The eerie crimson of the moon glared maliciously over their battlefield. It had been approximately one hour since the blood moon had started, and they had already began to grow tired. Blood of the undead had stained Lucania's once gleaming white sword of bone a dark red, and it tore viciously through the ranks of zombies.
"Say, Logan! Exactly how long does a Blood Moon last?" Selio hollered up at the Guide. He swiftly dodged a lunge from a zombie, and carved his sword upwards, separating one rotting limb from its body. The zombie looked down at the stump that remained of its arm, almost as if it was registering that it had gone missing. Gnashing teeth aimed at his throat told Selio otherwise. He sliced the zombies head off and sidestepped a grab from another undead.
"All night, about... nine hours, I'd say." Logan answered. He nocked an arrow and let it loose to sail through a demon eye that had been wandering a little too close for comfort. His answer set a grimace on everyone's faces. How could they stand there and fight against numerous enemies that just kept coming for hours on end? What happened when they ran out of energy? When they ran out of arrows? When they ran out of willpower? But they couldn't focus on that at the moment, all they could do was keep fighting.
Lucania came face to face with possibly the worst abomination she'd yet seen in Terraria. It was a zombie, that much was certain, but its only discernible features were horrid rotting teeth and putrid glowing yellow eyes. It was covered, absolutely covered in blood, guts and gore. As it walked it dripped, blood leaked from its body like a fountain. Tendrils of flesh branched out from its arms and lashed about with reckless abandon. It made Lucania sick, she wanted to twirl around and vomit at that moment. Instead of doing that, however; she thrust her sword at the abomination that they'd later call a Blood Zombie's face. The tendrils snapped at the bone, and tore it from her hands. Lucania's eyes went wide with fear, and she barely dodged as one of the tendrils whipped towards her face. It made a shallow cut a cross her face, and it probably would have cut her head in half if she hadn't moved. It flung her sword into the ground and lunged. The Blood Zombie was easily faster and stronger than any of its normal brethren, and had much more versatility in attacking with its fleshy tendrils. She needed her sword back.
"Take this you creepy fucker! Lucania yelled, and threw a right hook at the monster's face. Perhaps not her smartest move, but she needed to push it back. Her fist sunk into its face with an unsettling squish. The monster growled, a deep throaty growl that would cause a cat's hair to stand on end. It was not happy. Neither was Lucania. She pulled her fist away and gave the Blood Zombie a backhand so hard the 'crack' could be heard across the entire battlefield, and the monster stumbled back and nearly lost its footing. She snatched up her sword and cut a tendril out of the air as it reached for her. A frown set on her face, she gave the zombie a stern look.
"You gave it a good try, buddy." She thrust the sword forwards, directly through the zombies head, and pulled it out, the zombie falling to the ground with a gross, squishy thud. Something dripped down, from much higher up. She raised her head to see yet another gross abomination. It was, in simple terms, a floating mass of flesh with multiple eyes embedded in it, like someone had thrown four or five demon eyes into a blender and chucked it into the sky. It floated around haphazardly, with no real direction, until it spotted the group on the roof. It set off towards them, flying faster than one would have expected. Logan saw it and frowned. He nocked an arrow and let it fly towards the, well drippler seemed to be an apt name for it. It hit jut fine, and sunk into the floating monster, but the drippler kept floating towards them. Frederick gave it a shot, and dispatched three knives from his hand. They sunk in, just like the arrow, but also just like the arrow they had little effect.
"You guys, are useless." Abigail snorted. She held up a syringe with a dark purple substance, and gave the two a condescending look. She gave a glance at the drippler and flung the syringe into the air, where it spun a few times before the needle landed in the drippler's flesh. Logan looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, you hit it sure, but how are you going to in-" Abigail interrupted the Guide by holding up a single finger. She plucked a rock, about the size of an eyeball, off of the roof. She reared her arm back, and sent the stone flying. It hit the bottom syringe and successfully injected the poison into the hovering monstrosity. It hovered for a few more seconds while the poison did its work, before it dropped from the air like a stone with a sickening splat. Abigail grinned at the Guide and the Merchant cockily.
"That is how it's done." Abigail laughed and stuck her tongue out at them like a child. Logan sneered and muttered a 'whatever' before going to nock another arrow. Unfortunately for the Guide, there was not another arrow for him to nock.
"Son of a bitch." Logan growled. He looked down to Selio who had just sliced a demon eye out of the air. "Selio! You're basically our general here! Is there any way you can grant us a reprieve? I'm out of arrows here!" Logan yelled.
