Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Humanity’s first sin was trust.

Before townships were erected on every corner of the globe, before civilization rocked in its cradle, before humanity drank from the pond of war, there was only a garden and a tree of apples.

Eve sunk her teeth into one because the serpent told her to, and she trusted her creator, but she trusted it too. Adam ate one from the palm of Eve’s hand—because he lived in the garden, but he needed her to live.

The Guide was in Hell. 

That wasn’t a metaphor, or anything: It had finally happened. Everything he’d been working towards had come to fruition. The Hero had reached the Underworld, and challenged him in battle. The Guide doll had gone up in flames, triggering his awakening as the Wall of Flesh. He had put up a decent fight, even if his heart wasn’t in it. The Hero had won. His job was over. He had taught the Hero all they’d needed to know.

He could shed this mortal vessel like a corn husk, watch it burn and blister in the pits of the Underworld, and return to inhabiting the form he’d taken when he’d served as the sleeping dam between cosmic pandemonium and the world at large.

His job was over. Why was he respawning?

The sunlight was blinding.

It was the Arms Dealer and the Demolitionist who hauled him from the dirt, brushing the soot from his hair and dusting his cape off with rough, jerky movements. 

Oh, that was so like them, he thought, not a refined bone in their bodies.  

Wait a minute. Cape—that was new.

The Guide would have helped, tried to pull himself from the ground or climb out of the grave, but there were dandelion roots catching at his shoes whenever he tried to move, and after being killed twice by the Hero in one day he was tired . He felt worse than he did the day after the Ostara The Mechanic had challenged him to a drinking contest.

The two gave a heave, and with a final tug, The Guide was pulled out of the grave he’d come back in—and, despite every attempt to avoid doing so, he flopped gracelessly onto the ground.

The grass under his cheek was a welcome feeling. Holy Hell, he would never pull weeds from his garden again. He would have stayed there if it weren’t for the stares he was receiving from the townspeople. Shakily, he pushed himself up, and it was as he wiped the last of the soot out of his eyelashes that he realized his hands were darker than they were before.

He stared up at the gathered crowd—a crowd . Whenever one of them had died and come back before, their welcoming party was usually only one or two of their closest friends, digging them up the next sunrise with a pack of ale, and a heroic death story to regale them with. It was never a crowd. 

He swallowed dryly. And they never looked so hostile.  

As he got to his knees, he met their gazes one by one, distantly aware that he should probably be unnerved by the amount of animosity he found there: They were all crossed arms and pursed lips. The Nurse in particular had her hand on a syringe, like she was ready to tranquilize him. 

He met every pair of eyes in the crowd with a neutral expression: it didn’t make any sense for them to attack him, but if they did—well, he wasn’t going down without a fight.

After a beat of silence passed, he nonchalantly began to dust himself off, brushing ash from his shoulders, his hair, and the ornamental cloak he was wearing. As he looked down at his hands, he noticed the charcoal-colored stain that seemed to be crawling up his arms, watering his veins.

He looked back up at the crowd, beginning to legitimately feel unnerved. 

The Hero was at the front and center, half bandaged, staring right back at him with cautious eyes.

“Wyatt,” they said hesitantly, “You have some explaining to do.”

When he was pulled from the other side, he came back knowing three things:

• There was dirt in his mouth. (Uncomfortable.)

• He wasn't the Guide anymore.

• Good and Evil as he’d once defined it were relative. They were nothing. There was only order, and chaos, and as it stood—order wouldn’t be around for very much longer.

He lasted three days. 

It was hard enough trying to get people to trust him before he’d shown his true colors, The Guide mused, stirring a sprig of Petunia into the cup of tea he was making. He’d never been popular, but after he came back as The Emissary the townsfolk had been avoiding him like a leper.

The Guide knew he came back different. He wasn’t a fool. 

(Er, not that he was a fool beforehand.)

He knew what the cloak he’d been donning ever since he’d clawed his miserable way up from the Underworld meant. He knew what sinister wall the fuchsias of it alluded to, that the flowering golden finery atop it had teeth—he knew, that was his job . 

Was. He stirred the Petunias into his tea with a perfectly reasonable amount of aggression. Was his job.

The Guide prided himself on his rationality. There was an amount of satisfaction, he argued, in compartmentalizing one’s emotions; in knowing that the experiences of sorrow and fury and joy were just that: experiences. They were as fleeting as the wind and rain and were always destined to fade into a wash, like ink into watery paper.

Emotional Repression—sorry, Compartmentalization—wasn’t the only thing he was good at. Possessing a sharp mind in tandem with the knowledge of Terraria’s inner mechanisms made him exceptionally adept at decision-making. It was him who the townsfolk went to when they had a question; when they wanted to know more about the history of the world, or how much gold a certain mob carried, or Hey, Guide, should I eat this mushroom I found in the forest?

(For the record, the answer was always no. But that didn’t stop the Angler from trying.)

For the love of god, he was a literal walking encyclopedia. He may not have been able to fire a rifle, or concoct medicines, but he knew his strengths lied in his other areas: His knowledge. His judgement. His logic.

And logically, he knew as the newborn Emissary between the cosmic forces of chaos and order, he had no choice but to accept his new role...

...But some obstinate, irrational part of him clung to what he did best: Guiding people. Studying things. And so, he shirked his duties as the Emissary in favour of curling up with a good book on the classification of magical mushrooms in the solace of his kitchen.

What? He was only…

The Emissary knocked on the wooden door of the house, hoping it wouldn’t be muffled by the rain. He had to stoop over a little to keep the book in his hands from getting wet.

“Tinkerer!”

The hour was late, and he’d have felt bad if not for the warm citrine lights glowing through the windows — a product of the goblin’s own invention. He’d explained it to the Guide before: growing tired of working by the torch, he’d captured lightning in a bottle, and codified it into neat little bulbs — the filaments of which would never grow dim or blow out in the wind like candlelight did.

Light Bulbs, he’d called them. The Guide wrote as quickly as possible as he explained how they worked, eager to take in all of the details, to note every mechanism down — like every other ingenious machine the Tinkerer had ever built.

The Guide knocked again.

“Tinkerer! It’s Wyatt. I have your book.”

The ambient, mechanical noise that had been in the background suddenly died, and the Guide saw the familiar shadows of a pointy-eared scientist get up from the desk he was hunched over.

The Guide knocked again. Honestly, he chided the goblin internally, sitting in that position for the amount of time that he did was going to wreck his posture.

Footsteps echoed on a wooden floor. The door swung open, and the Tinkerer looked at him — hesitantly.

“... Wyatt?”

The Guide waved, with a faint smile.

“The very one. Working on a new machine? At this hour? You know staying up late kills neurons.”

The Guide expected him to fire back with, ‘You’re one to talk, I bet you spent the past few hours reading that!’ or ‘I certainly do! Must be why you’re so slow on the uptake these days’, but instead, the Tinkerer was oddly quiet.

 “Yes. I am. Was there something I could… help you with? A specific machine or part you’re in need of?”

Well that was… cold. 

No, it was frigid, the Guide thought, laughing nervously.

“Er… Well, yes. I have the book you lent me last month.”

The Guide pulled a copy of The Goblin Sorcerer from his cloak, holding it out in front of him.

“It was fantastic, by the way. Thank you very much for trusting me with it- your taste in fiction is impeccable, as always,” the Guide rambled, “I can’t believe you managed to get through all two-thousand pages in a week. I suppose I’ll have to try harder if I want to beat your record, no?”

The Tinkerer’s ears were drooping, and his eyes burned with an odd sort of intensity.

The Guide shifted nervously.

“Is… there something wrong?”

The Tinkerer opened and shut his mouth a few times, as if he were contemplating what to say, before blurting out:

“I’m sorry, it’s just that- well, it’s just, we don’t really know for certain, if you’re... dangerous... right now.” 

It took a moment for his words to sink in. The Guide’s heart fell.

“Dangerous?”

We?

The way the Tinkerer’s eyes swept over the fuchsia cloak was unmistakable.

“Wyatt- Guide- Emissary, I’m sorry if this comes across as antagonistic, because I mean this in a purely reasonable manner, but- but don’t take me for a fool. I know what that cloak stands for...” 

As he pointed to the object, the Guide noticed that the Tinkerer was slowly but surely closing the door on him — or perhaps, more accurately, he was trying to hide behind it.

“...And I know that you’re at least part of the reason why things have been so- so haywire, lately. Monsters are spawning that we haven’t seen before. The sun eclipsed yesterday. ”

By now, the warm yellow glow emanating from inside was just a sliver, silhouetting the Tinkerer and casting long shadows over his face. 

Oh, no. This was — the Guide had miscalculated. This wasn’t how he’d thought this would go at all.

The Tinkered continued on.

“So- I’m sorry, for rambling. I don’t care if you’re the Wall of Flesh, or a demon birthed from the Moon Lord’s forehead, or some sort of sentient meat puppet for the darker forces of the universe. The fact of the matter is, you’re holding an unprecedented amount of power, and until we- er, the townsfolk- figure out if you’ll turn that against us like you did to-”

“I didn’t want to fight the Hero.” 

“Right. But until we know you’re not one of the… hostiles, you should- I should keep my distance. It’s simply a matter of common sense, to stay away from the things that could harm us. Nothing personal. You understand, right? You were always good at that.”

Wyatt. Guide. Emissary.

“...Yes. Of course. My apologies for the intrusion.”

The Guide set the book onto the porch table. His mouth was feeling dry.

“I’ll just- Leave this here, then.”

…Perhaps human wasn’t the best word for what he was. At least, not in the same way the Arms Dealer or the Nurse or the Hero were. Maybe not even in the way the Clothier was, wasn’t, and then was again. Regardless, whether monster or demon or Wall of Flesh, he was a slave to the same base desires that every other living thing in Terraria was bound to—namely, doing whatever the hell he wanted—and damn it, Magia Agaric was calling to him.

Just as he sat down at the table to do so, he heard a knocking at his door.

“Son of a-!”

The Guide swung the door open, lips pulled into a rictus.

“Yes, what is- oh. Dryad.”

Barely scraping five feet tall, most people had to crouch down to talk to her at eye level. The Guide knew better. 

He angled his head down with deference. She couldn’t care less about politeness, but standing like this, she was at the perfect angle to tear his throat out with her teeth.

Which he knew she had no real qualms with doing, to most people. He shuddered.

The Dryad nodded airily, slipping past him through the doorway.

Luckily for him, the Guide was not most people. 

His facial expression softened as she marched into the house, depositing her woven satchel onto his counter. 

“It’s good to see you. Finally back from your last expedition?” 

The Dryad made a little mhmm of affirmation as she began to root through his spice cabinet.

“It’s been a while. Two months, in case you’ve forgotten,” he reminded her, before adding “I’m glad you’re unharmed.”

She turned around at that, staring at him with a piercing eye. He met it with his own.

Don’t back down in front of a Dryad, a voice inside of him whispered. They are predatory.

“It would take a lot more than what Terraria has to offer to kill me,” she answered.

The Guide smirked, leaning against his kitchen table with a cross of his arms.

“Humble as ever, I see.”

The Dryad turned back around, pulling different wares from her bag and shuffling the contents of his cabinet around to make room for them—a sprig of Deathweed switched out with his Rosemary, Moonglow petals where his salt once was. He thought he even spotted a freshly-pulled-

“Oh!” he exclaimed delightedly, marching over to peer over her shoulder, “Is that a Fireblossom? For me?”

“It’s going into your cabinet. I believe that makes it yours, yes.”

“The gesture is appreciated. I’ve been looking for one of those, but you know how I hate dirtying my hands…” he replied, before adding uneasily “You’ve never gone to the Underworld before.” 

The Dryad closed the cabinet, turning around to face him as he leaned against the counter in full. Her eyes ran down the length of his hands, stained with an infernal soot that would never come clean. He was thankful she wasn’t meeting his gaze—he was no stranger to the more frightening parts of Terraria, but the Dryad made looking right through him into a sport.

“Your hands look dirtied to me, Emissary.”

He swallowed dryly.

“It’s not actual dirt. They’re just- colored now, I suppose.” he stammered, “They were like that when they pulled me out of the ground. I can’t wash it off.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

The silence hung heavy in the air for a moment, choking whatever words he formed before they left his mouth. In spite of himself, he was rattled. How did she know?

What a stupid question, he thought, it’s the Dryad. Of course she knows.

The Dryad looked away, and whatever strange aura had filled the air dissipated as she scampered over to his fruit bowl, pulling an apple from it. She perched atop the table as she grasped it with both hands, peering at him a little wildly. He couldn’t help but be reminded of a feral little cat.

“You and the Hero,” she said as she bit into it, juices dribbling down her chin, “You did battle three days ago.”

The way her canines sunk into the skin of it was a little unsettling.

“... Yes, we did.”

“You nearly killed them.”

“They’re alive now.” he added, a touch defensively.

She licked her lips, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“So they are. I’m not accusing you of anything. I am only stating facts.”

Damn it. She always got him like this. The Guide drew in a breath, steadying himself. He chose his next words very carefully.

“If I had a choice. I wouldn’t have chosen… this.”

He turned around, pulling up the drapery of his cloak. He dropped it almost immediately—the tattered edges reminded him far too much of his other form. He wanted to keep as much distance between it and the Guide as possible.

“It looks kind of ridiculous, right?” he asked, rhetorically. “So much filigree and ornamentation. The gold is just tacky- and it doesn’t match anything I have in the closet. You’d think being brought back as the diplomat between the cosmic powers, I’d be entitled to choosing my own uniform.”

Some sort of weight was lifted off of his shoulders. It felt good to say it aloud to someone who understood what on Terraria he was talking about. He forgot how much he’d missed her. He wished the Dryad would spend more time in town. 

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right: he wished she’d hate spending time in town a little bit less.

“A uniform’s a uniform,” she said nonchalantly. “Taking it off would be renouncing the role you play.”

He’d heard this lecture before, on clothes, when she was trying to justify why she’d walked around half-naked—though he’d had yet to reach a solid answer as to what it meant.

“Along with who I am?” he finished for her.

The Dryad’s face scrunched up.

“No, it’s different with uniforms. Are you the Wall of Flesh?”

He paused, turning the question over in his mind. He knew she knew he was. She knew everything about Terraria; it was why they got along so well… So there must have been some ulterior motive behind it. Some sort of conclusion she was pushing him towards.

“Of course. But I’m also the Guide.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“The Emissary.”

“The Emissary too.”

She turned the apple over to the uneaten side, holding it out to him in her outstretched palm. It gleamed like a brilliant red ruby in the sunlight; delicious and tempting.

“Want a bite?”

Against his better judgement, he sauntered over, and took one.

Like the Dryad, the Guide had never placed any particular importance on names. The most they were good for was sorting things into phylogeny trees or distinguishing them from one another. The latter never really aided him—it may not be as obvious to the other townsfolk, but as the Wall of Flesh, he was always comfortably aware that everything on Terraria was made up of the same matter; the same atoms grouped together into different shapes and sizes. 

As a human, he was forced to humour the concept anyways.

The Hero crouched low to the ground, eyeing the weed like it was something finer than it was. They looked ridiculous — the horrid straw hat they’d insisted on weaving together was brushing the grass, and their face was basically in the dirt with how closely they were examining it.

The Guide snorted, pulling an identical straw hat down lower over his eyes. Really, it was ridiculous. They were going to get a disease down there. 

“It’s just a daybloom, Hero. You don’t need to look that closely.”

He crossed his arms as the Hero yanked the flower up from its roots anyways.

The sun was leering down at them from the midday sky in a way that felt distinctly vulture-like. It was sweltering, and humid, and no matter how far he rolled his sleeves up or unbuttoned his shirt down, the air clung to his skin — one of the many disadvantages of having any. 

The heat had never bothered him this much before, and he’d spent the vast majority of his life in hell.

The Guide would trade every one of his carnassials to be sitting under the shade of one of the many trees surrounding the clearing than teaching a novice hero how to distinguish between herbs, but he had promised they’d go out as soon as the Hero had finished building them a house. It was an underhanded agreement: the Guide assumed the Hero would be too exhausted to do anything else in this weather once they’d finished building, and he’d be free to spend his afternoon reading, or studying the geography of the area via map, or generally doing anything that didn’t involve exerting himself physically at all.

But lo and behold: The Hero, by some providence bordering on the supernatural, was unaffected. As soon as they’d placed the last wooden block, without missing a beat, they’d excitedly asked the Guide to show them all of the flora and fauna in the surrounding forest, and the Guide was reluctantly obligated to do so.

“I’m just being thorough!” they replied, so honestly that the Guide couldn’t find it in him to chastise them further. The Hero turned around, holding the stalk up to the light. Their eyes were covered by the brim of their hat, but the Guide could see the curve of their grin, and the beads of sweat dripping down their face.

“Good job on the identification, Hero. They’re everywhere, but small enough to easily miss.”

The Hero tilted the hat up, showing their eyes—wide, and earnest, but not dull. 

“Thank you kindly. What does this do, anyways?”

“Dayblooms are mostly used in potion breweries. They’re what’s known as a backbone ingredient, one that experienced alchemists will use to activate or amplify the magical essences of other ingredients. Since they’re so simple, they don’t add anything unique to a potion, but due to their uncomplicated makeup they don’t flush out the magical pulse running through Terraria like many others of their ilk.”

“Oh. So they’re like- hmm- the water you add to your tea, almost? That gets the flavour out?”

“Precisely. Think of the additive ingredients as the herbs, and the backbone ingredients as the boiling water that releases the flavours within them. There are other backbone ingredients too, like blinkroot, but those cannot be found as easily.”

The Hero looked at the Guide, and he knew what was coming.

“We are not-”

“Can you pleeeease show me the blinkroots too? Please?”

“It’s far too hot out to go-”

“But if you’d teach me now I could brew potions for us!”

“We don’t have a-”

“But having the knowledge could still be useful! Besides, you’re the one who said it’s better to get things done sooner rather than later!”

“That’s… true, but we’ve been searching for potion ingredients all day, are you not-”

“If we go, I won’t bother you about them tomorrow. And I’ll reorganize your bookshelf!”

“I’ll go if you SPECIFICALLY stay away from my bookshelf.”

“Deal!”

They found themselves in one of the deeper parts of a cave near their shelter. Predictably enough, they ended up far past the depths at which blinkroots grew. Once the Guide had pointed out their grisly, leering branches peering at them from further into the cave, the Hero had yanked them up by the roots, stuffed them into their bag, and asked the Guide to tell them the name of the vines cloistered in an alcove just ahead. When they’d gotten close enough to examine those, they’d discovered that it was already nightfall—and since they had a steady supply of torches, but very little in the means of weaponry, they’d be safer going further into the cave anyways.

They’d been on a steady descent since. He’d expected the cave system to be quiet and undisturbed, and near the surface it had been—but the lower they’d gone, the more aware he became of the susurrus of activity within. Whenever they’d pause to gaze at the massive stalactite formations, or to mine some of the minerals embedded in them, he could hear the scuttling of small, living things, the sounds of which were no longer hidden by the surface world’s wind or the echoes of their footfall. The pools of water they came across, dyed fantastic hues of green and red, were even more fascinating until they’d spotted pale, eyeless water-creatures swimming to the surface, drawn to the flames of their torches like subterranean moths.

The caves were quiet, but they weren’t still by any means: there was an ecosystem contained within its bounds, alive and active miles beneath their shelter.

He had to admit, it was resplendent, in a scientific sense.

And incredibly dangerous.

“Would it kill you to treat these ledges with a little more apprehension?!” 

The Guide yelled into the darkness below the overhang he was standing on, but he doubted the Hero was paying attention. Besides, it’s not like there was much he could do: they had already leaped off of it, plunging into the unknown depths below as naturally as a bird would spring off a branch to take flight.

He pointed the torch over the edge with bated breath, listening for the impact of the Hero’s landing—or the crunch of bone as they butchered it. Thankfully, he heard a massive splash instead, and then a sputtering noise as the Hero emerged from whatever body of water they had landed in.

The Guide pinched the bridge of his nose as the momentary panic that had seized him passed. The Hero was fine.

“Guidey, could you toss me a glowstick? I can’t- ohmyGOD SOMETHING BRUSHED MY FOOT! TOSS ME ONE NOW! NOW! "

The Guide contemplated doing exactly that. Then he contemplated doing something else.

He sat down, letting his feet hang off the rock ledge. He swung them merrily, knowing that the Hero could see him clear as day against the torchlight.

“Hmm, I don’t know. We’re running low. I’d better just use these last few to make my way back to the surface.”

“DO NOT JOKE ABOUT THAT!”

A sly grin spread across the Guide’s face.

“You can wait down here in the dark for an hour or two while I go back and get more glowsticks, right?”

“THIS ISN’T FUNNY! GET DOWN HERE!” they yelled back, and then added in a quieter voice, “Please, don’t actually leave me.”

Alright, too far. The Guide tossed them a glowstick, watching the green light plummet a good thirty or so feet before breaking the surface of the water.

“Relax. If you look beneath you, you’ll probably find a blinkroot tangled in your bootstraps. Remember that monsters make noises.”

The Hero’s relief was audible.

“Oh, thank the lord...”

A moment of silence hung in the air as the Hero dove beneath the surface to grab the glowstick. The Guide was left alone with his thoughts, and he contemplated what had just happened as he swung his feet over the ledge. 

What kind of idiot jumped off of a ledge without being able to see what was beneath it? They could have been dashed on the rocks below had the water not been there to break their fall. Sure, they would respawn, but dying was never a pleasant experience. 

Furthermore- who just blindly trusted that the person behind them would still be there to fish them out? 

He tried to craft an apology for threatening to leave them, but they all soured on his tongue. Terraria was full of monsters, some human and others not, and they would all use any means of deceit or subterfuge to take what they wanted from the Hero.

           This… fledgeling, that had imprinted on him in a matter of hours, was the warrior meant to bring balance between the rapidly-unstabilizing cosmic forces; a dull blade handpicked by the world itself, just as the Guide was handpicked to sharpen it.

He was responsible for them. He was to be their maker, and if he didn’t succeed, their-

 The weight of his role hit him for the first time in the past week. He had begun to realize that the question of how he would most successfully go about fulfilling it was one of the first problems that had truly vexed him.

When they broke the surface again, he tried to apologize. It came out as, 

“If I left you down here, who’d catch me dinner?”

A daybloom seed hit him in the eye.

“OW! Did you just- shoot me in the eye with the pipe you found?”

He could hear giggling from below.

“Oh, sorry, did it hit you in the eye?”

“So it was you! You little- I’M COMING DOWN THERE!”

More splashing sounds. Were they… swimming around?

“I thought you were too scared to jump?” the Hero prodded.

The Guide pulled out a length of coiled rope from his utility belt, along with the nail that he’d use to anchor it on. Carefully, he tied the rope around the nail, before feeding it off of the ledge.

“Not too scared - too sensible to go blindly charging into danger.” he parsed out, carefully making his way down the length, plunging deeper and deeper into darkness. “And civilized enough to use a rope when I decide to go surprise spelunking.”

“You go spelunking? I thought you read books and drank tea all day.”

The Guide didn’t grace them with a response.

Suddenly, the rope was jerked from the lower end. The Guide’s grip on it became vice-like in an instant.

“HERO.”

He could hear their snickering from below. They were up to something.

“HERO. I want you to listen very carefully to me: do not tug on that rope again.”

“Hurry up and get down here, then. You were right, it was just blinkroots. The water’s nice!”

Another tug on the rope made his head spin. He was still so high up… He tried explaining calmly.

“Hero, if you pull on that rope again, I will fall and die, and-”

With a final pull, the rope came loose from its anchor, and the Guide was hurtling towards the darkness, closer and closer to the water. Oh lord of the moon, he was going to die. While he was waiting to respawn in the morning the Hero’s progress would slow down exponentially, and the corruption would be eating away at Terraria while they were waffling around like a fool, and his cosmic superiors were going to yell at him, and-

Instead of cracking his neck on a stalagmite, or being pulled under the icy depths of a brine pool, he crashed into something softer at Mach speeds.

“Oof!”

The landing was hardly any gentler than being submerged in the water, but at least he didn’t get wet, and when he dared crack open his eyes…

The Hero’s grinning face beamed down at him, the angles of their cheekbones illuminated by the light of the glowstick, face given a new sharpness by the neon. The Hero had somehow pulled the rope from its anchor, calculated roughly where the Guide would fall in consequence, and caught him without dropping him into the pool from thirty feet below.

“Got you.” They crooned.

The Guide swallowed, at a loss for words. 

Maybe- maybe this hero had promise after all.

“Woah, Guidey, if you keep staring into my eyes like that I’ll start thinking you’ve-” the sentence was broken up by the sound of them desperately trying to contain their laughter- “FALLEN for me!”

Whatever reverie had overtaken him, the Guide snapped out of it immediately. He began to thrash out of their grip.

“Dream on, you dolt! You almost killed me!” The Guide sniped, but there wasn’t any venom in it as he reached over and tried to yank their hair. He got a fistful of straw instead. 

“HEY, let go of my hat!”

The Hero pulled his arm away, putting the Guide in a headlock as the two of them grappled in the water. In this part of the pool, it only went up to their waists, but they were both getting thoroughly soaked.

“We’re in a cave! You don’t need a sunhat!” 

“It’s for comfort! FOR COMFORT!”

“You’re an idiot! How could you just jump down here without knowing where you’d land?!”

 “I could HEAR the water flowing! OW! Don’t bite me! I thought you were civilized!”

The Hero let him go, and without their weight stabilizing him, the Guide fell into the water. He sputtered, wiping his tongue off on his hand, and for a moment he contemplated the life decisions that had led him to this point. He was civilized, damn it. Up until this point the thought of biting anyone was ludicrous.

No. It was still ludicrous. He was acting like a lunatic.

“I didn’t say I was civilized,” he gasped as a chill ran through him, “I said I was civilized enough , and that’s still leagues more than you are. How are we going to get back up, Hero? You pulled our escape route down with me.”

For once, the Hero had the decency to look sheepish. 

Good, the Guide thought. Let them sit with the consequences of their actions. 

“You, uh,” they huffed, “You think we can manage to lasso the rope around that nail?”

An hour later, they’d found themselves at the end of the cave. After the Hero, through sheer force of will alone, had managed to get the rope back onto the nail above them, they’d continued their expedition through Terraria’s cave systems on two conditions:

1. The Hero was entirely responsible for getting the rope back onto the nail. (it was only fair after they’d been the one to pull it down, of course.)

2. The rest of their journey would be spent in peace- and if they ran into more danger than they could handle, they would turn back.

The Guide shivered, holding the newly-lit torch closer. It was getting colder—they were in the deeper part of the cave by now for sure. The Hero was snuffling around the dead end as the Guide crept closer to better-illuminate the area. A massive crack was running up the length of the wall, but it was inches wide at best, and so narrow neither of them could see anything along the lines of an adjacent room or more cave to traverse through it.

“I don’t think you’ll find anything else here, Hero. This seems to be as far as the cave goes.”

The Hero was unusually silent. Instead of responding, they elected to raise their head, closing their eyes as if they were feeling a breeze on their face.

“Hero?”

They turned back around, peering at him.

“Do you hear that sound, Guidey?”

He scoffed. “You’ll need to be more specific. I can hear many sounds.”

The scurrying of unseen crustaceans moving across the ground. The dripping of water as it ran down a stalactite… The muted thud of footfall on the ceiling above them. Groans from a far-off cavern echoing down the tunnels. Stars above, he hated the underground. Literally worse than hell.

The Guide wrapped his arms around himself tighter. They needed to go back soon.

“... There’s wind flowing down here.” the Hero remarked.

The Guide’s eyes widened, and he turned to face them.

“From the crack?”

“I think so. I’m surprised you didn’t notice it. I can feel it on my face too… It smells… sweet?”

The Guide strained his ears, and realized that the Hero was right—under the crackling of the torch’s flame, beneath the sound of small, scurrying things and the living darkness that consumed them, there was another undercurrent: the murmur of fresh air, steadily blowing through the crack in the wall.

The Guide crouched down next to the Hero, trying to get a better look through the crack. It was fruitless: Although it spanned the wall from floor to ceiling, it was only an inch or so wide, and it only seemed to get narrower the further in you went. He couldn’t see anything inside.

The Guide turned to the floor around it, looking for clues as to what could lie beyond—trying to see if he could spot the radiant green of jungle spores littering the gravel, or the shriveled petals of deathweed growing through the cracks. 

If there was, he mused, he needed reading glasses. Nothing must have been able to get through the crack.

The Hero turned, facing him with the same hopeful eyes that had gotten them into the cave instead of back at home after their daybloom identification study.

“Hero.” he warned.

Their eyes continued to shine.

“Hero. We are not going any further into this cave.”

“... Can’t we just-”

“NO. I’m tired, and hungry, and-” the Guide peeled his shirt sleeves off of his arm for emphasis, “Soaking wet. We’ve reached the end. We’re going back.”

“What if I just take a peek? You can just, um, sit back here! On that rock over there. I’ll only be a minute.”

The Guide leveled them with an icy gaze. Who would protect me then? he thought, but didn’t dare voice it aloud. He was not going to let the Hero know how much power they held over him in this form.

He sighed as he sat down on a rock, refusing to look at them.

“I suppose there’s no stopping you, is there?”

The Hero took it as permission enough.

“I swear, I’ll only be a few minutes! I won’t leave you alone here for too long. Here, take the torch so you won’t be scared!”

“I’m not scared,” the Guide added defensively, but took the torch anyway.

He couldn’t stay miserable for long—not when the Hero set a torch down onto the ground, and began to strike at the crack with their pickaxe, trying to deepen its groove. The Guide snuck a glance at their back, watching the corded muscle there tighten with every swing of the axe. So little armor there, he couldn’t help but think. How could he let them go down this far without making a ramshackle wooden set to cover their… squishier parts?

 It would be so easy for a cave bat to tear the arteries of their neck open with its teeth, or for a skeleton to drive a sword through their torso.

The thought made him wildly uncomfortable. 

Maybe he should stop them now, while the barrier between them and whatever potential dangers lurked on the other side of the wall remained intact.

Maybe—maybe the Hero didn’t have to advance so quickly. Terraria wouldn’t suffer for waiting a little longer. For the Guide slowing down the Hero’s training a bit. Better to give them more time to prepare for their battle against the Wall, after all; and then the dam would break on the problems riddling the world, and the real challenge would begin.

The Guide put his head in his hands, breathing through his nose. Of course Terraria would suffer. It had been suffering, and the Hero had been put into place as a last-ditch attempt to carve out the dark and light spots on its surface and restore it to a state of peace.

Besides, the Guide thought, as he looked back up again at the Hero. It had only been a minute or so, and they were close to breaking a human-sized hole through to the other side. They didn’t seem like the sort who was good at taking things slowly.

With one final swing of their pickaxe, the Hero gave a cheer as they broke through to the other side. The Guide’s lip curled up as he watched them from his place on the rock, chin resting on his hands. Ridiculous. They were utterly ridiculous. 

The Hero kicked their way into the hole, widening it, and they were through. The Guide could hear a sharp intake of breath, alongside the little sound of awe they made as they breached the wall. 

...Well now he was just curious.

The Guide had no intention of actually staying behind, of course. There was no way he’d let the Hero go off somewhere potentially dangerous just two weeks after they’d arrived in Terraria—at least, not without his supervision. He got up, taking a moment to stretch his legs and get comfortable in his boots, before walking over to the hole.

Something—some sort of radiant, blue dander rode the draft from the hole and landed on his cheek. The Guide picked it off with irritation, and then, upon recognizing what it was, panic.

A glowing spore, dispensed by one of the giant, underground mushrooms that signified they’d stepped into dangerous territory. 

The Guide ran through the hole.

Glowing mushroom biomes were rare at this depth, but not unheard of. The monsters that lurked within them—nothing but corpses of animals caught inside, made embryonic again in mycelium cocoons—were far stronger than what he or the player were equipped to deal with. 

The fungus wasn’t necessarily harmful on its own, but at certain times of the year, the spore clouds were thick enough to choke anything unlucky enough to stumble across them. This was on purpose: it was a self-fertilizing system, and the mushrooms needed organic matter to feed off of. The blood of many creatures were spilled to water their gardens of rot. 

A clever design of evolutionary biology, but a mistake on the Guide’s part: he shouldn’t have let the Hero go anywhere near it. He shouldn’t have let them keep digging themselves into a deeper hole.

“Hero!”

When he stumbled through, the Hero was, thankfully, not too far ahead of him. It seems as if they were too awestruck to jump in headfirst as per usual. It looked like they had broken out of whatever trance they were in, however, and they lifted a leg, as if they were going to walk further.

“HERO!”

The Guide grabbed their arm. They turned to look back at him, shocked.

“Guidey? Are you… okay?” they asked tentatively.

The Guide recoiled instantly.

“I’m fine. But we need to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

The Guide’s eyes followed the Hero’s pointed hand like an arrow. They were right: it seemed as if the end of the cave system was a deception, for the cavern they had stumbled into was enormous. From where they stood just outside of the crack, perched atop a small rock cliff, they could easily overlook the entire domain.

Massive, fungal plumes stretched up to the ceiling of the cave, the mottled blue-and-white caps searching for sunlight they would never find. Mimicking the trees of the surface world, their stalks had branches; tendril-like offshoots that smaller mushrooms grew from, nursing from the stem.

Below them, what looked like a peculiar cerulean shade of grass engulfed the dirt floors, emitting a dim, ghostly light—the filaments of which seemed to be the source of the hair-like vines hanging from the top of the room.

The Guide winced. There was no sun down here to fuel grass growth. It was all mycelium. 

And if he remembered correctly, that mycelium was what linked them all together somewhere at the center of this room: it was all one creature, too.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” the Hero asked.

The Guide studied them. They were turned away, but he could still see their silhouette, the length of their neck, the way their cheeks lifted as they grinned; all outlined by the alien glow of the forest. 

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

The Guide pulled his shirt over his nose when he caught wind of a faint aroma. 

“Pull your shirt up over your nose, Hero. Remember it has spores.” 

The Hero turned to him, raising an eyebrow.

“It? Which one?”

The Guide waved his arm, motioning to the massive ring of tree-sized mushrooms at the center of the room.

“All of them. See how they’re all growing in a circle? Every mushroom you see there is connected by the same root system, growing outwards from the center. It’s one plant.”

“Oh, lord, is that- is all of the grass down there part of it too?”

“Yes.”

The Guide hooked a thumb through a loop on their utility belt and pulled them with him, “Now come back . Mushroom fields are dangerous, we need to get out of here.”

“Woah! Okay, okay, uh- wait, don’t pull so hard, I’ll fall off the edge!”

“It’s a good thing that crack opened up onto this cliff,” the Guide said, “Do you hear that buzzing?”

“What about it?”

“That’s the sound of the ladybugs that grow down here, feasting on the fungus. If you were on the ground, they’d swarm you.”

“I like ladybugs.”

“Not when they’re three feet tall.”

“Woah! You’re joking.”

The Guide smiled.

“I never do.”

The Guide put his foot into the dirt of the crack, and the Hero bent down to follow.

Or, they would have, were it not for the light that whizzed past them at that moment. It soared through the wall just inches from the Guide’s head, and he could feel the ghost of it warm his face when it went into the opening, burying itself explosively into the rock he was sitting on earlier. It missed the Hero, thankfully, but it wasn’t enough: they flailed their limbs to get out of its path, lost their balance, and slipped.

“HERO!”

The Guide watched their face go over the edge. He didn’t have the time to sit there in shock: A second blast landed a few feet above the first, sprinkling his head with displaced dirt as it hit the wall. He grimaced, biting his lip as he heard the Hero slide down the slope and hit the ground below.

“OW!... I’m okay!”

The Guide exhaled. They were fine. The idiot was fine.

He turned to the direction of the blast, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the area. He couldn’t tell his own hand from his face in the low lighting, but he could detect motion from the top of one of the mushroom trees further down into the cavern.

He cursed how pitiful his night vision had become. How did humans live like this? Couldn’t they have evolved in the Underworld, like-

Another blast of magic soared by him in a merry arc, and the Guide ducked to get out of its way. The resulting collision between it and the wall shook the ground a little.

Crouching lower to the cliff, he scanned the area, and spotted a familiar shape staring back at him. The figure perched on the mushroom was skeletal below its royal blue robes—no, that wasn’t right. As it raised its arms maniacally, preparing to unleash a new blast of whatever magic it was conjuring, the Guide realized that it was a skeleton, cloaked in sorcerer’s robes and a wizard hat.

“TIM!”

He yelled.

If skeletons could grin, it was doing so.

“TIM, YOU TROGLODYTE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” The Guide yelled.

Somehow, despite lacking both the lungs and lips it would take to whistle, it whistled. 

“Guidey!” it crowed. “Is that what you’re called these days? That’s just adorable.”

The Guide’s face began to burn. He could just feel the delight it took in mocking him.

“Shut up, you windbag!” he lashed out, “You almost killed the Hero!”

Tim giggled, swaying from side to side on the mushroom cap like he was about to fall off.

“Are you DRUNK?!” The Guide seethed.

The skeleton pointed a finger at the Guide, pathetically.

“Only a little,” it contended in a raspy voice, “It helps steady my-” it hiccupped, “-aim.”

The Guide gritted his teeth, trying to calm himself down. He and Tim never got along before he adopted his new role—when he was still just a wall, watching over Terraria’s hellish underbelly—but back when they’d sniped at each other and traded acerbic back-and-forths when he wasn’t preoccupied with maintaining his human form, if they’d ever gotten as far as taking up arms with one another, he could take it blow-for-blow. Now he wasn’t sure if he even had the energy to make breakfast.

Well, that first bit was a lie. Tim got along perfectly fine with everyone it met. It just didn’t care if its habit of pulling people into murderous, magical duels made it hard for everyone else to get along with it .

