Scar and his team were welcomed back with smiles and hugs, the other hermits wrongly assuming that the small group was successful.
Assuming they had actually done something rather than walk in and walk out.

False looked uncomfortable at the praise, casting a glance back to Mumbo who had quietly stepped through the rift.
Curious as to what she was looking at, more heads turned the same way.

And the mood dropped, conversation halting as if someone pressed pause, people frozen with shock as they stared.

Because here was Mumbo, his hair slightly longer than before, wings on his back and pointed ears.
Here was Mumbo, clearly different from before, a tired, sorrowful expression on his face as he stared down at the body in his arms.
Here was Mumbo, standing quietly as tears rolled down his cheeks as he held Grian in his arms, forced to carry his friends body rather than smile as Grian walked alongside him.

And the other hermits realised that Scar's team wasn't so successful after all.

"Xisuma, I..." Scar stammered, words faltering as Xisuma walked past the wizard and instead headed straight to Mumbo.

The founder gave Mumbo a strange look, the question everyone wanted to know clear in his eyes, asking it without saying a word.
"It's a long story." Mumbo replied. Xisuma simply nodded.

He understood.
Mumbo would talk when he was ready. But right now, with 20 or so people staring at him wondering what in the world happened? Now was not the time.

"We'll make a grave in the morning." Xisuma said, leading Mumbo up the newly-built stairs into the network of houses and bridges suspended from the canopy.
"We left Grian's and yours alone, if you want to stay there."

Mumbo nodded dully, following the path to Grians house and carefully pushing open the door.
It felt wrong for this door to not be painted.
It felt wrong to be in a place Grian once occupied.
Mumbo gently set Grian down on the bed, making sure that he was comfortable.
Like it mattered.
But it felt wrong to just haphazardly leave his body anywhere else.

He set the crystal Thorn had given him on the nightstand, curling up on the other bed in the loft and trying to fall asleep.

But it never came.

Moonlight shone through the windows, a faded, washed out light illuminating the room.
Just like from before, except he knew this wasn't a dream. Grian wouldn't magically show up.

Mumbo made his way out onto the rope bridges, sitting down with his legs over the edge, alone with his thoughts for a while.

"Things are gonna be different now, aren't they." Came a voice from above him.
Doc's voice, to be more precise, though it was gentle and kind, the usual harsh edge in it gone as he spoke.
"He made this place a lot more lively. Pulling pranks, pretending to be a hippie and all that." Doc sighed as he sat down next to Mumbo.
"And now with you- being fae now is probably a bit of a shock too.
"I guess what I'm trying to ask is- are you gonna be okay?"

Mumbo thought hard about how to answer. Nothing felt right in his mouth, each sentence didn't convey how he felt. "I...I don't know." He admitted finally.
"I miss him so much that it hurts. I don't want to accept that he's gone, and yet I had to carry his body back here. It feels like that should cement in my head that he's not coming back and yet, I keep hoping that it's just a bad dream. That I'll wake up in my base and he'll be running off from pulling some weird prank on me."

Doc simply hummed as he sat with Mumbo, idly swinging his legs over the edge.
"It'll be a while before any of us accept it, I think.
"It's probably not my place to ask this but...what happened over there?"

The redstoner was quiet for so long that Doc worried that he had overstepped and said something wrong.
"It started with Scar asking me to make a trap." Mumbo started, his voice barely audible.
"He said it was to get Grian back for pranking Larry. I agreed since he also got my base.
"I guess Scar was curious about Grian, was all. I don't blame him. None of us could have known that it would end like this."

As the night slowly gave way to the morning, Mumbo spilled everything to Doc. Every detail he could remember, every event that took place during the months he'd been missing.
Everything.

Something about talking during the nighttime made it easier.
There was no way Mumbo could have known about the person sitting in the branches beneath him.

But Scar listened to everything unfold above him, every word Mumbo spoke and every detail that spilled from his lips.
The one thing that stood out to him though, was that Mumbo wasn't mad at him.

Mumbo didn't blame Scar.

Despite having every reason to be upset, to hate the wizards guts, Mumbo wasn't mad.