Red finished fashioning the torch to the wall and stepped back to admire his handiwork. He still wasn't entirely sure how he was doing what he was doing, beyond that he was simply pressing the base of the torch against the wall and it seemed to stick fast - but at least it was working. Dustin closed the door gently behind him as he entered the building, and Red turned to look at him.
"So. Story time now, right?"
"If you want," His Guide shrugged non-committally. "What do you want to hear?"
Red stood near the wall and fell into thought, pondering his first question. He was buzzing with them, of course, but he didn't know where to begin. Several minutes passed, their gazes flickering about the house idly. Red's eyebrows were furrowed in thought, but the Guide looked no more or less stressed than at any other time he'd seen him so far.
"Okay," Red finally spoke up, and Dustin's attention fell back on him. "How come I was brought here?"
"Whoo boy," Dustin muttered. "Start with a doozy, huh? Well, fine. You want the chair, or can I?"
Red nodded his acquiescence, and Dustin dragged the chair back to the wall near the door, dropping himself into it casually and leaning it back against the wall.
"Comfy?" Red remarked, as he leaned against his own wall, his back to the warming flames of the torch. If what Dustin had said was true, he wouldn't have to worry about it again - it wouldn't burn out unless it was doused, and probably wouldn't catch anything except itself on fire.
"You bet," he smiled, putting his hands behind his head casually. "So - what do you mean, 'how come'? That's a pretty open-ended question."
"Well, I mean - how come I'm here, instead of... wherever I was yesterday?"
Dustin looked at him appraisingly for some moments before answering. "No idea. No offence, but you don't look really very noteworthy to me. Look pretty average, if I'm blunt. No offence meant, mind."
Red's eyebrows furrowed again, this time in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"I mean what I say. I don't know," Dustin shrugged his shoulders, hands still behind his head. "I don't know how people get signed up for this. I don't even know how I got signed up for this. I've asked, of course I have, but they're not very forthcoming. My job is to guide. That's what I was told, and that's what I'm good at, so why not, right?"
"Right. Who's they?" Red interjected.
"Hard to explain..." Dustin looked away, mulling over how best to phrase it. "They're just... well, they are. The powers that be. All I can reliably tell you is that they are. Just... a presence, is all I know of them. Big. Sometimes angry, sometimes happy. I remember I was told what to do here... couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't really move, but I heard it somehow. Next thing I remember is waking up near you. Like I say, nothing else to really go on, nowhere else to really go, so I thought I'd just go with the job I'd been given."
"So you've pretty much got nothing, then. I thought you said earlier you know what's going on around here?" Red said, slightly irritated. Dustin just shrugged, putting an apologetic look on his face. "Well, do you know what they dragged me here for, at least? Do you know what I'm supposed to be doing here?"
Once again, Dustin stayed silent, simply fixing him with an appraising look. Red fidgeted uncomfortably.
"Well, I can take a bit of a guess," Dustin began slowly. "You remember I told you that it's a lovely place during the day, but absolutely awful during the night? Well, it wasn't always. Used to be you could stroll around under the moon, not a care in the world!"
His hands finally left their place resting his head, accompanying his story with emphatic gesticulations.
"The land's... it's not well, is a good way to put it. It's... ah, ailing. It's sick."
"And I'm here to fix it," Red didn't know what he had expected, but he did know he wasn't comfortable being saddled with such a goal.
"Probably a good enough guess, but I wouldn't get ahead of yourself," Dustin shook his head. "That's a colossal job. Dangerous, lots of effort involved - I know I wouldn't if no-one was making me. No, I don't know exactly what you're here to do... it could be that, but hell, could be anything. Could even be some kind of cheap labour scam, for all I know," Dustin grinned wryly at this. "Still, all I've got to go on is what I'm given... You know, if you want to set a long-term goal for yourself, then that seems like a perfectly good idea to me. There's a pretty good one which will also tie in to finding a way back to wherever you came from - survive, get situated, and start advancing your situation."
"How would I go about doing that, then?" Red had asked for understanding, but was instead even more confused.
"Well, it's not really an 'okay, I'll have that done by tomorrow' sort of thing. Just - you know, advancing your position in the world. Expanding your sphere of influence. Getting to know Terraria, figuring out what you're good at, what you can do, where - normal stuff like that."
"Right... Makes sense, I suppose. You'll help me with that then, right?" Red asked.
"That's my contract to you, bud. Haven't I already been helping you out? I mean, night's falling and you've got a solid roof over your head - that's some good help, right?"
Red opened his mouth to reply, but Dustin talked over him. "That reminds me - the time..."
He turned his head to look out through the holes in the door, and Red's gaze followed his. The sun had gone down, and pitch black enveloped outside the house.
"Sun's gone down," Dustin said quietly, averting his gaze from the door. "The monsters will show up soon."
