I heard my sister's voice. "I built a house."
The voice that responded... It was low and secretive. "Good job, Frosti. Now make more houses for the villagers..."
I woke up in a long, grassy cave. I was heavily bandaged, my clothes ragged and torn. Every part of my body throbbed with pain.
"It's dangerous to wander around at night," muttered Jack, a few feet away. "What were you thinking? You should've found shelter before the sun went down."
Slowly sitting up, I patted my belt. My rapier was safe at my side. But something was wrong; my coin-pouch felt unusually light. "How did I get here?" I croaked.
He pointed down the cavern. "I found you just outside," said the guide. "Your wounds will heal quickly. Mushroom salve fixes everything."
Feeling hazy, I squinted down the long, vine-grown passage, toward the early morning light. Where was I?
The sun in Terraria's worlds always rises in the west and sets in the east. As I emerged from the grass cavern, I saw a flowering meadow, the cave's entrance lined with pots.
On the other side of the meadow, I saw another grassy cave, this one much smaller, overgrown with flowers and vines. "Did you dream?" said Jack behind me.
"Yeah." My sister left to explore Terraria, a few days before I did. Had she run into a guide, too? I tried to remember the dream, but it was too hazy, too incomplete.
It turned out that the grass-cavern was just under the hilltop where I first saw Jack. I must have fallen down the hill when the zombies swarmed me. I was lucky not to have broken anything.
Whistling, Jack strode out into the meadow. "You really need to build a house," he told me. "You'll need lumber first, of course."
One by one, I removed my bandages, encrusted with mushroom salve. Listening to the birds, I reluctantly took out my new axe.
My guide was right. I needed lumber. It took a while to climb up onto the hill with the trees, but I managed to get up there eventually. I had never cut down a sapling, let alone a grown tree. "Well, there's a first for everything," I muttered, and swung.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. One tree, two trees, three. I spent the morning chopping down trees, cutting the lumber into smaller pieces.
Once I had enough wood, I got to building my workbench. It was a very rudimentary workbench; the pieces weren't even bolted together, since I had no nails.
My workbench was set up in the second grass cave, where I decided to make my home. I sealed the entrances with wood, and the slimes couldn't get in. I was proud of myself.
I decided to check out the hill to the east with the spring that I'd seen earlier. There were two grass-tunnels between my cave and the east hill, both were overgrown with vines. A couple pots were left behind in the larger of the tunnels.
On the east hill, the pots had several lengths of rope, which I took with me. Water trickled down from within the rocks and into a bowl-shaped cave. The water was clear and refreshing; I drank my fill. Behind the spring, I discovered a chest with healing potions, and a sturdy spear. Whose spear? I don't know. But it was sharp, light, and well-built; so I held onto it.
Night was falling; I had to move quickly before the zombies emerged. The sun was just about to set when I got back to the grass caves. "Could I borrow a torch?" I asked Jack.
"No, but I'll show you how to make your own," he told me. "Here." And the gel from the slimes turned out to be quite flammable. He also showed me how to hang a torch on the wall without setting fire to it.
I spent that night safely in the small grass-cave, practicing with my new spear. I heard the growls of zombie hordes outside, bumping into my walls, clawing at the timbers, then crawling away in disappointment.
That night, in my dreams, I saw my sister wearing a bucket on her head, standing outside a wood cabin. She was talking to a hooded white figure.
"How do I make the villager stay in the house?" my sister asked.
"Make sure there's a table, a chair, and a light source," said the hooded figure.
It wasn't untl the next morning that I remembered seeing the white hooded figure before. Who was he?
Perhaps because of the dream, I built some furniture for my house in the morning: chairs, a table, and doors.
Like with the axe yesterday, I'd never used a pickaxe. It was tough; the pickaxe was heavy and the dirt was compacted. I soon had a small basement under my cave, though, and managed to gather quite a bit of stone.
After moving my workbench into the basement, I reinforced the cave with stone- namely, the parts above the doorway.
I decided to go exploring. Slimes might be frustrating, but they were much easier to deal with than the zombies at night. Besides, I could do more building tonight.
Jack's grass cave was much larger than mine. Emerging from the west entrance, I climbed the hill where I first ran into my guide. The view was beautiful; I saw sparkling lakes and swaying, towering trees. Further in the distance, I saw falling snow and frozen lakes; I saw a purple ruin on the edge of a lake, and the glittering sea beyond.
Turning to the east, I suddenly noticed a pair of giant trees in the distance, past the east hill. They were tremendously tall, towering far into the clouds. How had I not noticed them before? And yet, they showed no sign of toppling over, as if anchored firmly to the earth's very bones.
I encountered a few more slimes on my way back. My new spear far more effective than my sword, but my body was still stiff; and I was exhausted by the time I returned to the grass caves.
