“So, um… where exactly are we?” The muddy green horned thing from Magicant, who had just named himself Wil, asked Ralivil and Buzzy Bol.

Ralivil and Buzzy Bol came to a halt at the foot of the stairwell. They exchanged glances.

Buzzy Bol turned to face the aliens from Magicant and told them, “…We haven’t got to that part yet.”

Foppiue, the Foppy with markings next to their eyes and on the tips of their feet, spoke up, asking, “So we should go and found out now, right? Since we’ve all been to that room you wanted to take us to so badly?”

“Well… I wasn’t in much of a hurry to do it, but that’s the idea, yeah.”

Mav, the dark red trashcan Mook, said, “I nominate Greenie.”

Wil looked down at Mav as he gave a hum of query, while Ralivil looked over his shoulder at the other Mook with a raised eyebrow. Mav pointed to Ralivil, who then sputtered in response.

“ME?! Why me?” he questioned. Mav nonchalantly shrugged.

“I do agree; I think Ralivil would be excellent at exploring,” Wil said.

While Foppiue didn’t say anything, they did give a nod of agreement. Ralivil looked over to Buzzy Bol with pleading eyes.

Buzzy Bol gave Ralivil a sympathetic glance, then whispered to him, “We can both do it.”

Ralivil nodded, then told the Magicant aliens, “Um, yeah! I’ll be going…” he vaguely gestured to the front door, “…outside! To figure out where we are!” He hurriedly slithered over to the door, with Buzzy Bol not too far behind.

Ralivil slid out of the door. Once Buzzy Bol had followed him out, he slammed it shut. He heaved out a heavy sigh.

Buzzy Bol lowered himself down to Ralivil’s level, then looked around. After a moment, he looked over to Ralivil and, pointing his UFO’s metallic arm straight ahead, told him, “I’ll head down that way. You don’t mind going up the hill, do you?”

Ralivil surveyed the area straight ahead, then the hill, then replied, “No. In fact, I’d prefer it.”

Buzzy Bol’s face lit up a bit. “Awesome. I’ll try not to take too long.” With that, he flew away down the path. Ralivil watched him leave, then looked at the path around the hill.

‘Better get going,’he thought to himself.

Ralivil began to slither over the coarse orange dirt as he headed to the left of the house. The air was dead quiet, much like everything else surrounding him. He paused to look at the ashy ruins of what appeared to have been a house similar to the one he and the others woke up in. What could have happened to it? Was it a result of natural wear and tear that the house next door was somehow protected from? Or was it deemed unworthy to stay standing?

He blinked, finding his eyes a little wet, then continued walking down the path, taking a left from where he was.

He began to climb up the path that wound up the hill, and had just passed a small crater, when he heard distant voices from the top. He instinctively ran back to the beginning of the hill, then peered up to the top. Standing with a spiked Ghost of Starman, what Ralivil assumed to be a Mr. Saturn wearing a dark green hat and some other sort of alien that looked almost like a human was the blue Mook he had visited when he went to the Points of Power. The last time he had properly spoken to him ended in tears, and Ralivil didn’t know if the Mook would want to see him again.

From the top of the hill, the blue Mook turned in Ralivil’s direction. The Mook’s eyestalks stood up, and he then proceeded to make his way down the hill. Ralivil started sweating bullets. He glanced around, trying to find a good place to hide, but everything around him was so dead that there was nowhere he could go without sticking out like a sore, green thumb.

Before he knew it, the blue Mook had already made his way over to him. Ralivil took brief notice of the golden freckles that were now on the Mook’s face, but thought nothing of it in the moment. The blue Mook waved and quietly said, “Hi!”

Ralivil froze on the spot. He awkwardly glanced between the blue Mook and the leafless trees before a weird squeaky noise involuntarily came out of his mouth.

The blue Mook stared at him for a moment before asking, “Um… I– Do you, uh…” He frowned as he glanced away at the ground and mumbled to himself, “This is stupid…”

He gulped, then looked back at Ralivil and asked, “Do you, um, remember me? From when I was a kid?”

Ralivil slowly nodded. The blue Mook let out a small gasp as the freckles on his face lit up. The glow faded as he frowned, then asked, “But you didn’t in Magicant…?”

Ralivil’s mind blanked. “…Like, the grey cliff place?”

The blue Mook nodded.

“Oh! Well, uh that house over there,” Ralivil waved in the general direction of the house he and the others had woken up in, “has this room that, uh, restored my memories? Because apparently I didn’t have those in Magicant?”

“Oh. Weird,” the blue Mook replied.

“Yeah.”

There was moment of silence before the blue Mook said, “Oh, right! Um, my name’s Alinivar. I don’t think I told you that… did I?”

“No, you didn’t,” Ralivil assured.

“Okay. Um, I wanted to say, uh, sorry. For uh, being mean to you when I was a teenager. I just… had a lot going on.”

After a very brief moment of silence, Ralivil replied, “Oh, yeah, it’s fine! You’re fine! Don’t worry! You shouldn’t blame yourself for the situation you were put in.”

Alinivar blinked hard with a small smile.

“So… how have you been since I last saw you? Did you get up to anything exciting? Ralivil asked.

Alinivar glanced up at the sky in thought for a moment, then sat down. Ralivil followed suit.

“Well, uh… I… moved out… and found a cave on the outskirts of Satralia. I lived there for a bit, nothing exciting… then I died,” Alinivar began.

“You WHAT?!”

“I got better. There was, uh, this apple called the Apple of Enlightenment… It revived me and gave me PSI, but it also made me find all its pieces. That, uh… wasn’t… so fun. But I made some friends!” His freckles lit up at the mention of his new friends.

The two Mooks sat together for a few uncomfortably long minutes.

“Uhhh… I was thinking about it, uh… it’s really weird that you kinda just… appeared at my exact location every few years with no explanation. How did you do it?” Alinviar asked.

“Oh! Uh…” How did Ralivil do it? He knew it had something to do with the Points of Power, and probably the Prophet’s Mark as well, but what was the connection?

“…I don’t really know. I guess the– Okay, I had to visit these places called Points of Power, right? I think those might have taken my soul from my original timeline… to yours…” Ralivil shrugged as he ended with, “I dunno.”

Alinivar stared blankly at Ralivil for a second before asking, “You were from another timeline?”

“…Yeah.”

“…Huh.”

In the distance, a scream sounded. It travelled around from the other side of the grove of dead trees and right up to Ralivil. Buzzy Bol, the one who had been screaming his head off, bonked into Ralivil. The UFO quickly apologised, then explained, “There’s all sorts of crazy guys over there! They tried to kill me! Going down there is a no-go!”

“Oh,” Ralivil replied. “Well we’d better tell the others.”

Buzzy Bol dipped his UFO slightly as a nod of agreement, while Alinivar’s eyes went wide at the mention of the others, but said nothing.

As Ralivil got to his feet, he told Alinivar, “Well, I’d better get going. It was nice talking to you again, though!”

Alinivar nodded with a smile, a glow coming from his golden freckles once again.

As Ralivil headed back to the house with Buzzy Bol, the latter quietly questioned, “Wait, you know them?”