The group emerged from Reuben’s portal to find themselves rather conveniently back on Nova Santa Fe, except the sky was on fire and the boss music had resumed.

“W-What?” Samantha looked around. “We’ve been here before. This is where we—”

“Stepped through my portal, yes,” Reuben said. “It was a convoluted plan.”

Drunk Beard clapped his hands—or tried to; one was a hook, so it was more the sound of slapping your palm with a spoon. “Aye, this Super McGuffin, then. It must be here, hearties. Dig!”

“Don’t we have more pressing issues?” Briallen grabbed Drunk Beard by the… well, beard, and twisted his gaze to the horizon, and to the floating mass coming rather pointedly over it:

A great palace of beautiful stone drifted towards them. From its windows, there discharged lasers of red and white power. From its roof, there fired a horde of archers and mounted cannons. From its flagpole, there beneath the words Hendes Majestæts bevægelige erobringspalads flew a banner unmistakable, a brilliant cross atop a background the colour of freshly killed blood.

And, from its balcony, there waved none other than…

(Buckle up, cowboy.)

…Queen Margrethe II, who it seemed had abdicated the throne recently to free up a weekend in search of the Super McGuffin; she did, after all, have a strong passion for archaeology.

“Hej, dernede! Du er desværre lidt i vejen! Jeg ønsker dig held og lykke med at undvige disse spærreild af død!” Her Majesty called out.

“What?” Reuben called back.

“She be sayin’ we’re in the way, lad.” Drunk Beard crossed his arms, standing in a hole about a foot deep and two wide. What he needed was a shovel. “She brings barrages o’ death.” He smiled longingly at the sight. “But what a mighty fine ship she has! I should be wantin’ a go on them cannons later.”

“There won’t be a later, numbskull!” Briallen shook Drunk Beard by the shoulders. “Everyone, make like the pirate! Dig!”

They took to the earth like rabid dogs in fear of water, shovelling great mounds of dirt in every direction as the Palace loomed closer. In the distance, a gout of red-white fire mortared from a chimney and struck the space elevator, melting it down one side. The structure shuddered, groaned, and began to buckle with sickening cries, splintering directly onto the Visitor’s (not Visitors’) Center and flattening the whole complex in one great crash of broken glass. Cannonballs rained from the Palace’s roof, pockmarking the landscape as a taste of wrath to come. Some might call it an overture, but those in the line of fire had choicer words.

After frantic moments and many mouthfuls of inhaled mud, the group burst through the ceiling of an underground cavern and collapsed into a heap on its cold stone floor just as the Palace passed over the channelled hole in search of plunderables.

Art wiped the dirt from his eyes and jumped to his feet with startled breath. “Wait, is this?” He felt around in the darkness. “Yeah, I know where we are!”

“What do you mean?” Samantha spat a clump of grass into the darkness.

“It’s… I’ve been here.” He fumbled through his secret underwear pocket, pulling from its hammerspace a vintage shotgun. The weapon glowed with freakish light, its very metal lit from within by the fires of the forefather’s imagination, revealing above their heads the shape of a great creature coiled among a forest of countless dangling foetuses:

The Concepts Gardener, in all its returning glory.

It writhed in place for a second before descending from the cavern’s murk to slink a head into the middle of the group. “You come again, Art,” it said. “Have you done as I desired?”

“Be that the Moby Dick?” Drunk Beard reflexed for his harpoon, grabbing stale air instead.

Samantha winced. “It certainly looks like one.”

Art held up a hand to quiet their chattering, and stepped forwards to meet the slippery menace of man. “Yes, I have, creature-thing!” he said. “Herbert’s creations are dead!”

It tapped wiry fingers together. “Excellent.”

And then nothing happened, and Art and the group stood there for some time staring at the serpentine mass as it too stared back quite blankly and with nothing else at all to say. From far above, the sound of particle accelerators reverberated through the rock as the cavern shook with Danish power.

“…Uh, so…” Art gestured towards the creature. “What do I get in return? I’ve done my bit.”

“As have I.” It pointed to the glowing shotgun. “You have your prize. I offered nothing more.”

Art’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “But I didn’t even use the damned thing to beat the abominations!”

