By midday, we were ready.

We had helped Sarita extend the circle of sunflowers as far as they would go without leading us too close to the corruption.

We had food, water, torches and potions and I'd even managed to find a gun for the Guide.

He was so hopeless with a bow and arrow, I didn't have a choice.

Not that it wasn't worth it.

Worth what? To say we, not I.

In Terraria, it had always been me packed and ready.

It was exciting to share this new land with someone else.

Even if most of it was corrupted.

It wouldn't be for much longer.

We headed for the hills. It only took about an hour to reach the top, from which we waved to Sarita.

"Okay," I said with a deep breath. "The last time we looked over the top of a hill we were assaulted by a harpey."

"You do the honours, then." replied the Guide, suddenly nervous.

"Okay, but if the forest is corrupted and an Eater of Souls rips my head off, you have to carry my body back."

"Okay, okay. Together."

We looked over the top of the hill and found ourselves faced with our worst nightmare.

Why is it always a nightmare when it could be good for once?

Almost the entire forest is corrupted. Only a thin line of trees close to us remain alive. All of the others have died.

I feel a pang in my heart as I remember the first time I met the Dryad.

Our dryad, I mean.

There's a whole race of them.

If there are, don't they have names?

Wouldn't it get confusing walking around shouting "Hey you!"?

Anyway . . .

I entered the dead forest, sword in my hands.

I had been hoping to find a dryad here, the Guide said that they lived in forests. Do they live in corrupted ones? Can they live in corrupted ones?

I wonder what kind of brand new, deadly, corrupted monster I would find here.

Eater of Souls in a normal corrupted landscape.

Devourers in soft soil and ebonstone.

The list goes on . . . and on . . .

But what in forests?

I hear something to my side and turn around.

Nothing there.

It's always nothing when there's something . . .

And when there's nothing.

I cautiously make my way towards the spot where the noise had come from and see something I was not expecting to.

A living tree.

With a figure hiding in it.

Hiding from me or the corruption?

The corruption is spreading toward the last tree visibly, and I grab a sunflower out of my pouch, planting it in the soil as quickly as possible. The corruption stops.

I let out a sigh of relief and turn my attention to the tree and the person hiding in it.

"Hello?" I call out. "I know you're up there! Who are you?"

After a few seconds, the figure replies in a voice that reveals it to be female. "Who are you? Why are you in my forest?"

"Your forest? . . . Are you a dryad?"

". . . Yes."

"I'm here to help you!"

"Help me what?"

I frown. "Get you out of here!"

"Why would I want to leave?"

"You have to! The corruption has spread here, I can bring you somewhere safe!"

"A dryad does not leave her forest! She stays until the last leaf has wilted!"

"But you have to leave! You'll die if you stay!"

"Perhaps I will, but it would be a small sacrifice for my home!"

"No! Your home is as good as dead! I can bring it back to life, but not right now! Right now you have to leave, or you're as good as dead, and then who'll protect the forest once you're gone?"

After a long pause, the dryad lowered herself from the branches of the tree, her long braid dragged behind her. "What's your name?"

"Zelda68. What's yours?"

She frowned. "I am the Dryad."

"I know you are, but what's your name?"

"I am Dryad, guardian of the forest."

". . . So you don't have a name?"

"Yes, I do! Dryad!"

"Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry!"

"What are you?"

"Uh . . . human."

"But what role do you play in events?"

"Well . . . hero, if I'm lucky."

"And how exactly do you plan to bring this forest back to life, Zelda68?"

". . . well . . . I haven't worked that bit out yet. Apparently there's this stuff called purification powder, but I haven't been able to find any yet."

The Dryad smiled. "And you call yourself a hero?"

"Well, not yet anyway. It's the Guide that calls me that."

"Here." she handed me a small pouch with a strange symbol on it. I opened it to find it filled to the top with pure white powder. "And here." she handed me another pouch, this time without a symbol on it but bright green. "This will hold anything, no matter how large. And the other is full of purification powder."

"Thank you!" I say with a grin.

I sprinkle some powder on the grass around the tree, and it immediately returns to a vivid green. I sprinkle some more on a corrupted tree, and the bark appears to come back to life, but the rest of the tree stays the same.

"Hmm . . .the tree might take a few months to properly return to life," concludes the Dryad. "And even then it will not recover properly while the Great Eye still reigns."

