Terraria, Me and My Guide
Chapter 6.6: The Eye's Second Form (Realization)
Hmm, I seem to of taken longer on this one than the last; not a huge surprise, saying that I've had so many assignments recently. Well, please, at this point, tell me what you think of the action parts in the story. With that alone, I will let you get on with it.
If I were to draw my most amazing abilities, getting better and better as the fight continued, then my first card would have to be... well, it was hard to top what I just did, wasn't it? I had completely flipped out, that huge, precise slash had disappeared when the Eye had shed its skin.
Suddenly, I knew how to play my next part.
I ran at it, tricking it into thinking that I had gone back into my overdeveloped anger, but at the point where I was supposed to jump, I kicked a piece of the shedding, as large as it was, it was nearly weightless, over it, so as it would get the same feel as it did when I was first jumping, but to its disappointment, I slid underneath it, cutting off a large, red tentacle that until that moment, I didn't even know it had.
It struck me how stupid that was; I had pushed the fight into a match of trickery and deceit, but when the Eye acted on this, I would have to use brute strength to beat it - something that I had little in comparison to it.
Surely enough, the Eye acted on my stupidity, 'looking' up, as it would of been if it had a pupil and iris, and charging straight for me, but I saw it coming; there's only really so much an eye can do to trick a person that has two.
As it came streaming towards me, I ducked out the way, the only thing of mine that came into contact with it was my sword, which I had deliberately left pointing upwards so as to slash at the bottom of the beast, a large eruption of blood came out, seconds after my sword came into contact, leaving my face splashed with the horrible substance.
Maybe I could outsmart it after all.
Wrong. It had used that time, the time I spent recovering from the stench of death it leaves behind it wherever it goes, recovering from having to jump to the floor, under something that was accelerating so fast, It spent that time actually going above, as promised, and preparing to slam down towards me.
I realised, then, that the point of such trickery was to break all the mental rules that the opponent thought applied, where as I never expected any rules, I knew that this was going to be brute force from start to finish, with a few tricks and trips on the way.
The Eye, though, expected me to fall for everything it did, provided it did it fast enough.
I knew what had to be done, for the second time in this fight.
The Eye came crashing down on me, falling straight to Earth. Or Terraria, whichever way you want to put it. I knew it; since the Eye was a sphere, I didn't need to roll very far to get out of the way, and plunged my sword into it five times while it reared out of the ground.
I had to do it; it was the only way I could win; I waited, after stabbing it. It continued. It lurched for me. I dodged. It kept striking, but missed every time, its aim getting evermore inaccurate for every strike. I had defied the most basic rule of the fight. I defied the fact that it was a fight. I did nothing to harm it after those stabs.
I didn't really have and specific plan in mind; I didn't think about things like 'It's wounds will kill it while it exercises them' or 'let it wear itself out', for these where battle strategies, and this was no longer a fight.
The Eye soon caught on to the vibe, it knew that I wasn't targeting it anymore. It knew that it was safe. It knew that I wouldn't attack.
It struck me.
A clean blow, knocking me off my feet, carrying me into the cliffs, the same corrupted mountains from which it came.
I noticed something, that was why I had left the opening, because I didn't need to have that defence; It had stopped hurting me. The mountain didn't hurt, for I had let the Eye take me there, but it didn't travel fast anymore, and I knew I could get back just by jumping on it.
I did so, allowing it to take me across the meadows, back to the house, and got off there, as if to say 'thanks for the ride' and offered Namine and The Guide a hand up.
They both took it, Namine's soft hands as I pulled her up, The Guide's warmth that comes from her whenever she feels as though she is in dept to me.
I told them what had happened and explained the two reasons that I wasn't fighting. Then, I noticed a forth; If I didn't fight, and I wasn't fighting it, then the fight was between Namine, The guide and the Eye. The Eye didn't seem to go for them while it thought it could beat me, and I therefore needed not fight, I wasn't going to get hurt, and it sure was when The Guide and Namine where fighting it again.
The only problem was that I was severely injured.
Oh well, you can't win them all.
The battle had been epic. After I had devoted myself to distractions, The Guide was hitting its teeth with every arrow, dislodging most of them, and Namine had done something amazing.
Like I summoned water-bolt, though I had never mentioned it, she had summoned a spell rune.
She had been using her water-bolt as much as her small amount of manna would allow, and had ended up summoning the next-up version of it, as I mine new ores, she summons runes.
She had summoned fire-bolt by using it. She didn't know how she used it, but she did, her actions, her flourishes, all her movements, even with the repeated casting, had been somewhere between perfect water and perfect fire.
She had been flowing perfectly, but her emotion wasn't water; I could see in her eyes that she had fire in her heart.
A bright, orange light had came from her, burning the Eye when I dragged it past, killing it almost instantly.
We were all impressed, but I knew she had more runes to summon; she could heal, couldn't she?
"What in the mother of hell was that?" I asked The Guide.
"That," she said indicating to the eye, "is, or was, the Eye of Cthulhu; he seems to enjoy looking down on us and seeing what we're doing. People have seen it from the other side of the force-fields of the academies, like the Guide Academy, but other than them, all who have seen it have died, if anyone else ever did."
Oh, that explains it, I thought to myself, wondering if Namine was thinking the same thing.
I turned to see her marvelling at the book on the floor in front of her.
"How did I do that? It's not like I meant to... It's just like... all of that power that I had... it all ran out at once... but I made that fire-ball... it was amazing! I did something new!" she danced around, now holding the rune to her chest and spinning on one foot, her shoulder-length hair flowing around her, as she spun.
"Wow, I didn't think that you two had it in you... but... there you where, shooting, casting, helping me out all the way through!" I congratulated them in their accomplishments, knowing that the battle just then wasn't just flukes.
This world, this place they call Terraria doesn't allow luck... no, luck was forbidden here; what happens does because you make it happen, otherwise the Eye wouldn't of come; if we were lucky, then we would of had more time to practice, or we mightn't of even ended up here in the first place.
We had passed the first challenge, the first test, of Terraria, but there were more to come, what, with us hiding away in this small cubby of the world, we can't of found much about where we are, or what we are meant to do here.