A/N: Aaaaand the latest chapter, everyone! The final battle begins - get ready, ladies and gentlemen, because it's going to be a wild ride!

I honestly don't have much to say other than to offer my immense thanks to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed: you give me strength, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you, one and all!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine.

They had toiled for over a month to get this far – or at least it had felt like a month.

Dipper had led the pilots of the fleet on one aerial exercise after another, all while pushing the limits of his shapeshifting powers; Wendy had drilled and trained and honed their ragtag militia to a devastating point, to the point that any one of them could hold their own alongside the Society; McGucket had churned out hundreds upon thousands of weapons, power armour suits, new ship components, and sometimes even entire ships, all carefully field-tested with the help of Grenda and Candy; Pacifica had carried out the modifications to each ship of the fleet, slotting McGucket's newest upgrades into place with the power of her mind alone; Robbie had deployed his zombies from afar in repairs and modification duties, seeing just how far he could control them – absently testing to see if the animated corpses could be made to look more like him; Soos had volunteered himself as a target in Wendy's live-fire exercises and helped decorate the hull of the capital ships in zero-oxygen environments; Gideon had briefed the last of the newest recruits, warning them of the stakes that would await them if they stayed for the final battle and allowing anyone unable or unwilling to fight to retire to the Cookie Jar with the civilians. And through it all, Mabel had refreshed their food supplies, worked on putting Time Baby back together, upheld the time bubble that allowed their work to continue uninterrupted, and refined her powers further.

To the surprise of all, Gideon's mother and Preston Northwest had insisted on staying: the latter had reasoned that he'd rather die immediately rather than end up getting caught in the Cookie Jar and returned to prison if Bill won; the former had simply sat down in the middle of the Forge and refused to budge no matter how desperately Gideon had pleaded with her, responding only with a determined grunt of "just keep vacuuming." Likewise, Grenda and Candy had pointedly refused to leave, despite Mabel's best attempts at dissuading them. Quite apart from the fact that neither of them wanted her to face Bill without their help, the two were having too much fun with McGucket's power armour to quit now. Blendin Blandin had stayed as well alongside the time police, offering a defiant monologue in rudimentary sign language whenever he'd been encouraged to throw in the towel and recuperate. Even Sev'ral Timez had stayed on.

Now at last, they were ready.

Every ship in the fleet was flying free, automated where possible or manned when it wasn't. Over the course of the last few days or weeks or however long it had been, their little flotilla had been remodelled to be both functional and terrifying, every bulkhead painted, sculpted and decorated until it was guaranteed to put the fear of death into anyone who witnessed its approach. Where once the hulls of their armada had been a brilliant silver, streamlined, sleek and undifferentiated, now they were midnight blue and pitch-black, their bodies adorned with gaping fang-filled maws, grasping talons, fleshy tendrils of vat-grown tissue, batlike wings, grinning wreaths of skulls, and countless other horrific appendages.

Only their names remained the same, either aggressively cheerful names in defiance of the odds or hammy little tributes to the world that Bill had destroyed: the Merrymaker, the California's Vengeance, the Circus Is In Town, the Queenslander, The Show Must Go On, the Beijing, the Laughing Liberator, the Fist Of London, the Hold My Beer, the Remember Egypt, the Juggling Dynamite…

….and Dipper and Mabel's favourite, an experimental dreadnought known only as the Gravity Falls.

There was no set template involved here: every modification was unique and distinctive. Robbie had taken great delight in helping McGucket in the design, drawing particular inspiration from the covers of his death metal record collection, and had surprised just about everyone by adding things to the schematics that even the Toymaker himself hadn't thought of – including smoke projectors to mask the ships' approach and missile tubes hidden behind the wings. Thanks to his stylistic additions, many of the ships looked more like obscene gargoyles than mechanical constructs, and a few looked almost alive.

But it was in the use of shadow that the airships truly impressed: Ford had told them all that death and infinite void frightened Bill more than anything else, one of the many reasons why the wastelands had featured so many luridly colourful terrains and painfully bright hellscapes, why Bill's entourage was still a blaze of neon-tinted hues and searing incandescent light, and why even the Fearamid's gloomiest chambers had still been lit with a nightmarish luminescence; it's obsidian bricks had glowed, the mortar a hellish orange.

So, every ship in the fleet had been painted with another one of McGucket's newest inventions, a Weirdness-infused paint concoction that actually absorbed surrounding light and layered the ships in oozing near-liquid darkness, obscuring weak points and bulkheads from view. So it was that, with their mechanical components hidden and their monstrous adornments brought into sharp relief, the rebel armada truly became something more than just a mass of hastily assembled ships: now, they were ships befitting the new zodiac – mysterious, powerful and nightmarish beyond compare.

Of course, the one exception to this rule was the Forge: even if its non-Euclidean bulk hadn't been creepy enough already, there was no way in hell McGucket would have been able to build modifications big enough to be visible across its vast expanse; even painting it was out of the question. So, it was kept as the flagship of the fleet, carrying the majority of the troops, the majority of the zodiac, and towed by the Stanmobile II: it would be kept in reserve until the last minute, befitting their ultimate flagship – the fifty-first member of the zodiac armada.

And now, in the billowing kaleidoscopic skies above the Maddening Sea, five thousand feet above the turgid ocean of liquefied wood and frigid molten glass upon which so many desperate refugee ships had died, the shadowy armada of the zodiac had finally arrived at Bill Cipher's doorstep. They'd rang the doorbell to get his attention, just to make sure he witnessed the shock and awe in action; now it was time to face humanity's Lord and Master.

Scant miles away, the Fearamid towered over them, its uniform blocks of luminous black stone now augmented by a gargantuan mass of fused buildings, forming a monstrosity that dwarfed even the Forge itself. Here and there, a few vaguely familiar structures from across Earth could be glimpsed in the depths of its grotesquely intertwined body: the Lincoln Memorial, Stonehenge, the Arc de Triomphe, the Colosseum, Sydney Harbour Bridge, and roughly half the Forbidden City, all fused and merged and dyed the same colour as the rest of the Fearamid, a darkly luminous mishmash of architectural styles united under one tasteless banner. Even from here, the zodiac could hear it thundering with life, the power of its master rippling out from it in solid waves of sound and pressure, drowning out even the sound of their engines.

And atop just above the tip of the Fearamid was Bill Cipher himself.

Even amidst the dizzyingly colourful skies of azure, scarlet, emerald and silver, his neon-gold body shone like a beacon, searing any eye that dared to look upon him; only the tinted canopies and shrouds of vapour spared the pilots from being blinded. The fact that he was visible from this distance clearly meant that he had to have made himself truly gigantic, well over a thousand feet tall and probably at least a quarter of the Fearamid's height. All around him, lightning gathered in forked purple tongues, lurid electric-blue fire raged across the sky, and razor-sharp meteors slowly took shape above the needle-sharp tips of his spindly fingers, ready to launch at the first enemy to appear within range.

