A/N: Hee! Onward, at long, looong last. To answer Adelpha's question about the wizards, that was entirely me buggering up my timelines--I'll probably go back and fix it eventually, once I've finished this monstrosity. (If I ever do…jeeze, it's taking me forever). Kudos to anybody who catches the Stephen King reference.

Once again, I own nothing here except Life, and I'm not terribly anxious to claim her. The rest belongs to the incomparable Terry Pratchett, with the exception of Delirium, who belongs to Neil Gaiman.

------

Life gave Teatime a happy smile, munching another mushroom. "Have you? That's so sweet!" She poked Delirium, from whose hair random butterflies kept escaping. "Isn't that sweet?"

"As toejam," Delirium agreed.

Teatime blinked, momentarily nonplussed. He looked as though he was considering commenting, but apparently thought better of it. "Yes, Life, I have," he whispered, giggling, and with all the blurring speed of a striking snake he brought the sword around, impaling it up to the hilt in her sternum.

"…Oh." Life looked down, staring at the weapon protruding from her chest. "Why'd you do that?" Slapping Teatime's hand away, she grasped the hilt and pulled the blade free, her glazed eyes regarding it sadly. "This isn't my dressing gown," she mourned. "I mean, they can patch it, but patches always show." She tossed the sword aside and turned to Teatime. "That was mean, you…you…meanie!"

Teatime stared at her, and rolled his eyes in annoyance. Of course--normal weapons wouldn't work on her, would they? Just because she was corporeal didn't mean she was mortal.

"Well, bugger," he muttered. "Where am I going to find a weapon that will actually kill you?"

Whereupon, narrative causality being what it is, Susan came crashing through the door, the sword of Death clenched in her hands, radiating such vindictive fury that even Delirium did a double-take.

"Oh Teatime," she said, infusing the deliberate mispronunciation with as much venom as a cobra, "we need to talk."

------

Vimes, Carrot, Angua, Colon, Nobby, and Cheery were in the Great Hall. They hadn't planned to be there, but the tide of humanity being what it was, they'd been washed inside like drifting seaweed, albeit seaweed that punched and kicked and stabbed back. To Vimes it felt like the Glorious 25th would have felt, had all the participants been on hard drugs--only half the people were actually fighting; the rest seemed to be sneaking off to odd corners and indulging in things that were best done in private.

"What in hells is going on here?" Colon panted, dodging a flying hamhock. "This isn't a battle, it's…it's…."

"A free-for-all," Nobby supplied, catching the ham and tearing off a chunk. "With free food, too--if anybody throws any apples, try and catch 'em." He had procured a bag from gods alone knew where, into which he was stuffing all the unattended goodies he could reach.

"Nobby, it's war," Angua said, exasperated. "You're not supposed to be nicking food!"

"'s not war," Nobby said, spearing a melon out of the air with his pike. "Looks like just about every other wedding I've ever been to."

That worried Vimes a bit. It did look like they'd interrupted a wedding--or would have, if it hadn't been set on fire first. He didn't know what he'd been expecting to find in the castle, but it wasn't this.

"All right, we've got to get out of here," he said. "Vetinari won't be in the middle of this mess, I'm sure of it--we'll have to split up."

"You sure that's a good idea, sir?" Carrot asked, fending off a roast goose. "We split up in here, we might never find each other again."

"Yeah, well, we'll have to take our chances," Vimes retorted. "Carrot, Angua, you get upstairs. Nobby and Fred, you take this level, and Cheery, you come with me."

"Where are we going, sir?" Cheery asked nervously. As she had averred before, she wasn't likely to be any good at all in a fight, which was precisely why Vimes was taking her with him--somebody had to keep an eye on her.

"We are going to find whoever's responsible for this," said Vimes, a glint in his eye that boded great ill for whoever that might be. "And then, in the patois of the Times, we're going to interrogate the bugger within an inch of his life."

They digested this. "I'm pretty sure the Times has never printed that particular phrase, sir," Carrot offered at last.

"Whatever. Let's move."

------

The witches, plus Albert, had shoved their way through the throng until they reached the roof. All of them were laden with bottles of Granny's potion, clanking and clattering like a small glass army. Granny had warned them not to let any of the bottles smash, but hadn't told them why, which made them all the more cautious--if Granny wasn't telling them what would happen, it had to be bad.

