Inside a damp dungeon, below the Council of Guilds, the fate of an entire kingdom hung in the air.

Two men wrestled on the ground, while a lone woman bled slowly to death beside them. The first man, Marco Diaz, former Zonst guildmaster, struggled against the might of his opponent, the current Sentin guildmaster, Scarion.

When Marco broke out of his shackles, Scarion could've tried to use the Rewind Ritual to escape this timeline, but for whatever reason choose not to. Was it overconfidence? No, not Scarion. Perhaps he was thinking of the long term? Losing an eye was bothersome enough. What if his payment for the next trip back took something worse? Without a full grasp of the Ancient Tongue, he would be at the mercy of a Higher Being.

Eventually, years from then, Marco would reason it had to do with how long the Rewind Ritual took to cast, with a long incantation that lasted somewhere between thirty seconds and a few minutes, depending on how fast the caster could clearly recite it.

So, Scarion performed a different ritual.

This Fierceness Ritual only required a few hand gestures, and was much more suited for combat. It gave the user unrivaled strength and stamina.

Like all rituals, however, it came with a cost. As the ritual went on, you would begin to develop a lust for violence. The sound of blood spurting, the cracking of bones, and the begging screams for mercy would sooth your enraged conscious like a lullaby. Once you lost all constraint, you couldn't distinguish between friend or foe anymore, and would indiscriminately kill until you were the last one standing.

Though that hardly mattered to Scarion in this situation. The guards outside had given him the privacy he had requested, and the only other living beings here were his enemy, Marco, and his sister, Allion, who was already dead to him. No one would think anything suspicious of his justifiable self-defense. That is what Marco believed were his thoughts on the matter, anyhow.

"What corrupted beliefs did you plant inside my sister, Marco of Zonst? To make her go this far against me? To betray her own flesh and blood?" Scarion asked.

Marco could not answer. Two gauntlets had wrapped it's fingers securely around his neck. Scarion's grasp on him was so tight that not even a metal bar could pry them apart. Marco tried punching and kicking him away, but the man did not budge.

"Allion…" Scarion spat, looking with disdain at the girl spasming on the floor. "I should have known you were too young to be trusted with the rituals. To think you would resort to using them as cheap parlor tricks, to impress a boy…"

He was wrong. Allion always intended to keep the rituals a family secret, but during the Cleridic Invasion on Zonst five years ago, she had to use a ritual to save her and Marco's life. She didn't just break her promise for nothing.

Allion mumbled something unintelligible in response, and Scarion scoffed and turned his attention back to Marco.

"Why do the rituals require hands? I think I'm beginning to understand why. It is hands which make us capable of using tools. We use those tools to create buildings, art, and entire civilizations. Our hands have allowed us to conquer nature and bend it to our will."

His supervillain speech fell on deaf ears. Neither Marco nor Allion were paying any attention to him. Scarion didn't care.

"But at the same time, these hands rumans were gifted with have allowed us to wield weapons, and wage war against each other. Creation and destruction. Design and ruin. Life and death. This contradiction has held us back for milenium."

Marco was running out of air. He tried forming hand gestures, but his voice couldn't say the incantations.

"With this ritual, with these hands, I will end you two. Then there will be no more obstacles in my way. I will be free to sculpt the perfect world."

The next thing heard was a bloodcurdling scream. Scarion's scream.

As soon as his neck was free, Marco reflexively got up and gasped for air.

Scarion now laid on the floor in pain, with a puddle of blood forming under him. It took Marco a second to see the source of all that blood.

"Try… making a perfect world with fucking stumps… asshole." Allion said, barely louder than a whisper.

Her palms had steam coming out, and the blood on them had already boiled off. That alone told Marco everything. There was no man-made weapon in this dimension that could cleave off two feet in one clean swing, so of course it was magic.

Allion had used the Annihilation Ritual. Her hands were now hot enough to melt through any material, including ruman bone. She had army-crawled her way up to Scarion while he was focused on Marco, and it was as simple as grabbing his ankles.

But the ritual lasted a lengthy fifteen minutes, and she was just as vulnerable to it as her brother. Without the use of her hands, Allion couldn't apply pressure to her wounds. She needed immediate medical attention.

Marco mustered as much strength as he could to get up. He was still aching from the beating he'd received from Scarion's soldiers, but it would take more than a few bruises and a sore throat to stop him.

Despite being in even worse condition, Allion got up as well. She gritted her teeth and inched ever closer to her brother, until her shadow loomed over him. She was planning to fall straight on top of Scarion and catch herself with her palms and, eventually, the ground underneath him.

Allion leaned forward and allowed gravity to do the rest.

Scarion stopped screaming, as if up until that point he was merely exaggerating the pain of having his feet cut off. He took out a knife and placed it in front of her.

It was a rather clever trick on Scarion's part. He probably assumed she didn't have enough time or strength to turn her body out of the way, and hewas right. But before the knife could reach Allions chest, her hand extended out and grabbed one of his gauntlets. The same gauntlet holding the knife.

The metal glove liquified around her palm effortlessly.

Scarion struck Allion with his free gauntlet before she could melt his right hand. The hit had so much force behind it, despite seemingly done with so little effort, that she flew across the room and hit a brick wall.

That's when Marco tackled him.

The two fought against each other on the ground again, but with Scarion's constant blood loss and the overwhelming pain he had been trying to endure, the odds were much more in Marco's favor.

After much struggle (and constant kicking at Scarion's stumps), Marco was finally able to grab a hold of the knife. Without a second's thought, he plunged the knife into Scarion's eye - the only eye he still had, and then ripped it back out before the scream even escaped his mouth.

Almost in a trance, Marco whipped the knife around and stabbed Scarion through the side of his head, where his ear was.

Scarion's chilling screams echoed through the dungeon, and Marco pulled the knife out again and pierced it through his neck, filling the sound with gurgling and choking.

And then he stabbed his neck again, and again, and again. The sounds of the dungeon quieted to the sloshing and squirting of blood. Scarion was long past dead, his throat reduced to mashed flesh, and his blood coating Marco's entire upper body.

At some point, Marco's shaking hands dropped the knife, and it clattered against the stone floor.

