Hello, this is Pastrinator64 with another chapter from Hourglass!

Man...I was listening to an old radio on Pandora yesterday and had an overwhelming nostalgia trip. It was almost painful to hear all the old songs I used to repeat over and over and over and OOOOVER while I wrote. XD It's sad now that I recognize this series, which first began almost three and a half years ago, is almost ready to come to a close. Seven, MAYBE eight chapters remain before it's finally over. It'll be so happy and depressing and nostalgic and AASDFOI3JA3BASO235DB;';][HJK-97FASOJI`2J13JAG

*sigh* But I'd better get a move on, now.

Replies to Reviews...

Marshman101: Magnets can be both extremely useful and extremely deadly. One time when I was little, I screwed up my dad's laptop forever because I held a really strong fridge magnet near it and sucked up a bunch of important data it needed to even perform basic functions...bad day for both of us, let me tell you! ^^'

Airas Slayer: I KNOW! It's been one of my favorite scenes to write in the history of this frickin trilogy! Definitely top five! And hey, don't worry about school being in the way; I TOTALLY understand the interference you're having to deal with. Trust me, I've experienced the same kinda thing...ugh. But hey, it's summer for me! I'm trying not to think a whole lot about school outside of my, um... *shudder* ...my online summer courses. Bleck. :/

Prepare yourself for another doozy of a chapter, ladies and gents! ;D

Now, let the story commence!

Chapter 43: Always Ladies First

Bailey had been firing arrows off unyieldingly pretty much since she woke up, so by the time she sprinted over to Norman and Astrid, she was pretty exhausted.

See, right as she was just getting over the sudden HP gain in Baal Reincarnate, she heard Norman's urgent shouts from across the city block. She ran diagonally to ensure she wouldn't get bulldozed by the Unforgiven Spawn, reaching him and Astrid in a little less than a minute. Now here she was, huffing and puffing as she tried to catch her breath and simultaneously find out what was going on with them. She bent over, pushing on her knees with her palms to support herself, and gasped,

"What is it?"

Almost immediately, she spotted Adrian lying flat on the ground with a gaping mouth and half-open eyes. She raised both her eyebrows and added,

"What's wrong with Adrian?"

And THEN she saw Kelsey, who was also lying down seven blocks from the four of them, breathing heavily and staring wide-eyed at the sky. Bailey threw out a hand to Kelsey and declared,

"And what about HER?! What's happening to her leg?!"

Norman jumped and glanced behind him, remembering that Kelsey was still in grave danger. He twisted his torso where he stood and pointed in her direction with Shatter, lifting her gently up off the ground and placing her back on it next to him.

"I can't really explain right now, Bailey! I'm sorry!" he snapped, both frustrated and kinda panicked at the moment. "Long story short, I just exorcised a virus out of Adrian and Kelsey got a bad bite from a corrupted pig. There's really no more of a chance of saving this city anymore, but maybe we can save these two if we hurry! I'll try and stop the spread of plasma on Kelsey, you and Astrid find something to…I don't know, just see if Adrian's braindead or not!"

While Astrid and Bailey started rummaging around in their Blockpacks for supplies, Norman gripped his weapon tightly and fully turned to face Kelsey. He wasn't even sure if she knew he was there, to be honest; the sheer anguish in her eyes might literally be blinding her. He knelt down and gulped as he watched the plasma spread past her hip, sluggishly working its back down her other leg as well as up her stomach—armor and all. He wished desperately that he'd been able to do some quicker thinking and just amputate before the infection went beyond her thigh, but he was well aware how useless hindsight was at a time like this.

"Kelsey, look at me!" he said, holding her up on his lap and turning her head to stare up at him. "I'm going to try and use Shatter to push the plasma off of you, so you're going to feel some pressure! Just hold still, okay? You'll be fine in a minute…"

He helped her remove her chestplate, giving him a better look at the virus as he slowly lowered the tip of his spade to the tainted area. When he began to apply the magnetic waves to her middle, Kelsey had a massive intake of air and croaked, letting out painful wheezes.

