"Stupid dimensional portals," thought Warnado, tapping his foot. "Never open when you need them."

He sat atop a huge pile of rocks beneath which the golems were buried. Crushed. Broken. Whatever word you wanted to use, these guys were out of commission.

At the foot of the rockpile, sat a nether portal, some small stones piled against and spilling into the obsidian ring. Warnado looked expectantly at it for a few second, then sighed. He reminded himself that he didn't even technically know this portal led to Nexus. He'd just emerged right next to it so… y'know, it had to be this one, right?

His heart kept pounding as he thought about what was happening on the other side. The world hadn't evaporated into an endless nightmare, so Freak didn't seem to have won… yet. But he also didn't know that the others had won. He didn't know what had happened to Shadow, or Fire, or Lucy or her.

"I didn't even get to say-"

He stopped his thoughts in their tracks and the spillover emerged as uncontrollable laughter. What a stupid thought? Stupid, dumb, stupid thought. Of course she was okay. She had to be. Just perfect. It was fine. Sure. He believed that.

He distracted himself by throwing a hearty kick at the broken gauntlet. Just before impact an aethereal armoured boot formed around his foot, and he sent the already mangled pile of brass and shattered crystal into the stratosphere.

He felt good for exactly a second before pain shot through his foot and he fell back and found himself sitting on a golem's head. Suddenly he relived the moments before his expulsion in excruciating detail.

His power surging, the gauntlet shattering. Warnado had heard Tin-throne shrieking in his brain as he disintegrated. The whole time. Not fun. Then, his body freezing, doubling over as he shared the dying demon's pain. Golems beating and blasting him. His form shattering, surging out in an explosion of demonfire! The roof crumbling…

Somehow, he had summoned another portal, just as inexplicable as the one he had entered Nexus through. And he had come through right there. Well, the golems came through first, then the rocks, then him. Right beside this stupid portal that he couldn't open. And he had tried pretty hard. Somehow, after all his training and studying, he still couldn't even identify the general vibe of the spell he had used. When he tried it was like the spell brandished a shotgun and told him to get off its property.

So, his only option now was to wait, and hope they'd won. Or that he could be called back in time to help. His stomach twisted as he thought about them fighting that nightmare. About not being there to help-

Flash! His head snapped toward the portal so hard he was surprised his neck didn't snap. For a split-second the portal was active, filled with a blinding, solid, golden light. Then, it receded as quickly as it arrived. A lone figure stepped through, silhouetted in the glare.

Half-blinded by the flash, Warnado looked away, and as his eyes cleared, he saw the sky fill with a brilliant aurora. He got the vibe that this was a good sign. Hope filled him, his chest began to hurt, and a smile of impossible intensity began to spread across his face. He turned.

"You're alive!" cried the hoarse, husky voice of Dinnerbone.

The smile stopped right at its apex, so wide Warnado could have sworn it was about to split his face in half. When he saw that Dinnerbone really did have no one with him, he halfway wanted it to.

"You have no idea how glad I am to see you little guy! I knew I still sensed you, but y'know everyone kept saying you'd exploded and died. I really started freaking out, probably some apology cards to be sending… But you're here! The Prophecy can still happen! …Hooray!"

Dinnerbone's speech became more halting as he spoke and Warnado had a few ideas why. The enormity of the moment? Sure. Shame about how he'd behaved while freaking out. Perhaps. However, by far the biggest on the list was probably the fact that, while his glowing red eyes had slowly drained of emotion, he couldn't get rid of the smile.

They both got very quiet.

"Where's Amanda?" he asked.

Dinnerbone swallowed.

"She thought you were dead. Got real torn up about it. I, uh, I probably didn't help. Ended up going back with Astro's crew, I think."

Warnado's smile began to spread again. Further than he'd ever felt it. Past the point of splitting his head in two. And he began to laugh. Loud. Too loud. He staggered forward, jumped, and then slid down the pile of rocks toward Dinnerbone. He recoiled.

"So, she's okay, huh?" Warnado asked. "She, hahaha, she survived?"

"Yes."

He felt his vision narrowing. He knew what was coming.

"Cool. That's great. Amazing… Hah! Amazing-great-cool!" he patted the portal twice with his hand, "So why don't you just open this bad boy back up? Then, I'll, haha, step right through and get her."

Dinnerbone didn't say anything. Warnado summoned a taco into his hand and took a large, cartoony, almost animalistic bite out of it. He felt his jaw stretch further than he considered natural.

"I was afraid you'd say that."

He doubled over, and awful pain shooting through his stomach, then his heart, then all of him.