Dense silence filled the moment, and Marco stared down at the first person he had ever killed.

And then that silence was broken by a weak cough from across the room.

"Allion!" Marco managed to say through his now raspy voice.

The disgraced guildmaster stumbled to his fiance. She rested on his arms, every breath being heavier than the last.

"M-Marco? Did you do it?" she asked, looking off into the distance.

"Don't talk right now. Conserve your strength. We may be traitors, but they need to keep us alive. I'll find a way to alert the guards and-"

"Shut up." Allion said. It wasn't the first time she bluntly disregarded her superior's orders, but it was her last.

Marco fought back the tears. Things were grim, but he needed to put on a strong face for his dying lover. It was the only thing he could do now. The rest was up to fate.

"You killed him, right? You didn't just knock him unconscious, did you?"

"That's not important right now. We need to get you help. We need-"

She grabbed the collar of his bloody shirt, which burned to dust in seconds. She had a thousand-yard stare, but was still looking Marco directly in the face.

"Did. You. Kill. Him?" With nothing to hold on to, her hand fell back to the floor.

"For fuck's sake, Allion! Yes, I killed him, okay? Your brother is dead. He's a fucking corpse on the floor! I'm… fuck, I'm so sorry. I know how much he meant to you..."

Allion broke into a jarring laugh. "Marco, he stabbed me and told me I was nothing to him. He was a manipulative piece of shit. I'm just glad he's gone."

"Y-yeah. Me too," Marco said awkwardly.

She coughed blood onto the floor and Marco's lap.

"Fuck..." Marco said.

"I'm sorry you had to do it. You were always stubborn about not killing people. It was… adorable, but that's not how you go about surviving this place. You have to play by its rules. I promise... it'll get easier, though."

Marco looked like he was about to say something, but stopped himself. Now wasn't the time to argue morals.

"At least… knowing you actually had the balls to go this far, against my own brother, no less, it makes me happy. You'll make it through this and eventually go back to Earth. I no longer have any doubts about it."

"You'll come with me, Ally," Marco assured, holding her tight. "We'll go to Earth together and you can meet my parents. We'll go to Mewni and see Star. God, there's so many places I wanted to take you. Just hang on."

More seconds were passing in between each breath. Despite this, Allion's expression was the softest it'd been all week.

"Leave this shit-hole, Marco. Leave and never look back. You're too good for this place. You were too good… for me."

All the conflicted and resentful feelings Marco had towards Allion since the failed assassination attempt we're no longer there. He still loved this woman. She made an honest mistake. She was a victim of Scarion's words. She didn't deserve this.

Allion used the last of her strength to hold the back of his head. She was in so much of a daze, she had forgotten that the ritual was still on. It burned like hell, but Marco didn't mind. It was the last time he would ever feel her touch. He cherished it.

"Thanks for making… this world… wonderful." she said.

Her arm fell to the ground once more. She closed her eyes. No one could hurt her anymore.

Marco looked down at her, tears streaming down his face.

He tried placing a hand on her forehead, but the soft touch of his finger formed a crack in her skin.

"Allion?"

He stared dumbly at the woman. The fracture that ran down Allion's face now breached further down her body. Her clothes were even affected by this, being slit along the black rift.

Like the roots of a tree, the crack gradually spread out through her entire corpse, until the whole thing exploded into a hill of sand.

Marco slowly got up and looked around himself. Where Scarion's body was left was also a pile of sand.

He turned around, and Jackie was there.

Of course, Jackie wasn't exactly 'there.' She didn't know, for example, what color the stone walls were. She was clueless about how big or how small the cell was, and she didn't have the faintest idea what all this blood smelled like. But, her brain certainly tried its hardest to fill in the details.

"What are you doing here?" Marco asked her, numbly. "Isn't this none of your business?"

Before Jackie had time to answer, a large fracture appeared diagonally around Marco's body, and he burst into sand as well.

Jackie shot forward, gasping for air. The bright sunlight assaulted her eyes and made her nauseous. She felt disgusting and sticky from the sweat seeping in through her clothes and gluing her hair to her forehead.

She desperately tried to break that image of Marco from her head, but it stayed there, burned into her retinas, taunting her with how horrible of a person she was.

She was shaking, simultaneously wired and exhausted, and it wasn't until she let out a quiet sob that she realized tears were rolling down her cheeks, mixing with the sweat and then dripping off her chin and on to her lap.

She was such an awful person.

She was an even worse friend.

And, even though she wasn't a hundred percent sure where she stood with Marco, she was a really, really shitty girlfriend.

She sobbed again, and curled up to put her head between her knees.

And she stayed like that, for far too long, crying alone in her room until her throat was sore and her tears dried.

And then she took a deep breath.

And got out of bed.

And took a shower.

With her emotions in check, Jackie could actually focus. She let the water cascade down her body and hoped that it would somehow wash away the red circles around her eyes.

Once she looked presentable, she was going to confront Marco and tell him what she did, and take whatever consequences went with that.

It briefly occurred to her that if she didn't tell him, the fact that the book went missing would never cross his mind.

She would have the opportunity to get away scot free…

But she HAD to tell him. She couldn't just pretend she didn't know everything about his life.

The wish would account for that, though, wouldn't it?

It would make it all normal.

And there was also the option of just saying that she gained the knowledge inherently, instead of obsessively reading through his personal thoughts and feelings, and completely ignoring his privacy...

Jackie splashed her face, as if slightly more water would make anything clearer.

It didn't.

With a long sigh, she turned the water off and stepped out into the bathroom. She dried off and wrapped a towel around her chest before heading back to her room.

She passed by her parents' room, where her mom would be fast asleep until at least noon.

What if she asked her mom for help?

Jackie shook the idea out of her head as fast as it came. Her mom would immediately keep her from ever interacting with Marco again if she found out about all this magic bullshit.

Yeah. No thank you.

Jackie walked back into her room and closed the door behind her.

On her desk, bound shut, was the journal.

She was a little surprised by that. Honestly, she thought it would just pop back into Marco's possession after she was done with it.

Maybe she wasn't done with it?

