Oh Christ, this was a bad idea.
This was the Guide's idea. How did he screw up so badly?!
He's never gonna live this down. One day, when he's all bowed over and gnarled, he's gonna ask me to pass a book. I'll lean back, look him in the eyes and say:
"Remember when you made me sneak into the library?"
Because this was a bad idea.
The kids are on a lunch break, everything had gone just fine. A few decent archers, a lot of friendly faces. I almost got shot in the foot, but the poor kid felt terrible afterwards. I had to talk him down from tears – which was surprisingly hard.
And then that stupid smug little bastard with things living in his hair said that he'd hit a wall in his research. He thought he knew what book he needed, and could tell me where to find it.
But, of course, he wasn't going into the library. And why?
"She's a bit . . . scary."
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I accidentally offended this woman's religion, and he's worried that she'll look at him funny.
So here I am, sneaking past friendly villagers as if they're goblin scouts. Crouched low among the towering bookshelves, watching the dust which filtered their way through sunbeams, a calming aroma of musty books and age creeping its way into my nostrils.
Except, the thing is, I don't feel very relaxed.
What'll the librarian do if she finds me? I think she's actually a complete psycho, or maybe a skeleton in mediocre disguise. Perhaps she'll chain me up and throw me down a pit, all the way into Hell. Maybe she'll flay my skin off piece by piece to feed to her pet harpies. Or tear off her flimsy human disguise and reveal herself as Librarion, mother of all evil.
My money's on the Librarion bit.
Oh, I can see it. I can see it!
An old book, leather-bound and faded. Unlike all of the aging tomes around it, its spine has barely been cracked. After all, the corruption isn't something many people want to understand, and neither are its monsters. Hell, even asking the librarian about it before had alienated both myself and the Guide from its walls.
But he had visited since, hadn't he? Oh, for god's sake, if I'm just here because he's embarrassed I will personally kill him at least twice. And if any more guides come looking for me, I'll probably kill them too, and end up a mass murderer with more blood on my hands than our dear Duck.
Happy daydreams.
Maintaining my crouched position between the shelves, I began shuffling slowly towards the book, trying to keep quiet. The window I'd made my sneaky entrance through was behind me now, moving further away as I closed the distance between myself and the book. Soon I was close enough to read the letters on the spine: 'An Observation on the Foul of our World, as presented by those with the Sight'.
The Sight? Like, the mayor's psychic thing? This book might actually be helpful . . .
Floorboards creaking from a couple of aisles away. Getting closer. I freeze immediately, hoping that the shelves around me are stocked well enough to conceal my position. They kept moving closer - a rather heavy person, judging by the volume of the creaking - and finally stopped.
In the aisle right behind me.
Ah, crap.
Okay. I have two options. I could tear forwards, grab the book, and vault out of the window before anyone can get a good look at me. That's served me well enough in the past. Or, less preferably, stay still and pray that they don't come any nearer. I don't like that idea very much. I don't even know who it is - if I made myself visible, would they even understand that I wasn't supposed to be here? I didn't really enjoy being in the library anyway, with that terribly oppressive, heavy, musty smell all around me.
Of course, there was a third option. One that made a cat's grin split across my face.
The Guide would never forgive me, but hey, there's about a thousand things I've already done that I could say the same about.
I took a quick glance at the spines of the books on the shelf opposite me. Cooking books.
Okay. Here we go!
I stood up, leaned with all my strength, and pushed over the sturdy bookshelf. A blasphemous curse from the opposite direction told me that my mysterious observer had heard the noise, and was coming to investigate. I dived for the strange old book with all of my strength, skittering to my feet once again and bolting down into the depths of the library. I'd sneak back to the window when everyone had cleared off to tell the librarian what had happened.
As I stopped, I honestly felt excited. Maybe this meant spending more time inside than I'd hoped, but I'd probably caused more action than the dusty building had seen in years.
That was worth it.
Maybe I should've thought this through more thoroughly - not that thinking things through is what I'm renowned for. In fact, probably the opposite. I can hear a small stampede of people making their way towards the disruption, old floorboards creaking under their combined weight. But they're not going to fetch the librarian. In fact, if I didn't know better I'd say that she was in with the rest of them, her shrill, panicked voice rising above the rest.
