[ SYSTEM CRITICAL ALERT: DIMENSIONAL INVASION DETECTED ]
[ Hostile Entity: The Mind Flayer (Abyss Titan Form). ]
The sky literally tore open.
A massive, impossible shadow forced its way inside the Upside Down and it wasn't just a cloud of smoke anymore.
It was a physical, towering shadow-spider the size of a skyscraper.
The Mind Flayer had realized Vecna was dead and I had stolen its favourite staging ground. And it was furious.
It roared, a sound that flattened the dead trees and made the ground shake and it was trying to forcefully overwrite my ownership of the dimension.
"MINE," the Mind Flayer's voice scraped across my mind.
"I bought this place fair and square, ugly!" I yelled back, gripping my sword.
But the system alert wasn't done and another red box slammed into my vision.
[ Planetary Stealth Barrier: Temporarily Breached during Invasion. ]
[ Warning: One Lesser Entity slipped through the cracks to Earth. ]
My blood ran cold.
'Wtf Mind Flayer just kicked the front door open, and something else sneaked in through the back window.'
[ Location: Hawkins - The Hargrove House (Real World) ][ Time: 2:10 PM ]
Neil Hargrove
Billy and Max's abusive, terrible father—was sitting in his living room recliner, drinking a beer and yelling at a baseball game on TV.
"Catch the damn ball!" Neil shouted, throwing an empty can at the screen.
The TV flickered and the baseball game vanished into pure white static.
"Piece of junk," Neil grumbled, standing up to smack the side of the television.
He never made it.
The static on the screen poured out of the glass like black, oily smoke and the smoke swirled, forming a face with too many jagged, glowing yellow eyes.
A Void Stalker.
A scout from the dark spaces between worlds.
Neil froze, dropping his beer and tried to scream, but the shadow shot forward like a viper.
It slammed into his face, forcing itself down his throat.
Neil collapsed to his knees, choking and gagging, his veins turned pitch black.
When he finally stood back up, he wasn't Neil Hargrove anymore.
He cracked his neck.
His eyes opened, glowing with a sickly, jagged yellow light and a cruel, alien smile stretched across his face.
"So this is Earth," the thing wearing Neil's body whispered. "Smells like... dinner."
[ Location: The Upside Down - Creel House ]
I stared up at the towering, mountain-sized shadow spider ripping through my sky.
My newly mutated Yellow Hounds floated into attack formation.
I just smiled.
The Mind Flayer wanted to take my house? Fine.
"You want my dimension?" I yelled to the giant shadow, my Aether flaring up in a blinding violet storm. "Come and take it!"
[ Location: The Upside Down - Creel House ]
The Mind Flayer was the size of a skyscraper.
A massive tornado of black smoke and angry red lightning tore through my sky and it reached down with a shadow-tentacle as thick as a highway, aiming right for my roof to crush me.
"Basilisk!" I shouted, pointing my sword up.
"Fire!"
My fifty-foot magical snake reared back and spit a river of glowing, green acid straight into the sky.
The acid slammed into the shadow-tentacle and it melted instantly.
The Mind Flayer shrieked—a sound so loud my teeth rattled. It pulled its injured arm back, shocked that its old home pets was fighting back.
But the monster was furious and it sent down a dozen more tentacles at once.
"Hounds!" I yelled at my sixty mutated ghosts. "Dinner time!"
The Yellow Hounds glided up like a swarm of missiles and they crashed into the shadow-tentacles, pressing their hooded faces against the dark smoke to use their new power: The Erasing Kiss.
When a Hound kissed the Mind Flayer, that piece of the monster vanished completely and it was erased from the timeline.
The Mind Flayer roared in panic.
It was losing massive chunks of its body and couldn't heal them back.
"I WILL CRUSH YOU!" the monster's voice scraped across my brain.
"You're trespassing! BRO" I yelled back.
I owned this dimension, and I was going to defend it with my own two hands.
I raised my empty hand and slammed my own raw, crushing willpower directly onto the battlefield.
"Gravity Well!" I roared, pushing my mind to the absolute limit. "Sit down!"
I multiplied the gravity above my house by a hundred using pure, unfiltered psychokinesis. The giant shadow-spider slammed into the invisible gravity wall like a bug hitting a windshield.
It thrashed and screamed, completely pinned and trapped by my mind.
I raised my Void Blade and poured my purple Aether energy into it until it hummed like a jet engine.
"Eviction notice served!"
I swung the sword upward.
A blinding beam of violet energy sliced right through the pinned Mind Flayer and hit the cracked red sky.
BOOM.
I grabbed the torn fabric of space with my mind and ripped it shut and the energy sealed the rift like a zipper. The red lightning stopped instantly. The remaining tentacles trapped on my side turned to harmless grey ash.
[ SYSTEM ALERT ][ Dimensional Invasion Repelled. Sector Secured. ]
"Take that, you oversized spider," I wheezed, dropping to one knee.
I had won.
But down in the real world, the fight wasn't completely over.
[ Location: Hawkins - Billy Hargrove's Bedroom (Real World) ][ Time: 2:30 PM ]
Billy Hargrove was fast asleep in his bed.
He was completely exhausted.
He had passed out on his mattress after fighting off the terrible headaches as the Mind Flayer's came and so his possession. He thought he had burned it all out and he was finally free.
The room was totally quiet.
The blinds were drawn, keeping the afternoon sun out.
But Billy wasn't fully cured.
A tiny, black speck of shadow moved under the skin of his neck.
It crawled upward, sliding silently just beneath the surface like a nasty, dark vein.
Billy groaned in his sleep, tossing to the side.
From his open mouth, a thick, black, slimy slug slid out.
It wasn't just normal smoke or shadow; it was a physical, living piece of the Mind Flayer that had stayed behind, hiding deep inside his stomach where the heat couldn't reach it.
The slug dropped from Billy's lips onto the pillow, but billy didn't wake up and he just kept snoring.
The slug slithered off the bed, hitting the carpet with a soft, wet sound. It crawled quickly across the floor, leaving a tiny trail of black slime behind it and it reached the metal air vent in the wall and slipped right through the cracks, disappearing into the dark pipes of the house.
The Mind Flayer had lost the big battle in the Upside Down, but a tiny piece of it was now loose in Hawkins, crawling away to find a dark place to grow.
And up in my dimension, completely exhausted and catching my breath, I had absolutely no idea.
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