My cave was still bloody. I stood on the front porch, the wind swirling around me, my injuries bandaged with cloth. What do I do now? Where do I go?

I found myself wandering through the first grass-cave; the one where I woke up, after the zombie attack on the first night. It was still spacious and beautiful, despite the ravenous, vicious hordes that had visited me last night.

Cool mist swirled around me as I explored the cave. It felt cool and pleasant; peaceful, even. I took off my helmet and sat on the ground, staring down at the grass. I didn't want to destroy nature. But nature wanted to destroy me.

When I emerged from the cave, I found myself in an unfamiliar forest. In the distance, I saw a giant tree, like the two I had seen beyond the east hill. I couldn't see the lakes.

The giant tree had a hollow trunk, large emough to fit two or three men. On the outside, its bark was thick and smooth; on the inside, it was pitted, lined with wooden tendrils. There was a mystical feeling in the air.

Torch in hand, I climbed down into the hollow trunk. The mysterious sensstion grew stronger as I descended beneath the earth, like the glow of a fallen star.

I found myself staring at a door in the trunk's wall. The door was made of bark, interwoven with vines, light but sturdy.

Tenatively, I knocked on the door. "Hello?" No response.

Opening the door, I stepped into a small dwelling with chairs, a table, and a chest, all woven from bark and vine like the door. The walls were made of the same smooth, seamless wood as the rest of the tree.

Cautiously, I opened the chest to find a slender branch, polished and smooth. A tingle of power ran down my arm as I held it up to the light.

Gripping the branch firmly, I waved it across the air. The leaves at the tip left a glowing trail of green and yellow, which solidified into the same seamless wood that composed the tree.

A magic wand? Or perhaps a part of the tree itself, channeling the magic of its parent? Regardless, I decided to take it with me.

But night came more quickly than I anticipated. Somewhere, while wandering in the shadows, I found myself in a vast field of snow and icebound lakes. I saw trees of dark, dense wood; I saw flowers with brittle, translucent petals like ice.

I heard the growling zombies. In the torchlight, through the falling snow, I could make out their fur-lined hoods, encrusted with frost crystals that just barely caught the light. And I saw the slimes, pale glittering blue.

I had to find a place to spend the night.

At the foot of a snowbound hill, I dug a pit down into the snow, hoping they would see the ground missing and turn back. To my shock, they sprang down into the pit! Shivering, I gripped my pickaxe and began to dig up into the hill as the slimes and Eskimo zombies battered at me.

I managed to dig out a small cave. Crawling up into my small shelter, I shoved my attackers back and patched up the opening with snow, except for a small viewport. I hung a torch on the wall, and watched anxiously as they pounded against the snow walls, hissing and growling.

It was on this night that I first saw the floating, disembodied eyeballs. They must have been there every night, flitting about in the darkened sky, bloody tendrils trailing behind them; but this was the first night that I was fully aware of them.

I let out a sigh of relief. Nothing could get inside. Teeth chattering, I lay down in my snow-cave, huddled up in a ball. Just needed to rest... Just for a bit...

I was wandering in a great wasteland, covered with worm-eaten purple grass and pale vines with jagged thorns, the stone stained a dark violet. I saw fetid chasms that led far down into the earth, and the scent of rotting flesh wafted from their depths. I thought I felt a dark prescence watching me, like the power of the giant tree, but sinister and fearsome.

"Oh, another one."

I spun around to see a young woman sitting on a tree branch with decayed violet leaves. She wore a yellow rain hat and white robes, and seemed to take no notice of our nightmarish surroundings. "Ah, we can't meet like this, can we?" she said cheerfully, taking out an umbrella. "We ought to find a way. Somehow..."

Gasping, I bolted upright from sleep, staring around the snow-cave. The air was growing thick and heavy; I felt dizzy. Struggling to breathe, I desperately hacked away with my pickaxe at the walls, tearing them down. I crawled out from the cave, gasping for breath in the cold night air.

It was raining heavily that morning. More slimes emerged as I hurried on home, but my spear kept them back. Twice, I saw large blue slimes holding umbrellas. I stared at them as I passed, but hurried on.

There was a man waiting for me when I finally reached the grass caves. He wore a tan cap and matching long-coat. He had a large white beard, the sort of beard that blends into a mustache and reaches up to the sideburns. Over by the front door, I saw several stacked crates.

"Hello there," I said shakily. "Who might you be?"

Sharply, he turned to face me. "I'm Alfred, a merchant," said the man gruffly. "This is Corundia, yes? I've been searching for a place to settle down. Might you have an open room?"

We shook hands, and I showed Alfred inside, helping to carry his crates upstairs. He did not comment on the trashed first floor, but proceeded up to his new room and its thick stone walls. "I don't think you'll find a lot of customers here," I told him apologetically as he started to unpack his wares from the crates.

"Oh, they'll come," said Alfred confidently, setting vases on the shelf overhead. "People tend to gather where the heroes are."

On the word 'heroes', he paused and squinted at me with his dark, pervasive eyes, as if unsure whether the label applied to me or not. "I hope a kid like you's not all that's standing between us and the Eye of Cthulu," he muttered.

The floating eyeballs in the night? I had yet to test my strength against them, true; but considering the slimes and the zombies, I think I would do all right against them.

I still had some snow and ice samples from the snowfield, so I stored them away in my chest. "Right, so, I'm going to explore," I said uncomfortably. "Go ahead and... uh... settle in however you like."

In the side of the west hill, from which I had first seen the lakes, I found a cave passage. I proceeded down the passage, hanging torches on the wall as I went. I came upon a large stone vein, and stopped to mine it out; I didn't know, back then, just how plentiful stone was.

