Hey! If you saw the news last week, here's the latest: the Eightfold plush pledge campaign was a huge success! Thank you all so, so much! This means that Makeship will be making the plush, and everyone who pledged, as well as everyone who jumps in when it goes up for its limited run in October, will be getting an Eightfold of their own! I'm extremely excited to put this thing in your hands (and mine). Expect me to start banging pots and pans when the limited run goes up! Makeship's designer already reached out to me. I can't wait! Thanks again!!

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[Transcript]

        No matter how heightened the drama of teens became, however, the schemes of men marched on.

        “Thank you, my lovely lesser evils! THANK you!”

        Davy took a bow, basking in the rapturous applause that followed his last words on Mayview’s fate.

        “Keep our vision—DAYVIEW—in your hearts! WISH for it! PRAY for it! We three, the greatest threats of the Authority, will turn your dreams into reality!” With a twirl of his fingers, Davy commanded the curtains to close. “Let the RITUAL BEGIN!!”

        Cheers and wails of exultation filled the air. Sister Cat clasped her claws in reverent lust for a life unfettered. Brother Hog lowered his head, inscrutable and silent. Paige roiled in her own mind, feeling the ghost of her pulse echo through it. The Mandrake, Sister Lizard, and a smattering of other opportunists stared ahead—whatever future they were wishing for was still beyond tomorrow. The vast bulk of the mob, though, sharpened their will to a single point of sinister consensus.

        Davy’s smile slanted to a smirk as he turned away. The curtains shut behind him.

        “Blood and circus,” scoffed the PTA’s president. “That’s all it takes to satisfy the masses.”

        Cody shuddered as deep shadow filled the backstage once again.

        “What now...?” he whispered, speaking to himself as much as he was to his father.

        “NOW YOU GET TO SEE HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE!” shrieked Razor Rex as she swept past him. “A FAMOUSLY ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE.”

        Cody’s eyes narrowed.

        “This... isn’t a ritual, is it? That’s just how you sold it to your pawns.”

        “There’s my bright boy,” chuckled Davy, ruffling his son’s hair. “A simple pitch for simple people. Although, as lovely Fauxbia could tell you, any sufficiently tangled patchwork of parlor tricks is indistinguishable from an act of true black magic!”

        “While your FATHER’S rather skilled at BLOWING smoke, he’s lacking when IT comes to MIRRORS, sadly,” grinned the Witch. “This HOCUS-POCUS needs ALL three of us, to HIS undying agitation. THOUGH I’d be loath to share the SPOTLIGHT, too, were it MY only means to get a TAN that wouldn’t TOAST me!”

        Parlor tricks, seethed Fauxbia beneath her fabricated smile. She’d show him parlor tricks. Davy’s arrogance would be his downfall. This wouldn’t end how he intended. Tonight, she’d teach him FEAR at long, long last...

        “Nonsense, nonsense!” Davy laughed. “I very much enjoy collaborating with you two. I’ve no doubt our alliance will survive tonight’s necessity... if YOU do.” He smoothed his mustache with his hook’s bright silver edge.

        “DON’T WORRY, GUYS. IF YOU GET KILLED BEFORE IT’S OVER, I’LL REVIVE YOU AS COOL ZOMBIES.” Razor Rex planted her scythe at her side like a flag. “DAVE’S HALF-DEAD ALREADY. FAUXBY, YOU’RE A SHAMBLING PUPPET. I DOUBT IT WILL BE THAT HARD TO ADJUST! NYEH HEH HEH HEH HEH!”

        Fauxbia leered at the goddess of death’s gormless face. She understood Davy perfectly—she’d known him as an idealistic child, after all, back when he’d still had more hands than hearts. The only reason that she hadn’t yet been able to collect the fearsome power of his hook was that the deathless Davy Jones was not afraid of her. He’d faced Great Wights and won the day; why should he fear the sundered scraps of one’s abandoned aspirations? The stronger his foe, the more devastating the loss when he divided them in twain. He only had to dread the sun, Italian food, and wooden stakes. Those were the vain delusions from which Davy drew his courage. Razor Rex, however, was a mystery, an open book penned in a language that the Witch could not decode.

        Studying the “goddess” was like looking in a mirror. She was a swindler wielding power feigned or stolen—a false wight, surely, for she lacked one’s boundless, thrumming desolation. No, the only feeling that the Witch could sense from Razor Rex was fear. Simple fear, the sort of mundane cowardice born sensibly from weakness. She was a sheep in wolf’s clothing, Fauxbia was sure of it... and yet the Witch still couldn’t steal a single treat from her vast goodie bag of tricks. Fauxbia could taste the pilfered power every time she made Razor Rex flinch, but then it always quickly slipped away. How was that possible? What was her secret? Tonight she’d rip the truth free seam by seam...

