ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE _|_|_|

"And to a place I come where nothing shines." — Dante's Inferno, Canto IV

Kenny

I was so sick of waiting.

And this is coming from a guy who used to wander Purgatory all the fucking time: this was the worst. That stretch of time between Red getting taken the night of the Wolf attack and now was one of the most drawn-out, excruciating waiting periods of my entire life.

It didn't help that the new Shadow that Damien had laden me with kept pulling at me. Like it wanted to tear me apart. Whatever this was, it wasn't the Shadow. Cthulhu's Shadow. The thing that had been part of me once and now was gone. I could remember what the Shadow felt like; sounded like. This wasn't it. This was all wrong.

The new, conjured-up Shadow pulled and pulled at me, sprawling out over the ground and whispering words that didn't exist onto the wind, and all the many things the real Shadow had done, but in a much more violent way. Because this one didn't need me. This one was just fucking with me.

And that was pretty Goddamn insulting.

Damien was striking really low blows. If his primary aim was just to piss me off, he'd succeeded days ago. But the longer I waited, the more I really did start to worry. I had no idea where the rest of my team was. I had no idea where my sister was, or where my girlfriend was, or what Damien really wanted of me. I had too much time on my hands to think, and that made my brain spiral, and I'm really not good at being alone with my thoughts if I can't act on them. Usually if something bugs me, I do something about it.

I'd been forced into a position where I couldn't. No matter how badly I wanted to.

Gary wasn't helping.

He'd said a few platitudes after the first few members of my team had gone in, and I understood where he was coming from, I did, but as the hours wore on and he kept reading passages from the Book of Mormon aloud to himself, I got pretty fucking snippy and yelled at him to shut the fuck up.

At which point Henrietta grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out behind the van and said, "Look, he's pissing me off, too, but we need Mister Sunshine-and-Fairy-Tales in there or we're all fucked. You want everyone to be fucked?"

"I'm just on edge," I said.

"No shit, but… ugh." Henrietta pinched the bridge of her nose, then huffed out a breath and lit up a cigarette she fitted with stunning quickness to her quellazaire. "Look, Mysterion," she said, almost somberly rather than snidely, "I know all this must suck for you. But there are rules to this shit. And I don't mean imposed authority. I mean possible cosmic catastrophes if we don't play this right."

"Well, what's Damien doing, then?!" I roared. "He's fucking with the natural order of the universe, and I'm trying to stop that!"

"I know," said Henrietta, blowing out a trail of smoke. "And the whole planet's gonna appreciate your heroism yet again once it's all over and whatever, but we really can't fuck with the Between. We really can't. I don't know how he's pulling all this, but he is a demon, so he's got that going for him. You wanna find your girlfriend and stop this guy? I don't say this much, but you need to chill."

Well, maybe Craig had rubbed off on her a little after all.

I heaved out a sigh, trying to ignore the shifting Shadow underfoot. "Fine," I gave in. "I just… I hate thinking about Red being trapped in there. I hate thinking about my team being all split up."

"Mosquito's got it under control," Henrietta reminded me. "You gotta do that whole… ugh, trust and friendship thing and whatever."

"Since when do you give pep talks?"

"I dunno," said Henrietta, shrugging one shoulder. "Feels weird. And don't think you're special, I did the same to Endgame."

I sort of laughed. "Who are you?" I asked.

"Ugh," said Henrietta. She took another drag from her cigarette, and said, "Actually, I keep thinking I might, uh… nevermind."

"Thinking you might what?"

"I said nevermind, cape boy."

"All right," I said. But I kind of had a feeling I knew where that thought was going.

I'd seen how differently Henrietta and Gary had been handling their duties as primary intel on this mission. Gary was being meticulous and reserved (and rightfully nervous) about it. Henrietta had actually complained a few times that she was on the sidelines while the rest of us got to literally rush into Hell.

If I wasn't mistaken, Henrietta wanted in on the League. Officially. I'm sure her having dated (a loose term, sure, but still) Craig added to it, as if she hadn't been helping us out from the very beginning. But I respected her, and didn't offer. She'd come to us if that was what she wanted.

But she was right, for now. We couldn't fuck too much with the universe. So I fucking kept waiting, and it was torture.

I kept watching the smoke billowing out from the lamp, hoping I'd see something, or hear Red again, but all it did was keep marking the way.

Until, about an hour after Biomech had gone into the Carnival, the radio in the League van turned on, playing through static a hurdy-gurdy rendition of Radiohead's How to Disappear Completely.

I rushed back into the van and Iron Maiden turned up the volume, indicating with a look that he hadn't been the one to turn on the radio. No one had.

"We interrupt your evening," Damien's voice came crackling through the speakers, over the music, "to bring you this exclusive Red Radio broadcast." My heart sped up. "Red Devil/Red Hair is pleased to inform all citizens of the town of South Park that the Carnival you've been waiting for will soon be open to the public. Just a few more pieces that need to fall in place. And we are always accepting new volunteers.

"But as for you, Mysterion," Damien continued, and I swear his voice sounded even closer. The music began to fade out, and the static started to condense into an atonal, almost mechanical buzz. "Have I got a delightful offer for you."
"Bring it, motherfucker," I muttered.

"Oh, I assure you, the time will come," he most definitely answered. This was just a straight-up conversation. "Tread lightly, now, won't you? I've experienced a few setbacks, and I could really use your help."

"Yeah, I bet," I growled. "Let me in and I'll help you right back down to Hell."

"I was so hoping you'd say that," Damien said, and I could hear the sneer in his voice. "The gate's open, Mysterion. I hope you like what we've done with the place."

The radio crackled out, and Iron Maiden turned to look at me. I was frozen in place, and he had to snap his fingers in front of my face to get me to move.

"Timmy," he said, concerned.

"Yeah," I said, snapping back into the present. "Yeah, dude, I'm cool. I… I can go in." I looked up, and through the windshield at the thick red mist that had gathered during the broadcast. "I can go in."

Before I knew it, my feet were on the ground, and I was primed to go. Footsteps sounded behind me, though, and I turned to see that Gary had left the van. He was hugging the Book of Mormon to his chest, and he cleared his throat, tucked a stray hair into place to keep it pristine, and he said, "Mysterion, I don't know if what I've been doing has actually been helpful. Sorry if I've been any kind of burden. I just… I don't know why Damien doesn't like the Book, and I don't know if Heavenly Father has a plan for this, but…"

"Hey," I said, feeling bad for yelling at him before, "you're doing fine." I set a hand on his shoulder and said, "I've heard you helping the others out. Especially my sister. And if you can console an Angel, Elder Harrison, I'd say you've helped a great deal so far. Thanks for coming with us."

He lit up a little, then stepped back and held out his right hand. "Good luck in there, Mysterion," he said. "I know you may have a very different outlook on things than I do, but… try to have faith, okay? Doesn't matter what in. Just believe. Believe in your team. You're not going to lose to the son of the Devil."

Wouldn't you know it, that really did make me feel better. I shook Gary's hand and said, "Thanks, dude. Hopefully we'll all meet up soon."

He managed an encouraging smile and said, "I'm sure of it."

To echo his sentiments, Henrietta called out from the van, "Don't fuck up the universe!"

"I won't," I said.

Delphi leaned out the window of the Tenth Circle vehicle and said, "We'll be right behind you. Kick some ass. I know you'll find Red, Mysterion. You've got this."

I thanked her, then turned, and finally, fucking finally followed the trail of red smoke pouring out from the lamp, until absolutely everything was just a cloud of the stuff. I lifted up a bit of my cape to breathe into, and pushed forward.

Then, in a gust of wind, the red smoke disappeared, and I was standing in front of the wrought iron Carnival gate.

Everything was quiet.

The wind was gone, even. No crickets, no noise from within. Nothing.

Something pulled at my feet, and I looked down. A bit of red mist still swirled at my ankles, but the dark, new Shadow beneath me was beckoning me in.

From inside, I heard only one noise: the slow, groaning turn of a large gear.

And then a deep, sonorous bell.

At the sound of the bell, the Shadow snapped forward, casting my silhouetted image on the ground and then extending out long, inward and inward and inward into the Carnival. Toward the Bullseye.

Another bell.

I took a step forward. The red mist floated lazily around me, and I took another step, and another, until I stuck with a slow, purposeful stride, following the tugging of the Shadow at my feet. Another bell; another; another.

From all around me, as the mist slithered past, I knew I could hear things. Shouts from a far distance, as if they were coming from the mountains; yowling and screeching of cats, still from far away; words that humans could not pronounce.

Another bell. Another bell.

More sounds from distant worlds all around me, whispering as if they were trying to beckon me somewhere. Trying to call me home.

I walked forward.

Nothing else around me but mist and debris. Soon, a large Ferris wheel came into view, and I saw it turn, with the groaning of the enormous gear again.

Another bell.

The mist grew thicker and thicker and thicker, but I kept on walking. I heard the gear turn one more time, and now I felt and heard a strange sort of fluttering, like a flag whipping in the wind; or the flap of a large tent.

The Shadow stopped pulling at me, so I stopped walking.

I hadn't seen or heard anyone from my team, I realized. It was as if I'd entered a ghost town, and I'd only just now realized it.

The bell tolled one last time, bringing the toll to nine, and the mist evaporated completely, leaving me standing in front of not the Ferris wheel, but a ramshackle, one-storey wooden building that looked like it had seen better days.

It almost looked like my parents' house.

I swallowed back a lump in my throat, and finally glanced around me.

No one nearby. Static in my wire.

"Mosquito?" I asked, to test the frequency. "Henrietta? Angel? Can anyone hear me?"

Nothing. Static.

I looked back up at the building. Upon further inspection, it was more than just a shack. It was one of those old, turn-of-the-twentieth-century haunted house rides. The outside of it looked like it had been painted decades ago, with images out of some silent film fever dream, all dancing devils and formless ghosts.

I drew the ticket out of my pocket, and looked down at the embossed numeral IX, then looked up at its twin, painted in hasty, fresh dark red over the peeling designs on the outer wall.

There was a small, rickety set of stairs leading up to a porch at the front of the Carnival attraction, where on any other dark house ride one might get into a little cart or something. There was a track on this one, but I was clearly meant to walk in. There were two doors; one to the left, one to the right.

I looked up at a sign, again brand new and lettered in red, fixed above and between the doors. It read:

HOUSE OF LAZARUS.

If that wasn't Damien calling me out, I couldn't fathom what was.

A slot opened up in the peeling wall between the doors at just above waist height. I clenched my fist around my ticket, then fed the little slip of paper into the slot.

