A/N: Surprise!

Yep, a secret epilogue, folks. It's here that I can offer my sincerest thanks to everyone who's taken this journey with me, and explain where all the guest stars came from. it's been a glorious ride, and I can only hope this epilogue offers an effective capstone to the story. And who knows? Maybe you'll join me for my next foray into mad Gravity Falls fanfiction...

So, without further ado, the finale.

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, and neither are the following cameo figures that have appeared over the course of the story - sadly, I can't mention everyone referenced or the credits will be longer than the chapter, but here are the folks who actually made concrete appearances.

Nyarlathotep – Nyarlathotep and other Cthulhu mythos stories by H.P. Lovecraft

Emma Smith, the Filth, The Black Signal AKA John – The Secret World

Elizabeth and the Lutece Twins – Bioshock Infinite

The Starchild AKA Dave Bowman – 2001: A Space Odyssey

Coin – Sourcery/The Discworld series

Einstein and John Crichton – Farscape

Alma Wade – The F.E.A.R. series

Q – Star Trek: The Next Generation

Jessica Sorrow – the Nightside series

The Virage Embryo – The Legend Of Dragoon

Dr Manhattan – Watchmen

John Murdoch – Dark City

The Ellimist – the Animorphs series

Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith – Rick and Morty

The Doctors – Doctor Who

The Tzimisce Antediluvian – Vampire: The Masquerade

The Weaver – Werewolf: The Apocalypse

The Ori – Stargate: SG-1

The Electric Monks – The Electric Church by Jeff Somers

Tzeentch, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Khorne, – Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000

The man with the branch over his face – The Magicians by Lev Grossman

The "sun worshipers" – Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies

As for who Emma's mysterious bodyguard is and why she knows Dipper… that's another story for another day.

Oh, and this chapter's soundtrack is Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Thought of using Sympathy For The Devil by the Rolling Stones, but that might have been a bit much...

It took over three hundred and fifty-nine days for Bill to stop screaming, some distant near-rational part of his brain counting every single one even as the rest of him howled and gibbered incessantly into the Void.

Time and again, he tried to claw his way through the infinite blackness like a drowning swimmer trying to reach the surface: in his desperation, he imagined that their might somehow be a wall at the end of the darkness, something he could break through to escape from this nightmare, but if it even existed, the wall was always out of reach. With none of his powers accessible, he didn't have the energy to continue his journey for long before succumbing to exhaustion, and in the end, he could only float helplessly across the endless night, screaming in terror.

But soon he ran out of energy even for that, and fell silent. After all, it wasn't as if anyone could actually hear him; this was an entirely self-contained universe with exactly inhabitant: him. So, for the next five years, Bill simply hovered in place and tried valiantly not to panic. He told himself time and again that he was still alive, that there was nothing the darkness could do to hurt him – after all, he was already condemned to spend the remainder of his life here, so what was the point in worrying?

It didn't work. Every time he thought he had his nerves under control, he'd find himself instinctively staring into the Void in the hopes of finding a light somewhere in the darkness. He'd no idea what he'd expected to find in a pocket universe made largely of nothingness, but he found himself dementedly hoping to find a sun, a star, a tiny electrochemical reaction; any kind of light would have been enough for him, but of course he never found it. And the more he searched, the more frantic he became until at last he was back to square one: sitting in the darkness, whimpering and sobbing pathetically to himself.

From time to time, he would call out into the vacuum, listening to his voice echo across infinite space and fade forever into the distance. His reasons for doing so varied, in the event that he actually understood them: in some moments of desperation, he could almost imagine that he could see someone floating above him (though of course the only thing he could see was more darkness), and he would scream for help until he finally convinced himself that the apparition wasn't real. At other times, he would cry out for his jailers, forgetting his earlier realization and hollering their names in the hope that they might somehow be listening: Axolotl, Ford, Dipper, and Mabel were the most common of them, but he played no favourites, even beseeching Robbie for attention at one point. He threatened, he boasted, he cajoled, he tried half-heartedly to reason with them, he made ludicrous promises he had no way of keeping, and in the end, he simply begged to be released. He had no dignity left here in the Void, and in that darkness, he offered himself entirely to the Zodiac for any purpose they desired if they would just set him free. Eventually, he would remember that nobody could hear him even if they wanted to, and he would fall silent… up until another panic attack left him attempting the impossible all over again.

Most of all, however, he would simply talk to himself or to nothing at all, if only because rambling idiotically at the shadows was better than listening to the crushing, smothering, all-devouring silence that descended upon him whenever he stopped speaking. After he stopped screaming, Bill couldn't bear spend a single hour of the next two years in silence; he couldn't even make it past the thirty minute mark.

Worse still was the fact that his body still throbbed with pain: of all the injuries he'd suffered during that final battle and its aftermath, the only one that had not healed and never would was the implantation site in his back. Every day of his incarceration, he could feel that sunken crater in his flesh itching and aching in the dark, the implant beneath it buzzing furiously as it datamined his brain for pertinent information, every query sending tiny waves of pain and discomfort rippling down his spine and across his body. Time and again, he'd tried to yank it out of his brain, to plunge his fingers into the wound and rip the whole implant out, but he just couldn't get a grip on it. Something about that hateful little machine was impossible for him to touch, and actually stung his hands away whenever he tried to make a grab for it. Reaching it from any other angle was impossible while his regenerative powers were still in play.

