Hey yall, sorry for the short hiatus. I went on vacation to Europe and had no time to write. I think my writing might be a little off since I haven't done it in a while, but I hope you can nevertheless enjoy.

Thanks as always for reading!

Armour: None

Weapon: Arkhalis

Acc(0/12):

Health: (10/400)

...

Again.

It'd happened again.

It happened, and despite everything, The Terrarian couldn't help but feel darkly amused about it.

This was just...too familiar - to be surrounded on all sides by enemies. To be conspired against, to be the subject of elaborate schemes, to be mobbed and attacked - and to not understand why any of it was happening.

Stupid... this is surely what it means to be stupid.

Was this simply the course of things? Hadn't this happened to him time and time again? In the very beginning, all the creatures of the world seemed to want him dead... he didn't know why. But neither did it bother him very much. They killed him, he killed them. That was the long and the short of it...

And then one day, after killing an enormous eyeball, he returned home and was blown into the sky by a bomb! Why had that happened? (He couldn't recall) who had arranged that? (The faces were foggy) He was set upon by an explosive and The Guide had instructed him to flee to The Crimson, where... where he fought upon that scarlet plain. Struggling for his very life... and then... and then...

...

And then The Guide had lured him into the depths. That man had driven him deep into the pit and split himself apart, shedding his mortal form to burst forth as a horrendous monster! An Ambush! The Guide, his various schemes having failed, sought to kill him by his own hand. There he was in all his terrible glory, with teeth as tall as oaks, and his body stretching from one end of the cavern to the next. He bellowed and he roared and they did battle... And The Terrarian fought until he cut down his own father. He wept as he and tore out his black heart.

...Why? Why did he do that?! I don't know...

And it didn't end. The Guide returned and he did it again. The Terrarian's poor heart was so beset with grief and longing that he'd had become a pathetic weeping wretch. In weakness he was once more lured into the depths. Through trickery he was slain - his guts flung out of his body and smashed to paste against the temple walls. He didn't know why The Second Guide sicced The Golem on him. He didn't know...

Why am I so vehemently despised?

But what he did know was It wasn't enough. The Guide did not rest. He returned A Third time to cut him open! He crushed every bone in his ribcage and played havoc with his innards and most certainly would have slain him had The Terrarian not slain him first. Why did The Guide hate him? Why did he seek to slay him in body and soul? Was his existence so vile, was his nature so aberrant that he must be killed on sight? Why? Why? Why? From the very moment he opened his eyes, from the day he met The Guide - henceforth his life was nothing but hardship after hardship.

He schemes against me, even from the depths of the grave...

It... it must all be The Guide's fault.

Everything has gone wrong because of him.

Had The Guide bewitched the creatures of the earth to attack him on sight?

Had he caused the residents of The Compound to turn against him, to sever his limbs and cast him to The Crimson?

And now... even from beyond the veil of death, The Guide's power remained. That great unseen enemy which schemed to crush him, to kill him, to steal away every good thing The Terrarian dared lay claim to. Oh - if only The Guide had never found him that first day!

...

I won't let him win.

His adversary, the enemy to his soul... The Terrarian would never allow him to win.

Because he hated The Guide like he'd never hated anything before.

(gggck)

He looked around with his single eye, and he hated everything. He hated that cold blue sky, staring down at him is if he were naught but a vile insect. He hated the wispy aloof clouds which passed him by, casting disgusted glances before disappearing over the horizon. Those trees which stretched up and over him, mocking and branching in like a cage - like the walls of an arena... and all these vermin who had parlayed with that traitorous man! This throng of mockers laughing and guffawing and kicking and hurling insults upon him. This was The Guide's doing. These were men and women who had listened to his hateful plans and sought to participate in them! Pirates! They beat him and plucked him and sought to tear him asunder! They invaded his home and they treated him dreadfully. He'd been clothed in naught but the cuts and bruises so graciously lavished upon him, his skin splotched crimson and purple, his teeth broken, his limbs turned in ways they ought not bend. His bones were still soft and shattered readily beneath their boots - and shatter him they did, even as he hung by the blade in his throat.

*Thunk*

"Uncle! Are you okay!"

(roaring)

...

There was a knife in his throat.

A woman held the other end of it. A woman with bright orange hair and a limp in her step. They were nose to nose, and The Terrarian observed her dispassionately with his single eye as he slowly slid off her blade. Had she intercepted him as he lunged for The Pirate Captain's head? Had she put her own life on the line to preserve The Guide's plans?

(roaring)

The throng was howling and writhing now. They drew blades from their scabbards and plunged them through his back. Somebody chopped off his sword hand. Somebody else cut open his belly. He was being butchered. He was dying. He was dying again.

And it didn't matter.