A sickly whirring came from within, and then the ticket and the slot were gone, and the door to my right opened. A pair of red velvet curtains hung within, but there was no apparent light. My Shadow tugged at my feet; I steeled myself and followed it through the door.

The door swung shut behind me, and lights appeared underfoot, lighting up the cart track in front of me like an airport runway. With nowhere else to go, I followed. As I walked, I could see the outlines of a few cardboard cutouts lining the walls, typical of the dark ride atmosphere. The gaudiness was obnoxious and obvious, but at the same time, things started to look more and more like silhouettes of R'lyeh. Crude, shoddily painted versions of the pillars and vegetation of R'lyeh, but still, enough to make me uncomfortable, especially with the Shadow pulling at my feet.

I palmed a shuriken in my left hand and took my .45 up into my right. Still no sound came from inside the building.

Henrietta and Gary had heard all sorts of shit from the others. Endgame had gone up against the Leviathan itself. Kite and Toolshed had fought Dagon. Red Serge had bested Cerberus. If I was in a dark ride, there was no telling what Damien could have hidden in there to attack me at any moment.

But the thing was… I doubted he'd really spring-loaded the place full of monstrosities. He knew what I was capable of. He knew how pissed off I was. He'd more than likely be trying to keep me on edge in order to really fuck with me somehow.

"If you think you can scare me to death," I said aloud, figuring Damien could hear me, "that's only happened once, and I've got shit to do. There's nothing you can do to me I haven't seen before."

"Oh, believe me, dear boy," Damien's voice came from overhead and everywhere around me. I cocked my gun. "I know."

"Show yourself," I challenged him. I'd come to a point on the track with no surroundings. The footlights had stopped, but I could still see my hands in front of me.

"And just where is the fun in that?"

"Yeah, this all just a big fuckin' laugh for you, huh?" I said into the darkness. Again, whispers all around me, and then my Shadow pulled in four different directions and I practically tripped trying to keep my feet. I righted myself and glanced around. Nothing had changed about my surroundings, but there now seemed to be a pool of light at my feet, enough to show me standing in a cross of shadows.

And then eyes opened up inside them, and then grinning white mouths.

I tucked away my shuriken and fired my gun at the one directly in front of me. The cross broke, and out from the solid shadow skittered one of Damien's little imps. Another took its place, and when the cross reformed, I felt the Shadow pull forward.

Well. At least I'd finally figured that out.

"Hey, Damien," I said, making a show of putting away my .45. "Come out and talk. Come out and tell me why you decided to fucking possess me."

Damien's laugh echoed all around me.

"You're really just gonna do this?!" I shouted, outstretching my arms. My Shadow didn't follow my movements. Of course it didn't. It really wasn't the Shadow after all. "You seriously sent your stupid little imps to mimic the Shadow and fuck with me like this?!"

"I'm the son of the Devil, Mysterion," Damien said from everywhere. "I'll do whatever I want, if it means I can have you all to myself. I'd say I got your attention."

"You haven't stopped getting my fucking attention!" I shouted. "What do you want?!"

"Oh, I want what any successful demon wants. All of that and more. But I'm not an idiot, I know I can't do it alone. It's so hard to find good help these days. So many souls in Hell and not a single one good enough for the task. And we do miss you back home, McCormick. Haven't paid us a visit in a long time."

"So where's the welcoming committee?" I spat. "Show yourself."

"But I'm right here," he said, from directly behind me.

I whirled around, and there he was.

Damien was standing in a pool of light, dressed impeccably in a blood red ringleader's coat with black buttons and epaulettes, his red eyes fixed directly on me. He cast no shadow into the spotlight, until another handful of his imps skittered out of the darkness and formed a twisted cross under his feet. He grinned like a snake when I shuddered at the sight.

"So good of you to join me," Damien said, and the light in the room began to change from white to red.

"Yeah, no thanks to the staggered entry bullshit you rigged," I said. I held up my .45 and cocked it, the barrel aimed between his eyes. "Where's my team, Damien?"

"Cutting right to the chase, I see," Damien said, sounding bored. "That's something that has always irritated me about you humans. Always in such a hurry. Just one thing after the next until the day you show up at my door."

"Hell doesn't belong to you, Damien. Not yet. I highly doubt your father's super pleased with any of this," I said.

"It doesn't matter what he condones," Damien said. "Hell is mine to inherit and mine to build. What do you think of yours, McCormick? Have I captured the essence of what you fear most? Is this deserving?"

"What are you talking about?"

Damien grinned. "You're alone, aren't you?"

Above his head, the light fell upon eight nooses, echoing those from Wilcox's painting of the Ninth Circle. I almost dropped my gun, but recovered at the last second, shoved it into its holster, and made a run for Damien, catching him around the neck with both hands. "Where the fuck is my team?!" I shouted at him.

All he did was grin again. The imps making up the false Shadow rose up around me and shoved me back, away from Damien. "Dammit!" I barked, trying to move only to be held back by the false Shadow yet again.

"Something wrong?" Damien asked.

"Yeah, everything!" I snapped. I regained my footing, and glowered at him, and then up at the nooses, then back at Damien again. Echoes of my handprints around his neck were visible for a second before he brushed his fingers down his throat and they were gone. "Why are you doing this?" I had to know. "What's the point?"

"The point of what, exactly?"

"Let's start with the Shadow," I said.

"Yes," Damien said with a grin. "Let's start there. You had a gift, McCormick. You had a gift so rare in this vast and stupid universe, and you gave it up. I gave it back, that's all."

"Obviously I didn't want it!"

"You don't know what you want."

"Yeah, I think I fucking do."

Damien scowled. "You're a human who came close to grasping eternity and you threw it away. You should be thanking me for considering you at all in—"

"You don't know!" I shouted at him. "Maybe you've got files on all of us down in Hell, fuck, maybe you've got a whole library devoted to me, but fuck—you. You have no idea what I went through to get rid of my curse! So take this fake-ass Shadow and fight me. Me, you asshole, that's all you're gonna get."

Damien stared me down, considering my words for a moment, but the one he chose to echo was, "Fake…?"

"Yes, fake!" I snapped. I held my right arm out to one side. The various shadows under it followed, and I watched them, twisting and writhing in the hazy red light. I remembered the Shadow, all too intimately, and this wasn't it. "You think you can fool me with this?" I dropped my arm. "Maybe the Carnival was Tenorman's idea, but everything you've conjured up sure as shit goes along with the theme, Damien. It's all fake. It's shitty paint, it's smoke and mirrors, it's all a fucking set, it's an illusion that you've built up to distract us from what's really going on."

Damien smirked a little and folded his arms. "Your point?"

I clenched my hands into fists and held my ground. "What is really going on?" I demanded. "What's behind the curtain, Damien? Why set up any of this at all?"

Damien raised one eyebrow, and his smirk stretched into a grin. He turned his back, and said, "Walk with me."

"No! Just—"

"I said, walk with me," Damien said harshly, his tone taking on a rumbling, deep echo. As soon as he'd spoken the final word, the eight nooses above his head caught flame and disintegrated. Before I could even react, the fake Shadow pushed me forward, forcing my feet to follow. "That's better," Damien said, and set a steady pace for us. Red lights flickered on underfoot as he led me further and further into the building.

I managed to make my steps my own again, and I kept my eyes fixed on Damien. "Well?" I demanded.

"Well, what?"

"Answer my question. Why set this Carnival up at all?"

"Because it's all about reckoning," Damien said. He clasped his hands behind him as he walked down the hall. The light began to illuminate a thin corridor flanked with thorny torches, and I followed him, feeling the imps that had invaded my shadow tug at me from below with each heavy step. "It's about judgment, Mysterion. It's about weighing your souls and counting up your sins and flaws and failures, because the thing is…"

He stopped at the foot of a small staircase, which, as the light in the room grew, I was able to see led up to a small platform on which was stationed a throne of human remains. Damien sat down on it and crossed one leg over the other, and drummed his fingers on the bones that made up the arms of the disgustingly ornate chair. "The thing about you heroes," he continued, spitting out the word, "is that you have so much going for you in, well, the other direction." He pointed one sharp fingernail upward. "I can't use that. I certainly can't have that getting in my way of building."

"So, you're, what?" I asked. "Putting us through the wringer just to make us give up or join you? You wouldn't be targeting us if we weren't a threat, I get that. So why build here? Why South Park?"

"All roads lead to Rome, as it were," Damien said. "There is an excellent concentration of energy from the Betweens still lingering around here. And that volcano, well, what a perfect little elevator back home."

"Okay," I said. "Enough. Where is everyone? What is the point? Where's my girlfriend? Where's my sister? Where's Cartman?" That last question got him to pick his head up. "Where's your brother, Damien?" I asked again. "Why invite him in early at all?"

Damien tilted his head back and laughed, long and loud, and it echoed through the building, which appeared to be getting larger and changing shape the longer we stood inside. "You're all questions, McCormick!" he chided as he leaned forward again. Flames shot upward from his eyes as he glared at me, and when they were gone, the fire still seemed to be alive in his irises. If he could kill with a look, why wasn't he? Why not just burn me to a crisp right then and there and have it over with? "Why indeed," Damien taunted. "The answer is rather obvious, really. And to think, all I needed to do was kidnap our mother to get his attention. What a moron. He has been incredibly helpful to me so far, no matter how blind he himself is to the matter."

"How so?"

He laughed again and spread his arms out to either side. The platform seemed taller than it had moments before, and he was now looking down at me. Eyes opened up in the black walls around him and still more of his shadow imps scurried about, hissing whispers into the air.

"Well," Damien said triumphantly, "just look at what he's done for me already!"

I gasped and really did give myself a couple seconds to look around.

Yeah, we were definitely no longer in a ramshackle dark ride at any old carnival. I'd been to Hell a few times, and while Satan had preferred sort of building into caves and crevices, it seemed that Damien was adding, well, a human touch to the realm he was set to inherit. We were standing now in a great stone hall, and the gleaming red light was clearly the glow of the volcanic lava all around us. When I looked back at Damien, the stairs and the platform were higher still, and he drew in a deep breath, clearly savoring everything around him.

"Cartman… Cartman did this?" I asked.

"Oh, my, yes," said Damien. "That little weasel just can't stop trying to find an exit from the pit I flung him into the moment he arrived." Oh. Oh fuck. "You wonder why I called him here early? It was simply to get a head start. The further he goes into the bright and shiny new Tenth Circle of Hell, the larger it gets, the more Space I have to build. And he's never going to stop wandering, because he's an idiot and a human and all you humans do is keep pushing even when you know it's futile. I really should give you lot more credit. I mean, I'd be out of a job otherwise! But it's the torture, Mysterion, it's the absolute delight of doing whatever I want with your damned souls that's really going to make all of this worth it.

