone stealthy enough to sneak up on the Axolotl. We need someone native to this dimension, someone he won't be able to detect… someone who might be able to sniff him out with just a little help and modification..." Bill's eye twisted into a monstrous smirk. "The Axolotl wants to make this a hunt to remember? Fine. We've got the perfect hunting hound."
"Boss?"
"Amorphous Shape! Go back to Gravity Falls, find that old bunker of Sixer's, and get that cryotube thawed out: I think it's time our frosty little Pine Tree saw the light of day again..."
Somewhere just outside Bill Cipher's dimensional kingdom, the Weaver's corporeal avatar sat and brooded over her amassed forces – her Pattern Spiders, her Drones, her elevated Perfect Ones, her elements and her mightiest spirits – and calculated the next course of action.
This is not acceptable, she told them, her voice rippling out across the minds of her children, all of them listening in rapt attention to the Onesong as it played out across their interconnected brains. We must find another way into his dominion.
As you command, so shall it be done, the army replied.
What of the Ananasi we captured, a few outlying minds whispered. What of Darlene? What is to be done with her, Mistress?
She is to be re-educated… then Clarified. Perfection cannot be refused.
"Is this a private conversation, or can anyone join in?"
All heads turned in the general direction of the voice, millions upon millions of eyes focussing on the lone figure striding towards them. It was immediately apparent that despite its anthropoid appearing, this being was not human: the dimensions were too dissimilar, the energy readouts too vivid to belong to any of the Weaver's favourite breed. This was evidently the avatar of some powerful spirit, but what? An Incarnae? A Celestine? What power could this corporeal entity represent?
WHO ARE YOU? The Weaver demanded, now embossing her words upon reality.
"The name's Nyarlathotep," said the man, his smile casting an unearthly glow upon the surrounding watchers in the darkness of interdimensional space. "And I'm here with a proposition you might find very interesting."
WE ARE THE FORCES OF PERFECTION. WE DO NOT MAKE BARGAINS WITH THE POWERS OF WORLDS MY ONESONG HAS NOT TOUCHED.
"Nonetheless, I think you should listen for a while. It really is in your best interest."
AND WHY IS THAT?
"Because I honestly think you're aiming too low in life."
WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF MY AIMS?
"I know you were one of a Triat of ruling entities dedicated to the proper management of reality in your neck of the woods: the Wyld created matter, you refined it into recognizable forms and imposed rules upon it, and the Wyrm destroyed old and redundant matter so it could be recycled. Except you eventually had other ideas. You decided to take control of the process, to impose your order on a chaotic system, to make it perfect and ensure that it never changed. And I can tell from the fact that you're even here - and more powerful than most iterations of yourself - that you're from a dimension in which you triumphed over all: the Wyld and the Weaver are smothered in the Pattern Web, the Werewolves and Fera have been driven into extinction, Queen Ananasa has abandoned all hope, and humanity has been sculpted into your favourite creation in a world where everything is perfect and everything has been calcified into stasis.
Nyarlathotep smiled, barely stifling a giddy laugh. "And now that you've found a portal connecting your world to this one, you want a repeat performance: another perfect world of your own, am I right?"
YOU ARE CORRECT, said the Weaver, barely managing to hide her surprise.
"And what if I were to tell you that this world is so much more than just another prize to be perfected and calcified? See, Bill's invasion has made the walls of this dimension extremely... porous. You're not the only one to have made the journey here, honey, and you certainly won't be the last: every godling and abomination with a taste for fresh thrills has been flocking to this world to partake in the festivities of Bill Cipher's ultimate playground. But the portals aren't one-way, my dear: this world is now a veritable nexus of gateways – an interdimensional crossroads by which any world imaginable can be accessed."
There was a long pause, as the Weaver scrutinized every facet of Nyarlathotep's being, trying to discern any patterns associated with untruth.
YOU ARE NOT LYING, she said at last.
