Story The Emissary

mildflower

Terrarian
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The Dryad’s face scrunched up.

“No, it’s different with uniforms. Are you the Wall of Flesh?”

He paused, turning the question over in his mind. He knew she knew he was. She knew everything about Terraria; it was why they got along so well… So there must have been some ulterior motive behind it. Some sort of conclusion she was pushing him towards.

“Of course. But I’m also the Guide.”


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Summary:

The Hero has, through an irrevocable (and largely accidental) series of events: defeated the Wall of Flesh, broken the dam keeping cosmic pandemonium at bay, and unleashed an infantry of new monsters, demons, and lesser gods onto the world. This was fine. This was part of the plan.

Training them over the past year and a half had been difficult in several ways, but the Guide knew better than to think of them as ill-prepared for what the new world was going to throw at them. Being slain by them during their final trial had been harder, but that was where his job ended anyways, and he could slink off back to the Underworld and retire from his Guide duties—return to an easy existence of keeping its demonic government in line, reading quality literature, and drinking tea.

(That was what the Hungry were for, after all.)

... Except he doesn't, because for some inexplicable reason, the forces that be decided that he was worth bringing back to the surface world, in a human vessel, to act as the Emissary between it and the Underworld.

The Hero is burning with righteous betrayal, the townsfolk are ready to inquisition him, and the great bureaucracy of destiny has decreed that he cannot return until the Moon Lord is put in the ground for good.

This was not part of the plan.




OR:

Being human has a steep learning curve, and despite being all-knowing, the Guide has a lot to learn.

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AO3 link - The Emissary - Chapter 1 - Mildflower - Terraria [Archive of Our Own]

Ff.net link - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13828931/1/The-Emissary

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Chapter List

1 - Sometimes Dead is Better







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Author's Notes (very skippable):


Hi, Terraria forum! Someone gave me the idea to post the writing I do for this AU over here, and I figured some of you may get a kick out of watching me make my characters suffer this story unfold.

Remember all of the theories floating around that the the Guide was actually the Wall of Flesh? I decided to put my own spin on it in prose form. This is a story about sacrifice, consequence, and the complex relationships formed by its characters/the NPCs. It's also about the weight a predetermined destiny places upon a person, killing a god (or ten), and the morality of self-sacrifice and lies of omissions. It is told largely from the perspective of the Guide, who has been with the Hero since the very beginning, known about what their destiny really entails from the very beginning, and has been very guilty of hiding truths from them (from the very beginning).

The ideas behind it were created pre-2019 lore update, so I'm afraid that it doesn't line up perfectly with it. There is no order of the guide, and the Dryad race isn't quite as heroic as they were in Re-Logic's official canon. But hey, that just means you won't need any background knowledge to read this as long as you've played the game!

I hope someone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. I'm sorry if I've broken any forum conventions; I read all of the rules twice but I'm very new here. Please let me know if I have.

-Mildflower






 
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1 - Sometimes Dead is Better


Present day - Written in normal text.
Flashbacks - bolded.

(Sorry. I can't figure out how to un-italicize copy-pasted text.)


Humanity’s first sin was trust.


Before townships were erected on every corner of the globe, before civilization rocked in its cradle, before humanity drank from the pond of war, there was only a garden and a tree of apples.


Eve sunk her teeth into one because the serpent told her to, and she trusted her creator, but she trusted it too. Adam ate one from the palm of Eve’s hand—because he lived in the garden, but he needed her to live.


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The Guide was in Hell.




That wasn’t a metaphor, or anything: It had finally happened. Everything he’d been working towards had come to fruition. The Hero had reached the Underworld, and challenged him in battle. The Guide doll had gone up in flames, triggering his awakening as the Wall of Flesh. He had put up a decent fight, even if his heart wasn’t in it. The Hero had won. His job was over. He had taught the Hero all they’d needed to know.




He could shed this mortal vessel like a corn husk, watch it burn and blister in the pits of the Underworld, and return to inhabiting the form he’d taken when he’d served as the sleeping dam between cosmic pandemonium and the world at large.




His job was over. Why was he respawning?


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The sunlight was blinding.




It was the Arms Dealer and the Demolitionist who hauled him from the dirt, brushing the soot from his hair and dusting his cape off with rough, jerky movements.




Oh, that was so like them, he thought, not a refined bone in their bodies.




Wait a minute. Cape—that was new.




The Guide would have helped, tried to pull himself from the ground or climb out of the grave, but there were dandelion roots catching at his shoes whenever he tried to move, and after being killed twice by the Hero in one day he was tired . He felt worse than he did the day after the Ostara The Mechanic had challenged him to a drinking contest.




The two gave a heave, and with a final tug, The Guide was pulled out of the grave he’d come back in—and, despite every attempt to avoid doing so, he flopped gracelessly onto the ground.




The grass under his cheek was a welcome feeling. Holy Hell, he would never pull weeds from his garden again. He would have stayed there if it weren’t for the stares he was receiving from the townspeople. Shakily, he pushed himself up, and it was as he wiped the last of the soot out of his eyelashes that he realized his hands were darker than they were before.




He stared up at the gathered crowd—a crowd . Whenever one of them had died and come back before, their welcoming party was usually only one or two of their closest friends, digging them up the next sunrise with a pack of ale, and a heroic death story to regale them with. It was never a crowd.




He swallowed dryly. And they never looked so hostile.




