As Snooze activated the new Element, a swirling beam of magnificent emerald energy the size of a pickup truck formed and fired from her outstretched hand. It blazed away from her almost faster than she could track, speeding off into the void with a brilliant green tail chasing behind it.

Because she had accessed this unique skill set, Snooze found--with a note of surprise--that she could see the path the spectral demicube was going to take. It was a tunnel of pale-blue light, and the eighth-dimension Element followed along the twists and turns of the course like a bullet train. Now that she was aware of the route, she could also see that the other demicube, the one that had appeared right before she fired, was speeding along the same tube of energy from the opposite direction.

But there was more. As Snooze glanced around her, she could see thousands of the pale-blue tubes occupying the space around her, contorting of their own accord. They wriggled like worms through the void, some passing right through them in flight.

There was a loud boom, and she turned back to see something like a mushroom cloud of blue and green fire had erupted ahead, not far from where her demicube had been. With a start, she realized that the two blasts must have collided in their tunnel--but it was scary to think that the huge explosion was the result. Curiously, she noticed that though massive, the explosion seemed to be constrained to the confines of the tunnel itself. As areas of energy flame touched the outside, they dispersed immediately.

“Woah,” she said, looking down at her hand. “I’m… amazing!”

“Right, you are!” The Scroll of Currents responded jovially. “Great work on that there problematic little pony! Goodness! I done knew you were talented, but I didn’t deign to believe you’d be able to conjure up a cuss of that magnitude with such little prep time. I’m tickled.”

“So, those… Octonions. They just travel along the predetermined path?”

“Right again, little lady. They are a complicated Element, but they are made all the more simple as long as you can utilize their dimensional route. Think of it as a railway, and you creating one is a station. Next stop, explodey town!”

“Does that mean I can only use them if there’s… routes nearby?”

“At your current welpdom, yessir. But, if you train that up, it’ll be a terror for certain!”

“Are you saying I could eventually use it for something other than beautifully patterned destruction?”

The Scroll of Currents paused.

“It’ll become a bit more clear once you actually start to use it more. Though, I’d be careful. It’s a volatile Element and uses quite a lot of your energy reserves for each culmination. Better to wait until you have access to a Wellspring or something like it. Otherwise, you’re like to go into Reserves, and then you’ll really be cooked.”

Snooze was about to clarify because she’d heard several new terms and knew it was important. However, her queries were short-lived as the pale-blue tunnels began to fade from her vision.

“Those paths are going away!” She called. “Scroll, they’re disappearing!”

“Naw, they’re still there,” the Scroll said calmly. “You could only see ‘em on account of you using that Octonion. They’ll return when you use your next one--but they’ll be mighty hard to spot until then.”

“So… we’ll just have to fly blind until then? What if another one comes along?”

“We will cross that patch of prairie when we get to it, partner. Eventually, you’ll be able to control when you have access to Eight Vision. In the meantime, let’s try to--oh. That’s strange.”

Something had startled the Scroll of Currents, and that was something very unnerving to Snooze. She wheeled on it, but the orb was no longer moving.

“Scroll?” She asked. There was no answer.

“SCROLL?!”

Finally, after an extended period, the Scroll moved.

“Well, now,” it said, starting up its rotation again. “It appears that Grotto has stopped. Wherever she landed, I’ll bet my best pair of spurs she is in a heap of trouble. She ain’t moving through the Bulk now, so I can configure a little more suburbanly.”

“You can’t tell where she is?” Snooze wondered, keeping an eye out for more of the Runcinated 8-demicubes. “The Book of Leaf seemed to always know everything all at once.”

“It saddens me to say that I cannot,” the Scroll admitted. “I am, as you might refer to it, the Travel variety of my usual form. I have a backlog of useful quenching info that I can impart upon the thirsty masses. Still, new information I’d have to be much closer to the true Scroll of Currents on Grotto’s plane.”

“I don’t understand!” Snooze said. “How could you follow her signal and know how to navigate the right route if you don’t have updated information?”

“Think of it like the internet,” the Scroll said. “You remember that thing, right?”

Snooze crinkled her brow.

“Yeah, I remember the internet,” she said and thought that perhaps she was piecing the information together well enough, suddenly. “So, you’re like the entirety of the internet--except way better. Well, the normal you is, in any case. Does that mean that your Travel version is like a downloaded file?”

