“Enough! Enough!” Prime Briallen stamped a colossal foot and stunned the battle, and the music, to silence. “How many of you two are there?”

Art looked at Art, who looked back, before both Arts glanced at the pile of other Arts and Reubens behind them. “At least this many,” the first Art said. “Where do you think all the threads come from?”

Drunk Beard turned directly to the camera for a second. “Ahoy.”

Like air farting from a balloon, Prime Briallen began to deflate. “This isn’t possible! Across every timeline, we have hunted you down! All of you—every Art and every Reuben! That was our quest!”

“Your quest?” Samantha called out, continuing to choke one of the Reubens.

The farting, and the shrinking, continued. “Herbert’s plan!” Prime Briallen said. “Oh, I hate that man, but I hate you”—she pointed at Art—“even more! He sought you out, brought you here to me, to be destroyed!”

“But we’re just here for Reuben.” Samantha made pointed eye contact with the real one as she elbowed one of his clones out of spite. “He screwed with our cargo!”

“He screws with everyone’s… wait, what?” Prime Briallen was now merely the height of a tree. “Oh, never mind! I had Herbert at the tip of my sword, but he bargained for his life, and a chance at the original Art is what he offered.”

“But isn’t Herbert working for Reuben?” Ōkī called out from the sidelines, having been put there with his brother at the start of the battle so as to not clutter the narrative. “He said so himself.”

Prime Briallen winced. “What do you mean? Who said—”

“Wait.” Samantha scrunched her face in thought. “If Briallen’s conspiring with Herbert, and Herbert with Reuben, and Reuben’s doing all this to get back at Art, who was turned into a hairy wizard by Herbert back on Nova Santa Fe…”

Art looked at Art, who shrugged through his luscious, flowing locks.

“…then what are we doing chasing after Herbert at all?” Samantha continued. “Saving Mark from being blown up by the Really Illegal Explosives even though he isn’t on the ship? We sent him to the pet store, remember? To test the parasite? He’s in no danger! Barb was even fetching the Really Illegal Explosives Defusal Kit. Why didn’t we just, you know, stay on the Horizon? It was only impounded in the first place because of the explosives, but we could’ve dealt with them anyway. Did we come all this way because… well, because we could?”

With that, Prime Briallen froze.

The world zoomed in on her face, on her twitching eyes as they welled with tears, on her brow as it broke with cold sweat at the chaos of it all. She was but seven feet tall again, and smaller than ever she had known. What was cause and what effect? Was Reuben the mastermind all along? Did Herbert do his bidding? Was this Mark important to the plot? What in all hell was the Horizon? Briallen was come to avenge her grandfather, whom Herbert twisted into a newt, yet she also wished to be rid of the shenanigans both brothers caused. Herbert’s plan made perfect sense—as clever a barter as any, though it pained her to admit as much—and no sooner would she have finished Art than betrayed Herbert and been done with them both. Such had been her plan, Briallen’s master bait!

The camera cut to a frowning Drunk Beard. “Keep them thoughts clean, matey.”

But now? What remained of that genius? There were Arts aplenty, and Reubens too, and one chased the other by Herbert’s doing, but Herbert’s doing was Reuben’s own, and all undone by its own hand! The ouroboros! Oh, the self-eating snake! Plot and purpose! Revenge derailed by maddening! A timeline fallen into chaos! Puzzles ever splintering!

The horde of Briallens crumbled into dust, and Prime Briallen—now just Briallen, really—began to ugly cry.

“It–It doesn’t m-make any s-sense,” she sobbed. “I just w-wanted to–to avenge my grandfather! He shouldn’t b-be a… a newt! Newts a-aren’t people! Why is–is this all s-so confusing?”

By this point, the entire group of Arts and Reubens, along with Art and Art and Prime Reuben, Samantha and Drunk Beard, Ōkī and Baka, and all the other characters who have phased in and out of existence for this journey realized they could make neither heads nor tails of a single thing that had happened up to, and including, this moment. If Reuben sent Herbert to transform Art into a hairy wizard on Nova Santa Fe in the first place, then why had Herbert—acting on Reuben’s orders—sent Ōkī and Baka to kill the very Art that Reuben wanted alive in order to humiliate on SpaceTube? Indeed, why had they followed Herbert through the portal at all? A portal both Herbert and Reuben apparently made, remember? At that point, the group knew Reuben was behind the unidentified cargo-explosives. Mark had said as much when he called them, but they didn’t know the other cargo container had been tampered with until just now, when Art checked the footage! In fact, if Briallen wanted Art dead from the very beginning, why had she let him live not once but twice in the canyon? How does one tie such a convoluted confluence up with a single, satisfying bow? Where does one even begin to—

The narrator sucked a deep breath through his metaphorical teeth and exhaled. He was pretty sure none of this made it any clearer, either, that Samantha’s little speech had been just as circular as the plot; the narrator had absolutely no desire to go back and check. Perhaps the real story was the friends we made (up) along the way (to the… sigh, to the “Wizard’s Ass”).

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Fuck it. Everyone back on their feet!

