So... after all these months, we meet again.

"...I thought you were done with me."

I will not be until the demon Xornoth is done with your sister.

"What do you mean?"

While you are occupied by what I am about to do, he will distract Gemini Tay from finding a way to bring you back. He is one who wishes only for destruction and power. He blindly corrupts and destroys, while others use deals and strategy to get what they want. He is a fool, but he has his uses.

"You're behind this?!"

I may or may not be. The Listener has chosen a new representative, and we can't have that.

"What?"

In the meantime, enjoy seeing some of your friends again... there are three new additions to the punishment. They should add some... flavor.

"But why? What punishment? What did we do?"

I have said that Third Life would become a reality. I love to imagine the horror on your siblings' faces when they realize you are gone...

"No! What are you going to do to them?"

That is not your concern. It is theirs.

A feeling of dissolving and re-forming accompanied the next statement, as if the dream had shifted, but still I saw only blackness.

Last Life is not unlike the last dreamspace. But instead of every person possessing three lives and three lives only, you will be assigned a random number of lives from two to six. You will be able to transfer lives to one another by chanting a spell.

Like Third Life, when you descend to your final life, you will turn red and your goal will be to harm other Last Lifers. But unlike Third Life, you can be changed back to yellow if someone transfers a life to you. Once you turn red, all deals and alliances are over. Your only goal is to kill.

There is one more thing: one or more green or yellow names will be selected every so often. This person or people, called the Boogeyman, will have one task: kill one green or yellow name. If they fail to fulfill this task, they will be on their red name when the next Boogeyman is chosen.

I started to see a spruce forest above my head, then suddenly I drifted back into slumber.

You will watch this time.

"What?"

You will watch and experience the pain of betrayal, the Boogeyman Curse, and death from someone else's eyes. But be warned; if you interfere, you will join them.

"No, do it to someone else. Grian went through a lot of trauma last time, let him watch!"

He has angered us. He does not wish to watch. If he wishes to experience it, we will let him experience it.

Then I actually woke up.

I was in the spruce forest I had gotten a glimpse of before the second dream. But there was something different. The colors were more muted, and I looked like I was made of vapor.

Then I realized what had happened.

You may watch this time.

They meant I would be able to spectate Last Life without going through the things I had gone through in Third Life. I was already a ghost, which meant...

I willed myself to drift up. My feet left the ground.

Yep, I could fly.

I didn't know if it was a good or bad thing.

I drifted up in search of my best friends from Third Life: Martyn and Grian. I also looked for Ren, just to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't get possessed again.

During the few hours I spent searching for them, the lives were assigned and the Boogeyman was chosen. Something told me it was Bdubs, even though I had no reason to think that. I hadn't even seen him.

It was a few hours before I found poor Ren, who only got two lives. He was at a salmon lake not too far from where I had spawned. He seemed to be trying to make a farm out of it, but he was failing miserably. I yelled at him to stop wasting time, but of course he couldn't hear me because I was a ghost.

Grian had been on the move to find a place to settle, but when I found him he was with Scar. He also had just two lives, but he and Scar seemed to be negotiating about something.

"Just type in the command and give me the life. I'll give it right back to you," Grian was saying.

I knew him pretty well. He was lying through his teeth.

Like the idiot he was, Scar gave Grian a life. Grian's name darkened from yellow to lime green.

"Hurry and give it back before I die," Scar said. "Otherwise my life shop will be ruined because I'll only have five lives." That was Scar, always thinking about the profits.

"YOU GOT SIX LIVES?! Okay, I am not giving this back. 'Bye, Scar!" Grian ran off.

Scar ran helplessly after him. "Grian, you- you give that back right now!"

But Grian kept running. He only stopped when he nearly fell into a cave, where Lizzie Smallbeans (Shadow was her maiden name) happened to be mining.

I was surprised to see her there. She must have been one of the three newbies the Renporer had mentioned.

I had known Lizzie for a while. She seems very girlish at first glance, but it was a bad idea to underestimate her, because she was very smart and dangerous when you wronged her. In the Empires, she had gotten a few mutations related to axolotls that helped her adapt to living in the ocean. But now she was a full human again. I didn't understand why. But if she was human again, then Jimmy probably was, too. And Scott, and

After Grian nearly fell into her cave, she came up to the surface. "What's going on?"

