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[Transcript]

        Though Fauxbia had foreseen each second leading to this moment, though she had crossed each stitch and thread each needle as she’d woven her grand scheme to its conclusion... something had gone wrong. No new deific power had exploded through her body; Peekaboo stared up at her without a hint of fear in its black eyes.

        “D-didn’t you HEAR me?! I—I d-d-DARED you TO...” The Witch’s warbling sputtered to a whimper of frustration.

        Fauxbia, to her dismay, was uniquely equipped to understand the nature of her failure. Sheer strength, even a Great Wight’s strength, was not enough to flout the absolutes of a lesser spirit’s power. She’d forced the game with a binding vow, enforced its rules, and banned the truth without a hitch. When it came to the dare that she’d given, though, two absolutes conflicted. She’d felt that sputtering void of contradictory powers canceling out before—it was just like when the Sphinx of Truth short-circuited her yellow-bellied brother and vice versa. Fauxbia gnashed her gnarled teeth at Peekaboo. Some unknown power had prevented her from forcing it to fear her...!

        “It’s not f-f-FAIR! Th-that should have WORKED! Who... who has ROBBED me of MY destiny?!”

        “DON’T LOOK AT ME!” screeched Razor Rex. “I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.”

        The Witch, however, failed to parse her words as a confession. She was distracted by the flash of silver shredding shields she’d thought could stop it, by the claws seizing her fiercely by the fabric, and by the hook pressed up against the dangling string that was her neck.

        “Awful CONFIDENT in your funny little tricks tonight, WEREN’T you, Fauxbia?!” snapped Davy Jones. His wounds closed in an instant as he tore the threads that pierced him from his side. “Why ELSE would a cowardly INSECT like YOU welcome DEATH by ATTACKING MY SON?!”

        Gone was his mirth and his debonair charm; Davy had become a savage, snarling, blood-starved beast. Something still more gaunt and monstrous writhed beneath his sallow skin, an alter ego begging to be loosed, to be allowed to spread its wings after a lifetime’s restful roosting at the apex of the food chain.

        Cody watched in rattled silence, still rendered speechless by his father’s strict command. While Davy could protect him, Cody couldn’t move an inch. He’d keep him safe at any cost, just like he always claimed he would—his dad had thrown himself in harm’s way to defend him from the Witch. Cody wondered if the act had made his heart beat any faster. As the young vampire watched his father’s injuries stitch shut, however, doubt again replaced the spark of hope he’d briefly found. What did a love expressed at any cost mean when that cost was always covered? If safety meant that Cody would remain stuck fast and silent, then wasn’t he the one that paid the price?

        Dark thoughts entered Cody’s mind unbidden. He wanted to be hard to love, to make his dad have to endure much worse than fleeting pain to keep him. Would he do it? Cody fought back pangs of guilt—just one more moment as a monster. Would his father ever give him something that he couldn’t stand to lose?

        “W-wait!” begged Fauxbia, writhing like a worm on Davy’s hook. “YOU can’t kill ME! The door! The p-p-PORTAL! If I’M destroyed—”

        “LOOK WHO’S COME AROUND ON DEAD MAN’S SWITCHES,” Razor Rex teased, sidling past them and the hole that she had transferred from her body to the stage.

        “Shut UP, you YAPPING runt! A fraud LIKE you can’t—EEK!!”

        There was a sound of snapping string as Davy’s hook severed her head. Then, with a furious roar, he hurled it at full strength across the room. As it bounced with a thud off the curtain, Davy swept in close at bestial speed to seize it once again.

        “What makes you think you’ve EARNED your death?! The price upon your head has just SKYROCKETED, old hag, and I intend to make you PAY IT in INSTALLMENTS!”

        Davy held Fauxbia’s head aloft by its hair of tangled yarn, a Medusa slain by a Perseus as monstrous as his prey (and just as prone to scare one stiff when spotted in a mirror). Fauxbia, however, was not slain—Davy’s hook had sliced the space itself and not her threadbare neck. It was the first decapitation that had ever been survived (if one thought little of the world and all its wonders; Fauxbia alone had lost her head a dozen times, and only twice with help from blades possessed by Cryptide).

