Chapter 28: Try to Remember

-?M?-?M?-?M?-

"Where , where… do we start." Morpheus kicked his feet idly over the edge of the chasm. Uncaring of the seemingly endless drop below, he mulled over his words in the manner of a painter choosing tones. "How about you choose?" He gestured to Kenny's ethereal ghost, offering. "I present you places from where I could start… explaining. Then we go from there."

"Alright." The floating spectre responded, Kenny feeling his voice emerge from him like static hissing out of a broken radio, the voiceless speech of something without vocal cords.

Raising up a hand to tick off fingers, Morpheus began. "We have… The truth of what you are… The truth of the world you live in… Or the truth of what is coming…" Each pause between points gave the god of dreams time to think, to gaze away into the middle distance, preparing himself for a duty that was of vast importance to the one before him.

That individual - to whom these answers were more vital than his now lifeless body - was quiet for a time. Then he took that important silence and heaved a pissed-off sigh into it with all the care of a freight train. "Am I really being riddles-three'd right now?"

Blinking at the abrupt answer, Morpheus responded dully. "If you want to start, go ahead. That at least gives me more time to think." The dark haired god settled into his stony perch, crooking both elbows onto his knees and propping up his head with a lazy arch composed of his intertwined fingers.

"How about…" Kenny began with vigour, before seemingly hitting the same stumbling block that his companion had. "How about…" Involuntarily spiralling in the air, convulsing almost like he had sneezed out the thought, Kenny finally exclaimed. "Who the fuck even are you?"

Amused by what looked to be the end of the teenager's wits, Morpheus nodded. "Good question. Even better because it ties into the first one I offered you." The undead boy's eyes widened at that, the shimmering silvery pits in his otherwise ashen humanoid spirit glowing quite literally. "The Ancient Greeks called me Morpheus. The Ancient Egyptian's both Bas and Tutu. The Babylonian's called me by the name Mamu. Tezcatlipoca to the Aztec people. I have at various other times and in other places been called Baku-san, Mister Sandman, Manit, and also… Neil. But those who know me just call me, Dream." Despite the grand gallery of titles, the tired looking Brit barely raised his voice, if he'd had a hat something told Kenny the so-called deity wouldn't even have pretended to raise it, even in mock greeting. "And Kenny… We're a lot alike. We've walked a similar path. I was born on Earth, I grew up in a fashion I thought was normal, but as time stretched onwards it became clear that things were not as they seemed." A greater weight dropped onto Dream's shoulders then, forcing a stale breath from him. He was not bored, even though the outward Gothic aura was nearly palpable, he was more simply than that; done. Done with the life he began to describe. "I was bent under the weight of my own powers and did not even realise. Much like you could not avoid death, I could not avoid the psychedelia of dreams intruding on my waking life. During my early years I could not discern fact from fiction. All because I played an unwitting part in a poorly scripted play."

From the distant and mutating horizon, Dream turned his gaze to meet that of the undead boy. "My parents were more intentional in their cursing of me than yours, but we both suffered similar beginnings." For what felt like the first time in his unbroken biography, Dream took one of his apparently characteristic pauses to really pick over his next words as a diner might when eating at a suspiciously ill-kept restaurant. "I think… I was born November 29th 1988. I quickly lost track of that though, I could walk the dreams of anyone, living or dead. When I slept I merely walked others lives like a tourist. It was not an easy experience, especially once I forgot the difference between dreams and reality." The thought of a child who did not know whether they were awake or asleep, who did not know the differences between real and surreal, struck a deep chord in Kenny's heart. A chord that resonated with the twang of a mountain banjo, a Colorado note, a very South Park truth. "You are not alone, Kenny. I know that is some small comfort, but still, there are others like you, like me, whose birth was intended to be a catalyst. We were both meant to be vessels for something greater. Ships which could bear the presence of a great power into the waking world. An aborted duty for which we now suffer the unintended consequences."