As he got to his knees, he met their gazes one by one, distantly aware that he should probably be unnerved by the amount of animosity he found there: They were all crossed arms and pursed lips. The Nurse in particular had her hand on a syringe, like she was ready to tranquilize him.




He met every pair of eyes in the crowd with a neutral expression: it didn’t make any sense for them to attack him, but if they did—well, he wasn’t going down without a fight.




After a beat of silence passed, he nonchalantly began to dust himself off, brushing ash from his shoulders, his hair, and the ornamental cloak he was wearing. As he looked down at his hands, he noticed the charcoal-colored stain that seemed to be crawling up his arms, watering his veins.





He looked back up at the crowd, beginning to legitimately feel unnerved.




The Hero was at the front and center, half bandaged, staring right back at him with cautious eyes.




“Wyatt,” they said hesitantly, “You have some explaining to do.”


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When he was pulled from the other side, he came back knowing three things:




  • There was dirt in his mouth. (Uncomfortable.)

  • He wasn't the Guide anymore.

  • Good and Evil as he’d once defined it were relative. They were nothing. There was only order, and chaos, and as it stood—order wouldn’t be around for very much longer.


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He lasted three days.




It was hard enough trying to get people to trust him before he’d shown his true colors, The Guide mused, stirring a sprig of Petunia into the cup of tea he was making. He’d never been popular, but after he came back as The Emissary the townsfolk had been avoiding him like a leper.




The Guide knew he came back different. He wasn’t a fool.




(Er, not that he was a fool beforehand.)




He knew what the cloak he’d been donning ever since he’d clawed his miserable way up from the Underworld meant. He knew what sinister wall the fuchsias of it alluded to, that the flowering golden finery atop it had teeth—he knew, that was his job .




Was. He stirred the Petunias into his tea with a perfectly reasonable amount of aggression. Was his job.




The Guide prided himself on his rationality. There was an amount of satisfaction, he argued, in compartmentalizing one’s emotions; in knowing that the experiences of sorrow and fury and joy were just that: experiences. They were as fleeting as the wind and rain and were always destined to fade into a wash, like ink into watery paper.




Emotional Repression—sorry, Compartmentalization—wasn’t the only thing he was good at. Possessing a sharp mind in tandem with the knowledge of Terraria’s inner mechanisms made him exceptionally adept at decision-making. It was him who the townsfolk went to when they had a question; when they wanted to know more about the history of the world, or how much gold a certain mob carried, or Hey, Guide, should I eat this mushroom I found in the forest?




(For the record, the answer was always no. But that didn’t stop the Angler from trying.)




For the love of god, he was a literal walking encyclopedia. He may not have been able to fire a rifle, or concoct medicines, but he knew his strengths lied in his other areas: His knowledge. His judgement. His logic.





And logically, he knew as the newborn Emissary between the cosmic forces of chaos and order, he had no choice but to accept his new role...




...But some obstinate, irrational part of him clung to what he did best: Guiding people. Studying things. And so, he shirked his duties as the Emissary in favour of curling up with a good book on the classification of magical mushrooms in the solace of his kitchen.




What? He was only…








The Emissary knocked on the wooden door of the house, hoping it wouldn’t be muffled by the rain. He had to stoop over a little to keep the book in his hands from getting wet.




“Tinkerer!”




The hour was late, and he’d have felt bad if not for the warm citrine lights glowing through the windows a product of the goblin’s own invention. He’d explained it to the Guide before: growing tired of working by the torch, he’d captured lightning in a bottle, and codified it into neat little bulbs the filaments of which would never grow dim or blow out in the wind like candlelight did.




Light Bulbs, he’d called them. The Guide wrote as quickly as possible as he explained how they worked, eager to take in all of the details, to note every mechanism down like every other ingenious machine the Tinkerer had ever built.




The Guide knocked again.




“Tinkerer! It’s Wyatt. I have your book.”




The ambient, mechanical noise that had been in the background suddenly died, and the Guide saw the familiar shadows of a pointy-eared scientist get up from the desk he was hunched over.




The Guide knocked again. Honestly, he chided the goblin internally, sitting in that position for the amount of time that he did was going to wreck his posture.




Footsteps echoed on a wooden floor. The door swung open, and the Tinkerer looked at him hesitantly.




“... Wyatt?”




The Guide waved, with a faint smile.




“The very one. Working on a new machine? At this hour? You know staying up late kills neurons.”




The Guide expected him to fire back with, ‘You’re one to talk, I bet you spent the past few hours reading that!’ or ‘I certainly do! Must be why you’re so slow on the uptake these days’, but instead, the Tinkerer was oddly quiet.




“Yes. I am. Was there something I could… help you with? A specific machine or part you’re in need of?”




Well that was… cold.




No, it was frigid, the Guide thought, laughing nervously.




“Er… Well, yes. I have the book you lent me last month.”




The Guide pulled a copy of The Goblin Sorcerer from his cloak, holding it out in front of him.




“It was fantastic, by the way. Thank you very much for trusting me with it- your taste in fiction is impeccable, as always,” the Guide rambled, “I can’t believe you managed to get through all two-thousand pages in a week. I suppose I’ll have to try harder if I want to beat your record, no?”




The Tinkerer’s ears were drooping, and his eyes burned with an odd sort of intensity.




The Guide shifted nervously.




“Is… there something wrong?”