But worst of all was his eye, scanning the skies around him like a searchlight, the pupil aglow with energy and ablaze with hate.

Fortunately, the skies around the Fearamid were thick with impenetrable black clouds, courtesy of the armada's smoke projectors; as long as the remote gas drones they'd launched ahead of them continued pumping their noxious payloads across the battlefield, the fleet would remain hidden. True, the cloud cover wouldn't last for more than a few minutes, but hopefully that would be more than enough to keep Bill from blasting them all out of the sky before they began their attack. As Ford had said, "The eye points only in one direction at a time," and without any sign of where they were hiding and how many of them there really were, they might be able to keep Bill on the ropes.

The key word being "might."

But however optimistic their chances looked, that didn't stop many of the airship crews cringing in terror at the sound of Bill's thunderous voice echoing across the sky:

"ALRIGHT!" he roared. "LET'S SEE WHAT THE HUMAN RACE HAS TO OFFER THIS TIME AROUND! YOU THINK YOU'RE SOMETHING SPECIAL? YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?! BRING IT ON! BRING YOUR BEST! I'M RIGHT HERE, BOYS AND GIRLS! BRING IT!"

A blast of energy split the sky, lancing through the clouds and narrowly missing one of the airships; it was a probing shot, a clear sign that Bill couldn't see through the vapour, but it was also a very good indication that the demented corn chip wasn't playing around anymore. Angry and frightened as he was, he wasn't going to wait for a target to appear this time: even if they could remain behind cover, the fleet would still be under heavy fire.

There was a pause, as the zodiac took the biggest collective breath of their entire lives. They knew what they would have to do now: this was by far the single most dangerous step of the plan… but if the fleet was to survive, if they were ever to reach the runes without losing too many troops, this was the next logical step – not that it made them feel any better about it.

Up in the topmost pinnacle of the Forge, with nothing but an open hatchway between them and Bill's rage, Dipper and Mabel silently exchanged glances. At once, it was apparent that both of them were desperately trying to look more confident than they felt; all around them, the others were steeling themselves and readying their weapons, every single one of the troops just as apprehensive as their leaders. Even Grunkle Ford looked a bit unsettled.

But then the moment passed, and Mabel smiled in spite of herself. "Alright, guys," she said. "Just like we practiced: Dipper goes first, and the Horsemen follow on in classic order; Soos and Robbie, be ready as soon as the rest of the fleet moves in. Gideon, is everyone listening?"

"Telepathic links are live and everyone in the fleet can hear you: they're ready to go at your command."

"Good. Now, remember – we beat him once-"

"-and we'll do it again!" Dipper finished. "Now let's get out there and show Bill that his time is over!"

"The Pyramid Falls!" bellowed Amanda.

"THE PYRAMID FALLS!" chorused the troops inside the Forge.

And as the war-cry echoed along Gideon's telepathic web, troops across the entire fleet took up the cry, bellowing across the sound systems until the air itself once again rang with the sound of their voices: "THE PYRAMID FALLS! THE PYRAMID FALLS! THE PYRAMID FALLS!"

And right on cue, Dipper took a running leap through the open hatch and flung himself into oblivion. As he fell, his body shifted and warped once again, this time sprouting vast batlike wings that neatly converted his plunge into an elegant glide that sent him soaring across the skies towards the Fearamid…

From his position atop the Fearamid, Bill saw the tiny figure rocketing across the multi-coloured skies, and recognized it at once: even with his body massively altered to accommodate those wings, there was no mistaking that stupid mop of dull brown hair or that idiotically-determined expression on his face. Had he not already discovered the shredded body of Amorphous Shape in the ruins of the bunker, Bill would have dismissed the sight as a trick, but now he knew that the Shapeshifter had sided with the zodiac and reclaimed the identity of Dipper Pines… and all the effort Bill had expended on erasing Pine Tree from existence had been for nothing.

But had Pine Tree been the one who'd been making all that noise a moment ago? It wouldn't have been impossible for him to do so; he had the power to mimic multiple voices at once, yes... but just what was the upper limit of the Shapeshifter's powers? Did this solo attack mean he was the only survivor of the fleet Bill had destroyed back in Cipheropolis?

Bill shook himself. It didn't matter: he didn't have time to ask questions, not with the way Pine Tree was picking up speed, and certainly not with the new and terrible shapes he was assuming as he drew closer. Better to just kill the little bastard, wipe him from the face of the skies and forget this had ever happened. Once that was done, he could focus on Axolotl and then everything would be okay…

So, pointing a finger in Pine Tree's direction, he summoned up all his world-annihilating power and took careful aim, ready to sear him out of existence once and for all-

And then a grapnel hit him.

It was less than a foot across, it hadn't been tipped with any kind of explosive or poison, and it only struck him on the very tip of his index finger… but that didn't stop it from hurting like hell. Quite apart from the fact that the double-headed grapnel was actually quite sharp, he'd gotten it right under his fingernail, right at the very moment he'd been about to fire – leaving Bill's world-destroying blast of energy to explode in his hand.

"OW!" he bellowed, clutching his wounded hand. "What the hell did-"

"GRAPPLING HOOK!" shrieked a triumphant voice from behind him.

Spinning around, he saw another tiny figure soaring through the skies below, this one mounted on a horse so pale it seemed to glow even in the dazzlingly colourful skies around it. Of course, he already knew who the rider was long before he saw the bejewelled crown and the magenta war-sweater, but that didn't stop him from letting out an involuntary snarl of rage as he saw Shooting Star charging across the sky, circling the Fearamid like a vulture. The fact that she'd actually shot him was infuriating enough; the fact that she was now Pestilence, the first of his Horsemen of the Apocalypse, only added salt to the wounds. She was supposed to be part of his masterpiece… and yet here she was, with massively-upgraded grappling gun in one hand and that stupid pig tucked under her other arm.

With a howl of rage, Bill sent a storm of meteorites rocketing though the air towards her, following up with another blast of searing blue energies. To his shock and renewed rage, the energy bolt froze in mid-air, and every single meteorite proved off-target by at least fifty feet; the same went for the next twenty he flung her way. No matter how carefully Bill had aimed the missile, Shooting Star was always further ahead of it than he'd previously thought.

Time jumps, he thought feverishly. You're skipping ahead through time.

"FINE!" Bill roared. "THAT'S JUST FINE BY ME! LET'S SEE JUST HOW FAR YOU CAN JUMP, SHOOTING STAR! YOU'RE GOOD, BUT YOU'RE NOT A GOD! YOU'RE NOT ME!"

