- The Outer Gardens, The Never Castle. Gamma Cassiopeia System, a few moments ago…
Whispering, wafting around the new airs that the atmospheric shield provided, the perseverant sprites came at last, having traveled the long way around, who know how many time, who know how many lives. But they were at last, at the doors of the realm of their ancestors… Or at least, that was they believed.
The Elder One put their tiny feet over the grass, and their bright, flaming star-like skin got off, and from it, a coat of green grass grew over them. The Elder One felt that the grass was indeed touched by the hand of their ancestors; definitively, they had arrived. The rest of sprites, one by one, already having grown to human size by sole age, stepped over the grass as well, feeling the power invested in every corner of their insides.
But then, an explosion, coming from one of a window at one of the endless towers that were sprouted out from the gigantic palace in front of the humble gardens. The sprites looked at their Master, and The Elder One nodded in silent determination.
- In some place inside the Never Castle…
The elevator’s doors flew away, violently crashing the walls before fall into the floor in a noisy spectacle. From the now free elevator’s entrance, a pair of hands crept over the floor. A red headed raised between them, looking at her inmediate surroundings with maniac awe.
“Well, there went the second grenade,” Wendy exclaimed in amusement “You can come up, guys, I want to hear the rest of the story”.
Wendy stood over the ground, sitting at the edge of the entrance. Next, she took Dipper’s hand to help him to go up, in which back was Cassie, with her arms around his neck. She, aided by Wendy’s strong arms, reached the floor, untangling herself from her father’s neck. The three of them stood over the ground and fell into the vitreous ground with exhausted expressions; more than due a long trip, due to the mad voyage they had in that fast elevator.
Dipper looked at Cassie, who in turn was seeing him back. The lighthearted memories of his life with her passed fast across his mind, and for a moment he felt back home, at the undone times, in the merry afternoons after the tired and bored work hours when he, Mabel and Cassie could spend time together. So he remembered too, the night movies over the couch watching old Ducktective movies, The Cranky Girl Who Did Chores in Spirit Town, or Cassie’s favorite one: Kanira vs Habura: Let Them Fight!, the only old VHS in Grunkle Stan’s box Mabel could stand without hide behind the couch. He remembered Mabel’s constant surprise faces at the already seen plot twists, and Cassie’s amused expression at the rubber-suit monster fights due her well settled taste for bygone things. He wondered how he could’ve forgotten that, how he forgot Cassie, the living embodiment of the love he and Mabel had for each other, the girl who traversed who knows what odds and perils to reach that cursed place. His daughter, The Survivor.
Before he could made himself to know, he was passing his hand across Cassie’s sweaty hair, uncovering her forehead above her shinny eyes. None of them spoke a single word, but one made the other to know that they missed each otter.
Suddenly, both heard a noisy raspberry, and lifted their heads to see Wendy, with her body lifted over the ground.
“Ehmm, guys; I don’t want to spoil this beautiful scene but you know, the whole-universe-in-danger thing” She said, pointing at the endless corridor behind them. They heard a far explosion, and quickly remembered their purpose there. Dipper looked back at Cassie, now she seemed again brave and determinate.
“Let’s finish with this” Cassie said. “There’s something else you have to know” She said next, frowning in worry. Dipper’s smile faded away, acknowledging the incoming of even worse news…
- The Safe Heavens; The Never Castle. Gamma Cassiopeia System.
Connor fell straight over a stony bridge above a small river, completely destroying it. A great amount of dust aroused, coming from the numerous floors he just traversed in his downward way. He aroused from the watery river, heavily, soaked, and tired, but still willing to fight. He heard an air-tube like sound coming behind him, and knew that his master had come too. He made a quick glance at the place of the castle which they had fallen, and stared with heighted fear at the place in which they were now, the place in which supposedly all whom they had to protect should be.
Endless stony gardens extended it selves several kilometers around him, filled in quiet ponds of fresh water, runic stones of undecipherable messages scattered between green seas of flowered plants of kaleidoscopic colors, and tiny wild Neverweres flying around like the fairies of a folktale. Those were the Safe Heavens, the personal sanctuary of the Never Castle.