Whatever coincidence, foresight, or divine intervention had led them to cross paths again, the Guide didn’t have the time for it. He couldn’t deal with Tim’s boredom right now, and he sure as hell couldn’t afford for it to spill any important details about the Hero’s destiny, loose-lipped as it was on the drink. 

“I-” his voice was achingly hoarse, “I don’t have time for this right now, Tim. Just let us pass. We’ll duel another day.” 

The Guide’s hands were shaking with the expenditure—an unfamiliar feeling. Internally, he kicked himself at how weak he’d become. 

Tim sat its ass right on top of the mushroom.

“That’s so cute! You were never this cute before… Guidey? ‘Sthat your title now?” it slurred. “God, that’sa really weird title.”

Tim laughed to itself, as if it were privy to some sort of inside joke. The Guide wanted to ram his head straight into the wall.

“But I’m not interested in you. I mean, you’re just a human now. Name a bigger downgrade, RIGHT?!” 

(Its voice was uneven, shifting wildly in pitch and tone. It was hammered.)

Tim turned his finger to point to the Hero. The Guide’s eyes followed, pulse quickening. They had long-since recovered from their fall, now standing at the bottom of the slope, eyes wild as their gaze darted between the Guide, Tim, and the area around them.

The Guide bristled.

“If you…” he began.

But the threat was cut short. If Tim what? What could the Guide even do in this form? 

A chill swept over him as he realized that the answer was, at best, fire a volley of arrows at it to buy time for the Hero to run away. If he tried to get into an honest-to-god match with the wizard, he’d probably die.

He re-worded his warning.

“As it stands, the Hero is under my protection. To get to them… You will have to go through me.”

“Ooooh, I’m shaking in my pointy little- HIC- wizard hat.”

Tim conjured another blue blast of magic, aiming it at the Hero. 

“HERO! GET OUT OF THE WAY!” The Guide shouted reflexively.

Thankfully, he hadn’t needed to tell them. As soon as Tim pointed at them, they’d scrambled under the nearest mushroom, taking shelter away from its malicious gaze. When the burst of magic hit the ground, it exploded in a phantasmagoria of light and sound, and the entire cavern shook in the earth.

Of course he hadn’t needed to to tell them that, the Guide kicked himself mentally. What kind of idiot wouldn’t move out of the way of danger? If the Hero hadn’t possessed that basic instinct of self-preservation, Terraria really was doomed. 

The Guide took a moment to steel himself as the Hero made it to safety. The two of them weren’t dead yet.

And, you son of a bitch, He thought, pulling his bow from where it was around his quiver. Two could play at this game.

He nocked one of his arrows, and drew it back before releasing, watching it take flight.

Something dormant within him itched as he watched it land right in the skeleton’s eye socket. Tim stumbled backwards with the force of the blow, and slipped off of the mushroom cap, taking a long tumble to the floor of the cave.

He knew it would only daze it, but the Guide’s lip curled up in a spiteful smile anyways. His marksmanship was always something he’d taken pride in.

As soon as Tim was knocked into a stupor, the Guide carefully used the last bit of rope he had to create a handrail to make the climb up the slope easier. By the time he had fastened one end of it securely onto the nail, Tim was already getting up, leaning on the trunk of the mushroom it’d just fallen off of for support. It rubbed its bony temples.

“Ooooh, I’m going to have a nasty hangover tomorrow!” it whined.

The Guide’s eyes widened in alarm as Tim raised its drunken first again, charging up a new blast. The light of it was bleeding through its phalanges, casting strange, dark shadows across the cavern. It and the Hero were both standing within the circle of mushrooms now, facing each other from opposite ends of the cave, and the Hero’s face was tightened, waiting for Tim to strike.

Oh, shit. 

The Guide skidded down the slope, blindly running over to the mushroom ring, but it was too late: Tim fired, and the blast of mana traveled to where the Hero was standing in an instant.

“DON’T TELL ME THIS IS THE HERO MEANT TO SAVE TERRARIA!”, it warbled, “YOU RECKON IF I KILL THEM HERE THEY’LL-” It broke into a fit of giggling, “THEY’LL SEND YOU A NEW ONE?!”

The Guide nocked another arrow, drawing it far enough to where he could feel the fletching graze his cheek when he fired. He was aiming for the skeleton’s hand, hoping to cut off the flow of magic from the crystal that was currently serving as its sternum, but it moved at the last minute and the arrow lodged itself into another mushroom halfway across the clearing. The Guide cursed—it had been his second-to-last—before surveying the immediate area for the Hero.

The impact site of Tim’s magical pulse was charred and sizzling. Any organic matter there had been burnt away, leaving a dark mark, bordered by curdled black tendrils of mycelium. 

No Hero.

Charred impact site.

 No Hero.

The Guide’s heart skipped a beat. Did they die?!

They emerged from behind a mushroom, unharmed. From the Guide’s angle, he could see them clearly, but Tim was still looking around the room for the Hero, unaware of their hiding place.

The Guide shuddered, resting his hands on his knees for support.

The Hero waved to him covertly, and as Tim recharged its spell, they motioned with their hands: holding their right arm against the trunk of the mushroom, they made an arrow with two of their left fingers, using it to ‘pin’ it to the trunk.

Trust me, they mouthed.

The Guide’s face twisted. Trust was such a monumental thing to ask for.

But he nocked the arrow, taking aim anyways.

The arrow fired, whistling as it sliced through the air. Miraculously, it landed square in the center between Tim’s radius and ulna bone, fletching preventing it from sliding its arm off of the arrow .Tim whipped its head around, seeming to snap out of whatever inebriated haze it had been riding the high of moments before.

The Guide didn’t breathe as they stared each other down. His heart—at least, what he was fairly certain was his heart—was beating so fast. Should it be- that couldn’t be normal, right?

It opened its jaw to speak.

“You’ve become too human, you know. Everyone thinks so. I mean, come on, it hasn’t been that long.” it rasped with sobriety.

The Guide bared his teeth, and somewhere deep in the bowels of hell, the tendrils of something massive stirred in defiance. 

Too human. What an insult . 

He forced himself to swallow his pride, and replied quietly,

“I don’t care. This is the job I was given. I will keep the Hero alive by any means necessary.”

The Hero chose that moment to bodyslam the trunk of the damaged mushroom. Now that it had a weakness on one side, they were able to tip it over, and with a massive groan it fell onto its neighbor. The Guide turned to stare in amazement: The Hero had begun a chain reaction. One by one, the ring of mushrooms began to topple, falling on top of one another like a line of dominoes.

“HELL! FUCK SHIT! OH WORM FUCK!” 

Tim shrieked as the movement got closer and closer to where it was pinned to the trunk. By the time it managed to yank itself away (by the arm socket—its hand, forearm, and upper arm were still dangling from the Guide's arrow) it was too late—it was crushed beneath the falling trunk, too inebriated to dodge the fall. The sound of the crash filled the entire cavern; the collective noise was deafening, and the shower of spores each fallen fungus released from their gills obscured the Guide’s vision in a glowing haze.

The silence as the spore clouds dissipated felt too quiet by comparison. The Guide stared at the direction of the fallen shroom, waiting for… something. For Tim to teleport behind him and shout ‘Huzzah! You thought getting my bones crushed to a fine powder would kill me?!’ before- he didn’t know, before it stabbed him with a knife or something.

How hard he flinched when the Hero’s hand took him by the wrist was unprecedented.

Their face wasn’t completely visible through the spores, but the tip of their straw hat was enough. 

“Come on,” they murmured, “let’s go before that skeleton guy wakes up.”

The Guide let himself be pulled, a little dazed, and thoroughly amazed that Tim was really incapacitated. He turned back around. The spore cloud was settling, covering the fallen ring of mushrooms in a fine, luminous dust — and there was no sign of movement. His eyes searched the spore settlements for footprints leading away from the ring, but it was undisturbed, like a layer of noxious snow.

The Hero had thought of that. This was the Hero’s plan in action — he had no part in this.

The Guide turned to study them from behind as they pulled him along at record speeds, reassessing some things. 

The two of them climbed up the slope in nervous silence, and the Guide was too used to Tim’s antics to not keep checking behind him as they went. It seemed as if the skeleton really was too inebriated to pull anything: both the Guide and the Hero left the cavern as quietly as they had come in.

The Guide led them back to the upper levels of the cavern, quietly instructing the Hero to seal off the crack leading to the mushroom fields, but he said nothing else as they made the trek back to the surface. They were both taking pains to extinguish the torches they had left behind, to not tread through gravel, to muffle the sound of their footfall. The promising frontier of darkness that had once been in front of them on their way down took a new shape as they made their way back up again; predatory, stifling, like Tim was waiting to spring out of it the moment they broke the silence.

The Guide’s hands had stopped shaking half an hour ago, and his breath had been coming in and out at a steady pace since. Now that the amazement at the Hero’s brief moment of ingenuity had passed, he found his steps had unconsciously been outpacing the Hero’s. 

How could they be so reckless?

As he retraced the steps they had taken to get here, he felt something heavy and constrictive in his throat, like someone had wrapped a band around it and was pulling it tighter. This ordeal had all started from a simple lesson in daybloom identification, and how the Hero had insisted on going into the caves to check for blinkroots, and how they had kept pushing for them to go deeper, and into darker parts of the cave, how they had pulled his rope down when they were in the pool of water, how they didn’t turn back when he asked them to, how they went ahead with investigating the crack against his wishes… 

Why didn’t he just. Why didn’t he just say no?

“You’ve become too human, you know.”

Tim’s words echoed bitterly, long after it’d said them. What the hell was that even supposed to mean?

His nails were digging into the wood of the torch, and he loosened his grip on it, trying to slow his breathing down. He bit his tongue to stop himself from- from doing something. 

Maybe it was the exhaustion catching up to him. He felt like collapsing. How was he supposed to keep this idiot alive? Was this part of his job?

The two of them had gotten far above the cavern layer before either felt safe enough to break the silence.

“Who was that?” the Hero asked from a few yards behind, before continuing, “Or, uh, what was that? That was terrifying,” they laughed, “Good thing we got through that, right?”

For some reason, it incensed him. He didn’t respond.

“... Hey, are you mad?” they asked, trotting a little faster.

“No.”

“... Your, uh. Hand is bleeding.”

The Guide stopped momentarily. His free hand had been clenched earlier. When he unfolded it, upon examining his nails, he realized they were caked with blood. 

“So it is.” he replied cooly, and continued walking.

A moment of silence passed.

“... It really feels like you’re mad at me. Um, sorry. Sorry for getting us into trouble. Sorry for killing your friend.”

The Guide whipped his head around incredulously.

“Tim?! That cave-dweller isn’t a friend! Stars above, I couldn’t be more delighted that you put it in the ground. It’s where it belongs. Damn overgrown trilobite.”

The Hero snorted.

“Careful, it might hear you.”

The Guide began to walk again.

“Hero. We could have died in a very gruesome way back there, you know that, right?”

“Right. I know.”

The Guide sighed, loudly. 

“No, you don’t know! It doesn’t matter how many times I warn you. You just keep jumping into mortal danger like an idiot.”

The Hero winced.

“I’m sorry.”

The Guide realized his voice had gone up a few octaves. He toned it down.

“You’re wasting time like this,” he hissed, “Not just yours, but mine as well. I’m exhausted, and damn it, I’m still soaking wet," the Guide shuddered as he tried to peel his shirt off of his skin, only to find blue spores clinging to him in its wake.

"We should have gone back when we had found the blinkroots.”

“But you came with me…”

The Guide forced himself to breathe through his nose.

“Yes. That was my fault. I’ll leave you to die in the cave next time.”

Was that unnecessarily acerbic? Yes. Did it feel good to say it? Absolutely.

The Hero flailed their arms.

“Well, you were laughing with me. What was I supposed to think? I thought you wanted to come!”

The Guide squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“I didn’t-” 

Sign up for this, is what he wanted to say. But he began to realize that he did, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. He signed up for this when he acquiesced to the Hero’s request to search for dayblooms. He signed up for this the moment he began inhabiting this vessel.

“... Just listen to me when I say something’s dangerous in the future. You’re the Hero that is destined to bring balance to Terraria — to seal away the Corruption,”

The Hallow, too. But they didn’t need to know that yet.

“This world is rotting, but it’s not dead yet. Your death will only waste time.”

A moment of silence followed.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” they asked.

The Guide turned back to face them.

“What?”

“ ‘The’ Hero. There’s no ‘The’. It’s just my name.” 

They peered at him curiously, waiting for an answer.

The Guide’s face heated up. 

“I- I- I thought it was a role, like mine.”

The serious atmosphere was broken. The Hero chuckled, covering their mouth with their hand.

“Were you just-” they snorted, “wrong about something?” 

The Guide sputtered, at a loss for words. Him? Wrong? No, that couldn’t be right. He was never wrong. That wasn’t his own arrogance talking- encyclopedic powers came with their perks.

The Hero laughed harder. 

“You look like a deer in the crosshairs!”

The Guide huffed, turning away.

“I- Oh, whatever. I was wrong about one thing. So what? I’ve still been right about the other two hundred.”

“I dunno. This might be marking the end for you. Could be a slippery slope from here on out- first it’s my name, then you won’t be able to tell torches from glowsticks…”

“Big words from someone who thought they could eat slime gel.”

“Hey! That was one time!”

The Hero trotted up to fall in step with the Guide, bumping his shoulder playfully.

“So what’s your name, then?” they asked him.

“What?”

“Your name. I can’t just keep calling you ‘Guidey’. It’s been, what, two weeks, and I haven’t learned your name yet- oof!”

The Guide caught them as they tripped over a tiny stalagmite, helping them steady themselves as they continued their ascent.

“Does ‘Guide’ not suffice?” he asked.

“Well, I guess…” the Hero conceded, “but you said that was a title, didn’t you?”

“More of a-”

“More of a role, yeah. Like how my name’s Hero, but my role’s the Hero too. I don’t want to call you by your role… that seems kind of, um, dehumanizing? 

That’s the point, the Guide muttered internally.

“I suppose it is. But there’s nothing else I go by.”

Well, nothing else he wanted the Hero to know about.

“You don’t have a name? Seriously? Even I have one, and I was-”

“Born two weeks ago, yes!” the Guide finished, with no small amount of exasperation. “ Lord of the moon, you’ve been saying that since the day you got here.”

If the Hero picked up on his exasperation, they didn’t show it.

“Hmmm..” the Hero hummed. It was a rare sound to hear, considering it meant they were thinking about something. 

“Well, what name do you want then?”

The Guide sighed.

“Do I really have to choose one? Is it that important?”

“Uhh, duh. Of course. They’re part of who you are. What about Jake?”

“...No, too simple. That sounds like something you’d name a dog.”

“Bradley?”

“No, that’s not… well, I just don’t like that one.”

“Catherine?”

“Er, wrong gender, Hero.”

“Oh, sorry. Leaf? Blue?”

“Those aren’t even names.”

The Hero beamed. “Anything can be a name if you name something with it!”

“Whatever you say.”

The Guide was not smiling. He wasn’t.

“Andre, then?”

The Guide’s face scrunched up. “Ugh, no. That sounds horrid.”

“Kyle.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Huh… Wyatt?”

“That’s… elegant enough. Wyatt is acceptable.”

“Woohoo!”

The Hero pumped their arms in the air, and the Guide winced, ducking out of their way.

“How are you this energetic? We’ve been in this cave system for a day and a half.”

             The Hero’s grin stretched even wider. “Are you kidding? I’m ready to do that all over again!” they said enthusiastically. The grin fell as they saw the dark look the Guide was giving them.

“Er, not that I would. I mean, will.”

             They were close to the entrance of the cave now. The sun had risen, and judging by the birdsong echoing down its entrance, it was close to morning.

             The Hero was staring straight ahead, face surprisingly sober-looking. As the Guide looked at them — hair tangled, lip split, covered in blue spores (oh, hell, were those in his hair too?) — he found that, despite the energetic exterior, they looked pitiful. And shaken up.

He decided the appropriate course of action was to apologize.

“I’m sorry. About earlier. I... should have had more patience. You’re new to this world.”

He'd be more clear about when it was time to stop next time.

They gave him a shaky smile. 

“Nah. I should be sorry, right? I was the one who got us into this mess.”

The Guide swallowed miserably. 

But I’m your guide, he wanted to- he thought. It’s my job to keep you safe.

The Hero bopped him on the shoulder as they passed him up through the cave entrance. 

They ran into the daylight with a whooping noise, but the Guide stayed behind, taking a moment to stare down into the darkness of the cave mouth.

No more caves, he thought. Not until the Hero had armor, at least.

On the fourth day after his return, the Guide went into town to get supplies for the Dryad’s latest expedition.

They’re becoming more frequent, he thought with a grimace. Undoubtedly because of the changes Terraria had undergone recently. The Dryad had always been prone to leaving suddenly, keen on keeping tabs on the state of its ecosystem, and was always gone for months at a time. 

More often than not, she’d come back with curios she’d saved for him on her travels: a sprig of deathweed from the corruption, a jar of spores from the cloying depths of the jungle, a feather from a harpy ( how the hell did she even get that? )—the souvenirs built up in his cabinet, cluttering them over time with a strange assortment of odds and ends. It was like having the top inch of the tallest mountains and pebbles from the deepest of caves right in his closet.

He supposed, with no small amount of fondness, that it was her own way of showing affection. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to throw any of them away.

(That, and he didn’t have the courage to find out what she’d do to him if he ever did.)

This time, she’d made her plans of setting off known as soon as she’d dropped off the fireblossom. She had sensed the astronomical change in Terraria’s energy, and apparently, that was how she’d put two and two together that the ball had finally dropped, the Wall of Flesh had been awoken, and he’d unintentionally been put down by the Hero’s sword.

Now she needed to pinpoint where the Hallow had spawned, but that land was difficult to navigate even for her. The monsters that inhabited it were technicolor war machines, and as much as it pained her to embrace modernity, she’d need proper medical supplies from the Nurse if she hoped to come back in one piece.

She’d asked him to go into town and get them, and although he knew better than to question a request from a Dryad, it still irritated him. Could she really not pick up on the undercurrent of tension that had rippled through the town in his wake? He knew they found her a bit off-putting, but they hated-

They feared him. For now.

The nights are getting cooler , he mused, as he walked down the dirt path leading to the Nurse’s office. There was no need to bring a torch with him—the moon hung over town square like a watchful eye, and he walked by the light of its rays. It was late enough to where he was sure she’d have no customers that would be scared off by his presence, but not early enough in the morning that she’d be closing up and heading to bed.

He stopped just outside of the steps leading to its front door. Lamplight was glowing through the glass transom, but he couldn’t hear any movement from inside. 

An uncharacteristic prickle of nervousness ran down his spine. He hadn’t seen any of the other townspeople in close to a week, and their last confrontation had left a poor taste in his mouth. Not that he had  thought telling them he was the monster responsible for nearly killing the Hero wouldn’t, but he had no other way to explain how his home had caught alight the same night the Hero crawled up from the Underworld—nor the cloak he donned now that marked him as part of it.

Maybe he should come back later. Wait for tensions to simmer down further.

He steeled his nerves as he caught himself putting the visit off. He’d been doing it all day—first by telling himself the Dryad could use an extra day of rest, then with the notion that it was better to avoid alarming the townsfolk by coming during the busy hours. He needed to get this over with already.

The Guide put his hand on the doorknob, forcing himself to turn it. He stepped into a quiet parlor—wooden, well-lit, and decorated so minimally that it looked almost bare. The Nurse was lounging behind the counter, reading a magazine, but she straightened when she heard the shopkeeper’s bell above the door chime. Her face fell by a fraction when she saw the Emissary walk in.

“Oh, Wyatt…” she said slowly, eyes drawn to the cape. “Hello. What can I do for you?”

Her voice was soft and uncertain. He didn’t blame her: she must have just recently put together why he’d come in so often with lava burns, and was unsure of what to make of his new role.

She’s not the only one, he thought.

He nodded cordially.

“Good evening, Nurse. I just came in to get some supplies.”

The Guide feigned a polite look out of the window. “Sorry, I hope it’s not too late?”

The Nurse closed her magazine with fervor, letting it fall to the table with new bravado. “Nope, not at all! I don’t close up for another hour or so.”

She hopped off of her bench, pulling open drawers left and right.

“What can I get ya?” she asked roughly.

Well. At least it wasn’t outright animosity. 

The Guide walked up to the counter, idly watching her root through her supply cabinet.

“Not for me, for the Dryad. She’s going on another one of her expeditions.”

The Nurse looked up at him for the first time, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re kidding. Didn’t she just come back yesterday?”

The Guide’s lip turned up. 

“I know. But she’s already going off again to-” he cut himself off before he could mention the Hallow, “find some ingredient for an enchantment,” he covered smoothly. “She’ll need enough healing potions to last her for a week or so. Some bandages, medical supplies, and the like would also be appreciated.”

The Nurse sighed, pulling up medical-grade sutures and bandages from the drawers behind the front desk, putting them on the counter.

“That girl never rests, does she? Always in town one day and out of it the other. We worry about her, you know, honestly… This is the first time she’s ever asked for medical supplies, though. Is where she’s heading that dangerous?”

YES.

“I’m not sure. She wouldn’t mention where she’s going, but who’s to say this is for her? Maybe she’s going to visit a great, injured beast, or something,” he replied, before adding gently “But I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s always come back before.”

The Nurse hummed appreciatively, bending over to write some log of his purchase into the account book.

“I saw her hanging like a bat from the great Oak tree in town center last night. Is that how she sleeps? Honestly, I’m not even sure if she’s human.” she quipped.

They shared a chuckle at that. Probably for different reasons, but the Guide felt himself loosening up. He was surprised at how well the Nurse had taken his transformation—he was expecting this meeting to go much worse.

“Say, Wyatt, does that… cape... ever come off?”

Oh. There it was .

She had tried to frame it as a casual question, but she refused to look him in the eye as she said it, and was shifting from foot to foot. His smile became strained.

“No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

“Ah…”

An awkward silence hung in the air, before the Nurse clicked her pen and set it onto the countertop.

“Alright, it seems like I’m running low on healing potions, so I’m going to go place an order for a new shipment over at Edmund’s place. The merchant’s shop is just a hop away, so I’ll go swing by real quick, and once I come back with the potions I’ll bill you. Would you mind waiting a minute or two?”

“No, I don’t mind at all. Thank you.”

The Nurse nodded, giving him a stiff smile, before heading into the backroom. The Guide heard the sound of a door opening, and he assumed she left through the back entrance.

He sighed, looking around the room aimlessly. That could have gone… worse. He was stupid to think that she wouldn’t ask him about the cloak at all, especially not with how he had seen her eyeing it earlier, but he was glad she had at least stayed away from the subject of his hands. 

… And that she had bothered to swap pleasantries with him.

He knew he’d have to reintegrate into society at some point. He wasn’t a fool.

But it would probably be in his best interest to wait for a while before doing so. Show the townspeople that he meant no harm, in spite of what he did to the Hero. 

He examined the materials on the countertop: some bandages, gauze, sutures. Insect repellent—he could use some of that for himself, honestly. He hadn’t noticed she had new wares in stock since the last time he’d visited. Maybe he should come here more often- I mean, she was the only person in town aside from the Dryad who hadn’t iced him out, and it might pay to show her that he was harmless.

He was mentally forming his plan for societal reintegration when the shopkeeper’s bell at the front door rang. The Guide jumped.

“ What are you doing here?” 

A harsh voice barked at him from behind.

The Guide turned around, seeing a familiar figure standing in the doorway, propping it open with a well-muscled arm. The Arms Dealer stared at him icily.

Oh, great. The local firearms lunatic. 

The Guide cursed his luck. Out of everyone who could have showed up to the Nurse’s office in the ten minutes he was going to be here, it had to be the person who had taken every opportunity to make it known that he openly hated his guts.

The Guide nodded stiffly.

“Arms Dealer.”

Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing his signature trench coat, leaving his arms bared by the sleeveless red shirt underneath. 

Good. The Guide knew he kept his weaponry in there. Less guns to shoot me with.

The Arms Dealer let the shop door close, cracking his leather-covered knuckles.

“I said, what are you doing here? ” his tone was more aggressive this time. 

The Emissary regarded him with an indifferent cool. His human adversary may have had a few inches on him in this form, but the Guide was no weakling, and the Arms Dealer didn’t know what he was capable of.

The answer wasn’t actually all that much, but he could still use that ignorance to his advantage.

“Just picking up medical supplies. That’s all.”

He spoke curtly in an attempt to avoid confrontation. Just because he wasn’t going to back down from a fight didn’t necessarily mean he felt like getting shot in the foot today, either.

The Arms Dealer laughed with derision.

“Really? Not sneaking around, planning to finish what you started with the Hero?”

The Guide clenched his teeth, forcing himself to speak slowly.

“I assure you, I have no ill-intent. I’m only here because the Dryad requested I get her some necessary medical supplies.”

Somehow, his attempts to calm the Arms Dealer down only succeeded in bristling him further.

( Was it the facial expression? The Guide thought to himself. I’ll need to get better at controlling those .)

“Likely fuckin’ story, mate. The Dryad hates this place. She’d never even step foot near one of our modern shops. I know she wouldn’t use any of our medical supplies. ”

The Arms Dealer stepped closer, and the Guide couldn’t help but step back. Even when he wasn’t packing heat, the Arms Dealer cut a frightening figure. 

“You have some real nerve showing your face around here again after what you did.”

The Guide grimaced. Oh, wonderful. He was being pulled into a confrontation. This was exactly what he was afraid of.

“I always knew there was something off about you. I fuckin’ called it! Just like how I called the Eye of Cthulhu, or the King Slime, or the Clothier, god. But did anyone listen to me? No.”

As the Arms Dealer accosted him, the Guide studied his movements, trying to assess how to best de-escalate the situation. Screw the medical supplies. He could come back for them another day. If he didn’t get away from here now, he would either pop a blood vessel, or have one popped for him via uppercut.

The Guide looked to the Arms Dealer’s hands: they were trembling.

That can’t be good.

The Arms Dealer took a step closer, raising a finger to point at him.

“And look where it got us! The Hero just barely resuscitated from the brink of death, and the rest of us living in fear of what you’ll do next. I don’t know what you’re thinking, coming back to town like nothing happened. Do you know what you’re doing to the townsfolk? How much weird shit has been happening since you came back?”

The Guide stayed silent, backed against the countertop.

“ Answer me, motherfucker! ”

The Guide... started laughing. The Arms Dealer’s eyebrows furrowed, and he stared, open-mouthed, swinging wildly between extremely angry and... extremely confused. 

“... What? What are you laughing at?”

The Arms Dealer was looking more alarmed by the second.

When the Guide managed to pull himself together, he gave the Arms Dealer a hateful smile, tilting his head to the side.

“What do you want me to say? That you were right?” he chuckled, “You were right, Arms Dealer! You called it, long before anyone else had a clue. I’m a monster! Congratulations. Actually, I’m impressed. I have no idea how you called it, but you were right! ”

The Arms dealer balled his fists, biting his lip.

“Listen to me-” he started, but the Emissary cut him off.

“No you listen to me, Arms Dealer. I might be patient, but even I have my limits. I may not have intentions of harming anyone in town, but that is subject to change. ” he hissed.

The Arms Dealer clenched his teeth, looking a little wild. The Guide, laughing as he was earlier, was now glaring at him with a look that could melt iron. Distantly, he mused that the two of them must have looked like two animals, sizing each other up before a fight, waiting for the other to make the first lunge.

It didn’t come. Instead, the Arms Dealer quietly seethed, before saying.

“Except for the fucking Hero, right?”

This time, he hit his mark.

“Don’t.” the Guide breathed. “Don’t talk about the Hero.”

The Arms Dealer paid him no mind. The explosive anger within him had cooled into venom.

“You don’t think I know what you’re doing to them, you manipulative little creep? That none of us have caught on to how you’ve made them dependent on you? That you think they’re some pawn in your fucking ‘ cosmic game ’ bullshit?”

The Guide’s face heated up. He dug his nails into the countertop.

“You don’t know anything about the Hero and I.” he spat dangerously, curling his lip up.

The backdoor swung open, and the Emissary and the Arms Dealer were temporarily snapped out of their quarrel. The Nurse walked in a moment later, carrying a crate of about a hundred or so glass jars, each scarlet-red and glass-bright in the lamplight. She raised an eyebrow, seeming to pick up on the tense atmosphere.

“Andre? I didn’t- what are you doing here?”

The Arms Dealer laughed. It was raucous, and cold, and aggressive, just like the person behind it—and it was giving the Guide a headache. He could hear his pulse in his ears.

“Nothing, Allison. Just pointing out that I know for a fuckin’ fact , that at the end of the day—Wyatt?” he pointed to the Emissary, who was angrily recoiling away from the countertop, looking like a feral cat.

 “Wyatt hurt the hero more than any of the monsters he promised to protect them from ever did. He didn’t warn them about what they’d find in the underworld, and he didn’t tell any of us what would happen after.” 

The Nurse’s face grew panicked. She set the crate of potions down onto the table, looking at the Arms Dealer with a flinty expression.

“Andre, that’s enough.” she warned.

He ignored her, continuing on.

“He’s been hiding that he’s the Wall of fucking Flesh since Day one! He lied, to all of us! And he’s still keeping secrets!”

He turned back to the Guide.

“Fuck! You didn’t even bother sticking around town to make sure they were okay afterwards. Are you that cruel? That you’d just turn your back on the person who’d do fucking anything for you once you’re- you’re done with them ? !”

The Guide’s eyes were burning. He knew anger was an emotion he’d felt before, but what he felt now was nauseating. 

“ ANDRE! ” the Nurse yelled.

He looked at her with regret.

“Don’t push him.”

The Arms Dealer took a deep breath, face becoming stony. He had one last thing to say.

“They were always too good for you, you know.”

The Guide leapt over, balling his fist up, and struck him square in the jaw.

So, the Guide thought to himself as he sipped at his tea the next day. He had failed to show the townspeople that he was harmless.

He supposed it should have been predictable enough that punching the Arms Dealer would have been framed as an attack. It was suspicious enough that the gunsmith didn’t just wipe the floor with the Guide in the Nurse’s Office last night, but the Guide had chalked it up to his new, fearsome status as the Emissary—but this morning he’d realized that if the Arms Dealer had retaliated, it would have been a demonstration of the fact that the townsfolk, at large, were an even match for him; that he wasn’t as dangerous as they thought he was.

Damn that clever bastard , the Guide thought. Did he plan this?

The Guide sat at his kitchen table, staring out the window. Although his home was a good deal smaller and farther away from town than most of the others, the Hero had made sure to build a window that gave him a direct view of the town square. (His one-room dwelling was built on the cliffside bordering the town to that end.)

He had been watching through it since the previous night—first too angry to sleep, and then, too- Too vigilant. Near sunrise they had begun to congregate in front of the great oak tree at its center: first the Arms Dealer and the Tavernkeep at the crack of dawn, then the Demolitionist had walked out of the bar to join them. Half an hour later, the Stylist had passed by the oak, and after conversing briefly, was convinced to stay. The Angler was starting to peep out from behind the Nurse’s office, looking curious, but he was scared off when its sole occupant had gone out to talk to the crowd.

The Guide’s brow furrowed as the Nurse and the Arms Dealer shared a few aggressive-looking gestures, but in the end, she went back inside her office, looking listless.

By the time early noon rolled around, half of the town had joined them. The Arms Dealer and the Tavernkeep began recruiting in earnest by ten o’ clock in the morning, recounting what the Guide assumed was the story of how the Arms Dealer had been brutalized last night with zeal. The Guide could spot the ginger hair of the mechanic, pacing nervously at the edge of the crowd, the indigo turban of the dye trader looking vaguely displeased, the painter wiping a pallet knife on his apron...

He’d go down himself and check to see if the Tinkerer was within their ranks, but—he swallowed, sizing up the crowd.

Not that he was scared to check on why several of the townspeople were gathering down there, looking very angry, with torches and pitchforks and… semi-automatics, or anything.

Not at all. He just didn’t want to agitate the crowd further, is all.

When they began to move westward, towards his house, the Guide stood up in alarm. Tea spilled from his mug with how hard his hands had slammed the table, but he paid it no mind—he watched their advancement like a hawk. 

Led by the Tavernkeep, they began moving closer in a disturbing march. Their facial expressions were grave: brows furrowed, eyes baleful, lips pulled into a thin line.

Oh my god, this was it. He had lasted five days of walking the knife’s edge. They were going to kill him.

The Guide grabbed his satchel from its place on his coat rack and shoved several of his most prized books inside of it. He razed his cabinets, trying to determine which of the Dryad’s tokens would be most useful while he was fleeing from town, before just haphazardly grabbing a fistful and cramming them into the side compartment. 

(When he burnt his hand on the fireblossom, he waved it around wildly, cooling his fingers on his tongue. He didn’t have the time for this, damn it! )

What else would he need if he was going to live the rest of his life out as a mountain hermit, isolated from society? He grabbed the Emissary’s cloak from his chair, fastening it around himself at record speeds, before realizing he still had his pyjamas on. Shit, how am I going to climb over the mountain in these?!

Oh, to hell with it, he thought, pulling his hiking boots on over them anyways. He didn’t have time!

What else, what else?

He looked at the provisions lining his pantry, but he realized he’d have to leave Linen 101 and The Encyclopedia of Bookcloth behind to fit any of them in his bag. His eyes darkened. Not an option. He could just hunt for wild game.

Speaking of hunting: he pulled his bow and quiver from their place at his bedside, fastening both over the emissary’s cloak in the rush. 

Books. Tokens. Cloak. Quiver. 

What else did he need? He was only skipping town and disappearing into the woods forever. It’s not like he’d need much. Calming tea would be a nice addition, but that could be brewed from mountain herbs.

The Hero could do without him, he thought, struggling to hook his bow over the cluster of arrows he’d packed into his quiver. They’d broken past the Wall. His job had long-since been over. The Hero could figure out what to do from here—and besides, it’s not like they would be lonely. The townspeople adored them.

For some reason, the thought sent a pang of despair through him, but the Emissary shoved it down.

The Guide scurried over to peer out of the window before he bolted out of the front door, but to his amazement, the crowd had stopped. A hundred or so yards away, the Hero stood in front of them, blocking their way. They held a long, cobalt-colored sword in an outstretched hand—the Muramasa—preventing the throng of people from advancing any further. 

It looked like they were trying to placate them, the Guide observed, face pressed against the glass. He watched as the Hero dispersed the crowd. They waved the Muramasa around wildly, which deterred a few citizens, but the crowd remained mostly unbroken until the Hero got closer to exchange words with the tavernkeep personally. 

They drove their blade into the earth, leaning on it comfortably. Whatever the terms they were outlining, the tavernkeep seemed to consider them for a moment before reluctantly agreeing. 

The mob slowly began to scatter, breaking off into pairs and groups of three. The Tavernkeep, Arms Dealer, and Demolitionist all retreated into the tavern, and the dye trader, mechanic, and painter followed them soon after, successfully diverted. The Guide breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, however, the Hero pulled their blade from the ground, tucking it away in its sheath, and began their ascent on the steps to the Guide’s home—alone.

The Guide felt his stomach lurch. He hurried to yank off his weaponry, placing it haphazardly onto the kitchen table. Arrows spilled onto the floor, but he would pick those up later. He shrugged off his satchel, throwing it onto the bed, and was about to straighten his cloak just as there was a knock on his door.

“Oh, lord…” he muttered.

The Guide rubbed his temples, trying to ground himself. He walked over to the door, before pausing as a realization dawned upon him. The Hero was still carrying a weapon—not one quite as potent as the blade they’d use to slay him in the Underworld, but one that was still perfectly capable of slicing into the squishy meat vessel he was currently inhabiting. 

Did they- did they come here to finish the job personally?

His head reeled. He didn’t take them for the type of person who was keen on revenge, but he knew beneath the softhearted exterior laid an iron core. If anything threatened the safety of the town they’d built, they would make sure it was eradicated in the end, gentle nature be damned.

“I may not have intentions of harming anyone in town, but that is subject to change.”

Damn his running mouth. There was little chance the Arms Dealer wouldn’t have let that slide without telling the townspeople. The Hero had most certainly heard about it by now.

It was just something he’d said out of impulse! He didn’t actually mean it!

Another knock came from the door, and the Guide opened it hesitantly.

In front of him stood the Hero. Although they still had their sword strapped to their belt, they had taken their armor off, electing instead to wear a simple, tattered flannel. Their facial expression was unreadably neutral beneath the brim of their straw hat, but as soon as the door swung open they stared at him quizzically.

“Hero. It’s good to see you up and about.”

The Nurse had managed to sew up all of the places where the Wall’s hungry mouths had torn them apart, and the healing potions had done their job: it seemed as if their injuries sustained from the fight had already faded into scar tissue, and even those were just silver slivers.

They nodded, hesitantly. “... You too.”

You could cut the tension in the air with a knife, the Guide mused, before carefully pulling the door open further.

“...Would you like to come in? I have tea and apples, but not much else in the form of snacks, I’m afraid.”

Or food in general , he thought, but the Hero didn’t need to know that he hadn’t been by the market at all.

As the Hero’s gaze shifted to them, he realized with some embarrassment that they weren’t very appetizing: their brilliant crimson color had been tarnished by maturity, fading to withered rust. The Guide looked back to the Hero, who had poked their head into the door to look at them. He hoped it was the thought that counted.

“Have you tried them yourself?” they asked.

The Guide shook his head.

“I’m afraid not, but you’re welcome to take some from me.”

“... I think I’ll pass.”

The silence in the air was deafening. The Hero stared at him, saying nothing, and the Guide shifted on his feet. Suddenly they spoke up.

“Sorry, are you. Wearing silk pyjamas and hiking boots?”

