Meanwhile, the chapel was still a wild scene, the cavernous hall being lit in ethereal blues as more and more of the beast's ghostly secretions lashed against the venerable woodwork and stone. Cuts and notches were rapidly being removed from the building's skeleton.

The Pines, Trembley and the Corduroys were jumping between rafters and retaining beams as the colossal, hulking lump of discarded black liquorice heaved and rumbled beneath them, its writhing tentacular tendrils lashing out towards them as if they were flies.

"Don't let it hit you!" Ford barked, vaulting onto a strut.

"I wasn't freakin' plannin' to, poindex-" Stan was interrupted, as the brace he was about to step on was lashed in two by the creature's fury, falling to the floor with a hollow clunk. He looked up to the roof and winced. That brace looked kinda important.

"ALL OF THIS TIMBER IS STRUCTURAL, DAMN YOU!" Dan bellowed down at the amorphous shape, apparently more irritated by the loss of the building's lumber than he was by the situation. Gus was holding onto his back like a tiny, ginger-haired lumberjack possum.

"Dipper - I - freakin' - hate - this!" Pacifica squealed, as a purlin flew down past her, almost taking the skin off of the tip of her nose before her boyfriend grabbed her around the waist and yanked her back.

"Hey, I'm not having fun either, hun." Dipper retorted, holding her tight.

Quick as a dime, the sassy Northwest heir shot back in her usual manner. "If you get handsy I'm throwing you down there."

"H-hey! I would never-"

She grinned, pecking her boyfriend's cheek, then leaping out of the way of the bouncing, writhing tentacles that seemed so desperate to lash them into two.

Dipper spent a moment holding his cheek and trying to fight off the fluster, only for his sister to scoop him up and grapple them into one of the upper echelons of the roof.

"Stop getting distracted by romantic liaisons, Dip!" Mabel said, peering over the rafter. "This is serious!"

"I- I'm not, I- you've been smooching with Kevin throughout this entire thing!"

"Pft, that's not a liaison, that's a collision of sheer passion on the brink of death!" Mabel retorted with a suitably dramatic flair. The hollow roar of the great bulk of horror down below quickly made her retract some of her panache. "Uh…any idea what we're gonna do?"

"Mabel, I didn't know what we were gonna do when we saw a mutated Nathaniel. I don't know now. The - the Journal doesn't cover any of this junk. Even Ford is panicking!" Dipper sighed.

"I am not panicking!" Ford barked back, though his rapidly shortening breath proved otherwise. "We - we need some kinda deus ex machina!"

"Newsflash poindexter, we ain't got no machina, and we've already been served our damned deuce!" Stan barked, kicking a strut out of the way as he lept heavily onto another of the rafters.

"I want juice!" Mabel piped up, only for Dipper to slap his forehead. "What? What's wrong with juice?"

"What they're saying is that we're probably doomed, Mabel." Pacifica said. "This is awful. At least Bill Cipher made wisecracks. This thing just slobbers everywhere. It's like fighting against a giant slug."

"P'shaw, we can do it! I- I dunno how, but we can!"

A larger piece of lumber fell from the chapel's structure, plunging into the top of the creature's head with little consequence, thick blue phlegm simply dripping down the cavernous black mass. It almost resembled a water balloon with a slow puncture.

"My word. A durable beast." Quentin mused, rubbing his prominent chin. "Perhaps the Cankerblight edge of this creature has the same weakness as any Cockney: Jellied eels with a side of warm ale. Does anybody happen to have an eel pocket on them?"

"An- an eel pocket. Your idea to attack this thing is an eel pocket." Dipper retorted, dryly.

"I clearly stated in my town laws that any man under the age of bleventy six should always carry his eel pocket, in case the Londoners arrived."

"Genius!" Mabel gasped. "But it isn't old times anymore!"

Trembley furrowed his brow with his usual, highly dramatic - and utterly sincere - tone. "Heavens. We're vulnerable to both the whims of Cankerblight and chipper orphans from the East End. Truly, the end times are nigh."

"Okay, probably not with eels." Mabel shrugged. "But we'll find another! I mean, we're the Mystery twi-...um. Bunch! The Mystery bunch! The gang! The dudes! The uh… the- the people."

—

Meanwhile, the Speeder had already swamped through the floodwater and was descending through the same spiral tunnel that the locomotive had blazed through only a few hours before, rattling and thumping down every notch, kink and rail joint in the iron road with fierce, bouncing abandon.

"Shure is peculiar." McGucket mused, "The rails are all a-glowin' blue like some kinda… kinda like bio-loomisance.."

"Sure it is prettyyyy!" Susan smiled, clenching her hands together.

"IT LOOKS LIKE WE'RE IN ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT!" Grenda yelled. "QUICKLY, SOMEONE THROW SOME SHAPES! I WANNA GET MY RAVE ON!"

The rest of the group didn't bother to honour the request as the vehicle jumped and cascaded down the ramshackle railway line, the rails underneath them glowing bluer and bluer as the inspection vehicle continued on its merry route, dropping behind the odd bolt or nut.

The rails only grew brighter and brighter as the long-awaited contact of wheels upon them awakened a deeper, higher purpose - something only Northwest madness and Wentworth ingenuity could ever bring about. Every railroad spike hammered into those subterranean rails dove deep - metre after metre deep. Specialist rails by Northwest appointment.

Each of those spikes was glowing.

Each of those spikes was beginning to sear.

Each of those spikes was beginning to garner an impossible level of energy.

The perimeter of Gravity Falls was being outlined. Like a massive choker. A loop, a lasso. And, under every railroad tie, every sleeper, every foot of that rail, a thick ring was being drawn. Unbelievable energy, like that of Cankerblight, like that of the Boggles and their burning blue mass, like that held deep within the water of Gravity Falls itself, was beginning to cut and blister into the earth around them.

Were our heroes not in such grandiose settings of motion and chaos, they'd have noticed a gentle tremor. A shallow shaking in the town's very foundations, as something deeper, on a seismic level, seemed to rattle that sleepy little Oregon valley to its very core.

The Speeder was ignorant to the ground's motions as it finally reached the final loop of the enormous, town-spanning underground helix - its haphazard crew only growing more determined as each foot of track passed between them.

"STEP ON IT!"

"I cain't step on it no further or the floor'll cave through! Yehehehehe!"

They were oblivious to what lay beyond. Only knew that their friends were down there - and that, for every one of the well-meaning, if utterly unstable crew - was quite sufficient reason to go storming in there like a group of middle-aged mothers trying to buy a Gamestation Pro from a Black Friday Sale.