Reaching into the sky, beyond the clouds, past the barriers of the current playground and into space, he tore out a handful of the sun's corona and gathered it into a ball, ready to smother Mabel's flight path in a mass of superheated plasma too vast for her to avoid or stop. And then, just as he was about to let the lump of corona fly, a hail of tiny metal darts hammered into his side; none of them hurt, but it was enough to make him lose his grip on the missile. Roaring, he turned to find Pine Tree soaring away from him, his body now glistening with needle-sharp flechette-like feathers. And the little shit was laughing!

Bill prepared to retaliate, but a gout of flame nearly blasted him clean off his perch before he could so much as draw a bead on the retreating Shapeshifter. Bewildered, he turned just in time to see his assailant galloping away atop her own horse, this one brilliant crimson and blazing through the sky like a comet. It was Wendy, now the horseman of War; another ungrateful human empowered with all the gifts that Bill had so generously strewn in her path. She let out her own whooping shriek of laughter and charged away, peppering Bill with blasts of flame.

And then, just as Bill thought he was about to lose what little of his temper remained at that point, a massive explosion rocked the Fearamid, sending a huge cloud of pulverized rock billowing into the air. Bill tried to trace the source of the blast, but every time he attempted to focus his attention on it, one of the three zodiac would hit him with something new and inventive; more explosives shook the Fearamid to its very foundations and in a rage, Bill rent the air with a massive shockwave, sending Pine Tree hurtling away. Only then, with the sky around him temporarily clear, did he finally see what had attacked his palace.

Bursting through the clouds around him were dozens upon dozens of hideous black-winged shapes, wreathed in shadows and bristling with natural weapons: claws, fangs, tentacles, stingers, pincers and all manner of other appendages. They could be machines, or they could be life-forms, but there was no way of telling where they all were or how many of them were out there. His mind rebelled at the idea that the zodiac could have built this out of the rag-tag fleet he'd seen near Cipheropolis, forced him to insist that even the zodiac couldn't be that powerful... but what other explanation was there?

And that was all Bill could recognize, for the simple act of looking at these shadowy vessels made his eye sting and summoned up countless unwanted memories of unspeakable void closing in on him; he had to look away – every instinct in his mind demanded it. But soon, the sounds from below forced him to look again. Emitting mind-pummelling shrieks of sound, those monstrous shapes hurtled across the air like angry hornets, criss-crossing the air in seemingly random patterns… but on every pass, they spread their hellish wings wide and let fly with a barrage of missiles – aimed not at Bill, but at the Fearamid below.

It took exactly five seconds for Bill to work out what they were trying to do. Even Xanthar would probably been able to recognize that all of them had been launching missiles at a very specific spot in the Fearamid's outer wall – not far removed from the throne room, in fact. And though the missiles were low-yield at best, there had already been enough of them to leave hairline cracks in the shell…

With a frenzied yowl of panic, Bill took aim at the nearest of the shapes, only for another cascade of quills to split his finger open. Recognizing his assailant as Pine Tree, he reached out with all his power and snared the Shapeshifter in a telekinetic prison, then began reeling him in, constricting pressure tighter and tighter around Dipper until he was almost ready to burst like a grape in a vice. And in that moment, a lump of corrugated metal the size of a Boeing 747 jet engine hit Bill squarely in the face, releasing Pine Tree from his grasp.

Spitting teeth and eyelashes, he turned to see a black horse galloping through the sky towards them: on its back rode a small figure, porcelain-skinned and delicate, golden-haired and sapphire-eyed, her war-dress gleaming like obsidian in the multi-coloured lights of the sky. Even from here, there was no mistaking the tiny silver necklace at her throat or the hailstorm of telekinetic debris that encircled her… nor was there any mistaking who she was – or who she should have been.

Pacifica, the Llama Girl, his Horsemen of Famine turned traitor; another waste of time and effort, spoiled because some stupid impetuous child couldn't bring herself to accept her true self.

"HANDS OFF MY BOYFRIEND, CIPHER," she roared, voice amplified by magic and righteous fury.

Bill was about to return fire when something in the distance caught his eye, a new shape approaching the battleground. It was distant, only a silhouette against the luridly-coloured skies, but he could already discern the shape a rider on horseback. He'd seen Pestilence, War and Famine; there was only one Horseman he hadn't seen in person yet, and only one man who it could truly be. He'd already seen that the zodiac and the Horsemen were a thousand times more powerful than he'd intended, that the true scope of their abilities could only be guessed at… but he'd meant for Death to be more powerful than all of them put together.

Beyond his anger, beyond his confusion, beyond even the fear that shrouded him like a fog, Bill felt true terror welling up inside him, freezing the pit of his stomach. He couldn't restrict himself to precision attacks any longer, nor could he expend all his energies on single targets… and as useless as the Henchmaniacs had been in corralling the escaped prisoners, he really didn't want to tackle this problem on his own.

So, summoning up all his strength, he tore the battlefield asunder: at his command, vast diamond-tipped asteroids materialized across the surrounding area, hundreds of miles of open sky suddenly disrupted by a lethal mass of razor-sharp shoals floating in mid-air, protecting the Fearamid at all angles. Then, he stirred the sea from its depths, drawing it higher and higher like drawing water form a well, sculpting its substance into a repeating procession of tsunamis that lashed the asteroids with miniature rainstorms and hammering mercilessly at any assailant that dared get too close to the walls of the Fearamid. He called upon the winds to disperse the clouds and reveal the hidden ships still in reserve. Then he tore open the world around him into a vast portal tunnelling through space to the bulk of his army, summoning a gargantuan horde of eyebats, air-tarantulas, glider-sharks and other horrors to his side.

"Xanthar!" he boomed into his phone. "Get out here: if you wanted a chance to destroy indiscriminately, now's the damn time!"

From deep within his inner sanctum, there was a rumble of long-neglect vocal chords thundering in triumph, and then Xanthar charged from one of the Fearamid's hidden doors and into the sky, his mass ballooning outwards to the size of a sperm whale as he shot across the firmament towards the hornet-like fleet of shadows.

"We're on our way, boss!" 8-Ball hissed. "We'll be with you in just a-"

"No, no, no! You stay in the Fearamid with that thing with eighty-seven faces and all our ground troops and guard the runes! Xanthar's the only one of you I need – and that's final!"

"Eighty-eight!"

"SHUT UP AND GUARD THE RUNES!"

Nearby, a tortured screech of metal split the air: one of the bigger ships had swerved to avoid a wave and slammed into one of the asteroids, the diamond-studded rock face tearing open the hull; Bill caught a brief glimpse of several tiny human shapes tumbling out through the gaping wound in the hull, before the entire ship crashed headlong into another asteroid and vanished in massive explosion.