“...I must have been sleepwalking.”

The Hero raised an eyebrow.

“With your cloak on?”

The Guide coughed. “What? It’s comfortable.”

The Hero chuckled lowly, and the Guide felt the tension leave his body.

What was he thinking? The Hero, raising their blade against him? He was seriously out of it. 

“... How are your wounds?” he asked tentatively,

The Hero folded their arms nervously, avoiding leaning against the doorway like they’d done so many times before.

Still upset.

“They’re okay. Nurse Allison, got me uh, good as new. Right as rain.”

Their gaze trailed to the Guide’s arms. 

“Are your hands-”

“They’re fine as well. The coloring on my arms is nothing to be concerned about. It’s just a product of my-” the Guide avoided mentioning his second death , “revival.” he finished breathily.

A silence hung in the air, and the Guide searched for something to say—something tactful, something that would placate the Hero’s uncertainty while drip-feeding them information to get them to trust him again, but not reveal too much about what the Emissary knew—

But the Hero beat him to the punch.

“How could you not tell me?” they demanded. The intensity of it shocked him.

“I…” Something that won’t tip them off. Something that would make it clear you aren’t a threat. Something to get them to trust you again. “If there was another way, I would have taken it. I didn’t want to fight you.”

“I don’t care about the fight.” they argued.

Oh, lord. Just what he was afraid of.

“I just can’t believe that you didn’t… tell me you were born in, in the Underworld. Do you know how upset everyone is? That if you had just- told us, this could have been, avoided, maybe?”

The Guide’s jaw firmed as he crossed his arms. Oh, sure. Next time I approach a human township I’ll be upfront about being the keeper to the gates of Hell. I’m sure that will go over well.

The Hero continued rambling. It was as if a floodgate had opened, everything that had been brewing over the past five days was coming to the surface in a jumbled, incomprehensible stream.

“And what you did to Andre-”

“I didn’t attack him unprovoked .” the Guide hissed.

“I know. I know you didn’t,” their voice had raised a few octaves, “But have you considered, that maybe everyone’s pitchforks and torches and whatever are out now because you didn’t bother to explain that you weren’t a threat? You just, dropped that bomb on us that you were the Wall of Flesh , and that you were testing me, and then left?! ”

The Guide felt his hands shaking. He took a deep breath before answering.

“I didn’t want to incense them further. I thought I’d give the situation some time to settle down.”

The Hero looked angry. 

The way it distorted their features was alien to the Guide. He’d never seen them this furious before, and something in him shrunk down as it sunk in that it was directed at him.

“You’d hide up here and wait for me to clear it up, you mean.” they said with frustration.

The Guide felt his face heat up. 

“You are under no obligation to protect me. I can handle this on my own.” He said coldly.

The Hero put their arms up, gesturing wildly.

“So what was I supposed to do? Let them just drive you out?!”

They sighed, rubbing their temples.

“I just—can you please just make an effort to communicate with them? Show them that you’re not, I don’t know, going to, burn the town down in their sleep?” the Hero pleaded, before adding, “They set up a twenty-four hour watch, y’know.”

A twenty-four hour watch, like he was just waiting in the shadows, ready to strike. Like he would strike. Like the thought had even crossed his mind.

The Guide felt venom building up on his tongue. He wanted to… to say something that would inflict pain.

“In case you forgot: I am not your Guide anymore.” he declared sharply.

This is a terrible idea, he thought as he spoke, you are burning the only bridge that quite possibly stands between you and getting stoned by a horde. But he couldn’t stop.

He straightened up, pulling the tassels on his cape tighter, feeling a cold comfort in the crimson cloak wrapping itself around him.

“My job with you is done. You are free to do as you please. You owe me nothing.”

It was, as clearly as the Guide could elucidate it, a rejection. 

The Hero’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Apparently, it had rung clear as day. The Guide became uncomfortably aware that they were holding a sword.

“Are you not living in the house I built for you? Eating the- the fruits that I watered?”

They unsheathed the Muramasa, holding it up to the light, and the Guide backed away.

“Is this- is this not, the sword that you gave to me?”

Their voice was getting strained.

Distantly, he realized that everything had been building up to this. He’d known he’d have to break the news to the Hero at some point since the very beginning. He knew he’d never be a permanent fixture in their life, that his time with the townspeople was limited—he just didn’t expect to be resurrected to deal with the aftermath. Why was it bothering him now?

The Hero opened their mouth as if they were going to say something more, but instead… 

Whatever their argument had been building towards, it halted in its tracks. They simply shook their head, beginning to walk away, like the Guide was a lost cause.

Damn it. You idiot. Too far.

“Hero, wait, I-” the Guide stepped out of the doorway,  reaching out to grab their arm on instinct before stopping himself. The Hero turned around, steadying themselves on the handrail as they watched him vacantly from the first stair down.

“I’m sorry, alright?” he stammered. “For not telling you that I was... I didn’t think you’d go through with it if I had.”

The Hero gave him a remorseful smile.

“I guess we’ll see if you are, Emissary. If you- if the townsfolk don’t lose their fear of you… We might have to relocate you.”

When The Guide wakes up the next day, miserable, cocooned in the quilt he slept in, and fully expecting to find a dead crow or some other sort of small prey animal on his doorstep (how the Dryad had learned to express her displeasure), he is instead pleasantly surprised to find a small sachet of tea leaves waiting for him on his windowsill.

There’s a note attached to them, scrawled in the Dryad’s unsteady handwriting.

My name is Titania. You’ve still got me.

A smile settles on his face—a rare, genuine, gentle one. It immediately turns into a grimace when he flips the note over.

“Tell anyone and I’ll slit your throat? ... Lord, Titania, you don’t pull punches, do you?”

Chapter Text

"I am Cassandra—she who, without asking,

understood it all and still came to her fate,

I, Cassandra, full of visions,

who sees her own death without turning away,

and hears in the night the day that follows."

- Gabriela Mistral, Madwomen

“Woah! Did you see how far down that glowstick went? I can’t even see it at the bottom.”

The Hero leaned over the edge of the tree hollow, marveling at how far down the trunk went. The opening they were peering over was close to the crown, and nearly the size of their home, but even that was comparatively small to the size of the tree in general. The cavern it opened into was enormous. 

Enormous wasn’t the proper word to describe it, actually—there were plenty of enormous trees in the woodlands they'd come from. They’d built their house out of an enormous tree. 

This thing- being- stood on the mountaintop like a leviathan among sardines. The trunk of it alone had to have been a hundred feet across, and it only stretched upwards from there. Its crown didn’t brush the cotton-colored underbellies of the clouds passing the summit—it soared high above them, colossal branches weaving around one another to shelter flocks of birds within an organic latticework. The echoes of their warbling were carried down by the wind, faintly audible even on the ground, but up close like this it was like listening to a disjointed (but enthusiastic) choir.

Surprisingly, it had been Wyatt who'd dragged them on the outing this time—he and the Hero had climbed to the summit of the mountain cradling their shoreline home, and had spotted the trunk of it disappearing into the cloud cover from the peak of the next one over. At the time, he'd excitedly spieled off something about historical texts inside that the Hero had gotten… most of. 

A dwelling tree, he had called it. The seeds of it had been sown with Terrarian magic , enabling them to continue growing for as long as they weren’t cut down. Originally, they had only been as tall as the canopy surrounding it, but over the years where the others had reached their natural height or rotted away due to disease, the dwelling trees only kept siphoning Terraria’s m agical pulse from the ground, growing larger and larger with the passage of time. They had once served as markers—visible only to those who had a keen eye for magical detection—for the treasures and passageways that were tunneled around their root systems.

Beside them, Wyatt grimaced.

"Yes," their guide agreed, before reaching out and tugging them back by their armour, "yes, I did. I was sitting right next to you. Don't fall into the tree hollow- if you thought the trunk was enormous, just wait until you see the tunnel system beneath it.”

The Hero turned to look at him with a grin.

"Aww, are you worried about me- oof!"

Wyatt socked them on the arm, and the Hero felt the force of it bump them through the tin of their shoulder plate. For someone so slight, their guide had a grisly left hook.

"You’re full of it. It would just be a shame to dent your new armor, is all… We still have rope left, right?”

“Oh, let me check.”

The Hero wiped their brow with the back of their arm, but it didn’t do much good — the dirt and sweat that had accumulated there was just smeared around by the metal of their gauntlet. 

They retreated back from the opening, electing to sit down while they rummaged around their bag for the material. They weren’t careful: it’s not like either of them were in danger of falling off—they may have been perched on a branch hundreds of feet into the air, but it was wide enough across to support a small army. 

“Oh, no, I think we used all of it climbing up here…” the Hero laughed awkwardly, before adding “Sorry, I guess I didn’t pack enough.”

Wyatt crawled over to join them, wrapping his arms around his knees. As he did, the Hero reclined, splaying out luxuriously next to him. 

On a cloudless day like this, sunlight was able to shine through the leaves, dappling the brim of the Hero’s hat. The wind was more violent at this altitude, and it was shaking the smaller branches and battering some of the unfortunate birds on them, but up here in the crown all the Hero could feel was a gentle breeze on their face. It was a nice respite from the tumultuous climb up.

The Hero turned to look at their guide, only to see him tipping his head back to feel the sun on his face. His eyes were closed.

“It’s alright. We can just reuse the length I scaled to get up here,” Wyatt replied after some time, cracking his neck, “though, I’m not sure how safe the trip down will be...” 

The Hero massaged their wrist, and he glanced at them with a raised brow.

“I take it you’re not keen on using your grappling hook to go into the hollow?”

Their face twisted at the thought, and they shook their hand out.

“I don’t want to use this grappling hook to do anything,” they murmured, “If I knew it was going to leave my hand so sore, I wouldn’t have bothered making it.”

The two of them had spent the better part of the day climbing up, and it was beginning to show: the Hero was rarely winded, but the strain of having to make their way up the tree with their grappling hook to secure the rope Wyatt would climb up left a dull burn in their shoulders that they were eager to shake off. Their hands, while not marred by the same rope burns that were on their guide’s, were throbbing with a dull ache from suspending themselves on the grappling hook.

Concern flitted across Wyatt’s face, and for a brief moment, the Hero felt a twinge of guilt for complaining.

“You’re still going to be able to swing your sword around, right?” he asked, “There’s no telling what we’ll run into down there.”

Ugh. Nevermind . 

They were disappointed, but not surprised. Of course all he was thinking about was the scrolls.

The Hero rolled over onto their side with a dramatic flair, flopping their sore arm onto the branch between them.

“I’m injured, and all you can think about is how useful I’ll be? That’s cold, even for you.” they moaned dejectedly.

Wyatt was not buying it.

“You’re fine,” he replied calmly, not bothering to look at them, “drink a healing potion if you’re in any serious pain.”

Wyatt turned away to root through his bag, and, like so many times before, the Hero was seized with the uncontrollable urge to mess with him.

With an agile roll, the Hero flopped onto Wyatt’s shoulder, going limp. Unaccustomed to carrying anything heavier than a quiver of arrows as he was, their guide sank down easily underneath their weight. 

“What are you- get off of me!”

“I’m injured, Wyatt. You’re gonna have to carry me down there if you want to go exploring.” they said. 

Wyatt tried to push them off, but they only flopped down further, turning into dead weight.

“Like hell you are! If you don’t- HERO- If you don’t sit up straight I’ll push you off of this tree myself!”

They crossed their arms mirthfully. 

“Oh, really? Who’d be there to ‘swing their sword around’ then?” They prodded.

Wyatt attempted to crawl away on his hands with a strangled noise of annoyance, but didn’t succeed. He may not have possessed the frailty his build implied, but it was still the Hero who had been carrying their supplies on their journeys; who had laid the logs of their home, who had chopped their firewood in the afternoons.

If Wyatt had been the direction behind the swing of a blade, or the strike of a pickaxe, it was the Hero’s arm who had been lifting it; the one whose muscles strained with the force of cleaving the rock open. The heaviest object they had seen their guide lift in the past month was a stack of books.

That’s what you get for making me do all of the work , they thought to themselves.

The Hero put a hand to their forehead for dramatic effect.

“Is that all you see me as, Wyatt?” they wailed, “As a sword for you to use? A pack horse at your disposal?”

They meant none of it, of course. But it was still a lot of fun.

“Stars above, why are you like this?!”

“I’m more than just my sword, you know. I feel objectified!”

Wyatt sighed, giving up. By now he had flopped limply onto the branch of the tree. The Hero was lying on top of him, making the two of them back-to-back.

“Hero, you know that’s not-” his words trailed off, before he hissed in pain.

The sound sent a prickle of alarm through the Hero, and they scrambled off of him. The lighthearted air about them gave way to concern.

Shoot, too far.

“Sorry, I wasn’t being- are you okay?”

The Hero had recoiled as soon as they heard the noise, but they were still watching him, trying to determine if they had caused- if Wyatt was injured. Wyatt got up into a kneel, looking over the backs of his own balled fists, before slowly uncurling them.

The color may not have been as startling as it would have been in full sunlight, but they could still see the red beginning to seep out of the rope burns he’d obtained earlier. The skin that had been rubbed raw had been scoured clean off.

The guilt that blazed through them was instant.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to- I forgot about- I’m sorry.”

The rope burns! They were an idiot, how could they have forgotten about them? 

They didn’t look serious earlier, but they must have been scraped open while Wyatt was trying to push them off, grating against the jagged teeth of the bark. The Hero hadn’t realized their armor was that heavy. 

Wyatt had said something during their first weeks here, about learning to control themselves. At first they couldn’t be certain if it was really because their capabilities truly were beyond human, or if their guide was just unwilling to admit his own lack of skill with the axe and sword, but. But they supposed it didn’t matter — not if they were going to draw blood, either way.

Wyatt grimaced, but didn’t raise his voice to snap at them.

He did something much worse, instead.

“It’s alright, Hero. You don’t know your limits yet.” he said quietly.

He turned back around to them, giving them what they assumed was supposed to be a casual smile.

“I’m not upset with you. It’s not your fault… So, er- stop doing that thing with your eyes.”

“What? What thing?” 

The Hero touched a gloved fingertip to their eyes, and realized that they had begun to tear up. They wiped it away with the back of their hand furiously.

“Whatever! I don’t care about that,” they blurted out, “Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding?”

Wyatt began to look uncomfortable, shielding his hands with his body.

“It’s nothing to be concerned over. They’re only friction burns.” he looked at them quizzically. “Really, they’re nothing.”

Indignant fury bubbled up from somewhere within them.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?! Your hands have gaping wounds now!” 

Wyatt gave them an irritated look. 

“Which can easily be mended. You’re making an unnecessarily big deal out of this.”

The Hero stared at him in disbelief. The guilt was quickly pulled under a riptide of exasperation.

“I’m not- it is a big deal! Doesn’t it hurt?”

Wyatt’s jaw tightened as he took his bloody palms, and dragged them across the fabric of his pants. Most of the dirt and blood that was caught in the wounds was wiped away, but the Hero watched his hands begin to tremble a little with the strain of it. If the Hero was being honest, the thought of doing that themselves made them a little bit ill. They were sure it must have burned.

“No. So stop being a child, and calm down.” he gritted out.

The Hero opened their mouth, before shutting it again, trying to conjure up something to say to that. They couldn’t tear their eyes away from the red staining the cloth of his jeans. 

“I’m- I’m not being a child. You’re being a child!” They said carefully, “You don’t- you can’t decide what is, and isn’t a big deal, to me.” 

It wasn’t the most articulate way of putting it, but they couldn’t find the right words to say in the moment. 

At that, Wyatt only turned away, electing to root through his bag for healing potions instead of further engaging them. 

Their eyes narrowed — was he seriously going to try and douse his own hands just to prove a point?

The Hero sat cross-legged behind him.

“Give me your hands. I’ll pour the potion over them.”

“That won’t be necessary,” He replied rigidly, “I am capable of doing that myself.”

The Hero’s face flushed. Why was he being so stubborn? 

They knew his injuries were their fault, but if he had just- told them they were hurting him, they reasoned, they would have stopped earlier. 

At first being here had been a joyride: they could take out half of the forest in a day, or erect a new home in a matter of hours. Stretching their legs by jumping from treetop to treetop was nothing more than a game to them. They hadn’t noticed it when they were on their own, but waiting for Wyatt to catch up to them during their expeditions after they’d found a pair of Hermes boots was- it was like they were playing tag with the wind, and Wyatt was stuck on the ground, watching them soar high above.

But- somewhere along the way, it began to make them uncomfortable, too. 

“Difficult” wasn't the right word for it — what sent a chill through them was just, how easy it was, to brush up against things in the wrong way. To cause damage to them. The mushroom field incident wasn’t the first of its kind — since then they’d razed forests and collapsed more cave systems than they felt comfortable counting.

A moment of silence passed, and they curled in on themselves, watching Wyatt from under the brim of their straw hat.

The anger began to ebb away. Into its place flooded concern, and then a quiet apprehension. The way his fingers slipped and caught on the tools and papers within was obvious — he was trying to avoid brushing his hands against the cloth lining.

‘No’. What a load of... 

If he was going to blame them, they thought, it would have been easier if he’d just say so outright. They could take an acidic jab or a yelling match. Anything was better than- than stirring in quiet resentment. Than being frozen out. 

Something made a pit of ice form in their stomach.

What if one day they pushed too far, and ended up driving him away?

The thought made their insides churn. Having to figure out how the world worked on their own seemed daunting — but being left alone because they’d hurt the only person they could call a friend in it seemed so much worse. 

Which is. Well, exactly what they’d just done.

“I’m sorry, okay?” they relented, “For messing up your hands… And for messing with you earlier. I know I can- go too far sometimes.”

Wyatt turned back to look at them. His expression was unreadable.

“It’s not that,” he said, “It’s-”

The Hero held out their hand, palm outstretched. A silent invitation.

Wyatt sighed, before scooting closer and putting his hand in theirs. 

The Hero rustled around the pockets of their bag, before fishing out a glittering red vial and a strip of fabric.

They tugged Wyatt’s hand closer, turning it up to the light as they dabbed at the remaining dirt away with the cloth. He winced as they brushed a splinter of bark out of it.

“I just- I thought I was getting better at controlling it.” they muttered quietly.

“You are. It’s a skill that takes time to master, just like any other. You’re already better than you were when you got here. Remember how you used to butcher squirrels by running into them too quickly?"

The Hero grimaced at the memory.

"Well I was, hoping to forget that, actually…"

The Hero soaked the other side of the cloth in the potion and began to dab at Wyatt's hand. 

"The point is-" Wyatt inhaled sharply as the hero pressed a soaked cloth to his palm, at the shock of feeling his skin begin to meld together again underneath it. After a moment, he continued.

 "The point is, you haven't hit any in a while. If that's not evidence enough that you're growing into your role, I don't know what is."

“That’s only because I’m careful now,” they said with frustration, “Am I going to have to walk on eggshells for the rest of my life?”

Wyatt pursed his lips.

“I’m afraid so.”

The Hero wilted. It wasn’t fair.

“But it’ll become easier with time,” Wyatt continued, “At some point, controlling your strength will become second nature. You won’t even realize you’re holding yourself back.”

“How can you be so sure?” they asked dejectedly.

Wyatt gave a knowing little smile, as he retracted his hand, switching it out for the other.

“Hero, have I ever been wrong before?”

The Hero began to clean out the wound.

Wyatt’s hand trembled as the concoction did its work, and the Hero tilted their hat down further in an attempt to avert their gaze. It was making their own palms burn in sympathy.

“Sorry.” they muttered quietly again. “Sorry for um, snapping at you. While you were hurt.”

Wyatt gave them a flinty glare. 

“Stop apologizing," he said sternly, "You’re supposed to save the world. If you’re going to be this much of a pushover forever, we really are doomed.”

“Wh- hey! I’m not a pushover!” they declared, before softening it with “This time was just- on me, y’know?”

Wyatt’s lip turned up, and he rested his chin on his other hand. Their face heated up as they realized he’d been messing with them.

“Oh, whatever,” they huffed. 

They let it go. They needed to ask him something. 

“Wyatt, why didn’t you just let me help you? It was upsetting enough to mess up your hands. And then you just, brushed it off, like it was nothing, and you made them worse…”

As they rambled, Wyatt’s face began to fall.

“You said you didn’t blame me, but then you wouldn’t let me treat you, and- I don’t know. It feels like you do. It kind of feels like you’re punishing me, sometimes.”

The Hero could see the guilt sweep over it in real time.

Good, they thought. It was bittersweet. Now you get it.

“No, that’s not it,” Wyatt said quickly. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts, but he eventually opened his mouth again.

“In the place I come from… help isn’t freely given,” he explained, “especially once you’ve incensed someone.”

The Hero watched him as he spoke with round eyes. 

Wyatt shifted uncomfortably under their gaze as he continued.

“I dislike- I mean- it’s just common practice, to treat one’s wounds alone. It’s discomforting, for you to be in my space while doing so. That’s all.”

“... Where do you come from?”

The Guide laughed slowly, pulling his hands away. 

He stood up, and brushed himself off.

“Nice try, Hero. I’m still not authorized to say that yet.”

Of course. 

They weren’t expecting him to really tell them anything — he was always willing to fork over information about the world around them, but when it came to his origins he’d been unshakably tight-lipped.

Was it worrying? Absolutely. They weren’t a fool — they had enough common sense to know that it warranted some suspicion. They’d been kept up at night when they’d first washed up onto the shores of Terraria, wondering if everything he’d told them was a lie: that the world wasn’t really in any danger, that there was no grand cosmic battle they were destined to fight, that they were playing into some sort of game they couldn’t pick up on.

But Wyatt had never been wrong before, and the Hero hadn’t pinned him as… as someone who’d lie for no reason. Actually, they weren’t even sure if he was capable of lying at all: he'd been shockingly transparent about his intentions and what he wanted them to do since the very beginning, to the point where the Hero had briefly and quietly questioned his sanity.

(It passed, of course, on the first night, when they’d seen the undead rise from the ground.)

Wyatt had never been wrong before — And neither had they been, about him.

From their spot sitting on the tree branch, the Hero considered pursuing that line of questioning. Pushing him for details. They could do it, too — hold the tip of their blade against his neck, demand a straight answer.

But if they were being honest with themselves, they wanted to put off knowing for as long as possible.

“Wyatt, you don’t trust me with anythiiing,” they drew their voice out, “C’mon, who would I even tell?”

Wyatt reached down, and the Hero took his hand, allowing him to help pull them up. The skin there was softer than it had been before- the healing potions had done their work and then some.

Whatever. They were playing into a game, whatever. So they’d have to figure out a way to control their strength — they resolved to worry about it later. What did the world have that sitting in the summer shade next to a friend didn't? For what possible reason could destiny not wait a little longer?

They could trust him. They wanted to trust him.

“I’m not authorized to say that either," Wyatt said, with a touch of amusement, "Now come on. If your wrist is alright, we’ve got a dwelling tree to explore.”

The town the Arms Dealer had settled down in wasn’t particularly nice.

Honestly, it wasn’t—not in terms of build alone. He’d charted half of the map of Terraria and had actually struggled to name a bigger dump. The building style was brutalist, with most of the shops in town looking more like oversized wooden cubes than the rows of market stands that he was used to seeing in commerce districts near the mainland.

(Plus, they all looked the same. What, was the entire town built by the same person, with the same shitty taste in architecture? What kind of animal didn’t even gravel the roads?

At least give the houses proper, slanted roofs, good lord, he thought . Falling rainwater would eat away at the wood paneling and cause leaks in a decade or so. Those leaks would bring mold, which brought rot.)

He felt solidly neutral towards its location—the mountain range cradling its western edge made it nearly inaccessible to the outside world, so they’d never have to worry about goblin invasions or law enforcement officials halting business. On the other hand, the Arms Dealer had already exhausted his list of potential customers in town, and with how difficult the passage through the mountains had been, he couldn’t see new ones coming any time soon.

Being able to feel the ocean breeze on his face when he stepped outside was… nice, but there were plenty of seaside towns—with bigger ports, and easier marks to swindle.

(No one was ever able to tell the difference between lead and silver rounds with a nice coat of paint, he reminisced. Not until the next blood moon, anyways, but by then he and Bazdin would be long gone.)

After a year of trying to justify why he wanted to continue living here, he had given up, and accepted that maybe he just had poor taste. 

Still, whether it was a noble’s estate or a dilapidated fishing town, he was going to protect it. He had tried to, the previous day, when he and the Tavernkeep had led a half-baked inquisition against the Emissary that never came to fruition.

And he certainly didn’t want to see it explode.

“BAZDIN! ” 

The Arms Dealer yelled at the Demolitionist across the empty town square from his hiding spot. Currently, he was crouched behind the walls of the dwarf’s side of their joint artillery shop, peeking out of the front doorway. The Demolitionist popped his head up from behind a table on the opposite end of the town.

 Well — ”head” wasn’t entirely accurate. He could barely see the dwarf’s eyes peeking over the top of it, but years of target practice spent specifically aiming at the yellow hardhat had honed his eyes.

“BAZDIN! ARE YOU CRAZY?! THAT’S OUR HOUSE!”

He was referring to the rudimentary wooden structure that served as the forge he built his firearms in, the walls he concealed them behind, and the town’s only inverted bomb shelter.

(The Demolitionist had insisted on having a place to store his explosives near the back of their shop. The Hero had hesitantly agreed, but only after lining the inside with several layers of dungeon brick.)

Technically, it was only the Demolitionist’s in part—The Arms Dealer had furnished the store himself over the course of a few weeks, building secret compartments within its wooden frame he could stash his ammunition behind. When he was finished with that, he’d decorated it, grooming the structure into something that looked more like a quaint townhouse than a manufacturing site for illicit weaponry.

It was a habit he couldn’t shake from his time in the larger port cities—the nicer the house, the less likely it was to be raided by the town guard.

Still, habit or not, he’d taken great pride in his work—and the Demolitionist had just tossed a fucking grenade right at the crown jewel of their home.

He dove into the nearest corner of the building, covering his ears.

The grenade exploded. This close to the blast, the subsequent shockwave was so loud that it made his eyes water, and he was flattened to the ground by the force of the wind. It sent the door off of its hinges, flinging it violently into the backroom and, judging by what sounded like an ensuing maraca concession, right on top of the stack of bait boxes he organized his bullets in. 

The dust was beginning to settle down when he gritted his teeth, pushing himself up on unsteady hands. The noise of the explosion was nothing compared to how loud the ringing in his ears was now.

It was just a door, he reminded himself. It was just a door. He could reaffix it to its hinges.

He took a deep breath, trying to focus on the ringing. He made an attempt to remember what the Nurse had taught him about mindfulness.

Really, he should be glad it wasn’t anything more serious. If it had landed on the wall he kept his guns hidden behind, he’d actually have a reason to be upset. It was just his ammo boxes- which were now undoubtedly strung about the floor in a chaotic mess, which would take hours to sort through even if the knockoff silver rounds weren’t virtually indistinguishable from the real ones, and…

“BAZDIN! IF WE DON’T DIE HERE I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!”

“AYE,” The reply came in a guttural yell from across the town, but he could barely hear it, “YE’VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS, SHRIMPY!”

The Arms Dealer sunk into himself, pressing the back of his head against the wall. He had spent ten hours painting the patterns on that door. Ten. 

After a moment, he found the resolve to scream back “DID YOU AT LEAST GET THE- THE FUCK HORSE? THE BLOOD PONY?!”

If anyone had asked him what the hell a ‘blood pony’ was yesterday, he’d have no idea what they were talking about. For the monster that had been terrorizing the town for the past hour or so, it was the most accurate descriptor.

It had broken through the treeline earlier, storming into town center at high noon during a bustling market day. It looked like a horse in the same way that a rabid wolf looked like a toy poodle: the thing was a behemoth, easily dwarfing the Arms Dealer at its shoulder height alone. Its coat was the color of bone, brighter than any diamond he’d ever seen with a holographic tint that was twice as reflective. Behind it trailed the pink strands that made up its mane and tail, which would have detracted from the frightening aura it had, had the Arms Dealer’s vision not been sharp enough to catch the white roots.

It was not to be underestimated: it was either carnivorous, or enjoyed using the massive, spiraling horn on its forehead to hunt for sport—that shade of pink only occurred in the wild from being stained with blood.

They scattered like rats: the Nurse abandoned her stand outside of her office with a shriek as it sprang over them in a high arc, knocking a glass display of potions to the ground. The Tinkerer, who had been bartering with the Mechanic over the price of some miscellaneous object of science, immediately switched into panic mode to help the Merchant hobble over into the painter’s studio. The Zoologist had all but scooped the Party Girl and the Stylist up and flung them into the tavern to keep their skulls from getting crushed underneath the thing’s hooves. 

It had the perfect timing, too: the Hero was off on another one of their day-long mining trips, and they weren’t around to protect the town with their extraordinary strength.

He shook his head as he stopped that line of thought in its tracks. He was becoming far too reliant on their vigilance, and it made distaste curl in the pit of his stomach. 

He was an arms dealer, for crying out loud. His job was to give teeth to the most dangerous men, women, and everything in between in the realm. 

He had a stuffed pair of harpy wings in a storage cellar somewhere to commemorate the time he’d shot one out of the sky from the ground. He’d been back and forth through the Corruptive wastes, at regular intervals, and came back alive when no one else did—he could handle a fucking pony. 

Besides- it was unfair, for the Hero to shoulder the burden of town peacekeeper. They could all afford to pitch in a little. Lighten the load, and whatnot.

“I’M AFRAID I DID NOT, SHRIMPY!” the Demolitionist replied, before adding, “BUT I DID SCARE IT OFF! IT’S NEAR THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN NOW!”

Fuck it , he thought, pulling a flintlock from the inside of his coat. The entire town had been locked in a stalemate with the thing as soon as everyone had run for cover, and it was going nowhere. Something had to give—either someone was going to land an astronomically lucky shot on the force horse, or get grievously injured trying. If it was going to be him, he reasoned, he might as well try and strangle his blood brother/adoptive uncle/parental figure/partner in crime for blasting the paint off his door before doing so.

Besides, his voice was starting to get hoarse . 

(World below, he was a comedic genius. Why didn’t he do stand-up?)

The Arms Dealer darted out of the Demolitionist’s store, feeling not unlike a mouse scurrying out of a mousehole as he broke into a run.

As he went, he realized that the expanse between the shop, the Oak tree at the center of town, and the table the Demolitionist was hiding under was enormous . Had it always been this big? Or did it just feel that way now that he was running across it with death on his heels?

(Trick question—he knew the answer. The threat of death always exaggerated things.)

Come on, come on.

He was halfway to the massive Oak when he began to hear a grim braying in the distance. The familiar prickle of adrenaline, and something else , crawled up his spine. 

“HURRY UP, LAD! YOU CAN MAKE IT!” the Demolitionist yelled, popping out from underneath the table.

He passed by the Oak, and caught a glimpse of the Dryad peering out from somewhere between its highest branches with those waxy, white pupils of hers. 

“ Be careful! ” she hissed, “ It’s coming up behind you! ”

If it was possible, he bolted faster. He’d thank her for that later.

He could hear the clopping of hooves from somewhere in the distance. 

Almost there…

He was so close to the table.

“ANDRE! SHRIMP! HURRY UP! ”

He dove to the ground, kicking up sand in his wake, but he managed to slide under the table just as the monster galloped into town square from behind the Artillery shop. The Demolitionist sputtered from beside him, yanking an untucked part of the Arms Dealer's coat into the shadows as he spat out sand.

“Good lord, kid, did you have to get sand in my mouth?” he asked.

 He had spotted the beast, and he tried to lower his voice, but being quiet was never something he was great at. A product of working with explosives for a living. 

The dwarf wiped his tongue on the back of a hairy arm, and the Arms Dealer got into a crouch. His eyes were still glued to the white horse at the center of town when he bit back with,

“Sand is the least of your concerns!”, the Arms Dealer whisper-yelled, “Death will be a fuckin’ mercy if you peeled the paint off my door, pal!”

The dwarf whistled.

“Door, schmoor. It can be replaced.”

“ Not the ten hours I spent painting it, you fuck! You could have killed me!”

The Demolitionist waved him off.

“Oh, relax! … I told you staying here was a bad idea, anyways.”

The Arms Dealer took an empty magazine out of his gun, “What’d I say this morning, huh? You should have listened to me when I said I had a bad feeling.”

There was an undercurrent of panic that had been brewing within him all day, but he hadn't been able to place why until the monster had stormed into town. Being in the beast’s presence was like being struck by lightning: the fear made him electric; he was charged with nervous tension, from the soles of his feet to the ends of his hair, and he’d just knocked the pendulum that had been swinging between being frozen to the spot by the force of it and jumping into action firmly into the ‘action’ part.

The Dwarf wilted, making a clicking noise with his tongue.

It was actually him who’d identified what exactly the feeling was, when they had first met. The formal term for it was a sensing gift, and The Demolitionist had snapped him up as a business partner as soon as he’d realized Andre was essentially a walking monster detector. The Arms Dealer thought of it more as an over-glorified anxiety disorder with magical perks.

“Aye, ye’re right about that. But what was I supposed to tell everyone? ‘ My roommate has a bad feeling about today, so ye’d all better arm yourselves or take cover!’?”

The Arms Dealer was still upset, but he relented. 

Bazdin was right, after all—on the rare occasion that they’d stayed in a town long enough to see disaster befall it, they’d never had any luck trying to convince its citizens that it was coming on swift wings hours prior to its arrival. 

It didn’t matter where they were: they could have been cozying up to a noble in their estate or down on their luck in the sleaziest city tavern they could find. Sometimes he’d awaken from a restless sleep when the sensation would strike him, jolted awake by a tremor of alarm. 

Others, his morning coffee would sour on his tongue as he’d feel a distant but unshakeable anxiety compel his heart to beat faster. It came and went throughout the day like the tremors before an earthquake, each wave of panic stronger than the last, until the mounting wave of fear crashed over him during the eleventh hour as whatever monster or demon or lesser god he had sensed descended upon the town to feast.

The cycle had repeated itself enough times for him to accept that his sixth sense was only useful for saving his own skin—and sometimes, not even that. It had taken him years to figure out how to move when he was paralyzed by the fear that came with it, to melt down the shackles it placed upon him into a knife he could arm himself with.

...But he figured that since he’d stayed in this town for so long already, it was worth trying again, anyways.

“So instead of warning everyone, you tried to blow up our shop?” he replied.

“Have more faith in me, lad!” the Demolitionist exclaimed, “I know where I’m throwin’ my explosives. It scared off the hell beast, didn’t it?”

‘Lad’. The moniker was getting old- he was brushing thirty this year. 

“Right, just like you knew where you were throwing that stick of dynamite back in Deshret?”

“Blistering barnacles! You blow off a man’s leg once! ”

The Arms Dealer turned to him.

“ Once is enough!” he said sharply.

The horse whinnied from the center of the clearing. It was a dark, gravelly, sound. It reverberated within its chest cavity and came out like it’d been through an amplifier. The two of them turned their heads, looking towards the noise, and almost jumped out of their skin when they caught a glimpse of its pale legs trotting closer.

The Arms Dealer swallowed dryly. Each one of them was like its own marble column.

He and the Demolitionist went quiet, scooting closer.

“So,” the Arms Dealer said in a hushed tone, “How are we going to take this thing out?”

The Demolitionist raised a brow.

“ ‘We’?”

“Of course we, ” he replied, “Do you think anyone else around here could possibly fight that thing off?”

“Oh, don’t tell me ye’re feeling responsible for these people now,” the dwarf grumbled, “I knew teaching you how to read with philosophy was a bad idea. Where was this moral compass when we were running that accounting scheme in the capital?”

Andre rustled around the inside of his coat, feeling around for the shape of a magazine.

He didn’t tear his gaze away from the monster as he slid it into his pistol with a faint click. 

“That’s different. People won’t miss a few shillings outta their wallets,” the Arms Dealer parsed out as he steadied his aim at the horned horse, “Being attacked by something like this can fuck someone up for life.”

There was a bitter satisfaction, he thought, in knowing so from experience.

The Demolitionist gave him a side-eye.

“ I would miss a few shillings.”

“Yeah, because you’re a cheapskate . Now help me think of a plan!” he whispered.

The white horse lashed its tail, prancing airily in a circle just thirty or so feet away from where the Arms Dealer and Bazdin were hiding. It was first instinct to stop breathing, but Andre knew better: he’d spent the better part of a decade shoving down his instincts into something he could work with. 

He took deep breaths, trying to steady himself.

“Think you can shoot it from here? Peg it in an artery?” the Demolitionist said lowly.

The Arms Dealer didn’t fault him for asking. That was his first thought too, but as soon as he’d fired a bullet at the thing from where he was concealed inside the Demolitionist’s shop, he’d crossed it off of the rapidly-forming list of action plans in his head. The shot drew blood, but just barely—after grazing the horse’s flank, it had ricocheted off of it and put a dent in the tin sign dangling from the Merchant’s parlor. 

“I could,” he admitted quietly, “But I don’t think it’d do any good. I already hit it earlier.”

He spared a glance at the Demolitionist, and found that the dwarf’s ginger eyebrows had shot up with alarm.

“Good heavens! And it’s not dead?!”

The confidence his co-conspirator had in his aim made him swell with pride, but he didn’t betray it in his face.

“No. Whatever it’s made of, it’s not skin- bullet bounced right off.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Oh, yeah? Look at the merchant’s sign, and be amazed.” 

The reply was unnecessarily sarcastic, but the longer he spent in the monster’s presence, the more his fingers began to tremble with fear. 

Sensing gifts like his kept people alive, until they didn’t.

The Demolitionist stooped down to the ground to peer at it from underneath the table,

“ Holy smokesI Ye’re right! Thundering typhoons, I’ve never seen a horse that was bulletproof before.”

