In the days following the goblin attack, I kept busy with rebuilding the village. The brick condo was still standing; I installed new doors and put in new furniture.
I repaired Ahirom's and Faye's houses from planks and living wood respectively, packing dirt over the ceiling and walls as I had with Alfred's. The other wood houses were, surprisingly, intact.
The village was too quiet, too empty for my liking. I hadn't noticed that zombies had avoided the village before, perhaps intimidated by a large human prescence; but now, they returned in full force, knocking on my doors, growling, snarling.
I found myself exploring the caverns frequently. But these weren't undiscovered caves, anymore. The further I descended, the more traces of Rose I found; ropes, stucco, perhaps an ice torch that didn't quite light up the area properly.
Was it selfish to send her away? Looking back, yes, it was. But at the time, it had seemed the right thing to do. Perhaps she really had wanted to help. But on the other hand, Kyle and Alfred has been right about her. It didn't matter. Rose had left her mark on Corundia, one way or another.
I found myself in the desert, one evening. From a tall sand dune, I saw a great crater where the meteor had crashed into the desert, an eerie pit billowing with smoke and fire. Cautiously, I descended into the crater.
The meteor's scattered fragments were the color of mud, but glittered with tiny flames, bizarre crystalline formations that glowed and burned in the twilight.
Whatever mineral the meteorite was made of, it was very resilient. My pickaxe could barely scratch the brown stone, let alone break it.
Tenatively, I reached out to touch a meteorite chunk, then yelped in pain as fire swept up my arm, hot armor searing my skin. Panicking, I yanked the glove and bracer off, staring at my raw, red skin.
Light swelled behind me, heat spreading through the chainmail on my back. I spun around as a blazing boulder of meteorite shoved into me, flames erupting over my body.
The air was filled with sulfur that stung my eyes and nose. More meteor heads emerged from the sand, crackling and glowing like living coals, moving steadily, undeterrably.
My blade left dents on their fiery surfaces, then cracks. I managed to shatter one, cleaving through, searing fragments dropping to the ground; but already, there were six more, all around me... crushing into me.
Engulfed in fire, I sank to the ground, battered relentlessly. With a cold chill, I stared as the ghost figure descended upon me once again...
I stared down into the lake of fire, its molten depths frothing with tiny jets of steam. All around me, tiny veins of magma trickled down the walls, through compact ash and glassy black stone.
I extended my arm over the lava, and let the object in my hand fall, tumbling down, down, down into the molten lake. In the drab light, I couldn't see the object clearly.
As the object sank beneath the lake's surface, I heard a distant scream of pain, followed by a chilling hiss from the shadows...
Wake up! Wake up!
Faye was shaking me awake. "Scheil! Awaken!" she whispered fiercely, her eyes shining intensely. "You cannot leave Corundia unattended for so long..."
Breathing hard, I sat up, looking around the grass-cave. My skin still felt raw, burned. The meteors, I thought, staring down at my hands.
Faye pressed a bowl of water to my lips, and I drank my fill. Somewhere, it dawned on me that the ghost-figure might be the one who saved me, but it was the dryad's magic that restored my body. But even Faye had her limits.
Pulling off my armor, I stared down at my feet. The village was quiet-too quiet. "I don't suppose you have any idea on repopulating the village?" I asked weakly.
The dryad blinked. "Hm, have you seen that old man wandering around the dungeon?" she said thoughtfully. "He doesn't look well at all."
I blinked. "What dungeon? What old man?"
She shook her head. "If you explore this world enough, you'll find it," said Faye, running her fingers though the grassy wall. "Don't worry about it for now. People will come here like they used to."
I patted my belt for my pickaxe, but to my dismay, it was gone. Had I dropped it in the crater? I searched and searched for it, but in the end, I had to forge a new one. Pickaxes were too vital, out in the wilderness.
The next morning, I recieved a letter from the Merchants' Guild, offering its condolences for Alfred's death. It also offered to continue my bargain with Alfred-the bargain which would pay me for every monster killed. It then concluded with a promise to send a represenative to Corundia.