"I told you I was bringing the fire and brimstone back," Damien said, standing, "and here we are. My father's reign is ending, and I will rise. Hell is to be feared, my boy. Hell must be a force to be reckoned with! And I need Reapers who understand that. I need an army that will once again stoke fear in the hearts of men."

The imps pulled me down, and because I wasn't paying attention, they got me onto my knees.

"That's where you come in," Damien said. I picked my head up, and saw him descending his staircase, every footstep kicking up sparks. Down from the cavernous ceiling once again hung the eight flaming nooses. "Once I get your team out of the way, what choice will you have but to join me if you want their eternities to be tolerable?"

"You fuck," I spat, trying to break free. But the imps held me down, wrapping around my arms and legs, very nearly cutting off my circulation.

"Even if they survive my Carnival, I'll see them again soon enough," Damien said. "Yes, I've kept files, and don't think for a moment I won't manipulate a few things to my favor once their final judgment comes."

"You FUCK!" I shouted again. I tried to reach for one of my Roman candles, but I just could not move. I couldn't fucking move.

"Unless…" Damien said, trailing off to let the word hover in the air like a storm cloud. He brought up his right hand and picked at his sharp fingernails a little with the tip of his thumb, creating sparks as he did. The fire subsided from the hanging nooses overhead. His mouth then spread into a serpentine grin, and his firey eyes were on me again. "Unless, of course," he said, "you're willing to make a deal."

I felt like there was an anvil in my stomach, and at the same time I felt completely hollowed out. I'd had my share of opponents before, but the thing about Damien was… he wasn't some Dark God from the vast reaches of time and space, he wasn't some simple cartel boss or cult leader. He was a man my own age, but one who had walked the path of ultimate darkness from the moment he'd taken his first step. He was just enough of a demon to be able to absolutely destroy lives and conjure shadows and flame, but he was also just enough of a human to know what made us tick, what made us strong and what made us weak.

He had the capacity for empathy, but in its place was arrogance. He was even more of a sociopath than his Goddamn younger brother, because the thing about Cartman was, even when he managed to get ahead… he'd stop, eventually. Cartman would tire of whatever it was and find something else to do. Damien didn't stop. Damien could and would follow through, and it did not matter to him one bit what he had to do to get there. He even relished in it.

"You're right, you know," Damien said, the darkness in his tone so much more apparent now that I'd really figured him out. "It's all fake. For the most part. But it's serving its purpose, this Carnival. I may be bringing back some of the old ways, but pokers and racks are just so medieval. I don't see why torture can't evolve with the times. This Carnival is judgment, Mysterion. That part is very real. And… oh, yes… so is this."

He snapped his fingers, and a swirling grey mist appeared in the air beside him. The mist then curved into a circle and showed me, as if through a telescope, a chillingly familiar sight. An open grave… and the image zoomed in like a camera, until I could see the coffin at the bottom of the pit. And I could hear pounding coming from inside the coffin, and I could hear a voice call out from inside:

"Kenny?"

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

"KAREN!" I cried out. The mist folded in on itself, and the image was gone. "No!" I shouted. "You bastard! Let her out, let my sister out of there!"

"You want me to let her go?" Damien said condescendingly. He squatted down in front of me and jerked my chin toward him so I had to look him right in his burning eyes. "You want her to live? You want any of your precious friends to live, and have a relatively comfortable afterlife at the end of it all? Call it back."

I writhed again and the imps held on harder. "What?" I said through clenched teeth.

"You heard me," Damien said, lowering his tone. "Call—it—back."

"The Shadow's dead," I said. "I killed it. It's dead and gone and—"

"And yet it did let out one last call," Damien said.

My heart skipped. "What are you talking about?"

Damien sneered and stood up. He paced a little, then turned to face me again. "It's still out there, you know," he said. "The Void. The End of the End. The birthplace and resting place of all that created and destroyed R'lyeh. You banished it from Earth, but it's out there. Yuggoth waits, Mysterion. Those dreams didn't end when Cthulhu was destroyed. Your friend Marsh should know all about that. All about the endlessness that still exists in the Spaces Between. All those excellent pockets R'lyeh left behind."

He leaned down to look at me and said in a dark tone, "I want it. I want all of it. And oh, I fully intend on taking it."

"Are you fucking insane?!" I shouted. The answer was probably, but he'd never say it. "You can't harness an entire extraterrestrial dimension, it'll tear the Earth apart! You said it yourself, you'd be out of a job without humans, but if you do this, you'll throw the entire universe out of balance!"

"Not if I build."

"Let my sister go!"

"Oh, and what? Let the judgment of the Angel swoop on down and smite me? I think not."

I pulled against the imps that were holding me down, gathering my breath and all my strength to fight against them. Damien watched, hardly reacting, and simply scoffed as more of his shadow creatures flitted out from the walls to pull against me, making my shadow nothing but a heavy ball and chain.

I had fought.

I had fought so hard against Cthulhu, against my curse, against the Cult, and R'lyeh, and everything that sought to make me something that I refused to become. It couldn't have been for nothing. I couldn't have destroyed Cthulhu and R'lyeh just to be held down by a selfish half-demon who saw me as nothing more than a puppet in his infernal Passion Play; nothing more than a stepping stone to get what he wanted.

But the thing was, he'd managed to get exactly what he wanted already.

Damien had split up my team and cornered me, alone. He had everything in his court. He'd played me, and all of us, by giving us rules and consequences to our actions.

I managed to push myself up a little, only to be yanked back down.

Everyone I cared about was in jeopardy… not just now, but eternally if I could do nothing. The entire planet was once again at risk of annihilation and an indeterminable era of darkness. All of it just one big circle. And I, Mysterion, who lived to protect and fight for the world no matter what… I couldn't do anything.

Not alone.

I hadn't defeated Cthulhu on my own. I'd had my team. I had always had my team. And as long as I was trapped inside that building with Damien, I had no idea where any of them were. My wire was static. For all I knew, a Space had swallowed us up and we really were back in Hell.

I really couldn't do this alone.

"Pathetic," Damien said as I once again tried to struggle against the shadows. "Go ahead and wear yourself down, Mysterion. I'll just pluck your little soul right out of Hell once you've died of exhaustion and do whatever I want with it. You really think you stand a chance against me?"

"Let everyone go," I growled up at him. "That means my team, that means my sister. That means Red. Let them go."

"And what, McCormick? What will you give me?"

"Just let them go."

"Contrary to our surroundings, Mysterion, I am not playing games," Damien said. He was sounding angry. Good. People do dumb shit when they're angry. Cartman definitely did, and I'd butted heads with him enough times to know maybe a little of what Damien's human side might react to. "Do we have a deal?"

I tried to run my options through my head, but I knew I couldn't hesitate for very long.

"Will you become my Immortal Reaper, and walk the Spaces Between to help me reach my goal?" Damien bargained. "If you do, I will give you my word that your friends will know no more of Hell."

"How do I know you won't cheat me on that?" I snapped.

"Give me a little credit, McCormick. A deal's a deal. You hold up your end, and I'll hold up mine."

Tears stung in my eyes. I shut my eyes tightly, refusing to cry, but my closed lids registered not blackness, but a pulsing red light.

And I felt hands on my shoulders.

I was still being weighted down by Damien's imps, but from somewhere else… from somewhere else, she was there.

"…Red…" I dared to whisper out.

"Kenny," my girlfriend said, and I damn near cried right there. "I'm right here."

"No… you're not, baby, you're not," I said. "I can't find you. I'm so sorry."

"I'm here, Kenny," Red said again. "You're at the Bullseye."

I gasped, but didn't open my eyes for fear I'd lose my connection.

"What does that mean?" I asked. "Do you know?"

"It's where everything converges," Red said. "I'm here, too. I've been able to see everything. Your League is okay, Kenny, everyone is fighting so hard, and I know you can, too."

"But what do I do?" I asked. "Where are you?"

"I'm still Between," said Red, "but you're so close I can touch you. I know you can do this. You just have to fight."

I drew in a staggering breath. "I think I have to make a deal with him, Red," I said. "I don't know what else to do."

"Fight, baby, you have to fight."

"I know, but I can't move."

"Then fight however you can, Mysterion. You can do this, I know it. Please don't give up. You've come this far, and you're so close…"

"Okay," I said. "I'll try. And Red?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to find you."

I felt her arms slide around me, and I finally did feel myself cry. I hadn't felt her touch in days, and now I could feel her hair fall across my shoulder, feel her lips as she pressed a kiss to my cheek, feel her breath as she said, gently, "I know you will. You're my hero."

And then the connection was gone, and I felt the weight of Damien's imps hauling me further down. I let my eyes flare open, and I took stock of myself. The more I struggled, the worse I was pulled down. So I relaxed. Instantly, a few of the imps fell away. I measured out my breaths, and glared up at Damien. He appeared not to have heard my conversation with Red. Good.

I could still win this.

"Well?" Damien prompted. "What will it be?"

I had to do something, and it had to be something he wouldn't expect.

So I said, "I'll make a deal with you."

Damien's eyes widened, and a grin appeared on his face.

"If," I negotiated, "you can kill me in a fight."

He just kept right on grinning. "Oh?" he asked.

"I can't very well be Immortal while I'm alive anymore," I said. "So I'm of no use to you till I'm dead. It'll be easier for whatever's left of R'lyeh to find me then, anyway. Kill me fair and square in a fight, and I'll work for you, and you leave my team alone."

"Interesting," Damien said. "Any other terms?"

"Yeah. Call off your shadows," I demanded. "No cheap tricks. And if you kill me, you've got me. But," I added, "if I win, if I make it out of this Carnival with my life, no matter what else happens and no matter who else fights with me or whatever else fights with you, you just plain leave us out of your schemes for good."

Fuck. God. Fuck. This was risky, but it was my best and probably only shot. And I was still giving myself and my team an out.

Damien snapped his fingers with both hands, and his imps fell away from me just enough to allow me to stand, though they still loitered about my feet and inside my shadow.

"I admit," Damien said, "the thought of both killing and recruiting you is just too good to pass up. Two birds with one stone, as I hear the humans say."

"So do you accept my terms?" I asked, keeping my voice level despite the fact that I was fucking shaking inside. But I was going to do exactly what Red had said. I was going to fight. I wasn't going to come this far and not at least try.

"Yes, yes," Damien said. "Kill you, and you work for me. You win, you and your friends can go. Eternally."

I didn't like the confidence in his tone.

"The deal ends once I step outside the Carnival, Damien," I said. He scowled. "I'm not a fucking idiot, I'm not leaving myself open to you killing me later on. The deal's only good while we're inside Carnival gates."