"That... that little rapscallion stole my life!" Scar growled.

"Because you had six and I only had two! Six lives!"

"Well, I was planning to scam someone for a life too, so I'm probably not the best one to talk to about this..." Lizzie said, making both guys laugh. "Who do you think would fall for it?"

"Jimmy Solidarity would, if you can find him. He has dirty blonde hair, brown eyes..."

"Hold on, I know him! We're both from the Empires! He would probably fall for it."

Grian glanced at his phone, the communication device he used. "Wait, he only got two lives. Never mind."

"Aww, that's a shame."

Scar had been all but forgotten at this point. He had given up and ran off, but he wasn't far.

"Empires? Bl-... a friend of mine who also knows Jimmy told me you guys live in X Life."

"No... not anymore. We moved because we were just kind of getting bored of that world. The new one isn't boring at all, though. There's this demon... oh no, came to the Empires! I have to get home!"

"We can't get back until everyone has lost all their lives. I'm Grian Buildoff, by the way."

Lizzie stared at the patch of stone she had been mining. "Lizzie Shadow."

Did she not remember that she was married now?

Also, I didn't think Lizzie knew that Joel was also in this world.

This conversation was followed by Scar saying he was the Boogeyman, Lizzy being scared because he appeared to have diamond armor, and Grian breaking to him that it was fake. Then Lizzy and Grian took turns making fun of Scar, knowing there was nothing he could do about his missing life.

I drifted off to locate Martyn.

He was in a cave with Impulse, showing him a spider spawner that he had found. I didn't stay long because it was boring.

Seeing that all my allies were fine, I started my rounds again. Ren was still working in the stupid salmon farm. But I arrived just in time to see something interesting happen.

While Ren was cutting down a tree, Grian snuck up to his workbench and furnace setup and started to grab something blue and hard from the chests. Lapis.

Ren came back into the clearing just in time to see Grian trying to get away.

"Uh, Grian, what are you doing?"

"Something weird is happening right now. I was looking through your chests and then your lapis was suddenly in my inventory! There is an awful lot of lag today... you got pretty unfortunate with that yellow life, by the way."

"So did you... wait, what? Weren't you on two lives? How did you get one?"

Grian's single word explained everything. "Scar."

"Oh," Ren laughed. "Yeah, that makes sense. Are you going to Spawn?"

I knew there was an enchanting table at Spawn. That must have been why Grian needed lapis.

"Yeah, I am! 'Bye!"

"Hey, you gotta pay for that lapis!"

Grian turned back, laughing, and gave Ren some bones to compensate for the stolen lapis. Then he left the salmon lake.

I headed for Martyn again. He was on top of a mountain with a dirt hut on it. I sure hoped Martyn hadn't built that, just because it was such a beginner-looking house. He was with Jimmy, Scott, and Pearl, and I thought he had just scared Pearl with his creeper recording, because they were all talking about how Pearl was way too close to the edge of the hill. Then Martyn pushed Jimmy off the edge, but the hill wasn't steep enough for him to fall all the way down. He was fine.

When I went back to Grian, I decided to stay with him for a while so that I wouldn't always be flying around looking for people. So I watched as Grian, now a green life, started the journey back to Spawn.

He came across Etho and Bdubs along the way. I thought it was strange that they were together, after they were mortal enemies in Third Life. But they appeared to have settled their differences and were best friends now.

Had everyone forgot what had happened in Third Life?

"Hello? Secret tunnel? Surface level to secret tunnel, come in?" Grian said, referring to that funny moment in Third Life as he glimpsed their names shining through solid rock, signaling that they were in a cave down below. So they did remember.

"Hi!" Bdubs said cheerfully, and a similar greeting from Etho followed. Their voices echoed out of a cave on the side of the hill Grian was standing on.

"Secret cave? Should I call you guys Secret Cave? Are either of you the Boogeyman?"

