"So what do we need first?" I asked Martha. She had invited me down to her house for dinner, and the two of us ate in the party area outside while Dianite hovered nearby.

"We need to gather certain items," she answered, tapping her fork against her place, deep in thought. "One of them is called the Interloper, a Spacial Dash Gem that Sparklez is keeping safe. That's the only one I know of right now."

"It would be helpful if you could get it for us," Dianite told me.

I rolled my eyes. "Fetching more things for you, am I? Great."

He sighed. "I know, I know. I'm sorry Mot, but it's the most you can help right now."

"Fine." I finished the rest of the meal in silence, thanked Martha for the food, and set off for the Fortress.

The enormous purple towers loomed over the rest of the land, especially in the dim lighting of the setting sun. I carefully made my way up the narrow, ice-covered staircase, and approached the entrance. Most of the Fortress was empty, but Sparklez had added on a basement full of random things a while ago. I hadn't visited it before, so it was a bit of a shock to me when I descended from the lovely purple exterior to the dark, lava-filled lair beneath the ground.

"Oh, hey, Mot." Sparklez greeted me, exiting from what appeared to be a secret passage. "Do you need something? Or have you just come to see my basement?"

I was staring in awe at the glittering swimming pool, but snapped out of my reverie quickly. "No, I came to get a, uh... Horcrux? Is that what you call it?"

He laughed softly. "Yeah, I call them Horcruxes. It's... a reference to something. Anyway, is it something I need to go adventuring for?" He pulled out his sword and straightened his armor in preparation.

"No, actually, it's apparently an object you own. Something called the interloper? A... what was it called? Space-y gem thing?"

"Oh, that thing. It's in my spectre dimension. Want to come with me?" He extended his hand, instantly making me nervous.

"You can... umm... go to the spectre dimension with someone?"

"Yeah, want me to show you?" When I didn't reply, he reached out and grabbed my arm. I tensed at his touch, but he didn't seem to notice. He pulled out a translucent blue key and turned it in the air a few times, causing us to leave the overworld together.

We arrived in a relatively small box that was the same color as the key. The walls shimmered slightly, and I could see Waglington's spectre dimension through the wall. The entire room was packed with Sparklez's machinery, from his expanded ME system to his enormous Tinker's Construct furnace. I was staring in shock at each of the machines, but Sparklez didn't wait to let me take it all in. He strode over to the wall next to the smeltery, where a lot of shiny objects sat in frames.

"This is where I keep all of my important objects," he announced proudly. "I keep my purge prizes here, as well as any special object that someone has given me. This is Andor's boomerang, and Ianite's sugar. But this up here," he told me, standing on top of a chest to reach one of the top frames, "is the Interloper. It's a Spacial Dash Gem, which is, I think, what you were trying to say before."

"Oh, Spacial Dash Gem. Right." I waited as he pulled the purple crystal from it's box. Once it was out, for some reason, it flew into the air and sailed slowly back down. "What's it doing?"

"Don't worry, it's just a glitch that causes framed items to float down. It'll land right around here when it's done," Sparklez said, pointing to a spot next to the furnace with his foot. Sure enough, the gem sailed downward and ended up very close to his guess. But, once it was on the ground, it somehow managed to wedge itself under one of the basins.

"Another glitch?" I asked nervously. The thought of a precious object that could help bring back Dianite glitching all over the place made me very, very uneasy. He shrugged and went to grab it, when it suddenly began to sink below the clear floor. My heart started beating wildly as I saw the beautiful gem falling, slowly at first, and then quicker as it exited the floor and dropped into the void below.

Sparklez's blue eyes grew enormous with shock. "Wait... it... how? Don't tell me...." His hands covered his mouth in disbelief, and neither of us moved or spoke for what seemed like ages.

"Well, what are we going to do?" I asked Dianite, shaking slightly. "Will this impact your revival?"

"Hopefully not," he replied, sighing. "We just have to find more objects carrying my quintessence, and use them instead."

Today, the priest had joined our discussion. "Is there any way to get the Interloper back?"

"Intuition and Wisdom have been attempting it," Martha said, twisting a strand of her purple hair around her finger absentmindedly. "They seriously doubt they'll be able to retrieve it, though."

Dianite chuckled quietly. "Those two were supposed to help all of us out, but I feel like their main job these days is just fixing every mistake Glitter Lap makes."

"Speaking of mistakes he's been making," the priest added, making us all stare at him in shock, "Sparklez has been playing around with radioactive chemicals lately. He and Jericho put some in chests in Firefoxx's house. We're not sure if it'll have any impact on the physical area yet."

"Well, that doesn't sound promising," I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief. How many more things were going to go wrong?

The next morning, I awoke to find that the priest had already left the house. No breakfast sat on the table, and it didn't seem like he had even touched anything in the kitchen that morning. Confused, I scoured the house for signs of him or things he had done that morning, but everything was empty and untouched. Had he just left without doing anything? Why hadn't he come back yet? It wasn't exactly early.

I decided to ask someone if they had seen him, so I got dressed and left the house. The second I stepped out of the doorway, everything became clear to me. When I stepped out of the house, instead of walking across a path covered in green grass, the ground beneath my feet seemed dried and decayed.

Everywhere I looked, no matter what direction, sat dead and rotting land. The enormous lake that sat next to the priest's house was completely dried up, and no sign of plants or life at all sat where they previously were.

That moment marked the time, in my mind, that everything started to go bad. It seems I can never escape death and tragedy, no matter where I go, doesn't it?