“That sounds like a you problem to me, mortal.” It coiled about itself in the cosmic horror equivalent of laughter. “I said you might have it, not that it might come in useful—”

The Concepts Gardener’s head exploded as soon as Art pulled the trigger, and its body spasmed and flailed in spasming, flailing desperation for a twitching moment before collapsing across the cavern’s floor in a black miasma of goo and twitchy, gushing regret. Whoever’s idea it was to make shotguns that fired both barrels simultaneously clearly had issues they needed to address.

“Art!” Samantha grabbed him. “How do you know that thing wasn’t the Super McGuffin! The portal brought us right to it, for God’s sake!”

“I don’t know a lot of things, Sam, but I know that thing wasn’t the McGuffin.”

“…How, exactly?”

Before Art could respond, the Concepts Gardener’s remains sprang upright again, and a new head formed where the old one had been but seconds ago. A low chuckle came from within its mass, its oozingly fleshy girth.

Drunk Beard peered over his shoulder at the camera. “Ahoy.”

“Super McGuffin? I am no toy, no author’s string to action.” The Concepts Gardener raised far above the group. “Far more than that, I am a monument.”

Art chambered two more rounds. “You’ll need a monument in a second—”

It held up a hand to stop him. “Enough. You have done as I asked, I admit, though I sense Herbert is still alive. I shall find him myself, feast on him as salami-like treats are feasted upon by cats, though only a little.” It whipped back onto the cavern’s ceiling. “You will leave me to my entertainments.”

Art pointed the shotgun directly at the thing’s new face. “Marble or sandstone?”

“But, if that weapon was not enough a trinket”—its eyes glistened with stars—“then I have one more gift to give.”

Samantha slapped the shotgun down. “Go on!”

The Concepts Gardener pointed directly at Reuben and twinkled into nothingness; the cavern shook again to the battle cry of Arkæologi! Arkæologi! rumbling ever closer through the stones.

“Hey!” Samantha dashed forwards into the space the creature had been occupying. “What do you mean? What do you mean! What’s Reuben?”

It was no use. The thing had vanished into the darkness. Perhaps it had never been there in the first place. That would be concerning, all things considered, because mass hallucinations usually signal a carbon monoxide leak. It would certainly explain the last few chapters. Samantha paced about, swatting the air in the hope the Concepts Gardener might just be invisible and freakishly shy while Art held the shotgun up to illuminate as much of the space as possible. The dangling foetuses seemed to be watching their every move with unformed eyes. Drunk Beard clapped—as best the one-handed pirate could—to the Danish tunes growing steadily closer. Oh, how he liked a good broadside. From a palace? Perfektion.

And then it occurred to Reuben.

He froze as the camera rushed towards his quivering lips. In fact, it rushed so quickly, it struck him right between the eyes and sent him caterwauling over. His dramatic breakdown would not be as theatrical as Briallen’s before it, but Jesus would he try. After all, if none of this worked out, a career in acting was never far away:

“I get it now.”

The whole group turned towards him, ducking as Art wheeled the shotgun around obliviously.

“You get what?” Briallen crossed her arms.

“The Super McGuffin. I know where it is.”

“That’s good!” Briallen looked around nervously. “That’s… good? Why don’t you look like that’s good?”

Reuben’s mouth hung wide. “The thing that sets the plot in motion…”

The Dowager Countess of Grantham emerged from the shadows. “Yes, I know what a Super McGuffin is.”

Briallen jumped. “Who is that—”

“What,” the Dowager continued, “are you Super McGuffining too? Or would you rather take in washing? The boy is obviously speaking of himself.”

Everyone stared at Reuben. Even the camera stared, concerning in and of itself given the thing didn’t have eyelids, or indeed a face. The world seemed so small all of a sudden, as if all the air had gone from the underground cavern and the group were puffed up marshmallows in a vacuum chamber, squished against each other at the moment of realization as the pieces began to fall into place. Each of them drew in a breath and exhaled, and there hung over their shoulders a sudden weightlessness marred with surprise.

“You’re the Super McGuffin?” Art protested. “You?”

“It makes sense now,” Reuben said. “All of this is because of me! I made it happen! I’ve been searching for something by looking everywhere but the one place it was… inside me!”

(Drunk Beard whispered ahoy into the boom microphone.)

Samantha grimaced. “Don’t start with the Disney shit now.”