Because In a few days, he'd be back - whole and new, ready to once more battle The Guide and his cohorts. Today, his throat was slit. Tomorrow, he would slit The Guide's throat. If, next time, he were burned alive, he would burn those that dared lay a finger on him. If he was drowned, perhaps? Frozen to death? Torn to pieces? Well... he had been taught to kill. Everything The Guide did to him - he could do it right back.

And if The Guide hated him so much that he had desired to crush him over and over, The Terrarian would do the same. He had killed The Guide three times now... and The Guide had killed him twice. This had become their own personal war - a hectic little hell just for the two of them...where they would kill, and hate, and die, then kill each other once more - again and again and again...

...

He was entirely numb now; cold and tingling all over, from the tips of his fingers to the roots of his teeth. His hearing had vanished, as it often did in the throes of death, and blackness began to bloom behind his eyes. He couldn't feel much of anything anymore. He faintly registered the blows raining down upon him, but knew they were of little consequence. He shut his eyes and ground his teeth, allowing the hate to stew and fester - the rage to bubble and strain.

Today he died.

Tomorrow he would live...

And once more, he would stand to play his role in this brutal charade.

By the time The Flying Dutchman's upper deck erupted into a cacophony of shouts and clanging, The Party Girl knew she had best take what she needed and - quite literally - 'jump ship'.

Because - although she would like nothing more than to be chauffeured out of this little hellhole in the relative comfort of the ship's cargo hold - The Party Girl knew that if she arrived to Draedon's doorstep empty handed, she would promptly be handed over to CC Central, and CC Central would immediately lop her head off. Her only chance of survival was to fulfill her end of the deal with The Zoologist.

(Captain! Are you alright!)

(Did that mangy rat getcha?!)

(Kill the bastard!)

Now The Zoologist was known to be a prissy, easily annoyed, and unpleasant - but her position as Draedon's assistant granted her far more power and influence than her personality merited. She was a tremendously intelligent person, yes, but she was of weak mental constitution. There were rumors she had somehow managed to convinced herself that the bio-weapons she was oh-so-very skilled at creating were all for the benefit of humanity... and weren't used to destroy everything they were pointed at.

This delusional Bitch better hold up her end of this deal...

Clearly, The Zoologist was unstable. And clearly, only a fool would rely upon her... And - to make matters worse - there was technically no clean cut 'deal' at all!

The whole affair was rather foggy and unclear. The Mechanic had messaged The Zoologist and requested an extraction. The Zoologist has replied with something The Party Girl was not privy to. Then The Monster Knight had chopped off The Mechanic's head, and the escort team had never arrived (or maybe they did, and The Monster Knight lopped off their heads too.) She hadn't gotten any further responses from The Zoologist since, but the woman had expressed interest in The Monster Knight. She was also high enough on the totem pole to easily keep The Party Girl's head attached to her body if she pulled the right strings. Still... the moment The Party Girl arrived outside Draedon's Lab, there was nothing stopping The Zoologist from from taking the scientific sample and having her killed anyways.

And thus, in doing this, she was casting herself upon the mercy of pretentious and neurotic fox-woman who made it her career to conduct gut churning experiments upon innocent test subjects.

...fuck.

But alas, these were the depths that The Party Girl had been driven to - that she had been forced to place her life in the hands of such a fickle person. She really didn't like it, but then again, she hadn't liked much of anything for the past month. Lady luck had a sick habit of spitting in her face, and after years of this nonsense - The Party Girl had grown used to it. If she ever hoped to return to her previous station, serving the glorious empire as one of Yharim's CC - she hadn't any other choice. All she could do was escape this ship - collect The Monster Knight when he respawned - walk across The Crimson and pray The Zoologist would find The Monster Knight interesting enough to merit sparing her life.

*trample-splatter*

(Hey, stop stomping 'im. Where'd he go?)

(What the hell, he's gone? No way in hell he escaped.)

The Party Girl sighed as she listened the the sound of flesh squeaking against the floorboards. Even if she weren't able to see The Knight's heat signature deform and dissolve, from the noise alone - she knew he'd been killed. Not that it meant much of anything to him. This Compound was a very strange place. It was a place where not much of anything stayed dead. In a day or two - The Monster Knight would re-appear in that very specific spot where the patio used to be, weakened and hardly able to move, much less fight her off. If all went according to plan (most likely, it wouldn't, but one could hope) she would simply pick him up and walk all the way home.

"Hey, don't worry Miss! We'll be getting you home soon!"

The Party Girl blinked and cut her gaze to the woman who had just cheerfully addressed her. She was a bubbly young lady wearing a tophat and bedecked with all manner of polished brass trinkets... not somebody one would expect to see on a pirate ship - not that anyone expected to see pirate ships nowadays. As a member of the Clandestine Corps - The Party Girl had a cursory knowledge of the various threats that occasionally harassed the empire. She knew the original pirates had abandoned the sky not long after The Resplendent Phoenix began to patrol. The Great Jungle Dragon had burned ship after ship after ship until there wasn't a single flying tinderbox floating amongst the clouds.