“I feel like you should be teaching me a thing or two, friend!” The Scroll exclaimed happily. “Boy, you really don’t need much information to rub together before you start a noggin fire, do ya?”

Snooze beamed.

“But yeah, it’s something like that. I have, well, we can call them, updates, when I get close enough to the source of the true Scroll of Currents--who, by the by, has a much different personality than I do, so if you ever meet ‘em, don’t think you’re going to have the same rapport as you currently do. I have to get them from time to time to refresh any gaps in knowledge that I might have missed in my absence, which is usually quite a bit. I’ve spent a particularly long stretch this outing, so there’s a barrel full of intel that I ain’t yet privy to.”

“So, how can you track Grotto if you don’t have updated information?”

“Well, now. I have access to the building blocks of all knowledge in the entirety of the multiverse, darlin.’ I know how it works, and I know how to detect changes in things like this here Bulk. It likely looks loads different to me than your godly eyes, and I can surmise a lot of information with even the most subtle changes. That being said, I didn’t need to do that because--”

Suddenly, the orb just winked out of existence.

“SCROLL?!” Snooze screamed, and Meat shuddered beneath her. The Archangel had been extremely quiet during this entire last passage of time, and now it was a deep crimson again, likely sensing the god’s stress.

Almost as quickly as it had happened, the Scroll of Currents returned. However, its color had drained a bit, and it looked a lot more transparent than usual.

“Scroll, what happened?!” Snooze demanded, reaching up to touch the orb gently. It felt… cold. Not like the pleasant warmth it had had every other time she’d interacted with it.

“Oh, well,” the Scroll of Currents began. Its voice still had the drawl to it but seemed slightly more halted, like it was in pain and trying not to cry out. It vibrated, drooping a bit from its position and coming to rest on Snooze’s shoulder.

“Are you okay? What happened? Did you have to go to the bathroom?”

The Scroll was quiet for another moment, and then Snooze heard it sigh.

“That is… something I’d like not to experience again in the immediate future,” it said with a groan. “Most unpleasant, that was. This cowpoke thought the days were numbered.”

Such a strange turn of phrase, don’t you think? Of course, many people believed that days were, in fact, numbered, but they weren’t. It’s not so far as to say that it is entirely incorrect to assume there’s a label system to the whole process. Coincidentally, days are indeed signified by specific categories.

Before you go off thinking this refers to days of the week, months, or years: it does not. There is a prestigious and highly-esteemed order to all existing days so far as the passage of time affects those on mortal worlds outside of the planar and mindful spectrum of the celestial world. It just so happens they are all variations of different song lyrics. And not the ones you’d expect. This information, however, is so highly classified that if you were told, you’d have to be killed.

Just kidding. Telling you would be the process by which you died, as your severely underdeveloped, finite brain made of meat would boil and bubble until you were more oxygenated carbon than sentient ape. Trust that it is just better off if you don’t know the answer to that.

“I think...” the Scroll of Currents began hesitantly. “...I think something is trying to pull me away from you.”

“Who could do something like that?” Snooze demanded, a furrow appearing along her brow. “Do I have to mess somebody up? I will demicube them so hard they’ll wish--”

“No, darlin.’” the Scroll of Currents said softly. “You ain’t gotta worry about that. I think they’re gonna need more time to perform such a tremendous feat. Even a Travel version of myself is more than enough to tangle with the likes of immature god spells.”

“A spell can do that?” Snooze asked in wonder. “Oh, man. I want to be able to summon someone else’s helper at the drop of a hat. I’d be like, ‘hey, Scroll of Currents, want to get lunch?’ and you’d be like, ‘maaaaaybe little cowgirl, howdy’ and what not. Then I’d just snap my fingers and poof; there you’d be.”

The Scroll chuckled.

“Aye. Might be you could someday learn that. Even if it ain’t within the realm of your God Path, I’ve no doubt you’d muster up the means to do it. However, I don’t think this was necessarily someone else.”

“What do you mean? It would have to be someone else, right? Unless Grotto is the one trying to get you to come to her? Ooh! That would solve this problem real quick! Tell her to bring us along too!”