"What exactly is this stuff meant to do?" Agnes asked, setting her cargo carefully on the slate-covered roof. Perdita at least had enjoyed the trip up here--Agnes didn't often let her out, but her alter-ego was more than happy to kick and smack anyone unfortunate enough to get in her way.

"This castle doesn't actually exist," Granny said. "You saw that yourself--it's just a massive illusion. We're going to dispel it."

Nanny and Magrat shared a glance.

"Esme, not to be picky or anything, but we're on the roof," Nanny said. "We dispel the castle, it's gonna be one hard drop for us."

Granny waved a hand, apparently dismissing Nanny's words as an inconsequential side-effect. "We'll be fine," she said. "Though the poor sods below us might not be."

She didn't clarify that statement, and not even Albert dared press her. At her direction they placed the bottles at strategic intervals around the roof, making a rather drunken spiral that led out from the central chimney.

"Any particular time we're supposed to…set it off?" Agnes asked, rather nervously.

Granny smiled grimly. "Oh, I'll let you know," she said. "It shouldn't be long now."

------

Teatime winced at Susan's deliberate butchery of his name, but his eyes tracked every flickering movement of the sword she held. "Susan, difficult as it might be to believe, now is not a good time," he said, the words perfunctory and almost breathless. "Though if you could just see fit to lend me that--"

He lunged before he could finish the sentence, but Susan darted out of his way, taking a savage swipe at his head. Teatime ducked it with almost inhuman agility, launching himself at her and knocking her out the door and into the hallway, where she hit the floor with a dull oof.

"You know," he grunted, reaching for her sword hand "I've been very patient with you so far, but--" a wince and a fumble as her boot caught him in the shin "--you are really, really starting to--ow--get on my nerves." He rolled, trying to pin her, but she was equal to that, her free hand seizing his hair and yanking as hard as she could. It was, she thought grimly, poetic justice--tit for tat, so to speak.

"Well," she returned, grimacing as his fingers tightened on her wrist like a vice, "it's nice to know I'm doing something right." Her heel met his calf just as her teeth sank into his arm, and with a howl he released her wrist. Before he could begin to retaliate the sword-hilt hit him full in the face, and with a kick a mule would have envied Susan booted him away from her, scrambling to her feet with the sword clenched in white-knuckled hands.

She glared at Teatime, a wild frizz of hair obscuring one hectically bright blue eye. "I want to talk to you, Teatime," she said, the words clipped and concise despite her labored breathing. "I want to talk to you right up close." She raised the sword, treating him to a grim, humorless smile.

Life and Delirium, who had been watching the exchange like spectators at a tennis match, glanced at one another, and then at Teatime.

"I'd run," Life suggested.

Running was an alien concept to Teatime, but in this case even his fractured brain realized that if he stood his ground he was going to wind up a very well-dressed Assassin-kebab. He considered this for perhaps half a second, and before Susan could blink he bolted, racing and weaving down to the crowded main corridors.

"Dammit," Susan hissed, and promptly took off after him, kicking her way through the melee and leaving a horde of fractured shins in her wake.

Life and Delirium again looked at each other

"She's gonna hurt somebody with that," Delirium said.

"I know."

"Should we follow them?"

"Why not? Hey, maybe there'll be cake."

------

After quite a bit of knee-kicking, elbow-bashing searching, Vimes had finally located the Patrician. Unfortunately, and Vimes didn't know how in hells he'd done it, Vetinari had located himself on the bottom tier of the chandelier, sitting with his usual composure between two truncheon-sized candles. The chandelier was one of those giant medieval affairs, all polished wood and heavy iron, and could easily have taken up all six of the Treacle Mine Road Watch House's cells combined.

"Hello, Commander," Vetinari said calmly, apparently unfazed by the mayhem below. "I did think you'd find a way in sooner or later."

Almost absently Vimes bashed a passing minion in the spleen, his eyes searching the ceiling for something--anything--Vetinari could have used to get up there. He thought sourly that the Patrician had probably turned himself into a bat--gods knew he did everything short of magic already.

"We're here to rescue you, sir," he said, realizing even as the words left his mouth how absurd they sounded.

