I can't see anything. It's just total darkness
Where am I? Am I dead? Where's Dipper? Where's Primrose? Where's Bill?
Darkness...Abyss...Blindness...Night...Death...Blackness...Nothingness
Where is Dipper Pines? Where is Primrose? Where is Bill Cipher?
I can't move. Why can't I move?
Am I dead? I can't be dead. Mabel is waiting for me. I need to get back to Mabel!
I am drowning in this roaring silence. I can't see. I can't hear. I can't breathe.
The screeching of car wheels
Run onto that road
Catch the pheasant
Pine Tree The Demon Crescent Moon
I'm a human now. I'll never get my powers back. I'm stuck in this meatsack, I'm stuck as a real mortal human. I can't believe this. This food poisoning is awful.
My body...My head...It hurts...It all hurts so much
I couldn't help him
I couldn't help her
I couldn't help myself
I lost him. I can never get him back. He's gone. He's dead.
Big Dipper That Constellation You bare that mark upon your forehead
You bare his mark upon your forehead
Why did this happen? Who attacked us? What happened? Where am I? Where are they?
Chloroform. Tranquilliser dart
Yellow foam frothing at her jaws
White cloth covering their mouths and noses
I'm a disappointment
I've failed them
I'm powerless
Why do I care about them?
Why do I care about him?
Just one breath
Just one...
Just...
Dipper couldn't tell if he was awake or still sleeping. He tried to open his eyes, but they were already open, and yet he still saw pitch blackness. He couldn't see his own nose. But whenever he tried to open his eyes, not only did he see nothing, but electric pain shot through his eyes which forced him to close them. He couldn't see.
His breaths came in unsteady and unrhythmic gasps and whimpers, almost like sobs. The chemicals still lingered in his lungs, which caused him to cough in a feeble attempt to get the chloroform out of his breath. Vomit creeped up his throat, but Dipper reacted quickly and swallowed down the burning bile which left a horrible taste in his mouth. And that alone was enough to loll Dipper back into unconsciousness.
Still darkness. Still Dipper could not see anything. How many times had he woken up and gone back to sleep?
Where was he?
Dipper wiggled his toes, and then his fingers. At least he hadn't lost feeling in his body.
Then came the feeling of dampness. His clothes were damp and cold. The air he was breathing was dense with moisture, and smelled strongly of fungus and mould. What is this place?
His hand felt around at the ground he was laying on. It was cold and rough, and Dipper recognised it instantly as stone.
Stone? Didn't most hospitals have smooth surfaces? So he wasn't in a hospital. He moved his right hand, and his left hand moved with it. He started struggling, and discovered that his wrists have been bound, the rough binds rubbing against his delicate skin. Ropes? Handcuffs? Dipper struggled again. Nope, definitely rope. And a tight rope at that.
He tried to separate his legs, but once again he couldn't. There were binds at his ankles too.
Trying to set himself free, Dipper tumbled to the side but only achieved to send another shockwave of pain shattering though his own body. He let out a loud gasp of pain, and felt fabric rub against his skin. At least he was fully clothed.
He took a deep breath, and regretted the disgusting tasting air that filled his chemical-ridden lungs. At that moment he became aware of the thirst that lingered in his dry mouth. He needed water. Could a human survive on saliva alone? Dipper didn't know. Move tongue, get saliva, swallow.
With the little strength Dipper found in his muscles, he used to try and push himself up to a sitting position. It took a lot of trail and error, but Dipper managed to do it eventually.
His priority: get the binds off. Next priority: find Bill and find Primrose. If he was captured, so were they. Any fool could figure that out. He only hoped that they were okay. He knew that Bill was alive, otherwise he himself would be dead. But what about their dragon mother? Last time he saw her she had passed out from a violent, potentially lethal tranquilliser dart.
So Dipper lifted his heavy wrists to his mouth and tried to undo the tight bonds with his teeth. It was a difficult task, since it was pitch black and sight was useless, not to mention whoever had tied these ropes had done it really well. Looks like undoing these bonds was useless. The dryness returned to his mouth. Move tongue, get saliva, swallow.
There was a rustle in the darkness. Dipper's head snapped towards the sound like a dog's towards a squirrel, his useless eyes trying to pierce through the pitch black. In an instant he left his binds alone and listened. His heart gave a jolt and he automatically shifted to sit on his knees incase he needed to leap back at any moment. Someone, or something, was in here with him.