Kenny knew the feelings that Dream was wearing, an old coat of tired, fed-up, exhaustion. Like he had just wished for those days when he wouldn't die, Dream, or whoever he had been in the beginning, had lived days like that. Days, nights, unending stretches of time where nothing made sense, reality twisting like taffee. A curse, corrupted and complicated rules of power that governed their lives without their consent. So much strangeness in his life, memories fading from those around him every other day, then whole periods of time which it seemed reality erased, as if someone hit the do-over button. Always with a death of five sprinkled in there for good measure. What insanity had Dream endured, what manner of powers had twisted his life around their gnarled fingers? Kenny did not specifically know, but he saw a measure of power in the man before him, a measure of control and understanding. Beneath it all though was that same attitude Kenny had to his own curse, and a similar origin that told him he had found someone at least who knew what it was like.

He had known what his parents were doing; getting free beer. But what the cult were doing was mostly a mystery to him, the group who had performed whatever ritual they had on his mother was unknown. He knew he was meant to be something, to bring something, but what Dream had said brought it all rushing back for him, those feelings he'd encountered during the Gulf Crisis. When he and his friends had found the connection between Carol and Stewart McKormick and the Cult of Cthulhu. "I was meant to bring a Great Old One into the world.

"You can no doubt assume from your unique life that the process didn't exactly go off as planned." Morpheus paused to meet Kenny's eye directly, the next words he said made sense to him, but the undead teen wasn't sure it was the same sense Dream was considereing. "Then again, it didn't fail either."

"Because I can't die." Kenny tried.

"More." Dream's answer was expected, from how he had presented the information, but still threw the spectral vigilante for a spin. The unspoken 'what?' Was present even in Kenny's featureless smoke-form face. "It's not simply that you can't die, Kenny. In fact you die very frequently. It's that you won't stay dead, and… that no one will remember it. The world and the minds of those around you, blur and change to remove your death from history."

Forlorn, Kenny put words to the troublesome truth, confessing.. "They always forget, no matter what I do." Belatedly, the ghost of Kenny McKormick got a question lodged in his head. Voicing it, he looked at Dream to gauge his expression as well as his words. "Do you remember them?"

"I don't." The casual answer made Kenny's stomach drop, but the way Dream carried on reassured him, the next words out of the immortal's mouth feeling honest and even-handed. "But then again, I wasn't there. But I have seen your dreams. And I can tell a fellow immortal apart from the crowd, or at least I should like to think I can."

"My dreams." Kenny was mollified but not wholly satisfied with the answer. Seeing as how that was as close to anyone believing him that he'd ever had though, he followed up, fishing the thoughts out of his brain. "Sometimes I see things, when I do, I know. That something is wrong, or about to happen, or nearby." His dreams, usually after a death, roiling in his mind like sugar becoming syrup. Little bits and pieces that gelled together or dissolved completely. Looking at the supposed deity across from him, Kenny asked. "Is… that you?"

"No." Dream provided the answer with a roll of his shoulders, resettling his baggy shrouded `form on the jagged precipice. "It's common though. For people to pick up on disturbances in their dreaming realm. What might be seen depends on what you're sensitive to. It's why most people only dream of themselves and people they know. But if the mind is fractured open to another angle of existence… A radar is the most mundane way I can put it."

"When I focus I can sense those things. Magic, otherworldly creatures, hidden places." Kenny confirmed.

In response Morpheus nodded. "You will find it easier to focus on those things once we're done here. This…" The bedraggled god raised a hand and flicked a finger up and down to indicate Kenny's ghostly form. "I tore your consciousness out of your body, that's what you are now. It's keeping you from true death, since your body has expired but your mind is still aware."

"The fuck." The projected teen breathed out, dumbstruck by the revelation. "You didn't think to ask before you did that?"

