"What will happen to Terraria, without the guild?" I asked Myste that night.

"There's other guilds out there," said the spectre. "As a whole, Terraria will survive. That's the nice thing about it. But this guild, well... this one was in charge of all the nearby lands. Including yours."

"If guides are so important—" I broke off, the words choking in my throat. Jack, Kyle, Faye, Caitlin, Alfred. Why? Why didn't the spectre recover their souls? The souls of... of my friends. Even if a few hadn't seemed like friends.

"Even those who aren't adventurers can be resurrected, so long as their souls are intact," said Myste, startling me. "But it's not so easy, not so...instantaneous. Villagers are usually under the jurisdiction of other spectres."

The two of us stared out from the new guild tower's top deck, out over the tiny village. Next to Avilin's bar stood Metatyph's wooden bunker.

Past my house stood Rose's house, the roof sagging. Lights shone from all the other windows; but the house by the river was lonely and empty. Wind and water trickled through the fence-posts, the incomplete walls...

"Thank you," I said finally.

Myste glanced at me. "Hm?"

"Thank you for watching over me. Back in Corundia."

His gaze unnerved me. "You ought to know that I've never actually been to Corundia," said the spectre. "Through the spiritual realm, I can project an avatar of myself to other lands-but I cannot physically visit them."

I shifted uncomfortably. "What do you mean?"

"I could only see you. Not the world around you. I could reach you through Corundia's Focus. I can project myself to another soul, such as you or Bradley. But I cannot interact with your surroundings."

"You drove off Skeletron." But already, I suspected his answer.

"As god of the undead, he exists in both the spiritual and physical realms." He cradled a blue tome in his arm. "Yes, I can touch him. But even so, I cannot break his curses. That was all you, my friend."

I stared at the ground. His body and robes were translucent, but I could see and touch him. "Are you really a ghost?"

A low chuckle came from the spectre. "Perhaps I am. I have worn these robes for a very long time..."

I apologize. I shouldn't go out of order. It's just that the disappearance of Rose and the day's events overwhelmed me.

That morning, by the pit under Rose's house, I told the others what had happened to her.

"You're exaggerating," said Avilin flatly. "A mile-wide abyss? An infinite darkness? Falling forever? Terraria's caverns are large, but not that large. Even the great chasms of the Corruption under Old Avalon weren't that large."

"I'm serious! " I insisted. "I saw the place myself. It was like... like a slice of the world had been removed."

Avilin snorted. "And what do you make of this, Myste?"

Even with his face obscured, the spectre gave off an ominous feeling.

"Currently, Rose is not merely dead," said Myste. "I cannot even find her soul. Her connection to Avalon's Focus was completely severed. She cannot respawn."

I watched the twitching rope that led down the shaft. "I don't think any kind of treasure is down there at all. There's... something, some sort of-"

Metatyph's voice came from the chasm, so close that we heard him without beacons. "I've reached the bottom. Looks like Rose never finished this mining shaft."

Dumbfounded, I stared as Avilin and Myste got to their feet. How could this be? Rose had dug much further, I was sure. And the great void-slicing through Terraria like a blade through slime gel-

But there was no abyss. The bottom of the shaft was no wider than the top. Shocked, I pressed at solid dirt walls as Avilin divided us into teams in the cramped mine shaft. "Typh, you and Myste on the left," she ordered. "Scheil, you and I on the right. One... two... three!"

And so, we tunneled. And tunneled.

We tumbled into a cave with a small pool of water. In the dim glow of the wisp hovering at Myste's shoulder, Al and I lit our torches, castling specks of light off mineral veins. Climbing up onto some rocks, Typh raised his pickaxe and began mining out the veins.

From the walls, we seemed to be at the elevation where dirt yielded to stone-the edge of the cavern layer. At Al's instructions, Myste and I began tunneling into the cave's side.

Within minutes, we encountered the wide, blue glow of a mushroom cavern. Like the one on Corundia, this had formed around an underground lake.

"Ah! At last!" exclaimed the spectre, rushing forward, the glowing waters splashing over his robes as he dashed along the blue, grassy banks. "We ought to take a sample to the surface. Maybe build a farm."

Taking out my space gun, I shot down the descending bats as Myste began to gather mushroom grass samples. "I can get more from Corundia, if need be," I offered.

He shook his head. "That's for your own use. You'll need them more thsn you realize. These, though..." He held up a fistful of glowing mushrooms. "These are for the guild."

I frowned. We ought to have tunneled into the abyss by now, even if the shaft no longer led to it. If it had been a matter of the abyss sealing itself, I might hsve understood. But this... this was as if it had never existed at all.

Night was falling when we returned to the surface, the fountain bubbling gently between Rose's house and mine.

Passing my house and the bar, I made for the tower. Taking out my sapphire hook, I swung over the lava moat and landed on the doorstep. It was fairly simple architecture, thinking back, but the interior was alrather impressive. Lava and water frothed and sloshed under my feet in glass tanks on either side of the basement stairs.

The tower was ringed with windows about halfway up. What was the word again? Loopholes? Bullet windows? Somewhere to station a few rangers in case of attack.

At the bottom of the staircase was a single chest. There wasn't much in it, just a few raincoats and some rusty shackles. "Yeah, most of the stuff in there's rubbish," said Darren, emerging from the basement. "But it's a start, right?"

I blinked. "What're you doing here?"

""Al and Myste built some rooms under the tower," said the guide, pointing down the narrow stairwell. "It'd be too cramped if I stayed in your house, anyway." There was something different in the way he moved and talked; more relaxed, more at ease. Almost like Jack, on that first day...

"Name the convenience, and we shall build it," said Myste from the entrance, wings folding into the back of his robe. "Darren-how goes the search for Elysia?"

The young guide smiled. Probably the first time I ever saw him smile. "Thank you, sir," said Darren, nodding. "She hasn't turned up yet. But she should know about us by now."

"The Eater of Worlds chose its point of attack well. The Great Tree of Avalon has been tainted. But with Elysia's help, we should be able to cleanse it. Keep up the good work, Darren."

With a peaceful look in his eyes, Darren headed back down to his room. Approaching the spiral staircase, the spectre gestured to me. "Come, Scheil—we have much to discuss."

That was how I found myself talking to the spectre at the top of the guild tower. "I haven't just been watching you for the guild's sake, you know," he told me. "I've seen Terraria change from era to era. Only the greatest of heroes can adapt to face the mysteries of Cenx."

Though transparent like a ghost's wraps, Myste's robes fluttered in the wind. "To be blunt, you're not very strong. You're easily pulverized. You struggle with such simple things. Yet no matter how many times you're slain, no matter how many times I must drag your soul back to the Focus, you keep going."

"And then there's Rose's disappearance. Rose was taken, but you were spared. Most would not escape such an enocounter."

Something in his voice made me frown. As if he knew what I'd been talking about. No, more than that-as if he'd been in such a situation before. "Do you... do you have an idea what happened to Rose?"

He sighed. "Pethaps. Yes, I think I know what happened. But there's one way to know. Make sure you're stocked up on supplies-we're headed to the Dungeon tomorrow."

A/N: I apologize for a such a short chapter after such a long wait. I spent most of the summer playing 1.3, and then classes started, so this became sort of a warmup for other stories. As a small reminder, Pioneer is based (very) loosely on my own experiences, so it follows instead of 1.3. We should hit 1.3 in Act 4 or 5.