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The goblin raid had been quick, but brutal.
It wasn’t uncommon for such attacks to occur, even when they were kids. They’d been happening for decades now. But when a raid occurred, Amy was usually shunted off into a shelter with all the other kids, far away from the brutal and bloody action.
A goblin screams as Amy bashes it over the head with her wrench, saving Paris from getting shot in the side by an arrow. Another goblin blasts her with a burst of dark magic, and Amy stumbles forward from the impact.
“Fore!” Terra’s voice cuts over the din roar of the fight, and Amy ducks on instinct as a bright beam of energy soars overhead. It strikes the goblin sorcerer dead center in the chest, blasting a sizable hole in her, and she falls to the ground, dead.
Stumbling to her feet, Amy whirls around, wrench in hand and ready to attack. But aside from Paris exploding an armored goblin with her bombs, the area around the village seems calm.
“I think it’s over,” Dalek pants, wiping his glasses off on his shirt. He looks down, frowning at the goblin at his feet. “They’re all dead.”
She had asked him, once, if he struggled with fighting against his own kind. He had said there was nothing other than species connecting them, but she does still wonder if it hurts, to have the rest of his kind viewed as mindless barbarians. After all, the last two times the raids have occurred, he was the one telling the others the proper way to deal with the bodies in their culture.
“Thanks for the save,” Paris says, drawing Amy out of her thoughts with a nudge to the side. It makes her lower back twinge, but she barely notices it.
“Yeah, no problem. We watch each other’s backs here.”
“No one died, either!” Paris continues cheerily as Amy wipes the blood and gore off of her wrench. “I think that calls for a party!”
She smiles. Party girl Paris, indeed.
“Well, save it until after we clean up a little,” Amy reprimands gently, gesturing at the bodies on the ground. “Rotting corpses isn’t exactly good for our health.”
Paris makes a ‘phbbbht’ sound, rolling her eyes, but skips over to where Dalek is already beginning the process of collecting the dead. Before Amy can go and offer her assistance, though, a hand taps her shoulder.
She turns to see Terra looking at her, eyes flicking upwards to meet her gaze, before she raises an eyebrow. “Before you go anywhere, you should get that injury get checked out. Come on, your place is nearby, yeah?”
If it was anyone but Terra or maybe Heather saying something, Amy would wave them off—but she knows the fear that the question stems from.
“Alright, alright, I hear ya, doctor,” Amy teases, trying to lighten some of the tension she sees in her friend’s shoulders. Not that Amy blames her.
They make their way to her house, stepping over the corpses strewn about the slowly growing village. It wasn’t particularly big yet—only so many people wanted to live in the mountains—but there were a few people already beginning to deal with the aftermath of the raid.
Amy’s house is nestled near the center of the village, a finely constructed building of wood and stone, expertly maximized for optimal heat and cooling flow with a workstation attached. They do have to check to make sure no goblin sorcerer is hiding in her house, but it appears to be all clear of intruders.
It’s a modest space, mostly overrun with bits and bobs of inventions and mechanisms she was currently working on. Her first aid kit is in her little workshop, and Amy clears off a space on the bench for her and Terra to sit down.
“Do you think there were attacks on the other towns, too?” Amy asks idly, making conversation as Terra starts preparing the first aid supplies. The goblin raids attacked with very little rhyme or reason, and sometimes it was just one town that was targeted, while other times multiple villages and towns were attacked.
“I don’t know,” Terra muses. “When we’re done cleaning up here, though, I can go check. But I’m pretty confident in the militias we’ve started to set up. And if there truly was an emergency, well, that is what the Pylon network is for.”
“You really should get my teleportation system set up.” While the Pylon network was decent enough, there were enough towns that necessitated fast travel via a series of teleporters. For some bizarre reason, only one Pylon could be placed per region in the nation, and thus they were usually placed at the biggest towns of people that hadn’t yet fled over the past few years.
“I told you, I’m not smart enough for that,” Terra huffs, joining her on the bench.
“You run electrical wires and plumbing in your houses just fine.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been taught that since I was a kid. That stuff is way more complicated, while you can just plop down a Pylon in any town with a population over ten people. You want a teleportation network set up so badly, you do it.”