One down, Bill thought. They're not invincible. They're just ships – really creepy ships with shadows and void and judging darkness and everything that lies beyond it and – NO, they're just ships. Just ships. Just ships.

As Bill tried desperately to convince himself of this fact, his army swarmed out across the sky with Xanthar in the lead; the ships were fast and well-armed, but with most of them focussed entirely on manoeuvring around the asteroids or dodging the waves while they zeroed in on the Fearamid, it was easy for the army to pincer them: a couple of the smaller ships began spiralling out of control the moment the eyebats caught up with them, their crews petrified on the spot; one of the larger destroyers hit the brakes to avoid a diamond-tipped shoal, only for Xanthar to plough into it at high speed, rupturing the hull and splitting the ship in two, leaving both halves to tumble helplessly away as the army's outriders messily feasted on the crew.

Just as quickly, however, the zodiac turned from their bombing runs and began attacking the Henchmaniac army instead, carving their way through the aerial troops with a ferocity that almost took Bill completely by surprise: Pine Tree blurred from one shape to the next at an impossible speed, a maelstrom of transformation that reduced Bill's soldiers to pulped flesh and broken bones; Red shredded any opponent in her path, her axe cleaving limb from limb and her flaming sword incinerating anything left alive; and Shooting Star was visible only as a flickering image skimming across the battlefield, leaving a trail of grapnel-punctured bodies and eternally-frozen figures in her wake. Not too far away, a huge mass of animated corpses began lumbering awkwardly across the sky, crushing demons by the hundreds with every step, propelled by Zits' willpower and a crudely-mounted pair of jet engines; closer examination revealed that Question Mark was currently sitting on its necrotic shoulder, holding a rocket launcher bigger than he was. And as they fought back, so too did the rest of the fleet, some of them firing their missiles at point-black range into the oncoming eyebats, lighting up the asteroid field with one eye-searing flash after another.

But Bill applied more pressure, summoning up reinforcements from wherever he could. And when his reserves finally ran dry, he reached out with all his willpower and reanimated his army; and when there were no more troops to be resurrected, he sculpted fresh troops out of whatever materials were available to him: light, heat, air, dead demons, water, rock, fire, scrap metal – anything that could be moulded into a shape brutal enough to kill. For good measure, he continued his bombardment of the battlefield, hammering the zodiac with one devastating blast of energy after another; few actually hit any of them – thanks to Shooting Star's ability to control time – but the shockwaves were enough to send them reeling, and the harder he hit them, the less time they had to recover. All around them, the carcasses of wrecked airships protruded from the asteroids, their operators battling Bill's army as best as they could atop their ruined hulls, armed with guns and bayonets and everything else they could get their hands on – but the odds were stacked against them. Bill had reinforced his side too well to be overcome.

And yet, in the distance, Fordsie was getting closer and closer. Demons that fought him could not be resurrected; missiles aimed in his direction evaporated with a single swing of his scythe; even Xanthar flew well clear of him. Behind him, a colossal shape loomed in the distance… and neither Ford nor that mysterious shape were showing any signs of slowing…

Bill reached into the sky, readying to blast Sixer out of the sky with the strongest blast of energy he could summon – a bolt of power that could sear a planet's surface barren – and just as he was taking aim, his phone rang.

"WHAT!?" he roared.

There was a muffled burst of static, and then 8-Ball's voice boomed across the ether, sounding damn close to hysterics. "Boss, we need you in the parade grounds!"

"I'm a little busy up here, in case you hadn't noticed!" Bill roared back, absently blasting the engines off a passing cruiser with a wave of his hand.

"Boss, it's the runes! They're not safe anymore!"

"What the hell are you talking about? I've got a clear view out here: nobody's even gotten close to punching a hole in the wall."

"We've got enemy troops inside the Fearamid, boss!"

"…what."

Because Bill had picked the most visible spot on the entire battlefield as his perch, just about every single member of the zodiac's militia could see the exact moment when the giant triangular despot suddenly turned and floated off the Fearamid's point, descending back into the depths of his palace at a decidedly hasty speed.

Immediately, a cheer went up among the soldiers as the sight rippled along Gideon's telepathic web. "He's retreating!" one of them hollered. "We've got him on the ropes now, people!" Before long, that too spread from soldier to soldier across every single avenue of communication, until everyone from the zodiac to the newest recruits were fighting with renewed vigour, and the air resounded with shouts of "THE PYRAMID FALLS!"

Suddenly finding themselves up against an rallying opponent, Xanthar and the rest of Bill's army struggled to force the human forces back into a rout, but with Bill no longer supporting them from afar, it proved much harder: the zodiac were now free to protect the airships instead of constantly defending against Bill's assaults, and the ships were free to continue bombing runs against the Fearamid, leaving the lone Henchmaniac and his crew struggling to catch up.

As difficult as it was for them, however, it didn't take long for the de facto commander to spy an advantage. Xanthar wasn't the brightest of the Henchmaniacs, nor was he the quickest off the mark, but even he was cunning enough to recognize that one of the Horsemen was working overtime as a medic… and one habit he'd adhered to since his salad days was to kill the medics first – along with the engineers, the mechanics, the construction workers, the repair crews, the electricians, and anyone else who looked as if they might be able to undo his handiwork.

Despite having no eyes to speak of, he could see that Mabel's ability to control made her one of the most valuable members of the zodiac: already, she was doing her best to repair the damaged ships, and though she didn't appear to have had any luck bringing any of the downed destroyers back from the dead, Xanthar wasn't about to let her try. Plus, with only a horse and a superpowered grappling hook on her side, he knew in his own dim way that Mabel was the most vulnerable of the Horsemen.

So, taking careful aim, he launched himself at the distance shape of Mabel like an ICBM from a missile silo, picking up speed as he travelled until the world blurred and streaked around him. By the first three seconds, he'd already broken the sound barrier and he was still nowhere near his limit. At this speed, he'd probably kill her on impact, and even if he didn't, he'd probably knock her off the horse and into unconsciousness.

He was barely fifty feet away from Mabel when something bright red and pissed-off slammed into him at high speed, sending him spiralling off-course. Too late, Xanthar remembered that he was the biggest target on the battlefield next to the Fearamid itself, and everyone had seen him charging towards Mabel – including the Horseman of War.

Wendy Corduroy grinned savagely down at him from the saddle of her horse, her teeth replaced by jagged fangs that would have put a shark's to shame. "First and last lesson of the day, big guy," she snarled, her eyes flashing red and black.