I frown. "Great Eye?"

"Can you see any trees that are still alive?" I asked the Guide. "It will have to be somewhere in the middle of the forest, but it only takes one to keep a dryad alive."

Both of us scan the forest, hoping for some kind of life, but don't see any. I draw my sword and the Guide readies his gun.

We're going in.

We start the descent of the hill, the Guide being extremely careful not to fall. I glare at him. "Hurry up! Better fall than be slow! If the dryad is still alive, it's dying! We have to help it, and quick!"

We started running at full speed down the hill, unable to stop when we reached the bottom. We split up, scouring the forest for some kind of life. I had been searching for a few minutes when I saw a seedling, still alive.

But the corruption already had it's roots.

You can't plant a sunflower in corrupted ground, it'll just die.

But there was no pure ground left . . .

"P-powder . . ." came a weak voice from in the trees. "In . . . pouch . . ."

I ran in the direction of the voice and found a dryad curled up inside the hollow of a tree. I grabbed the pouch secured to it's waist and quickly ran back to the plant.

The corruption had nearly reached the top . . .

I sprinkled the powder on the ground around the sprout, which immediately came back to life. But the corruption reached the top of the sprout before the ground was purified. . .

I immediately grabbed a sunflower from within my pouch and planted it in the ground, stopping the corruption spreading to the seedling again.

The dryad . . .

I ran back to the tree and found the dryad still curled up inside it, not moving. I glanced at it's chest to see it still, but when I checked for a pulse I found it. Uneven, but still there.

"Guide!" I called out desperately. "I need your help!"

I knew that the Guide could help.

He had saved me from drowning on more than one occasion, and I was sure that he could use the same technique on the dryad.

But would he be too late?

Oh, for god's sake, why didn't I ever ask him how he did it? I couldn't help but think as I dragged the dryad out of the hollow.

The Guide appeared next to me and checked for a pulse.

"I already did that! Just do the thing that you did when I drowned!"

The Guide didn't make a comeback as usual, but started rhythmically pressing the dryad's chest with his hands, before breathing his own air into the dryad's mouth.

"Hang on . . . you did that to me?" I asked him, feeling slightly flustered.

"Is that really important right now?"

"Yes!"

"I didn't have a choice! Would you rather have died?"

I wanted to say yes, but I decided that I liked life.

The dryad's hand was turning purple (a colour I long ago learned to associate with corrupted creatures) and it's fingers seemed to be glueing themselves together and sprouting small, dead leaves on a texture that was becoming similar to bark.

"What's happening to his hand?" asked the Guide.

"That's what happens to dryads when their forests corrupt. They turn into corruption monsters." My face turned grim as I remember. "I've had to face down no few of them. They'd lost everything that made them human. Or rather, dryad."

Please don't let that happen again . . .

The Guide repeated his process for a minute before turning to me, a guilty expression on his face. "No good. It's dead."

I frowned, checking for a pulse again. "No, he's not! He's not breathing, but he's alive!"

"What?" asked the Guide, checking himself. "That's impossible! It should be dead!"

I paused, thinking. "Dryads aren't like humans, they protect their forest and die when it dies. So maybe . . ." I stood up, clutching the pouch of purification powder.

I walked over to the only pure spot in sight and spread some more powder on the dead grass, bringing it back to life.

"It's working!" the Guide cried triumphantly. "His pulse is regulating!"

Satisfied, I continued spreading powder on the grass until I heard a gasp for air behind me. The dryad sat up, clutching his heart and breathing hard.

"Are you alright?" I asked, concerned. "We used the purification powder on the grass and seedling."

The dryad seemed unable to answer, but continued to clutch his heart. I walked back over to the pure spot and continued to sew the powder until the dryad was breathing fine and seemed to calm down.

I walked back over and observed the dryad. He (if it was a he, hard to tell) had short hair, unlike our Dryad back in Terraria, that was somewhere between very dark green and black. His clothes consisted almost entirely of vines that seemed to have grown around him. He looked about my age, but it's hard to tell with dryads. After all, the one back home was over 300. He looked at us, slightly bewildered. We were likely the first visitors he had had in a large number of years, if he had ever had any, and we had just saved his life.

". . . Th-thank you," he managed around his shock.