But Connor wasn’t feeling any of their presences in the nearby environment… or inside the whole place at all. He turned around himself, in the search of the briefest sight of their silhouettes, but his keen sight didn’t see anything like them. They weren’t there
“No. No no no no no…” He began to say, when he heard the ceiling crumbling above them. “Master, she’s coming” He said, and the Could’ve Been King nodded softly in response.
The Young Crone fell over the floor, covered by a cloud of dust and the hideous smell of the blood of dozens of mice gorgons. The cloud fell like heavier debris at her mere contact with floor. Herblack, oily cloak was soaked in red blood, and her right hand, clawed and pulsating, was still holding the disfigured corpse of a mice gorgon, with its jaw disjointed and its ribcage tore apart, legs and arms broken and tangling over the floor.
“Well, don’t you think this doesn’t make sense anymore?” The Young Crone asked, letting the corpse in her hands to fall lifeless over the humid grass.
“Why do you want to destroy the universe?” Connor asked, still enraged for the death of his troops. The Young Crone gasped in amused disbelief, waving her arms in response.
“Why do you care?” She said in an anticlimactic smile. “You’re only an anomaly. Furthermore! Youu should be with me; without me you hadn’t existed at all!”. Connor froze, so did the Could’ve Been King. The Young Crone grinned malevolently, having just discovered a weak spot in the fight, and she was willing to use it.
“…What?” Connor asked, increasing his breath.
“That’s right. I caused the anomaly which made you to exist. You can blame your dear master for that, he trusts anyone” The Young Crone replied poking her cheek in an anticlimactic way.
“Why would you want do that? What were you thinking?!” The Could’ve Been King asked furiously.
“Oh! Come on King, you know it! We were taking forever in find the supposed suitable universe! You were going to take me with you whenever you could want” The Young Crone said “So many universes and none of them was of your liking!… So, I… speeded the things a little. It’s a luck you taught me to protect myself in the mindscape, it was soooooo easy to tamper with this universe. The only I had to do was to change some memories; a forgotten pill here, a little fixing there, and done! You existed. But you proved to be soooooo annoyingly persistent, so I had to… erase some little memories here and there among your family, and well, the rest is History”
Connor was breathing hard in full rage, holding tightly his rod between his pressing hands. All the things which didn’t make sense, the gaps and the nonsenses now were clear as air, and he couldn’t feel angrier. “What did you erase?” He asked with sustained fury. The Young Crone’s grin increased over her face, knowing she had accomplished her purpose. “You’ll never know”
Suddenly, a strong air current coming from below the Could’ve Been King’s feet sucked him into a hole, in the moment he screamed aloud when the floor in which he stood disappeared.
“I cast you out forever King! Live with your mistake done!” The Young Crone yelled aloud, and flew away thru the hole she made to get inside. Connor flew straight to the hole, speeding inside the incoming darkness.
“Master!” He yelled, trying to take his hand. “I got you!”
Connor’s hand stretched the King’s right hand, almost out from the hole. In the other side of the unholy tunnel there was the Nightmare Realm, in all its horrifying and gargantuan glory. The waves of whatever strange force, of the lawless insanities that comprised the rules of the maximum realm, made the King’s cape to wave violently in the direction of the way out. Connor turned to see him, trying to not pay too much attention to the utterly frightful environment that awaited for them. His facelessness looked at him with warm content, that kind that one might suppose as a way to say goodbye.
“That clever witch was calculating the hole in her mind as she was talking. How ironic” The Could’ve Been King said, still holding his apprentice’s hand.
“Take my other hand Master, I can get you out!” Connor yelled, trying with cosmic efforts to pull him in.
“She’d casted me out Connor. I know the power of my brother, you can’t do anything” The Could’ve Been King said, in an accepting and slow tone.
“No… No no no! You can’t give up! Your body won’t survive The Void!” Connor yelled again, with tiny golden tears falling from his eyes.
“Heh! I’ve been in worst places, my son.” The Could’ve Been King replied, turning to see the vastness in which he was going to fall. “I’m so sorry, my apprentice. I had never made you to sacrifice so much for my cause. My quest will continue, no matter what, but you have to save your home. Save your family, as I couldn’t save mine”. Connor frowned in anger and frustration, holding his master’s hand even tighter.
