The Eldest Cipher

Revelations

   Asilea slowly started to be able to focus as the sound of shouting broke through her foggy mind. After concentrating for a few minutes, she could tell that it was Ford, and he seemed very angry.

   "That's my great-grand niece he has," Ford exclaimed, dangerously close to shooting his blaster at the two brothers, "We are going to get her back!"

   "We can't right now," Will tried to reason, "We have no idea where he went."

   "Don't you try to pull one over on me," Ford continued to shout, "Are you seriously telling me that HE has no clue where his bestie is." 

   No one noticed Bill shutter when Ford gestured to him. "Matthias and I only spent time together in two places: our home planet and the Mindscape. He mentioned that he had a special place he created for himself outside of our home, but he never told me where."

   "I think I do," Asilea responded, slurring her words.

   "What?" They replied in unison.

   "When we were little, back before we really knew each other, Matthias told me about this place he had found, a place that only people like us can get to. A place where anything we thought of could become reality," Asilea's head was almost clear, and she could feel the effects from her battle with Matthias fading. She tried to stand as she spoke with relative success.

   "Do you know how to get there?" Ford asked.

   "Not entirely, but he said that if I ever wanted to go there, all I had to use was this," Asilea summoned an ebony rock with a spiral on it. The spiral glowed green in her hand.

   "And you just...never thought to use it," Will stated more than asked.

   "I had meant to, but I kept pushing it aside, and frankly over the millennia I forgot about it," she explained. Asilea closed her eyes to concentrate and the spiral continued to glow brighter. It grew so bright that everyone had to close there eyes. When they opened, the rock had disappeared, and in it's place beside Asilea was a portal leading to what looked like nothing.

   "Are we sure that this isn't a trap?" Will asked.

   "Nope," Bill answered as he jump through the portal after Asilea.

   The group entered into a place filled with nothing but empty blackness. The Cipher brothers, Asilea still being too weak after creating the portal, attempted to find Mabel and Matthias' presence but found nothing.

   "Are you this is the place that Matthias was talking about?" Bill asked.

   "Honestly no," Asilea answered, "But this is the place that the portal took us. He might have changed the location the stone would send me after...everything."

   "Well Mabel's not here," Ford interjected, "So where the he-" He was interrupted when a flash of light appeared out of nowhere. Once everyone's eyes had adjusted, they realized that it was a window to another dimension. Mabel was looking at them on the other side.

   "Mabel...how did you...?" Ford was stunned, but his question was answered when Mabel's right eye briefly flashed black.

   "Matthias let her go!" Will ordered.

   "It's still me guys," Mabel replied in her own voice. Everyone was taken aback. This wasn't like when Bill possessed Dipper. Either Matthias could replicate Mabel's voice, or she was telling the truth. Neither option was good.

   "Why...why are you...?" Ford couldn't properly form words. The idea that his precious great-grandniece had willingly let a creature even share a body with her sent his world crashing down around him. 

   "Matthias promised me that he would be able to protect my family," Mabel explained as if they were discussing the weather. 

   "And you trusted him?!" Ford shouted.

   "You've been trusting Asilea," Mabel countered.

   "Asilea didn't try to kill my family!"

   "But she didn't try to stop it!" At this point Mabel's voice was slightly distorted. It sounded like a merged version of her's and Matthias'. "The whole time Bill was attacking the universe, the one person who could maybe face him in fight was nowhere? Her own brother was locked away and tortured for years, and she did nothing to help him when she knew where he was! Doesn't sound strange at all!" At this point every was staring at Asilea. Even if Mathias was trying to manipulate them, he had a good point.

   "Asilea..." Bill almost spoke in a whisper. She looked her brother in the eye, and the person he saw wasn't his sister. It was something much darker.

   "When you destroyed our home," Asilea explained, "I blamed myself for all of it. Every single terrible thing that happened I thought was my fault, and I was determined to set it right. To find a way to separate you. I did terrible things in my search for the Cipher wheel. I killed people, innocent people whose only crime was that they were in the way of something I needed to move on. I bargained with creatures with magic darker than even I could wield, and I didn't save Will because I knew that he would try and stop me from doing what I needed to, so I left him in that...place."

   Everyone, even Mabel and Matthias, stood in shocked silence at Asilea's confession. Will was the first to speak, "Why did you stop?"

   Asilea hesitated before she spoke. They could see something snap inside of her, and suddenly Asilea's eyes began to glow bright purple.

   "She didn't," a distorted voice answered, "She just knew that she needed to be...less aggressive to get what she wanted this time." The creature disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke, leaving the mark on her arm scorched into the floor.