"You should really go, Dinnerbone," Warnado panted.

Dinnerbone seemed to falter for a moment. Then, with a look of resolve, he straightened his hat stepped forward.

"Come on kid, I can't leave you like this. Let me take you to Jeb's Kingdom, get you some food."

Warnado's fingers clenched so tight the obsidian began to bend underneath. He realised that he was scorching hot. Boiling even. Sweat cascading off every part of him.

"Don't worry, I'll go to stupid Notch Island," he hissed. "Invite your friends - hah! - we'll have a potluck! Hahahahaha!"

It all felt pretty funny all of a sudden. The girl he lost, then found again, then loved, stuck in a parallel world until he got his crap together and learned how to do a spell which seemed to actively hate him. And he hadn't even told her that-

"Warnado127, I understand what you're going through-"

"My dude, I really need to be alone right now! Don't you have somewhere you should be busking?"

Warnado snapped his head around. Dinnerbone looked nervous again. He realised that Dinnberbone's face was bathed in red light. Warnado's eyes were like suns. Suns streaming with tears. Huh, weird, he hadn't noticed.

Dinnerbone scrunched up his face and stepped forward again.

"Come on kid, let's get you somewhere safe."

Snap! Warnado saw sparks fly from his fingers as he did it. There were scorch marks on his palms. A pillar of lava appeared between he and Dinnerbone. The man with the ukulele jumped back.

"Go!" Warnado pleaded.

And so, he ran back towards the distant peaks of Jeb's Kingdom.

Warnado held it in as long as he could, shaking with the effort, his teeth gritting, his eyes like spotlights on the ground. Then, the second Dinnerbone was out of sight, he threw his face to the sky. He screamed.

Demonfire erupted from within him, spread across the clearing. The grass, the trees, the flowers, all were destroyed. Under the molten purple flames, they all burned, buckled and fossilised in seconds. The obsidian ring and the pile of rocks and golems both shattered and were blown away. Glowing smears led away from Warnado to the East and West. And all the while, he wailed in grief and agony.

Then, finally, he stopped. His head fell, his throat hoarse from the abyssal screech. He saw that his robes had changed colour. No longer blue and silver, they were red and gold - no! - brass. His robes were highlighted in the colour of the gauntlet he had only just gotten rid of. Great.

Honestly, he felt pretty amazing. Like he'd cleared a blocked nose or popped his ears. His horns even felt a little longer when he reached up to check on them. He supposed he'd finally stabilised his demonic powers and felt pretty proud of himself.

He'd beaten Glibby, helped save the multiverse, and sorted out all his demon weirdness. It was a pretty good day. No! A great day! No! A fantastic one, the good day, the best day of his life! All aside from the part where… He felt the pain and the heat begin to swell up in him again, so he stopped thinking about that. He decided he wouldn't think about that for a good long while, because, after all, otherwise, he felt completely, utterly amazing!

So, like any person who felt completely, utterly amazing, he sat down on the remains of the portal's base, stared at the aurora in the sky, and didn't do anything for a long, long time. The clouds moved. The aurora faded. The sun descended. The stars scattered themselves across the sky. Dawn broke. He didn't even move his neck.

At some point, he heard the crunch of footsteps on dead forest, but didn't look at it. It would have interrupted his busy schedule of sky-staring.

A guy stepped into his peripheral vision, marching forward as he intently stared at a cube whose six sides displayed various different images. He wore the robes of a wizard. He stopped, then looked around the clearing until his eyes settled on Warnado.

"Hey!" he called.

Warnado blinked, then looked down.

"Yeah?" he shouted back.

"Are you one of those Heroes of the Prophecy? The Dark Prophecy?"

Warnado rolled his eyes, then remembered he should probably be careful.

"Who wants to know?"

"Just me."

Warnado shrugged. Carefulness was overrated.

"Yeah, I am."

"Cool!" he said. "Big fan of your work, or at least, what you're gonna do!"

"Thanks!"

Neither of them said anything. Warnado looked back up at the sky. Frowning, obviously having expected conversation to come more easily to him, the wizard guy called out again.

"Is there any way I can help you?"

Warnado didn't respond. His mind kept wandering to the dream of Amanda, and he kept having to drag it back to reality.

The wizard guy huffed, then stooped. He brushed a finger against the ground. He licked the dust off it.

"Hm… demonfire. You know, I have a pretty decent recipe for a demon arm lying around back at the hut."

Warnado's eyes lit up. He arose. A wide, energised grin had spread across his face.

"I'm listening."