What he really wanted was to sleep, to close his eyes and let his consciousness fade. For one thing, a few hours of sleep might ease the pain in his back; for another, it might take the strain off his mind and help him think of something, anything other than that terrible, all-consuming darkness. If nothing else, he could dream of a way out: an imaginary escape from this hell would be worth every second, no matter how ridiculous it could be.

But of course, Bill couldn't dream a way out of this. Sleep was simply not possible: he'd deliberately altered his physical body so he wouldn't have to sleep.

After spending a trillion years locked away in the Nightmare Realm and only finding temporary escape in the slumbering minds of lesser lifeforms, he hadn't been interested in indulging in another minute of resting or dreaming. After all, as an all-powerful immortal with a plan for a party that would never end, what would have been the point in sleeping when there was so much fun on the horizon? And dreaming was for losers as far as he'd been concerned, for weak-minded underachieving mortal wastes of skin who had to imagine their fantasies and ambitions instead of going out and making them come true. Now, though, Bill wanted to sleep and dream more than anything else in his life; after so many eons in the Nightmare Realm and a few Ice Ages of subjective time as Earth's lord and master he almost couldn't remember what it was like to sleep, but he found himself almost possessed by the desire to recapture the feeling of slumber – to slip out of reality for a little while, drift off into a gentler, happier world, and awake feeling better...

And it wasn't for the sake of variety that he wanted to dream. If he wanted to see something weird, all he had to do was wait a little while.

Sapient minds weren't meant to go without input from their senses for long periods of time; having arranged Mabel's punishment for disobeying the rules of Mabeland, he knew that hallucinations were common for individuals under sensory deprivation, courtesy of the victim's mind beginning to invent imaginary stimuli to compensate for the lack of detail... and now he was experiencing that little side-effect for himself.

Every day, it was worse: at first, he only saw little things – a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, a flicker of light somewhere in the surrounding darkness, even a faintly glowing figure in the distance… but eventually, those hallucinations took on recognizable shapes. More than once, the Zodiac loomed out of their darkness, imaginary weapons tearing him open with all the agony that the real ones could inflict. Many times, Axolotl's light had left him blind and writhing in pain, even though he knew full well that the real Axolotl would never lower himself to follow him here. Countless foes from his past hounded him across the Void, some of them dating back to his time in the Third Dimension, and all he could do was flee in terror (even though he knew on some distant level that trying to escape them was pointless). Sometimes, he even saw his parents; they never spoke, they never moved to attack him, but simply shook their heads in sorrow and looked away.

And in time, all the torments he thought of inflicting on others were soon brought down upon him. His blood turned to acid in his veins, his bones shattered and clawed their way out through his flesh in monstrous sapient shards, and a volcano erupted behind his ribs and made him burn alive from the inside out. He was turned inside out, imploded, unravelled across multiple dimensions like a paper chain, and was made to toil in the slave-pits of a trillion different work camps. He relived the moment of his own defeat over and over again, forever being struck down and forever being humiliated – all the more galling for the fact that when he'd thought of that punishment, it had meant to be the Zodiac's defeat, not his.

Once, he even felt himself being forced into a sundering transformation, his body ripped to pieces, his mind igniting into a star as his torn flesh calcified and hardened into the seedlings of planets: he could feel his mind burning unto eternity as a sun, feel the fragments of his body alive with volcanic activity – then cooling under millions of years of rain until the first rudimentary seas and rivers formed on his surface; for millions of years, he itched as microbial life took root his oceans, then advanced across the land, taking root inside his skin as plants, weeds, grasses, forests. Then came animals; then came humanity; then came civilization... until one day, on one of his smaller planets, a tiny Bill Cipher appeared and brought down a compressed eternity of pain and suffering upon his transfigured self.

No matter how many times he told himself it wasn't real, the visions always left him huddled into a ball, weeping pathetically. Every so often, Bill entertained mad fantasies of resisting the hallucinations, of finding his way out of this nightmare, out of this prison and back to the world of light, freedom, and glorious chaos. In his wildest fantasies, he even daydreamed of some glorious recapturing of his past triumphs and starting all over again… but in the end, he didn't bother.

He'd lost.

He'd failed.

And worst of all, he'd found that in the end, it had all been for nothing, that all his grand plans and grander ambitions would have ended the same way even if he'd won: the rise of entropy, the collapse of his empire, the descent into endless darkness – no matter how hard he'd tried, it would have concluded in the same eternal prison, the same descent into defeat and despair.

What was the point in trying again?

What was the point in anything anymore?

"Bill?"

Somewhere in the darkness, Bill curled himself into ball again, shut his eyes tight, and wished he had something to hide behind – though he knew hiding from his own hallucinations was pointless.

"Bill?"

Just go away, he thought. Just leave me alone. I don't want more nightmares. I just wanna be asleep. I wanna be dead. Or something. Just go away.

"Oh Biiiii-iiiiiilll? I know you can hear me. He told me you'd still be able to hear me: most sapient beings wouldn't survive for so long in all this darkness, would probably turn into barking animals, catatonic living corpses with their brain-with their brain-with their brains leaking out of their ears. But you're not most sapient beings, are you?"