The Tinkerer opened and shut his mouth a few times, as if he were contemplating what to say, before blurting out:





“I’m sorry, it’s just that- well, it’s just, we don’t really know for certain, if you’re... dangerous... right now.”





It took a moment for his words to sink in. The Guide’s heart fell.




“Dangerous?”




We?




The way the Tinkerer’s eyes swept over the fuchsia cloak was unmistakable.




“Wyatt- Guide- Emissary, I’m sorry if this comes across as antagonistic, because I mean this in a purely reasonable manner, but- but don’t take me for a fool. I know what that cloak stands for...”




As he pointed to the object, the Guide noticed that the Tinkerer was slowly but surely closing the door on him or perhaps, more accurately, he was trying to hide behind it.




“...And I know that you’re at least part of the reason why things have been so- so haywire, lately. Monsters are spawning that we haven’t seen before. The sun eclipsed yesterday.




By now, the warm yellow glow emanating from inside was just a sliver, silhouetting the Tinkerer and casting long shadows over his face.




Oh, no. This was the Guide had miscalculated. This wasn’t how he’d thought this would go at all.




The Tinkered continued on.




“So- I’m sorry, for rambling. I don’t care if you’re the Wall of Flesh, or a demon birthed from the Moon Lord’s forehead, or some sort of sentient meat puppet for the darker forces of the universe. The fact of the matter is, you’re holding an unprecedented amount of power, and until we- er, the townsfolk- figure out if you’ll turn that against us like you did to-”




“I didn’t want to fight the Hero.”




“Right. But until we know you’re not one of the… hostiles, you should- I should keep my distance. It’s simply a matter of common sense, to stay away from the things that could harm us. Nothing personal. You understand, right? You were always good at that.”






Wyatt. Guide. Emissary.






“...Yes. Of course. My apologies for the intrusion.”




The Guide set the book onto the porch table. His mouth was feeling dry.




“I’ll just- Leave this here, then.”









…Perhaps human wasn’t the best word for what he was. At least, not in the same way the Arms Dealer or the Nurse or the Hero were. Maybe not even in the way the Clothier was, wasn’t, and then was again. Regardless, whether monster or demon or Wall of Flesh, he was a slave to the same base desires that every other living thing in Terraria was bound to—namely, doing whatever the hell he wanted—and damn it, Magia Agaric was calling to him.




Just as he sat down at the table to do so, he heard a knocking at his door.




“Son of a-!”




The Guide swung the door open, lips pulled into a rictus.




“Yes, what is- oh. Dryad.”




Barely scraping five feet tall, most people had to crouch down to talk to her at eye level. The Guide knew better.




He angled his head down with deference. She couldn’t care less about politeness, but standing like this, she was at the perfect angle to tear his throat out with her teeth.




Which he knew she had no real qualms with doing, to most people. He shuddered.




The Dryad nodded airily, slipping past him through the doorway.






Luckily for him, the Guide was not most people.






His facial expression softened as she marched into the house, depositing her woven satchel onto his counter.




“It’s good to see you. Finally back from your last expedition?”




The Dryad made a little mhmm of affirmation as she began to root through his spice cabinet.




“It’s been a while. Two months, in case you’ve forgotten,” he reminded her, before adding “I’m glad you’re unharmed.”




She turned around at that, staring at him with a piercing eye. He met it with his own.




Don’t back down in front of a Dryad, a voice inside of him whispered. They are predatory.




“It would take a lot more than what Terraria has to offer to kill me,” she answered.




The Guide smirked, leaning against his kitchen table with a cross of his arms.




“Humble as ever, I see.”




The Dryad turned back around, pulling different wares from her bag and shuffling the contents of his cabinet around to make room for them—a sprig of Deathweed switched out with his Rosemary, Moonglow petals where his salt once was. He thought he even spotted a freshly-pulled-




“Oh!” he exclaimed delightedly, marching over to peer over her shoulder, “Is that a Fireblossom? For me?”




“It’s going into your cabinet. I believe that makes it yours, yes.”




“The gesture is appreciated. I’ve been looking for one of those, but you know how I hate dirtying my hands…” he replied, before adding uneasily “You’ve never gone to the Underworld before.”




The Dryad closed the cabinet, turning around to face him as he leaned against the counter in full. Her eyes ran down the length of his hands, stained with an infernal soot that would never come clean. He was thankful she wasn’t meeting his gaze—he was no stranger to the more frightening parts of Terraria, but the Dryad made looking right through him into a sport.




“Your hands look dirtied to me, Emissary.”




He swallowed dryly.




“It’s not actual dirt. They’re just- colored now, I suppose.” he stammered, “They were like that when they pulled me out of the ground. I can’t wash it off.”




“That’s not what I mean.”




The silence hung heavy in the air for a moment, choking whatever words he formed before they left his mouth. In spite of himself, he was rattled. How did she know?




What a stupid question, he thought, it’s the Dryad. Of course she knows.




The Dryad looked away, and whatever strange aura had filled the air dissipated as she scampered over to his fruit bowl, pulling an apple from it. She perched atop the table as she grasped it with both hands, peering at him a little wildly. He couldn’t help but be reminded of a feral little cat.




“You and the Hero,” she said as she bit into it, juices dribbling down her chin, “You did battle three days ago.”





The way her canines sunk into the skin of it was a little unsettling.




“... Yes, we did.”




“You nearly killed them.”




“They’re alive now.” he added, a touch defensively.