"Why does everyone always sound so surprised when they say that?"
GET TO THE POINT. WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?
"That you halt your plans to invade this world again… for now. I have my own plans for this dimension, and they can ill afford further disruption. All I need you to do is remain beyond the barrier separating Bill's kingdom from interdimensional space, and keep the Weirdness from spilling out."
YOU WANT ME TO ABANDON MY SACRED MISSION FOR THIS REALITY. AND WHAT DO I GET IN RETURN FOR INDULGING YOUR SELFISH WHIMS? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE WORTH AGREEING TO YOUR BARGAIN, INSECT?
"Everything," said Nyarlathotep with a wink. "Quite literally."
There was a pause, as the Weaver digested this.
YOU PROPOSE TO GIVE ME ACCESS TO THE OTHER WORLDS OF THE CROSSROADS?
"It's the only way you'll be able to do so; your search for perfection will ruin everything otherwise. The portals connecting these worlds together have been brought on entirely by Bill Cipher's Weirdness: get rid of that, get rid of Bill and you get rid of the portals. Sure, you'll have one more world to add to your little empire of stasis, but you'll lose out on an infinite multitude of others. But if you consent to my terms, I can provide you with the locations of these portals and precise charts of where they lead. With my help, your conquest of the multiverse will be instantaneous and unchallenged, and neither human or Changeling Breed will be able to stand in your way."
YOU SAY YOU HAD PLANS FOR THIS DIMENSION.
"Let's just say that a crossroads… would be very useful for my purposes. Just how useful it'll be depends on just how well the next few weeks work in my favour. Right now, I've joined forces with the Axolotl – you may recall seeing him hiding under your entry portal. Long story short, we're putting together a team to depose Bill once and for all. Once he's gone, we can begin plans for your expansion across infinity."
AND WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU FAIL? WHAT HAPPENS IF BILL CIPHER IS ABLE TO DESTROY YOU AND THIS AXOLOTL?
Nyarlathotep shrugged. "Then you get to keep this dimension as a consolation prize. You've proved yourself more than equal to the task of ending Bill's reign if the worst comes to worst."
THEN I ACCEPT YOUR… BARGAIN, SUCH AS IT IS. I SHALL REMAIN OUTSIDE THIS DIMENSION, AND I SHALL PREVENT ANY WEIRDNESS FROM ESCAPING, AS YOU INSTRUCTED. IN TIME, YOU WILL SATISFY YOUR END OF THE BARGAIN. SHOULD YOU CEASE TO EXIST, I WILL CLAIM THIS REALM AS MY OWN, AND ALL WITHIN WILL KNOW THE JOY OF LIFE WITHOUT THE CURSE OF INDIVIDUALITY.
"Good, good. I knew you'd see reason. Oh, one more thing: I may need some of your Drones in the next few days – the more powerful ones, for choice. Just a little something to make life a little harder for Bill, among other worthwhile targets."
The Weaver considered this. YOU WANT SOME OF MY PERFECT ONES, she said.
"In time, yes."
THEN PERHAPS YOU WOULD DO ME THE FAVOUR OF ACQUIRING SUITABLE HUMANS THAT I CAN MAKE INTO DRONES… FROM AMONG BILL'S PERSONAL STOCK OF SLAVES. LOOK FOR OBEDIENT PERFECTIONISTS, THOSE INCLINED TO CONFORM AND SEEK ORDER ABOVE ALL ELSE. FROM THEIR DESIRE FOR ORDER SHALL A NEW ARMY OF PERFECT ONES BE BORN.
"An abduction plan for future minions? I like the way you think, my dear. As a matter of fact, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship of convenience…"
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Sovereign's Theme from Mass Effect.
Anyone care to guess who Nyarlathotep might want to offer up as a sacrifice? Who could fit the bill for the Weaver's favourite type of person?
Up next - a group of wanderers make a horrific discovery, and a new threshold of power is discovered... or, to put it another way:
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