Bolts of lightning struck each copy of Art and Reuben, vaporizing them from the rest of the plot. Another lanced Prime Reuben—now just Reuben—and invigorated him, cleansing his wounds as he rose on unsteady legs. The corpse of the original Art, who had been impaled some scenes ago, flew back along the shadow of the mountains and planted itself firmly next to the newly restored Reuben in turn. Art and Art, the lovers two, burst into prismatic flames and disintegrated as they wept. They did not embrace as they died. The narrator would like to make clear just how unwholesomely excruciating their deaths were. A final bolt found Briallen, who was soaking in a pool of her own tears, and restored her broken spirit with the energizing power of being electrocuted within a pool of her own tears.

(Nobody puts Brilly in a corner.)

“B-But… I was gone,” Art said, clutching at where the hole that had replaced his face had been.

“And I was… I was beat!” Reuben responded, blinking in the sun. “What sorcery is this?”

Drunk Beard sloshed over. “This be no sorcery, lad. This be magic, of a proper hexadecimal and arcane-y sort. There be dragons next.”

Neither Ōkī nor Baka said a word, for they were still on the sidelines being extremely stealthy in a conveniently out-of-the-way kind of way.

“But this means we aren’t finished,” Samantha said, eyeing Reuben. “This means Reuben never loses at all! What part of your master plan is this?”

“Does it look like my master plan is working out?” Reuben said. “I just wanted people to take me seriously. I thought the abominations would’ve been a little bit more effective, to be honest.”

Art crossed his arms. “Honestly, I don’t know why we were worried—”

Samantha elbowed him.

“Right! Right!” He turned back to Reuben. “Now, the Super McGuffin, if you please. The one you stole from me, from us.”

“Don’t look at me. I don’t have it.”

“You teleported it from my cargo hold!”

“No,” Reuben said, “that was the Super McGuffin Tablet, remember? This thing?” He held up a clay tablet written in language long forgotten and never explained. “Aren’t you paying attention?”

“Look, it’s been a long day,” Art said. “Don’t start getting funny. Hand it over, that thing, your dark, sole solution to our rivalry.”

“Never! I need the Super McGuffin to get back at you.”

Samantha stood between them. “Then use the Tablet to teleport to the Super McGuffin and then give us the Tablet back? Again, we’re only here for that.” She pointed to the clay.

Reuben’s brain began to fizzle. “I’m starting to feel I didn’t think this through very well.”

“Well, don’t think,” she said. “Thinking has not got us”—she gestured to the group—“to this point, man! Just do things.”

“But that’s the thing. I tried to,” Reuben said. “But where the Tablet leads was full of terror. I barely made it out alive.”

Drunk Beard blew a kiss towards the camera. “Nothin’ better than honest exposition. Right, lads?”

The camera nodded.

“Tell you what,” Art said, “portal us all to where the Tablet points. We can stop this terror together, then you take the Super McGuffin, return that Tablet, and we can all get the hell out of here.” He sighed; Matlock started hours ago, and he just knew he wasn’t taping it. “This was supposed to be a quick in-and-out haul, you know.”

Reuben pursed his lips. “What say you, Briallen?”

As she looked down, her eyes flitted between them, unsure of purpose, uncertain of friend or foe. “At this point, I’ll take anything. I just want to lie down. I just want my cave. Revenge isn’t worth… all this. Grandpappy’s not even a bad newt, really.”

“Then it’s settled.” Art clasped his hands. “I swear, if it turns out this is all another parasite-dream, I’m relapsing.”

“No one would blame you,” Samantha mused. “Now, Reuben. Do your thing!”

And with that, Reuben created another portal. It was a talent that he always had possessed. You would’ve thought the power could be used for good. He might have, for example, used it to transport cargo containers from one location to another and steal Art’s thunder and fame that way, instead of subjecting us all to this this incestuous, Kafkaesque contrivance.

One by one, the group stepped through the shimmering gate.

* * *

The old, potentially trademark-infringing man took a long drag from his pipe and looked out over the gathered children in the library. “Now, I expect you’d like to know how the story ends.”

One of the parents twisted his face in disgust. “No, actually, we wouldn’t. This was supposed to be Harry Potter—”

“And what an end it has, this story.” The old man leaned forward on the stool. “None will see it coming.”

“Where are the police?” A woman gestured to another, who shrugged.

“We called them ages ago,” a parent called out, still struggling with the padlocked door. They had snapped a pair of bolt cutters and tried breaking the window with a toner cartridge, but the old man’s magic had them sealed in tight.

“What happens to Briallen?” A child shouted, unfazed by hostagedom.

A priggish girl stuck her hand up. “Why is Art so dumb and—”

“Fool of a Pip!” the old man said. “Artolkien Rolkien Torrensolkien is not dumb! He is grand and jolly, and his skill without equal!”

“I thought his name was Mr. Speitz?” the librarian called out from under her desk. She had given up pressing the silent alarm some minutes ago.

“Took for a fool, bookish one!” The old man sprang from his seat, throwing back his mangey grey cloak to reveal grand white robes—and a deliciously rhinestoned pair of stripper heels with the hint of fishnet tights. “Pay attention, all! You will know the ending now, with not a moment to spare! The tale’s culmination comes. Prepare yourselves!”

From through the windows came flashing blue lights as snipers set up their nests on nearby buildings.