An Interlude
Was it just my mind playing tricks with me?
Had my father been better than the other swordsmen, or had I just convinced myself that?
Everything was so complicated . . .
Not as complicated as it was for Zelda68 . . . she had promised to take them, or at least some of them, with her. Had any of them really been good enough? I'd seen them freeze at the sight the sight of an Eater of Souls, and they were everywhere in the corruption. Could the men survive fighting off ten of them at once?
The Guide finished his hot chocolate in under a minute, but Zelda68 seemed distracted. It was only then that I could appreciate just how little she ate. What would she eat in the corruption, anyway?
Nourishment potions? It seemed she ate them all the time on Terraria.
But, looking at her now, I saw just how impatient she was. She had faced the swordsmen to prove that she was better than them, but now they insisted on coming with her even though she won.
She just wanted to go into the corruption and put an end to all this madness.
But she couldn't.
Being a hero must be very stressful . . .
X X X
Everything is messed up.
Last time it was just like: "Here's a sword, train with it and then save the world." But now it was like: "Make your own sword, come into the village, be forced to pick between swordsmen, all of which are terrible fighters, to come and save the world with you. Oh, by the way, you're dead. Live with it."
Things had gone from simple to complicated in the blink of an eye, and all of a sudden I was faced with a decision that was impossible. Why did everybody think that me being a hero meant that I could do things like this? I'm good with a sword, sure, but do they think that I have some kind of a degree in hard decisions?
The hardest decision I'd ever had to make before this was between blinkroot and daybloom seeds on one of the rare occasions in which my pouch was full. You weren't even supposed to be able to fill it, but I proved the Dryad wrong.
Speaking of which, where was Leaf?
I hadn't seen him since the other day, when the mayor had ordered for a house to be built for him. He could've just asked me . . .
I get off my bed in the mayor's house and headed for the small construction site, hoping to take my mind off things by helping out. I reached it in five minutes, realising that things were progressing quite slowly. Construction had barely began, but that was likely because there were only three builders left in the village and one planner. The planner had a fancy name that I couldn't remember – something like "architect" and the builders were called Phillip, Fred and David.
It was still hard to get used to the names in this place, they were so strange . . . but everybody here seemed to think that my name was strange, so fair enough. In fact, it took them ages to work out that the Guide's name actually was Guide, and that Guide wasn't just his occupation.
He was the Guide.
It wasn't that hard to work out, was it?
I walked up to the site, noticing that only Fred was working on it. "How are things going?" I asked, walking up to him.
"Not too well," he responded honestly. "The planner's caught up in something else and Phillip and Dave have been out for lunch for the last two hours. All I've been able to do is start crafting a door. At this rate it'll take months to finish."
"I might be able to help out." I said. "Stuff the planner, I've made a house for a Dryad before. I know what Leaf will like."
"Thanks," he said with a smile. "He just said he wanted it to be like a forest, that's all."
"Ha. Fair enough. I know what'll suit him."
The rest of the afternoon was a blur, and the sun was going down by the time the basic shell of the wooden house was completed.
"I don't think Phillip and Dave are coming back." concluded Fred, pausing to wipe his brow. "We'll have to continue again tomorrow. Thanks for your help!"
"No problem! In fact, I think I'll start on the plants tonight."
"Hard to sleep?"
"Yeah, especially with swordsmen around every corner. See you tomorrow . . . if I'm still here."
I headed back to the mayor's house, axe still in my hands.
Everything was so complicated . . .
. . . apart from building.
An Interlude
It was impossible to sleep.
Whatever Zelda68 was doing in her room, it was just too loud to sleep down the corridor. Even the sound of the mayor's snoring was drowned out by the sound of hammering and clanging and every other noise that had ever come from her room at night, apart from screaming.
Had she even slept since we left the floating island? It had been almost a week now, she couldn't go on like this . . .
Giving up on trying to sleep, I got up, threw my clothes on and walked to her room. Glancing out of a window I realised that it was past midnight.
For god's sake, just because she didn't want to sleep didn't mean I should have to stay awake!
