Mena stepped aside to let more hooded magic users pass by as she bartered with the mysterious merchant.

“What do you want?” she asked but was prompted into silence when the merchant placed a copy of “Love Across Dimensions” on the table. Mena gasped. Not only was Fabias on the cover, in all his shirtless glory, but he winked and looked right up at her with those charming baby-blues. “Woooow…” she said, nearly hypnotized by the sight.

The hooded merchant pulled a gloved finger forward, beckoning Mena closer. “There is only one thing I want from you…a lock of your hair.”

“But why do you want that?” Mena asked, but the figure said no more.

Mena meditated on the deal. There seemed no downside, aside from a creepy hooded weirdo having a lock of her hair and probably sniffing it.

“Uh pardon me,” Mr. Gnominski asked, sticking his head out from the knapsack, “Are you sure you want to be purchasing bootlegged merchandise?”

The merchant raised the book up, showing the back cover. Carefully stamped on the back was a cartoon seal that barked the words “Wormwood Authors’ Magic Seal of Authenticity,”

“Well, that ‘seals’ the deal for me.” Mena said with a giggle. “All books from Wormwood have that.”

Wincing, she pulled out a stringy lock of her thick hair and handed it to the merchant.

“That’ll do,” the merchant said in their low voice, and handed Mena the book.

“MENA!” a high, flighty voice cried from the front of the alleyway.

Mena turned her head. The young witch exclaimed with great joy, “JANUS!”

Stomping loudly along in her signature platform boots that were covered in chains, Janus Harvestar ran over to Mena. Her tall spikey, black hair hair bounced as she moved, and Mena soon endured an embrace from death, which was quite bone chilling, though familiar in its fatality. “I can’t believe we found you,” Janus said, as Mena’s teeth chattered. She was slightly paralyzed from such a hands-on encounter with the successor of death.

“Y-y-you nearly missed my birthday,” Mena said, shivering before she squeaked in horror. There was a robed figure standing before her. It was even more imposing than the merchant. Scaling seven feet with a jagged black hood and an enormous scythe, the man reached out towards Mena. Mena screamed and held up her hands to defend herself. The figure pulled down his hood, revealing a goofy skeleton’s smile, with bulging but surprisingly childlike eyes and most surprisingly, a silver pompadour with sideburns.

The seven-foot-tall skeleton man gave a toothy grin. “It is truly a meeting of life and death to come across someone like yourself, Mena.”

Before Janus could introduce the skull man, he placed his hand on Mena’s heart. “Hmm, ticker seems tick.”

He put his clammy but bony fingers up against Mena’s face and stretched the skin. “Skin is oily and pubescent, but not sallow or plagued.”

The skull man plunged his fingers—which were as cold as dry ice—into Mena’s mouth and pulled her cheeks open, revealing her braces. “Teeth and gums seem well cared for.”

The skull man took a step back and ran his finger along his pointed chin. “I give you eighty-seven years tops,”—he leaned in close and whispered—“Providing there are no fatal run ins with Anguish the Blood Siren.”

“What?!” Mena screamed, but Janus frowned, and threw her hand out in front of Mena. “Daddy, stop it. Would it kill you to introduce yourself before predicting her death?”

“I’m sorry, my dear,” the skull man said, and he bowed humbly. “It’s all in the occupation. But right, Grim Harvestar, at your service.”

“Wowie zowie,” Mena exclaimed. “I’m looking into the face of death himself. Did you guys really come for my birthday?”

Mena looked away from them for a second. “I thought you forgot.”

“Forgot?” Janus asked, tilting her head slightly in compassion. “Quite the opposite. We’ve been trying to reach you all summer—we even sent you a Death Basket—but there’s been shipping delays with the Lollypop Delivery Service because Law Pops is trying to intercept mail that would indicate where you’re being hidden.”

Mena did a double take. “He’s really that determined to find me?”

“My word,” Mr. Gnominski stammered, and he leapt out of Mena’s knapsack. “Who knew Gemini was allowing me to be harbored by an enemy of Law. This better be added to my pension.”

The Learn Gnome scampered down the alleyway, running into the crowd of magic users.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Straw-Woman screamed, waving her straw fists. “Mena and I are enemies of the Law,” she screamed before Mena shushed her.

Grim Harvestar kneeled before Mena, very humbly for Death-himself, she observed. “And that’s not all,” Grim said, “that Gemini may have a skull, but it ain’t screwed on that tight. He may have managed to keep you safe from Law Pops, away from the magic world, but he put you in a precarious location, a place on the ground away from all the magic barriers.”

Janus grabbed Mena’s hand urgently. “Out west is Lantern Valley and that is the gate to the Nightmare Void. As soon as Anguish found out where you were, she sent every voider at her command to look for you.”

“But how did they find out,” Mena squeaked, but then her heart sank. “The beetles. Bubbel and Karen told Anguish where I was.”

“You kept them?” Janus demanded. “I would have used them to fertilize our dead lawn by now.”

