The new nurse wore her uniform crisply and proudly. "Call me Jenna," said the woman, shaking my hand. Her eyes were sharp and scrutinous, her voice firm and strong. "A pleasure to be here, Scheil."

She studied my face for a moment. "Hm. You've been in the Crimson recently-early symptoms of crimson fever, most likely suppressed by high concentration of glowing mushroom spores in the bloodstream."

The new nurse was curt and to the point; something in the way she walked was assertive in a way that Caitlin never quite managed to be. "How come you're not a full-fledged doctor?" I asked as we crossed through the tower.

"Because the last medical institute within a thousand miles was destroyed four years ago," she told me. "Doesn't matter. I've had as much experience as any licensed doctor."

At Jenna's insistence, I began traveling to the mushroom cavern regularly; inhaling the spores would suppress crimson cell disease. During these visits, I started to rebuild the destroyed cabin, using the living wood wand and glowing mushrooms.

I gathered many cobwebs from the caverns, but was never able to build a bed with them. The man in purple was wrong-or so I thought, anyway. Rose had neglected to show me a particularly vital crafting station, you see.

One night in the mushroom cavern, as I insulated the cabin walls with compacted mushroom, I felt a familiar chill. Glancing outside, I discovered that the glowing lakes had turned a bloody red.

The blood moon was rising.

I scrambled up the tunnels with all haste, climbing up into the cellar, to my tower. Corrupt bunnies and growling zombies sprang at me from the shadows as I fought my way into the village.

Protecting Frederick was easy enough; I hung torches to block both of his doors. Ovbere fled into my tower. Bradley and Jenna were safely barricaded in the house on the hill.

I heard a heartrending cry from the grass-tunnels. Racing forward, I saw half a dozen zombies outside the Livingwood House, tearing at Faye's clothing, clawing at her, gnawing at her.

My bone sword couldn't cut them down fast enough; it was too heavy, too slow to match their blows. The zombies shoved me back, their growls like taunting laughter. "Faye!" I shouted, struggling against the tide.

She looked at me, her eyes growing dull as the zombies battered her again and again. "Fear not," she whispered. "Terraria... will watch over you always."

Helpless, I watched as the dryad withered away, shriveling like a dying tree before disintegrating into a cloud of green spores. "FAYE!"

Could I still be resurrected, without Faye to heal me? Could Corundia survive without a dryad? With fear in my heart, I prayed for a new dryad to come.

The tunnels had entranced me, once. There was a certain romance about a world with so many nooks and crannies, secrets around every corner.

I had dug countless tunnels to mine for clay, tin, lead, silver, and gold. I had dug tunnels connecting tunnels, a network of underground passages.

Those days were gone. Now, the tunnels only served as shortcuts for zombies and goblins, secret entrances for my enemies.

Thus, I began the long, arduous process of sealing up the tunnels. I only needed one tunnel to enter the underground, after all.

In the village, I sealed off one of the grass tunnels and connected the other to my basement. I filled in pits where I'd mined out mineral veins, removed unneeded ropes; any unnecessary crevice was eliminated.

Four, five, six levels under the village; I reduced them to three. One under my basement, leading to the underground river. One further down the underground river, connecting to the east hill's tunnel. One where soil met bedrock, leading straight into the caverns.

As for the actual entrances to the underground? Only three remained near the village: the original tunnels under the west and east hills, and that first door in my basement.

Meteorites dropped from the sky. One landed in the snow; another in the valley before the Dungeon. Though tempted to investigate, I willed myself to focus on the tunnels.

One night, I got stranded out in the desert.

In my haste, I dropped my bone sword, leaving me with just the chain-knife. But to my amazement, it was a very effective weapon; it stopped the zombies in their tracks, causing some to recoil.

Even if the knife didn't have the raw power of my bone sword, it was swift and deadly as a miniature thunderbolt; it punctured their flesh with ease. And so it replaced my bone-sword.

Jenna moved into Faye's livingwood house; Bradley moved into the hilltop house. I combined the brick rooms under the hilltop house into one room; Fantasy claimed it as her bar.

One morning, I woke up to find a new dye trader in the grass-cave. Apart from being Ahirom's replacement, he had a letter for me-a letter from my sister.