Vetinari glanced at the running hordes, the smashed tables, the still-smoldering carpet.

"I must say, you've made a smashing job of it," he said dryly.

Vimes could hear his teeth grinding. "Hey, I--wait, did you just say 'smashing'?" he asked.

Vetinari shrugged. "I'm on holiday," he said. "I can say whatever I please."

"Not like you don't anyway," Vimes muttered. "All right, you need to get down from there--the lads and I can get you out of this mess." Probably, the more honest side of him added.

The Patrician looked around the room again, and Vimes, through his skyrocketing blood pressure, realized than the man was enjoying himself immensely.

"No, I don't think I'll be doing that just yet," Vetinari said. "I quite like the view from here."

No sooner had he spoken than Teatime burst into the hall, leaping with all the dexterity of a dancer onto one of the long tables and giggling like mad. Susan wasn't far behind, pummeling her way through the crowd by sheer brute force. She wasn't being careful with the sword, and several people fell to an inadvertent friendly stabbing--fortunately Life and Delirium were trailing in her wake, so the dead didn't remain dead for long.

"Oh, good grief," Vimes muttered, as Susan went barreling past him, but he didn't have a chance to say more--as soon as Susan had gone by, a huge grey tomcat leapt after her. At least, it started as a tomcat--before Vimes' astonished eyes, it morphed swiftly and seamlessly into a tall, muscled, very naked man, streaking--literally--through the throng like a pale, bare-assed arrow.

"…Gods, that was disturbing," he muttered, shaking his head. Unwilling or no, it was his job to get the Patrician out of here, and he had a feeling it was only going to get worse from here on out. He jumped out of the way as the Dean, his hat on fire, barreled on by, pursued closely by a toothless scullery maid with a dangerously lascivious glint in her one good eye.

Vimes shuddered. The chandelier's support-rope had to be around here somewhere--he'd drop the damn thing if he had to, and to hell with whoever (or, at this point, whatever) was underneath. The Patrician could damn well suffer a few bruises--if this kept going as it had started, Vetinari wasn't the only person Vimes was going to bruise, intentionally or not.

Vetinari watched him swim through the crowds, smiling a small, dry smile. He hadn't had this much fun in years.

------

Teatime, still giggling like the lunatic he so obviously was, ducked and wove his way through the melee, seemingly without effort. He was on his home turf now--well did he know the chase, even if this was the first time he'd been prey rather than hunter. It was certainly a novel experience, whatever else could be said of it.

He'd retained most of his knives, formal dress or no--he would have felt horribly wrong had he gone to his own wedding unarmed, and the fact that Susan was his intended bride only made him more wary. Mad as a hatter he might be, but he wasn't stupid--he knew she'd knock him off the first chance she got, and being his brain-broken self it was one of the things he liked about her. Unlike most of the people he'd met (many of whom he'd inhumed), she wasn't at all dull.

He didn't want to kill Susan--he still needed her as his queen, even if everything was going utterly to hell--and that presented him with rather a problem. Assassins were taught to kill, not capture, and until now the idea of even maiming had been utterly foreign to him. In Susan's case even maiming was almost out of the question--nothing he'd read said it was all right for a king to wound his future queen, and several books had outright forbidden the very idea. You could lock them up, but you weren't supposed to stab them.

Tricky problem though it was, he would probably have figured it out on his own, had not the Cupid (who was buzzing erratically, apparently suffering a truly spectacular concussion) loosed an arrow that, by pure happenstance, struck him directly in the forehead.

Teatime dropped like a stone, knife utterly forgotten, twitching slightly as he hit the table. Perhaps fortunately for him that meant he was temporarily out of Susan's line of sight, and thus avoided having his soul (and possibly his body; you never knew, with that sword) minced into chutney.

Susan all but halted, scanning the crowd with vision sharpened into unnatural clarity by sheer fury. Her quarry had disappeared--one moment she was following a head of fair curly hair, and the next all trace of it had vanished.

Most uncharacteristically she swore, inventively and at some length, hacking and kicking her way through the scrum once more. She stepped on Teatime but did not see him--she'd stepped on more than one person already, and was too busy hunting the throng to bother looking down.

