Then I tripped over a loose magma block and fell face-first into a pile of rainbow wool.
“I meant to do that,” I said into the wool.
“You always do,” said Biscuit, and I could hear the smile in her voice even with my face buried in approximately forty stolen wool blocks.
I pushed myself upright and looked around. The palace was extraordinary, even now — enormous vaulted ceilings of dark stone, lava falls running down carved channels along the walls, and every kind of glittering block imaginable stacked in careful towers: amethyst clusters from the End, festival banners from Blockville, rainbow wool from Rainbow Meadows, sea lanterns from places I couldn’t even name. Mira had collected it all, every beautiful thing, and brought it here where nobody could see it.
That was the part that always made my chest feel a little twisty.
Magma Queen Mira was watching us from her throne, which was carved entirely from hardened magma blocks and was, genuinely, the most dramatic chair I had ever seen. Her orange and red cape shimmered. Tiny smoke puffs popped from her footsteps as she descended toward us. Her yellow eyes were very bright and her expression was doing something I hadn’t expected — it was wobbling.
“All seven,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“All seven,” I confirmed, brushing wool fluff off my tunic. “Vent two through seven, sealed and sorted. Biscuit did four and five while I was being a magma block. She was very fast about it.”
“I had a system,” Biscuit said immediately, pulling out her notebook. “Colour-coded. With backup sealing caps in case any of the first ones failed, which they didn’t, but it’s always good to—”
“Biscuit.”
“Right. Yes. The point is: all seven. Done.”
Mira looked at the palace around her. The stolen materials, the beautiful impossible collection, the lava falls she’d built alone and in secret and that nobody had ever complimented. Her crown glittered. Her expression wobbled some more.
“Nobody has ever made it past vent three before,” she said quietly.
“To be fair,” I said, “we only made it because Biscuit smelled which direction the caps had rolled and I accidentally sat on the reset mechanism for vent six, which turned out to be exactly the right thing to do even though I had no idea that’s what it was.”
Mira blinked her yellow eyes at me. “You are the strangest hero I have ever encountered.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”
What happened next surprised even me, and I have been surprised by a lot of things, including an exploding crafting table that produced chickens.
Mira agreed.
Not straight away — there was a long conversation involving Biscuit’s seventeen-point proposal for transforming the palace into the Overworld’s most spectacular underground attraction, complete with guided tours of the lava falls, a gallery of collected wonders, and a gift shop that Biscuit had somehow already designed a logo for. There was a moment where Mira turned very red at the phrase “your architecture is genuinely magnificent” and had to look at the ceiling for a bit. There was a slightly longer moment where I told her that the lava fall channels reminded me of the river back in Sproutville, and that back home we had nothing half so impressive, and I meant every word of it.
“You could call it Mira’s Palace of Wonders,” I suggested. “People would come from everywhere. I would come back. And I’ve already been here twice, which is more than most places.”
“Three times,” Biscuit corrected, checking her notes.
“Three times.”
Mira looked at her palace — really looked at it — for what I suspected was the first time in a long while. Then she sat down on the bottom step of her throne, which made her look considerably less dramatic and considerably more like someone who was very tired and a little bit relieved.
“A gift shop,” she repeated.
“With amethyst keyrings,” Biscuit said firmly. “They’ll sell enormously.”
The Champion’s Crown, which had been humming against my forehead for the last hour, suddenly blazed so brightly that I had to close my eyes. When I opened them, the whole palace was lit gold-white, and every Magma Cube in the room had stopped bouncing and was staring at me with what I can only describe as respect, which was extremely uncomfortable.
Five villains. Five victories. Full legendary light.
I looked at Biscuit. Biscuit looked at me. Then she burst out laughing, and I did too, and even Mira made a sound that was suspiciously close to a giggle before she composed herself and pretended she absolutely hadn’t.
The walk home took two days. Fizzwick, the tiny magma sprite who’d been unscrewing caps and cackling about it since chapter one of this particular disaster, escorted us to the surface and then waved goodbye very enthusiastically, which I chose to take as a sign that things had gone well.
The Rumbling Ridges were cool and quiet behind us. The sky was the proper colour again — bright blue, full of clouds that looked like sheep, which made me think of Snatcher from the Wool Festival, which felt like approximately one thousand years ago. Biscuit was already writing her guide to Mira’s Palace of Wonders in her notebook. I was carrying the Frostcap Helmet we’d been awarded, which was sparkly blue and kept everything around me perfectly cool, and which I’d already tried to wear twice and fallen over both times because it was slightly too large.
Sproutville appeared on the horizon just as the sun was going golden.
And then I stopped walking, because something was different.
My house — my gloriously, magnificently, accidentally upside-down house, the one I had built wrong twice — was right-side up. More than right-side up. It had been rebuilt entirely, with proper walls and a proper roof and flower boxes in the windows. And carved above the door, in the most cheerful gap-toothed grin I had ever seen rendered in stone, was a face that looked remarkably like mine.
The entire village was standing in front of it, cheering.
Mayor Groundwell stepped forward holding a small trophy. It was slightly wobbly, which I felt was appropriate. The engraving read: The Legendary Lumberg Medal for Falling Forward Into Greatness.
“You tripped into five adventures,” the Mayor announced, “and came back from every single one. We felt the house should finally stand up straight. To match you.”
I looked at Biscuit. She was already crying a little, which she would absolutely deny forever.
I looked at my house — my right-side-up, gap-toothed, home-smelling house — and I thought about every fall, every sneeze, every accidental victory, every villain who turned out to be lonely, every moment I’d said I meant to do that when I absolutely had not.
Then I tripped on the garden path and fell directly into Mayor Groundwell.
He caught me.
“I meant to do all of that,” I said.