Or maybe she was overthinking it and it was literally just that the wish got her the book and didn't care about giving it back.

After all, the last entry was before Marco faced off against Heckapoo (which Jackie would have to ask about, because there was no way he could win against her in that state), so he probably hadn't even touched the journal since coming back to Earth. Even without the wish's interference, he probably wouldn't have noticed the journal's absence for a while .

Which meant there was no rush giving it back, apart from Jackie's own guilt gnawing away at her until she confessed.

Which she was definitely going to do.

She was going to walk over to Marco's house, and-

Oh.

Shit!

The plans!

She'd agreed to meet Janna and Marco at his house in the morning! To take a dimensional road trip or some shit.

She was late! It was after eleven already!

Jackie scrambled to get dressed and grabbed her cell to dial Janna.

After three rings, Janna finally picked up.

"Sup," she said, the same way she always said it.

"I slept in. Did you guys leave yet?"

"I sure haven't, but Marco might've gone without us." There were muffled voices in the background.

"What?" Jackie asked.

"Yeah. I came to meet up with him, but his house is gone."

"What!?"

The shrug was almost audible over the phone. "Yeah. There's just a crater where his house was. The police are investigating," Janna said, with all the urgency of an obituary reading.

A crater?

A million very bad possibilities swarmed through Jackie's head.

"Hold on, I'll be there soon!" Jackie said, slipping the journal into her bag.

"Take your time. The crater isn't going anywhere."

"Yeah, probably not." ...but it might . Jackie hung up and gave herself a quick once-over before running out the door and jumping on her skateboard.

Oh. Wait. Right. Magic scissors!

Jackie turned around and hopped off her skateboard to run back inside.

Idiot that she was, she left Marco's scissors on her desk, right next to where the journal had been, and still forgot about them.

With a sigh, Jackie put her skateboard into her backpack and grabbed the scissors.

With one last check that she had everything she needed, she opened up a portal to Marco's front yard and stepped through.

As her foot landed on Marco's lawn and her view changed, she noted several things around her.

The first was the small crowd of people, probably twenty or thirty of them, gathered around.

The second was Janna, slurping on a smoothie near a police car and police woman, who seemed to have only recently shown up, considering how surprised she was by the scene.

And the last thing was, of course, the large crater where Marco's house was.

"Wow," Janna said, monotone. "He gave you his scissors, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," Jackie said, glancing down at the scissors that still very clearly said Marco in the Ancient Tongue.

"You know what he'll give you next, right?" Janna said with a grin.

It took Jackie way too many seconds to realize what Janna was implying, and when she did, she rolled her eyes in response. "Yeah, whatever."

Janna wasn't going to give her any answers anyway, so Jackie made her way through the crowd to get a better look at the crater.

It was perfectly spherical, with rounded edges even through the dirt, and with large rocks even just having been sliced in half where it met the open air.

There were a few kids her age in the crater, obviously not even trying to be cautious, marveling at the shape of the thing.

Dumbasses.

Ignoring them, Jackie walked up to one of the crowd members at the edge of the crater and asked, "Did you see what happened?"

The woman shook her head. "No, Gerry over there saw it this morning when he was walking his dog- always walks her at seven on the dot- and when he saw it, he dropped the leash. First thing Spottie did was run right down into the hole."

Jackie glanced over to where an old man was petting his beagle protectively.

"He couldn't get her out, so he called up Susan, and she called up David and his sons, who called up all their friends, and within an hour or two, we had an army to pull poor little Spottie out." She gestured to the two idiots in the crater. "And now all of our kids are taking turns in there. Seems harmless enough."

Jackie had to take a second to process how idiotic this whole thing was. What if the crater was radioactive? What if it was pouring out heaps of dangerous magic into them?

These people had a great sense of community, but apparently no sense of self preservation.

But…

Wait…

If people had been in the crater since this morning…

The answer hit Jackie like a brick.

Marco was a dumbass, too!

And now Jackie had to bail him out.

"Hey, get out of there!" Jackie yelled to the guys in the crater.

They both looked up at her in confusion. One of them even said, "What?"

"You heard me," Jackie said. "Get out of there, now!"

"You can't tell us what to do!" the other guy said. "This is our neighborhood!"

What was this? A suburban gang?

The police officer that had been stunned by the scene walked up to the crater.

"I can. Get out of there," she said.

Immediately both guys lost their spines and crawled up in a flurry of "yes ma'am"s and "sorry's."

The officer paid them no mind and instead turned her attention to Jackie.

"Do you know what's going on here?" she asked, her tone serious.

Jackie nodded. "I'm pretty sure. My, uh, friend lives here, and this is something he's done before."

The officer nodded understandingly. "Do we need to clear everyone out of the yard as well?"

Wow. She didn't expect that to go so smoothly. "Uh, it would help."

With another nod, the officer turned to the crowd and yelled, "Alright! Everyone go home. This is an active investigation and you are on the crime scene."

With a bunch of groans and sighs, the crowd of nosy neighbors dissipated and made their way to the streets.

Once they were far enough away, Jackie tuned to the crater and yelled, "The coast is clear!"

There was a moment where nothing happened, and then the house and surrounding ground faded back into existence.

Not waiting for a second more, Jackie ran in through the front door. Inside, Marco and his parents were standing in the living room. Though, that was as much as Jackie got to take in before she was wrapped in a tight fatherly hug.

"Oh thank you so much Jackie!" Marco's dad said, squeezing her with all his might.

"Ah, um, sure thing. Mr. Diaz."

"We thought we were going to have to wait forever," his mom said.

Jackie pulled away from the hug and saw Marco, who had taken a couple of steps toward the scene. He didn't look tired, but Jackie knew he had stayed up all night.

"Uh, thanks for helping me close off the ritual," Marco said, awkwardly scratching the back of his head. "And sorry if I made you worry."

"No problem," Jackie said. She had no idea why Marco used the Barrier Ritual, but as long as people stood in the spell's radius, Marco couldn't deactivate it, lest the Diazs' neighbors became a permanent part of the ground, wood, and concrete that made up their house.

Behind her, the police officer knocked on the already-open door, gathering everyone's attention.