Bloody hell. Why did I decide that wouldn't happen? And all for the sake of one bloody book!
Okay. Okay, so my exit is cut off, and I don't think there's a back door. Maybe I could go around them...?
I began to take small, tentative steps towards the other aisle, the one which led down opposite the gathering. Of course, for dramatic tension, I'd chosen the one with the creaky floorboards. I tried moving slowly and daintily (never done that before), but every time I put a foot down some tremendous groan would sound out. At first it seemed like they wouldn't hear me over their own raised voices, but then came a sudden silence as though one of them had noticed and alerted the others.
Well, that didn't work.
And my next solution, again for dramatic tension, was to bolt into the darkness clutching my beloved pile of pages.
Someone gave chase - the man with the heavy footsteps. He didn't let up as he went after me, and I realised with chagrin that most of that weight must have been muscle. The blacksmith? Oh god . . . it was, wasn't it?
No more late-night forging for me.
The far end of the library was darker and gloomier than the rest, but I didn't have much time to stop and observe its aesthetic. A cage-like interior seemed to be one of the focuses of this building, to the extent that there were so few windows at the back that dusty lanterns had to be lit during the day to cast a flickering light to read by.
I'll say that again - lanterns. During the day.
It was in this yellow half-light that I found myself crashing into a shadowy wall, and invariably backed against it. The blacksmith was getting closer, I had nowhere to run, and I was reading a book that was probably forbidden, if not at least frowned upon. Plus, I was never supposed to be here in the first place.
Backed into a corner, footsteps closing in, all for the sake of the Guide and his books . . .
Now why did that sound familiar?
"Go to the dungeon, he says. It'll be fun, he says. You might learn something, he says, like I'm a child! Well, I've learned something, mate. I've learned that that weird old man outside is actually a giant skeleton! And no, not just that, he's actually a completely new person who just happened to be," I put my fingers into quotation marks, "possessed by Skeletron. I've also learned that this place is awfully dangerous, and quite a bit more deadly than you put in the brochure!" I paused in my tirade to wring the neck of an imaginary Guide, and deflated with a groan.
"I just wanted treasure," I whinged, continuing down the purple brick corridor. "I just wanted enough gold to pay off the Merchant. I just wanted something to replace the bloody Night's Bane!" I clutched at the dark sword in my hands, and for one irrational moment considered throwing it away and leaving it here, going back to my old gold broadsword. "But here I am," I continued, "lost. Alone. In the bottom of a dungeon. And this is all the Guide's -"
Movement ahead. I clutched at the sword, ready to lunge. It wasn't a pair of eyes that greeted me, but the empty eye sockets of a skeleton. Some wayward adventurer who found his way down here, likely before good ol' Skeletron started his patrol. I readied myself into a fighting stance - I was messed up aplenty thanks to that Dark Caster, not to mention the battle beforehand, but I could take him.
But, the thing is, Lady Luck had already helped me take down the dungeon guardian, and, I swear, she's such a bloody turncoat.
"Ah," I murmured as more skeletons appeared. There must have been about ten in all, completely intact, staring me down from what almost looked like a dead end. I gave up, shone them a rueful grin, and shrugged.
"Maybe now wasn't the best time to vent, eh, boys?"
I laughed, but there were no takers in the audience.
"Tough crowd," was all I could think to say before I made the first slow step backwards, ready to take off like a rabbit.
As I took that step, so did they, and for a strange moment I thought that they might stop if I did, which was as stupid an idea as it sounded, and cost me some of my advantage. The gang of monsters seemed to revel in my presence, and didn't move any faster than I did, with the disturbing certainty that they would catch up. How long had they been down here? Why the hell were they all down here in the first place? And how come they were all around the same height, wearing similar clothing?