"Didn't have time." Dream shrugged. "Plus you were in so much pain that your mind was clouded. Every sparking wire of your brain was hooked into keeping you alive, everything else overwhelmed with sensation. Now, you have no sensations, you're just a mind. It would've been difficult to accomplish in the waking world, but this… this is our realm, this is nothing but a dream."

"So, I won't be able to do this again?" Curiosity tugged at his mind, even as he swept his perception to try and strike any physical awareness. Other than sight, and a sense of place, he found nothing. No smell whatever that would be here, no brush of air. "How does this work anyway, I can see and hear and shit, what do you mean I have no sensation?" Then yet another thing Dream had said slapped at his curiosity. "And by our realm, do you mean…?"

With a world weary sigh, Dream rubbed a hand against his brow. "I'm no teacher. You want answers about that ask Nelson. But, now that you're mind has cracked open a little further, it should be easy to pull off. And 'our realm' as in, us immortals, us who were touched by the cosmic… Now, you want to know about the important shit, or just this little bit of astral projection."

In an all too obvious way Kenny was reminded of two people, of Henrietta of course, but also, annoyingly, of himself. Those times he was forced to explain to the uninitiated; the team, Batman, Zatara. A mix of heavy indignation buried under a knowledge that some information was necessary. Though he couldn't cuss the guy out for it, so far he'd been nothing but forthcoming, and with answers that Kenny had been searching for his whole life. Taking a moment to Marshall his thoughts, he dove back in to the matter of his death and of remembrance. "What about the Gulf Crisis? That was more than just my death, that was… weeks, an apocalypse that people forgot about."

"I remember that. In a way." In the far distance something shifted, something between a mountain turning over and a whale crying out. It was a cacophonous sound, but so distant that it barely broke their range of hearing. Kenny instinctively looked across the horizon to where it had come from, but Dream seemed to pay it no more mind than you would give to a falling leaf. The man's continuation brought Kenny's attention back, Morpheus's voice too sounding distant and far away, albeit in tone and not space. "That was something more. Something that had more of an effect than you know."

"How do you remember, what kind of effect, tell me." He didn't quite demand, but the desire for knowledge put such a drive into his voice that it came out as one.

Dream levelled him with a stony stare. "I can tell you. But you must be certain that you want to know."

"Fucking… obviously!" The undead teen cried out, his exasperated ethereal voice rippling through the space around them.

"Even if the—"

"Even if the truth shakes my world view or breaks my brain or whatever, yes I still want to fucking know!" He cut the deity off with a further sharp slice of common sense. "Look I know what that stupid line is, I've used it myself before, but seriously, no one ever takes it. The whole, are you sure you want to know, thing! Every time I've used it on someone they always say 'yes, I must' or some other bullshit, no one ever has the common sense to say no and walk away, let alone me. I'm already steeped in this shit up to my goddamn eyeballs, so hit me, tell me the truth."

After that Dream pushed his hands against his knees and stood up suddenly, for a second Kenny thought he'd overstepped the mark, but with a casual wave of his hand Dream assuaged his fear. "Good. Because I need you to know. Right, well… since I'm rubbish at explaining things, why don't we take a little walk through your head,, hm?"

"What?" Kenny asked, dumbfounded.

"We'll have to take this guy with us." With an annoyed grunt, Dream leant down to grab the unconscious, perhaps even dead Psi-mon up. Unceremoniously the hobo-chic god threw the psychic villain over one shoulder. Taking a few short steps back to the edge of the cliff, Dream gestured for Kenny to come stand - or float - by his side. Following the instructions the undead vigilante watched to see what the deity would do.

In a clumsy fumbling action, Dream dug around in an inside pocket of his coat. In the manner that a smoker would take out that last cigareette, Morpheus drew out a pinched handful of sand. His pale hand twisted around in an artful, musician-like motion, until he had a palm full of sand held out to the wavering horizon. Dark eyes blinked once and the sand flew from his hand, stretching outwards in front of them and tunnelling into a wrinkle within reality, one that had not been present moments ago, as if the sand was so fine it was capable of finding holes in existence itself.