In spite of himself, a faint thrill of interest rippled down Bill's aching spine. Was it his imagination, or did that bubbling, staticky voice sound somehow familiar?

"Yes, yes, you're alive in there, aren't ya? Bit of breath left in the lungs, right? A few strips of meat on the bones, something we can work with at any rate. But I'm gonna need a word or two of confirmation before we reel you in, little minnow: I'm not just gonna haul in a semi-total basket case, y'know. Best speak now, Bill, or I'll leave you here to while away the next nine hundred and ninety-six years in the dark in five… four… three… two-"

Heart leaping in excitement and terror, Bill surged to life: "Yes!" he almost screamed. "Yes, yes, I can hear you, whoever you are, and I'll do whatever you want – just don't leave me here, please…"

"Good, good, good to hear there's still a bit of life rippling through the old vocal chords, bit of spark in the brainpan. He will be pleased." The voice chuckled malignantly. "Hiya, Bill. It's me, John."

For a moment, Bill could only boggle in confusion. Then he remembered that thick bubbling, almost electronically-distorted voice he'd heard back in the Fearamid, the one that had accompanied that tidal wave of black tar that had oozed out of his phone and begun infecting his army before he'd even had a chance to resist. For a moment, he wondered why one of his attackers would be coming to the rescue, but then fear took over again: suddenly, all he could think of was that horrible, tentacle-studded oil oozing though the darkness towards him, reaching out for him with dripping half-formed fingers. Out there in the real world, it had been easy to avoid it in the daylight… but here, in the endless dark of the Void, it'd be upon him before he had a chance to resist – and here, had no power to fight back, no way of resisting.

"Oh god," he whimpered. "Where are you? What are you? Why are you here? What do you want?" And because the last of his pride had bled away a long time ago, he added, "Please don't hurt me."

"Hurt you? Aaaaawwwwwwww, Bill. You've fallen so far, lost so much. Would the old Bill have ever sunken to this? I don't think so. Even when you were locked up tight in Stan's skull and being erased, you never begged as spinelessly. You weren't cowering. Christ on crumpets, if you had a bladder, you'd be pissing yourself."

And even here, even in extremis, Bill couldn't help but cringe in embarrassment and shame. "I don't want any trouble," he mumbled. "I'm not hurting anyone. Please… I'm already imprisoned. I'm already suffering. Whatever you're going to do to me, you don't have to do it-"

"Hey, I'm on your side. I know how you feel: you started out so strong, you waited so long to see your dream come true, and you set out as bold and brave as a brushfire through an ancient tinder-dry forest... and then, just as you thought you could be free and happy, someone came along, snatched it out of your hands and left you with nothing but grief and emptiness-emptiness-emptiness-emptiness. Locked away in the dark, waiting to die, all that beauty and potential wasted because some great big sky-daddy didn't feel like being fair. I know, I've been there, done that, stolen the t-shirt off the corpse."

Bill's eye narrowed. In spite of his fear and despair, a tiny flicker of hope stirred behind his eyes, stunted and malformed as it was; maybe John was just flattering him, but those oily words seemed hard to ignore and even harder dislodge from his brain. "Where are you?" he asked hesitantly. How did you even get here? This place is supposed to be impenetrable from the outside."

"Who says I'm here? You're hearing my voice, but that doesn't mean I'm here. I'm very good with tech, as you know by now, but it took a while for me to catch up with the little seed our client planted. Such a small seed, but that was all I needed." That thick, tarry chuckle again. "Axolotl should have been more careful about who he let near that implant he slipped into your skull-slot!"

"...you're in my head?"

"In your implant. A tiny blob of Filth's in there, no bigger than pinhead, but it's enough to forge a link I could follow inside, with a bit of time and effort. More importantly, I can lead someone back through it… unless you're too busy for a little meeting out in the real world. You're not busy, are you?"

"Me? No! No, I'm not busy at all! What makes you think I'd be busy?!" Bill laughed mirthlessly, voice on the edge of hysteria.

"Good. Now, hold on just one second while the rollercoaster gets ready for the plunge…"

There was a sharp buzz from the implant, and suddenly, Bill was no longer hovering in the Void, lost forever in the darkness.

Suddenly, light was pouring down on him from all angles, a low roaring sound pouring itself though his suddenly-present ears; though he still floated, he was no longer surrounded by senseless emptiness, but by a deep abiding cold. And a substance, something thick and transparent, something almost familiar…

He was underwater, he realized. He was floating in a glass tube of water, an aqualung mask strapped to his face and his body garlanded with intravenous tubing. With his eyesight hopelessly blurred by the water, it was impossible to tell where he was or what lay outside the tube,

More disconcertingly, he was human.

Not even the blurring of his eyes – yes, eyes plural – could disguise what he'd become: the weak, fleshy limbs, the puny non-geometric torso, the unnaturally binocular vision, the fact that he now needed to breathe… Bill was human, his almighty mind contained within the body of a lowly mortal. He was one of them now, a one-lifespanned three-dimensional five-sensed skin puppet.

