Lock quickly snatched the hearse piece before Shock could. Barrel casually took the cauldron while they fought over it so the loser would be denied their second favorite.

The rest of the night would be chaos as they teamed up, back-stabbed each other, cheated, flipped the board twice, and ended the game as they always did in a brawl, until they finally tired themselves out. The floor was a mess of Conquerer pieces, with Carver the closest one to winning by right of having a bigger chunk of the board under control before it got flipped the second time.

~~~

Most of the rest of Halloween Town simply went home for uneasy unrest. A few citizens found themselves kept awake by the events, none more than Jack.

All of the year's preparations - gone! How did it come to this? Who could have done this? Even Sally didn't have an answer, and quietly tried to reassure him. Neither of them got much sleep.

Dr. Finklestein couldn't sleep either, and immediately went to work trying to puzzle out how they could have missed it. Wolfman howled in sorrow. Behemoth dejectedly tended to his pumpkins. The witches closed shop early, though not without questioning why their brooms were stuck to the walls and ceiling. A matter for the morrow, as the loss of Halloween weighed more heavily on their minds.

In Vampire Castle, the four vampire brothers paced together in a perfect circle. An outsider looking in might consider their perfect pace and distance from one another akin to a dreary carousel moving in perfect time.

"All of that time - [i]wasted[/i]!" the smallest cried.

The largest one - Vlad - shook his head as he paced.

"My dear daughters," he said with a sigh. "All that practice, and for what? We've seen many Halloweens, but they've only just started."

"It's a shame for us all," another piped in.

They continued their pacing as they tried to ponder what to do.