She licked her lips, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.




“So they are. I’m not accusing you of anything. I am only stating facts.”




Damn it. She always got him like this. The Guide drew in a breath, steadying himself. He chose his next words very carefully.




“If I had a choice. I wouldn’t have chosen… this.”




He turned around, pulling up the drapery of his cloak. He dropped it almost immediately—the tattered edges reminded him far too much of his other form. He wanted to keep as much distance between it and the Guide as possible.




“It looks kind of ridiculous, right?” he asked, rhetorically. “So much filigree and ornamentation. The gold is just tacky- and it doesn’t match anything I have in the closet. You’d think being brought back as the diplomat between the cosmic powers, I’d be entitled to choosing my own uniform.”




Some sort of weight was lifted off of his shoulders. It felt good to say it aloud to someone who understood what on Terraria he was talking about. He forgot how much he’d missed her. He wished the Dryad would spend more time in town.




Well, no, that wasn’t quite right: he wished she’d hate spending time in town a little bit less.




“A uniform’s a uniform,” she said nonchalantly. “Taking it off would be renouncing the role you play.”




He’d heard this lecture before, on clothes, when she was trying to justify why she’d walked around half-naked—though he’d had yet to reach a solid answer as to what it meant.




“Along with who I am?” he finished for her.




The Dryad’s face scrunched up.




“No, it’s different with uniforms. Are you the Wall of Flesh?”




He paused, turning the question over in his mind. He knew she knew he was. She knew everything about Terraria; it was why they got along so well… So there must have been some ulterior motive behind it. Some sort of conclusion she was pushing him towards.




“Of course. But I’m also the Guide.”




Her eyes narrowed.




“The Emissary.”




“The Emissary too.”




She turned the apple over to the uneaten side, holding it out to him in her outstretched palm. It gleamed like a brilliant red ruby in the sunlight; delicious and tempting.





“Want a bite?”




Against his better judgement, he sauntered over, and took one.


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Like the Dryad, the Guide had never placed any particular importance on names. The most they were good for was sorting things into phylogeny trees or distinguishing them from one another. The latter never really aided him—it may not be as obvious to the other townsfolk, but as the Wall of Flesh, he was always comfortably aware that everything on Terraria was made up of the same matter; the same atoms grouped together into different shapes and sizes.




As a human, he was forced to humour the concept anyways.






The Hero crouched low to the ground, eyeing the weed like it was something finer than it was. They looked ridiculous the horrid straw hat they’d insisted on weaving together was brushing the grass, and their face was basically in the dirt with how closely they were examining it.




The Guide snorted, pulling an identical straw hat down lower over his eyes. Really, it was ridiculous. They were going to get a disease down there.




“It’s just a daybloom, Hero. You don’t need to look that closely.”




He crossed his arms as the Hero yanked the flower up from its roots anyways.




The sun was leering down at them from the midday sky in a way that felt distinctly vulture-like. It was sweltering, and humid, and no matter how far he rolled his sleeves up or unbuttoned his shirt down, the air clung to his skin one of the many disadvantages of having any.




The heat had never bothered him this much before, and he’d spent the vast majority of his life in hell.




The Guide would trade every one of his carnassials to be sitting under the shade of one of the many trees surrounding the clearing than teaching a novice hero how to distinguish between herbs, but he had promised they’d go out as soon as the Hero had finished building them a house. It was an underhanded agreement: the Guide assumed the Hero would be too exhausted to do anything else in this weather once they’d finished building, and he’d be free to spend his afternoon reading, or studying the geography of the area via map, or generally doing anything that didn’t involve exerting himself physically at all.




But lo and behold: The Hero, by some providence bordering on the supernatural, was unaffected. As soon as they’d placed the last wooden block, without missing a beat, they’d excitedly asked the Guide to show them all of the flora and fauna in the surrounding forest, and the Guide was reluctantly obligated to do so.




“I’m just being thorough!” they replied, so honestly that the Guide couldn’t find it in him to chastise them further. The Hero turned around, holding the stalk up to the light. Their eyes were covered by the brim of their hat, but the Guide could see the curve of their grin, and the beads of sweat dripping down their face.




“Good job on the identification, Hero. They’re everywhere, but small enough to easily miss.”




The Hero tilted the hat up, showing their eyes—wide, and earnest, but not dull.




“Thank you kindly. What does this do, anyways?”




“Dayblooms are mostly used in potion breweries. They’re what’s known as a backbone ingredient, one that experienced alchemists will use to activate or amplify the magical essences of other ingredients. Since they’re so simple, they don’t add anything unique to a potion, but due to their uncomplicated makeup they don’t flush out the magical pulse running through Terraria like many others of their ilk.”




“Oh. So they’re like- hmm- the water you add to your tea, almost? That gets the flavour out?”




“Precisely. Think of the additive ingredients as the herbs, and the backbone ingredients as the boiling water that releases the flavours within them. There are other backbone ingredients too, like blinkroot, but those cannot be found as easily.”




The Hero looked at the Guide, and he knew what was coming.




“We are not-”




“Can you pleeeease show me the blinkroots too? Please?”




“It’s far too hot out to go-”




“But if you’d teach me now I could brew potions for us!”




“We don’t have a-”




“But having the knowledge could still be useful! Besides, you’re the one who said it’s better to get things done sooner rather than later!”