The tunnel sloped down sharply, leading down into a dark cavern. I'd like to say I lowered myself down carefully with rope. As it was, I ended up losing my footing, and tumbled down into the cave.

I landed in a pool of water with a great splash. I could taste the salty tang of sand in the air, and there were pots underwater. The cavern was much wider than the tunnel, and its walls were slick, too slick to hang a torch.

Suddenly, a giant yellow slime sprang out from the shadows! It landed with a squish on the water's surface. I tried to back away, but it sprang again, this time striking me in the chest. My wood armor absorbed most of the blow, but it still sent a ringing pain

The water pressed me, every movement requiring more strength; my armor weighed me down, slurring my movements. The more I tried to flee, the more tired I grew.

Again and again, the slime battered at me, wearing me down. Finally, I sank to my knees; and once again, I blacked out.

I woke up in the grass-caves, my armor and weapons laying in a stack nearby. "Damnit, kid, I told you that weren't ready," snapped Alfred as he approached me, shaking his head in disapproval. "What were you thinking, going down there?"

Slowly, I sat up, staring around the cave. My head was bandaged, and there was ice pressed to the bruises on my chest and back. "How did I get here?" I croaked.

"Beats me! I found you here, so I decided to bandage you up." He started to pace around the grass cave, shaking his head. "You went down into the caves, didn't you?"

"Yeah..." Staring up at the ceiling, I remembered with a jolt that I'd woken up in this very same cave, after the zombies overwhelmed me. Jack had found me just outside, he said.

Two close calls with death, both times found near these caves, both times waking up in the same place. Could it be a coincidence? Or were they related?

"You ought to carry health potions with you," advised Alfred, glancing back to me. "I stock quite a few, you know. They're just three silver apiece."

I patted my pockets, and my heart sank. My wallet felt much lighter again. "I think I'm almost broke."

He sighed. "Tell you what, kid," said Alfred, squatting down next to me. "I'll pay you for every monster you kill. Slimes, bats, worms, whatever you run into."

"What about zombies?" I asked, frowning.

"I'll pay you for those too, but they usually carry cash on them," he told me. "Most of them were buried with coins, see. Boat fare to enter the afterlife, or so they thought."

I cleaned up the first floor that night, partly to get rid of the smell, partly to find hidden cash in the zombie remains. I managed to collect a fair bit of coin before the knocks on the front door started up.

At some point, Alfred came downstairs and started pacing around the room. "Don't open the door!" I shouted as he approached the front door.

He gave me a look. "Young man, I am perfectly aware that zombies roam the night. Furthermore, my room is made of stone, and thus extremely uncomfortable."

I left him to his devices and retreated down into the basement to dig for ore. My tunnel was rather spacious now.

The next morning, I took out the branch-wand and started building a third floor out of seamless wood, hoping it would appease Alfred.

I accidentally lay down some stone walls in the wrong place, though, and couldn't seem to tear them down, so I covered then with dirt. It was okay. All three floors now had a table and two chairs each. The small grass-cave was becoming a tower.

"This housing is suitable," called a voice.

I came downstairs to find a guide standing just outside my house, in the mouth of the large grass-cave. "Who are you?" I asked, frowning.

"The name's Kyle," he told me assertively, shaking my hand. "I'm here to replace Jack as Corundia's guide. You must be Scheil."

It felt odd to have Kyle around. At a passing glance, he looked just like his predecessor; he had the same haircut and clothes. Upon further inspection, though, he was clearly older than Jack.

After compiling a report on Jack's death, Kyle turned to me. "Monsters will attack humans if they get close enough, but they usually avoid permanent settlements," he told me. "You should attract more settlers."

"I have three floors," I told him. We were on the first floor. "If someone came along and moved into the first floor, I could make do in the basement."

"You know what the problem is here?" said Kyle. He tapped the cave's grassy wall. "No one wants to live in a cave."

I spent the rest of the morning destroying the cave's jagged ceiling, and replacing the grass floor with wood floorboards. Then I tried to tear down the grass walls, but had no luck. "What do you want me to do?"

He picked a yellow flower with red-tipped petals. "You'll need a hammer," he said, holding the flower up to the light. "Any will do. Just make one out of wood for now."

At my workbench, I fashioned a wooden hammer. Like the other tools, this was the first time I ever swung an hammer. I was amazed at how easily the walls gave way beneath my swings.

Once I was done with that, I moved my chest down to the basement. I was about to head back up when I heard a growl from the shadows. Alarmed, I descended into my mine-pit to discover several slimes and a zombie with a large blue head stumbling around.

I built a campfire on the rooftop that night and watched the stars. The zombies leapt and clawed at my tower's walls, but couldn't reach me. I kept my spear handy, though, just in case.

I glanced up in alarm as an eyeball with red tendrils swooped down from the sky and struck me squarely in the chest with enough force to knock me off the roof. Panicking, I pawed at the air as I landed in the midst of a zombie horde. "Help! Help!"

Had I not been wearing armor, I suspect several of my ribs would have cracked; the wind was knocked from my lungs. Gasping for breath, I struck with my spear, forcing them back. I managed to back up against the stone wall where my back door had been originally, allowing me to focus my thrusts in front of me.

As the last of the zombies fell, I saw a streak of light fall from the sky, hitting the ground a few feet away. When I was done looting the zombies' remains, I approached the fallen star, which glowed with fierce light of every color.

Pocketing the fallen star, I looked up to the starry sky, to the campfire crackling atop my tower. For a moment, I thought I saw the hooded white figure on the rooftop, standing against the glowing smoke; then I blinked, and he was gone.