"Marco?" she said, a little apprehensively.

"Pierce!" Marco said. "Yeah, sorry about that."

He walked over to her and Jackie frowned.

Of course no one asked how Jackie knew what to do. No one even asked how she knew Marco wasn't just dead. The wish was covering her ass.

With a sigh, Jackie walked over to Marco where he was talking to the police officer and tapped his shoulder.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" Jackie asked. "It's important."

Marco looked over at her and a couple of expressions crossed his face, signalling that he'd just had a very short conversation with Kar.

Then, he said, "yeah, of course."

"Alone," Jackie corrected.

Marco's face tinged a little pink, and Jackie wanted to roll her eyes. What happened to ?

When he didn't immediately move to talk to her alone, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the kitchen.

Marco stopped blushing and looked at her in concern. "Is everything okay?"

"Look, I found out what my wish was," Jackie said. "And this isn't going to be easy to hear, but I-"

"Marco, I brought the thing you asked for," the police officer said from the doorway, impatiently.

"The finger!" Marco said, immediately losing concentration and turning his full attention to that. He even went out into the living room again to talk to her, leaving Jackie alone.

For a moment, Jackie was angry, but then the absurdity of the situation hit her, and she realized Marco wouldn't normally get swayed so easily from a conversation that Jackie told him was important.

So, the wish was going to play dirty, huh?

But another thought hit her, right after she reasoned that out.

A finger ? What the hell did Marco need a finger for?

Jackie was assuming it was a human finger (though, it could belong to a monster or demon), so it really only narrowed it down to a few uses.

She could cross blood magic off the list. She doubted Marco remembered the specifics well enough, considering the last time he even encountered blood mages was shortly after Allion's death. After that part, they were really only mentioned as some comparison piece, such as "it wasn't as bad as Mirria, but it was worse than blood mages".

And even if he remembered, he probably wouldn't actually use it…

That left a few other possibilities-

Jackie then caught herself pacing back and forth in an empty kitchen. She could faintly hear Marco talking to that officer.

Duh . Jackie didn't have to play this stupid speculation game, when she could hear it staright from the source.

Jackie went to the doorway and listened in on them.

"The whole point was to stay inconspicuous , which you obviously missed the point of," the officer said, gesturing around the room.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry," Marco said, rubbing the back of his head. "But after I told my parents how someone has it out for me, they got worried. So to ease them, I used magic that would make us undetectable. It was only gonna last til sunrise."

Was he talking about Heckapoo?

"I got reports that a dog fell in there around seven, well past sunrise. Why didn't you close it before then?" she asked pensively.

"I… uh, got distracted and wasn't looking outside," Marco admitted.

The officer just shook her head. "Just please keep a low profile for now on. People already have a target on your house, Diaz. With all the crazy reports we've gotten about it already, it's practically an Echo Creek tourist trap. Not only will they notice any discrepancies, they'll actively seek them out for the next bit of gossip. There were fourteen reports when your house caught fire this week. Don't do anything like that again."

Jackie peeked a little and saw that Marco was holding a tupperware container. The finger was probably in there.

Marco, possibly in an attempt to not feel like a child getting scolded, shrugged indifferently. "Well, if we get the answers we need, then I won't have to."

Oh! He was going to use the Seance Ritual!

The officer frowned. "Until people know about magic, you shouldn't do anything flashy. Not just your little disappearing act. Anything ."

Was this police officer part of Marco's plan to integrate magic?

Wait, wasn't this none of Jackie's business!?

A feeling of dread settled in her stomach. She'd been spying . Just casually eavesdropping in on Marco's private conversation!

Jackie quickly stepped deeper into the kitchen so that she couldn't hear Marco anymore.

Ugh. She was as bad as Star!

Worse even!

Jackie pulled her hand through her hair. She had to tell Marco what was going on, and then if she wanted to know what was going on in his life, she could ask like a normal person!

She took a deep breath to calm herself.

Okay, whatever the hell Marco was doing could wait until after Jackie told him about his journal.

And if the wish wanted to stop her from doing that, it would have to try harder than it already had.

Jackie glanced back around at where Marco was in the living room, and saw that he was talking to his parents now. Perfect.

Jackie made a beeline to the conversation and grabbed Marco's arm, catching his attention instantly.

"Come on," Jackie ordered, pulling Marco along before he had an actual chance to respond, and dragging him out into the yard.

"What's wrong?" Marco asked, forgetting she had something important to tell him,

"I'll tell you once we're in complete privacy," Jackie said.

Behind the Diaz's house was a shed, which was what she was pulling Marco towards, and which was private enough that little to no reasonable interruptions could actually occur.

She pulled open the shed door, then paused and turned back to Marco.

"Why is your shed unlocked?" She honestly hadn't thought about that road block until it wasn't there.

Marco shrugged and said, "Is it? I don't remember."

Thinking on it, it was exactly like the Diaz's to be so trusting that they'd just left it that way.

But either way, Jackie had a plan and she had to follow through with it.

So, she pulled Marco through the door and pulled the chain to turn the light on above them. After closing the door and shutting them in, she took a deep breath.

"Okay. I need you to promise me that no matter what distraction comes our way, you'll give me your complete attention," Jackie said.

Marco looked uneasily at their surroundings and then at Jackie, a light tinge of red across his face. "S-sure. I promise."

Jackie nodded and pulled her backpack off. "I found out what my wish was."

She briefly looked up to double check that nothing had interrupted them yet, and then unzipped the top of the bag.

Here went nothing.

She reached in and took hold of the journal. "Last night, your journal-"

Jackie stopped what she was saying, because Marco fell forward into her, and she barely managed to catch him in time.

He was in a flashback. The wish would probably do that every time she tried to tell him.

God damn it! How was she supposed to be the good guy here?

Jackie stared down at Marco's unconscious body. Where or when was he? There was no way to tell if he was in a terrible memory or a fun one, but Jackie's heart pulled a little at the idea that he was back in the most hellish parts of his life.

She would ask him what he saw when he woke up.

But in the meantime, she needed to come up with another plan, or at least grab one of the hedgeho-

Her thoughts were interrupted as the door opened and sunlight poured in over her and Marco's bodies.