But strange things happened in This Compound all the time. She took the oddity into stride. After all, getting kidnapped by pirates was far, far preferable to waiting for The Monster Knight to regain enough strength to burst out of his home and either slaughter them or trim the grass. Or both, for that matter. He often followed murder with janitorial duties.

It would be amusing if I weren't stuck in the middle of it...

And to make things even more ridiculous, these 'pirates' didn't seem to be pirates at all! These bastards were wearing costumes! Or, at least some of them were. About a third of the 'crew' were dressed like a typical operators of the Thieves' Guild. Another third had added a tricorn or a bandanna to their getup... and the final third had fully committed to the bit - having drawn on scars with markers, attached fake gold earrings to their earlobes, and sported eye-patches and ill-fitting costume beards. Had the whole lot of them not been wielding very real bayonets and muskets, The Party Girl would have mistaken them for a gaggle of university drunks.

"I'm The Steampunker, and according to my Squad Leader - who is The Pirate Captain's niece, by the way - so you know it's true - we're all here to rescue you. So don't panic, okay? Just relax and we'll get you back to the Capitol."

The young woman interrupted her introspection with a sunny smile. When she didn't respond, the woman's grin faded a bit. A hint of worry crept into her expression.

"Um. That... that guy wasn't your friend, was he?"

The Party Girl paused for a moment, considered, then put on her most bitter expression. She needed to escape this place, and hopefully shedding crocodile tears would help. With far more theatrical flair than she thought she had in her, the hardened CC agent broke down into a bout of very genuine looking tears.

"The Knight! He... he helped me s-survive this place. For a month we were stuck here- trying to survive. Every day we... we..."

The Party Girl shook her head and attempted to wipe her nose on the curtain-turned garment (she'd gotten drunk the night before, and saw fit to clothe herself in the window's dressings) but - obviously - was unable to due to the ropes that pinned her arms to her body. The Steampunker, upon seeing this, leapt to her feet and immediately began helping her untie the ropes. She spoke sympathetically as she did so.

"I'm so sorry... It must have been a case of mistaken identity. The Thieves' Guide said they recognized your friend as a person who killed many of their troops - but I know he could never do something like that! I..."

The Steampunker hesitated a moment, as if suddenly realizing she was giving out far more information than she should. In response, The Party Girl began crying harder. Honestly, it felt good to cry a bit after all that... and it also caused The Steampunker to let down her guard. The woman finished untying her ropes and continued to offer all manner of juicy tidbits of information.

"I knew somebody who looks just like your friend. Maybe they're related. I'm not sure - but he had white hair, and eyes like a dragon's. He saved me life a few times, and then he killed our patrol leader. I thought he was a spy - but it turned out, he was actually The Her-... a hero, I mean. I-I don't really know where I'm going with this bu-"

*Thunk*

The Party Girl wasn't particularly old - but she certainly was an old fighter. She was a combat veteren no matter which way you looked at her, and it felt amazing that her strength actually meant something against the regular citizens of the empire. She had spent so much time under The Monster Knight's thumb, she'd almost forgotten that she was fucking strong. She had forgotten what it felt like to gloat in her own power... but alas, there was little time for that. She might be strong, but she wasn't strong enough to fight a hundred pirates.

Ughhh! (choke) Ahh! L-let me outt!

And besides. She didn't particularly dislike The Steampunker. She was a kind girl, if not crippling naïve and empathetic. A quick strike to the solar plexus collapsed the young woman to the floor - where she lay gasping and clutching her stomach. Before she could make much of a ruckus, The Party Girl quickly bound her hands behind her, stripped her of her outer garments, and - after bundling her in the curtain - tossed her into a nearby treasure trunk. Her allies would find her soon enough, but The Party Girl would have ample time to impersonate her and escape unnoticed.

The King's city was a beautiful place.

It was clean and shining, filled with happy people and flush with the wealth of the empire.

Happy families caroused through the streets, all well dressed and highly educated. The Bakers too, and The Chocolatiers, and The Bankers and The Street Sweepers and The Cooks and The Plumbers... Everyone who lived in The King's city was a happy citizen. None lived in misery and squalor. None had ailing disabled children. None had strange diseases and cancers. None lived on the streets, begging for their bread... no.

All of the undesirables were dealt with.

Excised.

Removed from the fabric of The King's city.

And if one had the courage to ask, 'to where do these people disappear?'... well, they would more than likely be shown firsthand - as The Empire did not tolerate this sort of dissent. It was a perfect system. It was a merciless system. A system that had neither pity nor compassion - even towards small, orphaned children.

-kzzt- *Identifying. Male, 11 years old, malnourished, but otherwise in good condition - Apprehended for analysis.*

"Ouch! Put me down you flippin' robot! What are you doing! Help! Somebody!"