"Let me think for a second!" Selio yelled back. Amidst the battle he tried to think of any strategy they could use to at least draw the zombies away for a small amount of time. Enough time for them to regain some energy and for Frederick and Logan to collect their weapons. Zombies' strongest sense was their smell, they could easily differentiate the living from the dead. They followed the smell of the living. Their hearing could also be used for them to rely on however. If he could create some large noise far away he could draw the zombies away at least for about 10 minutes. An explosion could probably work, he was sure he saw some gasoline in Frederick's room. That and a few torches could probably do the trick. The problem was that it would probably spell doom for whoever creates the explosion unless they could survive the thick of a Blood Moon on their own for long, which he doubted anyone of them could. If only they had some way to immediately get them back to the main battlefield...
"Lucania!" Selio hollered. The agile warrior cut down two zombies in one go and turned towards her friend.
"I'm a bit busy here, shit for brains!" Lucania growled. Selio rolled his eyes at her attitude.
"Yeah well you're about to get a bit busier! I'll take care of things out here for a few, I need you to run inside and grab some gel, a few sticks, the can of gasoline from Frederick's room, and that magic mirror you brought back." He explained. Lucania gave him a skeptical look.
"Dude, whatever you're planning better damn well work." Lucania huffed as she shoved her sword through a belt loop. Selio cut down a few more undead before she finally came back out, the supplies he asked for having been shoved into a backpack. He threw one strap over his shoulder and smiled at her.
"Hold down the fort for a bit, be back in a flash." He said, turning around and darting towards the forest. He swerved around trees and ducked under lunges and swipes from zombies. He had to get far enough away that the explosion wouldn't affect his friends at all, but stay close enough that the zombies would react to it. He stopped when he came to a clearing, and he didn't particularly like what he saw. On the ground, only about ten feet wide in diameter, was a patch of purple grass. It was from what he could only assume was the corruption, but the corruption couldn't be in the forest. They were two different areas, two different biomes. It couldn't possibly be that the corruption was spreading? He'd consult Logan about it once the Blood Moon was over, right now he had a job to do.
"All the better to destroy it now, I suppose." Selio whispered to himself. He poured some of the gasoline over the affected area. He tried to be conservative with it. There was a fair chance that he'd have to do this again later. He stepped back and placed some gel on some sticks and watched as it worked its magic. Gel had some rather strange properties, and if you asked him? Fire created from gel would probably react rather strongly with gasoline. Ha backed up as much as he could, held the magic mirror in his hand, and lobbed the torches towards the gas-coated corrupted grass patch. The explosion? Well, let's just say that it was sufficient. He waited a few minutes, then turned away and took a few steps to use the mirror, but something wasn't right. He took a sharp glance to his left, where a hooded figure leaned against a tree, examining their fingernails.
"Before you try anything, I wouldn't so much as point that golden toothpick in my direction." They drawled. Their voice had an odd ring to it, it didn't particularly stand out, yet it was pleasing, a voice you wanted to listen to all the time.
"Who are you?" Selio growled. He really didn't have time for this, but he wasn't just going to let this stranger in the woods be. The hooded figure turned towards him, an eyebrow raised. They had dark blue hair that was almost black and fell just over their right eye. The other eye, however; was uncovered, and it glowed. Not a metaphorical 'oh my god it's so beautiful' glow, the entire eye was a pure pink that shined over their face, illuminating their dark skin. Their face was attractive, but, well the only word Selio could find to describe it was ambiguous. He couldn't really tell what gender they were. "Are you a-" He was cut off by a dagger to the tongue.
"If you ask me if I'm a guy or a girl, I will cut this off." Threatened the very angry person of undetermined gender. "It's not really any of your business but sometimes I'm one, sometimes I'm the other, every now and then I'm neither one." Selio was scared and he didn't really understand, but he figured he shouldn't be questioning the non-binary person with a knife held to his face. He merely nodded and the knife was slowly retracted. "As for who I am, my name is Inania. I didn't really think there were any people in the damned place. Then I saw your little group while I was running around avoiding this Blood Moon's fuckery. I followed you here, wanted to see what you were up to. Pretty neat idea, the explosion."
There was something odd about this whole situation to Selio, and one thing in particular stood out to him. This person didn't have a title, no Nurse, no Merchant. The only other person he'd met like that? Lucania. There was Lucania and himself. So exactly what role did this person play in this whole mess they liked to call Terraria? He didn't have time to ask before they opened their mouth again.
"Well it was fun to chat, really didn't plan on getting seen by you, whoops. Well I'll be seeing you." Inania swiveled around and began to tromp away. "Ooh, and don't go around telling all your little buddies you saw me. Don't need any unwanted attention."