"Mark…Mark…" she repeated, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Markus Jackson Cobweb…" thought Norman, wincing at the sheer pain in Kelsey's eyes as she mentioned his one and only son. "I'm sorry that I couldn't save you when you needed your dad most…wherever you are, just keep in mind that I have and always will love you. No matter what."

"AaaaaaaHA!" Auconi exclaimed, his pick flying down in a blur.

This was the final strike needed to break the first brain block. It shattered into countless slimy particles, which showered down on the two unsuspecting heads of Carol and Sabrina below. Before those two could even react to how gross this surprise was, the entire bodily structure around them gave a rough lurch and nearly threw them off the spinal cord. Up on top, Auconi actually did lose his balance and flew backwards, landing uncomfortably on his back on the cold ground.

Baal, who had been in constant pursuit of Darcy, suddenly jerked to a halt, skidding a little ways over the skeletal floor before completely coming to a stop. All three of his oversized heads let out their own individual shrieks of anguish as he began to writhe around in place, shredding the ears of everyone in the immediate area. Then, without any warning, the monster's cat head shuddered violently and exploded into ash, coating everything in sight. Darcy managed to turn away in time, but Auconi was on his back and facing up, so he got a whole mouthful of the black dust.

"BLECK!" he cried, coughing and spitting immediately after taking the substance in.

Darcy cleared his throat, still wary of the noxious powder falling around him, and turned to Auconi from across the room, shouting,

"Keep it coming, mate! There's still three more of the blue uglies to destroy!"

At this time, Baal began to recover from the excruciating blow to his figure and was trying to focus on Darcy again with his two remaining heads. When he was finally able to, Darcy took the hint and started skittering after him just as before, somehow still with perfect balance.

"AUCONI!" Darcy shouted, jabbing his sword at the glowing structure in the center of the room.

Auconi gave a deep sniff, almost like he was going to hock a loogie, and spat heavily on the floor to remove the rest of the ash from his throat. He hurriedly ate a couple baked potatoes from his hotbar before jumping to his feet and speeding off towards his goal. Carol and Sabrina watched from below as he put his muscly figure to the test and climb the oddly-shaped spiral, going twice as fast as before. Carol turned to Sabrina with a sudden thought, paused for a moment, and then said,

"Do you ever think it's odd when short people have a ton of muscles?"

Sabrina raised an eyebrow and glanced at her suspiciously, replying,

"Carol, you're over six feet tall; your idea of short is a bit skewed."

While Carol was rolling her eyes in response, Sabrina looked up out of the hole again and continued speaking, only this time her focus was on the actual fight going on above them.

"Hey, don't you think it feels wrong that we're just sitting here and not doing anything? There's only the two of them and we're at full health right now, so…why don't we just, I dunno…"

Before she could finish her sentence, however, Carol grabbed her by the shoulder and got her attention again, muttering,

"Sabrina, be serious! Those two fight monsters on a daily basis! They're actually GOOD! The only monsters we've ever fought were ghouls and creeps off the street who wanted to give us a bad time!"

Sabrina huffed through her nose and pushed away Carol's spider-gloved hand, straightening herself up to get onto the next block and stick her head out of the hole. She watched for a few seconds as Darcy kept on sprinting away from his revolting hunter, simultaneously chewing on some unidentifiable meat to keep his stamina up; if that was her being chased around in a circle like that, she was pretty sure a wad of chicken wouldn't be enough to sustain her.

"Why don't we try attacking him from here, use our Block powers for once? I know I've only got snow, but you can maybe slow Baal down with some of your webs, right?"

Carol gritted her teeth and clasped her fingers around both her bff's arms and pulled her back down, reclaiming her attention in a bit of a rough manner this time.