The rustle came again, but this time Dipper could tell how close the something was. It was much too close, too close for comfort. It was far too close... so close that Dipper could feel the warmth of a smooth surface that rubbed against his bare knees. A terrified gasp escaped from him, and the rustling stopped.
"Pine Tree? Is that you?"
"Bill!" When he said his name, it didn't come with the usual anger, dismay or fear that usually came with it, but a gasp of relieved happiness that no-one before him gave while speaking the dream demon's name.
It didn't matter that it was Bill. It didn't matter what had happened between them before. It didn't matter about the past. What mattered, was that Bill was here with him against the poisonous darkness.
He could hear Bill pushing himself up to sit, still close to him and hearably struggling. Looks like Bill also had ropes tied round his wrists and ankles. But eventually he managed it and also sighed a long sigh of relief.
What happened next wasn't what Dipper had expected. A warm surface pressed itself against his right cheek, presumably the soft skin of another cheek, and rubbed against it tenderly. Dipper froze, but returned the gesture, somehow feeling safer after inhaling the now-apparent, suddenly soothing scent of his companion.
"I'm not gonna lie, this is the first time I'm genuinely happy to see you," Bill stuttered, the words barely making it past his tight throat and pride.
"Same here," Dipper replied, pressing his forehead into Bill's shoulder in turn, glad to have someone for comfort. "I thought I was dead. I thought we were all dead."
"Stop lamenting, we're not dead," Bill reassured him in his own, harsh and brisk way. He too drank in Dipper's presence hungrily, his heart beating rapidly against Dipper's chest. "We need to get out of these ropes, that's what." He broke apart the awkward hug, and Dipper began to hear noises of teeth against rope. "Shit! These are tight! Who did this to us anyway? Is Crescent Moon here?"
"I don't think so... but then again I can't see."
Bill tried to chew through the rope, but spat out a few stay hairs, or at least that's what it sounded like.
Another noise joined the two boys, but this time it didn't come from any of them. The unlocking of a door.
"Play dead!" Dipper whispered as loudly as he could.
It wasn't hard for Dipper to play dead, because, quite frankly, he very nearly was dead.
A door opened from somewhere, and light seeped into the pitch black. Dipper couldn't resist. He opened his right eye a tiny fraction, and his blood turned to ice.
The room he and Bill were being kept in was smaller than the Mystery Shack's tiny kitchen. Rough stone covered the floor, ceiling and walls all around. Yet there was no Primrose. Bill was laying next to him, his golden eyes also opened a tiny fraction, but he in turn looked almost dead too. In the distance, the metal door was opened, and two massive figures stood there.
"I thought I heard talking," one of them said. He was the closer of the two, one that took sharp steps towards them. He was now standing above them, and Dipper closed his eye in fear of the man catching him awake. "Do you think they're faking?"
No, no we're not. Leave us alone.
"Dude chill, I know you can't wait for them to wake," said the other. "But you overdosed on the chloroform you and that guy I can't remember the name of used on those two boys. They're like what, twelve and sixteen? About that age I would say. The amount of chemicals that you used could knock out a grown man."
The first one grunted and knelt down beside them. "When will they wake up? I'm getting restless. The others are still satisfied with our prey we caught from that train station. But these guys are new. They had a dragon pet for fuck's sake."
Dipper flinched as he felt a cold hand on his bare leg, and Dipper had to bite his inner lip to avoid from yowling out for help. That would be the biggest mistake ever.
"Dude, you won't get them to squeal for you in that state," the other told him. "They're knocked out cold, and what fun is in fucking unconscious children? Wait a few more hours and then you'll have twice the fun."
The brute took his hand away from Dipper's leg and stood back up to his feet. "Fine, but remember, I take the first shot. I didn't get a turn with our last little prey."
The two men existed the room and the door closed, once again plunging the room into total darkness. But this time the darkness was welcomed.
Dipper's eyes snapped opened to the blackness, and he let out the horrified noise he had been keeping back. "We've got to get out of here. Fast."
"I'm actually feeling something here," Bill whispered back. "I want to get out of here, I don't know what it is, and I don't like it." There was a stammer in his usually booming voice.
"That's called fear," Dipper explained quickly, though it didn't help his situation. Things were really bad if the former god of absolute chaos was scared. He could feel the awful sense of fear spreading through his own body. Dipper tried to remind himself to keep calm, but no matter what he did, no matter what he told himself, he couldn't stop the plague of panic rising within him.