“That’s… true, but we’ve been searching for potion ingredients all day, are you not-”




“If we go, I won’t bother you about them tomorrow. And I’ll reorganize your bookshelf!”




“I’ll go if you SPECIFICALLY stay away from my bookshelf.”




“Deal!”






They found themselves in one of the deeper parts of a cave near their shelter. Predictably enough, they ended up far past the depths at which blinkroots grew. Once the Guide had pointed out their grisly, leering branches peering at them from further into the cave, the Hero had yanked them up by the roots, stuffed them into their bag, and asked the Guide to tell them the name of the vines cloistered in an alcove just ahead. When they’d gotten close enough to examine those, they’d discovered that it was already nightfall—and since they had a steady supply of torches, but very little in the means of weaponry, they’d be safer going further into the cave anyways.




They’d been on a steady descent since. He’d expected the cave system to be quiet and undisturbed, and near the surface it had been—but the lower they’d gone, the more aware he became of the susurrus of activity within. Whenever they’d pause to gaze at the massive stalactite formations, or to mine some of the minerals embedded in them, he could hear the scuttling of small, living things, the sounds of which were no longer hidden by the surface world’s wind or the echoes of their footfall. The pools of water they came across, dyed fantastic hues of green and red, were even more fascinating until they’d spotted pale, eyeless water-creatures swimming to the surface, drawn to the flames of their torches like subterranean moths.




The caves were quiet, but they weren’t still by any means: there was an ecosystem contained within its bounds, alive and active miles beneath their shelter.




He had to admit, it was resplendent, in a scientific sense.




And incredibly dangerous.




“Would it kill you to treat these ledges with a little more apprehension?!”




The Guide yelled into the darkness below the overhang he was standing on, but he doubted the Hero was paying attention. Besides, it’s not like there was much he could do: they had already leaped off of it, plunging into the unknown depths below as naturally as a bird would spring off a branch to take flight.




He pointed the torch over the edge with bated breath, listening for the impact of the Hero’s landing—or the crunch of bone as they butchered it. Thankfully, he heard a massive splash instead, and then a sputtering noise as the Hero emerged from whatever body of water they had landed in.




The Guide pinched the bridge of his nose as the momentary panic that had seized him passed. The Hero was fine.




“Guidey, could you toss me a glowstick? I can’t- ohmyGOD SOMETHING BRUSHED MY FOOT! TOSS ME ONE NOW! NOW! "





The Guide contemplated doing exactly that. Then he contemplated doing something else.





He sat down, letting his feet hang off the rock ledge. He swung them merrily, knowing that the Hero could see him clear as day against the torchlight.




“Hmm, I don’t know. We’re running low. I’d better just use these last few to make my way back to the surface.”




“DO NOT JOKE ABOUT THAT!”




A sly grin spread across the Guide’s face.




“You can wait down here in the dark for an hour or two while I go back and get more glowsticks, right?”




“THIS ISN’T FUNNY! GET DOWN HERE!” they yelled back, and then added in a quieter voice, “Please, don’t actually leave me.”




Alright, too far. The Guide tossed them a glowstick, watching the green light plummet a good thirty or so feet before breaking the surface of the water.




“Relax. If you look beneath you, you’ll probably find a blinkroot tangled in your bootstraps. Remember that monsters make noises.”




The Hero’s relief was audible.




“Oh, thank the lord...”




A moment of silence hung in the air as the Hero dove beneath the surface to grab the glowstick. The Guide was left alone with his thoughts, and he contemplated what had just happened as he swung his feet over the ledge.




What kind of idiot jumped off of a ledge without being able to see what was beneath it? They could have been dashed on the rocks below had the water not been there to break their fall. Sure, they would respawn, but dying was never a pleasant experience.




Furthermore- who just blindly trusted that the person behind them would still be there to fish them out?




He tried to craft an apology for threatening to leave them, but they all soured on his tongue. Terraria was full of monsters, some human and others not, and they would all use any means of deceit or subterfuge to take what they wanted from the Hero.




This… fledgeling, that had imprinted on him in a matter of hours, was the warrior meant to bring balance between the rapidly-unstabilizing cosmic forces; a dull blade handpicked by the world itself, just as the Guide was handpicked to sharpen it.




He was responsible for them. He was to be their maker, and if he didn’t succeed, their-




The weight of his role hit him for the first time in the past week. He had begun to realize that the question of how he would most successfully go about fulfilling it was one of the first problems that had truly vexed him.




When they broke the surface again, he tried to apologize. It came out as,




“If I left you down here, who’d catch me dinner?”




A daybloom seed hit him in the eye.




“OW! Did you just- shoot me in the eye with the pipe you found?”




He could hear giggling from below.




“Oh, sorry, did it hit you in the eye?”




“So it was you! You little- I’M COMING DOWN THERE!”




More splashing sounds. Were they… swimming around?




“I thought you were too scared to jump?” the Hero prodded.




The Guide pulled out a length of coiled rope from his utility belt, along with the nail that he’d use to anchor it on. Carefully, he tied the rope around the nail, before feeding it off of the ledge.




“Not too scared - too sensible to go blindly charging into danger.” he parsed out, carefully making his way down the length, plunging deeper and deeper into darkness. “And civilized enough to use a rope when I decide to go surprise spelunking.”




“You go spelunking? I thought you read books and drank tea all day.”




The Guide didn’t grace them with a response.