        “You should THANK me!” spat the Witch, struggling to swing close enough to bite Davy on the chin. “I almost SAVED you FROM a wasted wish! DAYVIEW—bah! ALL the power of a god in REACH, and you think it’s BEST traded for the power of your AVERAGE local MAYOR?!”

        Not far above, the Hijacks twitched, as though they’d heard their mother call their name.

        “SENILE FOOL! I’ll rip you into ribbons SEAM BY SEAM!” growled Davy Jones.

        “...You two are so pathetically predictable,” purred Razor Rex.

        Fauxbia and Davy snapped to face her, startled by her lack of screeching volume.

        The self-proclaimed goddess was kneeling at the threshold of the portal, picking black wax from her nose... right next to Peekaboo. She flicked a booger past it, off into the endless haze of swirling fog.

        “HEY, SO,” continued Razor Rex, returning to the caterwaul that everyone was fond of, “I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU. MAKE ME A GREAT WIGHT.”

        Her shriek dropped to a diabolic hiss as her wish left her... and was granted.

        Davy’s eyes went wide with shock. “NO!” was all that he had time to say before a greater voice drowned out his own just like a candle at the bottom of the ocean. Peekaboo swelled in resonance; behind it, far behind it, something mumbled in its sleep.

        The world was perfect white and every color, a whirlpool supernova of pure liquid possibility, a Big Bang with the Death Cult’s quirky goddess at its heart. Cody felt as though he might unspool. The Hijacks held a scream in with more strength than they had used to hurl a hitball. Sophie Sybil juggled her phone as a sound beyond her senses struck her soul; her finger brushed a fateful camera setting as she caught it just in time. Fauxbia and Davy howled in fury as the truth collapsed around them, then converged on Razor Rex... who dropped her scythe and fell back to the floor.

        She’d had little other choice, in fact, now that she’d been transformed into a writhing great white shark.

        “N-NO! YOU USELESS SLUG,” she tried to shout, but only flared her gills and flopped about. “DON’T YOU GENIE WISH ME! I’M A GODDESS! I’M SUPPOSED TO BE A GODDESS!!”

        Davy’s horror melted drop by drop. It was a smile, now, a chuckle next... and then a helpless fit of laughter more maniacal than he had ever been inspired to release.

        “AHA-HA HA-HA HA HA HA!! You have a SENSE OF HUMOR, little friend!” he beamed at Peekaboo. “WELL, that’s one display of free will that I simply must excuse! In fact, I’d like to take that monkey’s paw of yours and SHAKE YOUR LITTLE HAND! Make me a Great Wight—HA! You BOTH really believed you could betray me! Did you think I formed this circle for the fun of it?” He thumped his bloodstained chest. “I’M the one who earned the Great Wight’s interest! I’M the one whose vision tempts it! I’M the one whose wish pervades the hearts beyond this stage! Don’t you get it?! You’ve done NOTHING to make your petty dreams reality. You ASPIRE to a POWER that I’ve captured on a LEASH!”

        Davy kicked Razor Rex and her scythe aside and shook a shell-shocked Fauxbia like a dirty turnip he’d just pulled up from his garden.

        “The Sphinx’s power. Now. Or I’ll push the Burgers’ house key through your brain.”

        “Make a better OFFER!” spat the Fear Witch. “YOU still NEED me!” She writhed in Peekaboo’s direction. “Choose TRUTH now, before HE speaks his dare—”

        “Do as I COMMAND you,” snarled Davy, covering her mouth, “and I won’t KILL YOU—”

        “DEAL!!” Fauxbia squawked, cutting Davy’s sentence short before he could complete his vicious threat. Her eyes shone purple—she’d secured him in a contract with the power of the Sphinx of Pacts’ compulsive Binding Vow.

        “Live to serve, then,” Davy growled, a black vein popping in his brow, “or die defying me.”

        Fauxbia shivered, though a thousand schemes were slowly weaving sparks between her synapses.

        “The OTHER Sphinx’s power, NOW, you beautiful baby—” Davy stopped, then found a smile. “Ah. See? Was that so hard?” He turned to Peekaboo. “Let’s end this trite charade, shall we?”

        Across the lake, beyond the hill, Dimitri woke up in his bed.