Content warning: This chapter, Part Ten, through Part Thirteen contain violence and bodily harm.

"Enter," said Lord Cipher.

Marcus opened the door, then bowed deeply. "Everything is in place, my lord. Do you have any ideas about when the Symbols are coming?"

"Right now," Cipher said. He sat on the carpet with his legs folded. "I can feel them. They just left the Mystery Museum."

Marcus was surprised, though he shouldn't have been. Of course Lord Cipher could feel his Symbols. They were connected to him. Especially after the spell two days ago.

"Are you sure everything is ready?" asked Cipher. "All the spells, all the traps?"

"I checked myself, my lord. They are ready."

"Good. Then I would like you to go, give everyone a final reminder of my instructions, and return here."

"Yes, my lord."

"No one touches the Symbols," Cipher said, giving the reminder that Marcus was to pass on. "They're mine. But you can do whatever you'd like to the others. Some of your traps are designed to hinder, and others to kill, is that correct?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Good. Cause as much chaos as you can. But don't get in the way of the Symbols. Separate them from their companions, but don't stop them."

"It will be as you say, my lord."

Cipher nodded. "Go and tell the others."

Marcus bowed again. Then he left, closing the door behind him and mentally charting his route through the Manor to safely reach his fellow servants without triggering any traps.

It was almost time. The Symbols and their magical friends were on the way.

Marcus allowed himself a small smile.