Maybe they can reproduce somehow. Like, skeleton romance, and then boom! Identical skeleton that can then go around and romance some more. And then you end up with a village full of identical skeletons at the bottom of a dungeon, all moving completely in sync, and all thinking exactly the same things. And they glue each other's arms back on because, hey, what else would keep them sticking together? But then, one fateful day, comes a skeleton unlike any other. Actually he isn't, he's just incredibly pretentious and thinks that his cheekbones are higher than everybody else's, and he writes poetry that is supposed to be deep but it's really terrible, but this guy finds a way to dig through dungeon bricks, and soon they'll be everywhere a tsunami of identical skeletons led by the high-cheekboned Skeleton King swamping the land of Terraria in eternal darkness and forever worshipping –
Did they move during that extremely important monologue?
Nah, I must be imagining – no, okay, they moved.
And I could swear that the one in front of them had slightly higher cheekbones than the rest.
I made a small move backwards, feeling like a rabbit caught in torchlight. If I ran away, they'd follow, and they probably knew this place better than me. There was no way of getting past them, and the climb behind me was so steep I probably couldn't manage it without a grappling hook. I'd passed a few rooms shooting off this hallway, but they all seemed pretty dangerous, and I was too messed up to be dealing with traps.
Well, this wasn't a good situation . . .
The Skeleton King lunged at me with a moment's warning, bone hands clutching desperately for my flesh and teeth chattering with a terrifying sound, and I didn't really have time to think. I let out a shriek of surprise, and some half-formed thought echoed in my brain about chucking the Night's Bane away. I flung my sword into the crowd and a lucky few scrambled at the sides of the hallway to avoid its sharp edges. Seeing my moment – and no other alternative – I dived through the hole in the crowd, into the unknown blackness.
"Your poetry is rubbish!" I called back in a daze, running at full speed into the dark corridors ahead, hoping and praying that I would tread on any spikes or set off any traps.
Concentrating on my breathing and the rhythm of my feet, I stumbled for a moment on an unseen obstacle, and realised too late I'd pulled the tripwire for a blow-dart. The brightly-coloured spike loomed in the corner of my vision, and gouged its way across the top of my head as I ducked just in time. My legs were burning, blood hazed my vision, and I was being pursued by skeletons. The fact that I was running on an incline didn't particularly help matters either.
If the Guide had been a little more straight with me . . .
A purple brick wall loomed out of nowhere, and I smacked straight into it with terrible force. Stars danced behind my closed eyelids and my whole body felt sore. I probably had bruises to rival that old man from earlier.
Shaking uncontrollably, I pushed myself into a sitting position against the wall (my new sworn enemy) and looked back into the darkness.
The Skeleton King advanced on me, hatred burning in his every movement. One of his arms had been clipped off at the shoulder by my flying sword, and he didn't seem very happy about it. Swearing to myself and trying to stop my vision from swimming, I looked around blankly, crossing my fingers for a miracle.
There! A raised tile, slightly different from the rest.
"Okay," I mumbled, meeting the King's gaze again. "Sorry about the poetry thing."
I pressed down onto the tile, and watched with no small amount of satisfaction as a boulder smashed down through a hole in the ceiling, released by some kind of mechanism in the walls. It smashed right through the Skeleton King and took out all of his identical friends, rolling back down the incline and leaving them nothing but a pile of bones and dust. Just as they should be.
Realising too late that the bound books tied onto my belt had been weighing me down, I sighed and thought again of the Guide.
"There's an old dungeon not far from here," I mocked in a weak voice. "Now might be a good time to check it out."
As I clung onto my magic mirror and prepared for a rough ride, I knew one thing for certain. I'd had enough of dungeons for a lifetime.
Or, at least, that day. After all, I'd forgotten the Night's Edge.
Raised tile. Boulder. Dungeon.
My eyes searched the orange-tinted room, still dazed from everything I'd remembered, and came up with something surprising.
There was a book on the shelf beside me that wasn't actually a book. It was wooden, and connected to some kind of mechanism. I'd been in enough dungeons to know what that meant. Not questioning my luck, and not bothering to overthink things like I normally did, I grabbed the book and pulled hard. Against rusted cogs and old rope I pitted all of my strength, and they in turn pulled up a secret hatch in the planked floor.
If I let go of the book, the hatch would close, but if I dived for it then I might not get there in time. Reaching out desperately with one foot, I managed to jam the toe of my boot under the wood, marvelling at how well it had blended in beforehand.
The blacksmith was close.