I found myself with quite a bit of stone, so I decided to expand my house. I dug out a lot of the hilltop to build a stone shack on top of the grass cave's hill. I rather liked how it looked.
I'd barely finished moving my furniture upstairs when I found Jack sitting in my chair, at my table. "What're you doing here?" I demanded.
"This is a lot better than my cave," he said cheerfully. "I'm moving in."
I tried to kick him out, but he just wouldn't listen. So I was stuck down in my cave for the night.
Well, at least I wasn't alone. More zombies growling, more zombies howling. I listened to them bumping into the walls again...
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
I felt a chill down my spine as the zombies began to knock on my front door, knocking with ceaseless rhythm. Slowly, I turned around as more growling zombies began to knock on the back door as well. Would they knock the door down?
They never did, thankfully. They just kept knocking, kept urging me to answer. At first I was relieved. But as the night wore on, their steady pounding started to get to me, grinding at my nerves.
"Go away!" I yelled.
They didn't go away. After a long time had passed, I finally got fed up, opened the door, and shoved my spear through the doorway, skewering several zombies through the belly.
I was too slow to shut the door, though: two zombies managed to get inside first. Cursing repeatedly, I backed away from them, jabbing them with my spear until they finally collapsed to the floor and stopped moving.
"Who's that?" called Jack as the other zombies continued to knock on the front door.
"No one," I called back.
That night, in my dreams, my sister was again talking to the white hooded figure, who was accompanied by a man in purple armor this time.
"My guide kinda died," said my sister.
"I'm not surprised," said the man in purple. "You'd have to kill him anyway." The white hooded man tried to silence him, but he kept going. "Beware the wa-"
The white hooded man gave the purple armored man a shove, and the man in purple armor tumbled down into a pit of blood.
Suffice to say, I wasn't very refreshed the next morning. Still, I'd survived this long, hadn't I? I could do this. Okay. Day four, start.
I decided to remove the back door and fill it in with stone. I doubted I'd be using it much anyway, considering how cramped that part of the cave was.
When he came downstairs, Jack looked at my shredded clothes. "You need better equipment," he told me. "You should get a furnace running. Then, once you find copper and iron, you can make an anvil for crafting armor and weapons."
For now, I decided to carve some armor from wood. It was bulky and uncomfortable, but it would do for now.
With the help of my guide, we set up a furnace, building a small stone-house over a wood fire. Looking outside, I figured that digging for ores could wait. The day was still young, after all.
In the cave with the rock spring, I came upon a small deposit of clay. I collected it for later; perhaps I could try my hand at some pottery. For now, I was curious about the source of the water. I would need a steady supply of fresh water to keep going, after all. Perhaps, if I could find the source...
My curiosity was a mistake. The moment I started to dig into the rock, the spring went silent. Dismayed, I tried to dig deeper into the stone. Had I accidentally blocked the spring? But no matter how far I dug, I couldn't find the water's source.
After a few hours of searching, I heard the trickle of a second spring. I decided it must be on the other side of the hill; I would have to investigate it later.
I managed to make it back by nightfall. Since it was dark, and I could hear the zombies stirring outside, I decided to dig for ore from the basement. I couldn't find copper or iron, but I managed to gather a fair bit of tin and lead.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump. The zombies outside were growing restless. "Who's that?" called Jack as he came downstairs, listening to the knocks on the front door.
Down in the basement, I stopped mining and frowned up at my guide. "What are you doing?" I asked him. "Don't open the door-"
Too late. He opened the door. And at once, the zombies were all over him. Alarmed, Jack tried to flee, but their claws had sunken into his shoulders, yanking furiously at his arms and legs, tearing at his hair and his skin. He screamed and screamed.
Grabbing my spear, I scrambled up the rope ladder, looking around the zombie-filled cave frantically; but I could see no sign of Jack. I backed up against the wall, lashing out with my spear, stabbing at the advancing hordes repeatedly, forcing them back. Their claws raked against my wood armor, their fists pounding at the carved breastplate.
My arms were growing sore, the wood armor dragging me down, slowing my movements. But still I tried to fight on, staring into the hungry, dead faces that had tried to drag me down, on that first night. Not again. Never again. I would fight to the end this time.
And just when I thought I could take no more, the zombies suddenly faltered, drawing back their claws. I stared as they looked at each other blankly, as if they had only just realized where they were. One by one, they began to retreat, hobbling out the door, slinking out of sight.
Outside, the sun's first rays appeared on the horizon. There was no sign of Jack.
Sinking to the floor, I crawled over to the open door and kicked it closed. The floor was strewn with bits of flesh, some rotten, some fresh. Under the table, I found bloody rags, a half-gnawed arm, bits of broken skull and hair.
My guide was dead. I was alone.