The new merchant's name was Frederick. Though he wore the same clothes as Alfred, he seemed a bit younger, or at least more easygoing and less crotchety. "Adventurers like yourself keep the economy flowing," he told me, patting the front door of Alfred's old house.
I spent a long time on other worlds, worlds that had not yet faced the humiliation and destruction from Rose and the goblin army. Luke's house in Alabaster became my base of operations, temporarily; it wasn't as homely as my tower in Corundia, but it felt innocent, untainted, safe.
On Minaria, Zach was nowhere to be found. After walking for some time, I came upon a brick shack. When I knocked on the front door, an unfamiliar guide answered. "You're not Zach," I uttered.
He stared at me blankly; it was getting dark, and it was clear I was no new adventurer. "Zach got transferred to another world," said the guide after a moment. "My name's Seth."
The shack was small, but cozy. "My daughter built this place for me before she left," said Seth, leaning back in his chair. "She's an adventurer, much like yourself."
The Adventurers' Guild still hadn't sent a guide to replace Kyle. "It can be tough to survive in Terraria without a guide, y'know," said Luke during one of my visits to Alabaster. "Oh, if you want, I can contact the guild and find how soon they can send a replacement-"
I shook my head. I wasn't even sure if I wanted a new guide. Not that I didn't appreciate Luke's offer. I felt we might have some understanding; he was just as lonely as I was. I was the adventurer without a guide, and he was the guide without an adventurer.
As with Minaria, I stayed in Alabaster for a few days, exploring the tunnels, reliving the old excitement from my first days in Corundia. I remember standing on a steep ledge, staring into a cave where two tunnels met, water streaming down around my ankles.
Following one tunnel up toward the surface, I came upon a Life Crystal. Using ropes, I climbed to the ceiling of the tunnel and dug straight up to the surface. It was not too far to dig, and I emerged only a short distance from Luke's house.
"So you don't know when your adventurers will show up?" I asked Luke one night.
He sighed. "It's not as if you show up on a schedule, you know? We don't even know where you all come from. But it's okay. You always show up, one way or another. And we'll always be there to help you people get started."
Before I returned to Corundia, I installed a furnace, workbench, and anvil in Luke's house. That would help Luke out; but also, once Luke's adventurer showed up, this would give him or her a head start-the sort of head start I could've used on that first night.
I'm ashamed to say that I lost my pickaxe on my way home. I'm not sure how; I recall taking the pickaxe out in Alabaster, and by the time I reached Corundia, it was gone. I was forced to forge a third pickaxe.
I didn't see the real gifts that Rose had left me until I came home. Next to the dye vat stood a glass kiln and a sky mill. In the patio workshop, I was astonished to find that the furnace had been replaced with a glowing red forge, hissing like the fires of hell.
In the mining chest, I had several bars of platinum and crimtane ore. The furniture chest held black-and-orange furniture made from obsidian, including a door that I fitted in the basement tunnels. The tool chest had the most surprising tool, however: a grappling hook.
This was not a basic grappling hook. I never saw a basic grappling hook until I had long outgrown the need for one. No, this was made of emeralds, its chain-links light but sturdy. Did Rose make this for me? "I'm sorry," I whispered to the air, though I knew Rose could not hear me.
With Caitlin living in the village-ironically, in the cabin on the hill thst she'd refused a long time ago-a painter moved into the snow-cabin. His name was Guido, and truthfully, he wasn't much different from Marco.
I spent a few days expanding the cabin, building a tower that poked up out of the snow-hill, before Guido's rude, snappish attitude drove me back to the grass-cave village, where Ovbere the Demolitionist was waiting for me.
Ovbere the Demolitionist was later followed by Reginald the Arms Dealer. Both lacked the sinister aura of Morthal and Dante- that is to say, they seemed trustworthy, at any rate.
I decided to convert the three-story brick condo into a two-story house, which Ovbere happily moved into. Moments later, Reginald eagerly moved into Ovbere's second-story bathroom. What was with these arms dealers and living in bathrooms?
I'm not sure why I rebuilt Rose's gallows, but I did. It was one of two structures with her trademark fenceposts that I left intact. The other happened to be the house in the Living Tree. Faye often complained about the cabin, clearly unhappy with the mutilation of such an important entity.