“No! That’s just a lot stupid junk! You can make it! You built all of this!”. The King extended his free hand to try to cast his power, but the vastly powerful sparks were sucked away like water by the same forces that were dragging him away, in front of the unaccepting eyes of Connor. All his power was useless now, at least, inside the universe. Connor turned to see him again, his eyebrows trembling in defeat. “I’ll make you proud, Master” He spoke.
“No. You don’t need anything to prove…” The King replied.
The Could’ve Been King’s hand slipped from his, and Connor watched impotent how his master was sucked away and disappeared between colorful, endless seas of steam and madness. Connor kept his hand at the air for a moment, when the muddy walls of the tunnel began to shrink around him.
Mason, Aiden and The Doctor fell over the ground, their feet pulled by furry clawed hands. The Doctor turned over the floor, seeing defiantly how the mice gorgon crept over him, ready to paralyze him again.
“Here we go again…” He said, closing his eyes.
But then, three shoots. Three horridly familiar sounds he recognized very well. Immediately he opened his eyes, looking at Mason and Aiden, getting on feet in front of unconscious mice gorgons. The Doctor raised from ground and turned to see whose were behind them, almost at the same time that his comrades.
“Oh, for God’s sake” The Doctor mustered.
In front of them, at a short distance, there was Cassie, a raggedy teenager of brown hair holding her hand, and a gallifreyan female soldier in the act of putting down her staser.
“Mason!” Cassie yelled happily, running towards her.
“Cassie! You’re alive!” Mason yelled back, receiving her between her arms in a merry hug.
“Dipper?!” Aiden exclaimed in disbelief.
“Aiden!” Dipper replied in confusion.
“A soldier from Gallifrey!” The Doctor yelled in angry bewilderment, strangling Ollistra in his mind.
“Ehmm, I really have no idea what to yell” Wendy replied, scratching her nape.
“Hold on bro, how did you make it to here?” Aiden asked, walking slowly towards Dipper without completely believe he was there.
“Not in the same way as you did” Dipper replied, getting spontaneously awkward, but to Aiden’s surprise, unsurprised at all, while aside them, The Doctor was walking slowly but aggressively towards Wendy.
“What are you doing here, soldier? Ollistra sent you?” The Doctor asked to Wendy.
“Olive-who?” Wendy reassured. The Doctor made the math quickly in his mind, and guessed the worst.
“I guess you’re not from another universe” The Doctor said sternly.
“Ahhhhm… Nop. sorry, man” Wendy replied, looking around everywhere in an uncomfortable expression.
“Oh gosh, we were so worried about you; we’ve running who knows how much to try to find you” Mason said, untangling the hug and holding Cassie’s shoulders. Then Mason’s eyes turned to see the burn in Cassie’s arm. “Cassie, your arm!”
“It’s ok. Look, I found Dad!” Cassie replied, turning to point at him. “Dad, she’s the other You!”. Dipper turned his head away from Aiden’s multiple and equally unanswered questions, and walked towards his parallel self, while Cassie moved apart from Mason.
There was a brief moment of silence between them, filled with a fast exchange of frowning glances, a short chuckle, and both uncovering their respective foreheads.
“Wow, you make me have so many…” Both said at the same time.
“Ehmm, we’ll need some…” They said at unison again. Then both brains thought the same way to find an asymmetry, and extended their respective hands to stretch them.
“Mason” Mason said at the same time, when their hands stretched.
“Mason?” Dipper asked, lifting an eyebrow in confusion.
“Aaaand that’s the asymmetry” Mason replied, pointing at him with her free hand in a pistol-like stance.
“Hey Dippers, some can say this old man to stop of inspect me?” Wendy told them from behind.
“Mhmm interesting. The Could’ve Been King imprinted the whole gallifreyan physiology and cultural traits on the inhabitants of this dimension’s Earth” The Doctor appointed, walking around Wendy. “I wonder how perfectly he did”
“Hey, if you are seeing my regenerations’ browse history I’m gonna smack you, dude” Wendy said.
“Ahmm, Doctor maybe you should to stop. Trust me, she’ll do it” Mason said. The Doctor walked away from Wendy, looking around the new team.
“I think I know what’s happening with this universe. If we don’t hurry up maybe it’s already too late” The Doctor appointed.
“Ok, but how we get out of here?” Cassie asked. Everyone turned to see her, and next Aiden looked at Dipper.