And then, no sooner had he gotten used to this transformation, there was a whirring from somewhere beneath him. Next thing he knew, a door had opened, the water was being drained away, and Bill was crashing to the floor, knees colliding painfully with the tiles as he tumbled gracelessly out of the tube. As if to add insult to injury, the mask was roughly yanked off his face, leaving him gasping for air for the first time in a trillion years.

"Welcome," said a soft voice from overhead.

Bill opened his mouth to speak, but all that emerged was an explosion of coughing. It took him almost five minutes of gagging and wheezing before he could utter a single word, and when he finally managed to form a complete sentence, he knew at once that something was very wrong with this new body. "Where am I?" he gasped.

"My world," said the voice, sounding distinctly smug and eerily familiar. "More specifically, the South Pole. Hope you don't mind the rough arrival, but that's the way it is when you're travelling by that method. Still, it could be worse: you could have ended up Filth-infected. John, you may leave us now; tell the delegates that I will be with them very shortly."

"As the Crawling Chaos commands."

Bill coughed and tried to stand up, only for his hands to slip on the wet tiles and send him smashing chinfirst to the ground. Whimpering in pain, he tried again, this time managing to haul himself upright with all the grace and poise of a baby giraffe. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he gradually discerned new details of the room around him, and not just the empty glass tube from which he'd emerged: he was in a vast chamber of gleaming metal, each wall so thoroughly polished that they essentially function just like mirrors – and it was from these mirrored bulkheads that he finally got his first glimpse of his new body.

Not only was he human, but he was also woefully unimpressive: from his lank blonde hair to his splayed feet, from his wobbling knock-knees to his scrawny, sunken chest, he looked absolutely ridiculous. His legs seemed almost too skinny to support the weight of the clumsy body, and his arms were so long and spindly that the only way he could possibly hurt someone with them was by paper cut. He was a weakling alright, a weakling in every possible sense of the word. And that face! What kind of cosmic joke had given a dimensional conqueror this pathetic face? Those insipid blue eyes, the ludicrously crooked nose, the tiny mouth with its wobbling lower lip, the expression that suggested it was just about to cry at any minute... even the backless wetsuit he'd been wearing looked ridiculous, especially with the rudimentary cape off intravenous tubing now dangling off him.

But he could have lived with it – if only the body hadn't clearly been a grand total of thirteen years old.

"What have you done to me?!" he shrieked, immediately cringing at the sound of his voice at full volume; it was still recognizably him, but downsized to human proportions and regressed until it almost squeaked with every other syllable.

"Don't you recognize your new body, Bill?" the voice chuckled. "This was one of the host bodies you designed for travelling among humanity in disguise – in fact, the only one of your vat-grown vessels to survive Ford's massacre. True, I tweaked a few of the features here and there, but it's still your handiwork. I hope you like it, because unless you fancy going back to the Void, this is now your physical form for the foreseeable future."

"But I look stupid!" Bill whined in spite of himself; try as he might, he couldn't stop his voice from resolving into that pitiable bellyaching bleat.

"I can make you younger if you like."

"No, no, no, that's fine! I'm just fine like this! No problems whatsoever! Um... you wanna maybe show yourself so we can talk about whatever it was you, uh, wanted to talk about?"

"Straight to business. I like that. But there's no need for me to show myself at all, Bill: all you need to do is look."

The source of the voice suddenly shifted, and the next thing he knew, Bill was standing in a growing pool of shadows – the source of which lay directly behind him. Heart sinking, he turned around and found himself staring up into the swarthy features of a face he'd never hoped to see ever again.

"You!" he gibbered.

Nyarlathotep smirked, his crimson coat billowing in an invisible breeze. "I'd say "pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name," but something tells me you're not a fan of the Rolling Stones. Plus, it's a bit of a cliché by now."

"But you were working with Axolotl! You were helping the Zodiac – you drank my tears, for crying out loud? Why would you break me out of prison?"

"Technically, I didn't break you out of prison: your body's still there, its brain still being merrily datamined by Axolotl's mind probe. It's just that your consciousness no longer occupies it. Rest assured, the Zodiac won't notice a thing."

"But why you? Why would you help me?"

"Oh, rest assured I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart," said Nyarlathotep darkly. "For the last few months, I've been putting together a team – an alliance, really: some of the most powerful entities from across the multiverse are gathering in my special conference chamber to hear my proposal, and you're just the entity to round out the roster. Believe me, your knowledge of eldritch energies would make you invaluable."

"Er... how? I mean, what do you want me to do for you?"

"Oh, that can wait until much later: I've got an entire roomful of cosmic beings waiting to be enticed into my service. So, why don't you stay for a while and listen the pitch? You'll hear all about the details of your assignment immediately after."

Bill's mind raced. He'd no idea what the hell this Nyarlathotep was planning, but he could tell at once that he wasn't cut out for it: he was currently stuck in the body of an adolescent, he was out of his depth, his heart was beating far faster than was healthy, and even now that he was free from the Void, that terrible sense of fear and despair hadn't left him behind. Worse still, he could easily sense that his powers were still sealed away, so he wouldn't be much good for any kind of serious mission. The most likely possibility was that Nyarlathotep was toying with him again, preparing him for participation in a sick game that would get him killed, tortured, or just sent right back to the Void. Well, it had taken a very long time to get the hang of the basics, but Bill had finally learned how to settle for less: even if his rescuer could offer him a return to godhood, he couldn't accept it – not with the weight of his failure pressing down on him. The safest thing to do would be to run, to wait until Nyarlathotep's back was turned and flee as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

"Where's the conference room?" he asked.