“No, it’s why the portal brought us here.” Reuben began to pace back and forth. “The Tablet doesn’t lead to the Super McGuffin. It reveals it! That’s right, isn’t it—”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Reuben tried to gesture to the Dowager Countess, but she had vanished.

“So, you’ve been searching for… yourself?” Samantha rested her hands on her hips. “You know what? I’ll accept it. It’s as good a message as we’re getting from all this.”

“Aye, the high seas are what we make of them, not what they make of us!” Drunk Beard cheered. “The Super McGuffin, greatest treasure in this here universe, is ye own honest value. No trove of coins might compare!”

The whole group embraced—even Art, whom Reuben pulled in against his wishes. It was a moment wholesome and fulfilling in its nature, and to that end even the narrator agreed. Sometimes, the real lesson’s neither in the journey nor the destination. Sometimes, it’s just the train you take to get there.

Or something.

Anyway, the cavern’s ceiling suddenly crumpled as a great mechanical arm burst through and snatched up the hugging group of heroes, wrenching them back into the light of the surface and scattering them unceremoniously across the ruined desert wasteland. The claw retracted back inside the Palace’s doors as the entire complex hovered to a stop and landed with a dust-whirling, earth-cracking Thwomp-slam a short distance away.

The boss fight had landed.

“Der er I alle sammen!” Margrethe called from the balcony, pointing at Reuben. “Siger I alle, at denne mand er, hvad jeg leder efter?”

The group stared back plainly, varyingly stunned and dazed, while Drunk Beard was too busy admiring the Palace’s masonry to translate.

“Hallo? Dansk?” she said, leaning over the stonework. “Engelsk?”

“What?” Reuben called back… again.

Margrethe rolled her eyes and searched for something on the side of the stone balustrade, scanning with a wry finger for a few seconds before pressing a button etched into the surface. From the top of the Palace sprang a comically oversized loudspeaker, and from the balcony’s ceiling dropped one of those hanging microphones used in old boxing matches.

“Jeg sagde”—Margrethe caught herself—“I said, is this man the Super McGuffin?”

Reuben sprang to his feet. “I am, yes! I’m not just Art’s brother anymore! I’m relevant!”

“That is nice, dear,” she said. “You are going into a museum.”

Reuben might have regretted his boldness when the Palace doors opened again and down their steps descended a horde of knights dressed in shining plate and resplendent capes. Their swords were fire, their shields a blaze, their eyes the glare of lit coals in the black. The regiment clanked into formation and, in concert, began to advance. A bead of sweat ran down Reuben’s brow, getting right into his eye and making it sting really bad. He couldn’t react, though. He needed to be strong in the face of adversity.

“A museum?” Art said, clambering to his feet. “Not if I have anything to say about it!”

Reuben turned, shocked.

“I think I want a go with the steely boys too!” Briallen cracked her neck.

Reuben was less shocked at that, but it was still nice enough a gesture.

“Arr! Get me that ship!” Drunk Beard lit his beard cannon’s fuse. “It be plunderin’ time, me waylaid hearties!”

Increasingly less shocked, Reuben turned around and set to making the sternest glare he could muster. The first of the advancing knights—Briallen was right on the money when she called them the Steely Boys, for that is now (was always) their name—hesitated in the face of such a comically evil, moustache-twirling fiendishness.

It proved to be the man’s undoing.

Reuben jumped through a portal and landed a punch directly on the back of the man’s head, who reeled forwards into Art’s knee, crumpled against it, and lurched to the floor. Two more of the Steely Boys swung at Reuben, who sank through the ground and swapped placed with Briallen. She caught both swords in her teeth: one of the knights blushed a little, the other wet himself, and a cannonball from Drunk Beard sent both on their way.

With those flaming swords in either hand, Briallen stared down the massed Steely Boys, opening her eyes to reveal increasingly open eyes. They opened again, and again, and again, and Briallen grew, and grew, and grew. From the height of a tree to as tall as the Palace itself, she soon carved two crescents through the gathered knights, who scattered like chaff in a breeze.

Two more grappled with Drunk Beard, whose sodden antics proved too unpredictable to fight. He staggered and lumbered through their slashes and blows, parrying one with the other and the other with a bottle of rum summoned into being by his need to be drunk at all times. The pirate cracked one of the Steely Boys over the head with the drink and grabbed the stunned man’s face with his broad hand, bringing the unfortunate up to eye level.