"Honestly, that's fine." I said with a smile. "Glad we got here in time!" The Dryad seemed unable to speak, and my smile turned into a grin. "I know how you feel. Takes some getting used to, mortal peril."

He frowned at me. "Are you . . . a hero?"

"I suppose so."

"You more than suppose!" the Guide said, interrupting me. "This is Zelda68, Hero of Terraria and, if things turn out alright, hero of here too!"

"And this is the Guide," I said, pointing my finger right into the middle of his face, making him go cross-eyed. "Who likes to exaggerate."

The Dryad raised his eyebrows and laughed. In fact, he seemed unable to stop. Soon we were with him, laughing at thin air as if it was the most hilarious thing ever. Like I had when I had seen a zombie in a top-hat, and I nearly died because of that. We just couldn't stop, even when we found it hard to breathe. Eventually, after numerous collapses after attempting it, I sat up and kept a straight face and the others soon followed.

I supposed the Dryad had never had anything to laugh at before, except maybe a beetle doing something remotely funny.

"I-I'm a Dryad." he said, trying to keep the smile off his face.

"And the Dryad too, I suppose?" I asked.

"Yes, that's my name."

"Fair enough. But that could get complicated, because we know someone else who's a dryad and is called Dryad."

"All dryads carry the name of the forest guardian." he responded with a frown.

"Yes, but can you think of something else we could call you, for ease of conversation?"

He paused, thinking.

"That's alright," said the Guide, still smiling. "It's a big decision, we'll give you a while."

The Dryad looked at the forest floor in his concentration and found himself confronted with his own hand. He stared at the slightly corrupted hand, completely terrified, until I lay an arm over his shoulder. "It's alright," I said soothingly. "I know how you feel."

"How?" asked the Guide with a frown, and I glared at him.

". . . I . . . I failed . . . protecting the forest from death . . ."

"Hey, it's alright. That's my job, anyway." I replied.

The Dryad glared at me. "No, it's not! The whole world is yours to protect, but this domain was entrusted to me! I failed!"

"Calm down! It was only corrupted for a few seconds, and now it's fine."

"How can you say that? Look around you! Most of the forest is dead!"

"And it won't be for much longer! You're back now, and we can spread the purification powder until the entire forest is better."

". . . but . . . all of the animals and plants that died won't come back . . ."

"The trees will, it'll just take time." I remembered my conversation with the Dryad years ago and my face turned grim. "And victory . . ."

The Guide frowned at me and turned to the Dryad. "Animals breed, and a few are bound to have survived. Everything will be fine."

"But . . . my hand . . . I taint my own home with darkness . . ."

"Don't worry." I said, returning to the present. "Your hand alone isn't enough to keep the corruption spreading here, you need at least an arm and a leg, and even then you'd keep your emotions. Your whole body would have to be corrupted before you'd lose everything. For now, sunflowers could hold it back."

The Dryad turned to me, his face a strange mix of curiosity and sadness. "You have a lot of experience, then. Fighting dryads."

"I've been . . . too late to save them in the past. That's why we only know one dryad, I suppose we could've known six, but I was too late, and the corruption was spreading too fast . . . Not as fast as here . . . But once they were gone, I did my best to grow their forests back."

He seemed to relax slightly. "Good. I was worried you'd . . . conducted experiments."

My face turned grim. "Who'd be twisted enough to do that?"

". . . another. They came walking through these woods not a week ago, and they brought the corruption with them."

I stared at him, uncomprehending. "So . . . it wasn't a monster? Not a . . . giant eye? Or a gargantuan worm with teeth and eyes?"

"No. A human. A sick human . . . they almost seemed . . . dead . . ."

The Guide raised his eyebrows. "How could someone dead be walking about? . . . Unless . . . They weren't a zombie, were they?"

"No. They were of the living, but . . . dead. I think it was a corrupted human."

"A corrupted . . . can humans even corrupt?" The Guide turned to me to see me lost in my own thoughts, terrified. ". . . Zelda68?"

. . . that was it.

That was how we got here.

She brought us . . .

I returned to reality. "What did sh – it look like?"

The Dryad frowned and tried to concentrate. "It . . . I think it was female. It was my height, and a bit younger than you . . . it's eyes glowed like embers, and it's skin was the purple of my hand . . ."

I heard a rustling noise behind me and turned around, drawing my sword.