"Just through that archway there." Nyarlathotep pointed to a gleaming black archway at the far end of the room, thick with shadows and impenetrable darkness.

"And, er, what's in that archway back over there?" He gestured vaguely in the direction of the gate at the opposite end of the chamber, this one an inviting burnished gold: with its doors open wide and blue skies visible just beyond, it was definitely the more alluring of the two options.

"Oh, that leads to my teleporter – my favourite model, believe me. By far the most user-friendly, it'll take you anywhere in the multiverse with a press of a button and a thought. Now, come along, Bill: we have a conference to attend."

The moment Nyarlathotep turned towards the black archway, Bill turned and ran straight for the other end of the room as quickly and quietly as he could manage. He didn't turn to check if his rescuer had noticed his absence; he simply ran, sprinting across the room with great difficulty on wobbling legs. But within perhaps six seconds, the archway was within arm's reach and with no sign of pursuit, Bill put on an extra burst of speed-

And promptly crashed facefirst into a brick wall.

"In all honesty," said Nyarlathotep cheekily, "I don't actually own a teleporter. I am, however, very good at illusions."

Face throbbing from the impact, Bill had just enough time to peel himself off the wall before Nyarlathotep grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and flung him to the ground. Once again, Bill tried desperately to claw his way upright, but he couldn't get a grip on the tiles, and then a booted foot hammered down on his undefended spine and once again sent him chinfirst into the ground.

"Not a very smart move, Billy," purred his attacker. "Not smart at all. I was already nursing a grudge over how close you came to endangering my universe. I mean, try to imagine all the millennia of effort I spent moulding the civilizations in my world into a sandbox in which I could indulge myself, and how easily your little apocalypse could have ruined it all if it had spread beyond the barriers of your world. And now try to imagine the level of my hatred for you. You know what I'd call running, Bill? I'd call that all the excuses I fucking well need."

And with that, he seized Bill by the back of the skull and slammed him facefirst into the ground hard enough to crack teeth and flatten his nose like a deflated balloon. Dazed from the impact, he felt Nyarlathotep's foot leave his back, and he tried to rise – only for another booted foot to catch him a stunning blow in the belly. Doubling over, Bill puked up what little nutrient paste his new body had been fed in the last few hours, and between gasps for breath, tried desperately to plead for mercy... but if Nyarlathotep had heard him, he wasn't interested. Next thing he knew, a boot had pistoned down on Bill's defenceless hand, shattering bones and pulverizing knuckles.

"Ah, there we have it," Nyarlathotep chortled, raising his voice over Bill's screams. "The scream I was waiting for. The nerves in that cloned youngster's body are so fresh, so new and untested, and unlike your last vessel, you don't have the power to regenerate. You don't have any power at all, in fact."

Bill went on screaming. Even the attacks on his eyes hadn't hurt this much.

"Pain really is hilarious, especially in your position, isn't it?"

"Stop!" Bill wailed. "Please stop! I know you're angry about me endangering your universe, but-"

Nyarlathotep smirked, and ground his heel into Bill's crushed fingers "Oh, I'm not hurting you because of that, not anymore. I've well and truly exorcised the worst of my frustrations by now, and everything is copacetic between us. I'm even on the way to forgiving… so I suppose the question is, why do I keep hurting you?"

"I... I don't know."

"Yes you do, Bill. Now, I'll ask again and if you answer correctly, I'll stop: why do I keep on hurting you?"

"I swear, I don't know!"

"Aw, you disappoint me, Bill. You used to know this better than anyone. But perhaps you need incentive, a little something to jog your memory a bit." Suddenly, the pressure on his broken hand vanished, and Nyarlathotep was hauling him to his knees by the front of his wetsuit, needle-sharp fangs looming dangerously close to Bill's face. "I'm going to ask one final time, and if you can't answer me to my satisfaction, I am going to eat your eyes. Now, why do I keep hurting you?"

And just like that, with terror unlike any kind Bill had felt before bearing down on him, the answer flickered into view in his mind's eye – and just as Nyarlathotep had said, Bill had once known it better than anyone else in his dimension.

"BECAUSE YOU CAN!"

"Perfect! Now, on your feet, my friend: we have a conference to attend, and I can't have you at my side looking like that..."

And before he could figure out what was going on, Bill found himself being helped to his feet: a few magical gestures later, and every wound that Nyarlathotep had inflicted on him had vanished, right down to the shattered nails on his pulped hand. Then, to Bill's continued bewilderment, his wetsuit and intravenous tubing were magically replaced with a finely-made royal blue cloak and tunic; for good measure, his wet hair was thoroughly blow-dried and combed.

Then, still shellshocked from the beating, he was led across the room towards the black archway – but not before Nyarlathotep took aside for one final discussion: "Please don't run again, Bill," he whispered, his eyes blazing with arcane energies. "It'd be a shame to embarrass you in front of all our new friends by breaking your kneecaps. Understand?"