Or, more specifically, to beard cannon level. A second later, the knight had a headache where his head should’ve been had he the head to feel it.

The other knight backed away and merged with the group forming behind him, and soon there came upon the battle a wall of shield-to-shield action. Briallen’s next strike crushed a line through the formation, but the enlarged blade shattered into a spray of flaming iron and slightly sub-par workmanship and the Steely Boys continued on. She tried to grab one of the knights on the outside, but a series of swift stabs had Briallen snatch back her hand in pain. Art danced around the edge, looking for an opening—until one of the knights threw his sword and forced the man back. Even Drunk Beard’s cannon fire ricocheted off the blazing barrier as echoing laughter came from the Palace.

None had noticed Ōkī and Baka up until this point, not even the reader.

Like the ninjas they aspired to be, they had snuck through the gaps in the shield-wall and, with a flurry of their blades and a comedy of slashing metal-on-metal sound effects, the formation found itself cut apart from the inside, and the Steely Boys scattered once more.

“Where were you two?” Art called out, pulling from his secret underwear pocket his mallet attached to a shower handle.

“Always here,” Baka said. “Waiting.”

One of the Steely Boys advanced on Art, ducking beneath Briallen’s titanic, sweeping slashes and lunging with his own sword. It deflected off the mallet, to the man’s horror and Art’s manic amusement, and a swift backstroke sent the knight rocketing comically into the side of the Palace, where he exploded into a spray of gore.

Art twirled the weapon. “I guess you could say he was… dumbstruck.”

From the heavens, a record scratch interrupted the fight. Everyone stared directly at Mr. Speitz in reasonable disgust while, to the side, a single cricket chirped. Time grew thin and watery, and Briallen let out a long, long sigh.

“That was horrible,” the cricket said. “You’re horrible.”

“Yeah, that was… that was pretty bad.” Art scratched at the surface of the mallet idly. “I should really get a grip.”

“You should get help.”

“I’m a space captain, okay? Not a comedian.”

“Clearly.” The cricket palmed the sky with little cricket-hands. “You’re not cut out for—”

Briallen stamped on the insect hard enough to shake the chandeliers in the Palace and turned her attention back to the Steely Boys… only to find they were no more. In the cringe-induced pause, Ōkī and Baka had quietly dispatched the remaining knights and bundled them into small wooden barrels now dripping with blood. Each barrel was inscribed with the kanji for death. The two were, after all, slightly edgy fourteen-year-olds, though their proclivity for killing people was certainly a cause, and gave pause, for concern.

Samantha, who had used the battle’s chaos to slip over to the Palace and begin scaling up its walls, finally reached the balcony and hauled herself over its neatly polished, slightly weathered edge to come face to face with Her Majesty.

“I say,” Margrethe began, “these knights are not as good as I thought.”

“Budget cuts, right?” Samantha mused. “Now, I want out of this story. What will it take for you to… well, leave?”

“I have come for the one you call Super McGuffin. I had thought it a treasure.”

“Oh, it is.” Samantha grinned thinly. “A treasure beyond any other.”

“But this man down here, he claims to be—”

“Reuben?” Samantha busked. “He’s not the Super McGuffin! He must’ve… must’ve misheard you. It’s… his name’s… Gri–Griffon. Soupy McGriffon.”

“What an unusual name.”

“Tell me about it. Anyway, the real Super McGuffin—that is, the actual one, I mean—is a… shotgun. Yeah. It’s a shotgun.”

Margrethe’s eyes narrowed.

“A really neat little vintage piece. It’d look great in your museum,” Samantha continued. “I can go and get it for you, if you’d like.”

“This seems too convenient.”

Samantha exhaled and pointed over her shoulder. “You see that giant woman with the slightly purple hair?”

Margrethe nodded slowly.

“You can either argue with me, or with her. Do you want me to—no, tell you what.” Samantha turned around and leaned over the balcony. “Briallen! Hey!”

“All right,” Margrethe said, tapping Samantha on the shoulder. “Bring me this McGuffin. I shall open the doors.”

With that, Samantha stood back as Her Majesty craned forwards in search of the correct button on the balcony controls. What she did with all the switches and dials was anybody’s guess. Why there were switches and dials on a balcony in the first place, we might never know. They fit quite neatly with the comically oversized steering wheel in the adjacent room. Drunk Beard would have a field day with that.

