William knew this was it.

This was when he was going to die.

Robyn's swords to his neck, with a sliver of life remaining. There was no way out, beyond pleading.

"If you do it, I'll know that Robyn will be lost forever," he said.

But she didn't do it.

She seemed to hesitate.

Her cursed eyes faded.

Back to their normal brown.

She gasped, then held back both swords, and dropped them to each side.

"Robyn?" William asked tentatively.

She suddenly sobbed, then fell forward, landing on him. Their armour clunked together as she embraced him tightly.

"I almost killed you..." she cried.

He stretched his arms around her back in return. He remembered when she had hugged him for the first, and until now only time. After they'd defeated the Queen Bee, and she'd fallen unconscious into the honey at the bottom of the hive.

So many emotions rushed into him. At how much he'd missed her. How much he'd wanted her back.

And now...

"You're back," he said.

Her response was to hold him tighter.

But that was when he noticed the sky around them had turned a strange teal.

There appeared to be more aliens flying around in the distance. Not Martians – different aliens, some bug-like with whirring wings. Others flew with jetpacks, held large shotguns, and wore domed helmets the same colour as the sky.

Robyn's head jerked to the side as she too noticed what was around them.

"What is happening?" she whimpered.

"I... don't know," William said. "Do you remember anything?"

She hesitated. "Everything feels so... muddled. I can barely sort any of it out..."

"Okay. No worries. Putting it simply, you were cursed by the Lunatic Cultist. I think Meg and Sid just managed to kill him."

"I'd gathered that much. I thought I'd been cursed or something... I saw him in the Dungeon... then a tablet of his in a vision during the party..." she pulled herself away from his arms. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry at how I acted then –"

"It's okay," William said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder.

The two of them got to their feet and stared out across the desert.

"These... aliens... they're here now. I don't know what happened, but I do know they're posing a huge threat to the land."

"So, we fight?"

William looked to her and nodded.

He started forward but felt her grab his arm.

"Wait! There's something I need to do."

He turned back to her just as she planted a kiss on his mouth. It only lasted about a second, before she pulled away with a flushed look on her face. "Sorry, that was a bit forward. I mean... I –"

William took hold of her arms, then leant in and kissed her in return.

"I feel the same way," he said. "And ever since you got possessed, I've wanted nothing more than you back."

That was when he spotted the aliens seemed to be surrounding them.

"Fight now, kiss later?" she suggested.

"Totally."

They both turned around, their backs to each other, and got out their weapons.

As the enemies charged at them, they both flew up back-to-back, attacking in opposite directions to keep any of the pack from reaching them. William swung his Terra Blade, slicing an Alien Hornet in half as it tried to latch onto him. Then he cut into some of the aliens armed with shotguns, the Storm Divers. A bang resounded through the air as they fired, but he and Robyn had soared too high.

They ran out of wing-flight time and began soaring back downwards. William saw Robyn pour arrows into an Alien Queen that burst into a cloud of beige Alien Larva upon its death, which were also almost immediately destroyed. Upon landing he slashed at a Vortexian, but upon its death a ball of dark-green energy appeared and shot out a lightning bolt at him, which he avoided.

It was then that he noticed some distance away a large, monolith-like object seemed to be floating in mid-air, covered with some sort of elliptic energy shield. It was brown in colour, covered with teal spheres, and at the top it was ringed with bright teal teeth.

He couldn't be sure what it was, but he somehow suspected it was what was spawning all of these enemies, and his suspicion was confirmed when a round portal object materialised directly above and some more Alien Hornets poured through from it.

He pointed it out to Robyn, who nodded, and the two of them sprinted across the desert towards the pillar.

***

Meanwhile Meg was slowly coming to. Her eyelids felt like they wanted to stay closed, but she forced herself to open them and look around.

"Morning, sleepyhead," Sid said.

She saw she had been laid inside the Dungeon entrance, Sid standing at the doorway some distance away. Outside the sky... appeared to be... pink?

"What happened?" she mumbled groggily.

"I beat the Lunatic Cultist, but when he did he summoned this... floating pillar thing, and the sky turned pink. I grabbed you and moved you inside the Dungeon entrance, and I've just been waiting for you to wake up. They haven't seen us yet, but we won't be safe here for long."

She nodded, and got to her feet. "Let's go face the music."

The two of them sprinted outside. She couldn't see any 'pillar' thing in the immediate vicinity, but she did spot a number of pink alien-things covered with tentacles and brains floating around. A large number of them were moving towards them, while one, which had a substantially larger brain, teleported forward and fired a laser at them.

Meg fired her Razorpine at it, but the enemy – named a Nebula Floater – teleported to the side and immediately shot another laser. She switched to her Razorblade Typhoon, knowing its homing ability would likely be more useful against an enemy like this, and it was soon brought down.