“How did you find us?” Aiden asked in a brief frowning.
“I took a slice of my TARDIS’s telepathic circuit, Cassie used it to find you” Wendy replied. Cassie took the spongy sample out of her pocket, as Aiden looked at it with certain disgust.
“O right, that’s all I would want to know” Aiden said. “Where’s Mabel?”
“She’s…” Dipper tried to answer, looking away. Say ‘She’s everywhere but here’ was resulting every time less pleasant to say.
Suddenly, Cassie moved her hand with the spongy piece towards a corridor, as this began to shine sparkly.
“No, Mom’s here, I feel it!” Cassie said with growing awe. She walked with hurry towards the corridor, following the telepathic trail.
“No, Cassie…” Dipper tried to say.
“Cass, wait!” The Doctor yelled, following her pace.
Everyone followed Cassie in her rapid walking towards the multiple directions, across several confusing corridors. Wendy unfolded her staser, ready to shot, as Dipper and Mason tried to put along Cassie in her march to the signal. Left, right, right again, and then left, Cassie turned around the endless, marbled corridors, the veins of the Never Castle, when in a sudden movement, she stopped, having just turned to right into the next corridor.
Mason and Dipper came first, so the three saw them, speechless. There was Mabel, wearing a blue sweater with a Portal Universe figure in it and her wrapping hook in one hand, along Grunkle Ford, putting his laser gun down when he saw them.
“That’s…?” Cassie tried to tell, but suddenly something – She could not say what - went out of place.
Before Cassie could say that something was not right about her, and before Mason could make her own way towards her, Dipper speeded straight to Mabel.
Her eyes widened in confusion while his arms went around her body, squishing her body against his. Mabel remained motionless, overwhelmed with the warm that powerful hug was pouring. Then next, Dipper untangled himself from her, and taking her cheeks between the palms of his hands kissed her ardently. Mabel’s eyes widened even more, and her wrapping hook fell out of her hands straight into the crystalline floor. Staring at Dipper’s closed eyes. The kiss was so sincere, so warm and soothing… and completely out of place.
After a brief seconds, Dipper had the enough force to separate his lips from hers, and opened his eyes. Mabel was staring at him in silent and happy terror, much for his confusion.
“Ehmm May-Maaaaay!” Mabel yelled as she rolled her eyes to see Mason. Dipper got apart two steps from Mabel, turning his head to see Mason.
“Ahmm, that’s my Mabel, Dipper” Mason said “And also my Grunkle Ford”. Dipper’s face reddened in unbearable shame, wondering how bad her Mabel could take the fact of just being kissed by the male version of her own sister, when he saw, much for his greater confusion, how Mason and that Mabel ran each other and his parallel replied his movement just in front of him, with all and the powerful kiss.
So, when the Doctor, Wendy and Aiden arrived, Mason was already kissing her Mabel with intensity.
“Oh mine” Aiden said with a disgusted frown. Wendy covered her mouth, trying to not laugh at the sight of Dipper’s bewildered face, when the sisters concluded their greeting kiss, but kept one’s hands in the other’s shoulders.
“I feared I couldn’t do that anymore” Mason said, recharging her forehead in Mabel’s.
“Heh, Boy Dipper’s also a good kisser by the way” Mabel said, chuckling briefly as Mason grinned naughtily.
“Now have I to be jealous of the other me?” Mason asked, feigning to be angry.
“Probably, Mr. Tyron” Mabel replied, and both laughed in nostalgia. Then they heard a noisy raspberry coming from behind Mabel, and both turned to see Grunkle Ford.
“I seriously thought you would miss me a little more, young girl” Ford said.
“Come on here, old man” Mason said, as she and Mabel got apart and Ford walked to hug her.
“You came to rescue me” Mason said, recharging her face in Ford’s shoulder.
“Being fair, it was Mabel’s idea. How bad it was?”
“Hey! I can hear y…” Mabel tried to tell, when Mason and Ford got apart, and she made them a quick but informative glance about the status of the situation.
“Where’s Stan?” Mason asked.
“Waiting for us in our dimension, we came here from the Nigthmare Real, we’re not so far” Ford replied.
“I don’t understand, you found me with this thing. If that’s not Mom, where she is?” Cassie asked.