I knocked on her door and the clanging stopped for a moment, which I took as an invitation to come in. I opened the door to see Zelda68, sitting at a workbench with a hammer in her hands. She had bloodshot eyes with prominent bags underneath them, and on the workbench was a long rod of steel that, I could see from the completed ones around her, was going to make the frame of a window. Glass panes that she had cut to shape were propped up against the walls along with bags of soil and a multitude of seeds and seedlings in pots.
"What on Earth are you doing in here?" I asked, but Zelda68's eyes returned to her work.
"I'm working on Leaf's house." she answered easily. "He'd want plenty of windows to let the air in and plenty of plants, just like the Dryad back home."
I stared at her and sighed. "You know, you should sleep."
"Who could sleep when the corruption is still out there?" she asked, suddenly angry.
"You did in Terraria. You're doing this so that you don't have nightmares and you don't have to think about the swordsmen."
She stared at me, and I found myself once again surprised at how much I knew about her. How had I known that? Well, it's obvious when you think about it, but . . . sometimes my mind is ahead of me . . .
"I - no. I - I'm just . . . passing the time." she stammered. I raised my eyebrows.
"Well, don't forget, it's not just your time that's passing. I haven't slept at all!"
"Sorry. I'll start on the plants."
"You should just sleep." I said simply. "Y'know, sleep? S-L-E-E-P?"
"I know of it." she said, her face suddenly in her hands. "But I'd just have a nightmare anyway, and then I might as well have not slept at all . . ."
"For god's sake Zelda68, you need to sleep! If you are going to go into the corruption, you can't do it half-alive!"
"I can sleep in the corruption." she replied stubbornly, looking up.
"But won't your nightmares just be worse there?"
"No. Haven't your books taught you anything?"
"I haven't read many of the ones on corruption, too freaky."
"Well, I have. That's weird . . . I've read a book that you haven't . . . but anyway, "The corruption gives you no nightmares, it is itself a nightmare."."
". . . Right . . . are you sure that's true?"
"Undoubtedly. I'd spent the last few months in the corruption before I faced . . . the Eye, and I spent the next year making up for it."
I couldn't reply, but sighed. "Just keep it down, alright?"
She gave a small nod. "I'll just finish this window and then you won't hear a word from me."
"Or a sound?"
"None of those either, whatever they are."
I grinned to myself and started back down the corridor. She was recovering . . . and faster than I had dared to hope.
X X X
I didn't dare stop and think, but in the quiet of the night (or rather, early morning) it was hard.
I became rather obsessive, pouring soil into the pots that I had shaped to cover every possible surface, hanging from windowsills, sitting on the floor, hanging from the ceiling . . . dayblooms, blinkroots, moonglows, waterleafs, fireblooms and plain old grass all in containers to suit the plant. It took a while for me to find meteorite and hellstone to make a lava-proof container for the fireblooms, but it would be worth it for . . . for what? For Leaf to be grateful, I suppose.
No, not grateful, happy. I wanted Leaf to be happy in the village.
Young trees would line the walls and vines would grow on them. There would be many skylights in the roof and the floor wouldn't be a floor but simply grass and everything would be perfectly natural to the extent that it would be hard to tell that it was a house and not a greenhouse. Leaf would lie in a bed made of clay with a feather mattress and pillows softened with moss, and sheets woven of reeds. It wouldn't be as comfortable as a normal bed, but then again Leaf had never slept in a normal bed and this was as comfortable I could make something out of plants.
I would do all of the work of course, it would be an undertaking but not my biggest. It would keep me busy until it was time to leave. I wanted to go, but there wasn't really any hurry – the corruption had been here for years so no purified land other than here would be left, so it was only a matter of purifying the rest of the land, not hurrying through it and trying to stop the corruption on the other end like in Terraria.
Everything was done, all of the plans drawn out, all of the pots sculpted, all of the windows made . . . what should I do now?
I could read a book, I suppose . . . but I was so . . . tired . . .
Was I tired, or was I already asleep? The workbench and tools had disappeared, and the last thing I thought was about nightmares before the whole world seemed to blur and everything turned black . . .
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