"Sabrina, stop it!" she snapped, staring open-eyed at her. "C'mon, this is stupid thinking! You know we'd die the moment that…whatever that thing is, it'd kill us the moment it spotted us! We need to leave the fighting to the people who stand a chance at survival! So get your head out of the fucking clouds and…and stay with m-me down here, okay?"

Her voice turned weak at the end of her rant. Emotionally and physically, Carol had never felt so exhausted in her entire life. Or at least, not since the first week she was taken out of her home and put inside the world of Minecraft…

But before Sabrina could say another word, whether out of comfort or irritation, their surroundings moved suddenly once again, violently tossing an unprepared Carol off of the bony structure. Sabrina instinctively reached out to grab her, but the moment their fingers gripped together tightly, the combined weight of Carol and her borrowed chestplate pulled both of them into the dark abyss below. Screaming and flailing, they both fell for a couple seconds before hitting the fleshy, squishy floor.

"S-SABRINA!" Carol gasped, feeling around her in a blind attempt to find her best friend. "YOU OKAY?!"

She heard a groan come from three-ish blocks away, then the scraping of armor over flesh as the maker of said groan sat up in place.

"I'm fine!" replied Sabrina, giving an unpleasant shiver when she found herself staring into a pair of lifeless Creeper sockets in the ground. "Let's get back up there, alright? I don't think I can deal with looking at all these faces and…other mob parts…ugh."

Sabrina had a bit more meat on her bones in comparison to Carol, so her fall wasn't quite as painful. She stood up unsteadily from the ground and shuffled over to Carol, lending her a hand in lifting her bony, stick-figure body off the floor. Once they were both standing, Carol couldn't help herself and fell forward, leaning on her shoulder for support.

"Mmph…got a-any food in your hotbar? I ate all mine already, s-so…"

While the two of them were gradually making their way back to the spinal cord, Auconi was busy trying to get a grip on the brain stem to prevent himself from falling for the umpteenth time.

"Two down!" he yelled, grunting as he hoisted himself up another block.

Darcy, meanwhile, had managed to chip off twenty-ish of Baal's one-hundred health points just by occasionally landing a hit with his own sword. Every one of its heads seemed to be coated with satanic magic, however, and most sword swings wouldn't leave a mark at all.

"That's ripper, Auconi!" Darcy declared, shooting himself forward with a small lava geyser to gain some distance from his pursuer. "Now quit flapping your jaws and get to mining!"

Auconi mumbled something that went unheard by anyone but him and proceeded to keep scaling the slim structure. Once on top, he went back to work on jabbing the third brain block with his pick over and over and over again. He was rather skilled at multitasking, so he did this without looking and watched Darcy in a rare moment of admiration. Considering how big of an airhead the guy was all the time, he often forgot how much legit fighting skill he had.

"Don't all get starry eyed now, Auconi…" he muttered to himself, rolling his eyes. "Just get. The job. Done."

Just as Darcy realized he was starting to get tired again, he looked down at his non-dominant arm to grab a couple more cooked porkchops from his hotbar. He pulled one out by extending two fingers off the hilt of his sword, pinched two in between his fingers, and lifted them to his mouth. Right when he started gnawing through the end of the first porkchop, something strong wrapped around his middle and squeezed the slab of meat out of his mouth, choking him for a moment. He growled and struggled in place as the frog head's long, sticky tongue constricted him uncomfortably tight.

Auconi paused while mining the block in front of him and threw out a hand as an immediate reaction, raising a wall up in between Darcy and Baal, swiftly slicing through the gargantuan tongue and freeing his partner. This cut twelve more HP off the boss tag, Baal toppling over on his back and thrashing around on the floor while the frog head croaked nonstop. Darcy still struggled to pull the muscly tongue off of him, but he was able to do so after ten more seconds and jumped to his feet, backing up quickly to prevent another ambush.

"Thanks, ya bludger!" he called, grinning up at Auconi from across the room. "I was nearly toad food!"

