Episode 76 - I Was Once in Cashews

## Synopsis

Morning came over the Great Green Lake. The pets took a medium rest, healing up, eating, and napping. Crowrigami brought them berries from the trees, and Ida filled her tails with more snacks.

When it came time to move on, they decided to follow the remaining scent trail to the southeast.

Mr. Wiggles followed the trail through the outskirts of Aleton Village, houses were destroyed and the road was ripped up. They continued to the bridge where they first encountered the Prickled Pest Who Pursues. His nose brought them to The Road Which Ends, leading into a cliff. There was a small turn left that carried along to cliff towards The Sage. The iron rust scent seemed to come from the Road ahead.

Wiggles asked where the others wanted to go, Crowrigami admitted curiosity as to who the Sage was, and Ida wanted to follow a pretty sapling that also led to the Sage. Virgil just said he didn’t want to go into a cave.

Mr Wiggles agreed with his friends, and together they went to visit the Sage.

Sitting in a small plateau above the path ahead was a small shack. It’s windows were boarded up, and it looked close to falling apart. Looking to their left they saw the entire valley laid below them.

Upon reaching the shack, Ida knocked on the door. From inside they heard footsteps, and an eye slit on the door openers slightly. They saw a single brown eye looking at them.

“*What are you doing here?*”

Crowrigami jumped slightly. “*Hello, art thou the Sage?*”

“*I’m called the Sage of the Mountain yes, that is what some people call me. Are you here to burn my home down?*”

“*Never!*” Ida assured them, “*who burned the house down?*”

“*Well… no one yet, that’s why I’m still living here.”*

The Sage continued to talk through the door, and showed interest when the pets said they had fought the Pest. They asked what had happened in the fight, and then if the four were the heroes of prophecy. Their eyes flicked over Wiggles and Crowrigami, with their new looks.

“*One second, if you really are the heroes…*” The Sage walked back and rummaged through their shack.

They came back to the door reading something. “*There’s an old riddle from the temple down there—the old temple before it got destroyed—that I managed to salvage, and if you really are the heroes I think you should be able to figure it out. If so, you can come in and we can have a whole chat about all of this, and I’ll give you a best a tour as I can. Does that sound like a deal?*”

After a moment’s debate, the Sage told them the riddle: “*I stalk the countryside with my ears, but hear not a thing.*”

Crowrigami exclaimed, “*Oh! Are you corn?*”

“*Are you deaf?*” asked Virgil.

As Crowrigami spoke, the pets noticed that the only crops not burning in the distance, were corn.

The eye shutter snapped shut, and the front door opened to reveal a wrinkly, sphinx cat.

“*Please, welcome to my humble home. Come in and take a seat wherever it suits you.*”

Inside the hut were dozens of rocks, paintings, pots, and other artefacts. In the back of the room was a huge slab of stone covered by a thick blanket.

The Sage looked back at the pets. “*So, if you have solved this very clever riddle, then I must assume you are the actual heroes. So what happened, where did you go all those years ago?*”

The pets expressed confusion, and the Sage explained her research. She told them there was evidence they had been to the valley before, and defeated the Pest then before leaving again.

The pets denied having ever been to Aleton before, with Virgil admitting this was his first trip anywhere.

“*So if you’ve all never been here… then that means this is more of a cycle than the same individuals coming back and saving us over and over. So you will come and save us, and the threat will end, then you will go off and die, and then the threat will come again, and then some sort of rebirth—another fitting the same description as you—comes and saves us again. So you are not the heroes who came here before.*”

The Sage ran over to a league stone tablet, and told them the last heroes had come after their owners had died, and asked if the same was true for the Ragtags. They quickly denied it, which intrigued the Sage as to how the same set of animals kept coming back.

They moved over to another painting, showing a golden beast with wings and hooves. The Sage told them the previous Pest had been more animalistic, and the new beast had no memory of the past.

The Sage again asked about their fight with the Pest. The pets told her about their struggle to beat it, and then finding the shrines that gave Crowrigami and Wiggles their new power. She wrote everything down, before removing the cover on the stone at the back of the room.

On the stone was drawn a partial map of the valley, missing out the central town. It seemed very similar to the map Hailey had given them, however instead of ‘*The Ruins*’ there was a small marble temple labelled ‘*The Temple of Heroes’*. At the very north, ‘*The Cave Not Travelled*’ was instead labelled ‘*The Cave of Heroes*’. To the northeast, the Great Green Lake was replaced by a small village surrounding a tower, labelled ‘*The Wizard's Convent’*. Next to the tower, the Lumberyard, the waterfall, and the Deep Mine, were painted representations of the pets as though burying a piece of themselves.

“*So, if you’ve gone to these two places already, and received some sort of boon, that proves that you were here once—or a different form of yourselves were here once. This painting is just a map to where those things were burned, those things that the previous heroes left, in case a great threat came again.*”

The pets absorbed these revelations, while the Sage thanked them for proving her theory correct. She told them to stop by anytime, as she was also a competent healer.

The pets thanked her for her help, and Ida asked for some medicine for a cut on her shoulder. The Sage obliged, and managed to heal her fully.

Mr. Wiggles suggested they visit the waterfall to find Ida’s relic. Together they walked through the round of the temple of heroes. It looked as though a natural disaster had come had utterly disintegrated it.

They arrived to where the river dropped off the cliffs with a loud roar. In the middle of the river was a circular stone platform. They flew over to it like they did back at the tower.

The platform was covered in mud and grime, Crowrigami and Virgil noticed some words were carved into the surface. The message read: “*Four must stand, United together, in a single form”*. Below the message was the letter ‘*Y*’.

Ida lay down in the middle of the platform, and widened her arms to form the letter ‘*Y*’. Crowrigami followed lead lead, opening his wings. Virgil and Wiggles joined them on the floor soon after. As each of them lay down, they heard a quiet rumble from the waterfall, but after they all lay down nothing else happened.

Crowrigami suggested they form a single ‘*Y*’ by stacking on top of each other. Virgil lay on his back, requesting they didn’t rub his stomach in case he fell asleep. Wiggles jumped on his stomach, with Ida and Crowrigami forming the arms of the ‘*Y*’.

They heard a loud rumble from the waterfall, and a covered bridge emerged from the waterfall and attached to the platform.

The pets walked over the bridge, and found themselves in a dark and damp cavern. In front of them was a very tall stone door, with four empty square slots and a squirrel finger pointing up. On the floor in front of them was a small raised platform, like a stage.

Looking at the ceiling, they saw the letter ‘*A*’ and a finger pointing right. Looking right they saw the letter ‘*M*’ and a finger pointing down. Looking down they saw the letter ‘*C*’ and no finger.

They went into the stage, and together formed the letters on the order they were written: YAMC. The leftmost square lit up blue, but the door did not open. Crowrigami suggested they try different combinations of the letters, and started listing the possible combinations. When he said ‘*YMCA*’, all the squares flashed blue with the corresponding letters.

They spelled out ‘*YMCA*’, and the doors opened. Inside was the same shrine as the other two they had been to, the Squirrel statue lit up with a bright white light. Behind them, the mural showed the pets ripping open the beast in a fountain, with a white light coming from its chest.

In front of the statues was a wooden rack with a white karate gi and black belt hanging on it.

“*Oh, new fit!*” Ida ran over to the gi and put it on, feeling emboldened with her new power.