“Fuck, right? I bet its hide is made to resist piercing damage. Your bombs might do the trick, but…”

“You don’t want the town to go up in flames, eh, son?” the dwarf finished for him.

Andre was quiet.

“... Oh, alright, fine! I swear, I won’t use anything bigger than a grenade. Ye’re a real stick in the mud, you know that?”

The Arms Dealer breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you.” he said quietly. It was rough, and barely parsed out, but he was working on it.

The two of them shifted in the dirt, lying low in the sand to get a better look at the beast. It was pawing at the ground around the tree, craning its powerful neck down to sniff at something lying in the grass. The image reminded the Arms Dealer, disconcertingly, of a bloodhound. 

“Look at it, it’s gotten a whiff of something,” the Demolitionist muttered, “What do you reckon it is?”

“Hopefully not those fuckin’ health potions Nurse Allison made. The last thing we need is for that thing to start healing itself.”

The Demolitionist chortled. 

“We’re in a real fucking mess, aren’t we?”

The Arms Dealer narrowed his eyes, straining his vision to catch a glimpse of whatever the horse was so interested in. 

“Is that… the Angler’s fishing pole?” he said quietly.

He couldn’t be certain at first, from the shine of whatever was on the ground reflecting the sun, but when he shielded his eyes from the glare he could make out the carvings on it that distinguished it as the Angler’s. It seemed as if the horned beast had caught an interesting scent on it, for it seemed to be trying to follow a trail with its nose to the ground.

He swallowed, praying the Angler had scampered off somewhere far away enough to not see. He loved that hook to the point of not replacing the handle when it snapped in half. It was a treasure, something the Arms Dealer had caught him whittling patterns onto when he thought no one was looking. It was more than a tool to him: he loved it enough to turn it into art, as childlike as that art might be.

The feeling was familiar. He’d had a gun like that once, too.

He wanted to look away as he saw the beast raise its hackles, before rearing up to stand on its back legs. The crunch of the rod being shattered underneath its hooves made his stomach drop. 

Beside him, the Demolitionist sucked in air through his teeth.

“Oooh, the poor lad. He’ll be crushed.”

The Arms Dealer bit the inside of his cheek.

“It can be fixed.” he replied roughly, beginning to get up from his crouch. 

Right. There was no more time to lose. They couldn’t wait around all day for the Hero to return, and there was no guarantee he’d have this chance again: if he didn’t take action now, when the monster was idling in his crosshairs, he’d never forgive himself as a hunter.

The Arms Dealer aimed low to the ground, near the beast’s legs, willing his hands to still. 

If the reason why his previous bullet bounced off of its hide was because of the muscle underneath, he’d go for the tendons in its legs, where the musculature was thinner.

“I’m going to aim for its heels,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure if it could understand human language or not, but with monsters one could never tell. ”At worst, it’ll be scared off. At best, it’ll be crippled.”

The Demolitionist hummed in acknowledgement. 

“Smart,” he admitted, “But not smarter than blowin’ the thing to bits. Get on with it, then.”

The Arms Dealer held his pistol out at arm’s length, peering over the rear sight. His finger brushed the trigger. 

The beast was sniffing at the ground again, preoccupied, unassuming.

It was so close.

The Arms Dealer didn’t dare exhale with the fear that it would throw off his aim.

He readied himself to shoot. He had no doubt he would land it; his marksmanship was always something he’d taken pride in.

...But before he could, a crossbow bolt soared across town center from the shade beneath a building to the right. He watched it pass by, an iron-colored bird taking flight, before lodging itself right in the flesh above the horse’s front hoof.

The reaction was instantaneous. The thing reared back in pain, eclipsing the sun over the hook as it whinnied. The bolt had managed to part the flesh there, sinking into bone and ligaments and cutting the fleshy wires that made up its tendons.

The Angler scurried out from beneath the building, drawing his crossbow once more. 

“STAY AWAY FROM MY POLE!” 

He screamed as he charged the beast, firing the second bolt.

Andre's heart stopped.

What was that IDIOT kid doing?!

The Angler was already small compared to most of the other townsfolk, but he was a fly on the horned horse's hide. If he were to get caught in its path, he’d be crushed under foot.

To his credit, the second bolt hit exactly where it was aimed at: it collided with the beast's hide, right against the skin of its neck. 

The Arms Dealer scrambled out from underneath the table, running towards them. Bazdin yelled in alarm.

The Angler’s bolt hit, but predictably enough, it didn't draw blood: it bounced off of the horse's neck like a trampoline, spinning away in a high arc through the air. The kid’s eyes widened as he followed it, and he trembled, frozen to the spot. 

The horned horse tossed its head from side to side. It couldn't afford to sit still anymore. It was getting ready to charge back at the Angler. 

The Arms Dealer dashed in front of him, tackling the Angler out of its way.

The boy was knocked away effortlessly, kicking up sand as he slid back underneath the building.

How did Cassandra die, again?

The horse charged, ramming its horn through the Arms Dealer's shoulder.

It had been a week since it had become obvious that the Hero wasn’t going to get any more days off.

They winced as the wing of their new adamantite helmet caught on a low-hanging tree branch. 

They had never been able to keep up with trimming the shrubbery around the path to the mines, they thought with a grimace. They hadn’t realized how irritating it would be to pass to and from them with a bulky set of armour on.

Wyatt had returned as the Emissary six days ago, and ever since, it seemed as if whatever mechanism the world was operating on had gone haywire. Since they’d pulled him out of the ground, the Hero had been so preoccupied with keeping a small infantry of new animals, monsters, and magical creatures out of town that they hadn’t even bothered to follow up with him until he was almost inquisitioned by the other townsfolk.

(And even then, they hadn’t gotten the chance to ask him what the terrifying twelve minutes the sun had blacked out that day was. It had descended upon the town like a harbinger, enabling every nighttime devil on the surface of Terraria to crawl out. They’d eventually gotten the information from the Tinkerer—a solar eclipse , he’d called it.)

What on Terraria was wrong with him? 

They picked the twigs out of their helmet, cursing his stubbornness.

Was he trying to upset everyone?

“Wyatt, you have some explaining to do.”

Stars above, they hoped they sounded stern enough. If they were being honest, the fight with the Underworld’s grotesque wall had shaken them, badly. They’d barely been able to describe the thing to Nurse Allison as she was sewing their fingers back on, and the adrenaline that had been flushing their synapses all night was rapidly fading. 

Wyatt looked up at them from where he was deposited on the ground, face twisted in confusion. The clearing where his grave was dug was a short distance away from town, surrounded by trees on all sides. The Hero stood right in front of him, blocking out the late-morning sun with their shadow. Around them both, the townsfolk—a disheveled, fearful crowd—were circled. 

“What is there to explain, Hero?” he croaked out. “You’ve won.”

Their stomach dropped.

If the fight with the wall wasn’t nerve-wracking enough, upon their return, they’d found out that hell had broken loose last night — monsters no one had ever seen before had devastated the town, and they’d all watched from around the great oak tree as the Guide’s cliffside home had caught alight in the midst of the calamity, blazing like an omen in the wind. 

After the sun had risen and the wave of monsters that had razed them slinked off into darker parts of the forest, the townsfolk, too battle-weary to think clearly and too nervous to rest, began to speculate. The Hero hadn’t wanted to believe that the three events of the night were connected, but — the fuchsias of the cloak their guide was donning were unsettlingly reminiscent of the wall they’d just fought, down to the mouths and eyes leering at them from its filigree. 

The Hero wanted to grab his shoulder, to lift him to his feet, but…

The memories of last night were a fresh wound. They stayed away.

Wyatt got up, without anyone’s help. He dusted himself off delicately, before standing up and meeting the Hero’s gaze. They had expected that to look different too, but the way his face softened into nonchalance was the same as ever. 

The silence that the Hero had broken was uneasy. It was quiet enough to hear the chatter of birds.

“Don’t- don’t play that game with me,” they managed to parse out eventually, “What’s wrong with your arms? What did I just fight in the Underworld?!”

Wyatt paid them no mind. Instead, he held his hands up to the light, eyes flickering back and forth as he trailed the newer, darker veins there. When he snapped back up to attention, it seemed as if he had come to a decision. 

“Well, I suppose there’s no point in denying you answers any more, is there?” 

He delivered a pointed look at the Arms Dealer — and the flintlock he had his hand on — before continuing.

“I’ll admit, you awakened the Wall of Flesh far earlier than I thought you would. My apologies for not telling you about the Doll earlier-” he said this with a slight declination of his head, “that was an oversight on my part. I’m sure the battle wouldn’t have been quite as difficult, had you known what you were summoning.”

He knew.

The emotional whiplash was instant. Betrayal blazed through them.

“What do you mean? Wall of- what?!”

Wyatt raised a brow.

“The Wall of Flesh. What you just fought in the Underworld. The creature that chewed up your hat and spit it out like a chew toy?” he clarified.

The Hero’s pulse quickened.

How did he know about what happened to their hat? They hadn’t told anyone about that.

They clenched their jaw, trying to re-focus. Something about how casually he was treating the situation incensed them. Did he not realize how much trouble he was in? How on edge everyone was? 

How much they had just- been through?!

“Wyatt,” they asked, trying to find a semblance of sanity within them, “Can you explain. Why you came back with a cloak, around you?”

Their guide paused before he answered, looking as if he was trying to remember something.

“I… Yes, I can. I’m afraid that I am… no longer the Guide.”

The Hero could feel the confused, hostile stares the townsfolk were giving him on the back of their own neck. They knew they were all frazzled after the onslaught they’d faced last night, and that the only thing stopping everyone from collectively going home to collapse in their beds at the moment was the coffee the Tavernkeep had brewed, and an answer to the question of how much danger they were in right now.

Internally, they cursed their role as the designated authority. They couldn’t find the right questions to ask, not when everyone was so tired and miserable and desperate to go home — part of them wanted to fade back into the crowd and turn the responsibility of asking the right questions over to them.

“...What I’m wearing right now is an emblem, of sorts. It marks me as a member of the Underworld Court.”

Shocked gasps rang out from behind the Hero. From beside them, they heard footsteps on the grass as the crowd began to inch away.

Wyatt’s voice was dampered by confusion as he continued.

“Actually, I’m not even sure what I am at the moment. I wasn’t supposed to come back after you killed me.”

Alright. The Hero did not put this lightly, seeing as how alarm bells had been ringing since last night, but that set off several alarm bells.

“Didn’t you die in a house fire?” the Arms Dealer asked sharply.

“Something like that.” The Guide answered, noncommittally in turn. 

The Hero pinched the bridge of their nose. They were so tired. They had spent the first few hours of the night trying to impede the advancement of an indescribably hellish monster. They had made the long, uncomfortable climb back up to the surface, through Hell , because they lacked the foresight to bring their magic mirror with them. 

When they had finally stumbled into town to get their wounds from the battle treated, instead of being greeted by the picturesque quiet of their seaside town at night, they had to duck out of the way of a flurry of bullets as the Arms Dealer narrowly missed the horde of zombies he was aiming for behind them. 

Anxiety and caffeine had been having a cockfight in their brain for the past ten or so hours, keeping them awake, and the exhaustion was just beginning to creep into their bones.

A chorus of murmuring erupted from behind them. They heard a “What the hell is he talking about?”, and various categories of “Are we safe, or not?”

Or two.

Or five.

“Okay, nevermind. Forget about the cape. Forget about the Underworld,” the Hero backtracked, internally promising to wrestle the answers from him later, “Can you at least- just, tell us all if- Do you know what happened to the town last night? Why it was overrun with monsters?” 

There was an unspoken meaning to the question. They knew the townsfolk would have added, ‘And was it your fault?’ if they didn’t respect them too much to disturb the sanctity of the moment.

Wyatt straightened his back, smoothed his cape down, and addressed the crowd with a seasoned grace.

“...I’m sure all of you know about how Terraria’s magical pulse has been on a steady incline in recent years. If any of you come from educated backgrounds, or have experience with the Capitol’s schooling system, you’ll know that people haven’t always respawned when dying to the hands of monsters. As it stands, scholars haven’t been able figure out why, but I happen to know.”

The Hero could hear the Tinkerer whisper into someone’s ear from behind them: “Not even the scientists from my homeland were able to figure that one out…”

Wyatt continued.

“The priories of the Lunar faith have felt it too — Magic was once so much more difficult to harness, but today there are colleges that teach it. It’s not just due to scientific advancement- the world is changing beneath our feet. It’s becoming more magical, more wondrous, more dangerous , at an exponential rate. Surely some of you have wondered why monster attacks are so commonplace now, no?”

The crowd shifted on their feet, wondering where he was going with this.

“There’s more to it than that, but… The forces of order and chaos are destabilizing, rapidly. Magic is allowing us to arm ourselves better than ever, but it’s also creating more monsters for us to fight. It’s turning the wheel of progress forward, like an unsustainable fire — eventually, the world will burn out, and become swallowed by its own discord.”

He turned to the Hero.

“Hero, you were right about the Wall being different from the other monsters you’ve faced. It is- was. Truth be told, it is only due to outside intervention that Terraria hasn’t burnt out yet. Ours is a world on its last legs. When you vanquished the Wall, you also broke a barrier of sorts — a dam, holding back waters you weren’t prepared to swim in yet. You mentioned a monster attack, earlier- that wasn’t a targeted event. That was how every night should have been a long time ago, before the Wall was put into place, and how every night will be, from now on.”

There was a pained quality to his gaze when he spoke again. His voice became much softer.

“The World is different, now. Things are only going to get more difficult from here, and you’re going to have to work much faster.”

Somewhere within them, a tiny flower of dread unfurled.

The crowd couldn’t hold back their questions anymore. The explanation had confused some, caused others to nod solemnly along, and had incensed almost everyone.

“And why the fuck do you know all that, pointdexter?! -ow!”

The Arms Dealer’s yelling was cut short by a swiftly-delivered jab to the ribs.

“Oh, so sorry about that Andre,” the Mechanic said saccharinely, before looking up to face the rest of them. 

Her eyes had bags underneath them large enough to warrant their own militias, and there were dark smears of oil on her face, but she didn’t shy away when everyone’s attention turned to her.

“Er- I would have phrased it in a nicer way, but… Andre is right. I’m not sure how believable that explanation was, but at the very least, isn’t it really, really suspicious that he came back in that uniform?”

She paused to meet Wyatt’s gaze, holding it steadfast, but looking more like she wanted to shrink away,

“And I have the feeling that he’s not telling us the whole story.”

The Clothier hobbled up to the center of the crowd next.

“If you’ll all allow me to impart my piece,” he began, “I can, at least, vouch for the validity of some of his explanation.”

The townsfolk were rapt with attention as he carried on. No one dared interrupt an old man.

 “When I was a boy, I watched my father die to forest slimes.” he waved his hand here when he saw their faces twist in sympathy, “Please, no need for that. It was a long time ago- far longer than any of you could comprehend… We carved him a tombstone, and buried him, but he never came back. We didn’t bother to check- back then, no one did. No one ever came back, under any circumstances, monster attack or not.”

The Merchant added onto the Clothier’s spiel.

“And I can vouch for the validity of friend Cedric’s words. It’s been so long that I hardly remember it, but back in my day, we didn’t even have zombies! That’s a real zinger of the modern age...”

Now that more and more people were speaking up, it seemed to give the Tinkerer the courage to do so as well. He skittishly stepped up to the front of the crowd, looking his newly-revived friend in the eyes.

“I’m not going to accuse you of anything, Wyatt. But- er, oh, now that I have everyone’s attention,” (here he laughed nervously), “I want to begin by saying that the people of my homeland are scientists. Inventors. Astronomers. They have access to technology that makes them, uniquely predispositioned to studying the natural world… to discovering truths about it.”

His hands were shaking. Poor guy , the Hero thought.  Public speaking was never his strong suit — he looked like he was ready to collapse.

“Granted, they’re also morally repugnant imperialists, and a lot of that technology is stolen, but the point is- they have done extensive research into the mechanics of the respawn phenomenon. Before I defected, I had access to- to libraries upon libraries of research papers, of case files, on the subject. I read all of them — and never before, has anyone ever come back with new markings on their bodies. They don’t even scar.”

The Tavernkeep stepped forward, approaching the Tinkerer gently, and the pointy-eared scientist looked immensely grateful that someone else was taking the burden of attention away from him.

“Alright, Tinkerer. We’ll trust your word on that. But what exactly do you think is going on here, then?”

The Tinkerer took a deep breath, before pointing at Wyatt.

“I don’t think that that’s Wyatt!” he exclaimed, “He may be in his grave, but coming back different is- it’s impossible! He must be- some sort of demon in a skinsuit!”

Woah, what?! Where did that come from?!

Most people were just as alarmed as the Hero was (including their guide), but a few began to buy into the idea, making soft sounds of agreement.

“No, no!” Wyatt said quickly, eyes wide as dinner plates, “I assure you, I’m the very same Wyatt you all know. I suppose I’m just… different, now.”

“Prove it!” the Tinkerer replied.

Wyatt opened and shut his mouth a few times, taken aback, before proceeding to do so.

“I know your favourite genre is paranormal romance, Tinkerer! I’ve seen the werewolf novels! They're right there on the bookshelf, you’re terrible at hiding them!”

The Tinkerer’s face flushed a brilliant azure blue.

A beat of silence passed across the crowd.

“...Well? Do we need to… cut him open, or anything?” the Tavernkeep prompted after some time.

“... I…” the Tinkerer shrunk back, ears drooping in embarrassment, “I may have jumped the gun. Perhaps we should wait a bit.”

The Tavernkeep looked like he was about to say something more, but the Hero raised their arms in annoyance.

“Okay, okay, we’re not going to cut anyone open!” they declared hastily, “Just. Just hold on a minute, everyone.”

The Hero turned to Wyatt. They’d heard this explanation a hundred times before, back when it was just the two of them, living out of a wooden hovel. Nothing he’d just said was news to them, apart from what he’d mentioned about the Wall.

...And it wasn’t what they wanted answers to, anyways.

“Why do you know so much about all of this?” they asked quietly.

They were sure he knew what they were talking about. 

Wyatt laughed nervously.

“I’m,” he began, “I mean, I’m not-”

His gaze darted to the townsfolk around them.

“I… I suppose… you’ll just have to… trust me?” 

The crowd exploded into an uproar. Voices rang out from every side.

“Seriously? No one’s going to question how Count Novel-ula over here knows why there are more monsters now?!”  

The Demolitionist’s voice rang out.

“Time for that later, lad- we need to know how much danger we’re in first!”

“Hold on, Bazdin, why should we even believe anything he says?!" The Golfer barked.

More voices erupted.

“Excuse me, but did anyone else catch the ‘swallowed by its own discord’ part?!”

“What does he mean by Underworld court? There are courts down there?”

“If there are, they need better designers. The dye job on that cape is hideous.”

"Did he say every night was going to be as bad as last night-”

"He's lying. He's got to be, I don't buy it!"

"If you think he's lying, you didn't hear how bad the Hero's battle in the world below was. The Nurse had to reattach their fingers because of how tightly they were gripping their blade-”

The Hero watched in stunned dismay as hysteria sunk its talons into the entire crowd. The conversation had spun off in a dozen different directions, and they had no idea how they’d try to reroute it .

The noise was becoming a blurred jumble, a razor-sharp cacophony, and it was quickly becoming overwhelming. The collective voices scraped against their eardrums like sandpaper. They couldn’t hear their own thoughts over the racket of the crowd.

In spite of how resolutely they’d been trying to avoid looking at it, their eyes were drawn to Wyatt’s cloak. Covered in dirt as it was, it was still obviously beautiful finery: the edges were torn, but not frayed, which they knew was a rare quality in silk craftsmanship. When he moved to cross his arms, the fuchsias of it caught alight, turning the dull maroons into velveteen flame. 

In the wind, it looked like it was moving. It looked like it was alive.

“How are we going to handle another attack like last night’s? We barely survived!”

“We’re not going to, if we don’t do something about it!”

The Tavernkeep’s voice was distinct among them.

“We need to construct some sort of barrier around town, to keep them out-” he said, with the dignified authoritative tone that bled into all of his words.

A breeze blew through the clearing, shaking the treetops and animating Wyatt’s cloak to a greater degree. The torn crimson edges of it lashed back and forth, evoking images of the Wall they’d fought not ten hours earlier. 

Of the massive, palpitating biomass that stretched from the floors of the lava pits to the ceiling of the underworld, hundreds of feet up; of its swarm of hungry mouths, of the raw, bleeding tendrils they were anchored by.

Their pulse quickened.

“Should we put torches up to keep the monsters out?”

“Aye! That’s what we should have done at the very beginning!”

“We need to set up some sort of watch, too, for the threats outside of town-”

“Yeah, and for the ones fuckin’ in it-”

The Hero’s head was spinning. They blinked, and for a brief moment, in the darkness behind their eyelids, they could see it again: the monster in its hellish glory, the massive, veiny eyes, pupils darting back and forth like a ship sinking into a whirlpool. An unbelievably massive pink integument that was miles high, enveloping the horizon.

 Their heart quickened, and they blinked again, and they were left standing in the center of a wailing crowd.

“I wasn’t supposed to come back after you killed me.”

“ENOUGH!” the Hero shouted over the caterwaul.

Everyone went quiet. The Hero’s face heated up as they realized how loud they’d gotten. They softened their voice guiltily, before continuing.

“I mean- just. Enough. Enough of the hysterics , it’s getting us nowhere.”

They sent a flinty look toward Wyatt, “And enough of the talking in circles. Give me a straight answer, okay? Please?” 

Wyatt’s lips pursed. His eyes were begging them to let it go.

A part of them wanted to. It was the part that he’d found on the shores a year ago, the part he’d offered food and shelter and safety to — the sapling he’d tended to, the sword he’d sharpened.

But a larger part of them knew they couldn’t afford to anymore. The town had grown too large, the riptide of danger too wide, the stakes too high, to wager on trust alone. 

“Was it you that I was fighting… down there?”

Their voice quivered near the end.

Wyatt’s face tightened.

“The monster you fought and I are one and the same. Congratulations, Hero. You’ve passed.”

As the Hero walked past Wyatt’s tombstone from the previous week, already becoming overgrown with weeds, they tried not to let their gaze linger.

Did it hurt when they’d sliced away his-

They cut off the guilty train of thought before it finished coalescing, and reminded themselves that- that he’d attacked first. T hat he’d kept things from them. That he'd dodged their questions and refused to answer and talked around in circles whenever they’d ask about what would happen when the Guide Doll went up in flames. 

That he hadn’t trusted them enough to tell them he wasn’t even human .

A pang of sadness hit them as they remembered what had transpired the previous day, and they could feel their face turning red with anger. 

“My job with you is done. You are free to do as you please. You owe me nothing.”

That he had just. Thrown them away, like he was done with them. 

Internally, they repeated it like a mantra: Whatever they had done to him, in self-defense, he’d deserved it.

They took a moment to lean against one of the massive oak trees they were passing by on their way to town.

Stars above, they wished that they could make themselves believe it. Who decided what someone deserved, anyways? Destiny? A jury? Themselves? 

What was the morally righteous thing to do, here? Forgive and forget? That would only make him complacent in returning to secrecy, and entrench them deeper into the tired old routines they had settled in before. Should they choose their next course of action according to its future impact, then? Dole out a punishment drastic enough to force him to change?

They bit the inside of their cheek.

Action, inaction. Past habits, future effects. Neither option sounded particularly appealing to them. They didn’t want to do either.

But did what they want even matter? Wasn’t the point of moral righteousness to set one’s own desires aside to do what was best for everyone else?

They had managed to assuage the hostility and fear in town the previous day, when they’d promised to talk things out with Wyatt, but you could still cut the tension in the air with a knife.

(Or in their case, they grimaced, remembering how they’d used the Muramasa to wave them off—a sword.)

The conundrum of how they’d go about quelling the tensions inside of town while managing to keep the hostile new creatures that had cropped up in the Emissary’s wake outside of it was beginning to make their head hurt. They needed a break, and their desperation for a way to both ward off the combatants of their new world and detach themselves for long enough to sort out their own feelings on the matter drove them into one of the caves they’d used as an ore mine.

They’d gone in feeling like they were being pulled in every direction at once, and emerged, with a new set of armor, considerably more sane than they were when they went down. 

They had a new resolve: they would protect their town, and the people in it, with whatever they had to give. To do this meant fulfilling the great plan that Wyatt had outlined, and to fulfill that meant lowering the Moon Lord into his cosmic burial place.

The thought of more fighting after their battle with Wyatt made them want to crawl into a hole, but they cared too much about the home they had built, and everyone in it, to do so. 

Besides, they thought, If I don’t, who will? 

Over the past year, they had come to live with their strength. It meant walking on eggshells, handling things gently, considering the consequences of their actions a dozen times before they took them. They couldn’t fully accept it—a part of them would always wish interacting with people didn’t feel like playing knife tag with an animal so small it made you nervous.

But what was the point of having that strength if they didn’t use it?

They had the unique ability, they recognized, to protect people. To build things for them. To- to make themselves useful , to them. If they were going to go to dark places, they reasoned, they were at least going to make sure it was so the ones they cared about could live in the light.

As they continued walking, the trees began to thin until they’d realized they’d come to the place where Wyatt had first taught them how to distinguish dayblooms from the weeds and grasses around them. 

They stared. The clearing was just as bright and sunny as it had always been: an assortment of sparrows, blue jays, and doves were fluttering through the upper branches. The flowers, while not the same ones that were there seasons ago, were the same color as they’d been the previous summer.

Descendants, they thought, of the ones that were blooming last year. 

It was like opening a time capsule. 

In the exact spot that they had pulled the flower from that day, one of the white doves landed. The Hero watched it with wonder. It was a thing of beauty; the wings of the creature fluttered behind it like pristine ribbons on the wind. The feathers of its neck ruffled as it began to peck at the ground, and as it did, the rays of sunshine beaming down on it illuminated its feathers, turning it into a living silhouette.

The Hero didn’t dare breathe. They could have only been five, ten feet away from it, but from their place in the shadows the bird was completely unaware of their presence. It hopped delicately from left to right, looking for seeds among the knotted weeds on the ground. 

So clean, they thought, mesmerized. And so small. 

They had known beauty in nature, but never before had they wanted to hold something so badly. To run their fingers through the feathers of a creature and feel its heartbeat. 

They lowered themselves into a crouch.

Suddenly, the dove turned to them, watching them with wild eyes. The Hero’s own widened with alarm, and they stood stock-still, unmoving. 

They held the dove’s gaze for what felt like an eternity. The ambient noise of the forest seemed to die down—it was as if they were the only two living beings in the entire clearing.

If I just, held my hand out, they wondered, would it- 

Slowly, they extended an arm, reaching towards the creature. Their gauntlet was dappled by the sunlight, brilliant and shining. It made the vermillion hues of it catch alight.

The dove flew away, escaping to the highest branches of a nearby tree.

The Hero retracted their hand with a sigh.

They couldn’t lie—the disappointment was crushing.

But- It was probably for the best, they reasoned, beginning to get up. That they didn’t get too close. 

They’d probably only end up hurting it anyways.

Moments later, an explosion rumbled in the distance, sending the birds flying away in droves. It wasn’t powerful enough to make the ground tremor, but the Hero nearly jumped out of their sabatons when they realized that it had come from the direction of town.

They scrambled to their feet, breaking into a run onto the forest path.

The Demolitionist never troubleshooted new explosives anywhere around town—the Hero would know, considering they almost always went along with him when he did. There was always the chance that it was a faulty grenade dropped by the dwarf, but...

Their pulse began to race. 

What if it’s another attack, like what happened the night they’d beaten the Wall of Flesh?

They weren’t willing to take that chance.

The run back to town felt like a small eternity. When they burst through the treeline, they were greeted with a sight they couldn’t help but stare in horror at.

At the center of town, what looked like a massive, white horse was rearing back with a bray. It was beautiful—legs as delicate as flying buttresses propelled it up, and its mane and tail were ribbons on the wind.

As it reared, the Hero could spot a twisted horn the length of a small sword protruding from its forehead, reflecting the noonday sun like a brilliant, lilac mirror. The movement sprayed blood across the dust, and the Hero’s sharp eyes caught the crossbow bolt buried above its front hoof.

The pale creature flinched as it was hit by another bolt, but it bounced off of the skin of its neck , ricocheting away to land in the grass a few feet away. As it backed away, the Hero’s line of sight was cleared, allowing their eyes to lock onto the Angler.

The boy was a statue in front of the beast, hands trembling as he aimed his crossbow up to its face.

The Hero unsheathed their sword, bolting towards them…

...But before they had even broken through the buildings surrounding town center, the Arms Dealer darted out from under a table, shoving the Angler out of the way into the shadows beneath the wooden piers of a nearby shop.

The horse-beast charged, and it was too late—in one smooth movement, the Arms Dealer was skewered on its horn, tossed up into the air, and then flung to the side.

His body slid on the dust, crumpling up a good thirty feet or so away from the horned creature.

Someone yelled his name, and then from the very same table the Arms Dealer had sprung from, the Demolitionist leaped; tossing a bomb towards the ground the creature was standing on. 

It exploded in a whirlwind of fire and noise. The aftershocks reverberated through the town, shaking the buildings in the immediate vicinity in their foundations. It was a direct hit—the white horse was knocked back by the force of it, and startled off by the noise; it ran in the opposite direction, but the Hero was there to stop it in its tracks.

With a slice of their greatsword, the Hero severed the thing’s horn from its forehead, melting the keratin there clean off.

The Horse whinnied in pain and surprise, and it thrashed backwards before trotting away, eyeing the Hero.

They swallowed as it turned to face them, eyeing them with a malice that betrayed an unsettling amount of intelligence.

The Hero held out their flaming sword to the side, blocking the creature’s exit. They didn’t have the time to weigh the benefits of making peace with it—it was dangerous, it needed to go.

The Horse kicked at the ground with its back hooves, keeping weight off of its injured foreleg, as it inched closer. 

The Hero wasn’t afraid of it: not with the weapon they held in their right hand, or the adamantite armor they were clad in from head to toe. Not when they had put things much bigger than a horse into the ground.

They waved the fiery greatsword, trying to get the thing to back away from the flame.

It didn’t: instead, the action seemed to enrage it, like a matador waving its flag in front of a bull. The horse charged, and the Hero forced their body to loosen, bracing themselves to swing their sword at the right moment.

At the last second, the Hero rolled out of the way, extending their sword out behind them. When the Horse charged, it tripped over the blade, and it stumbled into the dust on its side.

It wasn’t enough to truly injure it, but the brief moment of contact was all the fire on the sword needed to catch on, and the Hero knew it.

The horse tried to get back up onto its feet, but it began thrashing in panic as the bleeding cut the flaming sword had left on its foreleg caught alight. The coarse hairs around the wound began to singe black around the edges, before the fire spread across its hide. It was catching alight like dry paper, and when the beast had finally managed to stand on its feet again, it was already devoured, from the bottoms of its hooves to the tops of its ears, in an inferno.

The pristine white fur covering its body was charred in seconds. It whinnied in pain, galloping wildly around the great Oak tree like a torch in the wind as the hairs of its mane and tail curled up in the heat. The sound resonated through the entire town, growing in pitch and then rapidly fading as it ran out of air several times, like the haunting reverberations of a clock tower bell.

After a few seconds, the fire cooled, but the damage was done—as it finally bolted out of town the same way the Hero had come in, bits of its flesh sloughed off and onto the ground from its skeleton in its wake. 

The Hero stood there, gripping their sword until their knuckles turned white. The air was filled with a sulfurous miasma, before the wind began to carry the scent of smoldering flesh into town. They tried not to look at the piece of burnt skin that had fallen into the grass next to them.

What they had just witnessed was horrifying. 

But they shoved the feeling down, resolving not to think about it—they didn’t have the time to. Not when Andre was bleeding out.

They sheathed their sword, and ran over to where the Arms Dealer had fallen.

The Guide hated getting his hands dirty.

Even back in the Underworld, when he was still just a wall, he’d avoided the ash that stained the place from floor to ceiling like the plague. He’d hired cleaners for the building Hell’s court met in like clockwork, and when they fell below his standards, he’d slithered in and dusted the place off personally.

(What? The Hungry made an excellent team of feather dusters.)

When he’d finally clawed his way up to the surface, the days he had to spend roughing it in a cave before the Hero had arrived were among the worst in his life—and that was saying a lot, considering he’d been around for a good few centuries. He’d had enough of waking up with sand in places he didn’t know sand could get for a lifetime, and he was sure he’d have nightmares about the tiny, skittering, phosphorescent creatures that came out of the mud at night for years to come.

So one would have to understand, when elucidated on the depths of his hatred for getting dirty, why he was ready to risk getting skewered by a unicorn if it meant he’d get out of the muddy underside of the house he’d darted under an hour ago.

Something brushed against his leg, and it took all of his willpower to not scream and scramble into the open.

When the Hero had first built all of the houses, they hadn’t thought about flooding. The Guide had pointed out that, as a seaside town, it was common sense to take precautions for dangerous weather conditions, and (correctly) made them start over from scratch—this time with piers underneath them for elevation. The piers left dark, damp expanses beneath the homes they lifted up, and while this wasn’t normally a problem, they varied in size—some of the crawl spaces were spacious enough to house poker tables. The one he was stuck in was barely two feet tall, and narrow enough to press against his sides. 

Although he didn’t want to think of what unspeakable horrors were brushing against his foot right now (or about how much mud he was getting on his cloak), he would admit that the positioning of the crawlspace’s opening gave him a clear view of town center—and the monster that was snuffling around it.

The Guide army-crawled towards the light, trying to get a closer look at the creature. As soon as he’d watched the thing leap over the Nurse’s potion display, he’d deduced that it was a unicorn. He hadn’t needed to see the massive tooth protruding from its forehead—unicorns were known for hunting small animal colonies within their very own burrows, driving them into hiding with aggressive peacocking before tearing into their dens with brutal strength. 

The Guide could only assume the show it was putting on as it paced around town, knowing full well it could tear through the wooden buildings like paper and be done with it, could only be down to the pleasure it took in cruelty.

Gritting his teeth as he slid through a puddle, the Guide tried to focus his vision on what was going on in the center of town. The Arms Dealer had just made the mad dash past the Great Oak tree from the Demolitionist’s artillery shop, diving under a table on the opposite side of town just as the unicorn emerged from behind the very building he’d darted out from.

Out of all of the days to come into town…

He cursed himself for picking the one day a dangerous beast had chosen to go human hunting to shop for groceries. He was already low on food, even before the Hero had gotten the better of him in the Underworld, but he’d truly been on the last stretch for the past day or two. He’d been eating nothing but the fruits the dryad had dropped off a week prior, and if he didn’t go by the merchant’s shop soon he’d be forced to start eating banana peels.

The Merchant had a strict policy of closing at seven in the evening, and the Guide had an inkling that it was put into place because the old man’s nighttime wares were of the illicit sort, but he didn’t bother wasting time thinking about it. After all, all it meant was that the Guide would, unfortunately, have to go into town in broad daylight if he wanted to get food.

That morning, he’d poured himself his strongest cup of black tea. He combed his hair, and made sure the sleeves of his shirt were properly cuffed. He thought about bringing his bow, but decided against it—opting for a smaller, less diplomatically offensive knife instead. 

If he had to go into town, he’d use it as an opportunity to make peace with the other townsfolk, damn it! 

...So he’d ended up sneaking around the shadowed corners of the alleys behind the marketplace, trying to avoid everyone.

What? They’d probably just try to gut him again, he rationalized.

 It was the strategic thing to do. To wait for hostility to simmer down before attempting communications.

The unicorn was pawing at something now, trying to dig something shiny up from the grass. The Guide watched it closely. When it seemed content with what it had found, it raised its hackles, and stomped on it, crushing it underneath its front hooves.

From this far away, the Guide couldn’t hear the noise of whatever was on the ground breaking, so he assumed it wasn’t one of the Nurse’s potions—those could be heard from a mile away. Hell, soldiers could probably use them in place of signal flares.

Suddenly, some fast-flying object caught the sunlight as it whizzed towards the unicorn from underneath one of the houses. The creature jerked back as it was hit, braying and thrashing around.

“STAY AWAY FROM MY POLE!” 

The Guide watched as the Angler scrambled out into the open with a war cry, and his pulse quickened.

What was that idiot kid doing?!

The next series of events happened so quickly that the Guide had trouble determining the order they occurred in. 

The Angler fired a bolt from his crossbow, hitting the beast again in the neck, but it was a rookie mistake—that was where the hide was toughest, and it ricocheted off, landing somewhere in the grass. When he realized his attempt to fend it off had been ineffectual, fear gripped the boy, and he stood frozen to the spot. As the unicorn reared back to charge at him, the Guide closed his eyes, looking away.

…Only to open them again as the Demolitionist’s yelling filled town center with sound.

“ANDRE NO! ”

Just as the unicorn pointed its tusk forward and began to charge, the Arms Dealer leaped out from underneath the table, knocking the Angler back underneath the neighboring building into safety. 

But he wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way.

The Arms Dealer was skewered on the unicorn’s tusk, and the Guide watched with a mild sense of discomfort as the spiraling horn on its forehead pierced right through the gunsmith’s shoulder and out the front of his chest. The unicorn raised its head, dragging the Arms Dealer’s body with it into the air, before tossing it back and throwing the man into the dust where he crumpled.

The Demolitionist must have been hiding underneath the table with the Arms Dealer, because then a bomb—a real bomb, not like the grenade that was tossed at the unicorn when it was snuffling around the artillery shop—went off, right next to the foot of the beast.

The explosion was massive . The Guide plugged his ears and it was still loud enough to make them ring. It shattered the glass of every building in town square, and sent sand flying so high that it blocked out the sun above the Oak tree. The Guide could feel the piers of the house he was hiding under tremble.