They would be right where Cipher wanted them.

~~~~~

Sitting behind Dipper on the hippogriff, Mabel couldn't help but wonder why she wasn't more scared.

Oh, she was scared. Terrified, even. But it wasn't the terror of being possessed by Bill. It wasn't the blind panic of being captured and almost killed by Pacifica. This experience — traveling to the Manor for a final battle with Bill — it somehow wasn't the scariest thing she'd been through this winter. In fact, she almost felt. . . calm.

Maybe calm wasn't the right word. She couldn't be scared and calm at the same time, could she? But. . . oh, she didn't know. She was still tired from the disaster two days ago, and she was definitely scared, but she also had. . . this strange energy, this determination.

This was it. They were going to confront Bill, get him out of Lee's body with some type of magic, and defeat him.

It had to be today. They had to get to Bill.

The other Symbols seemed to be thinking the same thing. Nobody, not even Melody, had protested when Mabel had come down from the attic despite her exhaustion and gotten on the hippogriff with her brother. Gideon and Pacifica had explained yesterday that the Symbols were magically connected and couldn't physically be too far away from each other, so that meant all ten of them were going to the Manor. They all needed to be there; Mabel just knew it.

The hippogriff landed near the Manor, and Mabel and Dipper got off and joined their group. It was the smallest — the Symbols, Andrew, Enoch, two other minotaurs, a few dryads, and a few hamadryads — but for now it would stay with the bigger group on the west side of the Manor. Only later would the smaller group break off and go after Bill.

There were no servants outside. That caused some pause in the group. Clearly the servants were inside, waiting, ready to ambush them.

But then, weren't they already expecting that? They decided to move forward. A peryton went to a door and kicked it down with its powerful back legs. Everyone got ready to block any attacks from inside.

Nothing came. The servants were all but inviting the allied species into the Manor.

So? Mabel found herself thinking, despite the chill down her spine. We were going to go inside anyway. Come on, let's go.

The scouts went in first, so there was a bit of a wait. Mabel looked around at the other Symbols, noting their shared impatience. Fidds was wringing his hands with nervousness. Melody caught Mabel's eye and gave her a kind but tense smile. Gideon and Pacifica were trying to look above and around all the people to get a view of the door. (The Symbols weren't anywhere near the front of the group, for safety reasons, so it was hard to see — although Gideon was having a much easier time of it than Pacifica, given his height.)

Ford and Lee stood by each other, not quite touching, but very close. They both stared ahead. Mabel realized she and Dipper were doing the same: standing close by, drawing strength from their twin.

Robbie and Wendy were also close to each other, he with an arm around her. "You okay, Mabel-kid?" asked Robbie, noticing Mabel's gaze.

She frowned a bit. "As okay as I can be, I guess," she said.

Robbie gave a stunted laugh. "Yeah, I get that."

There was a moment of silence. Then, "Hey, Mabel," said Wendy, "I'm glad you're feeling better. After, you know, what happened with the Wheel."

Mabel wasn't expecting that. But she bit back her surprise and smiled at Wendy. "Thanks."

A few minutes later, the crowd started moving as the scouts ushered people in. Mabel looked to Dipper, who nodded. They followed.

This wasn't the grand main entrance Mabel had gone through last time she was here, when she'd helped Gideon with the ghosts. It was a side entrance, a servants' entrance. The passage was still clean, but it was small. The minotaurs had trouble fitting; a few grumbled but were quieted by Andrew. The hippogriffs, perytons, and wolves couldn't fit at all. That was to be expected, though, and the larger species stayed outside, guarding the entrances.

Once inside, the Symbols took off their bulky outer layers, since they didn't want to overheat or be hindered in their motion. Mabel put her coat and snow pants in the pile on the floor, wondering vaguely if she'd get them back after this was over. She didn't have much time to think about it, though, as she had to hurry to keep up with the others.

The Manor was dark, with dim generator-power lighting — much like the Museum, but a lot more enclosed, here in the servants' passage. Mabel followed the others, feeling their body heat and their anxiety. Things were strangely quiet, given the size of the group.

Then the scouts triggered the first trap.

Mabel didn't see it. But she heard it. In quick sequence: a door creaking open, air whistling as something small swung down, something sharp cutting into flesh, someone crying out in pain.

There was a miniscule moment of quiet — then people burst into motion. "Get back," Ford said, pushing Lee with one arm and Mabel with the other toward the wall. A moment later, a hamadryad ran past, holding the injured person — a dryad, maybe? — in her arms. Mabel thought she caught a glimpse of multiple knives embedded in the dryad's chest, and she definitely saw the blood flying back in the hamadryad's wake.

The hamadryad was fast. But would she make it outside to a tree in time? She couldn't heal the dryad otherwise.

Mabel felt a pit drop in her stomach, much like the knives had dropped from the door. This was real. People could actually get hurt. Even as the pit dropped, bile rose, and Mabel forcefully swallowed. They'd just gotten inside. She couldn't lose it.

They'd just gotten inside. How many more people were going to get hurt?

The group kept moving. The unfortunate door led into the kitchen, which had no lights on and only a few small windows. The smoke beings in the group lit up, providing streamers of orange and yellow light to illuminate the path. Mabel expected there to be more knives, maybe hanging from the ceiling or strewn around the floor, but she couldn't see anything from here. If anything had been there, it was gone by the time she walked through. It would've been disabled or moved by the others to make things safer.

Next was the dining room, with floor-to-ceiling windows and generous moonbeams lighting the area from outside. Mabel heard people at the front of the group yelling in surprise and pain — from what, she didn't know, and no hamadryads ran by with injured people in their arms. But the cries — quieter now, but not silent — didn't stop.

"What's going on?" Dipper asked Melody. As if she'd know.

Word quickly spread through the group, making it to Andrew. "Pain spell," he told the Symbols and others nearby. "It's spread across the room. Walking through it causes a lot of pain, even without injury."

"Let me help, then," said Gideon. "I can levitate people through the room, so it'll go faster."

"That's a good idea, but it'd take too long," Andrew said. "Do it for the other Symbols, but the rest of us will just have to get through ourselves."

Gideon didn't look happy about that, but he nodded.

"I didn't know the servants knew magic," Mabel said, her voice trembling.

"Maybe Bill did it," Gideon said. "Or maybe the servants have been learning."

"Something this big probably took all the servants to cast," Pacifica said. "There have to be physical anchors for the spell somewhere, though. Can we find those?"

"And then deactivate them," Gideon said. "Good idea."

Andrew got some smoke beings to go look. They were caught in the pain spell, too — though Mabel didn't know how exactly they felt pain — but they could move quickly and search for things.

When they returned, they reported that there was nothing to be found.

"That's not possible," Pacifica said.