"The gulf crisis… it's interesting, since in a way, it's where the world begins." As Dream spoke, Kenny was left holding only questions, one's he didn't have time to follow up on as the aperture in mid-air before them widened. The air disintegrated like sand, the displacement reaching out until it obscured the horizon-line. Not satisfied, this granular filter overtaking the world around them continued, spreading around, overhead and behind them. In all the time it took for Dream to say his cryptic words, they were surrounded by a heavily distorted version of what had been the already strange vista of R'lyeh. "At the very least it's where people like me begin."

Stepping forward, out into thin air, Dream reached out his free hand to touch the sand world. Immediately it all fell away, billowing and whipping around them like a desert storm. Then, where before he had been stepping on to nothing, Dream now walked out on to a sidewalk. The sandstorm tore around Kenny, passing him by and leaving him floating behind Dream, in the mouth of a dingy alleyway.

Gazing past his guide, Kenny instantly recognised their location. The wide open street that lay before him was familiar, not only that, but the figures who stood in the middle of that street were familiar also. One of them as it happened, was him.

In the partially destroyed road, stood a nine year old Kenny McKormick, clad in his version of the Mysterion costume, a getup that had changed surprisingly little over the years.

"We'll start with the end." Dream began with no fanfare.

"Are we… is this real?" He couldn't help but ask, voice filled with trepidation.

Dream shook his head. "This is a dream realm, made up of memories, yours mainly, but others as well… the dreams and memories of greater beings. The dream of… well, we'll get to that later. We've still got time." The rambling man trailed off, speaking more to himself at the end, words hiding under his breath.

He may have said it was a dream, but Kenny looked out onto this fragment of his past and found it to be more real than even his own recollection. Little details like the stink of gasoline fires in the air, the rot of the deep sea, scents both urban and eldritch mingling horribly. The rough grain of the road, half destroyed by falling debris, the ominous storm clouds gathering up above, the lightless windows, the nearby skyscrapers. Even the presence of a news reporter, right on the scene of his worst day. Especially the thing Kenny averted his gaze from, the colossal creature hunched over the city block.

"Hey, fat boy!" He saw himself surge forward, shouting at the rotund shape of Eric Cartman, also nine, also more real than memory or dream had any right to be.

"Kenny?" Dimpled double chin, raccoon styled face mask, Eric 'The Coon' Cartman's expression was first confused, then afraid, then filled with rage. "What the hell, I sent you to—"

His old 'friend' had anger issues, dictionary definition rage addiction, but tonight even the short so-called hero's fury couldn't hold a candle to his younger self. "To the sunken city of R'lyeh fallen from the stars!" Little Mysterion pushed towards Cartman, jabbing a fist into his chest and pushing him back. "You little fucking prick, what is wrong with you, what kind of sick fuck does that to his friends!" Kenny thought back briefly, his only other time visiting the sunken city prior to today. He and his closest friends warped there by Cthulhu itself, all at the behest of The Coon. Maybe it was because it was right there in front of him, but Kenny could feel the anger again, just as fresh, just as clear.

"It's not my fault you guys turned evil, Kenny!" Cartman spat back with his characteristic nasal whine.

"You are the bad guy, fat boy, you!" Each word punctuated with a jab or a poke, as if he was trying to stab Cartman's shrivelled heart out of his chest with sheer intent.

Indignantly, Cartman shot back. "I'm going around making the world a better place!"

Teeth gnashing and so hopped up on justified rage, little Mysterion practically jumped to attack his so-called friend. "For you! You're making it a better place, for you!" While he didn't strike Cartman fully, his words punched out with as much force.

"Right." The ignorant child answered with a nod. "That's what superheroes do."

"No."