The Palace doors swung open again, and Samantha made her way through its myriad hallways and stairs, stepping over the whimpering, mangled members of staff who had been thrown about the place presumably when the Palace started flying. Seatbelts would not have gone amiss, but that was a discussion for another time. Samantha strode down the steps as the group stood defensively, having been braiding each other’s hair for the entirety of the last conversation so the narrator didn’t have to put too much effort into this quote-unquote resolution.

“Art, give me that shotgun.”

He looked at Samantha like she’d asked him to give up his new puppy. “But I like it. It’s mine. It glows. Do you know how cool a glowing shotgun—”

Desperate to get out of this fuckin’ story, she kneed him in the crotch and he keeled over, dropping the gun. Samantha, in one fluid motion, snatched it off the ground and stormed back into the Palace. A few seconds later, she came running back down the stairs, grabbed Drunk Beard by the… yeah, still the beard, and dragged the pirate back inside, to his delight.

The whole Palace shuddered as its dragster-sounding engines spluttered back into life, and Samantha scooted out the doors just as the whole complex began to lift into the sky at a jaunty angle. From through the windows could be seen Drunk Beard at its wheel, laughing heartily, as Queen Margrethe II flitted to and fro in search of a display case for her new and shiny collectible. With a groan and a poot, the entire Palace zipped away into the sky and vanished between the stars with one final, grand ahoy.

Everyone breathed, for it was finally over.

“Is that it?” Reuben asked. “Is it finally over?”

“Yes, Reuben. That’s it.” Art looked towards his brother, towards his Super McGuffin. “It’s finally over.”

That’s right. It’s finally over.

(Almost.)

“And what a shit few days that was!” Samantha slapped Reuben. “What an absolute joke of a delivery! To think we could be in Cabalasa Four by now! Do you know who’s on tonight? Glam Dilf! I’ve wanted to see that old crusty for ages! Instead, we’re prancing about through your stupid portals in search of… God, I don’t even know.” She clenched her fists until the knuckles turned white. “In fact, make a portal. Make one right now. Portal me to the… what was it called? The mountain? No, that’s right, a mountain—literally A Mountain.”

Reuben rubbed his cheek and conjured the swirly hole as requested, through which Samantha stepped with some fury writ on her face.

“Should I just close it behind her?” Reuben said.

“No, no.” Briallen began to shrink back down to her usual size. “Let her vent. Last thing you need is a sequel where she’s the villain.”

About thirty seconds later, Samantha re-emerged covered in blood, holding Herbert’s severed head, and wearing both his broken teeth and ripped-off fingers on a chain around her neck. “We’re leaving. I want a drink. I want smelling salts. I want glue.”

Art pointed to the wreckage of the space elevator. “One small problem. The Horizon’s still parked in orbit.”

“One small solution.” Samantha pointed to Reuben. “You. Portal. Now.”

“Well, I guess this was a triumph.” Reuben called into being a final, glistening wormhole to the dockyard above. Again, this power could be used for so much good. “I’ll make a note of it. Huge success.”

“And now I only want you gone.” Samantha waved him off and tossed Herbert’s head through before she too disappeared into the light. The wind continued to howl over the desert plateau, through the charred wreckage of another world yet ruined by perfidious invasion.

It was oddly melancholic.

Art turned back to what remained of the group. “Well, I guess this is it for now,” he said. “If you see a guy called Mark, tell him we’re going to the club. He’ll know which one.”

Briallen nodded. She had absolutely no intention of doing that. “See you around, I suppose. You’ll be back to ruin this timeline some more, no doubt. I look forward to it.”

“No doubt.” Art finger-gunned her.

Ōkī and Baka bowed and faded from existence, their purpose fulfilled.

“As for you, Roob.” Art clapped his brother on the shoulder. “We should do this again sometime.”

Reuben wanted to say something witty, to reveal all along his true Machiavellian genius with a final, unseen twist that would forever have his name in lights. But it didn’t come. There was no more he could do. He was fulfilled, a bucked brimmed with water, an orange peeled in one continuous, unbroken go. All was good. He was not his brother’s shadow. He was his own McGuffin, and a super one at that.

“See you,” Reuben said, pushing Art backwards through the portal, “Space Cowboy.”