Especially towards small orphaned children, for Draedon found children worked best in his many projects, and Project Nephelim was especially hungry for living material. Indeed, the mission to 'Create A Terrarian' had put such a heavy strain upon The City's state sponsored orphanages, that they been all but emptied. And The streets had never been cleaner! There wasn't a single beggar on the street corners. There were no vagrants, or refugees, or anyone that didn't belong. For the 'undesirables' had never been so ruthlessly sought out. Draedon's machines searched for them the way a thirsty man searched for water.

-kzzt- *Analyzing imperial records for facial data match...*

"Let me go! Let me goo! Mister Cyborg said I can stay here! Put me down!"

They went into homes. The scoured basements. They searched tunnels and fields. Anyone who was not registered - or at least did not have some sort of fabricated ID was apprehended wholesale.

-kzzt- *no match found. You have been re-designated as Subject 576. Be proud. You are now an indispensable asset to Project Nephelim.*

Something had happened to him.

He didn't know what.

Something seemed different, no. Everything was just slightly off.

He was slightly off.

...

Because he was damn sure when he walked into his office this morning after the Autumn Festival's break, the first thing he saw was memorial to himself - flowers, portrait and all. He'd stood there flabbergasted, staring at all the cards scattered on his desk, bottles of expensive wine, expensive chocolates, lots of letters... What the hell? Had the place not been packed with his coworkers, all dressed in black and looking stupidly at him - The Guide would have accused them of playing some tasteless joke.

But for as rude as rehearsing a living person's memorial was, such a thing was not particularly off-colour for the pretentious snobs of The Capitol's Magical University. Staff and students alike, that bunch of snooty bastards always considered him an 'other' because he lacked magical capacity. So the fake funeral? That wasn't the strange part.

The strange thing was - he blinked.

And then the memorial was gone.

The flowers had been cleaned up. All the cards and chocolates scattered on his desk had disappeared...

And the memory of such things... they began to fade.

He, who never forgot a single thing from the day he was born until now, stood there in abject horror as the entire incident was wrested from him and blotted into obscurity. He... he had forgotten it! He had forgotten something terribly important, and he hadn't a single clue what it was! Indeed, he was left with only a feeling of loss and confusion of the likes he'd never felt before. Thoroughly panicked, The Guide quickly addressed the veritable crowd in the room with him. They too appeared just as confused as he felt.

"W-what! What happened! What's happening?!"

The responses came in low mutters and murmurs. Justifications and poor explanations were tossed around until the conversation became heated. The Old Wizard (who The Guide knew hated him) was standing near the office window, dressed all in black and holding a cup of his vile smelling tea. Even he looked confused.

("Huh? Why is everyone here? Were we doing something?")

("Are you in my office? Why are you in my office?")

("This isn't your office, you old dolt! This is my office! Wait-... you're dressed in black? Did somebody die? What's happening?!")

There was panic. Very real panic. The type of panic that even very committed pranksters wouldn't fake just for a reaction. Yet before anyone could do much of anything, the air shimmered.

Something clicked. Something changed.

The panic was writ into obscurity... as if it had never happened at all.

And suddenly, everyone was dressed normally.

Of course... of course they're dressed normally. The Guide berated himself, wondering where the thought came from. What else would they be wearing? Why was everyone here? Some of the staff had grown frustrated with the situation and began filing out. Some remained to cast a snide remark in his direction before following suit. As she passed by, Madame Administrator asked him if he knew where The Key to The Underground Jungle Temple was - as she had lent it to him when he-

He blinked.

...

The Air shimmered and everyone fled away, their footsteps clamoring in the hallways until they faded to silence. Something changed. A pen scratched something out upon the parchment of history.

...

Something had happened to him.

He didn't know what.

Something seemed different, no. Everything was just slightly off.

He was slightly off.

He'd just arrived in his office this morning, and found the place an absolute mess. Things knocked over, papers scattered around, footprints all over the place. It was as if thirty people had barged in here just moments ago and tramped around his personal space. Did they lay traps? Maybe set up a glitter-bomb, or were hiding in wait to turn all his books into frogs? Probably.

Damn kids... I'll fail the whole lot of you.

But, as depressing as it was, this wasn't strange. Not for him. The pretentious snobs of The Capitol's Magical University liked to harass him once in a while. Staff and students alike, that bunch of snooty bastards always considered him an 'other' because he lacked magical capacity. Well, by now, The Guide had grown used to this kind of abuse. With a huff, he sauntered over to his desk, slumped into the chair, and comforted himself with thoughts of his next paycheck.

MK: Would you still love me if I was a worm?
Faze: WORM?! WHERE!? AHHHHH

MK: :'-(

The lunatics on discord (me included) have collectively agreed MK has a thicc ass