Suddenly, the rope was jerked from the lower end. The Guide’s grip on it became vice-like in an instant.




“HERO.”




He could hear their snickering from below. They were up to something.




“HERO. I want you to listen very carefully to me: do not tug on that rope again.”




“Hurry up and get down here, then. You were right, it was just blinkroots. The water’s nice!”




Another tug on the rope made his head spin. He was still so high up… He tried explaining calmly.




“Hero, if you pull on that rope again, I will fall and die, and-”




With a final pull, the rope came loose from its anchor, and the Guide was hurtling towards the darkness, closer and closer to the water. Oh lord of the moon, he was going to die. While he was waiting to respawn in the morning the Hero’s progress would slow down exponentially, and the corruption would be eating away at Terraria while they were waffling around like a fool, and his cosmic superiors were going to yell at him, and-




Instead of cracking his neck on a stalagmite, or being pulled under the icy depths of a brine pool, he crashed into something softer at Mach speeds.




“Oof!”




The landing was hardly any gentler than being submerged in the water, but at least he didn’t get wet, and when he dared crack open his eyes…




The Hero’s grinning face beamed down at him, the angles of their cheekbones illuminated by the light of the glowstick, face given a new sharpness by the neon. The Hero had somehow pulled the rope from its anchor, calculated roughly where the Guide would fall in consequence, and caught him without dropping him into the pool from thirty feet below.




“Got you.” They crooned.




The Guide swallowed, at a loss for words.




Maybe- maybe this hero had promise after all.




“Woah, Guidey, if you keep staring into my eyes like that I’ll start thinking you’ve-” the sentence was broken up by the sound of them desperately trying to contain their laughter- “FALLEN for me!”




Whatever reverie had overtaken him, the Guide snapped out of it immediately. He began to thrash out of their grip.




“Dream on, you dolt! You almost killed me!” The Guide sniped, but there wasn’t any venom in it as he reached over and tried to yank their hair. He got a fistful of straw instead.




“HEY, let go of my hat!”




The Hero pulled his arm away, putting the Guide in a headlock as the two of them grappled in the water. In this part of the pool, it only went up to their waists, but they were both getting thoroughly soaked.




“We’re in a cave! You don’t need a sunhat!”




“It’s for comfort! FOR COMFORT!”




“You’re an idiot! How could you just jump down here without knowing where you’d land?!”




“I could HEAR the water flowing! OW! Don’t bite me! I thought you were civilized!”




The Hero let him go, and without their weight stabilizing him, the Guide fell into the water. He sputtered, wiping his tongue off on his hand, and for a moment he contemplated the life decisions that had led him to this point. He was civilized, damn it. Up until this point the thought of biting anyone was ludicrous.




No. It was still ludicrous. He was acting like a lunatic.




“I didn’t say I was civilized,” he gasped as a chill ran through him, “I said I was civilized enough , and that’s still leagues more than you are. How are we going to get back up, Hero? You pulled our escape route down with me.”




For once, the Hero had the decency to look sheepish.




Good, the Guide thought. Let them sit with the consequences of their actions.




“You, uh,” they huffed, “You think we can manage to lasso the rope around that nail?”


dine-divider-border.png



An hour later, they’d found themselves at the end of the cave. After the Hero, through sheer force of will alone, had managed to get the rope back onto the nail above them, they’d continued their expedition through Terraria’s cave systems on two conditions:







  1. The Hero was entirely responsible for getting the rope back onto the nail. (it was only fair after they’d been the one to pull it down, of course.)
  2. The rest of their journey would be spent in peace- and if they ran into more danger than they could handle, they would turn back.




The Guide shivered, holding the newly-lit torch closer. It was getting colder—they were in the deeper part of the cave by now for sure. The Hero was snuffling around the dead end as the Guide crept closer to better-illuminate the area. A massive crack was running up the length of the wall, but it was inches wide at best, and so narrow neither of them could see anything along the lines of an adjacent room or more cave to traverse through it.




“I don’t think you’ll find anything else here, Hero. This seems to be as far as the cave goes.”




The Hero was unusually silent. Instead of responding, they elected to raise their head, closing their eyes as if they were feeling a breeze on their face.




“Hero?”




They turned back around, peering at him.




“Do you hear that sound, Guidey?”




He scoffed. “You’ll need to be more specific. I can hear many sounds.”




The scurrying of unseen crustaceans moving across the ground. The dripping of water as it ran down a stalactite… The muted thud of footfall on the ceiling above them. Groans from a far-off cavern echoing down the tunnels. Stars above, he hated the underground. Literally worse than hell.




The Guide wrapped his arms around himself tighter. They needed to go back soon.




“... There’s wind flowing down here.” the Hero remarked.




The Guide’s eyes widened, and he turned to face them.




“From the crack?”




“I think so. I’m surprised you didn’t notice it. I can feel it on my face too… It smells… sweet?”




The Guide strained his ears, and realized that the Hero was right—under the crackling of the torch’s flame, beneath the sound of small, scurrying things and the living darkness that consumed them, there was another undercurrent: the murmur of fresh air, steadily blowing through the crack in the wall.




The Guide crouched down next to the Hero, trying to get a better look through the crack. It was fruitless: Although it spanned the wall from floor to ceiling, it was only an inch or so wide, and it only seemed to get narrower the further in you went. He couldn’t see anything inside.