The one word pulled young Kenny's anger to a stop, reigning it back in and redirecting it. Seeing himself, in such an honest moment from the outside, caused the spirit form of Kenny McKormick to realise something. He had never let go of that anger, he'd drawn it back into himself, kept it, and leashed it. Dark alleyways, beating down on criminals, running from rooftop to rooftop, even his wariness and vitriol for older heroes. That anger had been there since the beginning, grown out of interactions with people like Cartman, Captain Hindsight, and with another young hero he could see approaching the scene from afar.

"this is what superheroes do." Young Kenny threw the comment back at Cartman with as much care as the petty villain deserved. His arms upraised, the boy stepped beyond Cartman and looked up at the thing that had towered over them all. "You banished me but I'm back, what does that make me?!"

It's feet and fore claws were gigantic, almost unrecognisable as limbs. It was those which had caused the myriad cracks in the road, it was it's shadow that cast everything into darkness, and it was it's slimy flesh which brought forth that uncanny stink. Wet orange eyes looked down on the scene with indifference, a many tentacled mouth twitched in the wind, and still, despite how utterly fucking terrifying Cthulhu was… Kenny couldn't help but think it looked stupid. Even small, diminutive and background. Paart of that was the giant white t-shirt pulled over its humanoid torso, bold letters reading 'who is the coon?' plastered across the front. Yet something else was at play, something that cause Kenny's mind to twist in a mental sneer. Nothing he had ever seen after this day had ever matched up to the level of pure insanity that this sight had burned into his retinas.

This day more than any other, had felt like a joke.

While his mind was running the gymnastics course of his current feelings, his younger self continued. "Bring back my friends, take me!"

Before the great old one could move to respond, if indeed it would, something else innately fucking stupid blundered into the street.

"Mysterion, no! What are you doing?" Half his face obscured by a pink berry mask, Bradley Biggle shouted out in desperation and panic. The hero known as Mint-Berry Crunch, yet another one of the pretend heroes they had all played at during this time. When the world made so little sense, and yet no one wanted to ask any questions. Bradley was Henrietta's brother, a fact she never brought up, to the point that Kenny wondered if Bradley himself had been erased just like the collective memories of planet Earth. That didn't change this day though, the wider Gulf Crisis and Bradley's role in it. This was when things had really changed, Kenny couldn't pinpoint exactly why this time was different, but it marked a turning point in his life.

As the next moments played out, Kenny felt like his head was filling with cotton. His incorporeal form gained sensation brought on by his mind alone. A heat running up his chest, a clenching around his middle, and pinched feelings either side of the eyes. He was aware of more shouting, of Cartman wooing the monster, of Cthulhu turning his back and walking away.

Then… it happened.

Apropos of nothing a light descended from the sky. An oval opened in the air, surrounded by a halo of warm refreshing light, something that the black aura of the street had sorely been wanting. It was hopeful, welcoming. Within that portal was the visage of a man, long tangled hair streaked with brighter colours. He looked out of the portal, making eye contact with a fond forlorn smile upon his sharp features.

"Hello, my son." His voice echoed in Kenny's ears, then in the past and again now. The warm tones of a father, a mentor, of someone who cared. "If you are seeing this message then it must be dark times."

Kenny's fists clenched, even as his younger self showed the opposite response. Nine year old Mysterion nearly dropped to his knees, face brightening with unrecognisable hope.

"And you must have many questions."

Kenny's spirit shook it's head, wanting to deny himself the memory.

"Your true name, is Gok'zara. The power given to you comes from a planet far away. You are from that planet Gok'zara It is for that reason you have a power that normal humans do not have. I know this power must sometimes seem like a curse, but you were sent here to stop evil from taking over the earth and now, that time has apparently come. You must now harness and focus your power, Gok'zara."

Eyes narrowed to pinpoints of silver light, Keny saw himself believe it. His older personage mouthed out the next few words, delving back into a spiteful wellspring.

"The power of mint and berries, yet with a tasty satisfying crunch."