In that instant Dipper dropped his pride and pressed himself against Bill's chest, breaking down into hysterical sobbing.
"What are you doing Pine Tree? Why is there liquid coming out of your eyes and why are you making those strange noises?" Bill asked, frozen as ice.
It took Dipper a few moments to manage to mutter a few words that were just able to be deciphered. "I don't know what worse," he sobbed, letting his tears soak into Bill's clothes. "Dying here of starvation or getting tortured, raped and murdered."
Only then did Bill realise that Dipper had fallen prey to human emotion. At first he didn't know how to react, since the chaos demon had never comforted someone before in his life, but then he once again rubbed his cheek against Dipper's. "Calm down," said he, shocked himself at how different his voice sounded when he wasn't making threats or manipulating. "We're gonna get out of here. We're gonna escape, find Crescent Moon and get back to Gravity Falls, I promise you."
For a few more moments Dipper cried, but then he came to his senses and pushed himself away from his 'enemy'. "Okay," he steadied his voice and brushed his tears away with his bound wrists. "We first need to get these binds off." Both boys pushed themselves up to sit.
"I have an idea," Bill announced. What he said next didn't sound like human english, but like chanting in some inhuman language Dipper had never heard before. At his words, a bright light burst into life. Dipper gasped softly and closed his eyes tightly shut against the painful light; he had spent god knows how long in total darkness. And then bit by bit, he opened them gradually to get used to the white light.
The chain had sprung to life. It wasn't tense like when it usually became visible, but laying around on the ground, idle, yet still tied around his own neck and Bill's like a lead. They were still connected.
"How-"
"We have control over our curse," Bill told him with a shrug, as if Dipper had just merely forgotten. "We just can't break its limits." Another blinding light flashed, and Bill's cane had appeared between his bound hands.
"You're a genius," Dipper breathed before he could stop himself. Bill merely shrugged as he began to use his sharp cane to cut through the ropes. It took him a while, but eventually, Bill's hands were free.
"Let's get you out of there now," Bill whispered, eyes darting to the metal door for a moment, weary of those men coming back. Another moment passed, and now Dipper's hands were free as well.
The boys wasted no time. Their hands, now free, began working away at the ropes at their ankles. Finally their legs were free.
Now what?
Now it was Dipper who had an idea. "Do you have anything sharp?" he asked Bill. The older boy felt around in his pockets, and pulled out a thin metal rod.
"I picked this up at that shady town to threaten Crescent Moon with it, you want it?"
Dipper nodded his head and took the metal rod. "This is perfect! I can pick the lock now." Bill gave him a glare as if to ask how do you know how to do that? Dipper shrugged. "Mabel and I helped Gruncle Stan break into stores and buildings last summer," he explained quickly. "We're small and slender and can fit into places he can't, so we needed to learn how to pick locks, hack safes, climb buildings and avoid alarms. I guess I owe him thanks for teaching me how to become a master criminal."
"Your family is crazy," Bill commented.
"Oh I know."
So Dipper kelt beside the keyhole and began to fiddle with it. He held up the chain to give him extra light. The lock clicked. The door was open.
"Okay," Bill muttered under his breath, brandishing his cane like a sword. "Got a weapon?"
Dipper shrugged then held up the thin metal rod. "I guess I can use this as a dagger or something," he proposed. In reality, he had no practise with using actual weapons, the closest he'd ever gotten was using a burning hot fireplace pike in a sword fight against a wax Sherlock Holmes. "You ready to kick some ass?"
"I was ready for trillions of years," Bill replied. With a swift move of his leg, Bill lashed out and kicked down the metal door with ease. It clattered on the ground, and caused the orange outside light to spill into the darkened room and mix with the bright white light of the cursed chain. The boys leaped out like wild animals being reintroduced into a new habitat, combat-ready and weapons bared.
However nobody was there. The men were gone.
Dipper and Bill lowered their weapons cautiously, and looked at the surroundings. A dark corridor, illuminated by firelight and torches. There was more light at one end of the corridor, daylight? Maybe? Dipper was about to go forward when he felt warm breath hit his neck, then whatever had exhaled being violently dragged away from him. Dipper spun round, only to see a strange man struggling against Bill, who had gripped him round the head and forced his jaws tightly shut. Despite being weakened and weathered at by his sickness, Bill was still stronger than the average human, and he was winning.