"Dear Scheil," the letter read. "You're somewhere in Terraria, right? Tell me something I don't know. Your sister, Frosti." I wasn't quite sure what it meant; so for now, I kept it stored away.

The dye trader's name was Philosir. "You bear the sign of the fox," he told me as I helped him move into Ahirom's house. "Wily and cunning, you shall overcome your enemies through trickery and evasion."

More villagers meant more people to watch over. I faced a paradox: if I sent the villagers to safety, I woudl be alone. If I kept them nearby for company, they would perish in the goblin attacks.

"It must be hard to fight goblins when they strike from two directions," remarked Frederick when I asked him for his thoughts. "I wish I had a stronger weapon you could use, but all I have is basic equipment, I'm afraid."

Thanking him, I next went to Bradley. "Sometimes I wonder," he said wistfully. "Are goblins and humans so different, that we can't live in harmony?"

From meteorite and platinum, I forged new armor-meteor on the interior, platinum on the exterior. This was the first time I'd replaced my outer armor since crafting lead armor.

Down in the caverns, I heard a cry for help. Climbing up onto a steep stone ledge, I discovered a tied-up goblin. "Human! Please help," he begged me. "I've been sitting her for so long that I've probably lost circulation."

Taking out my chain-knife, I cut his ropes and helped him to his feet. "Who are you?" I asked, frowning. He wore glasses and a lab coat-definitely not attire I associated with goblins.

"Fahd! Fahd the tinkerer," he told me happily. "My people called me a traitor and left me here for dead, see. Glad you found me!" Wiping his glasses, Fahd squinted up at me. "You're an adventurer, right? You have somewhere I can crash?"

So far, goblins had done nothing but wreck villages and kill the people under my protection. They were raiders and killers, violent and greedy. Right now, I found myself before a goblin with more intelligence than many humans.

I wasn't quite sure how to bring him up to the surface-I always used my hook when exiting the caverns, but there was no way I could carry Fahd up that way. Besiddes, I wasn't sure how the others would react to a goblin's prescence. Instead, I brought him to the cabin in the mushroom cave.

The cabin was several times its original size now. I designed it after Frosti's underground apartments, with eight rooms insulated with compact mushroom and a mudstone exterior. Behind one room, I set up a workshop for Fahd.

Construction was not easy. I had no quick way to travel between the village and the mushroom cavern. There was also a giant pit right in front of the cabin's front door, a gaping hole that reached down into other caverns.

Part of the lake flowed under the cabin, forming a mushroom garden of sorts. I soon found, however, that bats and giant worms liked to gather in the garden. After draining that part of the lake, I expanded it into a six-tier farm and walled it up to keep out the wildlife.

"So what can you do?" I asked Fahd as he plopped down on his new mushroom bench. "You said you're a tinkerer, right?"

He nodded, grinning. "You know how when you craft a weapon or tool, it might not always turn out perfect, right? Well, I have the tools to reforge your various implements-at a price, of course."

Fahd's workbench was the size of a square table, with a red tablecloth and several short shelves. "I can also upgrade your equipment by combining your accessories," said the goblin cheerfully, patting his workbench. "That way, you can carry more stuff."

Over the next few days, I made frequent trips to the mushroom cavern to check up on Fahd. This wasn't as easy as it sounded; I was still getting used to my reduced tunnel system. I rarely used the west hill's tunnel now.

Somehow, word got out that I was sheltering a goblin. "A goblin? Are you out of your mind?" demanded Reginald one morning. "Doesn't matter how intelligent they are; they're all bloodthirsty killers, all of them!"

"If what happened with our predecessors is any indication, goblins are bad luck," pointed out Philosir from his dye vat. "Even one is a bad omen, friend."

Fahd, though, seemed unconcerned. "They'll get used to me, I'm sure," he told me. "Once they understand who I am and what I can do, they won't feel so strongly."

But the goblin attacks escalated after I discovered Fahd. "You harbor a traitor," the goblin captains would accuse me as they led their chanting squads into the village. "Surrender him, or perish."

During one attack, I left the village, hoping to draw the goblins away; I raced across the lakes and into the tundra. "Guido!" I shouted as I reached the snow-tower, goblins in hot pursuit. I pounded on the front door furiously. "Open up!"