"Sod it all, you little tit, where did you go?" she grumbled, punching the butler out of her way almost absently. No sooner had she spoken than narrative causality reared its nasty head again--Teatime, having regained his feet (thought not all of his balance) tapped her on the shoulder. When she didn't respond he tapped her again--still no response. Finally, frustrated, he seized her upper arms, spun her, and pulled her against him before she could blink, trapping her sword arm quite effectively between them.

Susan reeled, her guard momentarily shattered, but it only took about five seconds for her to gain equanimity and try to jerk away. Teatime, however, would have none of it, and his downright inhuman strength kept her ensnared.

"Let go of me," she said, the words almost--but not quite, because she was Susan--a snarl. Her arm was well and truly stuck, rendering the sword as useless as a toothpick. Theoretically he could easily stab her in the back, but from the feel of it he wasn't holding a knife--just what the hell did he think he was doing?

"No, I don't think I'll be doing that," he said genially, and Susan only had a moment of red-misted fury before his mouth descended on hers.

------

Life and Delirium, both still high as kites, were poking and prodding their way through the battle. They'd lost sight of Susan, but that was all right--Life was more than busy, resurrecting people left and right. It was highly, highly doubtful either one of them realized they were in any danger, but even if they had it probably wouldn't have stopped them.

"Where's the cake?" Delirium asked, utterly oblivious to the chaos. "I wanted cake. The butterflies want cake."

Life didn't get a chance to respond. Somewhere, far at the back of the hall, a shriek went up that managed to pierce through even the din of battle.

"Shit! SHIT! Everybody RUN!"

The cry hadn't died away before the wall caved in, and…something…came trundling through. It was a little like a toboggan, but much more like a tank, sliding on greased runners across the marble floor. Covered in moss, with huge, cannon-like apertures lining it on all sides, it was positively swarming with Feegles, most of whom were sending up a cacophony of conflicting battle cries.

Atop it sat the Kelda, in all her spherical, blue-tattooed glory, a ceremonial spear in her hand.

"MUSH, YE SCURVY DOGS!" she bellowed--a surprisingly loud bellow, from a creature so small. The toboggan-tank rumbled onward, cutting a swath in the crowd as people frantically scrambled out of its way, and when it had gained the center of the hall it halted, gears grinding somewhere deep within it.

All sound and movement ceased, as every eye stared at the thing with a kind of horrified fascination. Nobody knew what the hell the thing was, or what it was meant for, but all who had prior experience with the Nac mac Feegle started edging quietly for the exits. For a moment dead silence reigned, and then,

"FIRE!" boomed the Kelda, and a split second later the tubes exploded, firing rounds that shot to the furthest corners of the hall. The din abruptly resumed, this time on a higher pitch, but it didn't take long to ascertain that the thing hadn't fired true shots--instead, half the crowd found themselves covered in sticky juice and bits of watermelon, with more than one person felled by a melon to the head.

Vimes stared. "And I thought Ankh-Morpork was bad," he muttered, shaking his head. A glance upward assured him that the Patrician was unhurt--and was probably the only person in all the hall who had escaped the sticky mortars--and then he was off, pushing and punching and occasionally blackjacking his way through the crowd.

"You want to play hard? Fine," he grumbled, heading for the stairs that led to the gallery that overlooked the main floor. The rope that supported the chandelier--a rope easily as big around as his waist--was fastened to a massive hook set high in the wall. If Vetinari didn't want to come down voluntarily, Vimes would happily take the decision out of his hands, and damn the consequences. He wanted out of this mess, the sooner the better, and if it meant dragging Vetinari by his boots, so be it. The fact that he had perhaps a snowball's chance in hell of dragging Vetinari anywhere against his will had rather escaped him.

"Bugger this for a game of soldiers," he said, and with that oath he raised his sword and started hacking at the rope.

------

Carrot and Angua, who were by then several floors away from the hall, nevertheless heard the explosion of the Feegle's contraption. They exchanged a glance that, while silent, nevertheless spoke volumes, and with that unspoken agreement raced back toward the hall.

They grabbed Nobby on the way, first relieving him of several small, rather valuable items and a jade statue of blind Justice. He'd found a silk petticoat somewhere (Angua didn't want to speculate why its owner had abandoned it), and lacking any way of carrying it had opted to wear it instead.