"So, what's with the suspicious hiding in a shed?" Janna said, leaning against the door casually.

"Uh," Jackie said, her mind immediately scrambling to figure out whether Janna's interruption was of her own free will, or if it was just a back-up plan for the wish.

"Wait, does this have something to do with your wish?" Janna said, showing off her innate ability to know exactly what was going on half the time.

"Sort of?" Jackie reasoned. Might as well tell Janna what she could, right? "The wish doesn't want me telling Marco about it."

Janna frowned. "Well, that's bullcrap. What was the wish?"

Was it possible that Janna was immune to the wish's effects? Only one way to find out.. Jackie looked her friend in the eyes. "I read through all of Marco's personal journal."

Except, Janna had turned around while Jackie was saying that, and then turned back after she was done.

"Sorry, I thought I heard my name for a second," Janna said, and then her eyes went wide. "Oh, shit. You can't tell anyone about it, can you?"

Jackie breathed a sigh of relief. "No, I can't. Everyone gets distracted or passes out whenever I try to tell them. It's like this higher being is mind controlling everyone around me."

"But why?" Janna asked, stepping all the way in and closing the door behind them.

"It did the same thing so that you could avoid Science tests for the rest of the year," Jackie reasoned.

"Yeah, but you and Marco knew about that. Why can't we know about yours?" Janna said, looking down at the unconscious Marco. She tapped him lightly with the toe of her boot.

Hopefully he was in a good flashback…

"Probably because the higher being wants the best immediate outcome for the wishes?" Jackie guessed. "Like, me and Marco don't think any less of you for not wanting to take the science test, but you two will think a lot worse of me if you knew my wish."

Janna frowned. "That bad?"

Jackie thought for a moment. "You know Marco's journal? The one he mentioned in the hospital?"

"Yeah," Janna said, miraculously still paying attention.

"If you had the chance, would you read it?"

Janna shrugged. "Probably."

Jackie blinked. "What?"

"Well, I know you wouldn't, but I really wanna know what happened to Toza."

Jackie frowned. She briefly considered telling Janna what happened to Toza, but the wish most likely wouldn't let her, and it was better if Marco was the one to tell her anyway, so she just continued with her hypothetical. "But, what if I did?"

"You totally wouldn't. You're basically a goodie-two-shoes through and through."

"Well, my wish involved me doing something decidedly not goody-two-shoes, so it would change your mind on that," Jackie explained, knowing that the wish would stop her from catching on that it was literally that.

Janna thought about it for a moment. "Okay, so then this douchebag god thing decided that we don't get to know about it because we'll think differently about you?"

Jackie nodded.

"What a cop out. Jackie, get out those scissors. We're gonna go show that thing what happens when he messes with Janna Ordonia!"

Jackie kind of stared at her for a second. "You can't be serious. This thing can control reality and everyone we know. I don't think we're a threat to it."

"Yeah, well it hasn't met me yet!" Janna reached into Jackie's pocket and pulled the scissors out.

"Actually- hey!" Jackie said, scrambling to grab the scissors as they were pulled away from her.

Janna ignored her and opened a portal right there in the shed. "Come on, are we going or not?"

"Uh," Jackie said, staring at the portal. Then, with a resigned sigh, she said, "Sure, why not?" She took one last look at the unconscious Marco and went through the portal.

She ended up in the same spot Marco had brought them the day before, at the end of a long path leading to a towering temple. Jackie briefly wondered if it was the same exact spot as Marco's portal, because it almost looked like it.

Janna stepped through after Jackie and then handed her the scissors.

Oh.

Janna could have easily closed the portal and trapped her in a dimension she knew nothing about.

Jackie should've been a little more careful and made Janna go first…

"What're you waiting for? Let's go," Janna said, walking ahead towards the temple.

Jackie followed behind her and frowned. Should she even question something like that? They weren't the closest of friends, but Janna wouldn't betray her.

Like Allion wouldn't. Like Kranal wouldn't. Like Ortand , or Fetha , or Selak , or-

God. How did Marco have an ounce of trust left in him?

And Jackie betrayed him, too.

Well, she didn't try to kill him or anything, but this wasn't Heckapoo's dimension. This was Earth. What she did was basically the worst possible way she could betray him here.

Would he forgive her when she told him what she did? After being betrayed so many times? Would she be the last straw, the one to break his long-running streak of trust?

"Dude. Earth to Jackie," Janna said.

Jackie blinked. "Uh, yeah, sorry."

"Did you hear a word I said?" Janna asked.

"No," Jackie answered honestly. She hadn't even realized she was speaking.

Janna shrugged. "That's okay. It wasn't funny anyway." She knocked on the temple door. "Looks like it's locked."

Oh. They were at the doors of the temple already.

They looked the same as before, but had a giant chain across the handles with a large padlock holding it shut. Hanging from the chain was a sign that said "Closed On Weekend. Come Back Later" in English, and Jackie wondered if the sign just sensed their native language, or if this dimension just spoke it.

Without missing a beat, Janna pulled out what looked like professional lock-picking gear from her hat and leaned down to look in the padlock's hole.

"What are you doing?" Jackie asked, already knowing the answer.

"Uh, getting us in, duh," Janna said, standing back up and looking through the picks she had. She decided on one and slipped it into the padlock.

Immediately, the hole of the padlock closed, snapping the pick in half.

They both stared at it and Jackie sighed. "I don't think we can get in."

Janna shook her head. "No, it's just time for plan B." She grabbed the dimensional scissors from Jackie's pocket like it was nothing and cut open a portal. "After you."

Jackie stared at the portal for a moment, and decided that she would in fact trust Janna with her life on this, and stepped through.

She expected to step into complete darkness, but instead she emerged at the end of the path - the same place as the portal had been both times before.

Oh. It was probably the only spot they were allowed to portal to in this dimension. Or at least around this temple.

"Wait!" Jackie yelled to where Janna was about to step through her end of the portal.

Janna stopped and turned to Jackie. She had what was probably the same thought process and then groaned loudly enough that Jackie could still hear it from so far away. "Really?"