The Guide turned to the floor around it, looking for clues as to what could lie beyond—trying to see if he could spot the radiant green of jungle spores littering the gravel, or the shriveled petals of deathweed growing through the cracks.




If there was, he mused, he needed reading glasses. Nothing must have been able to get through the crack.




The Hero turned, facing him with the same hopeful eyes that had gotten them into the cave instead of back at home after their daybloom identification study.




“Hero.” he warned.




Their eyes continued to shine.




“Hero. We are not going any further into this cave.”




“... Can’t we just-”




“NO. I’m tired, and hungry, and-” the Guide peeled his shirt sleeves off of his arm for emphasis, “Soaking wet. We’ve reached the end. We’re going back.”




“What if I just take a peek? You can just, um, sit back here! On that rock over there. I’ll only be a minute.”




The Guide leveled them with an icy gaze. Who would protect me then? he thought, but didn’t dare voice it aloud. He was not going to let the Hero know how much power they held over him in this form.




He sighed as he sat down on a rock, refusing to look at them.




“I suppose there’s no stopping you, is there?”




The Hero took it as permission enough.




“I swear, I’ll only be a few minutes! I won’t leave you alone here for too long. Here, take the torch so you won’t be scared!”




“I’m not scared,” the Guide added defensively, but took the torch anyway.




He couldn’t stay miserable for long—not when the Hero set a torch down onto the ground, and began to strike at the crack with their pickaxe, trying to deepen its groove. The Guide snuck a glance at their back, watching the corded muscle there tighten with every swing of the axe. So little armor there, he couldn’t help but think. How could he let them go down this far without making a ramshackle wooden set to cover their… squishier parts?




It would be so easy for a cave bat to tear the arteries of their neck open with its teeth, or for a skeleton to drive a sword through their torso.




The thought made him wildly uncomfortable.




Maybe he should stop them now, while the barrier between them and whatever potential dangers lurked on the other side of the wall remained intact.




Maybe—maybe the Hero didn’t have to advance so quickly. Terraria wouldn’t suffer for waiting a little longer. For the Guide slowing down the Hero’s training a bit. Better to give them more time to prepare for their battle against the Wall, after all; and then the dam would break on the problems riddling the world, and the real challenge would begin.




The Guide put his head in his hands, breathing through his nose. Of course Terraria would suffer. It had been suffering, and the Hero had been put into place as a last-ditch attempt to carve out the dark and light spots on its surface and restore it to a state of peace.




Besides, the Guide thought, as he looked back up again at the Hero. It had only been a minute or so, and they were close to breaking a human-sized hole through to the other side. They didn’t seem like the sort who was good at taking things slowly.




With one final swing of their pickaxe, the Hero gave a cheer as they broke through to the other side. The Guide’s lip curled up as he watched them from his place on the rock, chin resting on his hands. Ridiculous. They were utterly ridiculous.




The Hero kicked their way into the hole, widening it, and they were through. The Guide could hear a sharp intake of breath, alongside the little sound of awe they made as they breached the wall.




...Well now he was just curious.




The Guide had no intention of actually staying behind, of course. There was no way he’d let the Hero go off somewhere potentially dangerous just two weeks after they’d arrived in Terraria—at least, not without his supervision. He got up, taking a moment to stretch his legs and get comfortable in his boots, before walking over to the hole.




Something—some sort of radiant, blue dander rode the draft from the hole and landed on his cheek. The Guide picked it off with irritation, and then, upon recognizing what it was, panic.




A glowing spore, dispensed by one of the giant, underground mushrooms that signified they’d stepped into dangerous territory.




The Guide ran through the hole.




Glowing mushroom biomes were rare at this depth, but not unheard of. The monsters that lurked within them—nothing but corpses of animals caught inside, made embryonic again in mycelium cocoons—were far stronger than what he or the player were equipped to deal with.




The fungus wasn’t necessarily harmful on its own, but at certain times of the year, the spore clouds were thick enough to choke anything unlucky enough to stumble across them. This was on purpose: it was a self-fertilizing system, and the mushrooms needed organic matter to feed off of. The blood of many creatures were spilled to water their gardens of rot.




A clever design of evolutionary biology, but a mistake on the Guide’s part: he shouldn’t have let the Hero go anywhere near it. He shouldn’t have let them keep digging themselves into a deeper hole.




“Hero!”




When he stumbled through, the Hero was, thankfully, not too far ahead of him. It seems as if they were too awestruck to jump in headfirst as per usual. It looked like they had broken out of whatever trance they were in, however, and they lifted a leg, as if they were going to walk further.




“HERO!”




The Guide grabbed their arm. They turned to look back at him, shocked.




“Guidey? Are you… okay?” they asked tentatively.




The Guide recoiled instantly.




“I’m fine. But we need to get out of here. It’s not safe.”




The Guide’s eyes followed the Hero’s pointed hand like an arrow. They were right: it seemed as if the end of the cave system was a deception, for the cavern they had stumbled into was enormous. From where they stood just outside of the crack, perched atop a small rock cliff, they could easily overlook the entire domain.




Massive, fungal plumes stretched up to the ceiling of the cave, the mottled blue-and-white caps searching for sunlight they would never find. Mimicking the trees of the surface world, their stalks had branches; tendril-like offshoots that smaller mushrooms grew from, nursing from the stem.





Below them, what looked like a peculiar cerulean shade of grass engulfed the dirt floors, emitting a dim, ghostly light—the filaments of which seemed to be the source of the hair-like vines hanging from the top of the room.