"Pinch his nose Pine Tree," he commanded. Dipper didn't ask questions, just did as he was told. Instantly the man began to struggle harder, unable to take in air. "Fix your hat, it looks like Crescent Moon had chewed it up."
Dipper fixed his hat with his free hand, and felt the man go limp. He had passed out from the lack of air. "Is that enough?" he hazard asking. Bill shrugged.
"I dunno, you're the meatsack expert here," was his reply, but he let him drop to the ground with a thud.
Dipper lead the way down the corridor, eyes around his head for any more thugs, Bill close to his heels, also battle-ready. They stepped lightly, careful not to cause their footsteps to echo round the walls. They came out of the corridor, and the whole place came to view.
They were in some remixed version of a broken line of corridors and caves, the walls an amalgamate of earth, rocks and smooth, man-cut stone. The electrical lights overhead were disused and dusty, so the tunnels were illuminated by torches and firelight. The corners were sharp, not letting to see what was past. Worst of all, there was no exit and there was no sign of the dragon.
"I'm getting bad vibes from this," Dipper whispered as he pocketed the thin metal rod, remembering his experiences with the Society's temple and Bill's lair. Those twisting corridors, he was sure he was going to develop of phobia of them someday if things carried on this way. "We need to find Primrose and get the heck out of here."
"Sounds like a plan, let's go."
They began to walk down the corridor, their hearts pounding in adrenalin. They jumped at every small sound, for fear made every sound louder. While previously the chain kept the two together by force, now they didn't leave each other's side, which caused the white chain to shimmer away into nothingness. They hid behind corners when they heard someone coming, and eluded the sight of the brutes as much as they could.
Who were they? Dipper still did not know. But judging by the conversation he and Bill had overheard, would it be a wild guess to assume that this was a pack of sexual predators? That was a terrifying realisation.
At one point they stumbled across a pile of human bones, which gave them both a heart attack and made them even more eager to leave this place. Human organs are quite expensive on the black market, after all. Dipper even picked up a bone, and gazed at it sadly. A person had fallen prey to these thugs, and their story didn't have a happy ending. He didn't even know this person, but a pang of sorrow hit him, for this person, whoever they were. And for the many others that have suffered and died this way.
"Hey check this out Pine Tree!" Bill called out to him. "I think I've found a mirror of Jaddrycryn!"
Dipper turned back to him in confusion and put the bone down. "A mirror of what?"
"Jaddrycryn," Bill repeated neutrally. "I wondered where I would find one of those again."
Instantly Dipper's mystery-hunting instinct kicked in, and he trotted up to Bill to see what he was making such a big fuss about.
The mirror was leaned against the uneven wall, minding its own business. At first Bill and Dipper didn't notice it over the shock bone pile, but now it looked as interesting, if not more. Its rim was made of gold, encrusted with strange, colourless jewels. Bill was looking at the mirror, with something in his eyes, something indescribable... something that Dipper had seen before, though couldn't put his finger where.
"What is it?" Dipper asked and looked at the reflection. He had expected to see the reflection of the slightly taller, golden-haired, golden-eyed demon boy he had become a custom to seeing and tolerating, but none of that had shown up in the mirror. Instead, was the reflection of a familiar, floating, yellow triangle, still sporting his black top hat, bow-tie and cane. His single eye looked on in the same longing as his human counterpart did, mirroring his every move.
Seeing Bill once again in demon form sent a nasty chill of horrified nostalgia through Dipper. Even if it was just a mere reflection, it didn't stop the waves and waves of memories he had with this creature.
Battling him in Stan's mindscape... Making a deal thus getting possessed... Seeing him plastered all over the second level of the basement... Getting chased by him through the many twisting triangular corridors of his pyramid...
The memories with this triangular fellow were not good, at all.
Bill noticed Dipper's uneasy expression, and couldn't stop the split-second flash of hurt through his eyes. So instead he tried to loosen the atmosphere.
"I remember one of these being in Gravity Falls," he remarked, looking back at himself fondly. "That Northwest had smashed it to pieces. A fine Jaddrycryn mirror it was. This one is a little on the rusty side, but it still works as it should."
"What is it?" Dipper asked, finally pulling his eyes away from the creature that haunted so many of his dreams to look at his comrade.
Bill too looked back at him. "Strange how Sixer missed writing about these," he said with a shrug. "They show what you looked like in your past life, if you had one. I guess the memory gun incident would count as my death after all."
His eyes darted to his reflection again, and the same tic returned to his irises. Now Dipper recognised the strange gaze.