Grumbling, the painter opened the door for me-and a hail of arrows flew past me, striking Guido and flinging him against the far wall.

He'd been living here, all alone. I never got to know him well enough to mourn for him, but it was another meaningless death-another death I was responsible for.

I became more determined to seal the tunnels. Even with Jenna's expertise and quick response time, it was only a matter of time before someone else died.

Acting on advice from the books, I dug a long shaft from my basement into the cavern layer, down to the mushroom cavern.

Bats and giant worms flew out from the walls every ten feet or so, often causing me to lose my grip on the rope. It also didn't help that I would tunnel down into a water pocket, causing the tunnel to flood.

I tunneled into the mushroom cavern on the far side of the lake from the hotel, spanning the lake with a bridge made from mushrooms. The village's evacuation route was complete-or so I thought.

Fahd wasn't alone in the cabin. I heard a voice-a female voice, cool and refreshing, like snow-melt trickling down the thick bark of a boreal tree. "We can cover it up, seal it over; but unless we confront fear directly, it simply festers and grows," said the voice. "You understand, don't you?"

I entered to find Fahd and a dryad sitting next to a campfire. "You must be Scheil," said the dryad, getting to her feet, her eyes glowing slightly. "I am Tatiana, newly assigned to Corundia. Lady Elysia sends her regards."

Something in Tatiana's voice made me wonder if we had already met-but of course, I must have been under her protection since Faye's death. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Tatiana," I told her, shaking her hand. "Come on-I'll show you a good house on the surface."

"Wait!" called Fahd, getting up. I looked to him, surprised. "If you don't mind-could I come to the surface, too?" He waved around the cabin. "Not that this place isn't great, of course-but I'd like to live where the others live."

There was just one problem with the evacuation route: The villagers never evacuated of thier own volition. They refused to leave unless I led them down to the mushroom cabin in person.

Considering that the goblins were fixated on me, evacuating the villagers in person would defeat the purpose of evacuation. Still, I kept the cabin-hotel's rooms furnished, hoping it might serve a purpose someday.

I brought Tatiana to the house Rose had carved out of a Living Tree-a thing of fenceposts and flowerpots. A Living Tree was the natural habitat of a dryad, after all, right? Plus, it served as a gatehouse to the desert-and to the Crimson.

Though I was worried about how Reginald would react, Fahd had his heart set on living on the floating island. "I've always dreamed of living in the clouds," he told me as he set up his workbench. "Safe and enclosed on the inside, but open to the heavens on the outside!"

Still, with the evacuation chute a failure, I was running out of options. Even with the chain-knife, even with my armor upgrades, the village's defenses weren't suited for goblin raids.

The problem, I finally realized, was that there were too many vantage points-too many places for goblins to stand. Too many bridges and staircases connected the rooftops; the buildings were too densely packed together.

Most troubling of all was Frederick's house. I built that house for Alfred on a tiny mass of floating land that had several ledges under the house and next to the tower. Goblins could easily gather inside and atop the grass-cave, and I wouldn't be able to stop them.

Experience told me that the only way to overcome the goblins was to force them to come from one direction. In other words... I faced my most challenging project yet.

I fled. I ran out past Tatiana's house and across the desert, into the Crimson. And I kept running, chain-knife swinging... until I reached the crimson forest.

Shadewood trees towered over me with flesh-like, stringy branches; thick grass reached into the bloody water with red, creeping tendrils. Clambering over the gleaming, bloody rocks, I stared out over the scarred landscape.

Stripes of fleshy, fingerlike red grass gave way to sprawling fronds and poison-tipped shrubbery, gnarled red trees with bushy, bright-green leaves. The Crimson petered out at the edge of a great chasm, where the waters ran not red but teal, where the jungle's mysteries waited in the depths.

All around me, I could feel the power of the jungle-rising, rippling, its sights set on me. I felt the fury of nature in its rawest form, stirring to strike at me.

Muddy jungle grass squishing under my boots, I beheld Terraria in its savage, concentrated state with awe-with amazement and fear.

This was why I couldn't yield. Why I couldn't surrender Corundia and all I'd built to my enemies. Terraria needed me-and I needed Terraria.