Jackie stepped back through the portal and ended up next to Janna again. "Like I said, I don't think we can get in."

Janna didn't listen, and instead examined the door for any sort of opening. "There has to be a way for us to open this thing."

"There's definitely magic stopping us from breaking in," Jackie said.

"So then we just have to use magic to get in," Janna said. "Let's get Marco. I'm sure he'll know what to do."

"No," Jackie said. "He'll just say that we can't defy a higher being and we're just kids who don't know what we're doing, and he's probably right about that. We can't just..."

Jackie stopped, staring at the padlock.

It was a lock, magic or not… right?

And, though Marco was wrong about this higher being and how it worked, the other had definitely stuck to its rules for at least the decade that Marco had used its power…

And what was a few hours without opening doors, right?

Jackie swallowed uncomfortably. Was she really going to cross this line?

Was it better to test the waters with a dip of the toe?

Deciding that she couldn't just stand there like an idiot forever, she took a deep breath and turned to Janna.

"I can open it," she said, trying to sound confident, but her voice cracking a little under the stress.

Janna stopped looking for cracks in the bottom of the door and looked up at Jackie. "Really? Get on it, then."

Of course. No questions of how. This was the problem.

Fine. If that was how it was played…

Jackie pulled her backpack off and took the journal out. She had a general idea of when Marco learned it, so once she got to the right section, it was easy enough to find the specific page she was looking for.

Instructions, with detailed diagrams and exact incantations.

Marco always was a note-taker.

After looking it over again, Jackie turned her attention to the lock and put the journal on the ground. She pointed at the padlock with her index fingers on both hands, flush against each other, just like Marco's diagrams had shown.

Then, she said, in the Ancient Tongue, " Remove this barrier and I will be barred for time to come. "

As she said the last word, she ripped her hands apart from each other, and the padlock unlocked, letting the chain fall from the handles and land on the floor in a heavy heap.

Jackie just stood there, almost shocked that it worked that easily.

She'd just… used magic.

No. Not just magic. She used a Ritual.

"Oh wow, you got it open," Janna said, having obviously spaced out for the last minute or two.

"Yeah," Jackie said, barely above a whisper. Almost in a daze, she picked the journal up off the ground and put it back in her backpack while Janna pushed the doors open.

The two quietly walked inside the temple until, just like before, the doors closed on their own and the inside was completely shrouded in darkness.

"Hey, Asshole! We have a bone to pick with you!" Janna shouted, her voice echoing several times over as if to remind her of how stupid of opener that was.

Jackie sort of wished she had memorized a few more of the journal entries before letting Janna do the talking. At least then they would have a way out of there. As it stood, they were both at the mercy of a Higher Being.

"E-excuse me?" a surprised voice said. The voice was almost as pointlessly loud as it was before, but without the exaggerated theatrics. It made it seem like they were talking to a normal person, and not a superpowered deity who could turn them inside out without a second thought.

Jackie responded before Janna could. "What my friend is trying to say Mr…" Shit! Did Marco say it was Grog' or 'Grern'? "...G. We, uh, have a few questions about a wish you had granted yesterday."

"How did you get in here?" 'G' asked, dismissing what Jackie said.

"We… came in through the door?" Jackie said, trying to shrug off the topic.

Several seconds of silence went by. "Did I forget to lock the front? Please tell me I didn't forget to lock the front. This is so embarrassing." G sounded like Jackie's dad did when he accidentally left the car keys in their van.

"Oh, the lock was there all right, but we busted that shit wide open," Janna said proudly. "We know how you guys like to look down on us Earthlings, but underestimating us could be the last mistake you ever make."

"Wow, okay, so, I grant you wishes, and in return you break into my temple and call me names. That is rude. You're rude."

This was getting surreal. Marco had hyped up these Gods to be unstoppable forces of nature that puny mortals couldn't possibly comprehend the motivations of. This was like an argument between two randos on the internet.

"Rude?" Janna scoffed at the notion. "My friend here had her morally questionable wish granted without her consent, and now whenever she tries to own up to it, the people around her either pass out or get distracted by a shiny blade of grass. I'd consider that pretty rude. "

"Young Lady, the happenstances around you are only present when you try to fight the effects of the wish. They're safety measures. If you let things play out, it will be back to business as usual, and the actions of those around you should return to normal." G followed that up with a sigh, as if it was the most obvious thing in the multiverse.

"But can you stop these safety measures?" Jackie asked. "What if I don't want what the wish thinks I want?"

"The wish operates in your best interest. There's no reason to go against it, Ms. Thomas."

"You didn't answer my question, though. Can you stop the wish from interrupting me when trying to talk to Marco? Yes or No?" Jackie asked, holding her ground.

A cough echoed through the chamber. Did this higher being even have a throat to clear? "No, I cannot. Once your wish is granted, my powers will bring your desires into reality, and that reality will be woven into the threads of fate itself."

Ugh, great. Fate mechanics. "Fine, screw it, how do you go about altering fate? I'm sure there's someone in the multiverse who specializes in it? You guys certainly like to take abstract concepts and reshape them like play-doh."

"Omnitraxus Prime of the High Commission deals in such things. Though he isn't exactly known for taking requests..."

The High Commission? The bullshit magic police that Heckapoo was from?

Yeah, hard pass.

"Is there anyone else who works with fate?" Jackie asked.

There was a pause, and then G said, "uhh, I can't really think of anyone? I'm sure there's someone, but Omnitraxus is really the only guy that comes to mind."

This was useless. This asshole was granting people's wishes blindly and locking people out on the weekends so he could avoid complaints.

"Though, I will stress that you shouldn't try to change your wish before it comes to fruition."

Before it- what?

"I already read the journal. What else is there to this wish?" Jackie asked, narrowing her eyes at the darkness before her.

"Well, your wish was to be together with Marco, in a relationship where he isn't hiding everything from you," G explained. "The first part of that was learning the secrets that he already held from you, and gaining an interest and knowledge in magic that will help him see you as more of an equal."

Jackie was honestly so glad that the wish didn't just mind-control Marco into liking her. But also… wow.

"What's the second part?"