“The telepathic circuits are too keen to be fooled, even by parallel persons from other dimensions. If the signals crossed so badly, that means…” The Doctor began to speak.
“… that she’s really here, inside the Never Castle” Wendy interrupted, looking at him. Dipper walked towards Cassie, taking her shoulder.
“You said… that you met your brother here, how in danger he was?” Dipper asked. Before Cassie could answer, the floor beneath them shook furiously, sending everyone straight to the floor.
“Finally. Just a good brave hit” The Young Crone said, standing in front of the central piece of the machinery. She touched delicately the smooth surface of the bright, golden metal, feeling part of its unmeasurable power flowing within her. Her heart speeded with the idea of cause total destruction, as her grin increased beyond the humanly possible. She was going to kill them all, she really wanted to kill them all for good. “Die forever!!” She yelled, closing her fist around the cold surface with all her forces with the intention of squish the machinery… But the hand slipped off. “What?”. She punched the metal surface with her new, cosmic forces, then again, and again and again, getting every time angrier. “Come on come on come on break down!!!” She yelled, until she stopped, breathing furiously. “Why can’t you be destroyed? Show me!” She said, resting her palm over the surface and closing her eyes. Her mind speeded towards the source of the flow that was blocking her energy into the machinery, waiting to find the core piece… until she found it, or better said, found them. She opened her eyes, smiling malevolently.
“This way!” Dipper yelled, as the group followed him across the everytime wider corridors which turned into halls as they ceased to be crystalline and turned stony, until they turned into practical inner palaces, filled with all kinds of furniture, gigantic statues of forgotten heroes from distant universes, chests of all possible sizes and details, and objects not discernible enough to be named. All was dusty, all was majestic, and illuminated by glowing chandeliers more alike to trees.
“Where are we?” Grunkle Ford asked loudly.
“We must be in the lower storage rooms!” The Doctor replied.
“I was asking less precisely!” Grunkle Ford yelled back.
“We’re inside a kinda gigantic space castle which’s breaking the universe!” Wendy answered, not losing a single moment her sight of where they were.
“We have a plan right? We have to have a plan!” Aiden tried to yell, as he was losing his breath due the endless run.
“For now we have to stop the woman in black cloak! Then.. We’ll figure it out” Mason replied in a yell, running along Mabel and Grunkle Ford.
“That’s all we know about her?! Da heck!” Aiden yelled even louder.
“Haha! Don’t you like the name? Mabel asked.
But then the floor shook again, making everyone to fall over the floor in middle run. The slice of telepathic circuit fell off Dipper’s hand, as the air impregnated with a scent of death and decadence and the illumination descended.
As everyone helped each other to raise from ground, Dipped looked at the source of the scent, and then he saw her. His pupils dwarfed, as cold sweat fell from his head and his legs got shaky in pure, distilled fear. Mason and Mabel saw her too, and they held their hands together, with their chests pulsating in terror.
“What about The Young Crone? I reaaaaaaaaaly like that name” The woman said, being at several feet from them…
- Meanwhile, in the lower vaults…
The sprites flew in every direction inside the dusty, endless windowed corridors, as ancient as time itself, as majestic as the glory incarnated in stone and stories. Their bodies shifted between the ancient rock and the weird wind and the growing clouds of dust, getting higher as the Never Castle began to shake repeatedly. Their soft bodies twirled around every direction, seeking desperately for their ancestors, or at least something that tells them they were still living.
“They are not here, I fear the worst” Sprinkles said, coming out from a pile of debris as their skin changed from rock to air.
“If they are not here, someone else has to be using their construction” The Elder One replied, standing over the floor as he took the texture of the ground he was stepping on.
“I feel a familiar presence, something came here from Earth” Dropping said, coming in from a gigantic window.
“I feel it too. It is like… It is like…” The Elder One tried to diferenciate from the strange pulls of the air around them.
“It feels like the Pines twins!” Sprinkles yelled, floating towards the Elder One.
“Why they should be here to begin?” The Elder One asked…
“…Mom?” Mason and Dipper asked at the same time.