The Scroll of Currents was silent again. Then it flickered.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Snooze said, and before she knew what was happening, she had activated her Aura. The shining light bathed the Scroll, and the flickering stopped. Snooze had the curious notion that perhaps it wasn’t Grotto trying to bring the Scroll along.

“Er, uh, thank you, little lady,” the Scroll said, its voice sounding forced again, and Snooze felt awful. She wasn’t sure if beings like it could feel pain, but it sure wasn’t immune to… whatever this was. Her Aura remained for a moment longer, and then she let it fade, feeling sapped.

“Boy, you weren’t kidding,” she said. “Using Octonion really took it out of me. I feel pretty tired.”

“I dunno if I’ll have more than a grain of sand’s worth of time to explain before that happens again, so I’ll push through,” the Scroll said suddenly. “Listen up, partner. If my calculations are correct--and they usually are--I’d bet more than Meat’s weight in sand dollars that something, or rather, someone has Grotto. Likely, they thought you were coming to them, and they made different plans. Now that they have a QUACK, they might be a little bit more concerned. That means they’d try to get Grotto to call me to her side all swift like, to right their mighty big failure.

If they can manage to wrangle me and get me there, you ain’t gonna have a mouse’s chance at the Snake buffet of finding her. That’s the bad news.”

“Is there good news?”

“There just might be,” the Scroll said. “While I’m out here in the Bulk, it’s gonna be powerfully difficult to ascertain my true position--much like when you tried to summon your own Travel Version of the Book of Leaf.”

When they’d first entered the Bulk, Snooze had the brilliant stratagem to call upon her own helpful informational display’s pocket edition, but it hadn’t worked. Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to do so beforehand because of the severity of the situation and time constraints. The Scroll of Currents had explained that the nature of the “space between spaces” was like trying to “button up a dress shirt over the ocean.” Since there was no physical space to align with, the shifting essence of the Bulk was nearly impossible to home in on one specific point.

“Well, I suppose some good had to come out of it,” Snooze said. “But they sort of got you already. What does that mean?”

“That means that whatever did this is trying to summon me directly through Grotto, and they were darn close, too! That’s… well, if I said it was unprecedented, I’d be lying, but it’s near close enough. It’s very unique.”

“I’ve found that unique, in this life tends to mean bad,” Snooze said. “What would be capable of doing something like that?”

“The Nosferatu,” the Scroll breathed.

“Like that creepy monster from the old silent films?”

“Near enough,” the Scroll said. “I’d imagine your old world had a person that had encountered one at one time. Maybe they made those moving pictures as a warning--heck, it may have been in tribute as far as I know. But the real Nosferatu are a bit different and much scarier than what you probably think of. They can conjure abilities on par with some of the lesser gods, and one or two in my time I’ve seen could merit a bit more than even that.”

“So, they’re not gods? Are they celestials?”

“No,” the Scroll said, and for the first time, its tone was painfully serious. Snooze wasn’t sure whether or not that was scarier than the information she’d just been given.

“What are they?”

“Fiendish,” the Scroll drawled. “And that’s a bad, bad munchkin there. You don’t want to tussle with one o’ them, little lady. That’s a guarantee.”

Snooze shivered. Just hearing the term Fiendish was enough to set her teeth on edge. Even Meat shuddered below her.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” the Scroll said. “Words have power, especially over the likes of you two. I won’t make the mistake of using it again, but you needed to know what to keep an eye or three peeled for.”

Snooze couldn’t shake the cold dread that had filled her at those words. Was it true that just saying it could affect her? Clearly, that had happened, and she didn’t want to hear it again--that was for certain!

“But, this complicates things even further,” the Scroll continued. “If a F-- ...something like that were to get a hold of Grotto, she’d be in a right dangerous pickle. Anything of their nature is a multiversal enemy of the celestial sort. Saying the words are one thing, but being in the presence of one… that’s downright agonizing. We’d best hope I’m wrong on this.”

There was only silence for a moment longer before Snooze spoke again.

“I don’t care,” she finally said.

“You don’t care ‘bout what, partner?”

“I don’t care what has Grotto, or that it’s something so evil that seeing it will make me cry out of my armpits, or whatever. I’ll get her back. She’s our QUACK, and she’s my friend. I will not turn my back on my friends. Never.”

“That’s easy enough to say, little lady. But, when faced with the true specter of fear and anguish that these ghastly beasts bear, you won’t be able to help it. The laws of existence dictate these things. Beggin' yer pardon, but you won’t be able to hold such lofty anime protagonist ideals when standing before one. Trust me.”