Damien snorted, and burning smoke shot out his nostrils. "Fine," he relented. "If that's how it's going to be, then I'm just going to absolutely savor tearing you apart."

"Yeah, good luck with that."

He didn't look as completely confident as he had moments ago, which told me that I could actually win this and make it out alive and well, and so could my team.

I repeated the terms of the arrangement: "You kill me within Carnival grounds, I'll be your Reaper and you leave my friends alone, now and in the afterlife. But if I walk outside those gates and you've lost, everything's off, and you just plain leave us alone."

"You really are a fool," Damien said, "thinking you can make a deal with the Devil and walk free."

"You're not the Devil," I countered. "Not yet anyway. Fair fight, Damien."

"Yes, yes. But once you work for me, there's no going back."

"Yeah, I kinda read into that," I said.

"Then," said Damien, holding out his right hand. "Do we have a deal?"

Fuck.

Here goes nothing.

I shook the son of the Devil's hand.

– – –

Karen

Believe, believe, believe, I told myself with every precious heartbeat. Think, Karen, concentrate. Breathe. Believe. Believe.

Rationing my breath, I thought back to the details of the ride. Technically, I had not yet gotten out of it. This all just had to be a part of it.

So… what had I seen? The ride was a wheel, a circle; seemingly unending, and yet I had managed to stop it. The Shadow… that… thing, impersonating my brother, which Damien had summoned specifically to overwhelm me. Something about the Void… the Void…

I felt like I was stuck in a void. No light crept in. The coffin was sealed shut.

Or… no. No, it wasn't sealed. It was locked. I'd heard it lock. If the padlock was on the outside, I was out of luck, but maybe I'd get lucky. Maybe.

I shifted best I could to start feeling along the righthand side of the coffin, where the click had come from. I started to pray that I would find something. Believe. Just believe.

I had to believe that I was not going to die in there, locked up and alone. I had to believe that I could save Kenny from whatever fate it was Damien had planned for him. I had to believe that I could still have a hand in saving everyone—my team, my town—from a spiraling descent into Hell.

Finding nothing along the side, I took off my glove and tried again. I ran my fingers along the inlay of the coffin, and then felt around the pine lid. Nothing. Nothing. Void. Tears in my eyes, I tried again, this time gingerly feeling against the crease between the lid and the base.

And then I found it.

I let out a small cry of surprise, but muffled my excitement quickly. Damien could still be out there. Something else could easily still be out there. I didn't even know how long I'd been locked up. With how strangely time was moving, it was possible I'd resurface at the true end of everything.

Still, I had to try.

My fingers touched upon a small keyhole, just barely large enough for me to stick my pinky inside to get a sense of the interior mechanism. Thank you, I thought.

I slid off my other glove and took off my barrette, grateful that I had it. Originally I'd just thought of the wing motif on it as a symbol for myself, but luckily, the hairpin aspect of it could come in handy. I twisted the clip around a few times to get the pin to bend out, feeling around it in the dark, hoping I wouldn't drop it and lose my only way out.

"Yea," I quoted in a whisper to myself, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…"

I took a deep breath, well aware it could be my last, and jabbed my hairpin into the lock. Letting my breath out slowly, I felt around with the pin for a lever or latch. I closed my eyes, and prayed, and thought about my brother, and thought about all of the good I still wanted to do for the world, and how much I owed to everyone who had ever helped me. I was not going to die in that coffin in the middle of Hell on Earth. Absolutely not.

Carefully, carefully, I moved around the hairpin. My lungs were starting to burn. There was static from the wire.

I heard a click.

My eyes shot open, and though I still registered only darkness, I had hope. I took a burning gasp, and turned my hairpin one more time. A slightly louder click sounded, and then a thunk as the lid of the coffin gave and let in a crack of light.

I let out a short, triumphant laugh, then shut myself up, figuring that Damien very well could still be out there, hovering over me, waiting for me to die.

Drawing back my hairpin, I jabbed my right knee up into the coffin lid, and it shot up, its hinges creaking. I sat up quickly and shoved the lid fully open, taking deep, deep breaths of the sulphur-filled air. Everything was heavy, and I felt dizzy, but at least I was outside again. I looked up, finding that I was still in a pit six feet deep. No sign of Damien or his awful little imps; all I could hear was the grinding and thudding of an enormous gear.

I didn't know how long I'd been underground, but hopefully I wasn't too late getting out to help. After a few more breaths, I stuck my pin back into my hair, and got myself standing. There was nothing around that could serve as a ladder out, no vines or roots or anything, so I just grabbed into the dirt best I could and began to claw my way up out of the hole.

It took a few tries, and I nearly twisted my ankle on one of them, but finally, arms and legs and lungs all burning now, I made it back to the surface. I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the sky, so profoundly happy to be alive and able to do something again.

After steadying my breaths a little more, I tried the wire. "Henrietta?" I asked, finding that my voice was faint from thinning out my breaths in the coffin. I wanted water. "Elder Harrison? Kenny? Anyone copy?"

"Angel?!"

Tears sprang to my eyes upon hearing the voice that answered.

"Karen, where are you?! Are you okay? We've all been worried sick!"

"Hi, Ike," I said, feeling myself smile. "I'm fine. I'm alive."

"Where are you?" he asked. "Most of us are back together. We'll come get you."

"Is Mysterion there?" I wondered.

"No sign yet, but if anyone can find him, I'm sure you can," said Ike. "Karen, I am so glad you're okay. Hold on. We're going to come get you."

"Number Six," I said.

"Yeah… yeah, hold on."

I thanked him, and tried to push myself up. My arms were spent from clawing myself out of the hastily-dug grave, but after a few tries, I made it to my feet. Once standing, I looked around me to discover that I was standing in the ruins of the Devil's Wheel ride. It hadn't been the most modern-looking thing when I'd entered it, but it already looked like something that had fallen apart and gone to waste years ago. Pieces were buried into the ground; it was a scrap heap more than anything.

In the distance, I saw the volcano, and beyond that, still more rubble… and, further still, the Ferris wheel, lit up with red lights nearly bright enough to combat the few stars that shone overhead. Clouds were gathering, as though to let us know, once and for all, that a storm was coming.

I shuddered, and began to walk away from the destroyed ride when my vision went blurry and dark for a second. I fell forward willingly, sitting on my hands and knees and forcing myself to breathe so I wouldn't completely collapse. I was dehydrated from my struggle and time spent buried in the coffin. I'd need to figure out something, and soon, if I was still going to be any help to anyone.

After a few minutes, I heard footsteps outside, and voices as well. Carefully, hands shaking, I took out my slingshot. I had no idea what had happened to my gun; I shuddered to think about Damien keeping hold of it. The groaning of metal could be heard, and one of the large chunks of the broken ride in front of me began to move. I steadied my breath and hated the fact that my hands were shaking, but I had to be ready for anything.

The piece of the ride was thrown to one side with ease, and the action kicked up red dust from the ground where it had been. As it settled, I could see a silhouette, and then a person. I smiled, and put down my slingshot, and let out a sigh of relief.

The Human Kite. "Angel!" he exclaimed. He turned and cupped his hands over his mouth to call out, "Guys, we're good, move in!"

And then there they all were. Everyone on the team who'd been granted a ticket, minus Mysterion, the Coon, and Professor Chaos. Tears flooded my eyes and I tried to pick myself up, but stumbled again. Red Serge rushed forward and helped me sit up, and as soon as I could, I hugged him. "Hi," I said.

"Hi," he said in return. "You okay?"

"I will be," I said. "You?"

"I'm good. What happened?"

I coughed to regulate my breath, and said, "Damien buried me."

"Buried—what? That asshole!"

"I'll be okay," I said again.

"You're fucking amazing, Karen McCormick," he said in an undertone. "Hey. Sorry if I've been kinda distant, eh. I, uh… I had some time to do some thinking. Unplugged."

I drew my head back and asked, "Really?"

"Yeah." He grinned, and said, "Given the circumstances of where we are, I'd say I had a 'come to Jesus' moment, but I'm still very Jewish."

I laughed, and hugged him again. And started coughing again.

"Anyone have water?" Red Serge asked the others.

"Shit," said Endgame. "I do, but my dumbass ride was on the River Styx. It mighta gotten in through a crack." He took a small flask off his belt and tossed it aside. "Figure we shouldn't take chances on, like, Hell-water shit."

"Good point," said Toolshed. "Unfortunately, mine was a water ride, too. Lethe. I'm out, Angel, sorry." He unclipped his own canteen from his toolbelt and threw it aside as well.

"Mine should be good," Mosquito offered. He took a flask off of his own belt and handed it to me. "Here, I haven't dipped into it much."

"If you're rationing it—" I started.

"Drink the whole thing if you have to, Angel, don't pass out on us, okay?" Mosquito said.

I nodded, and accepted the flask. "I've got backups in the vans," Toolshed said. "Once Henrietta and them move in, we'll have access to more supplies."

"So, they're on the way?" I checked after a couple fantastic sips of water. "What's the plan?"

"Well, finding you was part of it," Mosquito said. "Now we just need Mysterion, Chaos, and the Coon, and we'll be good to really go up against Damien and Tenorman. For right now, with who we have, we're going to try to formulate some kind of extraction plan for the townspeople being held here. Red Serge found the trailers where Tenorman's been copying people for his clone army."

"You?" I asked Red Serge.

"I sure did," he answered. I managed to smile while taking another drink of water. In that moment, I felt so proud of him. He'd been so attached to his screens lately he hadn't been giving any merit to his own natural talents. I was so happy to see him breaking out and doing the good I knew he could do on his own. Whatever happened, I was sure he and I could work things out and keep ourselves going strong. "How about you? We've all gone up against some crazy shit. And you said Damien buried you. As in, Damien-Damien?"

"What do you mean by that?" I wondered.

"I mean," said Toolshed, "we've all been hearing one or the other of them on our rides. With only a couple sightings of that Disarray asshole."

"Damien sent an illusion of himself into mine," Kite followed. "He's trying to keep us guessing that he could be anywhere. We don't have many other leads besides the stronghold at the top of the volcano."

"Or maybe the Ferris wheel," Marpesia added.

"I saw him," I said. I took one more drink, and tried to give Mosquito back his flask, but he refused it, so I clipped it onto my belt. With Red Serge's help, I got myself standing again, and feeling much better this time, then said to the others, "He conjured up a fake Shadow to throw me off."

"Wait… as in, the Shadow?" Mosquito asked.

"Yes."

"The one with just the eyes, and the dark wings?"