"I think that counts as being out of uniform, Nobby," she said, rolling her eyes at his protests. "Come on, the Commander will probably go spare if something's happened and we're not there to help."

"Sarge!" Nobby yelped, appealing to Colon for help. He got none--huffing and puffing, Colon was already trailing in Carrot and Angua's wake, as certain as they were that Vimes would flay them (probably not literally, but you never knew) if they didn't prod buttock back to the hall.

Their headlong flight accumulated more people--Justice, Famine, Pestilence, the Oh God, several seamstresses, War's daughter Clancy, Ridcully (who had been searching unsuccessfully for Albert), Ponder, and William de Word, who was too busy scribbling frantically to even notice he was being borne along by the tide.

Killer von Lipwig, ever-present cigarette to hand, followed the herd for the hell of it, certain that sooner or later they would provide some damn amusing theatre. Her deadly stiletto heels had already crippled more than one unfortunate, and when a bewildered, infatuated under-footman tried to grab her, one glare was enough to send him scrambling for cover.

By sheer accident she foregathered with Leonard of Quirm, who, like Life, was quite oblivious to the madness. Wisely realizing that he would have the life expectancy of a blowfly if left unattended, she seized his collar and dragged him after the rest of the mob, ignoring his token protests.

"Come on, Baldy," she said. "I don't know just what's going on here, but it's getting more ridiculous by the second."

"Well, well, look at it this way," Leonard replied, gazing about in utter fascination. "It probably can't get much worse."

No sooner had he spoken than the roof fell in.

------

The only person who hadn't been distracted by the Feegle-ocalypse was Teatime, and that was mainly because he was otherwise occupied and therefore quite distracted. Or at least he was, until Susan kicked him in the shin hard enough to break even his concentration.

"Ow," he grumbled, giving her a reproachful glare. "What'd you do that for?"

Susan, shaking with white-faced outrage, could not immediately form a coherent response. After a moment's spluttering she managed, "Why? Why? You…you…"

She trailed off, knowing words were not even remotely adequate in this kind of situation. She stomped on his foot instead, her heavy boot coming down hard enough to make even him wince. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded, the words fired on auto-pilot from a brain trying desperately to catch up with events. Cracked as he was, she'd thought he was smarter than that--he had to know her well enough to anticipate her reaction.

Teatime blinked at her, apparently genuinely puzzled by the question. "Why, kissing you," he said. "What, did I do it wrong?"

Did he do it--? Even cogent thought had failed her. Unless he'd been into some really interesting drugs, there was no reason his warped little mind should have hopped on that train of thought--

And then, abruptly, understanding and absolute horror dawned in tandem. It had almost entirely faded, but her fury-sharpened eyes caught the last fuzzy outline of an arrow sticking out of his shoulder.

A pink one.

"Oh," she said softly, "bugger."

Any response he might have made was, perhaps fortunately, interrupted by the truly spectacular roof cave-in. Despite the startled screams, what landed among the crowd was not solid stone--the castle, being mainly illusion, reverted to a sort of sticky ectoplasm when the spells that had created it were nullified. Those who had escaped the watermelon-shrapnel now wound up coated in goo, slipping and slithering like drunken ice-skaters.

That at least managed to distract both of them, albeit briefly. They stared, struggle momentarily forgotten, oblivious of the goop that was busily ruining their finery.

"…Right," Susan said, shaking her head. "Anyway…"

"Anyway," Teatime echoed, attention wandering back to the task at hand. He very likely would have kissed her again, save that Vetinari (who had, of course, escaped the fall of the chandelier unscathed) chose that moment to bash him over the head with what remained of a turkey.

"Thank you," Susan said fervently, flexing her now-free sword arm. She knew it was horribly bad form to kill a man while he was down, so she nudged at him with her boot, trying to wake him up enough so she could stab him with a clean conscience.

"I do try," Vetinari said, unruffled as ever. "I thought you might need some assistance."

Susan shook her head, but she had barely opened her mouth to respond when Vetinari's expression abruptly changed, and with a speed that rivaled even Teatime he grabbed her arm and jerked her hard to the right. She staggered, wondering for a brief moment what he was trying to dodge--

--and then something horribly sharp slammed into the back of her neck, and she knew no more.

------

A/N: Yeah, it's going from bad to worse. XD