"I am not the Boogeyman, and I can vouch for Bdubs. Are you?" Etho said. They came out of the cave and joined Grian at the surface.

"I'm not," Grian said. He was too trusting.

They decided to travel with him to Spawn. Or Bdubs did. Etho just decided to come with because he didn't want to lose Bdubs.

I was getting a really bad feeling about Bdubs. I had had the feeling since the Boogeyman was chosen, but now it was even stronger. Also, Bdubs was surrounded by a red glow. I thought that might have been the Boogeyman Curse, but only I could see it because I was a ghost and the glow existed on the same level of reality as me.

They sat there and enchanted their gear, chatting. Etho put down a jukebox and record and played it, but it was one of the two creepy ones, Disc 11 and Disc 13. This one was Disc 13. It reminded me of the Great Disk War between Jimmy and Sausage.

Etho started playing it. "Don't you think this would be the perfect Boogeyman song? Like, when you hear this, someone's about to die."

As the creepy music and footsteps played among a bunch of static, Grian said, "Please tell me one of you is the Boogeyman so that you can make this happen." He said it jokingly, but Bdubs took it a little too seriously.

He crept up behind Grian while he and Etho were focused on the jukebox. Then he yelled, "You are CORRECT!" and slashed his sword.

He hit Grian. Grian screamed and ran, not knowing what else to do, but Bdubs was right behind him. Grian turned around and held his shield up before deciding against it and taking off again at a full sprint. As he started down a hill to the river, Bdubs hit him again, and he lost the life he had stolen from Scar.

Grian Buildoff was slain by Bdubs Onehundred

I gasped.

Bdubs' Glow faded as he triumphantly said, "I'm cured!"

The first death of the series, and it had to be my former ally. I immediately thought it was karma, because Grian had been responsible for the first death of Third Life and now he was the first victim in Last Life.

Grian respawned only a few blocks away.

"Well, this is awkward..." Bdubs said. "I kind of overlooked that you would respawn right here."

"I started on two lives, managed to swindle my way to three, and now you've just brought me right back down!" Grian said. "First thing I need to do when I settle is craft myself a book, because you are on my list!"

"Oh no, not the list," Bdubs said sarcastically, but there was an edge to his voice that suggested that Grian might have scared him, just a little bit.

Grian turned to Etho. "You really didn't know?"

"No, I honestly didn't. I tested him, and he passed all of them."

"WHAT KIND OF TESTS DID YOU DO?!"

"Things like turning my back, taking my armor off, stuff like that. I even trapped Tango in cobwebs and he didn't go for it."

"Oh, wow. Why didn't he just go for you?" They both started to answer, but Grian interrupted them. "Wait, Bdubs knew that Etho would have slaughtered him if he attacked."

Etho was a seasoned fighter. I was pretty sure everyone knew that. But they both denied it, Bdubs because of his pride and Etho because of modesty.

After I got over the shock of the betrayal, I followed Grian to a mountain at the southernmost side of the world. Then I left as he started construction on a tower. I didn't really want to watch people build. It was boring.

So, I went to Ren. He had given up on his salmon farm and moved to the top of a hill near the mountain with the dirt house. He had also built a little tower, where he was sulking from the lost time, talking with the neighbors, Scott and Pearl. I wasn't too surprised that they had come together, because they were close allies back at Empires.

There were major changes, mostly in Scott. His pointed elvish ears were just normal round, and the golden antlers he was so proud of were gone. Instead of white and gold robes, he wore a normal denim jacket, jeans, and a rainbow shirt. The good thing about this world: there was no Xornoth to traumatize him.

Watching people talk was kind of boring as well. So I pursued Martyn.

He was spending his time at Spawn with Jimmy, Scar, and an unfamiliar man with a mustache, dumping lava from a bucket right at their feet. Well, Jimmy's feet anyway. Scar was on a horse, and the mustached guy was keeping his distance. They also had spyglasses and were looking through them at each other and going, "ah-HA!"

At some point, Impulse joined them. He looked at them, confused, before turning to Scar, who said, "Impulse, look, I'm learning Imperial culture!"

"I'm not from the Empires!" Martyn said, abandoning his chase on the guy with the mustache.