"I… didn't see the Shadow before, but that's what it looked like, yeah," I said. "Like Kenny, but not like Kenny."

The washed-out looks on everyone else's faces told me that what I had seen was exactly the Shadow they'd witnessed in R'lyeh. My stomach churned thinking about it… thinking about something that foreboding consuming Kenny. Changing him, warping him, until he wasn't even Kenny anymore.

"Fuck," Mosquito breathed out. "What's Damien's game, here?"

"I mean," I said, "obviously he wants my brother. He specifically came onto my ride to taunt me with that. He kidnapped Red right off the bat to throw Kenny off. He must be…"

"At the Bullseye," Toolshed and Kite said together.

"Attraction Nine," Kite continued, "must be at the direct center. Do we go directly there? Do we keep heading to the trailers? Do we—"

"We are not," Mosquito said, "splitting up. That defeats the whole point of this. But we do need to make sure Mysterion makes it out okay. Shit…"

"There's Henrietta and Gary," Marpesia suggested. "You moved them in closer, so… maybe we try an early entry? Biomech made it in okay."

She gestured to Token, in full armor, at that point, and I smiled, glad he had recovered and made it in. I took it that he'd adopted a new alter ego, and didn't pry.

"Biomech had a means of entry," Mosquito said. "As soon as we send a civilian van in, that's basically sending out a signal to Damien that we're attacking. I don't want to attack until we have Mysterion and the others."

"The Coon and Chaos are kind of free agents, though, in a way, right?" I said. "They're at least kind of on similar wavelengths. I'm sure they'll at least find each other."

"I'm concerned about Chaos's Circle being Violence," Mosquito said, "not to mention Disarray being around to fuck with him again. And there's been no sign of Cartman for days. If we don't get ahold of them and we march on Hell, there's a high chance they could get stuck."

"Well, we need to do something or the other," Kite said. "I vote send in Henrietta and Gary. Damien hates the Book of Mormon for whatever reason anyway. Having it in proximity might give us an advantage."

"Plus, that takes care of getting the Gingers out of here," Toolshed added. "And we'll still have Delphi and Iron Maiden keeping track of things from a distance, and as backup armor when we need them."

"I kinda agree," said Endgame. "But, like… we really should find Mysterion. Right?"

Mosquito folded his arms and drummed the fingers of one hand against the opposite arm. He glanced around the Carnival grounds for a few seconds, then sighed. "All right," he said. "Here's what we're going to do. We're going, as a team, to find Attraction Nine. I'm really glad we could all be here for Angel, and I have a feeling that Mysterion could use the backup once he's out, too. As soon as we've got Mysterion, Red Serge, I want you to contact Iron Maiden and have him send in one of the vans with Henrietta and Gary."

"On it," Red Serge said with a customary salute.

"Good. Angel," Mosquito checked with me, "you doing okay?"

I nodded. "I'm fine. Oh, my gloves…" I realized.

"What?" asked Red Serge.

"I left them down there," I said, gesturing behind us to the pit. "I can probably go without, but…"

Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned to find myself looking up at the Human Kite. He grinned, and held my gloves out to me. "Easy find," he said. "Here you go."

"Did you just climb down there?!" I wondered.

"Nah," he said, "just got a read."

I smiled, and accepted my gloves back from him. "Thank you," I said, pulling them on.

"Least I could do," he said. He set both hands on my shoulders, and said, "Hey. I got so worried when we were separated. I'm glad you're okay."

Beyond grateful, I hugged him, and said, dismissing all else about the situation around us, "Thanks, Kyle." I really was glad I'd gotten to know him, through dating Ike. Kyle was really similar to Kenny when it came to being a protective older brother, and I respected him so much for that.

Which, of course, got me thinking about Kenny again. But then that flash of a vision of the conjured Shadow came into my mind, and I forced my eyes open wide so I wouldn't have to think about it.

Kenny had broken his curse, right? Damien was powerful, but there was no way he could actually give the curse back to him… right?

I drew back, thanked Kite again, pulled on my gloves, and began walking with the others as we followed Mosquito toward the Bullseye.

As we walked, I kept hearing that awful grinding noise, as of an enormous gear, or set of gears, groaning to start up some sort of huge, heavy machine. I hung toward the back of the group with Red Serge, and grabbed his arm and asked quietly, "Do you hear that?"

"Hmm, what?" he asked. "The grinding noise?"

"Yes! Okay, you do hear it."

"Yeah," Red Serge said. "I kinda just started hearing it. Like, not long before we found you."

I shuddered, and chose to take another drink from Mosquito's water flask. "D'you think it has to do with Mysterion?" I wondered.

"I'd say that's a safe bet," Red Serge said. He took a moment to survey the area around us, then glanced down, and watched, for several paces, the feet of those in front of us. "Hmm."

"What?"

He drew his thin sword and started dragging the tip through the dirt underfoot.

"What?" I asked again.

"Hold on," he cautioned.

We continued walking in silence for a while, to nothing but the groaning of the phantom gear, and then Red Serge stopped and called out, "Hold up, guys."

Mosquito held up a hand to get the others to halt, and all eyes were then on us as Mosquito huddled us back together. "What?" our de-facto leader wondered.

"Yeah, we're going in circles, eh," Red Serge said.

"How do you mean?" Mosquito asked.

Red Serge gestured for the others to take a step back, and once they had, he lifted up his sword tip from the ground. He'd connected a line back to where he'd started.

"Fuck," Kite said, stating pretty much everyone's thought.

"Not only that," Red Serge said, "but I've been noticing this for a while. The Carnival's expanding."

"That's impossible," Mosquito said.

"We're in a pocket of Hell, dude, no it's not," said Red Serge. "Look."

He pointed forward with the tip of his sword, showing that the footsteps surrounding the line were much further apart than they should have been. Not by much, but enough to prove his theory. "The Carnival is expanding," Red Serge said again. "We're not getting to the Bullseye without following that path." He pointed with his sword to the chalk outlines in the ground, which remained unbroken.

"Ugh," Mosquito said. "This is some serious bullshit, but you're right."

"Um… okay," said Marpesia, "but how long's this going to take if the Carnival keeps expanding? And what's making that happen? What's to say we can get anywhere if that's the case?"

"Something to do with whatever that sound is, probably," Kite offered.

"Exactly," said Red Serge. "And it started, or at least became apparent, right around when we found Angel."

"Meaning the expansion is a recent thing," Kite said.

"Or we're just now noticing it," Red Serge added, "because whatever is causing the expansion is moving faster, or getting stronger."

"Or nearing completion," I offered, and Kite and Red Serge both nodded before falling into silent contemplation on the matter.

"Damien does keep talking," Toolshed continued, "about the Between. Tenorman, too. Or, well, Betweens plural."

"But we're not moving in and out of anywhere," said Mosquito. "It's like this place is rearranging things at random."

"Or," said Toolshed, looking over at the volcano, "something's just speeding up a natural process. But it's using whatever's left over from R'lyeh to do it in that fucked up way that made that place exist at all."

"So, where's it expanding to?" asked Biomech. "Is Hell basically just going to swallow up South Park?"

I thought again about the Shadow. And then about the empty room that Scott Tenorman had once occupied at the asylum. We will build the new Between, the words on the wall had said.

"Unfortunately," I said, "I don't think we'll be able to figure it out unless we keep walking. We've got to get to Mysterion. We've got to get to the Bullseye."

With few other options, we continued on. We switched off walking close to various other members of the team, swapping theories and discussing the nuances of each Carnival attraction we'd experienced. The one major similarity that the eight of us could pinpoint was each attraction's attempt to wear us down and split us apart. And yet somehow, something had allowed us to find each other. It was strange—if this really was Hell, wouldn't the trials continue? If we'd won out over things specifically designed to be our own personal hells… what could possibly be next?

After quite some time, and after I'd nearly gone completely through Mosquito's flask of water, we actually made it. The volcano still seemed to loom at a bit of a distance, but the Ferris wheel appeared to be closer, as did a couple of large white tents. Oddly enough, other than the Ferris wheel, only one attraction was still standing—the building we were approaching now.

Which meant that the Coon and Chaos must have either lost or won by now. Or at least Chaos had, and the Coon was still very much missing. The Ferris wheel had no number associated with it, so that couldn't be one of them.

Behind me, I heard the Human Kite, Toolshed, and Red Serge talking about the physics and geology of the expanding Carnival grounds and whether or not it was a phenomenon that would stick assuming we could beat Damien once and for all, but I tuned them out once Attraction IX truly came into view. I stopped dead in my tracks, and the others stopped behind me.

We were standing outside a building that looked a little like my old family house. I hadn't lived there in years, and Kenny and I did all we could not to walk by. When Kenny turned eighteen, the two of us did some paperwork that made me his legal dependent, so neither of us even had to think about our parents anymore. Kevin had made his choice; he was basically an errand boy for our layabout parents, but we never made contact with him. No kidding this was Kenny's Hell—back into a building so reminiscent of the one in which our parents did nothing but lie and refuse to talk to him about his curse, in which they did nothing but drink and scream and fight and put us kids last. In which Kenny had had to wake up every single time he died and came back to life, no matter how hard he tried to get away.

"Dude," Toolshed said, "this is pretty fucked up right here."

"Shit, for real," Kite agreed. "So, what's the plan?"

"I mean," said Mosquito, "as much as this sucks, don't we just have to wait it out? At least we know where he is. We can still go free the townspeople and make it back here for Mysterion, but…"

"But we're so close," I argued. "He's right there."

Silence fell over the group of us.

"For what it's worth," Biomech said after a moment, "Attraction Eight let me in. Then again, I technically had a pass."

"Well…" Kite said, raising one hand a little, "Attraction Two let me in, too, and I sure didn't have a formal means of entry. And Toolshed and I made it out okay."

"So do we storm it?" Marpesia asked.

"I could burn it," Endgame offered with a shrug.

"No," Mosquito said, "no burning, save that. And we can't just storm in there, as much as I want to. Plus, I also don't want all of us to split up now that we're together, but it'd be way safer for just one or two of us to go."

"I'll give it a shot," Kite offered. "I mean, Damien's been fucking with me from the start just cuz of my hair color. I might get another free pass."

"Or that's exactly what Damien wants us to think," Mosquito countered. "Too risky. I'll go."

"Right, cool, yeah," said Toolshed, "you're not going. We need a leader, and you've got this covered out here. I can at least try to break in. I've got lockpicks, a sledgehammer, and a fucking chainsaw. I can get in."

Mosquito started to fight him on that, then said, "That's actually a pretty sound argument."

"Team logic," Toolshed said with a grin, and he and Kite shared a quick fist-bump.