And with that, she drew her sword, its flames burning hotter and brighter than ever, and buried it up the hilt in Xanthar's side. The Henchmaniac let out a wail of pain like a foghorn and tried to force the blade free of his smouldering flesh, but the sword refused to budge, and Wendy now had an iron-hard grip on his flank – too strong even for him to escape from. Fire raced across his body, radiating outwards from the sword in liquid waves that oozed both across his skin and under it, cooking his internal organs, scorching his bones, pouring itself through his veins and boiling his blood, frying his heart from the inside-out, until every last inch of his form was reduced to little more than a roasting, burning, charring mass of meat.

"YOU LISTENING, BIG GUY?" Wendy roared. "NO-ONE! HURTS! MY! FRIENDS!"

With one last flex of willpower, she sent a wave of volcanic heat rippling down the sword and into Xanthar: what little of his flesh that hadn't already been burnt was immediately reduced to overcooked steak, the rest instantly stiffed to a solid mass of crispy-black charcoal.

The last thought to pass through Xanthar's brain – before it dissolved into sizzling grease – was to marvel at just how delicious he smelled.

And then he exploded, his body erupting into an expanding cloud of brittle charcoal fragments; all that remained of him was his party hat left tumbling through the sky, to be swallowed up by the waves below.

"WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?!"

"Hallowed are the Ori! Hallowed are the Ori! Hallowed are the Ori…"

"…the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, the Sun, the Sun…"

"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! Blood for the Blood God…"

"Lovely afternoon for bloody murder, old boy!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The parade grounds had once been one of the crown jewels of the Fearamid, a glorious multi-tiered cave of physics-defying hollows, four-dimensional pillars a thousand stories tall, and human corpses pinioned upon iron crosses floating across the chamber's mind-pummelling ceiling. In happier times, this had been the arrival point for new human residents, a combination shipping dock and entrance hall in which the Henchmaniacs, the slave galleys, prison portals and manacle-beasts had all unloaded their screaming cargo.

Now, it was a bloodbath – and not the fun kind, either: bodies lay heaped across the parade grounds, columns had fallen by the dozen, and every single ship left in the area had been reduced to smouldering wreckage. Meanwhile, in the centre of the vast room, 8-Ball, the Creature With Eighty-Eight Faces and a few hundred heavily-armed monstrosities were doing battle with enemies that Bill had never seen before; he'd no idea how any of them could have gotten in, for the skyscraper-sized gates were still firmly locked and barred, and the outer shell around them was still several hundred feet thick… but they were here nonetheless.

From one approach, a huge crowd of pale, foggy-eyed figures in silvery robes were assaulting 8-Ball's troops; seemingly the least-imposing of the invaders, they were currently bowling the defenders aside like ninepins, sending them flying across the parade grounds with telekinesis – or else simply immolating them with blinding pulses of energy from their staffs. And all of these robed weirdos were loudly chanting "Hallowed are the Ori," as if this wasn't annoying enough already.

On the western flank, a squadron of heavily-armed humans were peppering the troops with gunfire from improbably-advanced weaponry; though well-armoured, their faces were left uncovered so that all could see their glowing gold-flecked eyes and the shining glass teeth behind their smiles. And as one, all of them were proclaiming a single, simple chant: "The Sun," they intoned, over and over again. "The Sun."

Blocking 8-Ball's escape to the south was a horde of cloven-hoofed warriors, instantly distinguished by their crimson skin, bulging muscles, brass collars and curving bull's horns; all of them were armed with a brutal-looking arsenal of swords and axes, and slowly mincing their way through the defender's southern flank. Captaining the group was a gigantic version of his subordinates, sporting a massive pair of batlike wings, armed with a huge rune-studded axe and a barbed whip. "Blood for the Blood God!" he roared. "Skulls for the Skull Throne!" And his soldiers echoed him.

The final approach was guarded by a near-indescribable band of goblins, giant cats and other scuttling whimsies that looked as though they'd been borrowed from the nightmares of C.S. Lewis – no mean feat, considering that Bill had actually seen some of the man's fever dreams back when he'd still been trapped in the Nightmare Realm.

Leading this cosmopolitan bunch of weirdos was a bewildering figure in a neat grey suit, instantly distinguished by the floating branch that covered his face and the fact that he had just a few too many fingers on each hand… and by the fact that he was clearly using magic to carve a path through the defenders.

It took about twenty seconds of silently observing the chaos for Bill to erupt in a torrent of rage: he'd already undergone an unspeakable multitude of unwanted fears, frustrations and embarrassments in the last few lengths of nonlinear time – chief among them being forced to retreat before the entire zodiac army just so he could deal with this fustercluck. And now, seeing intruders inside his beloved Fearamid proved to be the last straw.

Bellowing a series of expletives too complicated for human minds to conceive of, he raised a hand, took aim, and erased the sun-worshippers with a single blast of energy. The Ori-chanting weirdos were a little harder to eliminate, given the strength of their telekinetic power, but eventually, Bill applied enough pressure to snap their staffs and reduce the little cult to pulped bags of mincemeat inside their robes. The red-skinned demons took an unspeakable amount of punishment, their collars glowing vividly and soaking up the supernatural power of anything thrown at them, but even they couldn't withstand being crushed like bugs under Bill's foot.

Most annoyingly of all, the wizard with the branch covering his face gave a mocking little wave and vanished before Bill could obliterate him, forcing him to make do the troops he'd left behind.

In the aftermath, Bill hovered above the wreckage, crimson with rage and panting like a wolf, too angry to speak or move or even think. After about a minute spent struggling with his temper and taking deep breaths that he probably didn't need, he calmed for a moment and said, "Does anyone want to explain what happened?"

8-Ball said nothing, though he at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

"Okay," Bill sighed. "First thing's first… I have a few questions before I kill every last one of you. Who the hell were all those people and where the hell did all they come from? Why did they have to wait until now to spring this shit on us? And are there any more of them?"

There was a faint gurgling noise from somewhere very close by, and Bill had just enough time to realize he'd forgotten to check the roof for attackers before something huge landed right on top of him. Taken completely off-guard, Bill fell forward as his distressingly fleshy assailant immediately draped itself over his body like a jellyfish and began jamming fanged tentacles into his blood vessels, and all he could think of in that moment was that this felt uncannily like being smothered to death by some giant, horrifically meaty pancake dredged from the nightmarish depths of gourmet cookbooks gone horribly wrong,

"Be of me, divine usurper!" it cackled. "Tonight, Tzimisce drinks the blood of gods!"

"All capital craft, ignore the demons! Focus on the Fearamid, and we'll deal with them!"

"Pacifica, we need you on the Hollywood Boulevard! It can't get through the enemy ranks ahead!"

"Fighter pilots, this is Wendy; follow my lead, we're going to take them from the right! Hornet approach, just like that time during the Plagues! LET'S GO, DUDES!"

"Dipper, look out!"