Mena’s body shook. Suddenly, the unpleasant truth came to her mind. “Deidre…. We need to get to…”

A loud screech erupted from the end of Magic Alley, and several flying human-like creatures with jagged wings flew over them. As they got closer, Mena realized: they were harpies. With sharp prong staffs, they began blasting the alley with jets of electricity, sending everyone scrambling and vendors to close their shops.

Mena ducked; a ball of lightning flew over her head at Janus. The pixie reaper nimbly swung her scythe, sending the ball right back at the harpy, disintegrating her to ash.

“That’s my girl,” Grim said, and he swung his own scythe, generating a thick black shockwave. It cut all the harpies down from the sky. They screamed as they vanished into a void of darkness. “From the Soul Void you came,” the elder reaper said, surprisingly solemn, “and that’s where you shall return.”

“We need to save Deidre,” Mena said, and the three of them ran out of the alleyway into the central square. “N-no!” Mena cried, as she witnessed the most horrifying sight of her life.

The sky turned a shade of crimson in the night as the book stands and buildings of Growden erupted in a blaze. Panic filled the streets as people attempted to escape the beasts of the Nightmare Void. Demons stretched their wrinkled hands towards the populace as wicked green witches cast spells transforming them into frogs and rats. Rock golems with glowing orange eyes leveled entire buildings. Mena and her allies winced as ash and debris shattered around them. “There she is,” screamed a were-woof, pointing his claws at her.

Several void dwellers ran towards them, with lust for fame in their eyes. Mena, with a great sense of urgency, held her hand to her head. “Fire magic, quickly cast, a blaze of heat to toast their sassafras.”

Mena had never cast multiple fire balls in combat before, but her training with Professor Caligari, and a great need to reach Deidre inflamed her with energy to do so. Like a cannon, fire burst from the palms of her hands.

Several void dwellers, including the were-woof ran hollering as they found their rear ends ablaze.

“We need to reach Dede!” Mena said, holding her hands forward, still smoking from the fireballs.

The three ran across the burning square, hoping to escape the city, but as they reached the entrance, Mena gasped, “Oh no…”

There were thousands of creatures pouring across the drawbridge determined to bring Mena to Anguish.

“Dede!” she screamed as she saw another army in the distance approaching the bakery.

Tears streamed from her eyes and Janus grabbed ahold of her hand. “Mena, we must find another way to escape.”

“But Dede…” Mena couldn’t contain herself. She had to save her caretaker. She chanted spells and furiously blasted more fire balls, but only a few fiends went down. More and more drew closer, taking swipes at Mena and casting spells of their own.

“We must go,” Janus said, as she grabbed Mena around the waist, and pulled her backwards.

“Please, I need to save her,” Mena cried frantically, but Janus resisted her friends cries.

The three reached the center square as the fiends converged around them from all angles. Mena was sobbing and the two reapers flanked her with their scythes.

How were they going to escape? There was no way except…

Mena, shaking her head, remembered the last time she was in peril at the same square. She recalled how she escaped it her execution. The young witch raised her hands to her head, and pushing against her sadness and grief over Deidre, she screamed “Dream Castle,” imagining the very fabric of the castle within her mind.

With all the power of her imagicnation exhausted, she watched as the floating castled hovered in the burning and exploding sky. It was as bright and vibrant as she imagined it--- bright white with red, yellow and blue spirals. Its eye-like windows observed Mena with great concern, and it dropped its anchor right towards the center of the square.

Gemini stood upon it, bedecked in his classic purple suit with his bushy hair piled high on his head. “You know what time it is?” he asked and removed a solid gold watch from his trousers. “The nick of time.”

He did a double take when he saw Grim.

“Ah death…my old friend, it’s been ages.”

Grim’s childlike eyes glared at Gemini. “Gemini…you’ve been eluding our meetings for years now.”

Gemini juggled his pocket watch. “You know the score, got so much to do, I ain’t got time for death. Try again in the next hundred years or so…”

“Very well,” Grim said, and a shadow draped over his pale jagged face. “Take good care of my daughter and Mena too. She looks like she’ll need it.”

“What are you going to do?” Gemini asked, as he helped Janus and Mena into the anchor. He held on especially tight to Mena whose face was strewn with tears and snot.

“I think it’s about time to…” Grim popped off his skull, rolled it along his shoulders and flipped it onto the top of his scythe. “ROLL THE BONES!” his head screamed.

A ring of blue ghost-fire enveloped the fiends as twisted boney limbs emerged from the ground. They all screamed in horror as piles of bones covered them up and pulled them into the dirt.

“Dede,” Mena said, stifling a cry. “What about Dede…”

Gemini frowned. “We don’t have time to rescue her… we need to escape before Anguish shows her ugly purple keester here.”

“I could have saved her…” Mena bawled, and the anchor shot up into the sky.

The world swirled around Mena and the last thing she saw was Deidre’s bakery burning in the distance…but soon, even that fire went out.