It was the unbearable glint of helpless longing, the same glint he had seen in Primrose's emerald eyes when she looked at him. Bill too had been longing, though like with Primrose, it was hopeless.
"Do you... miss your other form?" Dipper hazard asking, though his voice quivered in awkwardness, something that Bill chuckled at before replying.
"Of course I do," he answered. "I miss not being able to feel pain, I miss being able to know what everyone is thinking. You don't know how wonderful it feels to dance your way into people's dreams, or do anything your insane mind comes up with." He looked at his hands. "I miss having my imagination as my only limitation. I miss myself in some way."
There was an impressive silence as he paused speaking. But it was only for a moment, for he carried on. "But I guess being a useless meatsack isn't too bad," he admitted. "I like living on edge and running for my life. I guess I can get used to being a mortal."
It looked like Bill had matured a lot, and lost at least the bad part of his insanity. If Dipper looked now, he wouldn't believe that the god of chaos and this boy were one and the same. But looked like his other flaws were still present, such as his vanity, but that Dipper was somehow willing to accept.
Dipper nodded his head in understanding, his eyes fluttering between Bill's humanity and the floating triangle in the mirror. "Did I have a past life?" Dipper asked curiously. Bill shrugged his shoulders and made room for him.
So Dipper stood in front of the mirror, and his heart dropped to the base of his feet.
In the mirror, was not the reflection of an awkward brown-haired, brown-eyed technically-teenage boy going through massive puberty. But instead, looking back at him, was a dragon.
It stared back at him in shock, its strange green eyes widening. The scales it bore were the colour of ocean, bluer than Dipper had ever seen. Those crooked horns and the overall bulky, reptilian body shape was familiar somehow... but what really was the surprise was the mark the dragon bore on its forehead.
The Big Dipper constellation...
Both the boy and the demon stared at the dragon in shock, speechless, and it stared back at them, not uttering a word. The boy lifted his right hand, and the dragon lifted its left paw, perfectly synchronised.
"Who-" Dipper began to ask, but no more words escaped his mouth once he realised that the dragon had also moved its mouth.
However Bill knew what Dipper wanted to ask. "I don't know," he said seriously. He turned to look Dipper in the face. "But do you remember how Crescent Moon reacted to your birthmark?"
The faint memory rose to the front of Dipper's mind, and he remembered the painful way she looked at him. Back then, he had thought Primrose had just had an experience with that constellation. Now though, it all made sense.
Primrose knew this dragon. Primrose knew who Dipper used to be.
"Now we've got to find her to find out who you were in your past life," Bill joked, snickering in his usual laugh. "That is if she hadn't been beaten to death by these pathetic excuses for living beings," he finished in a sombre note. He turned away to walk further into the unknown corridors. "C'mon then Pine Tree, we've got an oversized snake to save."
Dipper was about to follow his companion eagerly, when a sharp hand grabbed his arm, the rough skin leaving little white scratches on the boy's forearm. Instantly Dipper fought for freedom, forced to face the unfamiliar man as he held him with an iron grip, something indescribably scary glimmering in his eyes.
"Let go of me!" the young boy shrieked in panic, but the man pulled violently, so Dipper stumbled towards him against his will, so close to the man's face now that he could taste his awful stinking dog's breath on his tongue.
"The little lamb has come to me," cooed the man with a creepy smile, sending a jolt of panic through the boy as he struggled against him harder. That voice! That voice that said those horrible things... it belonged to him! "The others know I've claimed you as my own, so don't you worry about them."
The man got closer, but as he did so, a sudden wave of force tore him away from Dipper, who fell down on his behind and looked up with fearful eyes.
"You nasty bastard!" Bill yelled, his hands clutching the man's shirt collar so tightly his knuckles turned white. The man was slightly lifted off the ground, trying to pry Bill's hands away from himself. From where he was curled, Dipper could see that once again, Bill's eyes have shifted from the calm gold to the raging red, once again beginning to leak the foreign scarlet gas. Dipper had seen Bill do this in his human state once before, and that was when he stupidly pushed him over the edge of his patience. But now? Why was he angry now? Shouldn't he be glad of what could've happened to Dipper?
"No-one... and I mean no-one-" his voice began to get distorted, so it sounded like a broken record. "-is to lay so much as a finger on my companion."
My companion...?
The words rang round Dipper's head. If he hadn't seen Bill's mouth move, he wouldn't've believed that the former devil had said that sentence. He was waiting for Bill to back down and let the man continue with his filthy work, but the ex-demon stood stubbornly. He wasn't kidding.