“So, what,” Snooze began. “Are we just going to turn around? When they’re trying to harm our friend and hit us with different dimensional bottle rockets?”

“Something else altogether is firing them at you,” the Scroll said. “Which means there’s multiple enemies out there--something of a united front if you will. What’s more, they know exactly who we are, and we haven’t the foggiest daydream of an idea who they are. That’s dangerous territory, even for someone as accomplished as yerself.”

“So, I’ll reiterate. What do you want to do?”

“I’ve got an idea, but it’ll take a bit to put into action. I can’t say it out loud because I don’t know how much information the Nos… thing can pull from me. I was gone for nearly a full second. That would be more than enough time to glean something important for someone who knew what they were doing.”

“Alright, well, let’s just keep at it, then, until your… idea becomes a reality.”

“I may have to go dark for a bit. This is uncharted waters, and I want to make sure I do it safely.”

“You’re leaving?!” Snooze exclaimed, and she could hear Meat whistle disapprovingly.

“I’ll still be here,” the Scroll said softly. “But, I’ll be inaccessible. It’s a deadly gambit, but if we want any chance of being able to do anything about this situation we’ve climbed into, this is a shot we’re going to have to take. Whether in the dark or not.”

“Okay,” Snooze said. “But, be careful. I don’t know how to admonish you if you get hurt, so I’d prefer to just have everything work out according to how it’s supposed to.”

She smiled. “Deal?”

“I will endeavor to do just that. Make sure you keep on this direction. It won’t be perfectly accurate, but it’ll be near enough while I’m away. Signin’ off. Good luck.”

Snooze was left behind as the Scroll went very cold and pale, nestling into Meat’s neck like the bauble of a cat’s collar. She reached over and patted the orb gently, resting her palm on its chilly surface for a moment before placing her other hand on Meat’s head.

“Guess it’s just you and me for right now, buddy,” she said quietly.

Meat whistled woefully at her, and she continued to stroke his head softly in reassurance.

“It’ll be alright, Meat,” she said. “We’ve been in worse situations before.”

She hadn’t.

The two drifted through the Bulk in relative quiet, nearly rudderless. They were without a guide and had no access to the map at the moment, either.

A sparkle appeared in the distance, heralding the arrival of another Runcinate 8-demicube, and Snooze shifted in her seat.

“Alright, Meat. Just like before. Let’s wait until it gets close enough, and then we’ll…”

She trailed off as another light twinkled into existence. A second demicube appeared next to the first. Then, with horror, Snooze watched as a third bloomed, then a fourth, and a fifth. In less than a second (a regular one), the void filled with hundreds of blazing comets of angry Runcinated 8-demicubes, all of them blazing through the darkness toward them.

The breath caught in Snooze’s throat. Meat turned a red so deep it was nearly the color of dried blood, and the hum from his body was that of crackling earth before a volcano.

“Meat…” Snooze said, her celestial heart dropping into her godly stomach with dread. They were staring down at surefire destruction, and they were utterly and totally alone.

Well, I suppose that’s not true.

Someone other than them was currently active and boiling over with opportunistic excitement that it could finally prove itself.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a tiny shape burst from beneath Snooze’s left leg and landed on Meat’s head. The minute form took the shape of a little translucent starfish with a singular burning eye.

“Odd?!” Snooze exclaimed.

“I’M ODD!” The creature bellowed in its tiny voice.

“What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here!”

“I WAS HIDING!” Odd bellowed further, pride swelling in its chest. “I’m GREAT at STEALTH!”

Snooze couldn’t fathom what had gotten into the little tyrant, but her heart was heavy. At least, she thought, they would be together at the end. But then, something truly odd happened. Odd began to glow.

“Odd?” Snooze wondered, unsure of what was happening with her tiny companion. But the little Archangel wasn’t listening; it was staring out at the wall of death swiftly approaching, its only eye slit into a scowl.

“Don’t worry, Dark Lord of mine! I’ll vanquish these foul foes!”

“Odd, what are you--”

Before she could do anything else, Snooze started in horror as her tiny Archangel leaped from atop Meat’s head and into the void.

“I’M OOOOOOOOODD!” It cried.