"Uh-huh," Mosquito said.

"No," I heard myself say. All other activity and conversation ceased. I took a deep breath, held my ground, and said, "No one else is going in there. It's got to be me."

"Angel," Mosquito said, "you're just getting back on your feet after being buried alive."

"I know," I said. "I know. But my brother is in there, and I wouldn't be any sort of Guardian Angel if I didn't at least try to help him right now. I have a feeling I'm supposed to go in there. I need to."

Mosquito nearly tried to talk me down, but Kite interrupted. "The rules said something about 'no unauthorized entry,'" he recalled, "but something authorized my going in to help Toolshed. If you feel like you need to go, Angel, then you need to go."

"Gut feelings aren't formal authorization," Mosquito said.

"But we have proof that it's worked once," Kite countered. "Look. All of us want Mysterion out of there and safe. Only one of us is going to be allowed to do so, and only one of us is going to have the strongest driving need to do so. And that's Angel."

"I'll be okay," I promised the others.

"Even," Marpesia checked, "if you see the Shadow again? I can only imagine…"

"I'll be okay," I promised again, and flashed her a smile.

Even under her mask and helmet, she looked pale, and I figured out why after a second. She and Butters were pretty much as close as siblings, and she'd seen darkness swallow him whole before; twist him and change him into an agent of a sort of chaos he couldn't control. They'd both come out standing and stronger, though, so I believed that Kenny and I would, too. No matter what sort of curse was waiting inside those walls.

Mosquito managed to connect with Gary at that point, who promised to keep time best he could. I had an hour before Mosquito would try to send in someone else to help. I agreed, but held onto the hope that I could find and assist my brother however I could in a matter of minutes.

Before I parted from the team, Red Serge took me aside and said, "Hey, good luck, all right? You've got this."

I smiled, and hugged him, and said, "Thanks. Help keep the peace out here, too, okay?"

"Keep the peace, eh? I think I can do that."

I laughed a little, and when we drew back, I kissed him. "See you soon," I promised.

We hugged again, and then, with a nod back to the rest of the team, I climbed the steps to the run-down shack that was the Carnival's version of the Ninth Circle of Hell. Two doors stood closed ahead, and with no ticket to enter, I unpinned my barrette once again. Going with my gut, I walked to the door on the left and tried the knob. As I thought, it didn't budge, so I knealt down and jabbed my hairpin into the keyhole.

After a few tries, I heard a click, and the door groaned open a crack. I shoved it open further, took a deep breath, and walked into the shadows.

– – –

Kenny

Part one of the 'deal' fucking hurt.

As soon as our hands parted, I felt something not just pulling but yanking at me from all sides, making me feel instantly as though I'd be completely ripped limb from limb. It had happened before, and I hadn't forgotten what it felt like. This, however, continued and burned and felt so much worse.

I doubled over and fell again to my knees, and the red light of the room glowed enough for me to watch as my shadow split away into fragments. Thousands of Damien's imps scurried out from under me like ants and skittered into the walls. My blood was boiling. The fake Shadow that Damien had sent me in that envelope had quite literally possessed me, and only now that the pieces of it were leaving did I fully realize it. I shivered as the last piece left, then coughed several raw times and held one hand out into the pool of light around me, if only to watch my thin, normal, unburdened shadow move as it should.

I was still in excruciating amounts of pain, though, and could barely move. Though willing my body to get up, I just couldn't yet. Not without a few beats of rest.

Even so, I measured out my breaths and glowered up at Damien. "Well?" I prompted. "I'm an easy target. Why not kill me now?"

"I want to enjoy this, Mysterion," Damien said, folding his arms and staring down his nose at me. "And I want you to fully grasp exactly what it is you think you're fighting for. I want you to understand just what a gift the Immortals had given you. What I am offering you. Human life is weakness like this. Human life is pain. And so, so utterly dull, McCormick, I truly don't know how you can stand it."

"All right," I said, "fine. You know what? Yeah. I'm going to fight for my chance to just go ahead and get sick again, and get well again, and keep living. I promise you, it's all worth it, Damien. You've just got your head too far up your own ass to see what we humans are actually capable of."

Damien snorted. "Go on, then," he sneered. "Show me capable. Show me what you've got, all fragile flesh and brittle bones. Show me what could possibly be so much greater than possessing the ability to warp eternity itself to your liking."

"Yeah, that's a tough one," I said. "It's not so much one person's ability as it is what we can set our minds to and help each other accomplish."

"Ugh," Damien said. "Sentimentality truly is one of my least favorite things about you. You don't have your team with you, McCormick."

"Not yet," I said as confidently as I could. "But I will soon."

"Oh, and then what? Power of teamwork, blah, blah, blah. Spare me all of that nonsense. I will fracture you, and I will enjoy it."

"Says the guy who admitted he had to ask for help to build his own shiny new Hell."

"Get up!" Damien roared to avoid even having to think through that.

He kicked me across the face. I wasn't ready for it, and the blow sent me flying a few feet across the still expanding room. No matter how I felt, I had to get up and fight at that point, so I forced myself onto my hands and knees, took a few steeling breaths, and hurled a shuriken at Damien as I pushed myself up to my feet.

Somehow, he'd procured a sword before I'd risen, and he used it to deflect the shuriken before hurling the blade right at me. I jumped aside and heard it clatter to the ground, then quickly ran to pick it up when Damien came rushing at me with a second one. I am very not well versed at all in swords—it was more Endgame's thing than anyone's—but I managed to swing the one I'd picked up over my head as Damien brought his down with both hands on the hilt. I turned the flat side up and shoved upward, one hand on the hilt and one flat against the blade. Sparks flew, and my bones were still burning after the lifting of Damien's quasi-curse so badly that I hadn't fully recovered my upper body strength enough to force him off.

"Fuck you," I spat. "Swords, really?"

"Oh, you're right," Damien said, his eyes practically made of fire. "Something else would suit you so much better, now."

Suddenly, the hilt of the sword in my hand became much slimmer and lighter, and my free hand was flat against a longer and much different surface. The new lightness of the weapon was enough for me to shove Damien off, and he slid back a couple feet, laughing as he corrected his stance.

I took a second to study what the weapon I was holding had turned into, then yelped and dropped it when I saw that it was a scythe. Pissed, now, I ignored the pain I was in and drew my .45 and fired a shot straight into Damien's collarbone. The bullet hit and sailed through him and clattered to the ground yards away.

"I said no added powers, asshole!" I shouted.

Damien continued laughing for a few seconds, then agreed, "Fine, fine. I'm only toying with you. As I said… I want to enjoy this."

I figured I had to humor him, at least a little, because the cockier he got, the more he'd let his guard down. That didn't negate the fact that he was pissing me off, which could possibly lead me, too, into some bad decisions, so I took a deep breath, tucked my gun away, and quickly lit a Roman candle.

"Enjoy this," I said, and tossed it at him.

Damien's eyes went wide, and he dropped his weapon to shield his eyes from the blast of flashing light that exploded over his head. He turned away from it, the light clearly hurting his eyes, which gave me enough time to move to a different part of the now enormous room.

Weapons now lined the walls, but I refused to make a run for any of them, not knowing what Damien could have imbued any of them with. I had quite a few shuriken and bullets left, and about five more Roman candles, not to mention my backup supply in the van. I could do this. I'd be okay. I hoped.

The first thing I had to do was get us both out of that building somehow, but with it ever expanding, that seemed an almost impossible task. But, with Damien currently incapacitated, I made a run for it all the same.

"Oh, no, you don't!" I heard him holler after me. All of a sudden, I was tripped, and a wall of his shadow imps rose up in front of me. "I know, I know," Damien said when I whirled around to yell at him again. "No powers. But, you see, they work for me, those imps. They're a part of my team, I suppose we could say. And since we said nothing of fighting to the death alone, I'm sure you can abide by that. Assuming you think you'll have your own team fighting with you. Where are they, anyway?"

He was now standing only a few feet from me. The imps dissolved back into the ground behind me in a scurry and a rush of whispers, but I didn't turn to try to run again.

"Damien," I demanded, "where are they?"

"Who knows?" he said with a sneer. "I've only assured you their security in the afterlife, dear boy. What happens between now and then is anyone's guess."

"I'm going to fucking kill you," I spat. "Quit literally dangling them in front of me. I want them safe."

"And they will be," Damien said. "And as for killing me, I'm terribly sorry to inform you that you'll be very hard pressed to do so. It's no easy task to kill a demon."

"You're only half, Damien," I reminded him. "And I've killed an Immortal, all right? I know what I'm doing."

"Prove it."

I let out a yell and rushed him. I tackled him to the ground, then yanked him up and tossed him as far as I could further back into the room. As he was getting up, I rushed him again, sprang off the ground, and delivered a roundhouse kick to his face. I was getting my second wind, and just in time, too.

As soon as I landed, I grabbed a shuriken, but Damien was quicker and had a hand around my wrist. He punched me in the throat and flipped me over his back. I hit the ground hard and coughed to get my breath back.

"What are you even fighting for, McCormick?" Damien asked, sounding unimpressed. He took purposeful strides toward me and kicked me across the floor. "Tell me that!"

I was shaking, but managed to regain my breath and slowly pick myself up again. "I'm fighting for everything, Damien," I said, staring him down from our current distance. He didn't make another move, so neither did I. "Shouldn't you know me well enough by now to have figured that out? I'm not just fighting for my survival, I'm fighting for my existence. I'm fighting for life, and not just mine, but the lives of everyone I care about. I'm fighting for my friends, the people I consider my family, my town. Everyone. Believe it or not," I said, realizing this for myself as I spoke, "Mysterion is still the symbol this town needs, and I'm never going to abandon the people who live here. This town, this whole damn planet."

"Why?" Damien asked, sounding almost genuinely curious. "What have they done for you?"

"Allowed me to do that first thing I said and exist," I replied. "Which is more than I can say for you at the moment. I fight for justice, Damien, which means I'm fighting for everyone your Carnival has kidnapped and used and tortured, and I'm going to set things right, because that's what I do."

"Well, then," Damien said, "how's this for justice?"

And he pulled out my sister's gun. I'd know it anywhere; the white pistol, the Bible verse on the side. I froze, and my eyes shot open wide. He'd buried her and taken the weapon she kept on reserve for dire circumstances.

"You asshole," I managed to say.

Damien only grinned, and cocked the pistol. "For all have sinned," he said with a laugh, "and fall short of the glory of God. Goodbye for a moment, McCormick."

"I don't think so!" a cry came from the darkness.