"With your interest in magic, you'll be a bigger part of his goals and plans, as well as more understanding of his plights and traumas. These things will help you surpass any obstacles to your relationship developing."

"Obstacles?" Jackie asked. "What kinds of obstacles?" She severely hoped they weren't the literal backstabbing kinds of obstacles.

"Star Butterfly, mainly."

Uh. "Wait, what?" Jackie asked. "This whole crazy set up is because of Star? So, what, I can cheat her out of her chance to get with Marco?" Was… Marco never going to see Star again because of her wish?"

"It's not up to me to decide how the wish helps you, but if Star Butterfly truly represents a rift between you and Marco, then fate will act accordingly."

Jackie just stood there, trying to process everything.

Inside the darkness, G spoke again. "Um, don't worry about Ms. Ordonia, by the way. She fell asleep as soon as we got into the specifics. Your secret is forever safe."

"How did it come to this?" Jackie asked, holding herself. "Was all this really on the back of my mind when we were first in the temple?"

She truly was an awful person. Jackie wanted to be the cool girl, she wanted to forgive Star for spying on her and Marco. She had just found out last night that when you're handed an easy opportunity like that on a silver platter, the temptation is too hard to ignore. Yet she was still pissed at Star and wanted her away from Marco. She was such a hypocrite…

"Think back to the lunch room, Ms. Thomas. Marco told you his ambitions, and offered his friends an opportunity to join him on his crusade. You remembered the traumatic experience inside the wand, yet still raised your hand. Was this courage? No, it was a fear of being useless to him. Ferguson and Alfonzo opted out, and while Marco was grateful for their help up to that point, deep down you knew they would drift apart from him. Their friendship ended right then and there. Marco had moved on."

That was true, Jackie didn't want to end up like Ferguson and Alfonzo, and that was why she raised her hand. Magic terrified her, more or less, and she didn't really think making it mainstream on Earth was a good idea.

Marco assured her that it wasn't an ultimatum, and she believed him, but all that was after Jackie went into the temple. Her agreement in the first place was just a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

"But Marco said that you only granted mundane wishes," Jackie said, already kinda sure what G's response would be.

"That was merely an interpretation on his part. I help soothe the troubled minds of people by helping them go through whatever was causing them the most grief. For Marco, it happened to be hunger."

Of course, why was Jackie expecting anything different? She had just read an entire sixteen year account of a man who acted on incorrect assumptions all the time , and almost never thought to ask what was going on until it was too late.

Why Allion knew about Rituals in the first place.

The Elesh Priests who promised him they could bring his lover back to life.

Where all the prisoners were disappearing to.

If a village's guardian spirit needed sacrifices for a legitimate reason.

Why all the members of the Felecxta Clan had glowing eyes.

Whether or not a cave filled with monsters was perhaps too much for a family of farmers.

If Tashern really had enough life force to put into Marco's sword and still come out alive.

That the owner of a slave casino wouldn't cheat at cards.

God, Marco was a dumbass.

...But Jackie wasn't going to make the same mistakes.

"Hey G," she said, not entirely sure how long she'd made him wait. "You know and see everything as it happens , right?"

There was a short pause before he said, "Um, yes. More or less."

"And you still don't know how I got in?"

There was another pause, and then, quieter, he said, "N-no. I can see you looking through the journal in front of the temple, and then you were walking in. But how you managed to undo the lock eludes me."

He sounded so… unnerved. Were the rituals blind spots for him? Did it work that way for all the higher beings? Were people just pawns for higher beings fucking with each other?

Despite that train of thought, knowing that G couldn't see the rituals gave Jackie a sliver of hope. Maybe she could fix this wish.

"I think we're done here," Jackie said. "If nothing else, thank you for answering my questions honestly, Mr-"

"Grong. My name is Grong," he said. "But before you leave, I want to tell you one last thing, Ms. Thomas."

"Okay, shoot."

"Ms. Odonia suggested that I look down on you humans, and I suppose by extension all mortal life, but that couldn't be further from the truth. If there's one thing that our kind fear, it's uncertainty. It is impossible to be truly all knowing, but some higher beings cannot come to terms with that, and will resort to anything to maintain a status quo or a delusion of omnipotence. It can drive some of them mad. Yet, you mortals are faced with nothing but uncertainty, and are still able to go about your daily lives. I've always respected that, and it is why I offer my services in the first place. To make your lives a little more… predictable."

"Um, thank you?" Jackie said, unsure of what else she could say to that.

"Maybe this method of obtaining Marco's affection will feel unearned at first, but the wish works alongside reality. Marco already had genuine feelings for you, and this wish merely pushes both of you towards each other."

"Then what about Star? Does Marco… have genuine feelings for her as well?" Jackie swallowed uncomfortably.

"That… is also an uncertainty."

An uncertainty?

As in, Marco used a ritual on Star?

That had to be it, right? The rituals were a blind spot for G. If he had no idea whether they liked each other…

Did Marco use the Obsession Ritual? Jackie shuddered at the thought. Ew, no.

But… Just in case, she would ask him what was going on once she settled this whole wish thing.

"And with that, I am sorry to kick you out, but I have things to do and you've already taken up a good chunk of my off time, so if you could please leave."

As the final word left his mouth, Jackie felt a force push her out of the temple and back on to the pathway. Janna was rolled out beside her, still unconscious.

A moment passed where Jackie had to reorient herself to the light and Janna slowly got up with a yawn.

"Woah, I can't believe I fell asleep. I guess I shouldn't have pulled an all-nighter," Janna said, putting a hand over her eyes to block the sun.

"It wasn't the all-nighter, it was the higher being," Jackie said. She looked down at the ground and kicked a pebble.

Was there an easy solution that she was missing?

"Jesus, really?" Janna said with a sigh. "So I'm guessing you didn't make any headway with Tall, Dark, and Spooky?"

"No. He can't actually do anything about it. He's powerless in the face of his own wishgranting."

"Wow. Dumb." Janna stretched.

"Yeah," Jackie said. "I guess we should head back, right?"

"Already on it." Janna opened a portal to her side and gestured for Jackie to go through.

They both stepped through to Marco's backyard and the portal closed behind them.