Auconi smirked back, disregarding the act with the wave of his free hand while he continued to hack away at the slimy block of blue.

"Whatever!" he shouted back.

Just as Darcy was about to leap back into action, Baal jumped right over the wall of diamond ore and landed on top of him, crushing him into the floor. He let out a scream of pain and frantically jabbed at the beast's many hairy legs in an attempt to free himself.

"That's it!" Sabrina declared, summoning all the energy in her legs and hopping up the last blocks to enter the room. "I can't just stand here!"

"SABRINA, NO!" cried Carol, trying and failing to grab her by the ankle as she fled their safe hideaway to join the fight. "You're gonna DIE, you dumbfuck! GET BACK HERE!"

Sabrina's stout legs carried her rather quickly around the pillar of blackened bones until she reached Baal on the other side; she jumped up into the air and brought her sword down with all her weight, slicing off no less than five of his legs from behind. The monstrosity fell backwards in an instant, releasing Darcy from underneath its girth and instead shoving Sabrina onto the ground. She shrieked and scrambled away, her sword now trapped underneath the creature. As Darcy was hoisting himself up off the floor, he swiped a hand through the air swiftly and yelled,

"Sabrina, I told you to STAY PUT! GET OUT OF HERE!"

Baal, now missing almost half of his limbs, contracted the remaining seven and spun around like a top so that both the goblin and toad heads could get a good look at their surprise attacker. Sabrina covered her ears and scrunched up into a ball as Baal let out a pair of distorted shrieks, now extremely aggravated. It lunged forward and landed on top of her instead, the goblin head opening wide with two glistening fangs, ready to chop her up into bite-sized pieces in an instant. Sabrina screamed for her life and threw up her arms to protect herself, not yet ready for her own death. Then, just as the razor-sharp teeth flew down to gouge her insides, she felt a powerful pair of feet kicked her painfully to the side, sliding her roughly out of the way; not a moment after, an ear-piercing slicing sound was heard. A few seconds later, she lowered her arms and caught sight of the most horrifying, nightmarish scene she'd witnessed in her life.

Darcy had taken her place on the floor and now had two giant white daggers sticking out of his back. He gasped, taking in every particle of air around him to fill his punctured lungs, and slowly turned his head to look at Sabrina. In a surreal moment of slow-motion, the two of them shared an intense gaze, both pairs of eyes filling up with tears in an instant. Darcy swallowed, holding out a hand to hold her quivering chin, and swallowed hard.

Then,

"Ladies first…heh…heheheh…" he wheezed, blood slowly drizzling out of his mouth. "Take care of your bestie, alright? Sh-she's a bit of a…a, y-y'know…ah, I won't say it…"

His hand became limp underneath her head and fell down into Sabrina's lap; his head slowly turned around until he was staring directly up at Auconi, who stood frozen with his pick in the air just seven blocks above them.

"Auconi, mate…" he moaned, giving him a big ol' grin despite his anguish. "Sorry I had t-t-to…to keep stealin' your thunder all the time…you can take the spotlight for me now, th-though…m-make your granddaddy proud…"

With the last bit of feeling left in his limbs, he lifted his left arm and gave Auconi a thumbs up: his final message. Baal wasted no more time in devouring Darcy and threw his ragdoll body up into the air, the massive maw of the goblin opening wide and swallowing him whole on the way down.

"D-duh…d-d-dah…" Auconi sputtered, his blood frozen in his veins. "D-d-d-d…D-Darcy…?"

Rather than putting any effort into his final swing, the pickaxe in Auconi's hand dropped like a stone and embedded itself in the surface of the third brain block, shattering it into a million pieces. Baal screeched with both heads, satanic cries issuing from his figure that rattled the bones of every wall around them. Suddenly, the warty toad head atop its gangly base spontaneously combusted, ending itself in a cloud of code and green particles; supposedly, this head had been tougher than the rest and required two blows to the brain to be destroyed. The tower-sized monstrosity around them also reacted to the impact, jerking forward and throwing a numb Auconi off the pillar and to the floor below.

"NGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

For the first time, Auconi couldn't get himself to fight anymore; what he'd just seen was so unexpected that it literally removed all feeling from his body and immobilized him on the ground, forcing him to watch with lifeless eyes as Sabrina snapped and started to beat the literal living hell out of Baal with her block powers. Somewhere in the midst of the chaos, he saw Carol also get up out of the hole and start to climb the bony pillar in the center of the room, grab his own pickaxe off one of the jutting blocks where it had fallen, and start chopping away at the last remaining piece of Baal Reincarnate's brain.

"…Darcy…Darcy…Dah…D…" he murmured, the rest of his surroundings slowly fading into blackness.

The last thing he saw was an explosion of blue light—his last sound being that of the goblin's agonizing defeat—before he completely blacked out, plummeting deep into his own shock, never to return again.

Darcy…

On the outside, Norman jumped when he heard every single part of the Unforgiven Spawn let out an ear-shredding scream of agony. He looked up at the giant, which had slinked off almost thirty blocks from them by now, and watched with gaping eyes as the entire boss tag floating up above it shattered into thousands of purple shards. Baal Reincarnate's many cries deepened suddenly, distorting and mixing together, and it started to lose balance.

Seconds later, it swayed in place for a moment before falling to its side, crashing into the many buildings in its way and shaking the earth around them. Norman watched in awe as it twitched, flailed, and screeched where it now lied. One moment, they'd lost all hope of beating the hellspawn thanks to several inconveniences; the next, it was down and out for good without any warning. After another half minute of violent struggling, Baal Reincarnate went completely still.

"It's over…" Bailey muttered next to him, catching his attention. "It's finally dead."

Suddenly, a heavy gasp of air next to them made both Norman and Bailey glance to their left. Adrian, who was being propped up off the ground by Astrid, had finally reopened his eyes and was breathing deeply, staring all around him in a moment of pure adrenaline.

"Oh Notch!" he muttered, eyes darting this way and that. "A-am I back?! Is it over?!"

He lifted a hand to his head and added,

"Ugh…ah've got a reeeal bad headache right about now, too…"

It was then that Norman remembered they still had one more life to save and whirled around, bringing the tip of Shatter back down on Kelsey's slowly decaying body. Her left leg was completely absent, with the right separated and nearly gone, and the plasma had moved past her middle by now. The demonic touch of the Unforgiven Spawn mixed with the Glitch's own viral power had made the virus eating away at her impossible to kill with mere magnetism.

"M-Mark…" she whispered, mouth and eyes stuck open to face the sky. "M-M…Mark…"

"Kelsey, come on!" Norman snapped, gritting his teeth as he pulled harder yet at the black substance now rising up her ribcage. "I'm not letting you die! I'm NOT letting you die!"

Just as the last time someone near and dear to him was about to be killed at the blood-covered hands of the Glitch, Norman felt a powerful surge of energy and rage flow inside of him. The three others—Adrian, Bailey, and Astrid—all watched in awe as something miraculous happened; his skin rippled, a sudden white glow issuing with every pulse and slowly surrounding his body as his face contorted with effort. In a matter of seconds, his entire figure was surrounded in a snow white aura. This really was just like the time when the Glitch took Liz's life in front of them all!

"Norman!" Bailey cried, rushing forward and grabbing him by the shoulder. "It's happening again! It's just like last t—"

He shot a glare backward at her, blasting five blocks back with only his stare. He looked at the other two behind him, who both flinched at his gaze, and shouted,

"The Glitch can't take her, too! I WON'T LET IT!"