“Huh, now I am your mother, how convenient” The Young Crone replied, looking at Mason as she walked closer to them. Aiden put Cassie behind him, as Wendy took her staser even tighter, feeling the undesirable need to shot at sight. Mason recognized the scar in her left cheek, and she knew immediately which version of her mother she was.
“That’s my mother Dipper, I made her that scar; the day we ran from home” Mason said, passing her hand over her right arm. Memories of shouting and throwing thing and cries came to Mason’s mind as well as to Mabel’s, nothing pleasant at all to keep in mind. “Why… why are you here?”
“Hah! Now do you care, don’t make me laugh! Sure Mabel got stuck wherever she could be and suddenly you came to rescue her. How romantic” The Young Crone said, pointing at Mabel. Mabel’s eyes were getting moisty, as she hugged her wrapping hook and walked a few steps towards her.
“Mom…” Mabel tried to say, extending her left arm in her direction.
“NO!!! I’m not your mother anymore. Never! You had spent all this time without caring about why I disappeared. You disgusting scum!” The Young Crone interrupted her abruptly. Mabel’s hand went back over her wrapping hook, as fast tears ran over her shaky cheeks.
“Ann, you haven’t disappeared where we come from. What has happened to you must have happened in your subjective future…” Ford tried to reason with her.
“Just shut up Ford and shut up your freaking lies! I am not Ann anymore. Ann Pines died the day their daughters decided that their disgusting backdoor shenanigans were more important than their family. You two killed me” The Young Crone interrupted, bitter and remorseful.
“Mom… Listen to me. Whatever is happening we can help you; let us undone…” Mason tried to talk.
“Hah! Haven’t you with your smart brain given account? I am the one who’s destroying this gross reality. And I’ll have the work done, with all of you here inside” The Young Crone said, lifting her arm to close ar fist in the air, pulling strings of rotten spacetime inside her hand.
“You…” Dipper began to say, getting furious.
“That’s right, Boy-Dipper. I am the responsible of get your lives worse and you know what? It was sooo funny to torture you over and over again while the Kings and your unborn son were wondering what was going wrong with the Shifts” The Young Crone said in a mocking tone, feigning to clean nonexistent tears with her fists. Dipper enraged as he didn’t knew he could’ all the pain, all the endless struggles, all the time Mabel had suffered with whole eras of memories inside her head. His fists got thigh as much as his nails craved inside his skin. Her mother’s face or not, all he wanted now was to punch it to pulp.
“We’re going to stop you” The Doctor said, making a step forward.
“What?” The Young Crone replied, bewildered.
“I’ve spent too much time inside an endless war. But I won’t let it to leak in any other place. If the Could’ve Been King is here he knows the stories and sure he had told them to you. I’ve fought gods, demons, demigods, all the bloody pantheon!” The Doctor kept talking, extending his arms as he walked towards.” So, if you’re intelligent, you’ll make the right choice, and you’ll go back where you came from to never go back”
“Oooh, yeah. The Doctor, I’ve heard about you” The Young Crone said, completely unimpressed. She raised a hand, and The Doctor fell over his knees, screaming in pain; so Aiden did too. Horror screams of the countless victims he saw for centuries looped itselves inside the Doctor’s head, pulsating as gongs clinging across his brain.
“Mom, stop!” Mabel yelled
“Shut up!!” She yelled at Mabel, to turning her attention to The Doctor. “Uhuuu, you have a plenty of horrible memories here, but I’m more into tamper with your future” The Young Crone said in a playful tone. “Iiirgh! Let’s make a prophecy!”
The Doctor lies but won’t do it more,
When he’ll be lying on Trenzalore,
The Doctor lies but won’t do it more,
When he’ll be lying on Trenzalore,
The Doctor lies but won’t do it more,
When he’ll be lying on TRENZALORE!!!!…
The Doctor fell over the ground, unconscious, as the Young Crone’s pupils widened with her hand in middle air. Out of nothing, she had forgotten completely how to use that power. Her eyes rolled to the sight of Dipper pointing at her with a memory gun, a weapon she knew very well now.
“You scum…” The Young Crone mustered…
Too fast to be prevented, too strong to be avoided. The Young Crone extended a black, oily sharp straight into Dipper’s liver, throwing him several feet until it stuck in the purple walls… having already gone through Dipper’s body.