Mint-Berry Crunch, Bradley Biggle, stumbled forward. Mysterion stood there blinking in a stupor. Kenny didn't want to feel anything after seeing all that, yet he did.

Dream started speaking, but the words didn't truly carry to Kenny. "After it all ended, you didn't leave with nothing… Something happened. Something that fundamentally changed the fabric of reality. This moment is easy to access for me, not just because I have you here, not just because it exists in the penumbra of dream and memory, but because it sits like a bubble atop the surface of the universe. A memory of the universe itself, yet hidden from all but those who were there… Yet not everyone who was there has the details we are about to observe… Kenny?" Seconds passed, and the God eventually turned to see his charge was unmoving. "Kenny?"

"Just… give me a minute." Without a face, the spirit of Mysterion gave forth no emotional signals, the only trace of his turmoil was how still he had become, and then the pain in his ashy voice.

"Ah." Dream replied, suddenly hit with the knowledge that this experience was not an easy one for Kenny.

"You ever been cucked out of your superhero origin story?" He barked with a sad bitter laugh. "It doesn't feel great I'll be honest." Smoky fingers clenched and unclenched. "I can still feel that moment. I thought I was going to get all the answers, everything I've ever wanted. Even standing here now… listening to you talk… I'm just waiting for something to fucking come out and rip my head off, or for you to turn into dust, or, or… I just need a second… such a fucking joke…" A strained hiss of breath drew in to an empty space where lungs should be. Trying to master himself Kenny shook his arms, span circles in the air, and eventually looked back at Dream. Behind the God the memory had slowed to a crawl, but seems to be winding down. Kenny knew what came next, death, the most sorely needed death he had ever put himself through. "What did you say again?"

Then Dream hit him with another freight train. "There's something here you won't remember. Something that it's become clear to me, that you were made to forget."

His still form no longer radiated anger and pain, but instead need, a need to know. Dream calmed him with a raised hand, gesturing to the vision playing out. "Watch… listen…"

As the living mockery ended, Kenny watched dumbly, literally reviewing his past. Though as Mint-Berry Crunch took off into the night sky with a cry of 'Shablagoo!' Something happened that he didn't remember.

Young Kenny had turned away to leave, hand already drifting to a pistol holstered at his hip. Then the tarmac beneath his feet shifted. His shadow, cast behind him by the moonlight, melted upwards from the ground. Like oil given life it raised tendrils up and adhered them to the young vigilantes back. Not sensing this, the young vigilante drew out his gun and raised it. Before the act could be completed, the shadowy limbs rushed over him, coiling around him to suddenly rip downwards and take him into the ground.

Not bound to space, Dream and the spectre of Kenny were torn along with it, losing a sense of place, but keeping along with the younger Mysterion's journey. It was darkness, that is all his present self could make of an abrupt light blossomed like a bursting star. On that light, those shadowy limbs deposited the younger hero.

His child-self stood on nothing but light, picked out of the darkness by an orb of bright white. His cape drifted bereft of gravity and his small dark-clad body hung in the light, turning the orb of illumination into something resembling an eye. An eye that had coalesced itself around him, focusing the young Kenny under a microscope.

Around them the darkness rippled, revealing itself not as endless void or darkest night, but as something tangible and physical. The darkness was alive, tendrils and limbs forming and reshaping, shadow moved against shadow, only the impression of things in that darkness. Distantly another orb of light bloomed, then shrank and vanished, a far off eyeball observing him from a distance this time as if to gain perspective. It became so clear to Kenny, standing in this lost memory, that the very location they now found themselves in was alive. This whole place, wherever it was, was a living organism. The light, the air, the darkness, everything was living. Not in that hippie bullshit way either, no, this place wasn't all connected by some life force or peace and love or whatever, no, it was a physical, spasming, muscular form.

A sound reverberated through the vision, two titanic cruise liners scraping together in a violent crash. It was the closest thing Kenny could think to compare it too, but what really made him uneasy was how Dream looked surprised and even frightened by the sound.