I dived to the floor, hauled the trapdoor open, and disappeared into darkness. The false book snapped back into its place, and I listened to the confusion of the villagers above me. Then came a shrill voice, a voice which I had heard rambling about god, and I froze.
Oh no. Don't you dare. She can't know that this bloody freaky basement thing is down here.
Maybe this is where she brings her victims.
I might have just walked straight into Librarion's larder . . . ready for her to feast.
Footsteps reverberated through the floorboards above me, moving dangerously close. I'd obviously caused a bit of a fuss with my unnecessarily dramatic escapade, and the thought brought a wolfish grin onto my face. Nothing made me happier than upsetting musty old people, or dusty old morals, or rules carved in stone. Defying expectations was better than defeating an Eater of Worlds.
Chocolate was the only thing which trumped both of them.
Eventually the people above shuffled off dejectedly into their own little routines, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for having knocked over that bookshelf. Almost. Not quite.
Allowing myself a second to come to terms with my current predicament and realise exactly what a strange situation I was in, I felt around desperately for some kind of torch. The trapdoor had left me in complete darkness, probably entirely intentionally, and there had to be something to show me the way ahead. I wasn't stumbling blindly in the darkness, not if I could help it.
After running my hands along the wall for a small way I came across a lantern – well, I say came across. It bumped violently against my forehead when I moved a step forward. I reached upwards and unhooked the helpful device from the ceiling of the tunnel, marvelling at how convenient it had been. Surely someone who remembered to leave a lantern behind would also leave some matches. I could touch both walls of the tunnel without difficulty, and realised that there was a shelf against the wall to my left.
Swishing my hand back and forth through the dust, I came across . . . matches, yes!
It took three goes for me to light the fragile little things, because I kept breaking them in half in trying to strike them across the box. I'd never really been one for matches – too finicky. Just keep a fire lit somewhere, why don't you?
I suppose that would be more difficult in a village.
My new lantern had an equally peculiar and fussy mechanism – there was a small wheel on the outside, which you had to turn to make a wick rise up from a small oil-filled chamber. I wondered if it had been designed by whoever managed all those cogs in the walls. Someone I should look up to, but probably wouldn't.
In the orange light of the lantern, my surroundings felt even more sinister. I reached my hand behind the shelves to see an interesting mechanism of belts and cogs – one that I could never manage or maintain, but which amazingly still functioned after obvious years of abandonment. Someone had put an awful lot of work into concealing this tunnel, which brought an obvious question to my mind: why?
I could think of a fair few reasons why someone would want to hide in this village. Perhaps they were atheist, or some other kind of non-conformist, and had been found out. It was possible that they were just some reclusive genius who wanted a break from village life. Or maybe they found out the truth about Librarion, Mother of All Evil, and feared her inevitable wrath.
And so the mighty Librarion smote the non-believers, and the corruption feasted on the worthy that remained.
. . . Maybe I went off-track a bit there.
So, holding the all-important book tight to my chest, I set off through what was probably somebody's lifework.
The tunnels branched off on many occasions, leaving me unsure where to head or where I'd come from. I had some vague idea about which way the library was, and therefore where the mayor's house would be, but soon I was completely unsure. These tunnels built onto the ones which had been mined out by the goblins, but soon I wondered exactly how long they had been there, and whether the goblins had simply utilised whatever existed. That sounded like them. But then why would there be a secret system of tunnels running under the village, and why would nobody understand that they were there?
This place had been around for a while, and it probably had an awful lot of secrets. More skeletons in their closets than in mine, most likely. Suddenly life in the village didn't seem so dull.
Movement ahead.
I froze into a fighting stance and carefully put down my book, careful not to make any sudden movements, reaching desperately for my sword. Then, wondering whether it would be necessary but with a worried scowl etched onto my face, I spoke.
"Who are you?"
No reply. For a moment I thought I might have imagined that image, those rustling shadows which reminded me of our indisposed Duck, but then the shadows moved again. Was it something in the darkness, or the darkness itself?
"What are you?" I found myself asking, ears pricking up.
Was that someone breathing? It was. Shallow breaths, trying to keep quiet, but it was as if they'd been running. I'd noticed that Duck breathed a little while back, but why would she have been hiding in these tunnels?