"Hey Janna," Jackie said. "Why were you so worried about the science test?" It just seemed so un-Janna-like to give a shit about that sort of thing.

There was a moment where Janna definitely considered lying, but then she sighed and said, "My parents are college professors. Like, the biggest nerds you'll ever meet. I didn't want to disappoint them."

"Did you tell them about it?" Jackie asked.

Janna blinked. "The wish? No, and I guess even if I tried to, the Wish-God or whatever would stop me."

"I meant your test result," Jackie corrected.

"Oh hell yeah!" Janna said. "It's the first thing I did as soon as they got home. They were so proud of me, and didn't even question why the rest of the year was covered as well. I felt so…"

Janna stopped for a moment, and then her expression turned sullen.

"It feels kind of shallow now. I get why you'd want to tell everyone."

Jackie took a deep breath. "Yeah."

"If we can figure out how to get around it, then maybe I'll tell my parents."

"If there is a way around it," Jackie said.

"I know I said this earlier, but we could ask Marco for help. Maybe there's some magic that can override it or something," Janna said with a shrug.

Oh.

OH.

"Maybe there is," Jackie said with a smirk.

The Learning Ritual. If she could tell Marco what was going on while the wish was blindsighted by the ritual, then maybe it would work!

After all, what was the worst that could happen? Another flashback?

And the price wasn't too steep. He would learn one thing she wanted him to know and one thing she didn't, but she was already telling him the worst thing she had to tell him, so it was just a win-win!

Jackie ran up to the shed and placed her hand on the handle. She stared at the handle for way too long, unsure of what to do next, before she realized it was because of the Unlocking Ritual.

Oh yeah. She couldn't open doors.

"Janna! Can you get this for me?"

"Uh, ,sure, though after you opened that temple door I don't see why you'd need my help," Janna said, walking up to her.

The irony in that statement was real.

Janna casually opened the door and natural light filled the room again. Marco was still lying uncomfortably on the floor.

"I figured he would have woken up by now," Janna said, arms crossed.

Jackie looked down. Yeah. This flashback was almost as long as the one when she and Star went into the wand. "Do you think they're becoming longer?"

Janna thought about it for a second. "I doubt it. He was fine for most of school yesterday. It's probably random and nonsensical. A classic Star trait if I ever fucking saw one."

That was a good point. It was more in line with Star's style.

"God, it's so nice to be able to swear again like a normal teenager, now that Star's gone," Janna said, basking in her newfound verbal freedom before looking slightly ashamed. "Too soon?"

"Yeah, a little," Jackie confirmed, then looking back on Marco. "I'm gonna try something on him, now. It's our best hope for beating this wish."

"Shouldn't we wake him up with a hedgehog first?" Janna asked. "I mean, I'm all for doing things to Marco while he's unconscious, but-"

"If he knew what I was about to do, he'd probably try to stop me."

"Alright, you sold me. Go ahead, Master of Unlocking," Janna said.

Jackie nodded and pulled out the journal, noting how Janna's eyes immediately seemed to gloss over. That was fine. If this worked on Marco, she would do it to Janna, too. There probably wasn't anything Janna didn't already know about Jackie's personal life, anyway. She wouldn't be surprised if Janna could recite her social security number, which even Jackie couldn't think of off the top of her head.

Right. The ritual.

Jackie flipped through the pages, briefly annoyed that there wasn't a table of contents, and eventually found the area with the most ritual instructions in it- Marco's time with the monks. It was then that he was taught the Learning Ritual, which made sense because you had to know the Ancient Tongue thoroughly to use it. It wasn't like someone like Allion could do it.

Luckily, the wish had granted her absolute fluency in the language, probably to push her toward using the rituals, and eventually toward magic in general-

She was getting off topic.

With a deep breath, she perused Marco's time with the monks and eventually found the entry detailing the ritual.

She read it three times over to ensure she didn't mess it up, and then put the journal back into her bag.

Then, she placed her hands onto Marco's head, flaying the fingers out so that her pinkies and ring fingers went around his ears, her palms covered his eyes, and her thumbs bent to poke straight into his forehead.

After a moment to make sure it was correctly placed, she recited in the Ancient Tongue, " I am giving you the truth, both the good and the bad. You will learn the entirety. You will know of my sins and my faults. But what I want you to know is that I have read the entirety of your journal. "

Light poured from Marco's eyes under Jackie's palms. She held her hands there until the light stopped, and then left them for a few extra seconds for good measure.

Jackie was almost surprised by how little mental resistance she had going through with this. G spelled out to her that Marco would grow to love her, and well, the idea of that did seem nice. Perhaps she wasn't as awful as she thought? Or maybe this was just her form of atonement, or this is what any reasonable person would do in this position.

Even if it could come at the cost of her friendship with Marco...

Then, as she pulled her hands away, Marco blinked several times, a blank expression on his face.

"Oh, you're awake," Janna said, not even realizing she blacked out for the duration of the ritual.

Marco looked between Janna and Jackie several times, and his mouth opened and closed.

"Are you okay?" Jackie asked, keeping her voice low. Panic rose in her chest. Had the wish given Marco brain damage just to prevent the ritual from working?

Marco shifted his attention fully to Jackie, but he couldn't seem to form words.

Instead, his arm convulsed, turning from tan to purple and growing into Kar'Margorach, the demon who, more than any other ally he'd made on his quest, kept Marco going. Jackie had a newfound respect for Kar, having actually seen what he'd been through and what he'd done.

"Don't worry, Jackie," Kar said. "It fucking worked."

Author's Notes: I know it's been a while, but we're back with another chapter! Moving to our first house has been hectic, but we should be done soon, and hopefully start coming out with chapters a little faster? No promises though.

Anyway. Holy shit, this chapter was 32 pages long. A bit of a monster, but we're happy with how it turned out :)

The beginning "flashback" isn't EXACTLY how Allion died (mostly Jackie's brain filling in details, like how Scarion's supervillain speech went) but it's probably the only version you guys will see so it'll work well enough!

Thank you guys for reading as always, and if you want to read some of our other writing, you can check out our webcomic at SuicideNoun(.com)!

Peace!