Amy rolls her eyes, sliding her arms out from under the straps of her overalls. “I think you’re just being lazy.”
“Well, you’re the professional. I’m just an architect.”
“Then you’ll be my assistant.” It would be nice, Amy muses, working on projects again like they had way back when, back before… Well. Many times before had they collaborated on projects in their hometown with their parents, making it one of the fastest-growing towns before the Blood Moons hit.
“I could,” Terra muses, setting the first aid kit on the desk and popping it open, and Amy stiffens at the hint of teasing that appears in her friend’s voice. “But I think Dalek would be a much better assistant than I would.”
Amy whirls, smacking Terra’s shoulder, cheeks burning. “Oh, you little-!” The action only makes Terra laugh though, eyes crinkled as she snickers. “You’re a menace. I never should’ve told you that.”
“Ames, darling, your crush on him is so obvious you wouldn’t need to tell me. Now come on, off with the shirt. Or should I call Dalek for this too?”
Somehow, Amy feels her face burn even hotter. It was one thing to do this in front of Terra, her childhood friend who quite literally died several times trying to rescue her. It was another to do so in front of her crush.
“Just… shut up, Terr,” she snaps with no real bite, hauling her shirt off over her head, already thinking of a way to work Terra’s crush, Roxanne, into the conversation. But before she can do that, though, Terra lets out a horrified gasp.
Amy stiffens, bracing herself. “Is it that bad?” The wound didn’t feel that bad, but she’s also come to realize her time in the Dungeon has left her with…
Wait. The blood that had been her face rushes out of it as a realization dawns on her.
“...Fuck.”
Terra’s hand, hesitantly, softly, gently, touches her lower back. Not the magic burn she had just gotten, but lower, around her hips. Amy resolutely stares down at the bench, refusing to look behind her and see the expression on her friend’s face.
“What happened?”
It was no secret from her friend that her time in the Dungeon left scars. Most of them mental or emotional, but a fair few were physical. Traceable consequences of her early days there, all the quiet and loud ways Amy had tried to rebel against those masked lunatics who took her captive. After a while, she had given up on fighting, but there were still several scars left over--a constant reminder of those many years spent locked up.
In her mind’s eye, she can picture it. The large, jagged scar cutting across nearly the entire width of her lower back, right over her spine. It was one of the scars she didn’t think about as often, because its position meant she didn’t see it as much as she did some of the others, and so it had slipped her mind, but she still knows what it looks like.
“Are you sure you want to know?” Just like that, the levity in the room was gone, replaced by a thick, cloying tension. Amy had thought that, nearly six months after her escape, they were past this awkward stage of grief and guilt and shame.
Apparently not.
Terra’s hand moves from her back to her shoulder, warm hand resting on her skin, and Amy finally gains the courage to look over at her. There’s no pity, thankfully, like there was at the beginning, but the deep sadness in her friend’s eyes still makes her chest twist.
“Only if you wish to tell me.”
Amy presses her lips together, considering. She had shared stories of a few of her scars and wounds from her time in the Dungeon, but the story behind this one was… unpleasant. Well, more unpleasant than most.
“It’s not a good story.”
“No story about torture is.”
Amy closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten. Drums her fingers against the bench and focuses on Terra’s warm hand on her shoulder, trying to push out the memories that tickle in the corner of her mind as she gathers her will to speak.
When she does, it’s short. Simple. “I tried to run, once. They severed my spinal cord as punishment.”
The thing about being Blessed, Amy’s come to learn, is that it makes death more of an inconvenience than an actual threat. But it still doesn’t take away the pain of it, and she can feel the phantom ache of it now.
When Amy had been caught after the escape attempt, the masked lunatic leader had cut her spinal cord, let her bleed out on the cold and damp dungeon floor. Amy wasn’t sure how long she had sat there, crying and in pain, before she stepped into that shade between life and death as Terraria itself repaired the damage done to her. But even though the damage was repaired, the scar still remained.
Terra’s hand tightens on her shoulder, and she gives a single, sad nod.
“When I find the bastard that did all this to you,” she says quietly, her voice full of conviction. “I’m going to rip him to shreds for all the pain he gave you. And then I’ll drag him back here in chains and let you get the final crack at him.”
Amy nods. Terra cleans her wound in silence.