"Neither am I!" The mustached man exclaimed. "We are neighbors, Scar! How could I be from the Empires? How is this Imperial culture if the participants aren't even from the Empires?"

"Also there's the little matter that Martyn started this, not me," Jimmy, the only Emperor there, said. He had changed to a full human form as well.

If they were neighbors, and Scar was from Hermitcraft, then that meant the unfamiliar guy was a Hermit as well. The amount of Hermits in this world was insane. I counted the ones I knew of so far.

Scar and Grian from saying it outright. Tango and Mustachio from inference. And Bdubs, Ren, and Cleo, from Grian and Scar saying they were back in Third Life. That was seven people, almost half of those on Third Life.

Lizzy, Pearl, Joel, Scott, Jimmy, and me were from the Empires. We were close behind, unless I didn't count myself. Then we were slightly less close behind.

That left Martyn, Bigb, Impulse, Etho, and Skiz whose origins were unknown. But I suspected that at least one of them was a Hermit. Maybe Martyn, because of his close relationship with Ren? Or Impulse, because he and Tango were best friends in Third Life?

Suddenly everyone was there, enchanting. Except for Grian, he still seemed to be sulking. But where there are people, there are shenanigans.

Scar told Bdubs to take off his chestplate. His new moss hoodie was adorable. I wanted one, but I doubted any of the empires had moss clothes for sale.

Anyway, Bdubs took off his chestplate. Scar pointed and said, "Doesn't he look like Oscar the Grouch? His pants are the trash can!"

We all laughed, including me, when we saw the resemblance between Bdubs and the fictional character.

Also, yes, we weirdos in the Minecraft universe have TV shows. Never underestimate the power of mods and redstone combined.

Bdubs, being Bdubs, yelled "VERY FUNNY!" and glared at everyone.

It had been one of the first laughs I had had on Last Life. But oh dear, it would only get worse.

As quickly as they had come, the Last Lifers had gone their separate ways. Martyn, Impulse, and Jimmy stayed at Spawn, playing their "Fancy Imperial" games. Scar and Mustachio wandered off together. I followed them, hoping for something interesting.

Grian turned up out of the forest a moment later. He seemed fine after he had built a tower solely for the purpose of plotting revenge on Bdubs.

"Hey, Mumbo, do you want to come to the Southlands?"

So Mustachio's real name was Mumbo. I was still going to call him Mustachio, though.

"No! I already claimed the mustache man, you can't have him!" Scar said.

Mumbo/Mustachio looked uncomfortable. "I did agree to go north with him..."

Grian rummaged through his backpack, holding up a finger to tell them not to leave yet. Eventually, he stood up with a dead salmon in his hands.

"Mumbo, I will give you one fish for your undying loyalty."

Mumbo smirked and chuckled, "Look... look at this." He pulled a bunch of fish out of his own knapsack. "You're talking to a man who already has too much fish!"

Grian raised an eyebrow. "Are you telling me you don't want one more fish? Okay, hold on. Two fish."

I cracked up.

"Three fish?" Grian said.

"Three fish is getting somewhere," Mumbo said.

"Noooo, Mumbo!" Scar whined. He threw an emerald on the ground. "You can have an emerald if you stay with me!"

Mumbo gave him a strange look. "I gave you that emerald, Scar!" He laughed. Grumbling, Scar picked up the jewel.

"The North has a lot going for it, with the fact that we now have four fish." Grian said.

"Yes! The North!" Scar said.

Panic crossed Grian's face. "No, the South! The South!"

"Do you have sugarcane, at least?" Mumbo said.

Grian's eyes brightened. "Matter of fact, I do." He pulled one of the long reeds out of his backpack.

Mumbo raised his eyebrows. "Really? I can't find any. Joel said he traveled across the whole world and couldn't find any."

Grian shrugged. "I was considering throwing it out. It's not that rare."

"It is here," Mumbo said. Wherever here is."

"Mumbo," Scar pleaded.

"How's this," Grian said. "Five fish and a sugarcane."

Mumbo stepped toward him hesitantly and reached a hand out for the seafood.

"Okay, you've taken the offer! Let's go! To the South!"

