#Be funny if the in-universe was that Mumbo got Isekai'd into the real world for a few months

[ailithnight]

So, this is about the Rift to Empires, right? In which case:

Imagine Grian's reaction as he's slowly, steadily pulling apart the threads of reality, and somewhere in the distance a shape emerges.

It's far away, and blurred by the bright purple, foggy haze of the Rift. But there's beady eyes and an unmistakable mustache and for a moment there is Hope. So Grian digs harder, hones in, fortifies the bond between his cave and that other place.

And maybe he should have paused, should have thought, should have remembered before locking this Rift onto that place. He made the machine, the least he could have done was remembered he existed. But he saw Hope. And it blinded him. And now this Rift is bound to a single place. He'd have to open a new one to look elsewhere. But the others are watching him now. All, "this isn't safe, G," and "you can't just open a bunch of Rifts, you'll destabilize the world," and "C'mon Grian, this isn't healthy."

And Mumbo is still missing.

my personal headcanon for the moment is that Grian is looking for weak places between worlds and opening a rift an an attempt to get Mumbo back from wherever he's vanished to.