Damien whirled his head in the direction of the sound, just in time to be hit between the eyes with an iron marble. "Fuck!" he spat, and winced, dropping the pistol and grabbing at his face as smoke billowed up from where he'd been hit.

I turned as well, just in time for another shot to come through from the space behind me—one of Angel's flash bombs, which was shot up toward the ceiling in order to illuminate the room. And once again, we were standing in nothing but a rickety, shitty old carnival dark ride. All of the planks on the walls shown for what they were, everything fake and rusting and hardly a threat.

Out from the flash of light rushed my sister, who tucked away her slingshot and threw her arms around me. I caught her, and hugged her, grateful for whatever miracle this was. "Angel?!" I said in disbelief.

"I found you," she said, as the light above us began to subside.

"'Course you did, kid," I said proudly. "You're my Guardian Angel, right?"

She pulled back, and grinned, and said, "You got it, Mysterion. You okay?"

"Depends on your definition," I realized.

"How," Damien seethed from nearby, "the fuck did you get out?"

We both turned to face him, Angel once again picking up her slingshot and fitting the center basket with another iron marble, and I readying a couple of shuriken. Damien lifted his head and lowered his hands, scowling down at the blood trickling through his fingers. There was a hole between his eyes from Angel's attack, pouring blood down the center of his face and hissing smoke upward.

He could bleed?

He could bleed.

"Miracles happen," Angel said. "Plus, you gave me an easy out."

"Picked the lock, did you? I suppose I shouldn't have ruled out your ability to do that," Damien said. He drew a deep breath, and sparked a flame between his fingernails, then held the tip of his index finger to the hole and drew an inverted cross over it, sealing up the wound without leaving a scar. He shook the blood off his hands and narrowed his gaze on us. "Better that you witness this, anyway."

"Witness what? Another shitty ride?" Angel said.

"Oh, no, no, dear girl."

Damien spotted her pistol on the ground and picked it up. He spun it open to examine the magazine for bullets. Satisfied, he clicked it closed and pointed the barrel toward me again. "You're going to watch, Angel," Damien said, still looking directly at me. "You're going to watch me make good on the deal I just made with your brother."

Fuck.

I hurled a shuriken at the hand with which he held the pistol, and it stuck between his forefinger and thumb. Damien spat out a word that sounded like Latin, and flame rose up from his mouth as he did. He was becoming more and more unstable, it seemed. The more we got to him, the more bothered he became; the more vulnerable he was making himself. He really was like Cartman. He hated to lose.

"What did you do, Kenny?" Angel asked me in a whisper. She looked up at me, her eyes wide and scared. And I started to doubt my decision. The guys were probably going to hate me for what I'd done, too. No one had told me I had to take it all on myself, but my other options were incredibly slim.

"I can explain," I said.

"Go ahead," Damien challenged me. He ripped out the shuriken and tossed it away. He even put down the pistol and tucked it into his belt. "Go on," he urged, as he sealed up the wound on his hand. "Tell her. Tell her about the little deal we made, Mysterion. Tell her that you signed yourself over to me. Tell her exactly how I'm going to win this little turf war and use your soul however I damn well please."

"Kenny…" Karen said, tears in her eyes now.

"Karen, I had to," I said, as gently as I could.

"What?!"

"I had to," I said again. "Damien was bargaining with everyone's souls. I can still make it out of this, don't worry. I'm not just going with him willingly, all right? We can still win this, and I can make it out okay, but I'm going to need everyone's help. And I need you to trust me."

"What was the deal, Kenny?!" Karen demanded.

I sighed, and glowered over at Damien. "Damien has files on everyone's lives," I said. "He has the means to damn everyone in the afterlife, and he was planning on killing the team off one by one in this Carnival and taking them to Hell no matter what."

"So, what, you traded yourself?"

"Sort of," I said. "He'll let us all go if we make it out of the Carnival alive. But even if I don't make it out, everyone else will."

"And when will that happen?" Damien prompted me, as the room expanded around us, his throne moving higher onto an even more impressive flight of stairs.

"It'll happen if," I said, not taking my eyes off of him, "you can kill me."

"Oh, for… absolutely not," Angel said, reclaiming her persona and once again aiming her slingshot at Damien. "You're not killing my brother, you bastard."

"Oh, haven't I heard that one before," Damien said with a sneer. He expanded his arms outward, palms up, summoning flames into them to cast flickering red and orange light across the still-expanding room. "Haven't I heard the bargains and the cries, every single helpless word from your little friends. Every single time they forgot about you. What will happen this time, I wonder? More bargains? More pleas? Or maybe I can go easy on them. You'd be sacrificing yourself, after all. Wouldn't it be better for them to forget all of this?"

"Damien, that wasn't part of the deal," I snapped, picking up my .45. I started taking steps backward as he advanced, holding out one arm over my sister, so I could sweep her out of the way of Damien's attack if I needed to. "Damien!"

His eyes flickered with flame, and the fire in his hands grew brighter. The ceilings rose, the walls creaked as they pushed out even further. What the hell was Cartman doing to make the room grow like that?

"We never said it wasn't," Damien said. He laughed, and it echoed throughout what was becoming less of a shack and more of a palace. All around us, the little shadow imps whispered things I couldn't make out. "Besides, you agreed to be an Immortal Reaper for me, McCormick. You agreed that the remnants of R'lyeh would be more likely to listen to your dear departed soul than your living body. Once the Void spits your curse right back into what's left of your existence, I doubt even you will remember who you were. I'll even do you a favor and give you back the Shadow's name."

The flames in his hands rose to pillars, and the flickering light cast horrible shadows over his face as he grinned, and said to me, "Welcome to Hell."

With that, he shoved the pillars of flame out to either side, and they licked at the walls, instantly spreading out and lighting up large, looming black candelabras that now lined the enormous room. The walls had turned from wood to stone. The floor beneath us was a shining black. Damien's throne dias loomed large at the back of what was now a grand hall.

He threw back a hand and a long, pointed scepter flew into his palm. He curled his fingers around it, then lifted it over his head and struck down at me. I blocked it with my arm and accidentally pulled my trigger as I did, then cried out when I realized the barrel would have been aimed in Angel's direction. I glanced over and saw that she had feinted out of the way, and she shot her iron marble directly into Damien's ribs.

Damien recoiled, but recovered just as quickly, spinning out the scepter and taking another swipe at me. I managed to put away my gun and block his attack with a kick just in time, then gathered my breath and dealt a roundhouse kick with my opposite leg before he could recover his weapon. He was sent flying a few feet backwards, and Angel rushed forward, tucking her slingshot away in order to catch him from behind. She spun him around by the arm and punched him with a hard right hook.

Though he was blown off balance, Damien rose to his knees quickly and whacked Angel in the shins with his scepter.

"Angel!" I called out.

"Mysterion, duck!" she cried back.

Damien had stood, and hurled the scepter at me. I dropped to the ground, hitting the floor flat with my palms, causing a sound that echoed throughout the hall. I shoved myself up and put all my weight on my hands in order to spring back up onto my feet, and rushed at Damien as he rushed at me. I got in the first punch, but he dealt another just as easily. His thumb was out just enough as he got in the hit across my face, and his sharp nail dug into my cheek enough to leave a scratch.

"Fuck!" I spat, and shoved him off. As he was righting himself, I kicked him in the stomach, but he caught my ankle and flipped me over. I fell hard onto my back, and it took a second to get my breath back.

Fortunately, Angel was back on her feet, and she ran at Damien, making a grab for her pistol in his belt. He jabbed his right elbow back at her to get her to let go, then turned and held her by the hair. She drew in a deep breath, then let out a yell as she kneed him in the ribs.

Damien let go, and Angel took a few steps back. She said, "Come on," and helped me to my feet, but Damien took that moment to draw two daggers out of his boots. He spun them out, then tossed them in our direction. We both ducked, and the fact that I didn't even hear the daggers fall or strike anything was a testament to how hard he'd thrown them, and how large the building had become.

"You're quick," Damien observed. "Step one in killing you will need to involve slowing you down."

"Good luck," I spat back. "We said no powers, remember?"

Damien narrowed his eyes at me, then took several confident steps backwards to the closest wall. From off it, he pulled a large mace, swung it out once, then let it drag and screech on the polished floor beneath him as he took purposeful strides back toward us.

"What do we do?" Angel asked me in a harsh whisper.

"We've gotta get out of here, first thing," I said.

"How? The exit could be yards away at this point. How does the room keep growing?"

"Cartman. Somehow."

"Cartman? What?!"

"I'll explain later."

"So, what, we just run?"

"Sounds good to me."

Now, it was not often that my plan was just run. My plan was usually fight. But we needed to figure out how to stop Hell from expanding any further, and we had to find some place that gave Damien any sort of disadvantage. Technically, all we had to do was free Red, Cartman, Cartman's mom, and the captive Gingers and get out of the gates, and the deal would be off. That was a lot of work, and it would involve my entire team, but the more of us, the better.

"Don't run away from me, McCormick!" Damien shouted as Angel and I began taking our own steps backward. "This is my torture chamber, and you are going to stay put until I have ground your body to a fucking pulp! You'll be begging me to kill you when the time comes!"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" I retorted.

Damien picked up his pace, then held the mace up over his head and rushed us. As he brought it down, Angel and I darted to either side. Damien swore in Latin again, and hurled the mace directly at me. It caught my cloak as I was trying to feint to the side, and pinned me down.

"Mysterion!" Angel shouted.

Damien sneered, and drew my sister's gun from his belt. He held it out in front of him as he walked toward me. I ripped at the edge of my cloak to get it out from underneath the heavy mace, and just as it started to tear, the ground beneath us rumbled.

All activity ceased.

Damien glanced around the great hall, and I saw his eyes widen when the candelabras started going out. "There's no way…" he said in disbelief.

I ripped my cloak and drew my own gun again, training it on Damien. "No way what?" I challenged him.

Damien looked back at me, pissed as all get-out that I'd freed myself. He lifted Angel's pistol again, only to lose his footing from another rumble beneath us. Damien righted himself, and said, "No, no, no! That piece of shit, this shouldn't happen! HOW?"

The candelabras fell, and the staircase and dias began to crumble. All around us, the walls were shaking, and the room started to collapse.

"He's not finished yet!" Damien whirled around and glared at me. "And I'm not finished with you."

"What's going on?" I asked him.

"Nothing I can't handle," he said with unearned confidence. "But if you will excuse me, there is something I need to deal with before I kill you."

He scowled at the crumbling room, then stomped a foot into the ground, and a circle of fire appeared around him. Dozens and dozens of his shadow imps skittered into the circle from around the room, and he disappeared in a flash of darkness.

"Okay, what the fuck?" I said.