        “GOSH, FAUXBY. IF YOU WANNA STARE DEATH IN THE FACE, GIRL, MY EYES ARE UP HERE!” blushed Razor Rex. “ONCE YOU’RE DONE UNDRESSING ME WITH YOURS.”

        “...I do WONDER what I’d find beneath those ROBES,” the Witch mused, smirking to suggest she knew more secrets than she actually did.

        “Ladies, there’s a child here,” sighed Davy. “Let’s keep things moving and PG. I’ve already done MY part...”

        He gestured to the model town and to the crowd beyond the curtain.

        “I secure the will.”

        Fauxbia gave Razor Rex one last leer of suspicion, then scuttled back to stand by her array of scribbled sigils.

        “And I the WAY.”

        Cody squinted at the chalk scrawl at her feet. There was nothing arcane about it. It looked like she’d set up... a game of hopscotch...?

        “AND ME THE KEY!” squawked Razor Rex.

        Silence stretched for seconds in the darkness.

        “...OH SHOOT,” the Death Cult deity shouted, scouring her robes with her big slappy black wax hands. “WHERE DID I PUT THAT THING? HANG ON.”

        A vein of stagnant blood popped in the brow of Davy Jones; the Witch, too, burst a button on her forehead.

        “You SAID you had it in a SAFE PLACE, you ridiculous CARTOON—” Davy began.

        Why had he believed her?! Why had he taken that fool at her word, when all his years of scheming would amount to naught without that last component? Come to think of it, she’d never even SHOWN them what she’d claimed she had acquired: the missing key that would unlock the missing Burgers’ missing—

        “WHOA, WHOA! HAVE SOME FAITH IN ME, YOU TWO! NO PLAN’S DEAD ON ARRIVAL WHEN YOU’RE BEST FRIENDS WITH A NECROMANCER! NOT FOR LONG, AT LEAST. BEHOLD MY POWER!”

        One of Razor Rex’s digits twirled above her other hand’s flat, outstretched palm. Then she pressed the finger down and, where it touched her waxy skin, it left behind the clear impression of a key.

        “NOW I’LL JUST—HUP!”

        With a snap like a graham cracker, Razor Rex cracked off the last few inches of her scythe’s serrated blade. Then there was a burst of bright blue fire, and the shard she’d broken free dripped down as molten ooze into the mold that she had made in her own hand.

        “YEEEEEOWCH!” she screeched. “THAT REALLY SMARTS! I’M REALLY SMART! OH-HO HO HO! I’M SUCH A GENIUS! I’M ON FIRE! OUCH, OUCH, OUCH!”

        Another gout of flame, somehow, doused Razor Rex’s heat. She peeled the key, now solid, from the crater it had filled upon her palm.

        “TA-DA!”

        “A replica won’t WORK, you BONEHEADED buffoon!” the Witch spat. Spiraling black energy surrounded her as torture methods bubbled to the surface of her mind.

        “SURE IT WILL! TRUST ME.”

        Razor Rex spun her still-steaming creation from one finger to the next. Cody’s peerless sight caught something strange, the faintest static spark upon the key. Had it been that shiny before? It had seemed rough-hewn, clearly counterfeit, until that very moment.

        “...SO LONG AS I’M ALIVE TO MAKE IMPOSSIBLE THINGS POSSIBLE, THAT IS! KYA-HA HA HA!”

        Davy and the Witch exchanged a glance, then glared at Razor Rex in tandem.

        “...A costly insurance policy,” Davy muttered darkly. “I hope it will be worth the price... should your method’s failure lead to injury or death.”

        “WHAT a brilliant stratagem, to show your HAND in all its WEAKNESS. A dead man’s switch BETRAYS your FEAR that we COULD easily destroy you.” The Witch held out a withered talon for the key. “Shall WE begin?”

        Cody didn’t understand. His father was meticulous. The Witch, too, spun her web with cunning patience. Why were they tolerating such a slapdash and last-minute substitution? Why were they tolerating Razor Rex at all? Were they that desperate to achieve their strange objective? Would they overlook him, too, if he attempted sabotage? Did he even still want to stop his dad if it meant giving up a moonless sky...?

        A room away, Mayor Hijack crept in lopsided staccato through the dark.