- Meanwhile, in the lower vaults…
The sprite herd flew wildly across miles of dusty halls, trying to gain speed under the odd laws inside the Never Castle, when they felt everything shaking around them. The Elder One stopped in middle air, as the rest of them did too. The light pouring thru the windows turned into dying crimson, and the Elder One knew that something terribily bad had happened.
“The Castle is dying” The Elder One spoke. “We’re running out of time…”
Cassie screamed in terror. Mabel just stared horrified how her mother had just stabbed him against the wall. Wendy and Ford unfolded their weapons and began to shoot repeatedly at The Young Crone, who covered her face with her arm as if she was being just ambushed by paper balls, and sent one of her spiky crystalline segments towards Wendy. But Wendy saw it in time, moving the enough to not be impaled alive, but not the enough to be free of the impact of the shard against the floor, sending her straight to a pile of dusty chests which fell above her and making Ford to slip off with the trembling of the ground the impact produced. Aiden ran towards The Doctor, falling in knees in front of him.
“Doctor! Doctor wake up!” Aiden yelled at him as he was shaking his urresponsive body. The Young Crone roared like a literal monster, and protruded several more of those shards, rising from floor like a spider as she pulled back the shard in his hand, letting Dipper recharged over the wall as his body slipped slowly to the floor, looking at her with impotence. His dying eyes rolled at the memory gun, still on the floor, and begged with his entire mind for her to not notice it.
“That’s it! The game is over!” The Young Crone yelled aloud, with her chest pulsating in utter rage. She made a quick look at the memory gun over the floor, and with no time to lose, smashed it with one of her long shard-legs. Then her sight rolled in Cassie’s direction, and her eyelids sharped her eyes. “Youuuu!” The Young Crone said to her. “You must die”
“Mabel, take her away” Mason said slowly, giving slow steps back.
“Take her away” Mason shouted in panic, and Mabel ran towards Cassie, raising her from ground and launching her over her right shoulder in an single, keen movement. Mabel felt the air moving behind her and the sound of ground breaking, and how Cassie’s muscles tensed at the same time; her own mother had just sent another spiky leg to try to kill them. So Mabel speeded, disappearing in a near corridor with Cassie in her shoulder, trying to not cry, trying to be strong.
“Face me child! Face your sins!!!” The Young Crone practically roared at her, as she shrieked her spiky legs and got inside the corridor to chase her own daughter.
Mason looked at her fallen comrades. Wendy unconscious between a pile of heavy chests, Aiden trying to reanimate The Doctor, Ford raising from ground as he stared at her with quiet horror, and Dipper… dying alone in the floor. Automatically, she ran towards him, and put her knees over the floor, putting one hand over his shoulder. She looked at the bloody patch over his stomach, and her insides feared the worst.
“Dipper… Dipper!” Mason yelled, shaking his shoulder. “Dipper wake up!” she yelled again, with no response. She looked at his eyes, still having the expression of his last breath, an expression of hopeless fear. Then she knew it. Dipper had died, alone and afraid. “No” Mason said to herself, to just after look at Aiden and move her head slowly in a denial signal. Aiden’s eyes got moisty and his face frowned in anger and impotence, when he felt the old body aside him to move. The Doctor raised his head, holding himself from the floor with his arms, and he saw the body.
“No” The Doctor mustered. Aiden turned his hands into fists and took them over his face, screaming with complete impotence, as his body bented to the floor in a slow movement. Then he stopped his scream, but stood breathing hard.
Suddenly, the chaldeliers’ lights turned into bloody crimson, and the floor shook beneath them. In any moment, the whole place would fall apart over them…
“What…?” Ford mustered, looking above him. Dozens of steamy beings appeared from the unknown, giving rounds in middle air as if they were floating. Then, one by one, the beings settled over the floor, instantly taking its crystalline texture.
Fine, slender humanoids with tiny eyes and no more over their faceless heads, landed delicately as leaves wafting in the wind. One of them walked softly towards Mason and sat over its knees, looking at Dipper’s inert body. Then it looked at Mason with a deep pity expression, the enough intense so Mason knew that being was going to help aid in some way.
“Help us” Mason asked in soft, defeated voice.
“Take our hands” The being said…
Out there, the entire universe shook as well.