"I see him, I see him – just slow him down for a second! YES! Thanks, Mabel!"

"Gideon, do we have any more hostiles incoming?"

"None that I can detect. Hang on… where's our dreadnought going?"

"Uh… this is Robbie, I've got some of my golems inside the Gravity Falls; the bridge crew are either dead or out cold. Looks like Xanthar did more damage than we thought. McGucket, how do I switch this thing to autopilot?"

"There should be a large green lever on the left-hand control panel on the centre-left console."

"I'm not seeing a green lever! Or a centre-left console… I think it got torn off on impact. Uh, how do I fly this thing? Actually, screw that – how do I hit the brakes?"

"Press the invert forward thrust command switch."

"Where's that?"

"It's on the central console."

"Okay, where abouts on the console is it?"

"… it's on the central console."

"WHERE IS IT, MCGUCKET? WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?!"

"It's a grey switch marked with a label-"

"THERE'S ABOUT TWENTY GREY SWITCHES, OLD MAN! THE LABELS ARE COVERED IN ENGINE OIL AND I CAN'T SEE A DAMN WORD! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL WHAT SWITCH IT IS?!"

"Er… it's a grey switch covered in engine oil...?"

"Oh-kay, McGucket, thanks for your input. Alright, alright, I can totally do this. Just gotta hope that this golem's body's up to handling this damn joystick and OOOOOOH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOD!"

"Dude, what just happened?"

"Robbie, are you okay?"

"I… I'm fine but I'm noticing a lot of wind resistance all of a sudden! Why the hell am I suddenly feeling air on my face? Where did all my zombies go? Where am I? Where's my real body?"

"…uh, don't panic or anything, but… well, you might want to hang onto something."

"Just tell me where I am, Mabel! I'm blind, remember?!"

"Well, I think you just drove the Gravity Falls right into your necrocolossus: you're hanging onto the airship's roof!"

"OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"

Howling in rage and humiliation, Bill tore into Tzimisce in a fit of temper that even he didn't actually know he possessed.

First erupting into three-dimensional form, he sprouted over a hundred arms from his body and wrenched the giant vampire from his body with one almighty flex of his supernaturally-fuelled muscles, slamming him to the ground with a sickening wet thud loud enough to drown out the sounds of bombardment from outside. Then with a roar of apocalyptic fury, he hammered at him over and over again, pummelling and pounding and pulverizing until every last inch of Tzimisce's gelatinous mass had been reduced to an expanding puddle of torn flesh and steaming blood.

And then, just as Bill was beginning to think it was safe to take a breath, the blood began to flow in reverse, gathering itself into a colossal coppery-scented mass that bore down on him in a massive crimson tidal wave, nearly sweeping him aside. When he recovered, the blood was beginning to coalesce and solidify into a single form, sprouting tendrils and claws and other hideous appendages as it advanced on him.

With a scream of disbelief, Bill pointed a long finger and blasted it with a solid beam of sizzling blue light, but the blood simply flowed around it, and with most of its original mass still coalescing, the rest of Tzimisce was easily able to dodge the beam. And at that point, Bill would have gladly torn the entire Fearamid down on the vampire-thing's head, torn the suns and planets from their orbits to crush it flat – and probably would have done exactly that if he hadn't remembered that he'd have left the runes exposed to attack. Eventually, though, he realized that there was one method he hadn't tried against his opponent, and with brute force and easily-avoided blasts being out of the question, it was the best choice left.

So he burned him: with a single snap of his fingers, Bill sent a wave of fire sweeping over Tzimisce, bathing him in a living mass of napalm from toes to teeth – assuming the vampire-thing had toes. Whatever the case, it did the trick almost immediately: with a howl of agony, Tzimisce's body smouldered, burned and dissolved into putrid-smelling molten flesh as the fire burrowed through him, until all that remained was a heap of steadily-dissolving ashes.

For several seconds, he hovered above the remains, panting heavily.

Then, he turned to 8-Ball and the others, now scarlet with rage. "And just what the fuck were you people were doing while I was being attacked by a vampire flapjack, exactly?" he demanded. "Jacking each other off? Checking the Weirdness stock index? What is wrong with you!? If I go down, you go down, remember?"

For a moment, the surviving Henchmaniacs and their entourage could only stare in horror. Then 8-Ball coughed nervously. "Um, boss…"

"WHAT?"

"…behind you."

Bill very slowly turned, belatedly recognizing the presence occupying the parade ground a few feet away.

Standing directly behind him was a small platoon of distressingly bland men and women, all of whom looked as though they'd just wandered out of a particularly boring conference on proper bookkeeping technique: they were dressed like office drones, the men in white button-up shirts, black neckties, and grey slacks, the women in grey skirts, white blouses and nondescript grey coats. Despite the blood, dust and wreckage of the parade ground, their clothes remained perfectly cleaned, starched and ironed, and even though modern toiletries were almost impossible to found out in the wastelands, all of these strangers remained perfectly shaved, scrubbed and groomed – not a hair out of place or a fingernail untrimmed.

And all of them were smiling. It was this last part that made Bill's blood run cold; the more he looked at them, the more he found himself gripped by an unaccountable sense of dread, until even making eye contact made him feel as though ants were crawling beneath his skin, weaving around bloody muscles and exposed nerve-endings.

"Hi," said the ringleader. "I'm Tad Strange, and purging inefficient elements is my game. You will feel a slight tingling, followed by agonizing death."

On instinct, Bill fired a lightning bolt at Tad – only to see it fizzle out less than three feet away from him. Too late, he recognized the same distinctive crystalline pattern in the ether surrounding the group: slowly but surely, they were weaving a pattern web, nullifying Weirdness and disabling his powers before they could affect any of them.

"That was a mistake," Tad said pleasantly.

Perhaps driven by desperation, perhaps by fear of disappointing Bill again, one of the giant tarantulas lunged at the nearest of the intruders, fangs raised to strike. Without missing a single beat, Tad grabbed it by the legs and casually ripped it the ten-foot-tall arachnid in half.

And with the impasse broken, the rest of the intruders surged forward into the ranks of Bill's defenders: none of them were armed or armoured in any way, but that hardly mattered: most of the time, the attackers moved too quickly to be hit, and on the rare occasion a swing of a blade or claw connected, their flesh sealed shut almost as quickly as it was torn; by contrast, this unassuming mob of drones could somehow shatter rock with their bare hands, slice through flesh with nothing more than a finger, and pulverize fallen opponents with a single bone-liquefying stomp.

Then, just as Bill thought the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, his phone rang.

"Why now?" he demanded of nobody in particular, as he plucked the offending device from the ether. "What could possibly be so important that couldn't wait until-"

An ear-splitting burst of static exploded out of the phone's speakers, and Bill dropped it on instinct – just in time.