"Absolutely."

"You promise to be on your best behaviour?"

This time, the look in Nyarlathotep's eyes was so disturbing that Bill couldn't even speak: instead, he only nodded contritely.

"Good boy. Now, let's introduce you to the team."

"Conference room" didn't do this place justice.

As far as Bill could tell, it was roughly the size of a stadium or seventeen, and probably would have possessed its own weather system if it hadn't been clearly been constructed through powerful reality-bending magic – maybe even an infusion of the dream world if Bill was any judge. The table alone stretched away for miles on end, a veritable cliff-face of polished wood and glowing runes, yet Bill could somehow see everyone seated at it no matter how far away they were, every face visible as if he was sitting right next to them.

And as for the "delegates…"

They couldn't actually be here: it simply wasn't possible for these beings to be sharing the same space in the same universe, not without kicking off an apocalypse by virtue of their own intrinsic natures. And more to the point, if Bill wasn't terribly mistaken, a lot of these entities would have been at each other's throats if they'd actually been within arms' reach of each other. This had to be an infusion of a dreamworld, the only place where these eldritch things could interact safely.

Here was the blob-monster that had attacked him back in the Fearamid, the thing that called itself Tzimisce – only much larger: there had to be an entire planet's worth of protean flesh sitting in that monolithic chair.

Here was the Weaver, the giant spider of order and calcification who'd invaded his world during the hunt for Axolotl; alongside her, a small retinue of drones led by Tad Strange hovered in readiness.

Here was John, a living lake of oily-black Filth controlling a robotic body that had once belonged to GIFfany… and as for the figures behind him, they were the true interdimensional gods. Their mouths like the event horizons of black holes, they idly licked at the craters in long-dead moons, hungrily waiting for a bigger feast.

Here was a beautiful woman with eyes that glowed like molten gold, dressed a gown of sculpted flame; flanking her were same staff-wielding monks that had attacked the Fearamid from the inside along with the drones and the demons. This flame-wreathed humanoid was presumably one of the Ori they'd mentioned so many times, but Bill hadn't the slightest clue where her power laid.

Here was a quartet of hideous figures, each of them impossibly powerful beings temporarily manifested in a singular form like children forced into their Sunday best: a giant scarlet monstrosity of rippling muscle and flesh-shredding fangs, a colossal axe sitting by his side; a vast, bloated heap of rotting flesh and squirming maggots, shrouded in a swarm of buzzing flies large enough to blot out the sun for three city blocks; a slender, androgynous figure in alarmingly revealing robes, every move impossibly graceful, every discernible feature beautiful beyond all rationality; and last but not least, a hunched figure in a swirling multi-coloured robe with a vulture-like face protruding from under the hood, his skin rippling like water and constantly forming a multitude of obscenely grinning faces wherever the light touched it. Bill didn't recognize any of them, but their places were helpfully labelled "Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch."

And there were more – so many more, some of them recognizable, some of them not. There were vast agglomerations of machinery a million stories high that fried human sacrifices inside their furnace-like stomachs and proclaimed their gospels in binary; there were near-invisible assemblies of alien colours and non-Euclidean geometry that warped space by presence alone, and did unpleasant things to Bill's eyes just by glancing in his directions; insectoid horrors that resolved into graceful, featureless humanoids like mannequins and played with atoms like Legos; giant hovering spheres with snow-globe like dioramas of torture and apocalypse playing out within them; and worst of all, there were things that had clearly once been mortal, even human, but now pulsated with alien power so great that it threatened to burst through the fleshy husks they still inhabited and reveal them for the nightmare gods they truly were.

A quick glance in the guest list waiting in front of Nyarlathotep revealed that this conference hall was a rolecall of some of the most dangerous and potent eldritch entities of the multiverse, some of them known even to Bill, most of them not: the Unnamed, the Akropolis, the Hyperbreed Omnibeasts, the Wyrm, the Brethren Moons, the Lloigor (with Ruby Fox as key representative), Martin Chatwin, Sutter Cane, the Dawn Machine, Apophis, Mad Jim Jaspers, the Anti-God, Lasombra, the Not-God, AM, at least a dozen different variants on Lilith, and even one of the legendary Infovores. Bill could only cringe and try to hide behind Nyarlathotep at the sight of them all: once, he'd been one of them, a god in his own right.

Now he was nothing.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Nyarlathotep announced, "Boys, girls, all things in between and beings beyond description, welcome! I've no doubt some of you already know why you've been summoned here, having participated in my latest gambit. But for the rest of you, worry not: this will still require some explanation.

"The multiverse has been a closed book to us for as long as it has existed, brothers and sisters, a door that will always be locked to us. We represent the most successful iterations of our kind across the multiverse: we are those who overcame the heroes against all odds, or those who could never be defeated even by those who styled themselves as the righteous. We are the outliers, the oddballs, the inexplicable exception to the rule that the destroyers, corrupters and distorters must always fall to the mortal heroes… and yet, though we have conquered our worlds of origin and sometimes even the odd neighbouring reality, we could never extend our reigns to the rest of the multiverse. We were sealed in, locked inside our dominion and quarantined forever. Unfair indeed, especially since so many so-called heroes and neutrals travel freely even as we languish in captivity. In the end, we have learned to tolerate the disappointments of interdimensional existence, if only because we had our initial success to sooth our wounded pride; we still had our kingdoms, our subjects, our… playthings.