"Zelda68, it was just a bird or something. Why so tense?"

I turned to him and debated whether to tell him or not.

No.

"Oh, don't give me that look!"

"What look?"

"The I-Know-Something-You-Don't-And-Am-Debating-How-Much-I-Can-Tell-You look. I hate that look."

"It's not like you've seen it on me before!"

"I have! Quite a few times since yesterday! What is it?"

"It's nothing! I'm not debating anything! It's just . . ."

"It's just . . ."

". . . I think that this thing might be the equivalent of the Eye of Cthulhu."

"Really?"

"Eye of what?" the Dryad asked, looking confused. "I'm in the dark here."

"The Eye of Cthulhu was the monster that brought the corruption and started it spreading in Terraria." the Guide answered easily. "Zelda68 here killed it, but very nearly died in the process."

". . . nearly . . ." I mumbled.

"What?"

"N-nothing. I'm fine. But . . . we should start powdering the ground."

The Guide laughed. "You have no idea how ridiculous that sounds!"

"Shut up."

It took us ages to purify the forest, even with the three of us spread out. The forest was big, bigger than any in Terraria. The sun was setting by the time we were finished, and the Guide and I headed back to the hill, the Dryad close behind. By the time we reached the top of the hill, it was night.

"I'll head back then," concluded the Dryad, waving. "It was nice to meet you."

"Wait!" I called. "It's not safe in the forest anymore. Who's to say that the . . . thing won't just come here again and corrupt it?"

"Then how can I leave? It is my duty to stand and guard the forest."

"But even with the corruption nearby, monsters will start to swarm there."

"I can't just leave it!"

"Listen. How long did it take you to start weakening after the monster came?"

He thought. "It would've been . . . three days. It was a week after the thing appeared, but three days before the forest started corrupting."

"Then we'll have plenty of time to come here and stop the corruption before you can be harmed."

"But it's not me I care about! It's the forest!"

"I know, but if you die, the forest stays corrupted!"

He stared at me for a moment, then sagged in defeat. "I've never gone over the hills before," he admit. "Is it dangerous?"

"No no, perfectly safe. There's a village there with nice people who'll take good care of us. Just one problem."

"What?"

"They all believe in this mad religion," the Guide finished for me. I supposed that answering questions was such an important thing to him that it didn't matter when they were directed at someone else. "And they think that their God will save them from the corruption."

The Dryad frowned. "So they do nothing to save their own lives and wait for God to deliver them from the plague?"

"Well put," said the Guide with a smile. "And yes."

"That's completely mad! . . . But also understandable."

"How?"

"Well, if they've been brought up to believe in an omnipotent being with almighty power, they would expect it to help them in a moment of need."

The Guide seemed unable to respond, so I did for him. "I suppose, apart from the path of enlightenment bit." The Dryad frowned. "Don't worry, we'll tell you all about it once we get there."

An Interlude

It was strange.

Mum wasn't making meals for me or anything like that, when she used to if I insisted she didn't. I would have to eat out at the restaurant and sneak into my bedroom window at night.

It'd only been happening for a day, but it was still taking some getting used to.

I was a stranger in my own home.

It was funny.

A few days ago I was thinking of dad as my knight in shining armour, come to rescue me from the religion and my religion-obsessed mum.

Now I'd be surprised if mum even noticed me, and dad seemed a far-off dream.

Thanks to Zelda68 and the Guide . . . they'd given me a harsh dose of reality when I was least expecting it.

Not that they had meant to.

Or that I wasn't thankful they'd come.

If they hadn't come, we might all be dead by now.

Without realising it, they'd saved my life.

And made me see the truth.

Dad was banished, likely dead.

That was the truth.

All of a sudden, I was dragged out of my thoughts by a knock on the bedroom window. Nervously, I got to my feet and peered out.

I found myself face-to-face with Zelda68, the Guide and a Dryad.

"Hello!" said the Dryad brightly. "You have a lovely house!"

"We've been having trouble explaining to him why some of the houses are made of wood and some stone." explained the Guide.

"Sorry I have to ask, but can you put us up for the night?" asked Zelda68. "Not enough money for a hotel." she jerked her thumb towards the hilt of a shining silver sword over her shoulder. "And another thing, about what you said about zombies. See, we've had five run-ins with them tonight."

8