"Fuck, I thought we'd have more time."

"Wait, what do you mean, where are we, why don't I remember this!?" He asked frantically, now suddenly aware there was a timer on this deluge of information.

"We're not just rooting around in your memories Kenny, nor just those of your mortal friends, this is the memory of something far more powerful."

"Who!?"

"I don't know its name." Dream grit his teeth, the so far relaxed deity now shifting to twitching worry and anxiety. The shaggy haired man looked around, eyes searching beyond sight. "I only know it is more powerful than any other entity I've ever encountered."

With a solid look from his not-so-solid body, Kenny demanded. "Explain!"

"Look, Kenny, burn this into your brain, if we run out of time here I need you to remember this. Watch yourself, you're speaking, talking to something, try to remember what you said!" Dream pointed at the smaller vigilante. "Something happened here that reshaped reality. So much of what you know to exist now, did not exist before this point. Whatever happened here changed everything, past, present, future, the rules of reality changed. I did not exist before this conversation we are seeing right here, so not just for your own sake Kenny, but for mine too, please, try to remember what the fuck you said here!"

It was true, his younger self was speaking, his mouth moving, yet no sound was emerging. Either this place having no means to carry sound waves, or something was blocking them from his hearing.

More orbs of light opened and closed, stars birthing themselves just to be able to perceive the young Kenny McKormick. Dream drew more sand from his coat pocket and spiralled it into the space around them in a long cascading trail. That crashing sound exploded again, more deafening than before, more insistent. Kenny saw himself open his mouth to say something again. Nine year old Kenny paused, considering his words, a look of ominous promise forming in the young vigilantes eyes.

Then he spoke.

Kenny did as Dream had instructed, burning the sight into his mind, trying to decipher what had been spoken in that moment. What was his younger self saying, who was he speaking to, what was that ragged look in his blue eyes. Finally, why didn't he remember any of it?

Before everything went to hell, Kenny thought he knew what the first words of that fated speech were.

'I wish…'

A choir of voices tore through reality, a nightmare of stringed instruments sawing open a single note. It was too loud, too consuming, too strange to decipher.

Then it stopped.

Silence heaved a shaking breath.

A tiny, fragile breath.

The air, along with Kenny's senses, were baffled, unable to comprehend the noise that just assaulted them.

Then it attacked both once more, the voices screaming, hoarse and jagged, making a song out of fear and pain. Whatever it is pushing those voices onwards, does something, the screams change. It oscillates, as if Kenny's ears are adjusting to the sound of it. It begins to sound almost pleasant, in a discordant way.

Howling winds swarmed through the emptiness left by the silence, the pressure of sound crushing back in. This lower thrum folded its own shrieking deep tone into the orchestra of madness. Colours bubble, a noisome stone thrown into a still pond. All at once the music hits this little pocket dimension anew, redoubling in volume, rising, climbing, exploding.

Silence gave a brief reprise.

Then sound.

Followed by death.

Kenny heard the music long through the night, and even when he awoke he still felt it.

The music from beyond.

-?M?-?M?-?M?-

A/N: This chapter and the last have been so difficult to write, I really feel the need to keep the exposition purposeful, give it emotional weight as well as to break it up and get it across in an entertaining way. I hate when fan fiction just turns into chapters of characters explaining things to each other, so hopefully I've avoided that while still getting all the important info across. I guess I'll see from the reviews what has been taken from these quite landmark chapters eh? Questions, answers, more questions, mind bending, reality changing, crazy shit! I love it though, and I hope you did too. I won't lie I'm looking forward to getting back to Gotham and writing some normal stuff with Kenny and the other side characters. I've had enough R'lyeh for now.

Obligatory poke for you to check out my other running fic 'Four Heroes' a South Park/My Hero Academia crossover.

Also, the Spanish translation of this fic, which you can find on this site, and which I'm very grateful for.

That's that, see you in the next one!

Faff