"What?" Scar protested.

Mumbo shoved the fish back at Grian. "No! I didn't mean-"

"Come on, Mumbo!" Grian sang.

"Mumbo!" Scar pleaded again.

But Mustachio had already followed his red-sweatered friend back to Spawn.

Martin and Company introduced Grian to their lava bucket games once they arrived, which he immediately backed out of due to his yellow name. He only got out of it after Martin set him on fire, though.

"Southlands is recruiting if you don't have a place to live yet," Grian said.

They all eagerly agreed and left for Grian's tower.

They stopped at the crest of a hill for Mumbo to set up some redstone thing. So he actually knew how a comparator worked. For me, that in and of itself was an achievement.

They put a campfire into the contraption and started talking about smoke signals and using Morse Code to send messages to each other. They failed in the end, gave up, and finally started to deforest the area around the Southlands Tower to build towers of their own.

And the jokes were endless. I couldn't stop laughing, even though it shouldn't have been that funny. But it was.

Most of the jokes had to do with the word Ah-HA, and most of them were presented by Martyn.

"You could say we've gone A-FAR from Spawn."

"Afar!" Everyone repeated, laughing.

"I think this time they're really going to raise the BA-HAR."

"Don't you just hate that one character in Aladdin called JA-FAR?"

"You wanna know the only person we're missing? SCA-HAR!"

Grian chimed in, placing a door and opening it. "Martyn, why did you leave this door A-JAR?"

"That door is going to stay there forever," the others joked.

"Even my laugh has turned into AH-HAs at this point in time," Mumbo said. "I think I'm going to need speech therapy after this."

That earned a laugh from everyone.

"Okay, getting back on topic here, of course we'll have bridges between the towers, but before we finish those should we also have a PA-HATH?" Martyn said.

"STOP IT!" Grian half laughed, half cried.

"You guys are just coming up with them off the top of your head," Mumbo stressed. "I've been thinking this whole time and I haven't come up with one."

And so on.

Grian alternated between getting mad at the others and cracking jokes of his own.

"What's your favorite animal? A GI-RAFFE!"

Mumbo said, "there's a wandering trader over there, can I kill him?"

They traded, then killed the trader, leaving the llamas behind.

Martyn continued being himself.

Later, "I CAN'T COPE WITH THIS!"

"Are we the only ones who find this funny?" Mumbo wondered.

Next, "MA-HARTYN, do you have any cobblestone?"

And finally, when the towers were almost done, "Martyn, you have ONE MORE. Use it wisely."

Martyn responded, "Is that LLA-HAMA on top of the mushroom?"

One of the trader llamas was indeed on top of a giant mushroom. They all shared a laugh over it. Then they all shared a laugh over each other's towers.

Four of the Southlands Towers were cobblestone, with dark oak roofs. They were all unique, two similar to the central one, one perfectly round and neat, one that looked like a creeper farm with its rhombus shape.The central keep had been finished with a similar roof.

But the other tower wasn't even a tower.

Mumbo had built a bunker out of stone bricks. His "tower" was actually an antenna sticking out of the roof. There was endless teasing and criticism for that.

"We should try to sneak AH-HAs into normal conversations and see if anyone notices," Martyn said.

They all burst out laughing at the thought, and Tango chose that exact moment to turn up.

He was obviously very confused, but he decided to explain why he had come anyway.

"So, I'm making this game called You Bet Your Life. It's where you give me a life and say who you think will turn red first. Whoever guesses right will get all the lives that were bet."

"Ooh, what are the rules?" Impulse said.

Tango counted on his fingers. "You can't bet on yourself. You can't kill the person you bet on. You can't influence the outcome in any way. It's pure chance. If two people vote for the same person, then the lives are split."

The Southlanders decided to pass on the gamble, because both Grian and Jimmy were yellow, Martyn said he was saving his lives for something, and the others just didn't want to risk losing. But Martyn, Mumbo, and even Impulse managed to sneak some ah-has into the conversation that Tango somehow didn't notice.

When someone turned red, someone else was going to become very rich from this game. And it probably wouldn't be a good thing.