"But now, things have changed: now there portals opening into a world where reality has broken down, a dimension that can – with a little subtlety and stealth – serve as a crossroads for multiversal travel. Several of you have already visited, either in person or through your operatives, and all of you have grasped the incalculable blessing that has landed in our collective laps. Now, we have a means by which we can access other worlds at will and attain all that we desire: wealth, power, territory, slaves, food, followers, freedom – you name it, it's out there, ripe for the taking.

"And it's all thanks to this young man that the gates of that blighted little world have been flung wide open, and a nexus of interdimensional passageways has been unveiled to us: ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the one and only Bill Cipher!"

And with that, Bill found himself unceremoniously yanked out of the shadows and thrust into the spotlight, and for the first time in billions of years, he had nothing to say to the teeming multitudes before him. It seemed impossible to believe, but Bill Cipher had just found himself the victim of stage fright; in the end, he could only stand there, pale, terrified, open-mouthed and waving limply at the delegates as they applauded for him.

"Furthermore," Nyarlahotep continued, "it's thanks to his anarchic amusements that I've ensured that Axolotl cannot interfere in this plan: as long as this plan remains under my administration, friends, he cannot touch us. As long as we remain legion, one of the most powerful defenders of the multiverse will not directly oppose us... and after that, the other defenders will fall, one by one: we have seen them in action and we know their weaknesses; we know which of us are best pitted against them – we can discuss that particular strategy after refreshments, of course. Once Axolotl has been eliminated to avoid any unfortunate loopholes, we will be able to split an infinite multiverse and all its resources between us, and nothing can halt our conquest of eternity!

But of course, I've no doubt some of you have very obvious questions concerning my loyalty: why am I helping you when I previous helped Axolotl? Why should you trust me after all that I've done? Well, to be brutally honest, Axolotl has nothing to offer me: I made a very simple request of him – keep Azathoth from waking up and ruining all my hard work. Simple, easily-accomplished with a bit of imagination and moxie. But no, according to the all-powerful newt god that lives beyond time and space, such a thing would be impossible according to the laws of multiversal reality. Impossible! After all the things we've seen and accomplished, after everything Bill here managed to do without Axolotl expecting it, and the cosmic justice of the peace still uses the word "impossible!" I ask you, what the fuck is wrong with the management of this multiverse?!"

Nyarlathotep's voice rose to a scream. "He saw reality unmade and he dared speak of what was not possible! He dared refuse me out of ignorance and fear! So, it's time that we faced the facts: we represent the greatest power in the multiverse; our collective might can outdo Axolotl, Rick, the Ellimist, Q, Jessica Sorrow, the Doctors, Elizabeth fucking Comstock, even the goddamn Zodiac! Nobody has seen a force such as ours united behind a single purpose, and nobody can imagine what we can accomplish together, least of all Axolotl. If the laws of the multiverse cannot serve us, then they cannot suffice any longer! We are together not just so that we can secure resources and entertainment, my friends, but to unmake infinity! We shall tear apart the dimensional constraints, rip out the foundations of stable reality and create new laws for this blighted creation: everyone gets what they want, and everyone gets what they deserve!"

He paused, and seemed to gather himself. "Rest assured, people, if this multiverse can't be chained to our will, then it must be changed. If it can't be changed… IT WILL… BE… FUCKED!"

Another cosmic storm of applause, the thunder of several universes worth of nightmares cheering in exaltation.

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen! Thank you one and all; now, feel free to adjourn to the antechamber for refreshments – we shall commence strategies within as much subjective time as we need!" Then, as the conference room began to empty, he turned to Bill and whispered, "In the meantime, it's time you decided what you're going to do with your new life…"

"This isn't going to work," said Bill, quietly. "All these different creatures, all these different ideologies… nobody's going to cooperate, not really. I mean, the Weaver's all about order and Tzeentch is a Chaos God; you can't expect them to agree or even to get what they want. Everyone's going to be trying to screw each other over: the moment they get the chance, they'll be killing each other."

"Exactly," said Nyarlathotep with a smirk. "The trick is will be making sure that they eliminate as much of the opposition as possible before they start eliminating each other. Rest assured, it'll be possible to kill the likes of Rick Sanchez and the Doctor without the help of our friends back there once the harvest is complete, but it'll be a much harder job without proxies."

"…what are you talking about?"

Nyarlathotep put a paternal arm around Bill's shoulders. "Ah, Bill," he chuckled. "You've been out of practice for so long: you haven't had a chance to honestly and truly manipulate someone in years; you've either been relying on ultimate power or locked away in the darkness too long. All these delegates, all these eldritch pawns are just that: pawns. Useful, entertaining, but inevitably expendable. Besides, even if I were to give them everything they could possibly want, even if they could cooperate long enough to rewrite infinity, they'd still want to take over everyone else's territory, including mine. I've no overwhelming desire to save my masterpiece only to lose it to them. So, what do you think I'm really up to?"

