Dark World

Chapter 7 - Equinox

Later that morning Dipper, Mabel, Pacifica, and Gideon all sat down for a hearty breakfast they had worked together to make. They had eaten almost everything when something unexpected happened. Mabel's eyes had grown very wide and had about jumped out of his skin at the breakfast table as a voice came from behind him.

"Dipper?" the young voice said questioningly. Dipper jumped out of his chair instinctively but relaxed as his mind began to recognize the voice of this small child. Dipper turned to see Zuri smiling at him. Then logic caught up as Dipper's jaw dropped. "How did you get inside?" Dipper asked. Zuri giggled. "Even for humans, locks are a poor excuse for security. I bypassed them if that's what you mean." Dipper chuckled as he threw his arms around the girl in an affectionate embrace. "We missed you Zuri," he said with doting affection. Zuri smiled as she hugged him back.

Then Dipper's face turned serious. "What could have brought you all the way here to our dimension?" Zuri's smile vanished immediately. "We have been tracking a signal of unknown origin. It is unlike anything we have ever encountered. We tried to pin it down, but it seems to span across countless dimensions making it difficult to pin down its point of origin. We did however find that all the signal vectors reached out in one way or another to a focal point...here on Earth." Zuri finished the last part with a somber stare of silence. It never ceased to amaze Dipper how advanced in maturity she was for one so young. Dipper suspected her race was different from humans in this regard. For all, he knew she could be far older than he assumed her to be. She still held that childlike wonder nevertheless.

"So where is this focal point?" Dipper asked. She held out a hand. "I will show you." She nodded at Mabel, Pacifica, and Gideon. They placed their hands on top of hers as if they were ready up for a game of baseball by the pitcher's mound ready to break for the start of the game.

The world shimmered around them as the living room and kitchen space seemed to fold in on itself to a single infinitesimally small point. Then Dipper felt as if that single point somehow was stretched upward and onward instantly, faster than his mind could comprehend. The feeling of vertigo was overwhelming. His feet were suddenly slamming on the ground. Dipper, Mabel, Pacifica, and Gideon fell over while Zuri stood calmly. Dipper was not entirely sure of what had happened, but as he watched Zuri pocket a strange device she had been holding in her fist. He suspected they had just transcended space-time somehow. Mabel spoke up first as she caught her breath. "Hey! I know this place. This is a spelunking cave not far from the Pacifica Northwest college of arts that Gideon and I attend!" Zuri nodded silently as she led the snow-covered way into the caves.

The cave maw was small but it opened up into a more cavernous space. Zuri consulted a three-dimensional projected image she had procured in front of her that strongly resembled map with a central red blinking light ping. "The transmission signal source is dead ahead," Zuri announced. The group kept close not wanting to get lost in the catacombs. Eventually, after a few turns and multiple forked paths, they found a smaller room.

Mabel gasped as she saw a light source within the room. Two lit braziers stood near the back of the room casting an odd glow on the room that felt unnatural. Then he saw the symbols graven into the side of the stone brazier and recognized some of the letters. "Those have been enchanted!" Dipper said with a gasp. Zuri nodded distractedly. Her attention was drawn to an ornamental table with short candles upon it and a  symbol drawn upon the face of the heavy stone table. Dipper saw the shape recognizing it to be an enchantment. It was a small circle with two smaller ring circles within it with a space left in the center. Each ring was a unique color. The outside was teal, the middle was golden yellow and the inside was vermillion. It contained some star symbols dipper recognized but most of them Dipper did not despite his formidable knowledge in cartography he had been accruing over the last few years alongside Ford's supplemental teaching. Some of the star symbols Dipper even recognized as ones that were present on the interdimensional portal. Something about the symbols made Dipper's hair stand on end.