"Maybe the anchors are in a different room, on the other side of the walls," Gideon said. "Either way, it seems like the fastest thing to do will just be to get through." He glanced at Mabel. "It'll be like the moon. When we were leaving it."

She nodded. She didn't want anyone to feel that magically induced pain, but it wouldn't actually hurt them.

Slowly, everyone got through the room. Gideon levitated the Symbols through, and it definitely made the pain easier to bear. But Mabel felt bad about flying through the room when the others had to walk.

After Gideon levitated the Symbols through, he flew through himself, then turned around to help the remaining people, including a relieved Enoch. Andrew was right that Gideon levitating everyone through one by one would've taken a long time, but having him turn around and help those who were left sped up the process. The others moved on, and once Gideon was done helping, he shoved his way through the group back to the other Symbols.

"When are we breaking off?" Dipper asked Andrew. "I thought we were going to go look for Bill."

"We are," Andrew said. "We'll go at that next intersection. Gideon says there's an underground bunker that way, and we'll go there first to look." He waved to the right, while the people at the front of the group were already turning left.

"Wait," Gideon said. "I. . . I don't think he's that way."

Mabel nodded without really thinking about it, and she noticed some of the other Symbols do the same. Bill wasn't off to the right. He was to the left. She could feel it.

Andrew looked around at the Symbols. "You feel him?"

"Yes," Gideon said. "I think he's in the same room he was in the last time we saw him. We can go through the ballroom and a few more hallways to get to him."

"The ballroom is too dangerous," Andrew said. "I thought we were going to avoid it."

"It's the fastest way to him," Gideon said.

"We have to get to him," Ford added. "We'll take the ballroom."

"Stanford, think about this. Our main priority—"

"Is to keep us safe," Ford said. "To keep the servants busy and give us time to get to Bill. If we know where Bill is, then we need to take the quickest route there."

"We need the time, Andrew," said Lee.

There was a quiet but strong note of pain in his voice. Mabel looked up at him. She didn't know what magic they were planning on using to get Bill out of Lee's body, but she didn't doubt that they needed time to cast it.

Andrew hesitated, then nodded. "All right. It'll be safest to go through with the group now rather than go alone later, too. Enoch?"

"I'll go tell them the change in plans," the younger minotaur said, anticipating his father's request. Andrew nodded again, and Enoch ran off. Mabel wasn't sure how he managed to get through the crowd, but he slipped through people and soon disappeared.

The Symbols kept following the crowd and turned left with the rest of the them. As they moved, Mabel started to hear distant sounds: crashing, banging, yelling. The other big group of people, somewhere across the mansion, must be running into trouble. She shivered.

The shiver returned when they got to the ballroom. Mabel had assumed it was the ballroom with the mirrors, where ghosts had attacked and where Pacifica had captured Mabel all those weeks ago. (How many weeks had it been since then? Three? Four?) But no, this was a different ballroom, one with a high ceiling and an elegant staircase on the other side of the room that curved up to the next floor. Balconies lined the room; multiple hallways and doors led away from them. There were no lights on, and though weak light came from the false moon that shone through the windows, the balconies were mostly in shadow. With plenty of places to hide.

And that's where the servants were.

Bang! The crack of gunshots rang through the room. The guns must have had silencers of some kind, because they weren't as loud as they could've been. But they were still loud, and Mabel instinctively ducked down. She and the others were supposed to walk through that?

A hamadryad ran by with a minotaur slung over her back. It would've been comical to see a thin woman holding a large bull-man with supernatural strength, except that there was a bleeding hole beneath one of the minotaur's eyes. Mabel gave a little shriek and took a few steps backward when she saw it.

With her backward movement, she bumped into Fiddleford. "He'll be okay," Fidds said, helping her regain her balance. "The hamadryad will heal him. We just have to get through the room."

"With servants shooting guns at us?" Dipper demanded.

Fidds looked about as fearful as Mabel felt, but he nodded.

Mabel heard the sound of glass breaking — it sounded like a peryton or hippogriff breaking the windows in the dining room so the hamadryads could get out to the trees faster. They'd still have to go through the kitchen and its pain spell, though, and the wounded minotaur was already in so much pain—

Fearful thoughts swirled in her mind, but Mabel was snapped out of it by Gideon giving instructions on where to go. "We'll want to get across the ballroom, up the stairs, and off to the first hallway on the right," he said. "Let's go."

Minotaurs and a few others formed a protective shell around the Symbols, and they started moving. Mabel felt her heart in her throat, and she kept expecting her legs to collapse beneath her. All around her were sounds of the battle. Guns fired—some bullets ricocheted dangerously around the room while others hit people straight on. Spells fired in return, streaking through the air in different colors of light. Hamadryads deftly avoided the bullets and the spells and helped the wounded out of the battle zone. Distant sounds of the other group fighting also carried to Mabel's ears, sneaking beneath the loud sounds here. The ballroom seemed huge, with no hope of making it before the servants picked people off one by one.

Blessedly, a few dryads and minotaurs made it to the staircase on the other side of the room and raced up to the second level, where they engaged with the servants in close quarters and did their best to neutralize them. Mabel didn't know how many servants were up there, but some gunshots still persisted, so there weren't enough people up there to stop them yet. Or maybe the people already up there had been shot, too.

"Keep moving," Andrew encouraged the others. "We're almost there."

Mabel took a few more steps forward.

Then a dryad cried out — not in pain, in alarm. There was a servant at the top of the stairs. He levelled his gun straight at the group below.

The dryad was one of the ones with a gun, and she shot at the servant but missed. Andrew yelled at their small group to move, move! The Symbols tried to follow his command, ducking and jumping out of the way while the minotaurs shielded them.

The servant shot into the group.

Mabel wasn't sure what was louder: her heartbeat or the gunshots. She cowered behind Ford, but some morbid curiosity led to her peeking out from behind him. There were minotaurs running up the stairs, trying to get to the servant to stop him. The servant fired at them, and a few fell, but not enough. One minotaur was seconds away from reaching him.

But not before the servant got off one more shot.

Someone screamed.

The minotaur tackled the servant and wrenched the gun from his hands. As the minotaur pulled on the gun, the servant let go of it and jumped away from his attacker, then took off and left the ballroom via one of the hallways. Mabel turned her attention from the servant and tried to see who had been hit, but there were too many people in the way.

Then—

"Andrew!"

It was Grunkle Lee calling the name. He pushed his way through the others. It wasn't safe — the gunshots were lessening as servants were attacked or else fled from the scene, but there were still some servants firing into the crowd. But Grunkle Lee didn't seem to care.

Andrew had been shot.