Most of the other floating brain enemies continued to approach them, but they were easily taken out by her Razorblades and Sid's Terraprisma. It was then that she noticed some other enemies falling off the wall.

"Sid, the citizens!" she cried, pointing at them. "They're going to be attacked!"

"We should go stop them," Sid said.

"You go. I'll hold these ones off."

Sid turned to her. "But you'll be alone up here! You could die!"

She smiled. "Trust me."

Sid nodded. "Okay. Take this. You'll need it." He dropped one of his summoning staves on the ground and a Bewitching Table. He watched her pick up the items, summon two Deadly Spheres, then ran away and leapt off the wall.

While soaring down the wall he directed his Terraprisma at the Brain Sucklers that were floating down alongside him, snapping at them with his Kaleidoscope. A few Nebula Floaters teleported around him, but despite their teleporting agility, his Terraprisma were faster and quickly cut them to pieces.

He landed at the base of the wall, all the enemies now gone, and raced off for the citizens. Down the hill and across the ice lake, he soon spotted them nearing the Hallowed plain that bordered the snow biome. But there was, impossibly, another pillar. This one was blue.

And it looked like the citizens were already being assaulted by the enemies this blue pillar was summoning. Some round, blue cells were rushing them to deal damage, and while they were killed easily, they split into smaller cells upon being killed that quickly grew back to normal size. There were also some flying tentacled enemies named Flow Invaders shooting blue comet-like projectiles from above, and some cerulean worms named Milkyway Weavers burrowing up from below to attack.

James was a powerhouse as always, but because he'd lost one arm he was less effective than before, and the enemies were quickly overwhelming him. Some massive blue lasers from some humanoid enemies named Stargazers kept piercing his body and remaining arm. The Demolitionist and Arms Dealer seemed to have done away with counting their kills, now just standing back-to-back and shooting at anything that moved. Sid saw the Nurse in the centre of the group, tending to a large amount of wounded citizens while those who still had life health tried to keep anything from getting to them. The situation looked dire for them.

Sid flew into the fray. He sent his Terraprisma after the Star Cells first, making sure they cut up the smaller ones as they split off to destroy them completely. He then shot his Snowman Cannon at the Stargazers and Flow Invaders. He found the Flow Invaders unleashed a large volley of shots upon being destroyed, so he made sure to be always on the move to avoid them.

He glanced at the pillar itself. It was shielded, just like the pink one had been. He had noticed, at both the pink and blue pillars, that when an enemy was defeated a coloured line would shoot off from it and fly into the shield. He suspected that the shield would fall once a certain amount of enemies had been defeated. They just had to hold out long enough for that to happen.

As he swung his whip at a Stargazer, he saw the Pirate and Angler fighting off a spider-like enemy that had its mouth on the top of its body named a Twinkle Popper. One of the projectiles it fired exploded against the Pirate, knocking him over.

"Arrr!" he cried out.

"Red Beard!"

Princess Faye was then by their sides, blasting the Twinkle Popper to stardust with the pink energy from her Resonance Scepter. However, that was when a swarm of Star Cells flung themselves at her. She blasted them apart with her scepter, but splitting them apart caused them to number too many. They regrew, and surged forward and swallowed her up like the Ninja that had been inside King Slime.

"No!" Bart cried.

Sid tried to run and help him, but a burrowing Milkyway Weaver blocked his path, and a Flow Invader unleashed a volley of shots that prevented him from moving forward.

While he sent his Terraprisma at the enemies close to him, he watched, amazed, as the Angler hurled Daggerfish after Daggerfish at the Star Cell that had captured the Princess.

"Let her go or else!"

The Star Cell split, four smaller cells exploding out. Sid's Terraprisma reached the cells at that same moment and sliced them to nothingness.

And the Princess fell. The Angler stretched out his arms to try to catch her, and somehow succeeded, though the sudden extra weight caused him to fall forward and drop the Princess on the ground anyway.

He staggered to his feet and held out his hand. "Are you alright, your highness?"

The Princess took it, and he pulled her to her feet. "You saved my life. You have my eternal gratitude."

She got down on one knee and regally kissed his hand, to which the Angler's face turned red at. The Pirate, who seemed to have only been minorly harmed from the Twinkle explosion, laughed.

Sid turned to the pillar itself and was shocked to see its shield had gone down.

It was vulnerable.

"Everyone! Attack the pillar!" he shouted, and flew towards it with his jetpack. He snapped at it with his Kaleidoscope and the Terraprisma started cutting into it. He saw gunshots, explosions, and pink resonance blasts cutting into it from the citizens, and it ended up losing all of its health quickly. Upon its destruction it faded out of existence, leaving a collection of floating blue star items hanging in mid-air.

Sid felt his mind go numb.