"I am the carcinogen frequency," said a voice from the phone, deep and bubbling and hissing with static. "Let me in."

Behind the phone's screen, a tarry black liquid began to ooze from the phone's internal mechanism.

"I am the voice of the void. Let me in."

And now the liquid was pouring out of the speaker, gushing out of the phone in a black, glistening torrent and spilling across the floor like oil… except oil didn't have tentacles, didn't sprout questing hands, and didn't move towards living targets with an uncanny sapience.

The voice continued: "I am the starry wisdom. I am the unshackled nightmare. I am what I am. Let me in."

An arm sprouted from the oil, drawing forth a dripping, half-formed torso; more followed, dripping oily faces oozing up from the murk to look upon the world with lamplike red eyes… and all the while, the voice was growing more insistent.

"Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. LET ME IN."

And before Bill's eyes, an army was taking shape.

"Hiya Bill," said the mass of sapient oil. "The name's John. I think it's time you and I had a little talk about infection…"

Already confused and demoralized from the drone attack from the front, the remainder of Bill's army was left reeling as John swarmed over them: anyone who wasn't immediately torn apart by the oncoming mass of oily claws was sprayed with pitch-black fluid, and rose with glowing eyes and oil pouring from their open mouths, now members of John's horde.

Caught between an army that was impervious to Weirdness and an army that multiplied too quickly to be eliminated, Bill threw up his hands and flew for the exit, followed closely by 8-Ball and the Creature With Eighty-Eight Faces.

Hurtling out of the parade grounds at high speed, they barrelled through the vast archway that lead into the Fearamid's network of corridors – pausing only to slam the doors shut behind them – and headed straight for the throne room. Bill didn't care if the two invaders could be defeated, if they would pursue them or if they took up arms against one another, or even if any of his own troops were left alive; frankly, all that mattered was ensuring that the runes were safe.

They didn't stop running until they'd finally reached the throne room and sealed the fifty-thousand-ton doors to the throne room were sealed, and even then, Bill went to the trouble of erecting a force-field around the runes, just so they'd be protected for a time even if the invaders somehow managed to make it past both sets of doors. Only then Bill at last relax… but not by much.

Somehow, he was now face to face with new and unforeseen enemies with powers he didn't know how to combat and no understandable goals; even his lone last-ditch countermeasure was no officially useless because neither John nor the drones would care if he blew up the Cookie Jar. He'd spent so much time planning to deal with the zodiac that…

Bill's eye widened in rage as he belatedly noticed the explosions still rocking the Fearamid, and realized that he'd been deliberately lured away from the battlefield; he'd no idea how this had been managed or why they hadn't gone straight for the runes if all this was within their power, but someone was helping the zodiac from afar, and had arranged this just so he'd take his eyes of their attack.

He'd been duped.

Bellowing incomprehensible expletives, he flung himself through space, launching himself back into the fray outside the Fearamid.

Utter confusion reigned on the battlefield.

By now, Ford had arrived and was busily slicing his way through enemy troops, asteroids, and even the tidal waves – leaving the entire sea to collapse sheepishly in on itself; Mabel was spinning time into a bewildering spiral that left her opponents caught in a continuous loop of being hit with the same lump of rock over and over again; Pacifica was folding space and reducing entire platoons of demons to screaming cardboard cutouts; Dipper had become a flying wheel of razor-sharp blades, and was now chasing a fleeing band of monsters across the sky, his combine-harvester teeth buzzing loudly in anticipation; Wendy was sudden death, a maelstrom of axe and flaming sword shedding her way through one company of enemies after another; Soos was bounding merrily across the void, singing tunelessly as he steamrolled any demons unfortunate enough to get in his way... and meanwhile, Stan was busy towing the Forge as fast as he could to avoid the eyebat swarms, peppering the enemy with all the power he could muster – in other words, as much as he wanted.

And through it all, Robbie screamed helplessly, pinned to the roof of the Gravity Falls like a butterfly as it soared across the battlefield. By now, he'd gotten most of the necrocolossus back in some semblance of order, but there was precious little his zombies and golems could do from where they were; even with the jet engines strapped to their combined body, they wouldn't be able to catch up with him. The best he could do was try to continue fighting Bill's army with one mass of zombies while trying to control the Gravity Falls with the few golems aboard it… and Robbie wasn't exactly an expert multitasker at the best of times.

As a result, the airship spiralled drunkenly about the skies like a beach ball in a hurricane, swerving and twisting from one end of the asteroid field to the next as he struggled to keep the Gravity Falls from crashing into something. He'd even managed to let off a few missiles in the general direction of the Fearamid, though he still couldn't tell if any of them had hit the target.

The telepathic web rippled with thought: "This is the Vesuvius – I think we've almost cracked the wall open… but we're out of missiles!"

The other airships began reporting in, all of them admitting that their missile banks were empty as well.

"Perhaps my scythe can break though the wall," Ford suggested.

"If we do that, you're going to be the first one Bill meets," Dipper replies. "We have to keep you in reserve for shock value: remember the plan?"

"What are we supposed to do then, dudes?"

Robbie sighed as the argument swept over him, hoping against hope that nobody was going to ask him to go on a bombing run.

It was then that, as he was swooping up the northern face of the Fearamid, Bill reappeared – directly ahead of him.

For a split-second of frozen time, the two could only stare at each other, eyes simultaneously widening in horror as they realized that there was no time for either of them to evade, retaliate or even stop what was about to happen. For one thing, Bill was more than triple the size of the oncoming dreadnought; for another, the ship was moving much too fast to manoeuvre around him… and that left only one direction for Robbie's borrowed flagship to go.

Then the moment passed, and the Gravity Falls ploughed onwards, needle-sharp prow lancing through the air...

Right.

Into.

Bill's.

Eye.

There was a deafening squish.

Robbie caught a brief glimpse of something that looked uncannily like the world's biggest, ugliest grape being speared on the end of a fork, before a huge wave of glowing blue fluid gushed out of the freshly-punctured eye; the next thing he knew, a tsunami of repulsively warm, viscous liquid had sprayed out across the front of the airship, layering him from head to toe in what could only be Bill's ocular jelly.

Bill screamed, his voice rising from tenor to countertenor to castrati as the Gravity Falls' prow burrowed through the ruined eye, punched another hole through the opposite side of it, and finally lodged squarely at the back of his eyesocket with a loud, wet thud, sending another wave of glowing fluids pouring out across the airship.

"Oh GROSS!" wailed Robbie, shaking ocular jelly out of his hair.

"Well done, Robbie!" Wendy laughed across the telepathic web. "I think you've got him pinned down!"

"And I think I'm gonna puke! This stuff… ah man, it's everywhere! Oh god, I think I got some of it in my mouth!"