Entire galaxies shredded like old clothes, as billions of souls, whose tiny worlds who being launched towards the deep and dark space, screamed in undecipherable terror and death. The universe was bleeding in growing darkness, an overwhelming darkness which began to cover everything…
The wrapping hook launched the hook at the airs, stacking against a high place. Mabel pushed the pulling bottom and elevated from ground at great speed with Cassie in her shoulder. The marvelous corridors and gigantic halls were crumbling into dust as everything around them, as from the farness, they were hearing the sounds of stocky machineries failing and cracking.
“She’s coming!!” Cassie yelled, as she saw how The Young Crone made her way across the complex, sharp details of the crumbling corridors, crawling over the immense walls like a sort of human spider with her sharply crystal legs, running wildly in their direction.
“Come here you pieces of disgusting filth!!!!” The Young Crone screamed, stabbing everything around in spasmodic convulsions, as she propelled herself with her spiky shards. “You can’t escape me! You can’t escape your death!!!”
The wrapping hook launched the girls above the ground of a high place, with Mabel activating the retractor as Cassie stood over the ground. That precise instant, one of the shards flew wild towards them, rasping Mabel’s left side at great speed.
“Aaaargh!” Mabel screamed as she fell over the floor, letting her wrapping hook to fly out of her hands.
“No!” Cassie screamed, barely giving the first step of an intended run towards her savior, when the floor beneath them inclined to the darkness. Cassie’s slipped, along Mabel and the wrapping hook, straight into the darkness…
Mabel came running, in middle of sporadic shakes of the ground, into the crumbling hall. The gigantic chandeliers, those tiny lights were emitting an intense red light, were waving furiously above her head, and she couldn’t prevent to look at them, before to keep moving.
Da’ heck this place is going down, Cassie where are you?!
Mabel passed across piles and piles of bygone stuff, wondering if she was ever going to find a way out, when her eyes caught the worst possible thing. She stopped at the sight, and turned around to prove herself that she was effectively looking what she was looking.
At first, she walked slowly, still in the hopeless idea of maybe it could be some of the numerous visual tricks that place had, but then her pace speeded more and more, until she stopped sudden.
There was, in front of her, the bloody body of her brother with his back recharged over a cracked wall, stained with his own blood. His arms laid lifeless at his sides, and his face reflected with painful clarity the despair and fear he had during his last breath.
Mabel fell over her knees embracing her own body as her spine curved towards the floor. There was no doubt; those were the clothes he was wearing the last time she saw him before he could escape, and that was the scar in his head he had because the car crash they had during their failed attempt to escape. Now Mabel knew it. She had come too late.
“NOOO!!!” She screamed aloud, to break into despaired sobs just after. Her continuous tears dropped over the floor, forming tiny spots of mud mixed with the dust in the floor. Her self-embrace got stronger, as the facts overwhelmed her more and more. She was alone, with no idea of how to fix anything and no escape from that doomed place.
Then she raised her head to look at him, with no discernible reason, when she saw it. His right hand was making a fist, sustained by his rigor mortis. An odd position for his arm, unless he was doing something when he died.
Her hyper-fast gallifreyan brain began to unpuzzle the situation, not willing to let his death to happen in vain. Dipper was surely trying to do something, but why?
A keener look at his fist, and she saw something white colored coming out, something like paper. At first she got reluctant, but her knowledge about him told her that she needed to do it. Delicately, she took his hand and undid the fist, revealing a creased piece of paper, a little reddened.
Mabel remembered their road to Gravity Falls, and the paper he was holding when he was writing theories about the causes of the Shifts, because he had forgotten his journal at home. The same paper he had carelessly put in his pocket when he gave the laptop to his parents.
Mabel opened the paper. Written with his own blood, over his previous notes, she read an ‘ERASE HER MEMORY’. Mabel’s eyes widened, when she saw back at Dipper’s face, and noticed he was looking at something. She turned in that direction, and saw at the pieces of a memory gun above a cracked floor. The she heard a far scream, coming to the nearest corridor out of the hall. Her trembling lips smiled, and she looked back at him.
“You idiot!” She said loudly, letting the paper to fall over the floor. Then she closed his eyes with her hand and gave his cold forehead a short last kiss. Then she raised from ground with her fists closed and a determined glance. “Let’s finish this”.
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