But the brute stopped struggling, and a wide smile spread on his face, somehow even creepier than whenever Bill had done it. Before Bill could comprehend what the man was doing, his hand took out something from his pocket. A switchblade. There was a flash of movement, where scarlet liquid shot away from Bill's face and a cry of agony emerged from him. He let go of the man and fell back, his hands trying to stop the blood from escaping. Once again, the look of true terror was back in his gaze, but he would not find the mercy that he found in the boy he had once terrorised.
The man stepped up to him, the shadows dancing across his face. This was a sight that nobody in their right mind would ever want to see before their own eyes.
Dipper had no idea what he was doing. He had grabbed the tiny metal rod from his pocket and held it as if it were a dagger. He stepped between the man and Bill, and tried to make himself a tiny bit more dangerous.
"If you want to get at him you'll have to go through me!" he barked, then he came to his senses. Was he really protecting Bill Cipher?
Yes... Yes he was.
"With pleasure," the man growled, but like his opponent before him, he underestimated how fast the thirteen year old was.
Dipper was always fast, and being small and agile turned out to be his advantage. Using brute force like Bill Cipher or Gideon Gleeful was not his resume, but he was able to win fights by cunning and speed.
It was difficult to say what exactly happened, for even Dipper remembered it as a blur, but in those few seconds, the man was on the ground, bleeding badly from three stab wounds in his stomach.
Even Dipper himself was surprised as his own brutality, but his moment of hesitation lasted only mere moments. Without stalling he pulled Bill to his feet and both of them fled down the corridor, away from the predator that had hunted them.
When they were at a far away distance from the place where the man had attacked them, they stopped to catch their breath. A few moments of panting continued to replenish the oxygen in their lungs.
The first to break the silence was Dipper. "You're bleeding Bill," he stated.
"Yeah no shit honey!" Bill growled at him, turning his head away so the left side on his face wasn't as visible. He pressed his hands closer to his face, but failed at trying to prevent the dark red liquid from dripping down his face and onto the floor. "Don't look at me and maybe I'll get over it."
Dipper gave him the most unimpressed look he could muster.
"Dumbass, you'll get the wound infected if we don't do something about it," he explained calmly. "And judging by the food poisoning incident, you don't want to fall prey to human weakness again, do you?"
Bill clearly wanted to argue, but once again Dipper had a point. So Bill turned his head towards him and took his hands away from his face.
Dipper's hands darted to his mouth to muffle the horrified gasp.
The wound was short, running from his temple to the bridge of his nose, but it was deep, leaking blood. But it also ran across Bill's eye, ridding him of the eyesight in that eye, forcing him to keep it shut. Once again he was one-eyed.
"And just when I was beginning to get used to having two eyes," Bill complained, waving his red-stained hands in a rant. "Will my eye ever see again?"
Dipper sucked air through his teeth. "I don't think so," he told him truthfully. "You'll be half-blind from now on. We need stop the blood loss."
Bill made a strange noise as his tongue tried to lick at the blood that was dripping down his face. "My vessels have had worse wounds that have healed over in the past, you should know that," he said darkly. "But perhaps you're right, I don't want this shit infected."
For an answer Dipper tore a piece of his red shirt off, and reached out to tie the scrap of scarlet fabric round Bill's head. It covered the wound and held the remaining blood back from the surface.
"There we go," Dipper announced proudly as he finished tying the patch. "You look like a pirate."
Bill rolled his eye and pushed the palm of his hand to the wounded eye, pressing the fabric to the open wound. "Thanks, I guess," he uttered.
It was then that a string of strange noises began to echo round the corridors. Noises, which the two had grown familiar to. Those deep-pitched growls, the cat-like hisses, the alien roars... those were the sounds that Primrose had continuously made throughout their journey.
"You hear that right?" Dipper made sure. "I think I'm hallucinating."
"Nope, I hear that too," Bill confirmed with a firm nod. "Let's get her and get the fuck outta here."
"You do realise that those thugs know about us escaping, right?" Dipper asked him as they once again made their way cautiously down the corridors. "They're gonna kill us."
"Haters gonna hate dearie, fuck 'em," was all Bill answered with.
So the two boys continued their way down the corridor, steadily making their way towards the sounds of their guide. They travelled stride by stride, close by each other's sides, the boy protecting the demon, the demon protecting the boy.