When he’d come back to his senses and managed to hack the sand out of his lungs, the Guide took a deep breath, only to immediately lose it again at the sight of the person in town.

When the dust from the explosion had settled, the unicorn was already galloping away in the opposite direction, on fire. The flames engulfing it trailed behind it as it ran, long tongues singing the grass underneath its hooves. In its wake standing next to the great Oak tree was a broad figure, decorated in the most terrifying set of armor the Guide had ever seen.

They were staring at the charred path the unicorn left behind, but from this angle, it looked as if the darkness underneath their helmet was boring holes right into the Guide’s hiding place. 

(Which was impossible, because the Guide was cloaked in total darkness under the house. Right?)

The metal it was made of was a brilliant crimson, turned to flame in the sunlight as the cloud of debris cleared. The way that it was built made the person inside look like a great, hulking thing, all spines on the shoulderpads and wings on the helmet. It was enormous, and breathtaking—it looked like the kind of armor the knights war stories were told about would wear, fit for a warrior king. 

It was also the colour of blood, and It made the Guide want to shrink back even further into the darkness.

When the Guide’s eyes finally dared travel down to the figure’s hands, he uncurled fists he didn’t know he was balling. They were holding a flaming sword—the same one the Hero had used to slay him in the Underworld. 

It was the Hero. 

He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the tension leave his body. It was only the Hero.

He didn’t spend much longer hiding underneath the building. When the moment of stillness passed as the unicorn ran back into the woods, calamity broke out. The Hero and the Demolitionist immediately ran over to the Arms Dealer’s side from underneath the table and across town square respectively, yelling as they tried to stop him from bleeding out. The Nurse threw open the door to her office, barking orders and pointing at the Arms Dealer’s limp form. 

After realizing that the monster wouldn’t be making a return anytime soon, the townsfolk all tentatively began crawling out of the woodworks, flocking around the body of the Arms Dealer and bringing a lot of noise with them.

“Stars above! Andre, are you alright?!”

“Does it LOOK like he’s alright?!”

Someone whistled nonchalantly.

“Good LORD! Look at the size of that puncture wound!...”

Several of them aided the Demolitionist and the Hero in their efforts to drag the injured sharpshooter into the Nurse’s office. Several more began to affront them, and the Guide assumed they were scolding the half-conscious man for doing something so reckless. The rest began to gossip amongst themselves, checking up on their friends to make sure they were alright after the events that had just taken place. 

Just like that, with the Hero’s arrival and subsequent exorcise of the beast, the hour of peril was over. The townsfolk were all breathing a collective sigh of relief under the sunshine.

Well, all of them but one.

From where he was under the house, the Guide had resigned himself to waiting another day to go grocery shopping. As his gaze broke away from the commotion at the center of town, his sharp eyes caught the figure of someone crawling out from underneath the building the Arms Dealer had just knocked them under with his heroic sacrifice, in the opposite direction from town center.

The Angler got up on unsteady limbs, pulling himself up from the dirt. He took a moment to lean against the back of the house he’d hidden under, curling up on himself in the shadows, listening to the chatter of the town.

It seemed like he was in distress. Instead of deciding to join them, he elected to walk away towards the outskirts of town, making a beeline for the coast with skinned knees. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, head drooping.

The Guide crawled towards the light, being careful not to draw attention to himself as he methodically shimmied out from underneath the house. 

Unicorns weren’t the kinds of predators that strayed far from their hunting grounds. If one had made its way into town, it was because the Hallow was nearby.

If the Angler was still bleeding, the scent of that blood could carry on the wind, drawing the rest of the herd. The Guide would figure out where the Hallow had spawned later. If the Angler kept bleeding out like that, he might as well have been a walking signal fire.

The Guide dusted himself off, before scurrying into the shadows the Angler had just fled from.

He began to tail the boy.

“Gauze!”

“Aye, miss!”

“Disinfectant!”

“Aye, miss!”

“Sutures!”

“Aye, miss!”

“That’s dental floss!”

“Aye, sorry, miss.”

The Nurse pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn’t have time for this, not when the Arms Dealer was bleeding out on her operating table.

The emergency room she’d set up wasn’t anything like the ones she’d done her residencies in at the Capitol. It lacked the marble flooring that was standard for the city’s medical schools, along with the drainage systems that were tunneled beneath them, meaning she’d have to scrub the trail of blood Andre had left away by hand. The walls were wooden, the shelves moth-eaten, and it was so cramped before she’d sawed open windows for ventilation that the only thing separating it from an over-glorified storage closet was the glass table she was operating on, and the lantern hanging above it as a surgery light.

No, it wasn’t a nice operating room by any means. But it also wasn’t the worst one she’d been in.

“Miss?” the Demolitionist asked tentatively as the Nurse began to stuff more gauze into Andre’s wound.

“Seems as if Andre’s… misplaced his… er, blood, everywhere.”

She could feel the dwarf’s eyes staring at the back of her neck. 

“Oh, yes. Yes, he has indeed done that…” she breathed, eyes sweeping over the red pooling underneath the operating table.

The Nurse finished applying the gauze as she rubbed her temples, trying to steady herself.

“Bazdin, could you give us a moment? I’m about to sew his puncture wound shut and it’s going to get real graphic in here.”

After the Demolitionist, the Hero, and a few others had dragged the injured party to the backroom of the Nurse’s office, she had ushered everyone out to give her some privacy. She’d said it was because she needed to focus, but she could stitch someone’s arms back on with artillery raining down on her. 

No—Andre would just hate letting anyone see him while he was so vulnerable.

The Demolitionist whistled. 

“... Right! Sure thing. I mean, he’ll be alright. Big wuss! It wasn’t even that much blood.” The Demolitionist said roughly, before adding,

“... He will be fine, right?”

The words were spoken casually, but the Nurse caught on to the unease they belied. 

She didn’t blame him. As often as people seemed to come back, the respawn mechanism was a capricious beast, and there was never a full guarantee that someone would be revived if they were buried.

Besides , she thought, it never got any easier to see your loved ones in pain.  

Even if it was only temporary.

The Nurse turned to him with a confident smile as she wiped down her forceps.

“What, you think he won’t be? I’ve seen worse than this from you, little man. He’ll make it.”

Crude as the reassurance was, it seemed to do the trick. Bazdin nodded, before stepping out of the backroom.

“Aye! Let me know if you need anything, lassie!” he yelled from the parlor.

“It’s miss to you, short stack!” she yelled back, before closing the curtains dividing the front and back rooms.

From below her, lying flat on his back on the glass operating table, the Arms Dealer seemed to be truly losing it.

“Did I die and go to heaven?” he gurgled, craning his head to look at her, “Because I think I’m seein’ angels.”

(At least, that’s what she thought he’d said. The blood he was coughing up made it hard to tell.)

“ Jesus penis fuck, Andre!” she yelled, “Stop trying to talk, you’re losing enough blood as it is!”

She scurried over to the supply racks lining the walls of the room, quickly gathering anything she’d need to treat him that Bazdin hadn’t already laid out for her—scissors, check. Local anesthetics, check. Surgical needle, check. Health potions…

Her hand almost reached for the bottom shelves where they were usually kept, before she remembered what had happened earlier that day. 

They’d all been destroyed earlier by the horse-creature when it had leaped over her table. It would only take minutes to run and get more at the Merchant’s shop, but she didn’t know how many of those Andre had left to spare.

As she laid out the necessary instruments onto a medical-grade steel stand next to where he was laying, she took a moment to assess his current state. 

Andre had turned his face away, sweat running down his forehead in bullets. His skin was cool and pale, and he looked like he was clenching his teeth. When she looked down at his hands, she found that one of them was gripping a fistful of the fabric of his coat, white-knuckled and wound so tight that it was tremoring.

The adrenaline must have been wearing off.

She’d seen plenty of injured people before— it was always ghastly on some level, but this was different. This was someone she cared about, someone she’d grown attached to. Watching the Arms Dealer recoil in pain as she reached down to touch the wound made her want to start hyperventilating. What if she didn’t manage to save him in time? Has he already lost too much blood to be saved? What if he never came-

Nope! 

She cut that spiral off halfway down and steeled herself. The operating room was no place to have a panic attack!

Her hands didn’t shake as she peeled away the strips of fabric from his shoulder.

“Allison,” the Arms Dealer gritted out, “Shoulder hurting. Real bad.”

“I know.” 

He looked up at her with pleading eyes.

“ Fix it. Please.”

“I’m going as fast as I can. I just need to get these layers off before I give you a local, okay?” she spoke gently, “Stay with me.”

She snipped away the fabric surrounding the wound with mechanical precision. In spite of all of the blood he’d spilled on the way here, she still felt a tiny amount of horror when she looked at the wound.

The horn he’d been speared with hadn’t been that large, but when the beast had tossed Andre to the side like a sack of potatoes, it had forced his body weight to dangle from it in full, widening it further. The puncture she was looking at on his shoulder was the exit point, and the flesh around it was grisly and mangled by the trauma, painted with hues of organic matter. 

If it had pierced a lung, he wouldn’t have been able to breathe by now, but…

She could still see the white of his ruined clavicle when she peeked inside, and it seemed as if his shoulder blade hadn’t been moved out of the way upon impact—the horn had gone right through, shattering it completely.

The Nurse swallowed. She couldn’t imagine how it must have felt.

“Still there, Andre? Blink twice for yes.”

Once she’d finally wiped the area down with disinfectant and administered the anesthetics, the Arms Dealer seemed to relax, letting go of the tension he was holding. His hand unclenched, and he stopped tensing the muscles around the wound so stiffly.

The drugs were doing their work, but now she had to switch her focus to a different problem.

The Nurse stared down at the shattered bits of bone in the wound.

How do I fix this?

 On one hand, if she tried to take the time to graft every splintered piece of bone back together, Andre might bleed out and die during the process—and the chances of him respawning were always a gamble. If she stitched it close and tried giving him a healing potion to stop the internal bleeding instead, the bone fragments of his shoulder blade would undoubtedly be grafted together in a discordant patchwork of cartilage and osseous matter, and not even a respawn could fix that. He’d never move it again.

Brewing beneath the panic was a riptide of anger, and it swelled to the surface as her train of thought steamrolled into the long-term consequences of an injury like this. If his shoulder healed poorly, he’d lose his range of motion in that arm. If he couldn’t move it, he’d lose the ability to aim, to draw designs for new weapons, to continue to practice the craft that he loved so much.

You idiot! You stupid, noble, heroic fucking clown!

She bit her tongue, chiding herself for getting upset during emergency surgery. She steeled herself—she was better than that.

Focus, focus. 

She needed something that could adhere the bone splinters together quickly, right as she was putting them together, so she could move on to stitching and cauterizing the wound before he… exsanguinated . As she formed a plan of action in her head, she began to use the forceps to pluck some of the larger bone fragments sticking out of his muscle from his flesh, laying them out on the stand where she’d put her instruments.

“BAZDIN!” She yelled in the direction of the front rooms, not breaking away from her work, “I NEED YOU TO GET-”

“-Healing potions?”

He finished the sentence for her, stepping through the curtains with a crate full of them. Her relief was immeasurable.

“ Oh my- Bazdin, you- you did your know?!” she sputtered.

The Demolitionist set the crate down at the foot of the glass table, right next to where the Nurse was standing. She was too busy to look him in the eye, but she hoped he knew she appreciated the gesture.

“Ah, I figured after ye’re little stand was knocked over, it couldn’t hurt to get more. Now hurry up and stitch my roommate back together! He aims with that arm, y’know!”

She could hear Bazdin’s steps trail out of the room from behind her, and she was filled with a new determination. The situation was still dire, but at least now she knew what to do.

She felt the Arms Dealer’s pulse beneath her fingertips. It was shallow, and unbelievably fast, but it was still there.

He must have lost three or four pints of blood by now, she thought grimly—and he was getting unresponsive. The number would be creeping into unsurvivable territories soon. She needed to hurry up.

“Come on, Andre, I’m not giving up on you…” she muttered to herself. 

She smacked the side of his face, and his brows furrowed, but she could tell by the way he was staring directly into the lantern hanging above the table that he was somewhere else.

The Nurse wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, before taking one of the bottles from the crate and uncorking it with a gloved hand. From the table where her instruments were lying, she took a bundle of Q-tips and dipped them into the potion, and then she began to get down to business. 

The process of gathering the fragments of bone embedded within his flesh and piecing them back together was a meticulous one. By holding two fragments together with the forceps, and dabbing the crack between them with a Q-tip, the two would be joined as the tissue regenerated. It wasn’t dissimilar to gluing a shattered ceramic back together.

The shoulder blade hadn’t been easy to repair, but all that she’d needed to put back together was the part shown by the entry wound—the rest might be fractured, but at least all of the pieces were held in place by skin and muscle. The clavicle had been considerably more difficult, seeing as it was in a dozen or so pieces, but she managed to repair that too before she began to stitch the musculastructure lining his ribcage together.

She was closing the wound in his skin when he regained lucidity. 

“Allison? S’that you?” he slurred.

He was alive.

Her legs felt like they were about to give out. 

“Who else would be poking around your insides?!” 

The Arms Dealer cringed at how loud her voice had gotten.

The Nurse’s voice softened as she tied the suturing into a knot, clipping the end of it with her scissors.

“Think you can sit up? I still need to sew up the entrance wound.”

The Arms Dealer took a breath, looking like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t have the energy to.

“Okay. Yeah, sure.”

His face twisted, and he grimaced as he began to lift his head up off of the table. He heaved with the expenditure. Sweat ran down his brow. And then, he collapsed back onto it with a cough. It sent specks of blood flying.

“There, is that good?” he finally asked. 

“...Andre, you didn’t get off of the table.”

“Oh.”

The Nurse winced.

The glimmering red of the healing potion caught her eye, and she contemplated a course of action.

It was dangerous. She’d be gambling on whether or not she’d put the bones of his shoulder back together properly, but… 

She looked down at the blood he’d just coughed up onto the table.

Just because the bleeding’s not external doesn’t mean it’s not there.

“You know what? Take a sip of this before you try that again.”

She took the last of the Q-tips that had been marinating in the potion she’d been using out, before holding the bottle up to his lips. She tried to hold his head up for him, but he waved her off, taking the glass bottle into his own hand as he took a swig.

She cut him off when he’d drained half of it.

“Alright, that’s enough. I still need to check to make sure your shoulder blade’s in the right position.” she said, prying the glass from his grip.

The Arms Dealer gasped as it did its work, repairing the frayed blood vessels beneath his bruises and closing the scrapes he’d gotten from being tossed onto the ground earlier. He pushed himself up tentatively, sucking in a breath through his teeth.

“I think the locals you gave me earlier are wearing off.”

“Andre, that’s because the healing potion is repairing the damaged nerves around your wound. You almost died.”

His face paled.

“Oh,” he said quietly, before trying to laugh it off, “Well, wouldn’t be the first time, right?”

The Nurse was quiet. 

“Turn around. I need to see the entrance point.” She said frigidly.

The Arms Dealer shifted uncomfortably, before doing what she said. When his back was facing her, she began to regret how harsh her tone had gotten.

...But then she’d remembered the buffoonery that had gone on two nights prior between him and Wyatt, and then how he’d brushed her off in front of everyone the previous day when he and the Tavernkeep had roused the mob, and then how he’d made the stupid , heroic decision to get lanced in place of the Angler.

She couldn’t fault him for that last one, but she didn’t want him to think it was—she didn’t want to let him off the hook like that. She wasn’t going to congratulate him for putting his life on the line, ever.

Her hand ghosted down the curvature of his spine, hovering over the wound.

 “You think you can take your jacket off, or am I going to have to...?”

The Arms Dealer began to lift his injured arm, before tilting his head back, and cursing.

“Just cut it off.”

It was one thing to see the blood stop flowing from his wounds, but seeing him up and moving around was a different kind of relief. She was sure he could feel her hands trembling now that she wasn’t forcing them to be still.

When the entry point to the wound was exposed, she set her lips into a tight line. The flesh there had already been sutured closed by the healing potion, sealed shut with a thick coagulation of drying blood. She didn’t dare move it—pulling away the fabric of his shirt had already disturbed the clot, and it was beginning to become damp again.

“Andre, I need you to lift your arm for me.”

His head snapped up.

“What? Which one?”

“What do you mean, ‘ Which one ?’ The one I just operated on.”

She couldn’t see his facial expression from this angle, but she knew it wasn’t good.

“My right arm? The one I use to aim?”

“Yes.”

“The one that’s bleeding out from the shoulder?”

“Yes.”

“The one you were just rearranging, the insides of?”

“ Yes, Andre, that is the arm I’m referring to.”

The Arms Dealer took a deep breath.

“Alright. ‘Course. You got it.” he said, before raising his left arm.

The Nurse felt a flame of anger flicker within her. She wasn’t in the mood for this.

“You know I wouldn’t ask you to do something that would hurt you if it wasn’t necessary, right?” she snapped, “What kind of doctor do you think I am?!”

At that, the Arms Dealer seemed to sober up. He put his face in his good hand, groaning into it.

“Sorry. I know that. It’s just- damn, Allison, I almost died! Can you give me a minute?”

The Nurse felt the flame grow a little bit bigger, but she bit her tongue, trying to get her sympathy to outweigh it.

“I need to know if the bones in your shoulder healed back right. What if you’re never able to shoot again?” she said angrily. 

“I have my other arm.” the Arms Dealer said plainly. “It’d be fine.”

Her sympathy did not outweigh it.

“Oh, can you draw up blueprints with one arm? Cast iron with one arm?” the words came out quickly, and she got angrier and angrier as she said them. “We’ll see how fine you are when you try to put your shirt on every morning. Hey Andre, why don’t you just try aiming rifles with your mouth from now on while you pull the trigger with your one functioning arm? ”

“What was I supposed to do?! ” the Arms Dealer sniped, “Let him die?”

The Nurse bit her tongue. Distantly, she remembered that the entry point of the wound hadn’t been sanitized, and she picked up an antibacterial wipe with her forceps and began to dab at the wound. The Arms Dealer was stock-still, but he hissed when the prongs of the tool inched too close to the blood clot.

“...Of course not.” she added, after some time. “I don’t know, Andre. I’m not letting that idiot boy get away with putting himself in danger, either.”

A heavy silence hung in the air as the Nurse put down the wipe with the forceps, picking up a cotton ball instead. She soaked it with a healing potion before dabbing it on the wound—edges first, just like how she was taught. She watched the skin regenerate around the clot, contracting the edges, tugging them closer and closer to the epicenter of the wound like it was stitching itself shut.

“Why did he do that?” she asked quietly. “It’s just a fishing pole. We could have made him a new one.”

It took some time for the Arms Dealer to reply.

“It’s important to him. There are carvings on it and shit.”

The Nurse’s brows furrowed in ire. 

Dying for a fishing pole. What nonsense.

“Nothing’s important enough to risk losing your life over.” she said bitterly.

The Arms Dealer stiffened, before laughing hollowly.

“No, you’re right. But he’s just a kid. Don’t think he gets that yet.”

The Arms Dealer shifted, straightening up, before slowly beginning to lift his right arm to the side.

It went up like it was tied to the ground. His jaw tightened, and he didn’t breathe as the limb went up at a grueling pace. The higher he raised it, the more it began to tremble, and he fought to keep it up in the air, to raise it just an inch higher.

Chest-level was his limit. He swore, and with a hiss of pain he let it drop back onto the table.

“You’re sure you can’t raise it any further? Try again.”

“I did, but it’s just- not working. I’m pullin’ it up. But when I get halfway there it just gives out, like they’re pullin’ on something that’s not there, or… yeah.”

That was the only answer the Nurse needed. Her mouth went dry, and she set the forceps down onto the steel table, face twisting.

Shiiiiit.

She’d seen things happen like this before, on the battlefront. Injured soldiers who were wrecked on the inside would chug healing potions in a desperate bid to stay alive. It worked—they’d stop coughing up blood, became able to climb up to their feet and fight again within the hour. It happened again with every new injury, and again, and again, and each time they’d report feeling better than they had in years as they came down from the buzz, just as bright-eyed and able-bodied as they had been when they had enlisted.

But then something began to happen.

They began to fall ill. Fatigue, at first; an unwillingness to join in when the rest of a squadron was playing cards on uneventful nights. Then the intolerance for alcohol became evident: drinks rarely flowed freely on military bases, but moonshine did. They were no lightweights, but just a cup or two was enough to send them to the darkest corners of the encampment to hurl up their insides for the next day or so. Alcohol poisoning became a rampant cause of death.

So rampant, in fact, that when they’d buried them and realized they were just as dead as they’d been the night before at sunrise, their commanding officer had ordered them to perform autopsies on the bodies to ensure no foul play was afoot. 

There wasn’t. It was something far more insidious: when her team of medics cut the bodies open, they’d found that their insides had become a patchwork quilt of connective matter. The membrane lining their chest cavities had grown in size, like it had been trying to keep everything inside together with a pale, organic cocoon a solid half-inch thick.

Once they’d cut through that, they’d found that their organs healed well—exceptionally well, actually—but they were all lodged within nests of scar tissue, and most of them weren’t in the right place. The esophagus in one with a collapsed lung had branched out to merge with his bronchi, explaining what the medical team thought had been a smoker’s cough. The right kidney of another had, in the process of being speared with a sword, migrated towards her ventral side, becoming caught up in the small intestine and amalgamating with it. 

The potions had repaired their engines, but it had put the gears back wrong—went inside and switched around the parts of the machine, set a biological mechanism of destruction within them, ticking away like clockwork that sped up with every injury.

And no one had noticed what a mess they’d become on the inside, all because the damage was out of sight. 

Granted, these had all been severe cases—people who had gone through traumas that should have been utterly unsurvivable—but it was the exact same principle that had caused the Arms Dealer’s shoulder to lose part of its function.

Before trying to use a healing potion, it was imperative that everything in one’s body was in the right position—every bone in the proper place, every organ detangled from other organs. The potions would only heal where the body detected damage, but they were inexact, and were closer to an organic cement than a proper healing process. If a rib were sticking out of the skin, it would heal like that. So too did the same go for missing limbs that weren’t reattached before a potion was downed, or eyes and ears that weren’t in their proper sockets or canals.

In her panic, The Nurse had taken a gamble that the broken parts of the Arms Dealer’s shoulder she couldn’t see were all connected properly, and she’d lost. The bone was set for good, and so too was its damage.

This was it. She had done all she could, and it still wasn’t good enough.

She put her head in her hands, trying to breathe in and regain her composure, but it didn’t work. She’d held it together through the unicorn attack, through seeing Andre get human shish-kabobed, through grafting his shoulder back together. 

You could have done better .

She started crying.

Andre turned around immediately, looking alarmed. 

“Woah, hey- Allison, what’s wrong?”

“You’re not- you’re not going to be able to fire with that arm anymore, Andre,” she choked out, pulling at her hair, “The bone is set like that, now. It’s stuck.”

His face fell, but he steeled himself, reaching out to wipe her tears away with his good arm.

“Oh, whatever. I’ll survive.” He said crassly, before softening it with “Besides, there’s no point in grieving for it now. It’s gone, y’know? Fuckin’, uh, nothing to me now. Whoosh. Just like that.”

The Nurse pushed his hand away, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

“It’s not nothing. I know how much you care about what you do. I’m sorry I couldn’t fix it.”

She laughed bitterly.

“Some nurse I am, right?”

The Arms Dealer looked at her in stunned silence. 

Just then, the shopkeeper’s bell above the Nurse’s office rang out, and the Nurse frantically wiped the tears off of her face with a coat sleeve.

The sound of footsteps crossing the floor and idle chatter rang out across the parlor, before the Demolitionist and the Hero poked their heads into the backroom.

The Nurse stared at them—wide-eyed, tentative, looking the Arms Dealer over for injuries. The Hero, carrying a carton of ale over their shoulder.

They stared back at the Nurse—dark trails of mascara smudged around her eyes, Andre’s hand reaching out towards her.

“Er… is… now a bad time?” the Demolitionist asked.

The Arms Dealer’s face contorted with disbelief as he processed the question.

“ Yes, Bazdin! Yes, now is a bad time! ”

As far as brooding spots went, the docks weren’t a particularly bad place to go, the Guide thought to himself.

Currently, he was leaning against the wall of a wooden beach shack, peering at the Angler.

The boy was sitting on the shore with his knees tucked into his chest, staring out into the waves. The broken pieces of the fishing hook he’d tried so hard to defend were clutched tightly in his grasp, and the water was inching ever closer.

The Guide couldn’t see his expression from this angle, but he wasn’t shaking. He was, unsettlingly, quiet.

The Guide swallowed the odd pit of unease that was forming within him. 

The Angler was many things. For starters, he was rude —he didn’t think he’d ever heard the boy say please or thank you once in the past year or so. The Guide was actually fairly certain he didn’t know the meaning of the words, considering how he’d never responded to either.

He was also conniving. 

Seasons ago, before the Hero had found him washed up upon the sands, the townsfolk had fished for their own dinners. People carved their own rods and tackle from branches pulled down from the oak trees cloistering town, and used line supplied by the only Merchant in town. Over time, though, a problem arose: the line the Merchant stored in his warehouse became fragile and easily-broken. Seeing as none of the townsfolk had the prowess to spin their own, the number of people who were able to fish steadily trickled down to zero as their lines began to snap. At first, the Merchant had blamed it on supply companies switching over to cheaper materials to undercut their competitor’s prices, but the Guide knew better.

It wasn’t the fault of the supply companies—he’d watched the Angler cut a hole in the wall of the warehouse right behind the space the Merchant kept his string weeks prior. The opening he’d carved invited mildew from the outside to collect in the tangled nests of line, eating away at their structural integrities, weakening them over time.

It was when the entire town ran out of usable fishing line that the Angler capitalized on the situation, immediately—as the owner of the only functioning rod in town, he’d offered to fish in place of everyone else, selling the idea with zeal. The townsfolk would never have to waste valuable time sitting out at sea for hours again, waiting for some piecemeal minnows to bite. Not when they didn’t have a choice.

And especially not when the Angler was simply better at it than they were.

The little brat made an ill-mannered vendor, and he’d hiked up the prices as far as he could. The Guide wasn’t sure he knew what the term monopoly meant, but he was certain the boy would wear the badge with pride. 

...But he had to admit, the shrewdness he’d shown was impressive. There were some Underworld demons that weren’t that smart.

Yes, the Guide mused, watching the Angler from the shadows—he was discourteous, insolent, clever , and from what he’d heard of him, far too vulgar for his age. Whatever age that was.

But he was never quiet.

Not that the Guide was concerned, or anything. But he knew when people- humans -  isolated themselves, when they began to behave in opposition to their natures, it meant that something was wrong. 

A wave crashed onto the shore, sweeping over the sand and inching ever closer to the docks. The Angler was stock-still as the water went past him, carrying some of the blood running down his knees into the ocean as it retreated back out to sea.

The Guide padded over, carefully avoiding getting his shoes wet.

“It’s not good to let blood flow freely, you know. Especially not into the water.” He called out, looking out to sea.

The Angler stiffened, jerking his head around. 

“Yeah, I know that, idiot .” 

The Angler turned his head back around, staring out to sea again. By now the sun was low enough on the horizon that it was gaining a red hue, and it made the water catch alight like brilliant, liquid glass.

“‘Sides,” he continued, “Salt water’s good for it. Disinfects the wound.”

The Guide crouched down beside the Angler. 

“Ah, but you’re not sitting here to disinfect it, are you?” he asked softly. “If you were, you’d be wading out to sea right now.”

As soon as the Guide got close to him, the Angler bristled, jumping away like a frightened animal.

“What’s it to you, creep?”

The Guide backed away, putting his hands up.

“Nothing. It’s nothing to me,” he said evenly, “But I have some bad news for you, if you think sitting out here with open wounds is a good idea… You didn’t scrape your knees falling when the Arms Dealer pushed you, right? You’ve had these injuries all day.”

The Angler scrambled to his feet, looking at him with startled eyes. The Guide’s lip curled.

“So, I’m correct.”

“ How did you know that?! ” the boy hissed, “What, were you following me, or something?!”

The Angler looked like he was torn between bolting and going for the Guide’s kneecaps. The Guide backed away further. 

Just as a safety precaution.

“I didn’t. But the monster that just destroyed half the town is drawn to the scent of blood. If you were in the forest earlier today, and you were injured, it’s entirely possible that what led it into town was the splatter trail you left behind on your way back.”

The boy’s face fell.

“You mean…” he began, but the question died on his tongue. He shook his head, seeming to steady himself, and pointed a finger at the Guide.

“No, you’re lying. How the hell would you know that?!” he refuted.

The Guide swallowed the bitterness the words evoked, and continued speaking.

“I know a lot of things. For instance: that monster is a pack animal called a Unicorn, and the reason it destroyed your fishing rod is because it was trying to catch more of your scent. Bloodthirsty little hounds, they are…”

Then he stopped, because convincing his adult neighbors of his honesty was difficult enough, and the Angler was a child.

He switched tactics.

“Whether you choose to believe me or not, it’s a good idea to patch up, no? The Nurse is rather busy with the… Arms Dealer, at the moment.” He said, pulling a roll of gauze from the satchel underneath his cloak.

The Angler’s brows furrowed in distrust.

“...And, standing out so close to the treeline like this, you might as well be a walking signal fire. There’s no telling if your blood will draw the rest of the group into town.” the Guide dropped casually.

The Angler’s brows furrowed in distrust further, and then he inched closer.

Bingo , the Guide thought.

“Fine. Whatever. Give me the gauze, jerkwad.”

The Angler made a wild grab for it, but the Guide held it out of his reach. He looked like he was ready to bite him.

“Wait!”  the Guide ordered, “What are you, an animal? Go wash the blood off first!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” the Angler snapped, but he must have detected some sense in the words, for he scuttled off to the waterside anyways.

The Guide sighed, running a hand through his hair as he watched him wade out to sea.

If he was being honest with himself, the Unicorn attack was filling him with an unprecedented amount of anxiety. He wasn’t exaggerating when he’d warned the Angler of their tracking capabilities—they could catch the traces of warm bodies from miles away on the wind. 

And, he thought, idly watching the boy rinse his knees off with saltwater, they never hunted alone.

Nor did they stray too far from the sterile, iridescent lands they were bound to, which meant that wherever the Hallow had spawned, it was too close for comfort.

The Guide began running over his mental to-do list..

First, he needed to talk to the Dryad. Today had, undoubtedly, lit a fire underneath her—wherever she was in town right now, she was probably itching to leave to try and pin down the Hallow’s exact coordinates. The only thing keeping her here was the fact that she was waiting on the Guide to drop off medical supplies for the journey there.

Which he fully intended to do , he reminded himself. Just as soon as he was certain the Nurse wouldn’t throw him out of her office as soon as he’d walked through the door.

Then there was the matter of finding a way to warn everyone in town of the danger they were in without arousing suspicion. To do that, he’d have to wait until the Dryad came back with news of the Hallow, to give adequate reason for why he knew of its existence—but that could take months, depending on how interesting she found it.

No, he thought with a frown, it would undoubtedly take months. She’d spent a vast majority of her life studying the world’s flora and fauna, but a few thousand years of watching the same creatures die out only to evolve once more got dry. She’d be captivated by the new biome, dangerous as it was, and had no real reason to come back to town with whatever information she’d gleaned save for the fact that the Guide had, cordially, asked her to.

A ludicrous idea formed in his head.

He could just alert the Hero to the Hallow’s whereabouts.

...But that bridge was still smoking, and there was no guarantee they’d trust him, after his lie of omission about his past.

There was also no guarantee he could trust them to handle it. Was their new set of armour forged skillfully enough to prevent its insects from crawling inside? Had they bothered to upgrade their sword yet? Were they ready to face its denizens?

He rubbed his temples, running the mental calculations on the biome’s fatality rate. How likely were they to die to the hands of the pixies? To the unicorn herds? Was today’s small victory a product of luck or a sign that they were truly capable of surviving?

Right. Better to let the Dryad handle this one for now, fickle as she may be. 

The Angler’s voice snapped him out of his train of thought.

“I hate Andre.”

The Guide stared at his back, watching the boy furiously scrub off the blood from his calves.

“...Apologies, but… who?”

The Angler’s glare was thorny enough to take a little seriously.

“The Arms Dealer, stupid.”

“Oh.” 

The Guide let out a tentative laugh.

“Well, that makes two of us, I suppose.”

The Angler went quiet again, turning away. The Guide tried to search for something to say to that—something that was tactful enough to not scare the boy away—but he was drawing a blank.

So he settled, only slightly discomforted, with saying nothing.

The Angler piped up again when he began to rinse his skinned knees off with saltwater.

“I didn’t ask him to help me. He’s such an idiot.”

“An astute observation.”

“...And he’s rude.”

What was it they said about pots and kettles?

“Oh, certainly,” the Guide concurred, “Why, I don’t think I’ve heard that neanderthal say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ since he’s gotten here.”

The Angler winced as he finally got the last of the dirt from his wounds moments later, scraping them open again in the process.

“I’m done,” he said miserably, waddling back to shore, “Give me the bandages.”

The Guide held them out to the boy as he walked over, bare feet leaving a trail on the sand that faded into a wash behind him.

“Here—gauze, to absorb the blood, and bandages to keep it still.”

The Angler took them in frigid silence.

“You know how to apply them, right?” the Guide asked.

“Of course I do!” the boy snapped, “I’m not stupid.”

“That’s not what I was- actually, nevermind. Give them back when you’re done, please, I’ll be in need of them later.”

The Angler plopped down onto the sand, stretching his legs out in front of him. He tried to harden his face, but still bit his cheek as he began to wrap the scrapes.

The Guide sighed with resignation as he watched the Angler put the bandages on underneath the gauze.

He sunk into a crouch, reaching down.

“Here, let me-”

The Angler slapped his hand away.

“I don’t need your help.” he hissed.

The Guide’s eyes widened as he contemplated what he was about to do—before promptly smacking himself in the face out of embarrassment.

He’d gotten so used to the Hero bandaging up his own wounds that he’d almost forgotten how intrusive he’d found it, at first. 

How intrusive it was , to go around asking people to trust them enough to do so. 

The Guide backed away immediately.

“Sorry.” he said curtly, rising to his feet.

The Angler looked up at him, eyes wide in what looked like surprise.

(Or was it fear? He still had difficulties telling them apart.)

“Oh- uh. Well. Yeah! ” The boy jeered, wrapping the bandages tighter around his knee,  “You should be sorry!”

“I… am? My apologies, for getting into your space like that. That was impolite of me.”

The Angler’s brows furrowed, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish.

Well. The Guide had exhausted his emotional index for the day. He wasn’t exactly sure how to identify that one.

“Good!” the boy yelled.

“Indeed.” 

“Great, even!” 

“Yes. Er, wonderful.”

“ Fantastic!” the Angler replied, aggressively tying the bandages in a knot. He stared at the gauze, as if he were trying to identify where it was meant to go.

“...Angler. The gauze.”

The boy looked up at him with round eyes.

“It goes underneath the bandages.” the Guide pointed out.

The Angler’s face flushed.

“I knew that!” he said quickly, but began untying the knots of the bandages almost immediately.

The Guide sighed, watching the boy try and troubleshoot a simple medical procedure. And then found himself snickering at the absurdity of it.

“Undoubtedly. Is that why you tied it up like that?” he prodded.

“...Shut up.”

The Guide got down onto one knee very slowly, taking great pains not to startle him.

“Why don’t I show you how to tie that properly?” he asked, and when fronted with the Angler’s scowl, quickly added “Not on your leg, but on mine.”

“How are you gonna...?” 

The Guide outstretched his hand, holding his palm up to the light.

“You can tie it yourself later, but for now, I’ll need those for a moment. I don’t have any more I can use to demonstrate, I’m afraid.”

The Angler stared at him with some uncertainty for a moment, before he relented; placing them in the Guide’s hand. When he did, the Guide bent down and wrapped the gauze over his own knee, holding it there with a thumb. 

“The bandages aren’t there to stop the flow of blood—that’s the gauze’s job. The bandages are only meant to serve as a means to fasten them in place.” the Guide explained, securing the it with a strip of bandage. 

A few moments later, the Guide had tied the ribbons up into an immaculate knot around his own knee. He held his hands away to let the Angler observe how it looked.

“Understand, Angler?”

The boy was staring at him calmly.

“Yeah.” he said plainly, before catching himself and raising his hackles. “I mean, yeah! Obviously! It’s not like it’s a hard concept. Jerk.”

The Guide refrained from pointing out that the boy hadn’t understood it a few moments ago. He had a feeling it would only evoke more… prepubescent rage.

“Alright. Well, here are the bandages,” the Guide said, untying them, “and here is the gauze. Use them as you wish.”

Before the Guide could even finish unwrapping the gauze, the Angler had snatched the materials up, quickly mirroring the process the Guide had just shown him with flawless accuracy as he stuck his tongue out. In moments, he had identical knots around both knees, stopping the flow of blood.

Alright. He’d finished the task before the Guide could blink. That was new.

(And distinctly un-Hero-like. But the Guide shoved the comparison down when it made something bittersweet curl up in his chest.)

“...Any other injuries?” he double-checked.

The Hero, with their awful, reckless nature, taught him the importance of doing that.

Wait, no they didn’t. Stop that, brain!

The Angler shook his head.

“Nope.”

“You’re certain?”

The Angler glared.

“What are you, my mom?”

The Guide stood up, brushing the sand off of his cloak.

“No. I suppose that’ll be all, then. I recommend you head inside before nightfall. The light of the moon will keep some monsters at bay, but not all of them.” he said, beginning to take a step away.

The Angler called out behind him.

“Hey doofus! What’s the catch?!”

The Guide turned back around, regarding the boy with mild bewilderment.

“... Catch?”

The Angler got to his feet, jutting out his chest.