He returned his focus to Kelsey, who was too much in shock to realize what unbelievable things were going on around her. Somehow, Norman knew exactly what he needed to do in the heat of the moment and abandoned Shatter completely, tossing it to the side. He raised both hands and concentrated harder than he had in his life, pushing all the amazing power within him to his ten fingers. Right when he knew they were ready, his hands shot down and clasped tight onto the glob of plasma rising up her stomach and gave a great shout, directing every ounce of energy in his body at it. A blindingly bright pulse erupted in between his hands and the murky substance, annihilating it in a fierce explosion of black and white.

With the plasma gone from her being, Kelsey took a massive breath and arched her remaining body, desperate to recover some air. After giving away all of his power, Norman felt limp and fell onto his back next to her, also breathing heavily as he tried to regain his energy. The two of them stared at each other for several silent seconds, both extremely in pain, overwhelmed, and frightened all at once.

"Th-thanks…" Kelsey groaned, a shaking smile forming across her lips. "Th-thank you, N…N-Norman…"

Norman nodded in response, but his eyes returned to look at her many missing body parts. Somehow, thanks to the natural laws of Minecraftia, she remained alive…for the time being, at least.

"I'm g-gonna see Mark now, aren't I?" she said, her pearly whites showing in her grin. "I-I'll be with the Glitch, t-too, but…at least I'll have M-Mark again…just l-like the two of us dreamed, w-we'll be…we'll die together. Not one of us will be left alone for a s-second…"

Norman shook his head this time, his whole body tremoring violently as he struggled to get to a sitting position and find Shatter. He gulped, looking down at her near-lifeless eyes with secret tears.

"No, you'll be fine! I swear you'll be okay!" he growled angrily, utterly furious with the unfairness of it all. "Now that the plasma's gone, I can heal you again! It might take long, it…it might take a couple more weeks to fully restore all of your limbs again, but we can do it! You just gotta not give up, o-okay? Don't you want to make my son…Mark; don't you want him to be proud of you?"

Kelsey's smile still failed to waver even when she was just seconds from death. She swallowed, choosing on purpose not to pay any mind to her blackened lower half as she continued to choke out a few more words.

"Oh…I think he already is…" she murmured, closing her eyes and squeezing out a new stream of tears. "I've c-come a long, long, lo-hong way…"

She laughed lightly, followed by a series of airy coughs promptly after.

"I've kept f-from giving up forever now. It's time I j-just…let things happen…"

Norman's eyes scrunched shut and he gripped her arm tightly, shaking his head repeatedly as he tried to conjure up a solution inside his aching brain. Of course, nothing came to mind and he slumped over on top of her, holding her there in total grief. No more special powers came to him that day. Instead, he received his one and only fear: emotion.

"Thanks for a-all the t-t-t…the t-talks…" she whispered, her voice barely audible now. "You really are the greatest l-leader a mismatched group of t-teenagers like us could've w-w-wished for…"

Norman couldn't see it through closed eyes, but Kelsey's head fell to the side as her entire body went still, one last breath issuing from her open mouth. After all the adventures, the good and bad times, the suffering, the victories…finally, she was with her beloved Mark once more.

And as prophesized in the Divination of Dimensions, the second Discarded was claimed.

So much death and destruction has come since the arrival of the next Unforgiven Spawn. On one hand, dreadful and evil characters such as Ben, Alexander, and the actual Unforgiven Spawn are finally dead! But then...then there's Kelsey and Darcy, too...damn it. I'm such a terrible, terrible person. *sigh*

Did Auconi, Carol, and Sabrina survive the crash inside of Baal Reincarnate? Where has Firzon the Fifth been hiding during this entire battle? Will Auconi ever be able to recover from seeing Darcy get murdered right in front of him? Will NORMAN be able to recover from a similar scene with Kelsey? And do the remaining heroes have enough time to make it to the last Unforgiven Spawn before Arabaloca reaches the 64th Dimension? Find out in, er...well, one of the future installments of Hourglass!

This is Pastrinator64, your fellow writer and reader, signing out!

*throws sugar bomb and disappears behind its cloud of fine white sugar*

...Goodbye for now...

~Pastrinator64 [~]