As I crossed the bridge between the living trees, I thought of the ghost figure who appeared again and again, whisking me from death.
Standing before the meteor's crater, I watched the mysterious meteor-heads drifting around the shattered meteorite, flickering with fire from distant worlds beyond the sky. I had no desire to go back down there.
In the distance, I caught a glimpse of a red scar upon the land, far beyond the desert, eerie and forbidding. Heart pounding, I passed the crater, heading toward the desert's edge, slowly at first, gradually rising into a sprint.
Abruptly, pale yellow sand gave way to dark red. Sliding to a halt, I found myself staring at a terrible, scarlet wasteland. The desert continued for some distance; but the sand was dark red and damp, as if mingled with blood.
Further on, I could make out acres of bloody, stringy grasses and trees like shredded flesh, glowing red rock formations with hideous spots liike exposed bone. The wind carried the scent of fresh blood.
If the Corruption had filled me with sorrow and despair, this bloody landscape filled me with horror, hot and throbbing.
I heard snarls from overhead. Drawing my sword, I looked up to see red, legless monsters like flying lobsters. They were shaped like eater-of-souls, but with barbed red scales instead of hairy, rotting skin.
The crimeras dove at me, their pincers striking my armor, barbs slipping through the chainmail links. They were bolder than eater-of-souls; they darted in and out of reach with time-honed instinct.
Though they had the appearances of lobsters, my blade found bones within their flesh, vertebrates popping free as my sword cleaved through them, blood running down from my blade in horrifying splashes.
"Why are you standing here?" whispered a voice as I sank to the blood-soaked ground, exhausted. "The Crimson will remain, no matter how hard you fight back."
I found myself before the ghostly figure, eyes glowing beneath his translucent hood, glowing chains dangling from his wrists. Above his head, I saw a ball of ghostly fire imprinted with a hollow face. "I cannot fight your battles for you."
The one who watched me from afar. The one who pulled me back from death, but not the others. Why did I escape death again and again, while everyone around me perished? "What is this?" I croaked.
He stretched his hand out over the scarlet, bloody landscape. "You stand before the Crimson, the flesh and blood of Cthulhu, the elder one," he said softly. "Older than dryads, older than Terraria itself, the strands of his corpse mutate their surroundings, terraforming the landscape into one befitting his llikeness."
"How do you know all this?"
The sky was growing light. I caught sight of another person climbing the sand dunes toward us. A guide! So far from the village? "Sorry I'm late," gasped the guide as he reached us, out of breath. "I... aha... couldn't keep up."
The Crimson's bloody stench grew stronger as the sun rose, bitter and foul. "No more of your hesitation," the figure told me sternly, resting a hand on the guide's shoulder. "Go back to your village now. And take Bradley with you, that you might prepare for the next battles."
Still speechless, I stared as the guide stepped toward me. "It'll be a pleasure working with you, Scheil," said Bradley, helping me to my feet, his eyes firm but his voice friendly. "I heard your situation. And I'll help however I can."
"When you've learned to survive, we'll meet again," said the ghostly figure, his glittering eyes still on me. "On that day, you will learn what I am, and who I am. Until then... I shall be watching you from afar."
Turning away, he strode off into the desert, ethereal robes rippling. "Wait," I called, finally managing to speak. The ghost figure stopped. "The dungeon... And the old man... Tell me about the dungeon."
Without looking back, the ghost-figure chuckled. "You seek the treasures inside the dungeon?" he said softly, like the stinging wind that clicked against my armor. "I suppose that's one way to survive. But you won't be able to enter, not immediately."
"How do I get inside, then?"
"Seek the old man at the dungeon's entrance," replied the ghost-figure. "His curse has gone on for too long." He tilted his head slightly, and I thought I could make out a thin smile under his hood. "When night falls... speak to him, and he shall be transformed into Skeletron, god of the living dead."
Skeletron. A name that terrified some, and only confused others. I stared as the ghost-figure vanished into the desert, mystified. "All right, Scheil," said Bradley cheerfully. "We've got a long walk back."
Nodding, I patted my belt. My pickaxe had vanished again.