(Or at least, trying to. There wasn’t much to jut out, considering how scrawny he was.)

“What do you want for helping me? Duh.”

Oh.

Now that was- that was a familiar sentiment. The boy was speaking his language, now.

“I mean,” the Angler parsed out with some desperation when he saw the Guide trying to repress a peal of laughter, “Come on. I’m not an idiot , Wyatt. Nothing is free. There’s always some string attached, to it, or like, something someone wants you to do, so. Come on! Tell me what the price is!”

He would have taken the Angler up on that offer, once—because that was customary for the Underworld, with all of its pacts and bartering and demonic laws. Driven the hard bargain, because absolving someone of the debt they owed you when you could instead bleed them dry didn’t make any logical sense.

But he didn’t, because this was the Overworld.

Because it would have upset the townsfolk, if they’d caught wind of him bringing debts and bonds into what should have been a base human instinct to help those in need. Because that would make his continued existence here more difficult.

Because with how often people helped each other on the surface, trying to keep track of what and how much he owed would make his head split. Was making his head split.

No other reason.

“Nothing. There is no ‘catch’, Angler. This was… on me, so to speak.”

The Angler’s face flushed.

“I know how business works. That is such a load of bullshit.”

The Guide raised a brow.

“You know how business works?” he threw back at him, “What are you, ten?”

“ Eleven! ”

The Guide waved a hand, growing impatient.

“There truly is no price, Angler. You owe me nothing. I will not ask for payment at a later date, nor will I recall a favour. The scale between us is evenly balanced.”

The Angler looked at him skeptically.

“I know you’re not as nice as the Nurse is. Why’d you even help me, huh?”

“Looking a gift horse in the mouth, are you?”

The Angler was silent for a moment, calculating something behind mistrustful eyes.

“Well... Thank you. I guess.” the boy said quietly.

“You have nothing to thank me for. It made sense to patch you up, is all—in the vein of preventing any more unicorn attacks.”

“...You’re a real weirdo, aren’t you?” the boy asked. 

The Guide had heard that enough times from the Arms Dealer that it no longer fazed him. Actually, it seemed ridiculous, coming from someone so nonthreatening in comparison. 

“I get that often. Farewell, Angler.”

The Guide began to walk away, but the Angler caught the edge of his cape, stopping him in his tracks.

“Hey, Numbskull! Wait a minute.”

Oh, Lord of the moon. What now?

The Angler looked up at him through the brim of his straw hat. It might have been the shadows casted over his face in the evening light, but his gaze was given an intense new dimension as he leveled it at the Guide. 

“You… know things…” he stated, seeming to test the waters, “Do you know if, um… Andre’s going to be okay?” 

Oh, wonderful. The local firearms menace. His favourite subject. 

“That’s dependent on your definition of the word. He’ll live for certain, and even if he doesn’t, he’d come back since the unicorn is technically a monster. But if the Nurse decides to use a healing potion on him, his shoulder may be irreparably damaged.”

Below the brim of his straw hat, the Angler’s face twisted into grief, but he bit the inside of his cheek and stayed quiet.

“What do you mean, damaged?” he managed to parse out, after some time.

“Well, getting skewered from front to back typically causes great bodily harm. The horn could have hit a vital organ, and he’d have already bled out by now. If he’s less fortunate, he’ll still be alive, and it’d be up to the Nurse to graft the pieces of the bone back together…”

As he spoke, the Guide came to the realization that the Nurse wasn’t going to be willing to leave it up to the respawn phenomenon to bring the Arms Dealer back—not when she wasn’t certain he would, considering he’d died to something she’d never even heard of. 

She’d almost certainly go for the latter course of action; try to repair the damage done herself instead of waiting for Terraria’s natural mechanisms to do the legwork for her. If she used healing potions to speed up the process, any damage to the bone or muscle in his arm would be set, and that’s how he’d come back every time from then on.

If the Guide had clarified that the Arms Dealer would come back…

Instead of frantically rushing him into the emergency room in a panicked frenzy, the townsfolk might have sat quietly next to him as he died. Instead of making the damage done to his arm permanent, they could have dug him up the next morning, no worse for wear.

The Arms Dealer’s shoulder could have been irreversibly mutilated. 

That could have been avoided, had the Guide told the Nurse that she could trust the respawn mechanism to sew up his muscles, to glue the broken shards of bone within together.

The Arms Dealer was now a less dangerous enemy. 

This should have been a cause for celebration, but the realization only made him feel hollow.

The Angler brought his hands together in front of the Guide’s face in a clap, and he was snapped out of his musings.

“Hello?” the boy said impatiently, “What’s going to happen to him? Is he- will he be okay?”

The Guide stared down at the boy, weighing his options.

He could lie—feed him a gentle misconstruement of what was most likely occurring in the Nurse’s backroom.

Or he could tell him the truth, and make sure the boy understood to not venture into the woods alone again.

The choice was obvious.

“No. That attack most likely crippled him for life. I doubt he’ll have much movement in that arm from now on.”

The Angler’s face fell immediately—going from the pale shades of horror, to the twisted grimace of rage, until finally he’d yanked the brim of his straw hat over his eyes, obscuring the Guide’s view of his expression.

Seconds crawled by like molasses pouring out of a jar. The Angler’s fists balled up at his sides, and the Guide watched as he seemed to bristle with fury with mild alarm, but the boy’s voice remained even when he spoke up again.

“You’re lying.”

When would people stop accusing him of doing that?

The Angler continued.

“You’re- you’re just saying that, right? So I’ll stop going off by myself?”

Alright, thought the Guide, certifiably unnerved. This kid was certainly smarter than some Underworld demons.

The Angler brought his arm up to his face, wiping it furiously as he hid beneath the brim of his hat.

“ Like I’d ever buy that! ” he said sharply, “Andre’s stupid, but he’s not stupid enough to get himself seriously injured like that! You’re lying! ”

“I don’t lie.” he said icily, before adding, in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, “But if you’re still skeptical, feel free to check the Nurse’s office later today.”

The Angler finally looked up at him, and the Guide finally caught a glimpse of his eyes below the brim of his hat. They were welling up, and he was furiously trying to keep them from spilling over.

“Shut up!” he choked out, “Of course you are! ‘Cause why would he- why’d he do that?! I didn’t ask him to!”

The Angler leveled a look of utter desperation at the Guide.

Angry tears were flowing from his eyes in rivulets, and his entire face was flushed an ugly shade of red. It was a grisly sight, and something about it clamped down on the Guide on the inside, vice-like and needle-toothed.

The Angler’s voice raised a few octaves, and the Guide jolted.

“Did you see how worried everyone was?!” the boy whined, “I can’t just go ‘ check out ’ how he’s doing! Everyone’s there, and-” 

He gritted his teeth, staring down at his own curled fists with venom.

“-And they’re gonna be so mad when they realize it’s my fault! ” 

The Angler’s legs gave out beneath him, and he sank down into the sand, curling up into a ball as he hugged his knees to his chest. 

His weeping wasn’t plaintive. A sob would wrack his body and he’d fight to keep it inside, holding his breath until he was red in the face. When he ran out of air, his tears would drip down onto the sand, and he’d let a chilling wail.

Whatever dam had been holding back the torrent of emotions that had been building throughout the day had broken, and he was engaged in an uphill battle to keep the waters from crashing down.

The Angler descending into hysterics—and how quickly the Angler had descended into hysterics—made the Guide’s knees want to buckle. He took one step away, and then another. But the feeling of anguish the sight of the Angler’s sorry state evoked only grew worse.

So he stepped closer instead, searching for something to say.

“Sorry, I wasn’t being- are you okay?”

The Guide could feel the Hero’s eyes on the back of his neck as he got up into a kneel, crouching on the branch on the dwelling tree.

The color may not have been as startling as it would have been in full sunlight, but when he turned his scoured palms over, he could still see the red beginning to seep out of the rope burns he’d obtained earlier. 

Oh, good grief, he thought with a grimace. That was going to be a hassle to fix later.

The Guide turned to look at them. They were crouched behind him, looking at him with wide eyes, and it sent a shiver of discomfort up his spine. 

“Sorry.” they stuttered, “I didn’t mean to- I forgot about- I’m sorry.”

The Guide put his hands down on his lap, turning them over so they’d face the ground as his face fell.

He hated how often they’d taken to apologizing as of late. There was always something to atone for — for the tools the Guide had to mend. For the flowers they’d trample. For the dinner plates that’d shatter underneath their fingertips.

He opened his mouth to snap at them for the apology, but when he turned to look them in the eyes, he stopped in his tracks. 

Their brows were furrowed together, and they were biting the inside of their cheek. It looked like they were on the verge of tears, and even he couldn’t snap at that. 

He bit his tongue, electing to say something gentler instead.

“It’s alright, Hero. You don’t know your limits yet.” he said coolly.

He tried to give them a reassuring smile.

“I’m not upset with you. It’s not your fault… So, er- stop doing that thing with your eyes.”

“Angler,” He said carefully, crouching down next to the boy, “I want you to listen very carefully to me. You weren’t the one who broke the Arms Dealer’s shoulder. This isn’t your fault.”

The Angler peered up at him through angry eyes, snot dribbling down his nose. Despite the tears, he still managed to look like a wild, indignant little creature. The Guide almost found it impressive.

“You said it yourself,” he said miserably, “If I wasn’t in the woods earlier today, the stupid unicorn wouldn’t have come.”

The bitterness of the statement was undercut by the Angler wiping his snot off on his shirt, but the point remained. 

Perhaps he’d been heavy-handed with the scare tactics. The Guide backtracked.

“You couldn’t have known it would be out there. It was an accident.” he said gently.

“Whatever!” the Angler bit back, “It doesn’t matter if I did or not ‘cause Andre’s arm is still screwed up now because of it, either way!”

The Guide tried to form a response to that, but before he could, the Angler went off on another spiel.

“And now- what if he’s never able to shoot again? What if- people depend on ‘im! No one else can use a gun like he can, and Hero can’t handle keeping everyone safe without ‘im, and-” 

The Angler gave a heave before he began crying again.

“And I didn’t ask him to do that! It’s not fair! I hate him! I hate him!”

The Guide reached out a hand, tentatively patting him on the head as the boy sobbed on the ground.

“There there,” he said, trying to remember what the Hero used to do to placate people. He wanted to grimace at how unnatural it felt. They made it look so easy. “It’s… alright.”

Even more surprising than his outburst was that the Angler didn’t pull away from the touch. Or bite at it. 

The Guide had no idea how many painfully awkward minutes had passed, but gradually, the Angler’s sobs died down into whimpers, and after some time those died down too into quiet sniffling. By the time the boy’s breathing leveled out, the sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving nothing but a fading red glow over the waters at sea. The Guide could feel higher waters lapping at his ankles as the waves began to inch closer—the distinct mark of sunset’s high tide.

Now that the Angler had calmed down, and the panic at being confronted with his sobbing had passed, the Guide became acutely aware of the silence. 

“You’re right, you know.” he said. The Angler sniffled, looking up at him curiously.

The Guide elaborated.

“It’s just as painful to sacrifice as it is to be sacrificed for. I have an inkling that the Arms Dealer doesn’t know that.”

The boy was staring at him with rapt attention now, too tired to argue.

The Guide gave him a small smile.

“If it helps, I’m certain this isn’t the first time he’s pulled something like this. That idiot has a hero complex a mile wide.” he said darkly, before softening it with “But his actions were his own. He chose to jump in the line of fire in your place. He can’t blame you for that, and neither can you.”

The Angler stared at him, calculating something behind exhausted eyes, but he said nothing in return.

“...Why did you do that, Angler?” the Guide breached carefully, unable to hold back a growing curiosity, “Trying to attack that monster was incredibly dangerous.”

“... ‘M not an idiot.” he stated plainly, wiping his eyes. “I know how to use a crossbow. I thought I could handle it... I could have handled it.”

"Even the Arms Dealer couldn't do that."

“ I was the one who got a shot in.” the boy argued, lip curling up slightly in pride. His face fell as he kept talking.

“It had my fishing pole- it broke my fishing pole. I thought I could save it. That’s all.” 

“...Is that possession of yours seriously worth dying for?”

The Angler leveled a glare at the Guide that could melt iron, and the Guide put his hands up, backing off.

“Alright, I understand,” he said quickly, “So it is.”

The Angler picked up the shattered pieces of the pole from the ground next to him before the waves could carry it off, staring dejectedly down at its parts.

It was truly, utterly broken. The handle was intact, but the main length of it was in six or so different pieces, with each end splintered so viciously that it was impossible to tell which part of the pole belonged to the next. The white line had been unraveled from the metal reel, which was made lopsided under the weight of the unicorn’s hooves, and the hook was nowhere to be found.

Interestingly enough, upon close inspection, the Guide noted that the handle was engraved from end to end with carvings. They were rudimentary enough to be mostly incomprehensible, but he could make up some aquatic pictographs; an eight-limbed spider for a squid, a pointed ellipse for a minnow, some cross between a shark and a pig-beast. Two tall figures encircling a smaller one at the very bottom of it, symbolizing people.

“And it didn’t even work. I could just. Glue the pole together- ‘cause I’ve done it before- but I don’t know how to make a new reel. I don’t know where the hook is.”

With some alarm, the Guide realized the boy’s eyes were beginning to water again, and he scrambled to say something to stop him from bursting into tears for the third time. It was giving him a damn heart attack.

“It’s repairable.” he blurted out. “The reel is only a mechanical part. It can be fixed.”

“How do you know that?” the Angler replied testily.

The Guide gave him a coy little smile.

“I know everything.”

“Oh yeah? And where am I gonna do that, numbskull? It’s not like Andre’s going to let me use his forge any time soon, and he runs the only one in a hundred miles.”

The Guide hummed, pretending to contemplate what the Angler had said for a moment.

“I happen to know of a forge you can use to do so. Near the mines, where the Hero builds their armor. I  could show you how to smelt a new reel and hook. You could make an entirely new fishing rod, if you so desire.”

The Angler raised a brow.

“You’ll… The Hero isn’t going to be mad at me for using their forge?”

The Guide’s smile sharpened.

“They’ve got bigger things to be upset about.”

The Angler opened his mouth to speak, but the Guide was faster, remembering what the boy had said earlier.

“There’s always some string attached, to it, or like, something someone wants you to do...”

“It won’t be free, of course. I’ll teach you how to create a reel, and I’ll provide any materials necessary to do so, but I’m not paying you to fish for me for a month.”

“...Yeah, okay. Yeah. Fine. It’s a deal.”

The Angler seemed to have gotten all of the tears out of his system, and it filled the Guide with an immeasurable sense of relief. He stood up, shaking the saltwater from his cape, before nudging the boy to his feet too.

“Excellent. Now would you stop wiping your… snot off on your shirt? It’s unbecoming of you.”

The Guide fished out a handkerchief from his pocket, holding it out. The boy took it wordlessly, blowing his nose.

“You’d better keep your word, creepazoid,” he said when he was done. “This is an official business transaction. I’ll know if you try to… undercut me.”

The Guide snorted.

“Do you know what that means?”

“ Of course! Just… keeping you on your toes! Do you?!”

The Guide pinched the bridge of his nose, letting it go.

“Alright. Official business transaction it is, Angler. Just give me a day to get the alloys for your rod, and I’ll show you the path to the mines.”

“... Okay. Good.”

The Angler used the handkerchief to scrub the trail of tears from his face before holding it out to the Guide.

“Do you want this back?’

The Guide cringed away.

“ No! ” he spoke quickly, “I mean- it’s yours. Feel free to keep it.”

The Angler shoved the strip of fabric into his vest pocket, sticking the tip of his tongue out as he buttoned the compartment closed.

“So.” he said, trying to stand taller, “How are we gonna make this contract? Should we shake on it?”

The Guide stared down at his hands. They looked… sticky.

“...Does my word as bond suffice?”

The Angler shrugged.

“If you say so.” he said, before averting his gaze.

“Um. thanks. Or whatever.” he said quietly at the ground.

“I thought this was an official business transaction . No need to thank me if we’re even, no? We’re simply exchanging services.”

The Angler’s face flushed.

“Yeah, I knew that! It’s- it’s about professionalism!”

“Oh, yes. Very professional crying earlier.” the Guide jabbed, but there was no spite in it.

The Angler kicked the Guide in the shin—hard enough to make a jolt of pain shoot up his entire leg.

The Guide yelled, crumpling to the ground in surprise.

“I WASN’T CRYING, NIMROD!” the Angler growled, bristling with rage, before running off into the direction of town.

The Guide watched the boy’s figure fade into the distance, nursing his injured leg. It wasn’t until the footprints he left behind were washed away by the tides that he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

The pain of the blow had faded enough to start walking, but the Guide elected to keep sitting on the shore for a moment longer. He tucked his knee under his chin, staring out to sea as the last of the day’s light bled out of the sky.

He hadn’t expected to be so perturbed by the Angler’s crying. Truth be told, it was unsettling, the degree to which it horrified him. He’d seen tears before, but nothing so… visceral.

He thought he’d been shaken every time the Hero had cried out of guilt, but that was an easier kind of pain to deal with. At least the Hero hadn’t looked like they were being eaten alive by their own grief.

What a strange biological mechanism it was, he thought, to feel the anguish of other people. 

He stared at the waves. They were dark and glamorous under the light of a rising moon, tumultuous on the surface—even wilder underneath. 

He could put a name to every creature that lived under them, every current rippling through the depths below. But that didn’t mean he knew how to catch them, or escape them when pulled underneath a riptide.

He supposed he’d call what had moved him to help the Angler sympathy.

The Arms Dealer stepped out of the clinic’s front door. The shopkeeper’s bell pealed behind him. The wooden deck of the veranda creaked underfoot as he made his way across.

Allison was leaning against the railing on the other side, watching the sun set across the rooftops of the buildings across town square. It was at the hour where the sky was emblazoned with vibrant hues; fire-colored oranges sparkling on the skyline that faded to violets and dusky blues higher up on the horizon. The crooning of cicadas was a living susurrus in the background, but Andre hardly noticed them.

(Maybe that just spoke to how deeply they’d permeated his subconscious. Just one more reason he stayed out of the deep country. Fuck.)

She was rolling a cigar between her index finger and her thumb, sticking her pinkie out daintily as she stared vacantly ahead. The delicate arches of her hand contrasted jarringly with the size of the thing, until he noticed the nicotine stains lining the inside of her fingers, and the calluses on her palms from doing the legwork of refurbishing the clinic herself.

The sight made a pang of longing course through him. He could have probably watched the smoke rise and curl up around the moon for hours, sitting there in silence, listening for the sound of the gears turning in her head.

Like a fucking idiot.

He needed to move.

He crossed the deck to join her, pressing a chilled bottle of wine to her cheek.

She jumped, recoiling away from the sensation.

“ Hey! That’s cold! Knock it off.”

She made a swipe for the bottle, but he held it just out of her reach with his good hand. The Nurse turned around to face him with a death glare, and he set it down with some amusement on the railing. 

When he did, she extinguished the cigar on the wooden handrail next to it, leaning her back against the balusters as she turned the glass of it over in her hands.

“Where’d you get this? I don’t keep alcohol inside.”

“The Hero dropped it off. Said it looked like you could use it.”

“Charmed. Bet they’re just trying to make up for their unpaid medical bills.” 

But she still smiled wickedly, before pulling the cork off with her teeth, spitting it over the railing, and taking a long swig. When she was done, she slammed the bottle back down onto the railing with a sigh, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand. The Arms Dealer felt something flutter in his chest.

“Oh, lord, that burns,” she coughed, “Did the tavernkeep make that? It’s awful. Tell him to start making fruitier drinks.”

“Sure. Soon as the bastard gets too old to pop my head like a grape when I do.”

The Nurse chuckled lowly, tracing the neck of the bottle with a lacquered nail.

“So, what’s the deal, huh? Not joining those two inside for the party?”

She was referring to the Hero and the Demolitionist, of course. The Arms Dealer leaned on the railing next to her on his good arm, looking out at the darkening sky.

“Nah. They were just fuckin’ interrogating me anyways.”

The Nurse kicked her heels off, sending the fuchsia slippers sliding across the deck. The Arms Dealer could feel the wooden railing dip and creak under her weight as she hopped atop it, swinging her legs back and forth in a girlish manner.

“They were worried, sugar,” she said sympathetically, as she settled onto the surface, “Everyone is. Well, was.”

“That’s what’s pissing me off,” he snipped, putting his face in his hands, “After everything that happened today, I just wanted to be left alone, y’know? Then there’s two people getting up in my face when I just wanted to…”

“Be at rest?” she finished for him.

“Decompose.”

Maybe there was a deeper psychological meaning behind why he wanted to go hide in a corner whenever he was injured. Maybe he didn’t want to untangle that mental slinky right now.

She took a sip of the wine, eyeing him thoughtfully.

“That’s just how people show they care. Seeing the people you love get hurt is a trauma, and that needs mending too.”

The Arms Dealer chuckled darkly.

“If Bazdin cares, he’s got a funny fuckin’ way of showing it. Pretty sure he only came up here to make sure I wrote him into my will.”

The Nurse said nothing in return, electing instead to watch the shimmering liquid spin around in the wine bottle, and it hit him just how pointed her comment was. He bit the inside of his cheek, electing not to open that can of worms. To not start fires in the metaphorical desert. It was something he was getting better at.

“... What were you thinking about?” he asked, trying to soften the roughness of his voice, “Before I came out here.”

The Nurse leaned onto the veranda column next to her, pressing her shoulder onto the damp timber.

“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.” she replied. 

Well that wasn’t cryptic as fuck.

The Arms Dealer furrowed his brows as he watched her start tapping her nails onto the glass of the bottle. It was a nervous tic.

“...About the Dustmark Campa-”

“ No, ” she cut him off, wrapping her fingers around the neck of it, “I mean- No, not this time. Do you remember what your life in the Capitol was like, Andre?”

“Uh… yeah, sort of. Kinda seedy?” he said with some confusion, before remembering she’d loved it there and retconning it. “In a good way. Pretty sure it’s the biggest port city I’ve ever stayed in. Lots of good people. More good people doing, making, and transporting illegal shit. Why do you...?”

The Nurse laughed a little too loudly, and the Arms Dealer began to notice a glow on her cheeks that wasn’t entirely natural.

“You must have stayed near the outskirts, then. I was… I went to med school downtown. The Capitol I knew before the war had guardsmen on every corner. Neoclassical architecture. Clean streets, with flying buttresses on everything. Always a new construction project going on… but you were right about the people. Lots of good people. Lots of bad ones, too.”

The Arms Dealer turned his head to the side, leaning his head on his arm as she continued.

“But there were always a lot of them, everywhere you’d go. I think that’s why most of them don’t notice it—just how dangerous the world’s become. Or why they’re so willing to brush it off. When I was on the war front, I rationalized how many monsters we’d see on the… general amount of violence, out there. I thought they might’ve been attracted to the carnage. But then I moved out here, as far away from the border as possible, and it’s even worse.”

She stopped swinging her legs over the edge of the railing, going still save for the tapping of her nails on the glass. The Arms Dealer could pick up on the nervous energy that stillness concealed—she was lightning in a bottle, a fire starting in another room.

“I don’t think it’s just me being a metropolitan lady , either,” she said, voice rife with nervous tension, “My family had a summer home in the country, when I was a kid. Real country. Deep enough into the woods that you could take a hatchet to a guy and even your closest neighbors wouldn’t hear the screams.”

“... Sounds pretty dangerous, Allison.”

“Right? Except it wasn’t. There were monsters, of course- always are- but we, my dads and sisters and I- we could handle them, with nothing but a shotgun and a few kitchen knives we had lying around.”

The Arms Dealer could have pointed out that where she stayed probably wasn’t real country, if they’d been able to protect themselves at all. That he was shaped by real country, raised between the teeth of its mouth; and that it was the reason why ninety-five percent of the Terrarian population clustered around the cities. That rich people didn’t send their kids to places where they could be picked off by a swarm of soul-eating worms, or torn apart at the arms by the undead, or have their flesh melted from the sinew by slimes, or- yeah, he’d made his point.

But he thought he knew where she was going with this, and he agreed. So he didn’t.

The Nurse took another swig of the wine with quivering hands.

“So if it’s not the proximity from people that’s making more of them spawn, and it’s not the bloodshed, then it has to be this- this terrible world, that’s changing. Getting more dangerous, right underneath our god-damned feet, just like what Wyatt said!”

Before the Arms Dealer could comment on Wyatt’s general unreliability, the Nurse cut him off, speaking so quickly that he’d barely processed the spaces between her words.

“I- When I first moved here, I thought it’d be safer than the war front,” she said, laughing in a manner that was growing increasingly nervous, “I thought maybe there were enough of us here to protect ourselves, but we’re even more screwed than the Capitol’s armies were! Are! At least up north we had weapons, and trained infantries. Look at what happened earlier today with that horse! We’re sitting fucking ducks out here!”

Her hand was a white-knuckled claw, curled tightly around the neck of the bottle. She held it like a drowning man clings onto a lifeline; like how he held the grip of his firearms.

The Arms Dealer pushed himself up from the railing, hair standing on end.

Shit, shit . What was he supposed to say to that? That she was wrong? That she was right ? 

He’d never been good at this.

“Allison,” he said, settling for wrapping a hand around the bottle atop hers, “I think you’re getting a little too fucked up for this conversation. Let’s, uh, put the drink down, for a second, okay?”

He became acutely aware of how course his palms must have felt, which naturally progressed to how soft her skin was in comparison to his own, and then the blood rushed to his his face and shit , was it fucked up that he was thinking about holding her hand while he was literally trying to pry the alcohol bottle from it?

“I think I’m the perfect amount of fucked up for this conversation,” she snipped back, jerking the bottle away from him. “This situation is fucked up! The world is fucked up! The town dynamic’s fucked up! Your arm is-”

She stopped herself before she could finish that sentence, and her face twisted in grief.

“Sorry,” she said quietly, “You’re right. I am getting a little too fucked up. You don’t- you shouldn’t have to deal with this. You’re still recovering.”

“It’s fine, Allison. My arm’s fine. It’s-”

“Nothing?”

The Arms Dealer swallowed dryly.

“Go back inside, Andre. I’m scared. And tired. And so are you.”

The Arms Dealer stepped away from the wooden railing, leaving the Nurse to sip on her wine in peace.

“...Can I at least have the wine bottle? Don’t think it’s a good thing for you to be drinking right now. Shouldn’t have brought it out here. It might make your fuckin’, uh, stress disease worse.”

The Nurse gave him a disconsolate smile, swirling the red liquid around in the bottle.

“Stress disorder, sugar. But I… I think I need to. That monster attack earlier set something off, in me. I would have gotten some myself even if the Hero hadn’t dropped this off. I’m not sure I can sleep tonight without it.”

Well. He couldn’t exactly argue with that, could he?

He ambled back over to the front door wordlessly, putting a hand on the brass knob without turning it. Despite the warmth of the lamplight glowing through the transom, the metal felt cold underneath his hands.

He took a chance, opening his mouth to speak.

“I might not even be alive right now, if it wasn’t for you. You did what you could.”

Short and sweet and to the point. Hopefully, what she needed to hear.

"So thanks. For saving me."

“... You don’t know that I did.” she replied.

Apparently, it was: he caught on to how fraught her voice was.

He turned back around, giving her a rare, gentle smile.

“Have I ever been wrong before, Allison?”

Maybe he was being an idiot, letting himself romanticize a woman who was a little too fucked up to love him back. Or maybe he was the fucked up one—too much of a quivering pussy to make a move, too unsure of what comes after to even know what to do next. Maybe he was fucked up for thinking he had a chance with her when he was too busy compartmentalizing his own mental baggage. Maybe he was fucked up for entertaining the notion that anything he had here was permanent at all.

Because he and Bazdin would just skip town once the war between the Capitol and the goblin empire was over, and the crackdown on illicit weaponry cooled off, right? It's not like there was any reason to stay in this fucking dump. It's not like there was any reason to stay fucking anywhere.

Bazdin said the people would blur together over time, but that was a bold-faced lie. He remembers every face he'd ever seen.

The spice trader who'd shown him how to build shelters in alleyways out of wooden planks. The carpenter who'd paid him too much of his own fucking paycheck on the hour to paint doors. The fishermonger who’d taught him how to weave nets and set traps... The contraband dealer who'd saved the key to his stash of armaments during a time of war. The Tavernkeep who saved him pints on the house whenever he'd come through the door. The Nurse who'd saved his arm.

Yeah, they were going to fucking leave.

But for now, he was here. In this boring fucking coastal town with its stupid fucking architecture.

 It was... okay. Not having to leave immediately felt good. It was a strange feeling. It was a fucking suspicious feeling.

The Arms Dealer steps back into the parlor, letting the warm yellow glow of the lanterns inside cast a comforting light over him. A little while later, so does the Nurse.

The moon was already beginning to rise when the Guide had finally managed to make his way back to the marketplace—which was now empty, devoid of both people and consequently, the groceries he’d left his house to get this morning in the first place.

“Son of a bitch! ”

Chapter Text

Five hundred years ago, the clockwork governing the world goes haywire. 

Biological processes go out of tune, the animal kingdom shifts and mutates, the mechanism of day and night crumbles by its own design. Sorcerers get the brilliant idea to construct a wall to keep the worst parts of it at bay.

The first step of its construction was decades of arguments over what material it should be made out of, of course. Explorers of the jungle’s depths pointed towards Chlorophyte, for its amplifying properties. The idea was promising until it quickly became clear that getting the ore in large amounts would be nearly impossible due to the dangerous conditions of the underground cavern layer.

(A few years later, geologists would discover that Chlorophyte possessed the property of plants that allowed them to grow and self-replicate, making the need to gather more obsolete. By then, however, engineers would have already begun the process of the Wall’s construction. Such is the nature of history: accidental for the most part, and riddled with dramatic irony.)

The second most favourable proposal was Hellstone. This is for one reason alone, but one important enough to hold the most sway: it was found in the Underworld, where the Wall was being constructed.

The Wall is a joint effort between two civilizations, you see; both of which remain standing today, although their relationship has soured due to persistent warfare. The Goblin Empire of the current century is far ahead of any human land in terms of technology, but most of these developments (such as electricity and the engine) are recent. In the past, before their invasion and subsequent colonization of the human territories surrounding their archipelago, the Goblin Empire relied on human sorcery to accomplish what they now can using machines.

The Underworld, as an impartial territory that was largely becoming involved in Overworld politics for profit, was-

It’s at that exact moment that the building the Wall has managed to occupy the upper levels of starts to shake. 

The columns holding it up tremble under the impact of some explosion down below. Support beams groan in agony, golden vases clatter to the floor, ornately-patterned tapestries flutter with agitation in closed rooms. The Wall turns a massive, bloodshot eye away from the textbook it was poring over, and looks out of a window devoid of glass—as was the norm, for the Underworld—and catches the phosphorescent trails of blue magic dissipating into the air outside.

It takes a deep breath, and prays the source of its irritation outside would disappear in a similar fashion.

It doesn’t. If anything, it worsens.

“YOO-HOO!” a gravelly voice calls out from below, “LORD FLESHWALL! YOUR UNHOLY EMPERORSHIP!”

The Wall closes the book with aggression, and doesn’t even bother finding where it would fit in the bookcase alphabetically before shelving it. 

(An unprecedented and racy act of rebellion.)

The Wall then shifts its great mass to look out of the window.

(Hold on a minute.)

(What was next, civil insurrection?)

(It plucks it from the bookcase, and shelves it in its proper place.)

“DEAR DICTATOR! O HORRIBLE, MONSTROUS CREATURE OF THE NIGHT! YOUR MOST BELOVED COMPANION IS HERE TO SEE YOU!”

Lord of the Moon, it thought, could it not have ten minutes to itself without something coming to bother it?

The Wall then shifts its great mass to look out of the window.

Hundreds of feet below, the source of its annoyance stood emblazoned in brilliant blue robes. Tim was waving maniacally up at the window with one hand—the other was wrapped around the neck of an elegant glass wine bottle, which The Wall knew was most likely empty.

The Wall heaves a sigh before answering.

“Greetings, Tim.”

“ SALUTATIONS , fair maiden!” Tim replies with a wave that could only be described as ‘girlish’, “ ‘Oh, you- hic- poor thing! You must just be withering away in that tower o’ yours!”

The Wall’s eye narrows in vague annoyance.

“What on Terraria are you talking about?”

Far below, Tim gesticulates wildly, pressing a hand to its forehead with dramatic flair.

“Oh, it’s just not right! Not right! To keep such a lovely specimen, such as yourself, locked up in that awful tower!’

Ignore it, The Wall chided itself internally, ignore it and it’ll get bored and go away.

“BUT HAVE NO FEAR!”

It did not go away.

“I, TIM THE SORCER-KING, am here to free you from your confinement, o maiden!”

“Can you go be- OW- can you go- FOR THE LOVE OF TERRARIA, WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP THAT?!”

The Wall blinks away the remnants of blue magic out of its eye, and distantly wishes it had been designed with more arms.

“Tim,” The Wall says breathlessly, trying to muster up the most menacing undertone it could to its voice, “I am going to count down, starting from three. If you continue to exist in my line of sight by the time I reach zero, I will grind you into a fine powder, and spread your remnants on the wind.”

“What if I want you to grind me into a fine powder.”

“That’s ridiculous. No living creature would actively seek out - OW!”

Tim pointed the hand that did not currently have its phalanges curled around the neck of a bottle, and shot a glimmer of mana directly into The Wall’s pupil.

The integument constructing The Wall’s eye seethed with fury, but it took a cold, calculating look at the skeletal form of the wizard down below—and decided it had better things to do with its time than indulge a pathetic bonebag in a senseless duel.

“Forget it, Tim. I’m busy, and I don’t have the time to fool around.”

“Awww, g’mon, don’t be like that!”

The Wall shifts, uncoiling its massive length vertebra by colossal vertabra, and it begins the arduous process of slithering out the door.

And then it stops:

For it hears another bang, and the tower quivers again, making The Wall lurch back and forth. 

This time, however, something differs—it can feel the building catch alight near its base, singing its lower extremities and falling support timbers holding it up. Something akin to shock flutters in its core, and then panic begins to settle in.

Something isn’t right about the fire—that much The Wall is certain of. Everything in the Underworld was built to withstand the smolder of heat by necessity, including itself; whatever Tim had done to somehow ignite the building had to have been a monstrous piece of spellwork.

Obsidian crackles and melts around it as it scurries its corpulent body down the stairs, and it lets out a hiss as it gets caught in the shards of… something.

The unfamiliar feeling of dread begins to settle in as it realizes that it’s stuck. It was hard enough navigating the halls to get in, but trying to get out was an entirely different beast.

“TIM!” It bellows, “I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND! PUT OUT THIS FIRE AT ONCE!”

The Wall can hear it giggling from outside.

“OR WHAT?” Tim shouts, “YOU’LL EXTRICATE ME?!”

“THAT’S NOT EVEN THE RIGHT- OH, GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

With a massive shiver, The Wall manages to curl upwards, lifting the weakened building off of its foundations. As it writhed, it shattered parting walls, breaking the structure up into a dozen or so splintered pieces. It heaved, wincing in pain as its body touched the blue embers near the bottom, and with a colossal shrug of its forefront it uprooted the structure from its base completely and tossed it to the side.

The mountainous building slid down the incline in a landslide, bringing down soot and ash and dozens upon dozens of expensive jewels and fine pottery into a nearby lava pool. The Wall, shaking off the excess debris, watched beautiful woven carpets burn at its surface as it respirated.

Then, it turns its eyes back to Tim, unsure of what to make of the ordeal. It was out of breath for the first time since its creation; bested by something it towered hundreds of feet over.

The skeleton stands nonchalantly a hundred or so yards away, taking a swig from its liquor bottle.

There was no way, it thought. No way in Hell that magic that powerful had come from this…

This homeless reanimated wretch!

“Alright”, The Wall spits, after some time. “I suppose if you’re determined enough to knock down a building to speak to me, I’ll humour you for the moment. What the Hell do you want from me?”

Tim whistles, tipping its pointed hat.

“Do you know what they used to keep in towers, your majesty?” it rasps cryptically.

The Wall thinks for a moment.

“That is entirely dependent on what ‘they’ you are referring to. Certain civilizations built structures similar to pyramids, which they used as burial grounds for their rulers. The Dryads used them for storing treasure, while the Goblin Empire erects them to aid telecommunications.”

“Wrong!” Tim trills, “Oh, so, so wrong! Where’s your flair, your majesty? Your theatrical spice?”

There are no spices typically associated with thespians, The Wall wants to bite back with, but Tim cuts it off.

“No, no, no- you see, people keep damsels ‘nd princesses or whatever in towers. And they’re always guarded by a terrible monster at the bottom, or around the castle, that eats her would-be rescuers and prevents her from leaving… ‘cuz they usually want her to themselves.”

The Wall’s eyes narrow. Where was it going with this?

“… And?”

“Well. You’re in one hell of a tower down here in the Underworld, your majesty. So I just want to know-“ 

Tim’s eyes shone with an uncanny radiance, “are you the maiden, or the monster?”

The Wall stared down at it, contemplating what it had said.

“... What? That doesn’t even- what are you talking about?”

“SURPRISE, BITCH!”

With a dramatic wave of its arm, Tim summons a horde of snakes from somewhere in its draping sleeves.

Their glittering bodies slither in rivulets towards The Wall, reflecting the glow of magma off of their diamond backs. Tim actually stoops over when they begin to pour from its cloak in earnest, clearly unprepared for the torrent.

White-hot fury courses through The Wall’s veins.

“I don’t have time for this,” it hisses, at the end of its rope, and as the snakes inch closer to its underbelly it unleashes the Hungry to descend upon Tim in a carnivorous swarm.

As per usual, just before they hit their mark, Tim disappears in a burst of blue magic and before The Wall can even utter its curses it’s gone.