His tone unsettled Red. It wasn't fear, but it definitely wasn't his usual jolliness - what was it, really? He couldn't tell - Respect? Reverence?
"Will they hear us? Can they get in?" Red asked, a note of panic seeping in as he tried to keep his voice down.
"Yeah, they'll hear." Dustin's voice returned to its usual pitch, but the grim undertone stayed in. "We'll be fine in here, though. They can't get in. Still, I'd just... stay away from the door. Especially on your first night."
"You're right next to it, though..."
"I'm half a dozen feet away from it," Dustin rolled his eyes. "I'm talking about shoving your hand out through the holes or something like that. I'd just not go near it."
Red felt some reassurance, but his body didn't relax. He looked away from Dustin, trying to see out through the small holes in the door.. "You're sure they can't break it down or something?"
"Positive." Dustin replied, a bit more breezily than before. "They'll try though, for sure. You might not sleep very well, but you'll be safe, and that's what counts.
Red finally let the tension slip from his body and went back to leaning back against the wall. "They can't be really that bad if they're stopped by a wooden door, can they?"
"I think you'd be very badly surprised."
Red waited for more, but Dustin didn't seem to want to go ahead and elaborate.
"What kind of things are they, then?" Red finally gave in and asked.
"Monsters," Dustin answered quietly. "Things. Unpleasant things. Do you want to know what's out there tonight?"
Red nodded once, steeling himself.
"Zombies and Demon Eyes, tonight. It's quiet, so it'll just be them."
"Zombies?" Red's stomach fell to hit his feet. He knew that word.
"The walking, stalking dead," Dustin answered grimly. They're... well. Like I said, Terraria's not doing too well at the moment - some foul magic that I don't even want to know about has been playing into the place. The dead, if they're touched by it... they get up again. They're... tough. Relentless. They'll be very hard for you to kill, armed and armoured as badly as you are, and if you can't kill them then they'll kill you - and an end at their hands will not be a pleasant one. If I were you, I would just not go out at night for now."
"For now?" Red picked up on that one pretty quickly. "That implies I'll ever be going out where there's zombies and whatever else you're not telling me about."
"Well, that ties into the whole 'advance your situation' deal I was mentioning earlier," Dustin explained. "Once you've got a big enough weapon and a decent suit of armour, you can kick them around no matter how wimpy you might be. The problem is surviving in the interim."
"But they're zombies. Don't they bite, or something? Turn you into one of them?"
Dustin ran a hand through his hair, trying to remember details. "Hmmm... I don't think so, no. I mean, they'll probably bite if they think they can manage it, but I don't think that's any worse than getting punched or scratched."
"So they can't turn other people into zombies as well?" Red asked, still not entirely reassured.
"They can turn you into a corpse if that's what you're asking, but most any monster can do that if you let 'em. Where'd you get that idea, anyway? I've never heard of anything like that."
"I don't know," Red mumbled, running a hand through his hair. "What about these... Demon's Eyes?"
"I'm told they're the eyes of hell come to see what we're up to," Dustin replied. "Not sure on the truth of that, but in either case they're good at a damn sight more than just seeing. Big, round, red and white, pretty easy to see even in the dark. They'll dive bomb you, hard, and smash you against anything they can. If you keep an eye on the sky you can usually beat them away or slice them open or something, but that's easier said than done, especially with things like the Zombies demanding your attention elsewhere."
A sudden thump on the wood from above resounded, interrupting Dustin's words of wisdom. Red jumped away from the wall and inched towards the centre of the house, but Dustin didn't seem too phased.
"That'd be one now, as a matter of fact," He said, face taut. "You'll be alright in here though, bud, like I said. A crowd of 'em couldn't get through that door."
"How?" Red insisted, looking at the thin, spindly door. As if to spite Dustin's words, the thump of flesh on wood continued to resound through the small house. Red was certain he could hear a low groaning through the door. "Are you sure? God, how can just that stop them?"
Dustin scratched at his hair idly. "Don't rightly know, but it does - so really, may as well just relax. Catch some sleep or something. Shouldn't stay up too late playing storytime,"
"Yeah. Right," Red groused. A sudden thought occurred to him. "Where will I sleep?"
"You can have the chair if you want, otherwise I'd guess the floor," Dustin pushed his chair forward and away from the wall. "Or you could fashion another chair or something. Either way you'll be sleeping on wood, unless you brought something else in without telling me,"
"Nah, forget it," Red slowly dropped himself down onto a section of the floor just slightly off the centre of the house, using his hands as a makeshift pillow. "No way it's worth it tonight, then."
"Right," Dustin settled back against the wall and closed his eyes, tuning out the almost rhythmic thumps with clearly practiced ease. "G'night then. Sleep well."
"Yeah. Right..." Red closed his eyes anyway and waited for sleep to take him, doing his best to ignore both the hardness of his bedding and the continued threats of death from without the house.