Bill thought for a moment. "You said there was a harvest. You're going to harvest the energies of the delegates, aren't you? The Weaver, the Ori, Tzimisce – you're going to have them kill anyone who might try to stop you, and then once they're too exhausted to fight back, and then you're going to siphon them to death-"

"And claim all their power as my own," said Nyarlathotep triumphantly. "And with all that power, unmatched by any in the multiverse, I can prove Axolotl wrong and rewrite the laws of my universe: Azathoth will remain asleep for all time, and my masterpiece will remain undisturbed unto infinity."

There was a horrified pause.

"Also, there'll be no chances of any interdimensional interlopers ruining my best work, because everyone who could have tried that will be dead! So, blue skies all around, I think."

He's insane, Bill thought. He's absolutely bonkers; I know I've said that about myself, but this guy is out of his goddamn mind and circling the toilet bowl chanting "cuckoo for coco puffs!" And I'm his unofficial prisoner. Jesus Christ on crackers, what have I gotten myself into?

"Where do I fit into all this?" he asked nervously.

"It so happens that I need someone who knows their way around Weirdness, and I need someone who doesn't have an agenda. More importantly, I need someone who wants something that I and only I can provide."

That threw Bill for a minute. "What do you mean?"

"Has it occurred to you that the world you always wanted might be possible through my influence, Bill? With the power I will harvest from the delegates, your idea of a party that never ends with a host that never dies might not be so impossible after all. With universal laws rewritten, you can have all the benefits of Weirdness with none of the drawbacks."

And in spite of all the failures and disappointments the end of his reign had brought about, a tiny spark of hope flared in the back of Bill's mind. "Really?" he asked.

Careful. He could be lying, or it could be just another one of his pipe dreams.

"Really. And if you're wondering what I can do for you right now, I can ensure that you – as my favoured emissary – have all the benefits you could possibly need. You're in a human body, and you have human requirements that I can satisfy: sustenance, rest, entertainment, clothing, healthcare, decent holidays… and best of all, I can give you back some of your powers – in small quantities, but I'm prepared to supply more if you perform well."

Bill couldn't help it: he was almost salivating by now. But still, something kept him from accepting the deal.

"There's something else you want me to do," he whispered, "Isn't there?"

"Very perceptive, Bill. At the end of this grand quest of ours, however many decades it will take, I'm aiming to secure one last dose of power… and by this time, it will be quite potent. The Zodiac will only continue growing in strength with every year that passes, and I want to harvest every last purified drop of it. A couple of centuries from now and their power will outmatch even you in your prime, exactly what I need to rewrite my universe."

"So what do you need me for?"

"Well, I made a promise to Axolotl: I swore a vow that I would not involve the Zodiac in my next scheme." A horrible grin inched across Nyarlathotep's face. "He never said anything about the Zodiac involving themselves in the plan, did he?" he snickered. "And true, the Zodiac might like their relaxation and their responsibilities… but they hate you, Bill."

And just like that, the tiny spark of hope in the back of Bill's head fizzled out.

"Bait," he gasped. "You're going to use me as bait."

"Exactly. But only after several centuries: I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to prepare for your reunion in the intervening years. And if you survive, you'll have the fun world you've always wanted."

"What happens if I say no?"

"Well, Billy, you'll go right back to the Void and die there, alone, unmourned and forgotten, and I'll just have to make do with the most convincing illusions I can conjure. Rest assured, you'll suffer a whole lot more than I will."

Bill laughed nervously. "Uh… I guess I could consider joining you if… um… I was sure I was going to be rewarded for my services."

"And in case any cute ideas are occurring to you, I will not tolerate any further disobedience on your part, Billy: if you try to run again…" Nyarlathotep's teeth, suddenly impossibly long and sharp, gleam magnificently. "I will rip out one of your eyeballs and eat it."

Assuming you're quick enough to catch up with me if I run for it while I'm on assignment.

"And if you're actually stupid enough to try and betray me to the other delegates – assuming you can resist the enchantments placed on you – it'll be both eyes. And I will ensure that you spend the remainder of your life learning exactly how long the human intestinal tract can unravel before it starts to dissolve. Do I make myself clear?"

Bill whimpered in the affirmative.

"Excellent! Now we can like each other simply for who we are… assuming you're prepared to accept this little bargain of ours."

He held out his hand, clearly waiting for a handshake.

"What'll it be, Bill: eternal glory or eternal damnation? Your choice."

Bill took a deep breath, knowing full well that he didn't have a choice at all; if he accepted this deal he was almost certainly going to get screwed over just as he'd screwed over Ford, Dipper and Mabel, and even if this bargain had no treachery attached to it, even if it wasn't some elaborate game played on him for no other reason than to watch him squirm, he'd probably end up dead anyway. After all, he was just as expendable as the rest of Nyarlathotep's friends, bait for the Zodiac and little else.

But what else could he do?

At least dying out here would be better than dying alone in the Void.

At least he'd have a few centuries of gentle servitude before he became the worm on the end of a hook.

At least the Zodiac would kill him quickly when the time came.

So, letting out the deepest breath he'd taken in this new body, he reached out…

…and shook Nyarlathotep's hand.

HSLFOW R HZB LI HSLFOW R TL?