Instead, the Hungry feed upon the serpentine bodies its magic left behind, before they realize they’re tearing into thin air—

An illusion. 

Just an illusion.

The Wall sighs, trying to regain some semblance of composure.

It wasn’t sure why it expected anything else to come of the visit. It was always the same thing with Tim; the same cat-and-mouse game of Tim prodding The Wall for some kind of reaction, before The Wall inevitably snapped and drove it off with some show of power.

… But it had never seen magic that powerful from the wizard before.

A vague sense of unease swept over it.

‘Are you the maiden, or the monster?’

The Wall had never given any particular significance to Tim’s words before, but for some reason, this particular duel left it with a certain tension. 

The Wall gazes forlornly into the burning building sinking into the lava pools nearby. The textbooks it had been reading were floating on the surface, smoldering quietly. 

Perhaps it wasn’t worth contemplating.

It had other things to do anyways: meetings to attend, court hearings to adjudicate, legislation to draft. 

Tensions between the human and goblin empires were beginning to simmer, and maintaining diplomatic relations with both nations would require careful and strategic planning.

It began to slither away, feeling only slightly guilty on behalf of the ruined architecture.

It’s not like it was the only target the skeleton was known for picking fights with—it seemed to delight in pushing around the lesser ranks of the Chthonic bureaucracy, and from what news it overheard from the Overworld, its nasty habit of challenging unwitting opponents didn’t stop there. It’d pick a fight with anything that breathed.

So there was no significance to Tim’s duels with it. It had just learned a new spell that happened to be capable of harming it, that’s all—it was still nothing, compared to The Wall. 

What danger could Tim possibly pose anyways?

The night the Guide is baptized in fire and regains his demonic form, the moon goes dark.

The townspeople gather outside in the dead of night as the ensuing swath of monstrous creatures swarm the town, panicking at the celestial blackout.

Efforts to combat them are in vain. Nocturnal devils swarm them in droves that are too numerous to combat. People are slaughtered with tooth and claw and terrible, painful magic that made the skin blister and lungs burn. 

Monsters rip apart the pitifully-reinforced wooden shelters like matchbox cardboard, and many die to the unfamiliar hands of the new world–confused, disoriented, violent deaths.

Above them, on the cliffside, the Guide’s home burns brightly; it burns and burns and burns and burns and burns and burns.

Summer, beginning of May

Night of the Unicorn Attack

7 Days Post-Wall

The tavern was warm and waxen, and it was very, very busy.

The Tavernkeep polished a crystal decanter in his hand with a towel, cleaning the remnants of mead glued to its surface until the bottle was ice-bright and gleaming. He stared at the crowd that had gathered inside of the building.

Seems like everyone crawled out of the woodwork tonight, he thought, sweeping his gaze over the front house. People were passing around bottles of brandy and trading poker chips and bartering heatedly over who-knows-what, making merriment and swapping ties and dancing on tables like loons. Excalibur–his pride and joy, hanging neatly over the stone mantle–languished on a table, being traded for a deck of cards.

He spotted his regulars, of course: The Demolitionist with a jug of ale dancing with his belt around his head, the Nurse cheering him on with a mug of whiskey beside her… the Zoologist, wine-drunk and trying to crawl onto the same table, being aided by a laughing Party Girl. Oh, yes, that crowd was no cause for concern–not when they drained half his supply every night.

But tonight differed. He was seeing people he’d never even seen step foot into his tavern before.

The Tinkerer sat nervously in a far-off corner, blue fingers curled around a glass of pinot noir. Next to him, the Mechanic chattered, chipper and bird-like, as she sipped a small margarita given to her by the Party Girl. The Golfer stood in another corner away from the raucous party at the center of the tavern, sipping a daiquiri as he made idle conversation with the Painter.

Hell, even the Clothier was there–and he looked like he was one more drink away from being put on life support.

A tiny hand dropped a silver coin on the bartop.

“ ‘Scuse me. One beer please.”

The Tavernkeep stared down at the Angler.

Oh, lord. Perhaps no one was safe tonight.

“How does an apple cider sound?” he offered tentatively.

“Don’t patronize me!” the Angler yelled back, “I don’t want an apple cider! I want a real drink!”

“ No! For the last time, boy, you’re not getting any alcohol from me! How did you even get in here?! Shoo!”

The Angler made a face, retracting his coin.

“Fine! I’ll just get someone else to buy it for me, then!”

As the Angler skittered away, the Tavernkeep sighed, carding a hand through his greying hair.

He was certain the entire town hadn’t shown up just to party as per usual. After the unicorn attack earlier that day, it seemed as if everyone–weary and suddenly uncomfortable with the knowledge that monsters were now perfectly capable of invading town–had wandered in, following friends, hoping the yellow light and human noise radiating from inside would keep them away. 

(A secondary service of the tavern, he had realized after some years of bartending–a safe haven for the wicked, restless, and concerned; both literally and metaphorically.)

The Tavernkeep glanced at the clock hanging above the tavern door. It was nearly midnight.

It was then that the Arms Dealer decided to slink up to the front bar, an empty wooden mug in his good hand.

“Lord, can you believe that people have the nerve to drink on a night like this?”

The Tavernkeep raised a brow, setting the decanter down.

“By ‘people’, son, do you happen to mean you?”

The Arms Dealer flashed a degenerate grin.

“Whiskey sour. Make it snappy. I’ve had a fuckin’ day.”

The Tavernkeep grunted, but put up no fight. He reached beneath the counter for a bottle of whiskey and his lime juicer.

The Arms Dealer was the only one who elected to sit at the front bar, reluctant to join in on the merriment going on behind him. He and the Tavernkeep sat in a pensive silence as he worked on the drink.

The Tavernkeep pulled a sliced lemon from underneath the table, shoving it into a juicer.

The Arms Dealer sighed, putting his face on the side of the counter.

“Sooo, what’s the uh, the plan big guy?” he murmured, face-down.

He looked over the Arms Dealer, face-down, ragged and looking concussed. He was a sorry sight, and he could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“... You and Bazdin brought the designs we drew up last week?” he prompted tentatively.

The Arms Dealer gave a drunken thumbs-up.

“... I’m making this virgin. And you’re going to sober up, and then you’ll help the Demolitionist sober up, and then we’ll call the town meeting. Lord knows we need to hold one after that attack.”

The Arms Dealer peeled his face off of the table.

“Whaaat? I don’t need to sober up. I’m, perfectly fuckin’.... Dude, you literally can’t even tell that I’m drunk .”

“And antlions can fly.”

The Arms Dealer was quiet again for a moment, and the Tavernkeep strained the lemon juice and egg whites for his drink.

“... Big guy. You’ve been around the world. You ever seen something like that horse before?” 

He thought of himself and the Arms Dealer as birds of a feather: former mercenaries who’d elected to travel between different human encampments rather than stay in one place, unlike most of Terraria’s population. He’d always felt that they shared a sort of camaraderie—though he was a little older, a little wiser; less likely to jump into the fire. 

He sensed it was an honest question, so he answered it honestly. 

“No. That’s what’s concerning me.”

“Fuuuck,” the Arms Dealer slurred, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, that’s the answer I was expecting. Neither has Bazdin. Guess we’re really fucking in it now, huh?”

“Would appear so.”

The Arms Dealer curled his fists into balls, using them to prop himself up on the table with a sigh.

“I mean, fucking,” he continued, “First all of the Underworld bullshit, and then the eclipse, and now this shit. Really feels like the big guy upstairs is out to get us sometimes.”

“Mhm.”

Another uneasy silence passed between them as the Tavernkeep filled the Arms Dealer’s drink with ice.

“ ...You think uh… You think we’ll be able to repair the damage pretty quick, then?”

“Mhm.”

The Arms Dealer rested his face on a hand, staring at the Tavernkeep.

“...Shit, fuckin’ hope so. My door got ruined in the battle. Fucking… pissing me off.”

“...That’s unfortunate.”

The Arms Dealer bowed his head in defeat.

“I spent ten hours painting it. And Bazdin doesn’t even, like, fuckin’... care,” he slurred, “The only thing that motherfucker is good for is like… destroying shit. Destroying his house. Destroying his fuckin’ reputation… Destroying me… ”

The Tavernkeep stirred the concoction within his mixer, before giving it a violent shake.

“And I guess that’s like… what does that make me good for? Killing things?” the Arms Dealer asked.

The Tavernkeep didn’t have an answer for him.

Not while he was this inebriated, anyways.

The Arms Dealer looked up at him quizzically after some time elapsed.

“You uh, not fond of talkin’ to poor drunks, huh?”

“I have drunk people telling me their darkest secrets all of the time. Sorry you’ve got daddy issues, son, but you’re not gonna fix anything by drinking them away.”

The Arms Dealer’s face went scarlet.

“Lord of the fuckin’ moon, pal, I’m pouring my heart out over here. Just trying to make some conversation! Damn!” 

The Tavernkeep placed the virgin sour in front of the Arms Dealer, who–in spite of his mood–snatched it up and downed it almost immediately.

“ Whew, that’s the shit! You might not be much of a talker, but damn, you can make a mean cocktail.”

“I take pride in what I do,” The Tavernkeep replied evenly, “Now go get a coffee from the front and get one for- damn it, tell Bazdin to put my sword down! Get him too. We’ll meet downstairs.”

The Arms Dealer pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. I just got my arm detached and sewn back on today, and I might never be able to shoot again, but hey! There are bigger fuckin’ issues. Sure.”

“It’s because your arm got detached today that we need to talk about this, son,” the Tavernkeep said with a grimace, “Now get to it. We don’t have much time before everyone’s too piss-drunk to make rational decisions.”

The Arms Dealer put his hands up, ambling unsteadily in the direction of the coffee pot that was kept near the double Oaken doors near the front. The Tavernkeep wiped the countertop down before shuffling into the backroom.

A little while later, a (much more sober) Arms Dealer and Demolitionist slipped in through the back doors of the Tavern, papyrus notes in hand, joining the Tavernkeep in the wine cellar below.

“Did we draw any of this while we were sober, lad?” the Demolitionist asked as the three of them clustered around a small wooden table, still a little drunk, “I don’t remember any of this.”

Above them, a single lightbulb swung back and forth, casting long shadows on the racks behind them and bringing the green-stained glass bottles to uncanny, multicolored life.

 The Arms Dealer had unfurled a hand-painted map of the town, startlingly true-to-life, with a few key differences: around it, a wide moat had been crudely inked with massive spikes sticking out of it. 

On the inner side of the moat was drawn a wall ensconcing every part of town within a stone cloister; with watchtowers on the North, South, East and West corners housing gas-powered fire pits bright enough to serve as beacons from miles away.

“ Yes, you dolt,” the Arms Dealer refuted, “You probably don’t remember ‘cause you’re still fuckin’ drunk. We drew them up last week.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to drink away my troubles and forget about reality the night after we all almost died. ”

“That doesn’t make you puking on my shoes any better. You know that doesn’t make you puking on my shoes any fuckin’ better, right?”

The Tavernkeep held up a hand.

“ Enough. I roped you two into this because I knew you were the only ones who’d know how… pressing, our situation has become. If you’re going to fight, I can propose the fortification plans myself, and see who’d be willing to give their aid.”

The Dwarf–all three feet of him–glared up at the silver-haired giant in front of him.

“And who the hell died and made you the boss of us?!”

The Arms Dealer rubbed a temple.

“Shut up, Bazdin. Just- shut up. He’s right. We can’t be fighting like this if we want to get anything done.”

Just then, the stairs leading from the backroom to the wine cellar creaked under gentle footfall, and a rapping on the stone walls of the cellar echoed down from the top.

“Yoo-hoo, gentlemen!” the Merchant called, gnarled hands wrapped around a brass hurricane lantern as he descended, “Friend Driscan! Andre and Bazdin! Wonderful to see you two.”

The Tavernkeep nodded in response.

“Walter.”

The Merchant hobbled down the steps, aided by the Arms Dealer over his last few steps.

“I hope I’m not too late for our meeting,” he said breathlessly, “ I’ve brought the contacts for my supply companies, and the catalogs and inventories they’ve so generously provided me. I’ll warn you gentlemen, though, with the Goblin Empire encroaching on our western front, it’s, ah… not much to write home about–most of the lumber and steel being milled in the Capitol are going directly to the infantries keeping them at bay.”

“That’s alright. We’ll take all we can get. Thank you for all of your help.”

The old man chuckled in response.

“Where there’s money to be made, you’ll find me. Besides, with the warrant out for my arrest in the Capitol… well, I’d like to avoid getting turned into slime food if I’m to stay here.”

The Merchant handed the Tavernkeep a rolled-up piece of parchment paper, which he promptly opened, setting down atop the fortification plan drafts.

“ Holy shit! 10,000 silver pieces for one ton? You weren’t kidding.”

“Them’s the markets these days,” the Merchant sighed defeatedly, “Iron sells for less, but shipping it’s more of a bitch, even to a coastal town like this. Trade vessels can only carry so much before the materials outweigh the buoyancy.”

The Arms Dealer fixed a questioning stare on the Tavernkeep.

“You sure we can drum up enough for steel walls, buddy?”

The Tavernkeep furrowed his brow.

“… Perhaps we’ll have a stroke of luck in the near future. But look,” his finger dropped from the price listings for steel to the price listings for demonite ore, “Demonite is only 300 copper pieces for the same amount.”

“Oh, no no no, ” the Demolitionist rebuked, “There’s no way in hell ye’re thinking of using demonite to reinforce our town.”

The Tavernkeep turned to the Merchant, a brilliant idea forming.

“It’s ludicrously cheap. We could buy enough to reinforce the town and then some with our own savings. Why is that?”

“It seems as if some of the towns bordering the corruptive wastes have recently seen the… well, spread of it.”

The Arms Dealer, the Demolitionist, and the Tavernkeep ogled the Merchant in utter perplexity.

“Spread? What exactly do you… mean by that?”

The Merchant’s head shook.

“Just what it sounds like. No other way to describe it, my friends–the wasteland seems to be encroaching on the territories surrounding it!” he said with a dark zeal, “First it’s just the flora growing in places where it hadn’t been able to before, and then, before you know it, entire towns have been turned into worm food. A terrible shame!”

“Holy shit…” the Arms Dealer murmured.

“That’s impossible,” the Tavernkeep refuted, “The corruption around that area hasn’t–it doesn’t really move. It’s been there, in the same territories, for hundreds of years. Why would it just now spread?”

“Who knows?” the Merchant shrugged, “But there appears to be an abundance of Demonite ore, as the worms tunnel through the dirt of the cleaner areas around it, and excrete… well, you know. Carnegie Steel is doing their best to remove it from these towns at the rate that it’s growing, but the problem is really only growing exponentially faster. A worthless investment, if you ask me.”

The Tavernkeep tapped on the desk in contemplation.

The Arms Dealer spoke up.

“Hey, now, you can’t possibly think… swapping out the steel for demonite is a good idea. Who fucking knows what’s inside of it? We could spread the Corruption just by shipping it here. Let’s just- use stone, or something.”

“From where, the mines?” the Tavernkeep refuted, “We don’t have the manpower for it–there’s only twenty-or-so of us in town, Andre. And half of us are too old or too weak to make the frequent trips necessary to excavate it. Carnegie’s the best option we’ve got.”

“So Steel it is then!” the Demolitionist refuted, “demonite’s just unusable ! Stronger than steel, maybe, but lord knows what’s inside of it! What if there are… worm eggs inside it, or something?!”

“We’ll see how much everyone is willing to pledge to our idea,” the Tavernkeep amended, “But, I’m warning you all now–demonite may be our best option if we want to make these fortification plans a reality–especially with the Hero busy warding off all of the monsters around town. We’re certainly not building it out of wood after what the horned horse did to our homes today.”

The Tavernkeep tucked the rolled-up parchment into his belt, and began to gather the rest of the papers they had collected between them. He turned to walk up the stairs.

“Alright, speak now or forever hold your peace, you lot,” he added, “We’ve got an entire town to sell on this. Any objections to our plan thus far?”

The Merchant turned to shuffle up the stairs behind him, waiting on the bottom step with.

“None from me! Any protection is better than none, am I right, boys? And any business is good business.” he quipped, turning to the Arms Dealer and the Demolitionist with a twinkle in his eyes. 

“Lighten up. We’re as good as dead anyways–what the hell are a few worms going to do that the monsters around here can’t already?” the Merchant added after seeing their sour expressions.

The Arms Dealer sent a fierce glare in his direction, and the Merchant laughed at the look on his face.

“Don’t be such a crank, Andre,” he said lowly, after the Tavernkeep was out of earshot, “Look, even if this town goes to smithereens because of this stupid plan, you, Bazdin and I can always skip town and head back to the war front. Lord knows I’m sick of this place.”

“Not everyone can do that here, worms-for-brains. ” he hissed.

The Merchant shrugged.

“Not everyone is my problem, sonny-boy! Look out for yourself,” he rebutted, “This place’s economy is a nightmare! I’m going back to civilization as soon as my bounty expires!” 

The Arms Dealer bristled in silence as the Merchant turned to make his slow ascent out of the cellar. When the Merchant was halfway up, he paused to turn back and look at him.

“Oh, and by the way–rent on your storage space is a month overdue. Make it snappy! I’ll have to sell your harpy wings if you keep paying it late.”

When the Merchant was fully gone, the Arms Dealer swallowed dryly, uncurling his fists.

“...The fuck is that guy’s problem?” he asked, fuming.

The Demolitionist sighed from next to him.

“Maybe he’s right, Andre.” he said tentatively, and Andre whipped his head around to face him disbelievingly.

 “We’ve been here for too long already. I’m itchin’ to get back out there again and make some real sales. We can’t keep living here. If someone tries to pay me with a line of trout again, I’m going to lose me shit.”

“I fuckin’ know that, damn! Get off my ass!” he bit back, “I’m just fucking saying maybe we shouldn’t leave the people that are here defenseless when we go. Least we could do is help everyone adjust to the… everything. Fuck!”

The Demolitionist raised his arms–a silent extension of mercy.

“Whatever you say, lad. Just don’t get used to it.”

The Demolitionist turns to look back at him one last time before he scuttles up the stairs, into the light.

In the darkness, the Arms Dealer let his resentment simmer beneath his tongue. 

A little while later, he crawls up to join them in the front bar.

“HEAR YE, HEAR YE!” The Tavernkeep shouted, banging two cast iron mugs together behind the counter.

A chorus of groans erupted from the crowd as several townsfolk covered their ears.

The clanging throughout the building, breaking heads and splitting eardrums left and right. The Merchant stood steadfast to his right, while the Demolitionist and the Arms Dealer pinned up the painting of the fortifications they had drafted atop the wine rack behind them where everyone could see it.

(“Hey!” the painter called out from somewhere within the crowd, “Is that my painting?! I’ve been looking for that!”)

A horde of confused townsfolk turned their heads to face the Tavernkeep. The interruption had disturbed the chaotic chatter that had been going on minutes prior, and the entire tavern stared ahead in silence.

They were drunk, yes; but not drunk enough to disrespect the bartender in his own tavern.

“Thank you, Walter,” the Tavernkeep murmured to the side, before turning to face the crowd, and unfurling the price sheets given to him by the Merchant.

“Everyone,” he began, “I’d like to address the monster attack in town earlier today.”

Immediately, the crowd’s faces fell. The mention of the hardships of the day prior during a time of merriment and escapism quickly soured the mood.

“I know you’re all on edge, after everything that’s happened… Rightfully so. As am I–first, the Hero’s battle with the monster in the underworld, and now this… It appears as if we’ve suffered an onslaught of invaders threatening the safety of this little haven we’ve built for ourselves, nestled away in these mountains.

“But as much as we’d all like to bury our heads in the sand–or in the kegs–and forget about everything until we wake up hungover tomorrow morning, there is one thing our resident underworld monster was right about, that I’m sure you can all feel: we are running out of time.”

The Tavernkeep swept his gaze across the front room–where there were once confused, dizzied faces caught in embarrassing acts in staring back at him, it seemed as if the mention of the times had sobered everyone up. The Zoologist and the Nurse had crawled down from the tables they were dancing on before, wiping the mascara from her eyes. The Dye Trader was shuffling back into his trousers as the Tavernkeep spoke up again.

“As the world becomes more dangerous, we cannot simply stand by and let it snuff us out–we must do something to protect ourselves!” he rallied.

Murmurs of agreement erupted from the crowd–and quiet as they might have been, the favourable reaction egged him on.

“Last week, when the Hero returned from their hellish journey through the underworld, Andre, Bazdin, Walter and I realized the gravity of our situation. We drafted a plan to fortify our town, and keep us safe.,” he continued, pointing to the watercolor depiction of their town hanging from the wine rack behind him.

“It is here in front of you. As you can see,” he explained, using a finger to circle around the town, “We believe the best way to keep monsters out is to keep us in. We’ve designed a spike trench, and a drawbridge that opens at dawn and closes at night, to serve as a rudimentary moat to keep these nighttime devils in their place–away from civilization. I know, from my years of experience, that most creatures of the night are not foolish enough to risk their lives trying to jump across and impale themselves on the spike pits below.

“If any of them somehow do, they’ll have another obstacle to contend with–the wall we’ll be constructing around our town. As you can see, according to the diagram, it’ll be three feet thick and tall enough to cover our highest buildings from arrow fire. There will be four watchtower-beacons, in case anyone happens to be stranded outside when the gates close. It should be visible from the peaks of the mountains surrounding us.

“But the four of us cannot embark on the journey of fortifying our town alone. I’m sure every one of us here is concerned with the safety of this town–because the safety of thy neighbor is the safety of oneself. We’ve been through so much over the course of these last three years: attacks from minor gods. Visits from Ostara. Hell, we’ve even had to free our neighbor from a curse that turned him into a skeletal demon in the night!”

The Clothier chuckled from somewhere in the crowd.

“Each time, we’ve banded together, and it was our unity and cooperative spirit that allowed us to pull through even stronger than before. Citizens–the hardships we are facing now might appear more grave, more dangerous than ever before–but we must realize that just as these hardships grow in gravity, so too do we in strength and number. Let us not go gently into this good night–all we ask is that each and every one of you lends a hand in the effort to fortify this town, and make it a safe haven once more.”

The Merchant pumped his fist up in the air.

“COME ON, NOW! WHO’S WITH US?!” he shouted.

… But he shouted alone.

The people, while slightly swayed, seemed hesitant to join him in admiration for the plan.

The Angler pushed his way up to the front of the crowd.

“What’s the catch?!” he countered, “And where’s allothis’ material coming from to make the walls, anyways?! You think we’re just made of money, or stone, or something?!”

The Tavernkeep grimaced.

“The catch is, young one… Andre, Bazdin, Walter, and I don’t have enough between us to fund the construction of the wall, nor do we have the manpower to build it ourselves. When we say we need help from everyone in town… we do mean everyone. This project is not going to work, unless we band together, and everyone goes all-in.”

Now that was when the discontent began. 

Around him, the tavern erupted into fervor. People–now well-past sober–were muttering into their neighbor’s ears, discussing the proposal. Words like outlandish and juvenile carried in the air from the house to behind the bar, and the Tavernkeep began to sweat.

Perhaps he had misjudged them–maybe the Angler was right, and the monster horse attack would sooner send its citizens running off to take shelter in the Capitol than stubbornly stay in town and help build up its defenses.

The Merchant, sensing the direction the Tavernkeep’s thoughts had gone towards, piped up again–seeming to brush off the earlier rejection from the crowd.

“OI! From one coward to many others, if any of you are thinking it’s a better idea to turn tail and flee to the Capitol, I’ll just stop you right there–you won’t find any place that’s any safer than here, my friends,” he advised, unrolling the scroll with the material prices from Carnegie Steel, pointing to the price of demonite.

“How many of you are familiar with the corruptive wastelands just east of here?” the Merchant inquired once he had their attention, “Show of hands!”

The crowd looked among themselves, confused as to where he was going with this. Nearly all of them raised their hands.

“Good. Then I wouldn’t be wrong in assuming that you all know what demonite is as well?” he prodded further.

A chorus of yes, of course, maybe s rang out from the house area.

“Look at the price charts and weep–demonite is more accessible and cheaper than ever.”

As the Merchant pointed to the price of demonite–listed at the very bottom–there were several audible gasps of outcry among the townspeople.

“400 copper?! Only 400…?”

“Why is steel so much more expensive nowadays…?”

“I didn’t even know Carnegie Steel sold demonite to begin with…?”

They were mortified.

“Oh, yes. It’s their hottest new material,” the Merchant enthused, “And you know why it’s so cheap now?”

He waited for a response from the crowd, but none came.

“Because the disease within the eastern wastelands is spreading. The reason Carnegie is offering this material specifically at such an alarmingly low price is because there’s an overabundance of it, to the east of here. The flora and fauna of the wastes are reaching far beyond their former territories, and that means the worms are too, turning grass to deathweed and iron to demonite! If you don’t believe me…”

The Merchant shuffled around the hidden pockets within his jacket, and unrolled a wax-sealed envelope with the signature pegasus symbol of the Carnegie corporation of the Capitol of Terraria. He held it up to the light before breaking the seal, and unfolding the letter inside.

“...Read this letter sent out by them to all merchants and suppliers, warning them of the growth, for yourselves.”

The Merchant handed the letter across the bar, into the greedy hands of the Angler, who read it with his eyeballs popping out of his skull. One by one, the townspeople passed it around among themselves, each exclaiming small gasps of shock and fury at the news it contained.

“I’m afraid it’s not any safer in the Capitol, either,” the Merchant continued his tirade, “as the goblin army encroaches on our shores, we’re being left with less and less people to defend our cities as they head off to the western front for war. Hell, this town might be the safest place on the map, statistically speaking! At least all we have to worry about are the monsters.”

“ Thank you, Walter,” the Tavernkeep cut him off, sensing rising panic among the crowd, “You’re right. This town might be the last damn place on the map where we’re free from plague or warfare.

“I am not rallying for your help, everyone,” he said desperately “I am begging. I see no other way we can continue living here.”

It was then that he did something truly shocking–

Tavernkeep; once-hero, slayer of monsters and teller of stories–legend of folklore bound in mortal flesh–got onto his knees, and bowed.

“Please,” he asked quietly. “We need your help. Not just for us… for us all.”

The image struck a chord of dread within the townspeople’s hearts. It was a humbling sight.

The Goblin Tinkerer, shockingly enough, was the one to break the silence.

“It could work with some cannons on top of the allure.”

Everyone turned to look at him in the corner. They parted like the red sea, allowing him to speak directly to the Tavernkeep, and his ears flushed blue at the sudden attention.

“Er, well, the walkways, atop the walls. That’s the formal term for them. Maybe some guns too… The idea seems entirely feasible… We, uh, set something similar up on our, um, battle posts, in the empire. The design is nearly one-to-one, actually, minus the beacons. It’s a great start, defensively-speaking. But we aren’t going to just want to be defensive, against these new monsters–we need to be offensive too.”

The Tavernkeep got up from his knees, dusting the legs of his pants off.

“That’s a great idea, Tinkerer.”

“Ooh, you’re so right!” the Mechanic added from the seat next to him, “Shoot, it looks pretty darn solid to me. Let me get up there and take a look at those plans.” she said, hopping out of her seat and skipping up to the bartop.

The Arms Dealer begrudgingly smoothed the parchment so she could take a clearer look, as the Tinkerer trailed timidly behind her.

“Three feet thick, huh…” she murmured.

“Just on the outer wall,” the Tavernkeep clarified, “The inner wall will be made up of wooden columns, to cut material costs down.”

She looked up at him.

“Well, the spike pit’s going to be a real bitch, but we can totally do that in like, a week. What material were you thinking for the spikes, Driscan?”

“Ah- well, we were just going to go with wood, unless there’s a… better option…?”

She shook her head.

“No, no! Wood is good. Wood is great! Metal would be way too difficult to carve into those spike shapes anyways, and we can use driftwood from the shore so it’s not so heavy to carry! The depth and width of the pits might be an issue, since the walls are going to have most of their mass lying on them, so we’ll need to make the part the walls are on slanted upwards to evenly distribute the weight…”

“Would we be able to support the weight of the watchtowers on wood?” the Tinkerer added, “Better if we use stone, or bricks.”

Then, he amended shyly, “Do the, material companies have… bricks?”

The Tavernkeep nodded.

“Well, yes, they do, but they’re not very structurally-”

“Bricks are bricks,” the Tinkerer cut him off, “Anything will do, so long as it’s not wood.”

“Oooh, that’s a great idea, Nort!” the Mechanic chirped, “So much easier to lay than stone! Much better shipping times too. Plus, if we use bricks, we might not even have to use demonite for the watchtowers–we could just replace that with brick too since they’re so high up…”

“What about ranged enemies?”

The Mechanic pointed a callused finger up to the diagram.

“These are, what, 15 or 20 feet up? By the law of gravitational acceleration, any projectiles should lose enough force at that point to not break through the walls.”

“Oh, you’re right. I’m being silly.”

She turned to the Tinkerer.

The Mechanic put her hand to the diagram enthusiastically, facing the crowd.

“Everyone!” she called out with a smile, “This plan has the engineers’ seals of approval! This is totally doable, and it shouldn’t even take more than a month or two. If we get labourers from Carnegie, it might take us even less time!”

Whispers of hope crept up from within the crowd like a forbidden word. 

Could it be?, they seemed to think, is certain doom… avoidable?

The Mechanic looked back to the Tinkerer.

“You said this diagram looks like the stuff you guys made on the goblin war front, right?”

The Tinkerer nodded.

“That’s correct,” he said, voice barely-audible, “But we were building out of wood, not stone. I can’t promise that the construction timeline will chart the same course depending on the materials we’ll be using.”

The Tavernkeep spoke up.

“We based our designs off of the Goblin Empire’s military forces. I happened to have diagrams from my time traveling the war front.”

The Mechanic turned to look at the Tavernkeep.

“What material were you thinking of using anyways, Driscan?”

The Tavernkeep swallowed.

“That’s… another issue. We haven’t decided, but we’re leaning strongly towards… demonite.”

Gasps erupted from the crowd. The Tavernkeep held a hand up, attempting to quell the derision and shock.

“Simmer down, everyone–we don’t know for sure yet. It depends on the budget we have and the amount of time each material takes to ship.” the Tavernkeep clarified, turning to the Merchant.

“So, er,” he asked, “What exactly… are the shipping times, for each material?”

The Merchant pulled out a leather-bound notebook from within his coat, flipping through the pages.

“... Six months for reinforced steel.” He uttered, after some time.

A crestfallen expression fell over the crowd.

“... Three months for copper. Eight for iron… And one for demonite. But, really, our only options are stone or steel. No other material strong enough to withstand monstrous blows like they are, good friends.”

An uneasy silence filled the room, from corner to corner.

The Tavernkeep swallowed.

“I’m sure you all understand that it would be… problematic, to wait that long for steel. We could, of course, harvest the stone from the mines around us instead, but that would most likely take even longer. The ports we have are our greatest ally. We’d have materials at our doorstep in mere days.”

The Merchant sighed as he looked upon the silent crowd, before cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling out,

“ALRIGHT! We know our reinforcement plan needs some workshopping, but who’s all with us?! This is a joint effort, or it’s not happening at all! ”

Over half the crowd raised their hands in response. 

Not bad, the Tavernkeep thought. He had been expecting more pushback.

“It won’t be free labour, mind you all,” The Tavernkeep amended, “Whoever helps won’t be paying me a single cent during its construction, and all of your tills will be wiped! The very least I could do, for your citizen’s aid.”

Free mead?!, he heard whispering from the crowd, screw our safety, i’ll help out for that alone!.

The amount of hands that shot up made the vote a majority.

“ALRIGHT, GOOD FRIENDS! Glad to see you’re all with us in fortifying our resplendent countryside town.  All in favour of waiting for steel , raise your hands! Don’t be shy, now– this is a democracy! Every opinion counts!” the Merchant continued, with showmanship.

One or two uneasy hands were raised, but quickly dropped, when they saw they were the dissenters.

The Merchant spoke up once more, for the last time.

“ALL IN FAVOUR OF DEMONITE!” he shouted.

This time, the vote was unanimous: every single one of the townsfolk raised their hands, with varying degrees of uneasiness, at the proposal.

The Tavernkeep swelled with pride… and relief.

He reached underneath the bar counter for a glass, before using an open bottle nearby to fill it up. 

When it was full and foaming with froth, he raised his glass, and cried out,

“THEN THE PLAN IS SETTLED- TO OUR SAFETY AND FUTURE!”

It seemed as if the vow of a feasible safety plan had unified everyone, lightening the mood. The crowd followed suit, cheering and whistling as they raised their own glasses.

“TO NOT LOSING A LIFE TODAY, NOR A SINGLE ONE, IN THE PAST TWO YEARS!”

Now to that, the crowd cheered louder. It was an accomplishment deserving celebration: even the largest townships weren’t able to say as much for their loss-to-life ratio.

“TO OUR CONTINUED HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY OUT HERE, SO FAR AWAY FROM THE CAPITOL!”

Once more, they cheered. A refrain of Hurrahs echoed across the walls of the tavern, surely being heard from across town.

“ONE MORE TIME, EVERYBODY–TO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US! TO OUR RESILIENCE IN A VOLATILE WORLD! TO NOT JUST SURVIVING- BUT SHOWING THESE DAMNED MONSTERS WHAT WE'RE MADE OF!”

The crowd raised their glasses, and soon whooping and light and loud chatter filled the tavern again as the Tavernkeep, the Merchant, the Arms Dealer, and the Demolitionist rolled up their parchments and went to go store them in the backroom once more before grabbing their own drinks and joining the festivities.

They were the first words of encouragement many had heard in a very long time. The promise of safety bloomed like seeds in the wind–frail and dormant, but on the verge of wake. The townspeople allowed themselves the glimmer of hope at the mere prospect of them blooming.

From underneath a table, the Angler watches the adults talking in silence.

The Arms Dealer lies in bed awake that night and thinks about the past.

Anxious, young, flea-speckled little rat prince, a memory of a memory–his teacher, idol, mother says to him when she hands him his first gun:

“If you love something, baby, give it teeth.”

She handed him a black pistol, placing it into his hands. It was cold and smooth under his fingertips; except for the grip tape; that part, it dug into his palms if he held it too tight.

It was the perfect size for a child. She put all of her love into the weapon, he could feel it–she wanted him to protect himself. She wanted him to be safe. 

It had been a long time since he’d thought about her, but the memory exposed a tender nerve within him.

These were the things that she taught him,

Love was a weapon–it wasn’t real if it didn’t hurt somebody.

Summer

8 Days Post-Wall

The Guide idly gnawed on the cooked meat of a rabbit, skewered on one of his arrows.

It was early morning, and his life was falling apart.

Tea churned and bubbled in a tin pot over the fire.

(A tin pot. What kind of monster brews tea in a tin pot? )

The fire pit he had created was small and makeshift, kindled with debris from around his charred home–the structural integrity of which had been rapidly dwindling since the night of the fire. The stove, in all of its precious modern glory, had stopped working the night before due to part of his roof collapsing onto it; and so he had done what any reasonable person would do:

Create a fire pit in his kitchen over which to brew tea. Obviously.

The Hero was not the best architect, even the Guide could admit that.

To their credit, however, the Hero had done an excellent job of laying the foundations of his home.

 Even after the fire, the steel supports that had fastened it to the cliff had remained steadfast, so at least he wouldn’t be falling off of the cliffside any time soon. However, that didn’t stop the rest of his home from decaying: the roof above the living room had been grossly exposed to the elements and blackened with soot by the flames, leaving an iron-colored skeleton for the wind to whistle its mournful tune through.

That was all the damage he found upon his return from the Underworld, but over the next few days it continued to deteriorate: the shingles on his roof had fallen into his bathtub. His bedframe had broken in half, leaving him to sleep in a cocoon of silk throws on the floor. The heat’s expansion and shrinking of the wooden window frames had caused the glass to come loose and fall out. 

It was early morning, he was cooking an animal carcass over an open fire inside of his own home like a primitive, he hadn’t showered in days, there was a hole in his roof, and his life was falling apart…

He turned the arrowhead, flipping the sinewy flesh over so it could sear, surface-first on the other side. The fuschia cloak was pulled tight around him.

…But not his plan , he thought. 

Never his plan.

A knock at the door startled him, pulling him away from his musings and sending his heart into his throat.

Could it be?

He jumped to his feet, darting to the window beside the door. He cracked the blinds, looking for a familiar straw hat, and couldn’t name the emotion he felt at the lack of it.

He swung the door open.

“Oh. Angler. You’re here… early.”

The sun’s rays were just barely dusting the horizon, and the morning fog hadn’t cleared out yet. It made the Angler look ghostly.

The Angler tipped his hat.

“Howdy, business partner. In case you can’t remember… you owe me a hook!”

The Guide leaned out of the doorway, checking to see if there was anyone on the wooden steps outside of his home, before turning to face the Angler.

He looked a little tired, but there was an eager glint in his eyes and he was rocking back and forth on his feet. Over his shoulder was slung a cloth sack out of which the remains of his hook were being carried.

“You look quite chipper today, Angler. Excited to get your hook fixed, I presume?”

The Angler grinned sharply.

“We have a deal. Oh! And for payment…”

The Angler reached around into his cloth sack, before pulling out a brilliant red snapper by the hook it was on and holding it up to the light.

It was enormous, and looked fresh out of the water. The Guide’s mouth watered.

“Did you just… have that in there?” he asked.

“It’s my fishing sack.”

Alright, the Guide thought. That was gross. 

The Guide took the line out of the Angler’s hand anyways, before hanging it from a curing rack behind his front door.

But not gross enough to deny free food.

The Angler popped his head in through the doorway, and the Guide jumped.

“What’s in here?” he prodded.