"Wait!" Selio called, "You could come back with me, the more people the better our chance at survival! You could help, we could use someone like you." Inania chuckled and stopped for a moment.
"Wow. Tempting offer, but I myself can survive just fine on my own." From under their cloak Inania pulled out a golden staff with a ruby crowned at its top and released two blasts of magic that struck a wandering drippler and blasted it apart. Selio's eyes widened and he nodded.
"You're the loner type, I get it. I'll admit something to you, this is hard. I wouldn't be able to survive on my own. For whatever reason, these people see me as some sort of leader. They're counting on me to lead them to survival. For more reasons than just combat, than surviving, having people to be there for you is important. Being alone isn't healthy. I'll let you go, I doubt I could stop you anyways, but just remember that." Inania gave him a blank stare, but nodded, not a chuckle, not any sort of snark, she understood. "One more thing, though. When you arrived here, what was the first thing you heard?" This time, Inania let out a small laugh. She pulled out an icy mirror, reminiscent of the one he held in his own hand.
"Welcome to Terraria!" She laughed, then with a flash she disappeared. Selio, with a lot to think about, let the mirror in his hand take him away as well.
As soon as she'd seen the explosion Lucania let out a whoop, which thankfully the zombies didn't hear over the sound of the explosion. She let herself fall right into the blood-soaked grass to take a rest. She wasn't sure they were going to make it out of this whole mess, but then comes Selio with some inane plan that actually works. With him at the helm, maybe they could make it through the night after all. She had to have some respect for the guy, he was a genius when the time came for him to be. Logan jumped down from the roof to gather his arrows and Frederick's knives.
"I'll admit, this isn't exactly what I expected him to come up with, but damn I suppose it worked didn't it?" Logan shook his head as he wiped off an arrow with his already tattered and dirtied shirt. About five minutes later, Selio popped into view as well, a slightly distressed look on his face. Lucania propped herself and gave him a concerned look.
"You okay there, General Selio, First Rank, of the Elite Terrarian Defense Force?" Lucania asked, partially serious. Selio looked at her and let out a noise that was somwhere between a chuckle and a snort. He could always count on her to put a smile on his face, even if it was somehow always through directly making fun of him. He could lose his arm and she could probably still make him laugh about it.
"Please never call me that again." He looked out over their group, who was looking pretty beat up, and all kinds of done with this shit. They were just getting into the thick of it, and they couldn't be discouraged yet. "I know we're all tired, and no one wants to be dealing with any part of this. The upside though? By the time this is over I'm sure we'll be plenty able to paint the house red if anyone wanted." No one laughed, he didn't expect them to. "Rest for now, but get ready. When they come back? We give them hell."
Daylight was breaking, the ranks of the undead had thinned out around an hour ago, and everyone and everything involved was given hell. Everyone, bar Grayson, was covered in minor lacerations. Absolutely everyone was mottled with dirt, and wanted more than anything to find a bed to sleep in. Hundreds of undead corpses lay strewn in every direction, waiting for some unseen magical force to make them disappear. Selio had to repeat his Explosion-Diversion tactic three more times, and he'd had just about enough of explosions for one night. So, it stands to reason that he wasn't exactly thrilled when a bearded man barged out of the woods juggling grenades. He came up to Selio and Lucania, short enough to have to be looking up at them, and grinned through his soot-stained, singed, curly orange beard.
"Ha, well how you be? I'm the Demolitionist, Tordak be the name!" He laughed heartily, collecting the grenades in one hand and stuffing them into his trouser pockets. Selio looked out at the horizon blankly after this introduction.
"Oh, fuck no. Lucania you deal with this one, I'm going to sleep." And with that, Lucania was left alone to speak with Tordak.
"So, uh, what brings you here Tordak?" Lucania asked, trying to ignore the unsettling blood stain on the Demolitionist's mining helmet.
"I saw a couple of explosions last night, I assume that was you? Pretty impressive." Tordak exclaimed, obviously impressed by Selio's impromptu gas-gel explosions.
"Actually, that was my friend Selio, you just saw him. It was a diversion tactic to give us a reprieve during the Blood Moon." Lucania explained.
"Ah yes, Blood Moons, nasty business, those." He spoke with an extremely odd accent, Lucania couldn't quite identify it. Though due to her amnesia, she doubted she could quite recall any sort of accent. He was short, pointy ears, beard, she didn't want to go making any assumptions but he had to be a dwarf. She didn't think dwarves had accents, or that they were even real. She never thought zombies were real at one point, either.
"So did you want to stay here? I could have Selio build you a room when he wakes up later, he's kind of super grumpy and tired right now. We all are actually, I'm passing the fuck out as soon as I finish talking to you." This evoked a hearty laugh out of the dwarven man.
