Warning: This chapter is kind of graphic. Reading this might cause mild pain. Heck, I started getting a headache in the middle of writing this chapter, though that might just be from staring at my screen at night. Still... I'd recommend that you bring an aspirin or something.

Chapter 11: The Four Barriers

Ixia's raven landed silently at the roots of the great tree. Opening the trapdoor, she dropped into the cavern as one of her aides ran up, looking panicked. "Your Highness! Thank the gods you're all right, my queen! Something terrible is happening!"

"Oh?" Ixia smirked, raising one eyebrow and cocking her head in an inquisitive gesture.

The summoner took her arm and sprinted with her to a hole in the cavern wall, containing a periscope. When Ixia put her eye to the hole, she saw a horrid sight: a floating pillar composed of writhing gray flesh, topped with a crown of luminous blue tentacles. Above the pillar, the yellow sun of Terraria was being drowned out by a much larger, brighter star, one that gave off an intense, pale blue light. The air smelled like stars and decay, and as she watched, horrifying otherworldly creatures began congregating around the floating obelisk. Ixia could feel her focus growing sharper, despite the intense pressure she knew was building behind her eyeballs. She felt her eyes were about to explode when her aide tapped her shoulder. "Your Highness?"

Ixia pulled away from the periscope. Her focus immediately blurred, but the pain behind her eyes stayed. "Don't worry, my dear," she said, grinning despite the agony. "Everything is going according to plan."

Meanwhile...

Cassandra continued to stare and shuffle forward, slowly raising her hand to touch the pillar. Her fingers were just inches from brushing the pulsating surface when she suddenly felt herself tackled and thrown to the ground. She twisted, with a pained grunt, to look at her attacker. It was Lorre, shrouded in a violet miasma from her warped vision. She regarded him with annoyance more than fear, hissing and spitting while attempting to get free.

Lorre glared down at her in confusion and reached for something atop her head. Cassandra heard his fingers close on something soft and squishy and immediately felt a skull-splitting agony as he ripped something off the top of her head. As Lorre scooped her up and sprinted for the Magicians' Guild, the last thing she saw was the sky, awash in multicolored light from not one, not two, but five different suns. Cassandra's vision swam, the pain fighting with the horrid beauty and the multicolored sunshine melding into a psychedelic oil slick. Then, finally, the agony triumphed and her vision went completely black.

A clearing.

Screams and pain.

The four barriers.

Orange. Surrounded by extraterrestrials wielding spears of pure flame - or perhaps it was more than flame, spears of superheated plasma that slice in twain anyone and anything foolish enough to approach.

Green. Alien insects crawl from the inside of the great pillar, still coated with diseased fluid, their slime-coated eyes staring and staring until even the most fearless runs screaming.

Purple. Strange and horrible beings float about, emitting their psychotropic waves to make even those with the strongest of minds believe whatever they say without question.

Blue. Cell-like things, almost not worth the name of creatures, which slowly surround prey without any escape, and only multiply if struck.

They form a diamond, and in the middle, heavy and gray... La Lune.

The moon, bound by the pillars. Without the protection of the yellow sun of Terraria, the eldritch ritual of the otherworldly deity can continue uninterrupted.

The preparations are nearly complete. All We need are these things...

A destroyer of the barriers
The body and soul of one who mourns
Blood of those who are not of this soil

Bring these to Us, and We will cleanse this wretched planet, for We are the Nothing and the Everything, We are the Birth and Death of the universe, We are the Sun and Stars, We are the Moon. We are the Moon.

We are the planet.

We are Terraria.

WE ARE TERRARIA.

W3 AR7E T0-ERR/ARIA.

0T P-80AG -ERR/AAOIFA3876.

ERR.

ERR.

ERR.

... - - - ...

... - - - ...

Pain. So much unbearable agony, enough to destroy the very soul.

Screams. Howls of purest terror, the endless keening shrieks of one who has seen the cruelly vast emptiness beyond.

Pain. Screams.

And silence.