I remember when I first set foot into this land. I had just a thin sword on me when I wandered into the woods, not knowing of the mist that drifts between worlds. When I stepped out from the grassy cavern and saw this majestic valley, I was awed by its beauty, its sprawling, lush hills.
Three slimes attacked me from behind. Pain flashed through my back as their gelatinous bodies slapped against me. My shortsword plunged into their green, translucent flesh; stinging gel splattered across my face and arms as they lunged into my blade.
When the slimes were finally destroyed, I was on my knees, my clothes dripping with slick blue gel. My sword had never felt so heavy, nor had my chest burned so hard with each breath.
"Hello, traveler. How may I help you?"
Slowly, I got up and turned to face the speaker, the only other human I'd encountered in this mysterious land; but he was just a young man with curly brown hair, a gray shirt, and blue jeans. He had a shiny new copper ax and pickaxe in his hands. "Who are you?" I asked.
"I'm Jack, Jack the Guide," he said calmly. "I'm from the Adventurers' Guild in Avalon. We guides travel throughout Terraria, helping adventurers like yourself to survive the perils of the land."
I stared as he handed me his tools. "Here, you'll need these. Welcome to Corundia."
Terraria, infinite and mysterious... Countless, distinct lands sprawled across the cosmos, connected only mysteriously through the mists of dawn...
"You can mine for stone with your pickaxe," said Jack as I crossed the wilderness with my shortsword, keeping an eye out for more slimes. "Stone is particularly useful if you want to build houses from brick."
The slimes flew at me, a pair of blue blurs. Blindly, I struck at them with my thin blade, continuously backing away. All the while, Jack's ax and pickaxe were strapped to my back. "Why did you give me your tools?"
Jack was turning out to be less helpful than he seemed. "They're not my tools; they're yours," he told me. "Consider it a gift from the guild. You'll need them to survive in this land." And he never once took out a weapon or helped to kill the slimes.
The part that concerned me about Jack, however, were the tools. Pickaxes were the tools of miners who tore up the landscape and left ugly pits in flourishing fields, destroying whole forests in their wake. And transforming the earth was the last thing I wanted to do. "I'm going to go explore."
Jack simply nodded. "I'll just be off gathering firewood."
More slimes! They came from rocks and rivers, emerged from ponds and dropped from trees. Always jumping, hurling their blobby selves at my head, green and blue, always advancing, forcing me back.
Somehow, I figured out that if I could land a thrust right as a slime jumped, they would fall back, and I could strike again without stepping back.
But this was tricky. For me to stab them at the right moment, I would need to get extremely close. Close enough that if I missed, I would have a faceful of jiggling slime.
Actually, I was starting to feel good about my progress on the slimes, when the little pink slime appeared.
Pinky, as I learned to call him, was brutal. Though half the size of the other slimes, he made up for his size with a swift, bruising lunge like a slingshot.
I was completely unprepared.
As I fled, other slimes emerged from the grass and the water to join Pinky in hunting me. Over the fields, through the trees, he chased me with some sadistic joy, bouncing along like a rubber ball.
By the time I managed to kill Pinky, I was almost back to the hill where I left Jack, and the sun was starting to set. I was exhausted and battered. "Hey, Jack?" I called weakly. "Think I could crash in with you tonight?"
There was no answer.
"Jack? You there?"
I thought I heard a growl in the distance.
"Hey! Aren't you supposed to help me survive?"
In the fading twilight, I saw a tiny waterfall trickling down a large, grassy tunnel in the mouth of a hill to the east. Above the tunnel sat a cluster of clay pots, nestled in the the shrubs.
As the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. I heard the growls, the mutters, the shuffling footsteps; I heard chain-links clinking, shifting, rattling; growing louder, closer.
Raising my shortsword, I slowly turned in a circle. "Hello? Who's out there?"
I felt a cold shudder as the first figures emerged from the tunnels. In the pale moonlight between the trees, I caught a glimpse of their deformed, hideous faces, their rotting flesh and hair. Claws sank into my leg, grimy yellow hands grabbing my arms, bearing me down.
"No!"
I stabbed at them repatedly, trying to force them back in vain. More zombies from behind, dragging me to my knees, swarming over me like ants.
I couldn't get away. I was too exhausted, too worn out; I could barely them in the darkness. Their hungry growls filled my ears, their nails at my flesh.
The last thing I remember seeing was a hooded figure in white descending from the night sky, wreathed in blue flames.