"If I can play a hand in any more of those mighty explosions, I'd be happy to stay with you lot!" Lucania nodded, shook the man's hand, and kept her word by passing out face first on the ground in her room as soon as she shut the door.
From a distance, out of a tree branch, Inania grinned. "Well, they are quite an interesting lot, but they don't really need me around. I do wonder how well they can handle the Eye, however. It should be any day now it shows its ugly mug." She dangled an object from between her fingers, a rather suspicious looking eye, and let it fall to the ground. "But if not, well, from ignorance comes from tragedy."
I really sometimes don't even notice how long it is before I update again, truly I apologize. I've started working recently, and school is a bitch. I've got three inane, stupidly long study guides, I missed part of a final today, and I have a website to create in four days. Plus I have to bring up my AP Euro grade within 3 days, so fun. Anyways I hope you enjoy this chapter! It personally didn't live up to my own expectations, but those are always too great for my own scope in any case. I was pleased to see all of you all regaling me with your tales of your first blood moons, as well.
R: The Blood Moon, full of death and bloodshed. I remember killing so many mobs, there were items everywhere, my inventory full, my guide and merchant dead. It was fun. Take your time, I wouldn't want this fic dying out yet. Not much to say, my hype is real, keep up the good work!
A: Indeed, Blood Moons be a fuckery, especially when you first encounter them, underequipped as a new player early on in the game. Thanks for your understanding, I try to update fast but it just doesn't seem to happen.
R: Oh god, when you're just starting out blood moons are the WORST. My first one, well it wasnt hard because i was in my cousins world and he gave me a starfury (no im not boasting about it), but when my real first one happened (alone in my world), it was NOT a pretty scene. I didnt know zombies could open doors, my starfury was left in my cousins world, and all my npcs were in houses on the ground ('-') and you can imagine how that went ,but anyway, good job, and YES the others are slowly catching on, but when will Selio and Lucania realize it themselves? Hee hee hee :)…
A: I had a similar experience to yours, I believe. Rather on my first, my more experienced cousin was in my world, and had a hand in slaughtering the masses. He gave me a few useful weapons as well. When I faced my first one by myself, however? Let's just say I was lucky to have some high roofs. On the matter of Selio and Lucania, the others, bar maybe Grayson, realize it just fine. Selio and Lucania however? Oblivious teenagers will be oblivious teenagers, trust me I know from experience...
R: Im not saying i dont like your writing/typing style.. Quite the contrary actually, but can Selio and Lucania take it down a notch with the swearing? Its not against the rules in the slightest, but there could be kids reading this story. Im also not saying stop the swearing altogether, but try be mindful of the complete audience. On that note, this is really starting to look like a fanfiction, so do your loyal (but surprisingly few) fans of the story a favor and keep going
A: While I'm glad you enjoy my writing style and my story, I'm sorry to say the swearing will remain the same, for a few reasons. I realize children may be reading this, but I'm fairly certain the demographic for reading fanfiction falls more on teenagers and onwards. The story is rated T, so coming into it people should at least expect some curse words. On the subject of swearing, they're just words that have been charged with being disrespectful and unacceptable by society. In the way I'm using them, it's to evoke an emotional appeal. When you hear someone yell, "Fuck!" Then you know that they are not happy about something. Then there's the fact that Selio and Lucania are seventeen. I'm seventeen, all of my friends are seventeen. Seventeen-year-olds swear a fucking lot on just a regular basis. In the situation Selio and Lucania are in, well I'm surprised their vocabulary isn't just 75% the word fuck. I understand and respect your opinion on the matter, however.
R: This is epic! I can't wait for the next chapter to be posted! As a huge Terraria fan with access to the internet, I knew I had to find a good book that followed the game, and so I have.
A: Thank you! I'm glad you like it!
R: Hmm, i get the distinct impression that the title references the song "Bad Blood", for which i have seen both the official video and the parody (Bart Baker's version). Also, good work on this as of yet. There are some fanfictions that just dont cut it for me, but surprise surprise, this one does. I just hope that at some point, Selio and Lucania realize what's going on between them, preferably in an isolated spot, such as a floating island or in the "roots" of a living tree, even if this is only a suggestion, could you keep it in mind?
A: It does reference a song, but sadly that is not the right one, sorry. I'll see if anyone can guess it by the next chapter, though. I'm glad my story meets your standards, always happy to have a fan. Selio and Lucania realizing what's going on between them may happen at any point, but it may be a while yet before either one confronts the other about it. I do like your suggestions, though, and I will be sure to keep them in mind.
Thank all of you for reading, and if I don't post again in time, happy holidays!