More to the point, what monstrosity would she run from?
My fingers played with the hilt of my sword, taking comfort from the warmth of its hellstone, and I opened my mouth to speak again. The breathing suddenly became heavier and pained, and a face loomed into my torchlight.
It was her, it was Dusk Duck, but the red glow in her eyes seemed to flicker. She came close, far too close, mouth moving up and down but unable to form words. As she moved nearer to me I realised that she shadows were holding her back, pulling her, and that without them her body was bare. I felt exposed. There was a plea in her eyes, as though she was too injured to speak clearly. Anticipating regret for my every movement, I moved one ear close to her mouth, hoping against hope that her pain was real.
"F . . . fi- . . ." she groaned weakly through a pained throat. "Five . . . five."
I glanced into her eyes.
They weren't glowing anymore.
She looked scared.
Just as suddenly as Duck had appeared, she was snatched back into the shadows, grabbing desperately for my support. I reached out instinctively, hoping to provide some support to what was suddenly and unquestionably a frightened little girl, but reined myself in before I dived into the darkness.
After a moment of standing still with shock, unable to comprehend what had just happened, my legs gave out and I crumpled to the ground with an oath. I wanted to ask myself what had just happened, but it seemed far too horrible to comprehend. Even after the life I've lead.
With trembling hands, I opened the leather-bound volume that had caused me so much trouble. The book was divided into sections that had multiple headings, and each began with an illustration of the foul creature it detailed. I recognised a few – there was Skeletron, an Eater of Worlds, and of course the Eye, but even King Smile made the cut – but most of them were completely alien to me, and the drawings didn't do too much to help. Most were vague and unreliable, as though scrawled by a madman. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if "the Sight" brought insanity, before I remembered the mayor.
I guess knowing a lot of stuff takes its toll.
Something caught my eye, and I took a moment to calm myself before opening the book again. There, below the header of page three-hundred and six, she was. Or someone very like her. A black mass consumed most of the paper frame, writhing and twisting in a way that might not have been captured by the artist had I not seen it firsthand. At the forefront there were a number of figures, standing in a line as if they were soldiers. Some seemed quite plain, others grotesquely deformed, but all had their eyes obscured by shadow and tendrils reaching into their skin. At the front, their cloak composed of a swirling darkness provided by the mass in the background, was an androgynous figure whose eyes glowed.
I'd found her.
Dusk Duck Had It.
I glanced at the title of the page, written in some ornate and outdated script that I could barely decipher in the half-light. I kept the image in my mind for some time as I continued traversing the caves, now desperately searching for an exit. It was only when I finally found light up ahead and stumbled blindly forwards that the name came to me.
The Puppeteer.
Well, it made sense.
And, much to the confusion of both myself and those around me, I found myself in the goblin cavern underneath the church, fifty pairs of yellow and red eyes staring at me.
"Just a quick . . . inspection," I blurted out without thought, lamely saluting the Speaker. "We're arming the villagers now, so that they can defend themselves. But, well, we're worried a few of them might try to defend themselves against you." The crowd murmured an agreement. "So, are all of you guys armed? Not so you can attack, just for self-defence."
Silence.
"Seriously? Like, after a battle, you're all still armed?"
A few more moments of awkward shifting on feet and eyes refusing to meet mine. One runt of a thief raised a stubby hand, but his mates slapped it back down with boisterous chuckles.
Nodding to myself, I continued onwards. "I like you guys," I decided, and they seemed grateful. I turned to the Speaker again, making my presence official. "Any problems, let me know." He returned my words with a slightly bewildered salute of his own, and then carried on chatting with a bunch of peons.
The Puppeteer . . .
Which left me with an important question – one which the book's illustration hadn't really answered.
Was Duck the puppet, or the Puppeteer?
X X X
Somehow, the girl got away with it. The shadows weren't angry with her. They soothed her wounds, too tired to inflict more. Perhaps later she would be punished. Maybe the shadows just had to gather their strength.
She could do a lot more in that time.
The girl smiled. She didn't believe in good and evil, but she believed in courage.
"Four and a half," she whispered, but the shadows didn't hear.