The more I read the books, the more they alluded to the ancient prescence sealed in Hell-and with each mention, the prescence became more mysterious.

Some pages called it a force of good; others, a force of evil. Some called it a being of chaos; others upheld it as the pinnacle of order.

And then, an ominous passage: "Once the spirits of light and darkness are unlesashed from the underworld, they shall consume the land."

Grass, stone, ice, sand; the Crimson hungered, yearned to permeate my world. Dangerous as it was now, the Crimson was in a weakened state. At full strength, it might easily destroy Corundia in days.

Before I waged war against the Crimson, however, I needed to know more about the ghost-figure who snatched me from death, who carried me back to the grass-cave. So I talked to Bradley, since the ghost-figure had brought him here.

"He's called a spectre," said the guide. "Spectres are responsible for recovering adventurers from the brink of death. When you fall, they bring you to safety, where the dryads rebuild your body through Terraria's essence."

"The grass-cave is Corundia's Focus, its anchor-the spawn-point, some call it. Every land has one. As long as you're in Corundia, you're spiritually bound to that place. That's why your body is reborn there-not by the spectre's choice, but because it's the only place he can bring you."

"Could I move the focus?" I asked. "Or is that impossible?"

"The Focus can't be moved, no," said the guide. "But theoretically, you could setup a temporary 'spawn-point' away from the focus. If you slept in a proper bed, your dreams would form a connection between the bed and your soul, as long as you leave the bed intact."

This was exactly what I needed to hear. "So how do I build a proper bed? I heard I needed cobwebs, but beyond that..."

"You'll need a sawmill," said Bradley, grinning and getting to his feet. "I'll help."

With the guide's help, I constructed a sawmill, from which I built a loom. Setting up the loom next to the dye vat, I wove my large collection of cobwebs into silk.

"Hey, Bradley?" I asked after a moment. "What happens if I run out of cobwebs?"

He looked sheepish. "You'd have to get more from the underground, of course. I know cobwebs aren't particularly common, but you could also harvest fresh spider-webs from spider nests."

That was how I came to think of silk as one of my most precious commodities.

I built three beds in total: a wooden bed for the tower, a mushroom bed for the caverns, and a cactus bed for the desert cabin. With the third bed, I now had a base from which to fight the Crimson. With Bradley promising to keep the other townspeople happy, I set out for the desert.

Though Tatiana had only recently moved into the Living Tree, I summoned her to the desert cabin. "I know why the dryads are watching over me," I began. "You want me to cleanse this world, right? From the Crimson?"

Goblins and blood moons had distracted me from my other purpose-to purge Corundia from the Crimson. This was what Faye had wanted of me, right? Goblins and zombies came and went; but the Crimson was an unknown quandry, an ever-present danger in the vein of the Corruption.

Where Faye had been mystical, Tatiana was scientific. "Our purification powder contains certain compounds that disrupt metabolism in Crimson or Corruption microbes," she said from the seat across from me. "It's perfectly biodegradable for normal or Hallowed grass, however."

Eagerly, I bought a large stack of purification powder from her, casting it over the desert, driving the blood from its dunes. In less than a day, over half of the crimson desert had been purified.

But then it occured to me: I was only purifying the surface! Tunneling under the surface, I discovered that the purification powder reached only fourteen feet down at most; everything beneath that was crimsand.

Warding off face monsters with my chain-knife, I dug down into the desert at the place where golden sand ended and bloody desert began, down into the sand until I reached dirt, casting powder over every patch of crimsand I saw.

I soon learned it was unwise to dig just beneath the desert-heavy tons of sand would pour down on me, pressing on me, smothering me. But I needed to find some way to purify the desert-and that meant being able to reach the desert's depths.

Tunneling into the earth, I cast more powder over veins of gleaming crimstone, the Crimson's blood-filaments shriveling away. In the dirt, I saw crimson grass seeds like miniature eyeballs staring at me, watching my every move.

As my supply of powder began to dwindle, I relied on bombs to blast open the blood-slicked stone; my pickaxe, after all, couldn't even dent them. With the bombs, I eventually blasted open a large, spacious tunnel.

Actually, the tunnel was an accident-I was throwing bombs into a narrow crevice, only for every last one to bounce out and down to the floor. Eventually, I coated a bomb with gel, and managed to stick it into the crevice.

The Crimson's bloody scent wafted in and out of the tunnel; it was stronger near a pool of water, but completely undetectable by the opposite wall. Perhaps I could dig a perimeter around the Crimson? I just needed to dig a path from the desert under the Crimson, up into the jungle. Simple, really.