Bill let out a wordless howl of mingled humiliation and pain, and began flailing blindly at the airship, either trying to pluck it loose or swat it away entirely. Suddenly realizing he was now in danger of being squashed like a bug on a windshield, Robbie sent new commands to his zombies on the bridge, trying to get them to hit the reverse thrusters and escape from Bill's eyesocket before he got any more combative.

Unfortunately, one of his zombies must have bumped the joystick, because the Gravity Falls immediately lurched into a sickening barrel roll that ended up corkscrewing the airship even deeper into Bill's optic nerve.

"GGGGGGOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNN!" Bill roared.

Robbie groaned quietly and threw up: being stuck on the roof of an airship, only surviving due to the death of conventional physics, enduring five uninterrupted minutes of his own terrible piloting skills and accidentally swallowing a mouthful of ocular jelly had all taken a toll on his stomach; the spinning was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

As if to add insult to injury, one of the zombies on the bridge tripped over and blundered into one of the control panels, activating the dreadnought's public hailing system: instantly, the triumphal strains of Ride of the Valkyries began to blare from loudspeakers right next to Robbie's head.

"AAAAARGH, FUCKING WAGNER, TOO?!" thundered Bill.

There was a rumble of excited muttering on the other end of the telepathic web.

"Robbie, hold him there for just a minute!" said Stan. "I've got an idea: we won't need missiles for this next bit!"

"What are you talking about?!"

"Trust me! Just keep him busy while I get this Forge turned around! Gideon, be ready with your bag of tricks: I'm going to need a distraction!"

Robbie sighed and hit the afterburners.

Blind, swearing, discombobulated and in excruciating pain, Bill struggled to force the airship out of his eye, but with his senses awhirl with agony, he could barely work out where his own face was much less his empty eye socket. He hadn't been in this much pain since the zodiac's last attempt on his life, and even then, they'd at least had the decency to just rip the whole eye out of his head and be done with it. He hadn't been forced to deal with a few thousand tons of sharp metal digging into his optic nerve and refusing to get out of his socket – and as long as that was still there, he couldn't regenerate.

Just as he thought it couldn't get any worse, there was a muffled explosion inside his socket, and a massive eruption of fire and molten metal rippled across the inside of his skull: the airship had begun firing its missiles at point-blank range. It was nothing to be concerned about, physically speaking: he'd taken a nuke to the face more than once in his reign of terror, and a few dozen ordinary missiles fired directly into his brain were nothing to write home about. Besides, he'd tied his essence so thoroughly to the Nightmare Realm that even if the ship did manage to reduce his physical form to disconnected molecules, his spirit would soon be able to build a new one altogether. No, the real blow here was the pain and humiliation… neither of which he could take another second of.

With one almighty bellow of rage and agony, he reached up with a hand shaped into flesh-rending claws, tore through his own face, and at last seized the offending airship by what felt like its engines. Then without a word he threw it across the sky and immediately began pouring all his energy into healing the eye.

A minute later, he could see again.

Just in time to see something huge hurtling towards him, getting steadily faster as it travelled: it was the Forge, hurtling through the air like a meteor; up until now it had been towed by Ford's idiot brother, but now it had been loosed like a stone from a slingshot, and was now barrelling towards the Fearamid at a speed that would have beggared even the fastest ships in the zodiac fleet… and it had been aimed squarely at the weakened patch of wall.

Bill didn't hesitate this time: with one almighty blast of Weirdness, he poured forth the heat of a thousand supernovae and tore through the Forge's triumphant charge with a single armour-piercing beam of power.

There was a pause, as the echoes died away and the blazing wreckage of the Forge slowly faded out of sight, taking Gideon, and a few thousand other resistance fighters to their graves at the bottom of the Sea of Madness.

And then, just as Bill felt the first inklings of relief beginning to seep into his brain, there was a cartoonish little pop sound effect, and suddenly Gideon Gleeful was standing next to him – thinner, greyer and a good deal balder than he'd been when they'd last met, but very much alive. For good measure, he was smirking triumphantly.

"Hi!" he said brightly. "Are you interested in saving money on long-distance calls?"

Bill boggled in confusion. "What… what happened?" he shrieked. "What are you doing here? You were on the Forge! Why aren't you dead yet?!"

"Well," said Gideon, "I just tweaked your perceptions a tad. Long story short, I'm not really here, and you just blew up a target that isn't really there: the real Forge is approaching from a different direction entirely. I doubt you'll ever find it though."

"And why's that?"

Gideon's smirk grew by a thousandfold. "Because your reality is an illusion," he smugly replied.

"You-"

"A hologram, if you will."

"…oh no you fucking don't," Bill snarled, quivering with rage. "Don't you even think of using my own material, you little-"

"Would you like some gold?" By way of emphasis, the illusory Gideon held up a small cardboard box filled with tiny glittering nuggets. "Only $35.99 an ounce."

"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-!"

"Byyyyyyyye!"

Then the illusion vanished and Bill found himself back in reality once again…

…just in time to see the Forge crashing headlong into the Fearamid with a deafening roar of tortured metal and crumbling masonry that could probably be heard on the other side of the solar system. All over the Fearamid, ceilings cracked open, columns toppled, bricks shattered into dust, avalanches of debris fell from above, windows exploded into hailstorms of glittering shards, the floor swayed drunkenly from left to right, the great stack of monuments wobbled, the Australian Parliament House slipped free of the building and went tumbling into the void but nobody noticed…

…and the much-abused outer shell of the Fearamid, already cracked and fissured, finally caved in – creating a hole large enough to accommodate most of the Forge's eastern flank, with more than enough room left over for at least half a dozen airships.

And in the horror-stricken silence that followed, Bill heard Grenda's voice echoing across space, transmitted by loud hailer, by comm frequencies, by telepathy and virtually any other medium that would carry it. At first, Bill couldn't hear a word of it over his own terrified heartbeat, and when he did, he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge that anything she was saying could be possible. But eventually, the flurry of commands resolved into comprehensible speech, and now there could be no doubt:

"The enemy wall is down!" Grenda was bellowing. "I repeat, the enemy wall is down! All troops, to the breach: it's time to bring the pain in person!"

A/N: Any guesses as to what might happen next? Any thoughts on Bill's final fate? Let me know!

This chapter's soundtrack is The Show Must Go On, by Queen – the only song that really fits the mood, I feel.

And now for the code!

Gsv xolxp szh hglkkvw, blfi grnv rh wlmv
Zmw mld gsviv'h mldsviv ovug gl ifm
Hl zin blfihvou zmw hszwv blfi vbv
Blfi lmob lkgrlmh ziv gl urtsg li wrv

Feel free to translate and let me know what you think…