The Guide panicked, maneuvering his cloak into the way to block his view.

“ Nothing. There’s absolutely nothing in here that would be of interest to you. Stay out here.”

the Angler blatantly ignored him, pushing the cloak out of the way with his hand.

“Why’s there a hole in your roof?” 

“… The building has been having some structural troubles as of late.”

The Angler raised a brow.

“ No duh. Was it ‘cause of the fire?”

The Guide pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was he even bothering to justify the state of his home in the first place? It was only the Angler.

“Yes, it was. The roof unfortunately collapsed last night. I’d ask the Hero to repair the damage, however…”

The Angler pinched his nose.

“Did your shower have some ‘structural troubles’ too?”

The Guide’s face dusted scarlet.

“I’ve been busy ,” he hissed, “Do you want your hook fixed or not?”

The Angler scampered away lightly.

“Come on then!” he yelled from the first step down, “We don’t got all day, and I’ve already held up my end of the deal! Let’s go!”

The Guide sighed. If he was being completely honest, he was regretting the promise he made to the Angler. He didn’t feel like going to the forges. He didn’t feel like leaving his home at all.

But he wasn’t one to break a pact—especially not one that he proposed to begin with.

He acquiesced. 

(Reluctantly.)

“Just let me grab my quiver first, Angler.”

“Are we there yet?”

The Guide trudged through foliage, using a knife to cut clearance through the growth. Behind him, the Angler pitter-pattered with comparative ease, stepping delicately over tree roots and trampling wildflowers underneath.

He sighed, carving away a tangled vine above him.

“No, Angler. I assure you, when we arrive, I’ll let you know.”

“The Hero always made it sound like it was right there.”

“Well, to them, I presume it is ‘right there’. They’ve got their lightning boots, remember? A mile’s journey is only footsteps away to them.”

The Guide tugged another vine out of the way, ripping it apart with a grunt.

Good grief, he thought to himself. Is the way to the forges already this overgrown? It could have only been a week since he’d used them.

Yet another sign of the world’s clockwork going out of tune, he surmised. The signs of the world changing were less subtle than he had predicted, and it filled him with discomfort… for some reason. He shoved the feeling down.

Only a matter of time until the Hero makes progress, he reassured himself. And then he could return to his rightful place as final judiciary of Hell, and put the surface world behind him for good.

“That’s not fair.” the Angler muttered from beside him. “I want a pair of lightning boots. Why don’t we all have them? How did they even make them anyways?”

Knowing you, the Guide thought, you’d just end up impaling yourself on something using them.

“Whenever you’re ready to embark on a quest through the jungle to gather the supplies to make them, feel free to inform me. I’ll give you the instructions to forge them.”

The Angler let out a fearful noise.

“I’m bold, not suicidal! You’re crazy.”

The Guide let out a chuckle of amusement.

“Good to see there’s some common sense floating around that skull of yours.”

“Yep. All certified brain matter, chief.”

“Could have fooled me–I thought it was empty… ow! ”

The Guide felt something sharp and rubbery hit him on the back of the head. He whipped his head around, making direct eye contact with the Angler, who quickly shoved a wooden slingshot back into his vest pocket. His grin was crooked, like he was desperately trying not to laugh.

“ Did you just– hit me with a slingshot? ”

“No.”

“Don’t lie! ”

“It wasn’t me, honest!”

“Where did you even get the ammunition from?!”

“I didn’t get no ammunition ‘cause I didn’t hit you with nothing.”

The Guide reached into his satchel, pulled out a pebble, and flung it at the Angler. It hit the boy square in the forehead.

“OW!” the boy yelped. (But he was still laughing, so the Guide knew it didn’t really hurt him.)

“Hey, you can’t do that!” he hooted, “I’m just a kid!”

“I could hear the echo of the pebble reverberating around your skull.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“...Have you ever been in a cave before, Angler?”

“Yeah.”

“You know when you shout into it, and your voice carries all the way down to the bottom?”

“Yeah!”

“There’s a feature specific to caves that allows your voice to echo like that. What do you think it means when it does that?”

“Uhh… Well, I guess, the cave length?”

The Guide sent him a sharp grin.

“That it’s empty.”

The Angler’s mouth dropped in disbelief as he realized what the Guide was implying.

“ You jerk! ”

The Angler pulled out his slingshot, firing another rubber pellet at the Guide. It hit him on the shoulder, smoothly rolling off of the silk fabric of his cloak.

Well. War was war. The Angler made his choice.

He bared his teeth, pulling the cloak up with his hands to form the illusion of dark wings.

“I’d be careful if I were you, Angler,” he hissed with mock derision, “Don’t you know I’m a demon from Hell?”

The Angler laughed in his face.

“Oooh, I’m so scared!”

The Guide sheathed his knife and started sprinting towards him.

The Angler screamed, running in the opposite direction.

“GET OVER HERE!” the Guide bellowed, “I’LL DRINK YOUR BLOOD AND EAT YOUR CHILDREN!”

The Angler shrieked with laughter, darting away somewhere in the underbrush.

The chase didn’t last long. The Guide quickly ran out of breath, giving up to return to cutting down vegetation along the path.

Perhaps the Angler’s antics would have irritated him, had it been a different day–had the boy posed any threat. But as it stood, with nothing else of immediate urgency to attend to, or any tasks to complete on his checklist, or any world-altering plans to ruminate on… he felt uncharacteristically jovial. Perhaps he even felt it was fun.

The quiet eventually stretched on for longer than he felt comfortable with, and he stopped to call out for the Angler.

“ANGLER?” he shouted, “ARE YOU OUT THERE?”

A few moments of silence passed with no response. A pang of nervousness shot through him.

Any amount of silence from the Angler usually meant nothing good. In the forest, animals were wilder, caverns deeper, monsters more frequently found thanks to the still air and shade–what if he had gotten lost and was stuck in a ditch somewhere? What if he’d been carried off by wolves? 

‘ Village boy mysteriously disappears when wandering the forest with local eldritch spawn. ’ That wasn’t a good look.

“ANGLER?” he called out again.

“I’M UP HERE!” came an excited reply a few seconds later, “DON’T THROW ANY MORE PEBBLES AT ME! I FOUND THE FORGE!”

The Guide cut through the last of the shrubbery, and emerged into the light on the other side.

The Angler was perched precariously atop a lichen-covered boulder, bent over the other side to observe the rocks below. Below him, a stream trickled between the cracks, murmuring quietly as it fed into the mouth of a well-lit cave.

The Guide stared at the opening.

“You want to build your forge here?”

The Guide turned to the Hero, raising a brow. They were too busy scrawling an image of the cave mouth onto a piece of parchment serving as their map to do the same.

“Yes!” they chirped, “It’s perfect! Not too far away from our house, kinda small, super close to the mines… I want it to be, uh, out of the way, y’know?”

“It’s a little…”

“A little what?”

The Guide stared into the darkness of the entrance. Around them, the wind whistled its haunting tune as it blew through the forest around them.

The cave itself was formed underneath an enormous escarpment that was at level-height with the trees around it. It was obvious that they were standing on a former riverbed, and that the cave itself was formed by the stream–thousands of years ago, perhaps, when it wasn’t a trickle, but a rapid. 

Although the vines that were growing to cover the rocks of the bed added a touch of green, it still painted an unsettling, brutalist picture.

“...Creepy.”

The Hero cackled, turning to face him. 

“You’re all about creepy! Besides, I’ll put some torches up. It’ll be cozy.”

“Some would say there isn’t much of a difference between a bed and a coffin.”

The Hero brushed him off, electing to hold up the map they’d been working on instead to the light.

The Guide’s eyes swept over it with admiration. He’d discovered the Hero was terrible with words and numbers early on, but they had a knack for the technical aspects of drawing, and an artistic flair that allowed them to transform the mundane into the exquisite, and the wretched into the divine. The map was monochrome, but rich with detail; upon it must have been every tree they had come across, every stream they’d dipped into the waters of, and every flower they had plucked from its dirt cradle.

Their shared base was at its center, with the path to the mines the only other real structure on it. Still, the Hero found ways to add elegance to an otherwise pedestrian scene: the mountain range and the dwelling tree Wyatt had found some days earlier were depicted in vivid wave patterns. They had even, somehow, managed to capture the softness of the snow on the mountain peaks.

“So what do you think?” they asked him.

He replied after some time.

“It’s beautiful. As your works always are.”

They beamed at him, glowing with pride.

“You flatter me, Wyatt.”

“Now if only that aesthetic sense transferred over into architecture.”

“When are you going to let that go?!” they whined.

“Wyatt?”

The Angler stared at him from atop the boulder.

“...Yes, Angler?”

“You’ve been staring forever. You gonna fix my hook anytime soon?!”

The Guide shot him a pointed look.

“I’ll fix it as soon as you get down from there and stop dancing atop it like a lunatic . You’re going to break an arm.”

The Angler blew a raspberry, but complied.

Before the seal on the world was broken, the area around the cave was always neatly-trimmed–within the past week, it had already become so overgrown that the flickering of torchlight was barely visible through the vines that draped over the entrance.

When he looked down, he discovered that the rock bed where he was standing was no longer stone, but a carpet of moss. When he looked up, he saw that the trees had grown far past the degree that should have been normal.

Beautiful, perhaps–but unsettling. It had appeared that the natural processes of the world were speeding up.

Another rubber pellet hit him in the forehead during his rumination.

“OW! Damn it , I told you to cut it out!”

“Angler, I need you to promise me something– do not try and forge anything yourself, whether I’m here or not.  And keep your face covered by the mask at all times. If any sparks get into your eye, you’ll go blind.”

The Angler did a mock salute. 

“Can I see your reel?” the Guide asked, pulling an iron welding mask over his head.

The Angler fished around inside of his bag for the broken mechanical part, before handing it to the Guide, who turned it over.

“... It appears as if the Unicorn broke open the shell, and scattered the washers inside. Did you happen to find any on the ground when you were picking the components up?”

The Angler shook his head furiously, but the movement was dampened by the weight of the mask.

“Not a problem. We can forge more–there’s more than enough material here.”

“Won’t the Hero be mad we took their supplies?”

It didn’t show, but the Guide’s lips turned up in amusement under his mask.

“They wouldn’t notice if you took the helmet from their head.”

The inside of the forges was bright with lamplight. The enormity of the open mouth of the cave was an illusion–it ended only a hundred feet or so towards the back, and the entire length of it was mottled with an array of torches, candles, and lanterns. The floors were blanketed with a soft, white sand–perfect for the creation of glass, which was in part why the Hero decided to build their furnace inside.

The main area of the forge consisted of multiple stone furnaces ensconced by the cave, surrounded by anvils. On the walls hung old, defunct swords the Hero had no use for–a few horribly disfigured copper shortswords from their earliest smelting days hung from a clothesline that was strung across the cavern, and a newly-abandoned Muramasa was left to idle on a wooden chest. Bookshelves storing texts on the methodology of swordsmithing lied gathering dust to the right. 

(A touch medieval, the Guide had thought upon their creation, but not unfitting for the weaponry the Hero was fond of.)

The Guide felt a twinge of unease at the Muramasa being abandoned atop the chest. The blue sabre had been their most prized possession–he couldn’t imagine a version of the Hero without it sheathed at their side.

He pushed it down.

The Guide walked over to the chest, shoving the sword aside and pulling out an ingot of silver metal. He held it up to the light for the Angler to see.

“What kind of metal do you think this is, Angler?”

“...Silver?”

“Close. It’s Tin. Silver’s too rare for us to use creating something like a fishing reel, but Tin is just as durable, and as beautiful… and, it doesn’t rust. It’ll be good for working along the seaside.”

“Huh. Well, whatever works, I guess. Doesn’t have to be fancy.”

The Guide tapped his head.

“Doesn’t have to, but why not?” the Guide hummed, “Besides, looking at the carvings on your pole, you know the merit in artistry better than most.”

The Angler was quiet for a moment. 

“... I guess that’s true.”

Inside of the furnace laid a bed of dark red coals–not freshly-lit, but not long-abandoned, either.

“How are you going to fix the reel, anyways? You’re not a fisherman.”

“I learned from a book I read. Anything you want to learn, you can find it in a book.”

“Okay, weenie.”

“It’s true. Perhaps you would know that… assuming you know how to read?”

“ Of course I know how to read! ” the Angler bristled.

The Guide raised a hand.

“I meant no offense,” he smoothed, “Not everyone does. You’re very lucky.”

He leafed around the papers inside of his satchel, before pulling out a mechanical diagram showing what looked like a pole with six or seven broad, concentric rings around it.

“If you can read, then can you decipher this?”

“… Mechanical… reel diagram. How-to… forge,” came the Angler’s reply, and then, predictably “..Centri, Sentry..”

The Guide was pleasantly surprised.

So, they even teach street urchins how to read now. He didn’t remember the overworld having a solid education system like the Underworld did–how far civilization has come.

“Not bad. The word you’re looking at is Centrifugal. ”

“That’s not even a real word.”

“It is as per the laws of physics. Centrifugal: Moving or tending to move around a center.”

“Like… Like a wheel and axle?”

“Yes. Good example.”

The Guide pointed to another word.

“ Coaxial. Any guesses?”

“Co… Axial… like, axel?”

“Exactly like.“

“So it has to do with axles?”

“Somewhat.”

“And ‘co’ means ‘with’, so, it would mean, two things that share the same axle?”

The Guide stared down at the Angler, who had his brows furrowed.

“How old did you say you were again, Angler?”

“Well… I’m turning ten next december..”

Well. The Guide knew two things.

1. The Angler was much smarter than most children his age.

1. He was a terrible liar.

“I must admit,” he spoke honestly, “I’m impressed. You’re more literate than half of the people that are twice your age.” 

“Why thank you, ” the boy replied, glowing with pride, “Of course I am. You gotta know how to talk if you wanna be a good businessman, after all.”

“Where did you learn to read, anyhow?” the Guide asked curiously.

“School. I was gonna learn more, ‘cause that’s how it is where I come from, but then I came here.”

An inexplicable urge surfaced within the Guide compelling him to prod further with, and how exactly did you come here?, but he suppressed it. It wasn’t his business, anyways.

The Guide pulled a few ingots from within the chest, before placing them onto an anvil beside the furnace. He then pulled a bucket of coal from beside it, heaving it up to the hearth, and dumping it into the embers.

“The coal itself is going to take a few minutes to catch alight. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait–once it’s a steady blaze, we can heat the tin up and start smelting you a new reel.”

“Oh. Well then what are we gonna do now?”

The Guide paused. 

To his surprise, he hadn’t actually thought that far.

“...Nothing. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Can we tell stories?”

Oh, no, the Guide thought. This was treading into dangerously personal territory. 

The Guide could almost detect friendship in the Angler’s voice.

“So then that’s how I killed the king slime.”

“... Were the alpaca cannons really necessary, Angler?”

“Guide-y, the jewel in a king’s crown is not functional. But it is necessary. You know why?”

“Why?”

“‘Cause it proves a point .”

“Fair enough.”

The Angler proved to be a surprisingly competent assistant during the forging process. He spoke mostly about himself, and his questions were unintrusive; he stayed out of the smelting area as the Guide went about creating his new hook and reel; he was a chatterbox, but had the good sense to keep quiet and go do something else as the Guide made adjustments to the size and curvature of the parts.

It went smoothly, and was not at all what he expected from the Angler.

“Alright, Angler–here are your new components, as promised.”

The Angler’s eyes glowed as Guide handed them over. He looked up at the Guide, as if he were waiting for a split second for permission, before snatching them up.

“This is great!” he exclaimed, “These are prob’ly better than the parts on my old hook! You’ve outdone yourself, Wyatt.”

The Angler stuffed the parts into his knapsack with the speed of someone who genuinely thought they were about to be robbed.

“There’s one more thing. Consider it pro-bono work.”

The Guide kneeled down, holding out a newly-forged silver shortsword. The Angler looked at it quizzically.

It was an ugly thing, he would admit: it was knotted and grainy, but sharp enough, and the Guide had spent a good chunk of the Hero’s silver reserves creating it.

“A sword?”

“If the unicorn attack proved anything, it’s that your crossbow isn’t going to cut it anymore, Angler. If you don’t have a good short-range weapon, you’ll be turned into mincemeat.”

“A sword for me?! ” the boy said excitedly. A huge grin spread across his face.

“ Yes. Now don’t go swinging it around near me, damn! You’re meant to use it against monsters, not people.”

The Angler stilled, looking at the Guide with an unidentifiable expression.

“...What?”

“...Just… only monsters, not people?”

“That’s what I said. You’re welcome, by the way.”

The Angler smiled smugly, like he’d realized he was right in his head about something. He stuck his hand out.

“You’re starting to grow on me, mister fleshwall.”

The Guide reached out for his hand this time, and shook it.

(Not sticky–thank the Lord.)

“Flattering…” the Guide said frigidly, before softening it. “I suppose the feeling is mutual.”

Despite his best efforts, The Guide keeps having visitors. 

He’s sitting at his living room desk, idly turning the pages to a book he’d been trying to read, when someone drops in through the hole in his roof and lands with an enormous thud on the floor.

He yelps, dropping the book and scuttling up onto his chair in surprise, before realizing who it was.

“ Stars above, Dryad, must you always find the most terrifying possible way to make your entrance? I have a front door for a reason.”

The Dryad hopped onto his kitchen counter on all fours, nibbling on a hangnail. She stared at him with scrutiny.

“You are a sorry sight.” she said.

“Thanks.”

“I brought something for you.”

The Guide’s eye twitched. Not even a ‘hello’? 

Titania pulled something flimsy and delicate from the leather sachet that swung at her side, and tossed it at the Guide. He caught it in midair, revealing that it was a beautifully-decorated red envelope, trimmed with golden scrollwork.

Delivered from the Underworld–of course. Its demons were the only living creatures in the realm with such an eye for beauty, he thought to himself, and such beautiful attention to detail.

He turned it around, to his horror, revealed a ludicrous little drawing of a penis in blue glitter defacing the front. He frowned.

“The… skeleton wretch dropped it off for you.”

The Guide flipped it over in his hands, admiring the filigree.

“I had forgotten about this month’s court meeting… Why and how did Tim intercept this?”

“There was no interception. He handed it to me personally.”

Personally.

Tim had handed it to her personally.

Tim was on the surface world, he had access to the Court’s communications, and he was hounding him in his mortal form through the Dryad.

“What? ”

“He works for the Underworld court now.”

The Guide shot out of his chair with alarm.

“Excuse me, what?! Why?!”

“He seems to be doing very well there. It pains me to see.”

The Guide carded a hand through his hair. In spite of himself, his heart began pounding, and the blood began rushing to his head.

Had his court fallen to shambles in the year since he’d been gone? How could they possibly be letting someone so incompetent serve among their ranks?!

The Dryad tilted her head, watching him with a gesture that looked like a petty mockery of concern. It was genuine enough, for her.

“...He is only a lowly courier. You know how the court has been short of staff, now that the Lunar sect has stopped working with them. They needed bodies. I assume.”

The Guide pushed back his concern, peeling open the envelope.

“That’s no excuse for letting an idiot like Tim be anywhere near the court. The only reason why it’s allowed passage into the Underworld is because it can teleport and we literally cannot stop it!”

Titania studied him for a long time.

“…What?” the Guide asked tentatively, looking back at her, “…is there… something else?”

“…If I were you,” she finally parsed out, before closing her mouth again. “I would not underestimate it. Him.” she said cryptically, “I am busy. I must be going now.”

The Dryad leaped off of his counter, soaring through the air like a bird in flight, before clinging to one of his damaged rafters and beginning the spider-like ascent out of his home.

In spite of the anger-inducing revelation, he didn’t forget proper decorum.

“Thank you, Titania!” he called after her, out of politeness, “For dropping it off! I would have forgotten otherwise.”

She turned back around from where she stood on the roof, piercing him with her iron-hot gaze. He felt his stomach sink into the floor.

Oh no, he thought, was I not supposed to use her name? 

He thought he’d been given explicit permission to use it with her letter. Was it considered rude to use it? Was it rude to not use it?

Before his fear was able to fully glue him to the spot, the Dryad shocked him by giving him a soft smile. 

“You are welcome, Wyatt.”

Guidey,

Joyous greetings from this cycle’s end, dearest!

The end of the month is upon us, heralding yet another court gathering. Surely, the prospect hasn't slipped your mind during your ventures afar?

You might be curious about the arrival of this missive. Indeed, the seal it bears is one reserved for those within our courtly circles. If the news hasn't yet reached your ears through dear Titania, I've ascended from the role of court pest (though you would know that I was really more of your beloved jester, right?) to that of court courier —a thrilling upgrade, wouldn't you agree?  You did always advise me that instead of pestering you, I should find gainful employment. I’ve taken your words to heart.

Just checking in. Hopefully your court’s little passion project hasn’t died yet, but if the plants I found in your study were anything to go by, you can understand my lack of confidence in your nurturing capabilities. If you ever feel as if the responsibilities of being the Hero’s guide are too much for you to bear, feel free to call upon me–we can switch out for a day. Though I can’t guarantee the Hero will come back in one piece.

No doubt, the surface world keeps you exceedingly occupied, explaining your absence here. Down below, chaos seems to have taken a liking to the void you left. The Parliament is sorely in need of its steadfast leader to restore order.

Who knows? My work ethic has been growing recently. Perhaps if I work my way up the ranks, it’ll be me one day!

Cheerio.

Yours sincerely,

Tim

“Oh, shove it, you passive-aggressive piece of shit!”

Summer

10 Days Post-Wall

“Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.”

― Meghan O'Rourke

The next time the Guide meets the Angler, it’s once again mostly by mistake.

When he awoke as the Emissary, he was blessed with the divine knowledge that part of his duties were to survey the new world. So on the tenth day of his awakening, he packed his quiver and his bow, his pens and his papers, his styluses and seismic equipment, and made his way down to the mines to take note of the new ores that were meant to be emerging.

Because if there was one thing he wasn’t going to do, it was sit idle. Not while the world was crumbling, and not while he risked exile from the only safe township in miles.

So with a torch in one hand and his research journal in the other, he set off in catabasis into its stygian depths.

However, it was a universal law that no expedition could go without problem, and there was no Lewis without a proverbial Clark–at least, that’s what the Angler had said.

“It’s true! You can’t go by yourself. It’s too dangerous! You need me to watch your back.”

And just as there was no journey without a complication, and no paper without a cut on your hand, and no shoe without a pebble inside; there was no universe in which the Guide would be able to shake the Angler off from joining in on an adventure.

“Angler, I’ve already told you, the mines are no place for a child,” he warned, “Even if you believe you are ready to face the creatures of the underground, you are not. Even the Hero had difficulty in Terraria’s underbelly when they first arrived.”

As per usual, his warning fell on deaf ears. The Angler heeled him anyway.

“But I’m way better with my sword now! I’ve been practicing all week,” the Angler chirped, “Plus, it’s dangerous for you too. There’s no telling what’s down there now that the world’s, like, changing and everything.”

The Guide turned to face him, kneeling in front of the boy.

“Angler,” he reasoned, staring intensely into his eyes.

“Y-Yeah?”

 “I beseech you to stay put. It’s because of the way that things are changing that I need you to stay out of here ,” he beseeched, “Terraria’s caves are notoriously more dangerous than the surface world, and I have no idea what might be in store down here. The only reason I’m doing this is because I have some…” 

The Guide struggled with how to phrase his ties to the Underworld Court.

“... I have some colleagues, who are in need of information about the state of things. Otherwise, I would never venture down here alone.”

A memory from the last time he had gone spelunking with the Hero and their gruesome encounter with Tim came to mind.

“Besides,” the Guide added, “Nothing good ever happens in caves anyways.”

The Angler stared at him with wide eyes.

“But, what about you? Who’s gonna protect you now that the Hero’s gone?”

The Guide paused.

Who will protect you now that the Hero’s gone?

Shit, he thought to himself, if only someone would tell me.

The Guide was surprised at the twinge of pain that the Angler had managed, however unintentionally, to evoke. 

He could have been angry.  Instead, he chose to forgive the boy, and smiled with a rare touch of good humour.

“I have no need for another pest.”

“ You jerk! Fine, I’ll just go have fun on the surface. Without you !”

The Guide did a mock wave as the boy scuttled towards the direction of daylight.

“Au revoir, Angler. Watch for the rotted vines! ”

“If you are going to follow me from a distance, boy, the least you could do is be subtle about it.”

From far behind, a young voice echoed, “ How did you know?! ”

Well, the Guide had reasoned to himself, if the Angler was going to follow him irrespective to his warnings, it was better that he follow in his line of sight than from a distance. Although he wasn’t keen on the idea of a child accompanying him into the mines, he knew how difficult the Angler could be to stop when he had set his mind on something.

And after all, he thought, it wouldn’t look good if the Angler was injured in the same mines the Guide  was exploring that day. 

And knowing the Angler, he would, indeed, get injured.

“Keep your sword drawn and your torch up, Angler. And stay quiet , so you can remain alert to any cave-dwellers.”

The Angler did a silent whooping motion, raising his fists into the air and jumping up and down like a victorious, mute chimp.

“YES! Promise I’ll be helpful! I won’t pull any pranks or get into your hair or nuffin’, Wyatt.”

“And stop your jumping! You’ll attract cave worms.”

The Angler saluted him.

“Aye-aye, captain! ” he whispered.

The Guide pinched his brow, already beginning to regret not sending him back.

As the two began their descent into the cave, the Guide began to flip through a worn leather journal. It was nondescript enough on the outside, and one could tell it had been well-used–the binding was nearly falling apart.

“What’s that book you’re looking through?” the Angler asked.

The Guide angled it so so that the Angler could see.

“This is a book of flora and fauna of the natural world. I began writing notes as a way to aid the Hero when facing monsters, but now that there are new species emerging I don’t know of, I figured it was time to add more.”

“ Wow! Did you draw these?”

The Guide chuckled.

“No. The Hero did.”

The Angler continued to sing praises to their artistic abilities. The Guide handed the book to him, and he eagerly flipped through the pages.

“It’s so good. They’re so, lifelike. She’s, he’s, um.. really talented.”

For some reason, this revelation impelled the Guide to smile.

“Why so surprised? They’re not all machismo and monster hunting, you know.” 

“... I dunno. Just never really talked to ‘em. They’re always walking around with that armor, and it’s kinda scary.”

Then, the Angler added quietly,

“And I thought they’d think I’m a nuisance anyways. They never even built me a house.”

The Guide paused, searching for the appropriate thing to say.

“... I don’t think they think that, Angler. They are a busy person. Especially now that things are so different.” he said, before adding, “ Besides, you never hang around town for long enough to warrant one. You’re always slinking around the coast. I’m sure they assumed you had somewhere to stay… You do have a roof over your head, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, of course I do!” the Angler snipped, “Just woulda’ been considerate is all.”

The Guide made a mental note. 

Get Hero to build home for Angler.

The Angler flipped to a page in the middle of the book–scrawled with writing, like every other page, with one key difference: the center of the page, where the illustration was meant to be, was empty. 

“Why’s this one missing?”

“That is the page for Nymphs. They’re found in the lower cavern levels, but they’re extremely rare–what makes them uniquely dangerous is that they take the form of what the beholder desires most in the world, so they usually take the form of beautiful women with long hair. They’re known for luring miners to their deaths.”

Perverted miners, the Guide thought, excluding the detail that they were almost always seen naked, but the point still stood.

“They pick up on the emotions of their targets,” the Guide continues, “the more desperate the beholder is for something, the easier it is for them to appear to them in that form.”

It apparently piqued the Angler’s interest.

“What happens if it meets two people?”

“From a distance, it is possible for a nymph to maintain the illusion for multiple people. However, they lack much magical capacity, so upon closer inspection they take the form of the beholder with the stronger emotions. That’s what they feed off of to keep their illusion going.”

“That’s so cool!” the Angler said excitedly, “There are so many monsters in here that I’ve never even heard of!” 

“It is difficult to spread information on the surface world,” the Guide said with no small amount of grievance, “the literacy rates are low, trade between cities is difficult due to monster attacks, and producing paper is expensive outside of urban areas… Would you like to hold onto that book? It would be useful, while I illuminate the way. You can go through the rest of it if you’d like.”

“Yes!”

So on their descent went. 

Aside from the constant stream of questions on part of the Angler, the journey was surprisingly pleasant. The Angler kept true to his word, and avoided any acts of mischief. He was insightful enough to ask intelligent questions about the underground, and acute enough to know when he could explore on his own and when to cling to the Guide and hide quietly under his cloak. 

The Angler may have been brash, temperamental, and rude; but the Guide was starting to reframe the boy’s behavior as he spent more time around him–what might have been viewed as rambunctiousness by the townsfolk disguised an eagerness to learn about the natural world; and the penchant for mischief, an unfulfilled desire to connect with peers his own age.

Besides, the Guide thought with a twinge of regret, it was gratifying to teach someone who was truly quick on the uptake. The Hero-

He would never regret teaching the Hero anything, but Lord of the Moon, trying to enlighten them of basic arithmetic was one of the most vexatious tasks he had ever embarked on. The Angler picked up on the fundamentals of calculus with ease.

They had stumbled upon one of the quieter, darker parts of the mines, where the echoes of dripping water reverberated from miles away, and the flicker of torchlight casted long and twisted shadows on the cavern walls. The Angler was quiet with unease as the Guide held the torch close to a vein of ore that he’d never seen before, making the shadows dance like contortionists.

Finally, the Angler whispered something that broke the silence.

“...What kind of ore is that?”

The metal gleamed incandescently in the torchlight, emitting a faint, turquoise glow. 

“No idea.” the Guide replied sharply, before fumbling around for the miniature chisel and hammer he kept in his satchel, “But the glow indicates that it’s rife with magical power. I’ll need to take a sample.”

The Guide used his tools to break off a small chunk of the material. The metal was exceedingly tough, and it was difficult to break off any more.

“ Turquoise metal… found in trace amounts in cavern layer… harder than Tungsten, left scratch marks on chisel… ” the Guide dictated to himself softly as he wrote in the book, before closing it and turning to the Angler, “Alright, I think we’ve gone far enough into this tunnel. Angler?”

The Angler was motionless and facing away from him, staring off into the darkness.

“Do you hear that?” he whispered quietly.

“... Hear what?”

The Angler was quiet for a moment, before turning back around.

“...Nothing. I dunno. I thought I heard something, but it’s gone now.”

The Guide raised a brow. 

If the Angler heard something, there was probably weight to it–he knew his vessel had already aged past the point of being able to hear the higher frequencies human children could pick up on.

“Are you sure? You need to tell me if you see or hear anything. Your senses are sharper than mine.”

“... I thought I heard someone calling us from further down in the cave.”

The Guide curled a protective arm around the Angler instinctively. 

Whatever it was that the Angler heard, it was probably nothing good. 

“Let’s go, Angler. Nothing good could result from us going any deeper.”

They walked away from the darker parts of the cave, and instead took a different route that would lead them into a mineshaft–a deeper part, but one that was better-lit. It was one Hero had carved out and explored it many times over, tracing desire paths into the limestone and lighting up sinkholes with torches along the way.

The atmosphere lightened immediately as a result of the change in environment. There were even cairns and trail markers painted on the wall, courtesy of the Hero. It made it feel more human, and less otherworldly, as Terraria’s caves often felt.

“What are those markings on the wall?” the Angler piped up–back to his usual, energetic self.

“Those are… Er…”

The Angler pointed up at a mural of charcoal paint on the wall that, while vaguely hieroglyphic in nature, resembled an abstract art piece moreso than meaningful directions. There was an arrow pointing to the right, labelled “left”, that had then clearly been written over with an arrow pointed to the left, labelled “up”. Circling them both was a massive ‘no entry’ sign, which, confusingly, had the letters ‘YES’ scrawled next to it. Among other things.

“The Hero put them there. For reasons. I assume.”

The Angler giggled.

“I thought they were supposed to be good at drawing!”

The Guide sighed.

“The illustrative and creative arts are really their forte. Directions and navigation… not as much.” he relinquished, “Come now,” he beckoned, “We need to go down further to reach the bottom of the cave before I can be satisfied with the information I’ve gathered.”

“Uh, is that, like, safe?”

The Guide paused to reflect.

Was it safe?

“We’ll be fine. The Hero has long-since walled off any unsafe parts of this mineshaft, and the torchlight should keep away any monsters.” the Guide asserted, before throwing a playful grin the Angler’s way.

“Besides, where’s this big, strong warrior so bent on using his new sword I met earlier?”

“ Right here, jerk! I dare any monsters to come near to me! ” The Angler challenged, unsheathing his sword from his back and doing a wild chopping motion, “I’ll slice ‘em into carpaccio!”

The Guide silently thanked the stars above that they hadn’t had to use it yet. 

Something about the lack of monsters they had encountered thus far was deeply unsettling to him- they had been exploring for almost two hours, but hadn’t seen a single other living creature aside from the regular cave insects and crustaceans that were non-volatile. 

The world was different now–-before the seal was broken, it was unusual to go more than thirty minutes without something going wrong. Two hours was unheard of, especially in these new conditions.

“We have a brave warrior in our midst, I see,” the Guide jested, in spite of his unease, “How is the blade holding up? Is it too heavy or too light for you?”

“S’perfect!” the Angler replied excitedly, “Nuffin’ wrong with it at all. Maybe, the handle is like, a little too heavy on the upswing, but that just means it’ll be the perfect weight for me in a year or two.”

Good insight , the Guide noted.

“If it is, we can shave some tin from the hilt.”

The Angler puffed up. 

“No need. Not all of us have frail, fragile little bookworm arms.”

The Guide raised a brow.

“These fragile little bookworm arms draw the arrows that have been keeping us safe.”

“Duly noted.” the Angler said, mocking his intonations. 

The Guide ignored it, favoring instead to continue walking at a brisk pace. 

The pitter-patter of child’s footsteps heeled him as he went.

“Sooo, Wyatt… why are you keeping note of all of this stuff anyways?” the Angler probed. “I mean, this is, kinda dangerous… to be doing it all for… the Hero.”

The Guide could pick up on the hesitation in the Angler’s voice. Although he was trying to phrase it as a casual question, the boy couldn’t hide the curiosity in his voice–and the trepidation.

He had the right to curiosity, he reasoned. 

The Angler was a newer addition to their rapidly-growing seaside town. He had washed ashore only a few months prior to the decimation of the Wall in battle, but that hadn’t stopped him from maneuvering his way into the town’s economy.

He was more social than many of the other townsfolk, but nowhere near their age, and the way he interacted with others could come across as both brusque and naïve. The older adults didn’t appreciate all of the pranks he pulled, and the younger ones–while friendlier–didn’t take kindly to being cheated out of their coin for fish.

As a result, the Guide had noticed that the only people who truly looked after him were the Nurse, and the Arms Dealer by proxy. It seemed as if no one else wanted to make the boy their problem.

For some reason, the thought evoked a twinge of an unfamiliar emotion within him.

His youth meant that the Angler had few real connections in town–and that made him less of a threat, should the Guide tell him anything incriminating.

The Guide stared at the Angler’s wide eyes, and detected no hostility.

If he was going to tell anybody anything, he reasoned, the Angler was his safest bet–he was harmless, and even if he shared the Guide’s secrets, who would listen to him?

So it was a completely logical and calculated move, when the Guide decided to finally let some of the knowledge that had weighed down upon him, separated him from his court, and suffocated him for the past year spill.

“I have to.” the Guide said after some time as they continued walking down the mineshaft. 

The Guide jumped down from a flowstone with some difficulty, before offering his hand to aid the Angler in making the same leap. He struggled to parse his new role in a way that the Angler would understand.

“Before the Hero and I fought in Hell, I was meant to serve as their Guide to the natural world. I was to teach them how to survive their first nights on Terraria. I showed them how to start a fire, cook food, and build their first house. Eventually, I was supposed to guide them towards… Killing the Wall of Flesh. Killing me. 

“It’s why I know more about the world than everyone else. While you with human souls must learn and process things on your own, I had that knowledge inborn within me. After we dueled, I was not expecting to come back. I was meant to respawn as the Wall and continue my affairs separate from everyone on the surface world. I thought my job was done, but it appears not. Adding onto the confusion, I have no knowledge of the new world–meaning I, too, must learn everything from scratch, as you do.”

Oddly enough, it felt good to tell someone that wasn’t Titania. There were things about his origins he couldn’t even tell the Hero. It felt like unclenching a muscle.

“Wow. So back then, it was just you two all by yourselves?”

“‘Back then’ makes it sound as if it was a much longer time than it was, Angler. We’ve only been here for a year and a half. The rest of you followed suit–many fleeing from the war front between the humans and the Goblin Empire.”

The Angler stared at him with quizzical eyes.

“You don’t think you’re human?”

The Guide shot an exasperated look his way.

“My vessel is, but you’ll be disappointed to find that I am not.”

The Angler was quiet for a long time. The boy’s silence pained him, for a reason unbeknownst to even the Guide.

The Guide felt compelled to speak up again.

“I know I’ve lost my temper a few times, but that  doesn’t mean I have any ill intentions, Angler. I want to see the Hero succeed as much as you all do. But I am only… I have my limits too.” 

He stopped in his tracks, and sent a modest glance the Angler’s way. 

“I would not go out of my way to harm anyone in town, and that includes you. You have my sworn word as bond.”

The boy’s brow was furrowed.

“Well, duh , I know that! If you wanted to kill anyone you’d have done it by now.”

The Guide threw his arms up in vindication.

“Thank you! ”

Finally, some sense in this town!

“Yeah! Everyone just thinks that ‘cause you’re weird!”

“Thank - they think I’m weird?”

The Angler threw his hands up too, emphatically protesting alongside the Guide.

“You’re harmless, Wyatt! You couldn’t hurt a bunny. And even if you wanted to, you suck at fighting anyways!”