Then a swarm of bats emerged from the dark and knocked me into the red water. Coughing, spluttering, I quickly sank under the surface.

Somewhere in my panic, Rose's lessons came back to me. Fumbling with my pickaxe, I hacked at the rock surface, making a hole barely large enough for me with a small air pocket.

When I had regained my breath, I began to expand the hole, chunks of stone dropping into the water around me. I tunneled into the stone, away from the Crimson and its grim stench.

Cavern to cavern, tunnel to tunnel, I explored the underground beneath the Crimson. I was alarmed to see patches of red growth with bushy stalks like white teeth; but fortunately, it was only moss.

I could hear the screech of bats in the distance. Not cave bats-jungle bats. I heard running water swishing through thick, bushy fronds, the shuffle of skeletal footsteps through jungle undergrowth.

I tunneled into a muddy jungle hollow, sunlight streaming through the vines overhead. In front of me, I saw a gnarled mahogany tree with rich, red bark. I stared at the tree. Was I already close to the surface?

Unlikely. Up on the surface, there was a steep gorge with waterfalls trickling down through the tangled, forbidding canopy, separating the Crimson-infected jungle from the healthy jungle. If I could somehow get from this hollow to that gorge, the Crimson could be completely contained.

While lost in my thoughts, a pair of leafy jaws tore at the back of my leg painfully. Whirling around, I saw a man-eater anchored by a vine to a distant rock, moving in and out of reach. A hail of jungle bats swarmed me, slamming into me with alarming strength, tossing me around like a ragdoll.

As my chain-knife tore through their tiny bodies, I heard a rising buzz. Scrambling for safety, I lashed out at a large hornet swooping down on me, releasing a steady stream of stings at me. As the stings sank between my chainmail links, I felt the man-eater strike me from behind again, and I crumpled to the ground.

With my last supplies of meteorite, I forged a hamaxe. Combining hammer and axe functions, this would allow me to reduce the number of tools I carried around.

I built a fourth house with a fourth bed in the jungle, next to the great gorgd that separated it from the Crimson. I moved frequently between the desert and jungle bases during my little war on the Crimson. The more bases I had, the better. Right?

I settled on a simple, but extremely tedious plan. Foot by foot, I would purify the crimsand on the edge of the pit, mine out the clean sand to expose more crimsand, and deposit the sand behind me. Slowly, but surely, I would move along the desert floor, cleansing it as I went.

One day, I discovered four or five blood-crawlers waiting for me in the pit under the desert, plus a few crimerae. Clinging to the wall by my grappling hook, I frantically swung my chain-knife again and again at them until they stopped moving.

There were no mysteries about how they got into the pit. I didn't leave any crimstone exposed if I had to leave the pit, usually, but last time I'd left in too much of a hurry. As the blood-cells of the Crimson, so to speak, it made sense that blood-crawlers would be able to emerge wherever the Crimson was exposed to the air.

In fact, I'd accidentally unearthed a crimson grass seed that had almost swallowed the pit completely, even uprooting a sunflower I'd planted to hold the Crimson work. So much for the detoxination power of sunflowers-or was this something specific to the Crimson?

Thanks to all the sand I'd gathered from the desert, I had a very large supply of glass. And so begsn another tedious, pointless project: I began to glass over the Crimson, every bit of crimsand and crimstone. I expanded the cavern with bombs and my pickaxe, carving out a large space underground.

My tactics prioritized conservation of powder. Once I cleansed a patch of crimstone, it was safe to remove the glass. If I missed a few deposits of crimstone, I glassed them over so as to not waste powder.

Perfect, utter containment.

I came upon an altar of congealed, bloody flesh, an eyeball woven in with bloody threads staring up to the sky. Though I was able to cleanse the crimstone around it and beneath it, the powder didn't affect it at all. My pickaxe couldn't even scratch its surface. Raising my hamaxe, I brought it crashing down.

A horrifying, bloody flash swept through me, oozing tendrils shoving the hamaxe back. My entire body shook as I sank to the ground, my blood curdling, tingling. My nose was filled with the wretched stench of infected wounds and damp scabs.

With no other options, I sealed the flesh altar in a large glass box and moved on.

Face-monsters would come bounding over the crimsand to the east, tumbling down into the pit I built a cactus wall over the pit to keep them out, but as my pit migrated across the desert, I found myself contantly having to tear down and rebuild the wall.

With my chain-knife, I cut down crimerae, blood-crawlers, and face-monsters, glassing over cavern walls as I went. As the cavern expanded, I saw the red weed retract from the pools, leaving the water pure blue.