"No time to wonder!" my sister shouted. She rushed forward and grabbed my arm. "Let's make good on that 'run' plan!"

"Gotcha."

We sprinted out of there, with Angel tossing out light flare after light flare to give us a sense of the path ahead. The ride truly had turned into some sort of hellish medieval stronghold, but the further we went, the less we saw of stone and the more we saw of rotting wood. At the closed exit, I gave two swift kicks to the door to knock it out of its frame, then grabbed my sister as we both rushed away from Attraction IX as it groaned and crumbled to the ground.

The force of the enormous structure toppling and kicking up dust forced us both forward several feet, but even though we fell, hands were there to catch us.

"Kite!" I heard Mosquito order. "Biomech!"

"On it," came the answers, and the force of the dust around us seemed to subside.

As everything began to settle, I coughed out some of the dust from the collapse, then slowly got my eyes adjusted and checked on my sister. She coughed a few times, too, but looked relatively unharmed. I checked us both for cuts and breaks; finding nothing serious, I looked back toward the direction of the building.

Blocking my view were TupperWear, holding back the rest of the dust clouds with his shield, and the Human Kite, doing the same with his unclipped glider. The gilder was in rough shape, but it was holding up. And TupperWear was there at all. I glanced around and stumbled back, but heard Toolshed say, "Woah, hey, man, I gotcha."

"Toolshed?" I asked, and turned to face him.

He grinned, and said, "Dude, it is so fucking good to see you."

"Holy shit, you too."

"Welcome back, Mysterion," Mosquito said from overhead. I glanced up, and he offered me a hand, which I gladly took and let him help me up to standing.

"Thanks. Dude, what'd I miss out here?"

"A lot, but we'll fill you in. How are you holding up?"

"Remains to be determined," I said honestly. "But we'll figure all that out. Angel…"

My sister was being helped back to her feet by Red Serge and Marpesia, and not far off, Endgame stood on lookout. Almost the whole team was back together, and I damn near lost it and started crying right then and there. Everything I'd told Damien I was fighting for, everyone, practically, was right there, and giving us a hand and welcoming us back from that literal hell.

"We clear?" Mosquito called over.

Kite clipped his glider back on and flicked both hands out to his sides, mentally forcing it open. The action blew away still more of the settling dust, and he kicked off the ground and hovered overhead a few feet before calling back down, "Yup, I'd say so."

When he landed, I asked, "How'd you do that?" I hadn't seen him levitate, or whatever, that well or that easily since R'lyeh.

"Do what? Oh! It's, uh… a work in progress," Kite said modestly. He walked forward, and grabbed me and hugged me. "Glad you're safe, Mysterion."

"Safe's relative, but thanks," I said. "You, too."

"What do you mean, relative?"

"I'll get to it."

"Okay," Kite said skeptically.

"I'll be fine," I tried to promise.

"Fine with what?" asked TupperWear, clipping his own shield onto his back and striding forward.

"Man, holy shit," I said to him. "You're back?"

"Don't tell me you doubted I would be," he said with a grin. He held out his right hand and said, "It's Biomech, now, by the way."

"Yeah?" I said. I shook his hand gladly. "I like it. Thanks for coming back. We need you."

"Thanks," Biomech said. "How're you holding up?"

"Not great, if I'm gonna be honest," I said.

"Why?" Marpesia wondered. "You beat your ride, didn't you?"

"I think it was more of a technicality," I said. "Huddle up, team, we need to talk."

Mosquito gave an extra signal, and then, just like that, there we all were in a tight circle. Eight of us, anyway. Closer than we'd all been for far too long. As always, Toolshed and the Human Kite were on either side of me, and Mosquito was directly across, along with the Guardian Angel, who gave me a concerned look.

I glanced around at each and every one of my present teammates, then sighed. "There's no easy way into this," I started. "I made a deal with Damien in there."

"You what?" every single one of the others shouted, Angel aside.

"Dude," Toolshed reprimanded me, smacking me upside the head.

"Ow. Listen," I said as strongly as I could. "Damien's striking incredibly low blows."

"No shit, dude," said Kite, "this is Hell. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I'd save everyone from what Damien was trying to do," I answered. "He's been playing with all of us here in the Carnival, but he means fucking business when it comes to torture. He was wagering your souls. All of you. He wants me to work for him."

"And you did say 'fuck that,' right?" said Endgame.

"Best I could, yeah," I said. "The name of the game right now is staying alive. As long as I live through this Carnival, we're all safe."

"Okay," said Mosquito. "What do you mean, as long as you live through this Carnival? We're not doing that Shadow shit again. Are we?"

"No," I said firmly. "Unless Damien kills me. Which is what the deal was. He kills me, I, uh… I go back. He fails to do so, well, basically no harm no foul."

"What the fuck," Toolshed said, smacking me again, this time on the shoulder.

"Can you not?" I said.

"Depends, can you, like, maybe not make deals with the Devil's son?"

"It's not as simple as that!" I said. "It was literally my best option in there. I'm confident that we can still win this, guys, especially seeing all of you here." I looked around at everyone again, and repeated, "It is so fucking good to see you guys. You have no idea."

Kite managed a slight smile and nudged my arm. "Says the guy who's had us worried sick," he said. "All right. So there's probably no walking back a deal like that, but it sounds pretty winnable. What was going on with the rest of your ride? Or was that it?"

"Well… I managed to get him to call off the fake Shadow he'd slapped on me," I said, which really was part one of a win. I felt like I could breathe again. "I made contact with Red." Win number two. "And, uh… did you guys see anything strange going on with the building? Was it growing?"

"A little," Red Serge confirmed. "The entire park seems like it's been expanding for a couple hours now."

"The whole…?"

I glanced around us again, but I hadn't gotten much of a clear view of how far apart things had been before. All around us now was rubble. The only pristine thing within Carnival grounds was the untouched, red gleaming Ferris wheel. That, and two white tents, stark against the backdrop of the volcano. Which… did seem a little taller than it had before.

"Fuck, dude, what has he got Cartman doing?"

"Cartman?" Marpesia asked.

"Somehow, Cartman is controlling the expansion of the Carnival," I recalled. "Meaning he's playing some kind of role in Damien's expansion of Hell itself. He's not aware of it, it doesn't sound like, so he must just be stuck playing some kind of Carnival game. Somewhere. What's even left?"

"The Ferris wheel," said Red Serge. "But that doesn't have a number."

"Not even Ten? Wasn't that the Coon's number?"

"Yeah, buddy, but there's no number on it. Not even a big old red 'X' anywhere. I checked."

"What's in the tents?" Biomech wondered.

"No idea," said Mosquito. "That could probably be our next stop, before we bring in the vans to free the townspeople."

"You guys found them?" I wondered.

"That guy did," Mosquito said, gesturing to Red Serge.

"No shit? Nice work, kid," I said.

"Thanks, but can you not call me that?" the hero in question asked.

"Yeah, gotcha. Nice work, all the same. What's the extraction plan?" I asked Mosquito.

"Same as before. Henrietta, Gary, Iron Maiden, and Delphi are on standby to bring them out with the vans."

"Good," I said. "We need everyone for this. I want at least Gary on moving the captured people out of here."

"Why him?" Red Serge asked.

"Because he's literally the most soft-spoken in the face of disaster, and I think that's what everyone's gonna need," I said. "But we'll get to that when we get to that."

"What's your call?" Toolshed asked. "Do we bring them in now, or wait till we've at least found Chaos?"

"Tough to say," I said. "I don't want him or the Coon getting hurt if we make the wrong move."

"Hurt?" said Mosquito. "Chaos is in the circle of Violence."

"All the more reason," I said, in defense of our teammate. "Dude, you've gotta let that past feud go. Please."

Mosquito sighed, and said, "Yeah, okay." After a pause, he asked, "Anything else? Anything else Damien might've said to you in there? Anything else we should be prepared for?"

"Other than threatening me with the Shadow, he did mention something," I recalled. "Something about the Void. Henrietta's brought it up before, but it was always this nebulous concept to me before now. Damien directly addressing it means it's something."

"The Void," Angel said. "He mentioned that to me, too. 'The Shadow descends from the Void of space,' or something like that. What's the Void? How do we stop that?"

"I don't know, exactly," I said. "But it's got something to do with where Cthulhu and the other Old Ones originally came from. We'll get Henrietta on it as soon as we can. But first thing's first. We find Damien. We find Red. We find Cartman. We fucking end this. With everyone's soul intact. I'm done with the afterlife fucking with me and everyone I care about."

Angel smiled, and I felt both Toolshed and Kite place their hands on my shoulders. "So," Toolshed said. "The plan once again is to keep Mysterion from dying and save the world. You guys in?"

"At this point," said Mosquito, "does anyone really have to ask?" He thrust his right hand into the middle of the circle, prompting everyone else to do the same. I set mine in on top, and drew in a deep breath, and let it out, so insanely fucking grateful that this was the team I was marching into Hell with.

We really were so much more than a team, though, honestly. This was what family looked like to me. People who'd risk their very souls for each other.

And then, just like that, the ninth made contact.

"Can anyone hear me?" Chaos asked into the wire.

All of us dropped our hands and took a step back. "Chaos," Mosquito answered. "Where are you?"

"Well, I'm not really sure, but I'm going to send up a flare. You're gonna want to hurry."

"Kite," Mosquito said.

"Yup," Kite said, and kicked off the ground without so much as shoving off of my shoulder for a boost. Some eyes from the group were on him, while others scanned what they could of the rest of the horizon. Clouds were gathering in the sky, and a red haze was again starting to roll in, but Kite confirmed after a few seconds, "Marked. Got your location, Chaos. We're on our way."

When he landed, Kite said, "We had the right idea. We need to head for the tents." To Red Serge, he added, "Think we can get there without keeping to the chalk path?"

"Only way is to try at this point," Red Serge said. "Since we've reached the Bullseye, we might be able to get away with a straight shot."

"Worth it if we can get the team back together faster," I said. "Let's go."

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Authors' Notes:

South Park is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

Couple things: This chapter was mostly written while listening to the Rufus Rex song 'Rise, Lazarus, Rise' on repeat. Trey and Matt killed Satan and sent him to heaven recently and I'm confused but we can work with it. Damien swearing in Latin in this chapter was probably along the lines of, futuere ('get fucked') or ede faecum ('eat shit').

Thank you so much for reading and sticking with us! Chapter 24 is almost done and ready to go as well. We'll be hearing from Butters again, and will be back to the main four narrators until the end of the story, which is currently planned out at 30 total chapters.

Thanks again for all of your support of this story!

We'll be back soon!

~Jizena, and RosieDenn~

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