And yet, my efforts were too small, too slow. Desperate to contain the Crimson, I began construction of a giant glass dome. Twice, I ran out of glass and had to stop for more. It was very difficult; harpies and crimerae battered me every step of the way. But after two days and two nights, the dome was complete.

But the dome was not so easy to extend underground. I could never be sure whether I had missed a corner of the Crimson, whether I was seeing crimstone or red moss. After a very long struggle, I gave up, and never built the underground dome.

Even a giant dome wouldn't be enough, once the spirits of light and dark were unleashed. I remembered Faye's stories and Alfred's past, telling of worlds consumed by Corruption in one week. If the Corruption could spread so quickly, the Crimson would surely be just as ruthless.

Somehow, the Crimson would find a way to escape this prison I'd built for it, no matter what I did. I was sure of it.

I returned to the village to find everyone in an uproar. Around the gallows, Fantasy, Frederick, Ovbere, and Philosir were bickering furiously while Reginald tried to drag Fahd up to the noose, Jenna holding hm back There was no sign of Bradley. "What's going on?" I demanded.

They all stopped and stared at me. "Scheil! Thank god you're back," called Frederick, who looked immensely relieved. "As you can see paranoia has been brewing for quite some time. Please, dispel these-this mob-"

"Paranoia, my foot!" shouted Reginald, who looked unstable as ever. He pointed at Fahd with a shaking finger. "I've had it with him. Always cooped up in that workshop of his, muttering strange words and asking strange requests. What were you thinking, letting him live here?"

That set off the others, with Philosir, Ovbere, and Fantasy agreeing hotly with Reginald, while Frederick and Jenna tried to protest. "I don't understand," I said, frowning. "What set this off?"

"Bradley's gone missing," said Fantasy disdainfully. "He volunteered to test out this freak's rocket boots this morning, and we hsven't seen him since." She sniffed and tossed her head. "Why we haven't disposed of him yet is utrerly beyond me."

"You don't know for sure he had anything to do with Bradley vanishing," I protested, but they didn't seem to hear me. In the back of my head, I felt cold, empty echoes. Another guide lost... Another friend dead.

Fahd, oddly enough, looked neither insulted nor afraid, but simply looked at us all oddly. "This is utter nonsense," said the goblin flatly. "I take all precautions for hazard detection. We would have seen or heard him if anything went amiss-"

"What's all this commotion?" We all spun around to stare as Bradley emerged from the tower, followed by a painter. He was alive!

Immediately, the guide's expression darkened as he saw Reginald. "I was afraid of this," he muttered, striding over to join us. He gave me a nod to assure me he'd deal with the townspeople. "That's enough, all of you. Let the goblin go."

Shocked, Reginald let go of Fahd, who brushed down his clothes and stood there, as if not surrounded by people begging for his blood. "Bradley, love! Where have you been?" called Fantasy, eyes wide like a doe's, her lower lip quivering. "You had us so worried-"

He silenced her with a look. "You look at Fahd, right now, all of you," ordered the guide, resting a hand on Fahd's shoulder. "What do you see? A goblin? An animal? Some of you can look past your differences and recognize his brilliance. But the rest of you-" He looked at Reginald coldly. "This goblin is innovative. A genius-a prodigy. More than I can say for you."

Ovbere and Fantasy faltered; their resolve was cracked, dissolving. Reginald still looked furious, but at a sideways glance from Jenna, he turned and strode away, followed by a fuming Philosir. A moment later, Ovbere and Fantasy both retreated as well.

Frowning after Reginald, Jenna approached Fahd and examined him. "No broken bones, might need something warm to drink," she concluded. The nurse glanced to Frederick. "You can cover that, right?"

The merchant nodded. "Nothing on me right now, but I'll check my stock," he replied, looking perfectly calm, though his voice cracked. On the rooftop bridge, the painter watched us silently, neither approving nor disapproving.

Bradley gestured for the painter to join us. Now that the mob was dispelled, he didn't quite seem so stern, so imposing. "Sorry I've been gone all day," he said with a laugh. "This is Bruno; he knew Marco from art school. He's Corundia's new painter."

We shook hands with Bruno. "Hoping to last a bit longer than my predecessors, of course," he said, nodding. "I look forward to working with you."

We brought Fahd to Jenna's house-Faye's old house-after which Frederick arrived with a bowl of soup. "Drink up," said the merchant, handing it to the goblin. "Don't worry about the price-you can pay me in the morning."