The Guide winced. There was no sun down here to fuel grass growth. It was all mycelium.




And if he remembered correctly, that mycelium was what linked them all together somewhere at the center of this room: it was all one creature, too.




“Isn’t it beautiful?” the Hero asked.




The Guide studied them. They were turned away, but he could still see their silhouette, the length of their neck, the way their cheeks lifted as they grinned; all outlined by the alien glow of the forest.




“Yes. Yes, it is.”




The Guide pulled his shirt over his nose when he caught wind of a faint aroma.




“Pull your shirt up over your nose, Hero. Remember it has spores.”




The Hero turned to him, raising an eyebrow.




“It? Which one?”




The Guide waved his arm, motioning to the massive ring of tree-sized mushrooms at the center of the room.




“All of them. See how they’re all growing in a circle? Every mushroom you see there is connected by the same root system, growing outwards from the center. It’s one plant.”




“Oh, lord, is that- is all of the grass down there part of it too?”




“Yes.”




The Guide hooked a thumb through a loop on their utility belt and pulled them with him, “Now come back . Mushroom fields are dangerous, we need to get out of here.”




“Woah! Okay, okay, uh- wait, don’t pull so hard, I’ll fall off the edge!”




“It’s a good thing that crack opened up onto this cliff,” the Guide said, “Do you hear that buzzing?”




“What about it?”




“That’s the sound of the ladybugs that grow down here, feasting on the fungus. If you were on the ground, they’d swarm you.”




“I like ladybugs.”




“Not when they’re three feet tall.”




“Woah! You’re joking.”




The Guide smiled.




“I never do.”




The Guide put his foot into the dirt of the crack, and the Hero bent down to follow.




Or, they would have, were it not for the light that whizzed past them at that moment. It soared through the wall just inches from the Guide’s head, and he could feel the ghost of it warm his face when it went into the opening, burying itself explosively into the rock he was sitting on earlier. It missed the Hero, thankfully, but it wasn’t enough: they flailed their limbs to get out of its path, lost their balance, and slipped.




“HERO!”




The Guide watched their face go over the edge. He didn’t have the time to sit there in shock: A second blast landed a few feet above the first, sprinkling his head with displaced dirt as it hit the wall. He grimaced, biting his lip as he heard the Hero slide down the slope and hit the ground below.




“OW!... I’m okay!”




The Guide exhaled. They were fine. The idiot was fine.




He turned to the direction of the blast, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the area. He couldn’t tell his own hand from his face in the low lighting, but he could detect motion from the top of one of the mushroom trees further down into the cavern.




He cursed how pitiful his night vision had become. How did humans live like this? Couldn’t they have evolved in the Underworld, like-




Another blast of magic soared by him in a merry arc, and the Guide ducked to get out of its way. The resulting collision between it and the wall shook the ground a little.




Crouching lower to the cliff, he scanned the area, and spotted a familiar shape staring back at him. The figure perched on the mushroom was skeletal below its royal blue robes—no, that wasn’t right. As it raised its arms maniacally, preparing to unleash a new blast of whatever magic it was conjuring, the Guide realized that it was a skeleton, cloaked in sorcerer’s robes and a wizard hat.




“TIM!”




He yelled.




If skeletons could grin, it was doing so.




“TIM, YOU TROGLODYTE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” The Guide yelled.




Somehow, despite lacking both the lungs and lips it would take to whistle, it whistled.




“Guidey!” it crowed. “Is that what you’re called these days? That’s just adorable.”




The Guide’s face began to burn. He could just feel the delight it took in mocking him.




“Shut up, you windbag!” he lashed out, “You almost killed the Hero!”




Tim giggled, swaying from side to side on the mushroom cap like he was about to fall off.




“Are you DRUNK?!” The Guide seethed.




The skeleton pointed a finger at the Guide, pathetically.




“Only a little,” it contended in a raspy voice, “It helps steady my-” it hiccupped, “-aim.”




The Guide gritted his teeth, trying to calm himself down. He and Tim never got along before he adopted his new role—when he was still just a wall, watching over Terraria’s hellish underbelly—but back when they’d sniped at each other and traded acerbic back-and-forths when he wasn’t preoccupied with maintaining his human form, if they’d ever gotten as far as taking up arms with one another, he could take it blow-for-blow. Now he wasn’t sure if he even had the energy to make breakfast.




Well, that first bit was a lie. Tim got along perfectly fine with everyone it met. It just didn’t care if its habit of pulling people into murderous, magical duels made it hard for everyone else to get along with it .




Whatever coincidence, foresight, or divine intervention had led them to cross paths again, the Guide didn’t have the time for it. He couldn’t deal with Tim’s boredom right now, and he sure as hell couldn’t afford for it to spill any important details about the Hero’s destiny, loose-lipped as it was on the drink.




“I-” his voice was achingly hoarse, “I don’t have time for this right now, Tim. Just let us pass. We’ll duel another day.”




The Guide’s hands were shaking with the expenditure—an unfamiliar feeling. Internally, he kicked himself at how weak he’d become.




Tim sat its :red: right on top of the mushroom.




“That’s so cute! You were never this cute before… Guidey? ‘Sthat your title now?” it slurred. “God, that’sa really weird title.”




Tim laughed to itself, as if it were privy to some sort of inside joke. The Guide wanted to ram his head straight into the wall.




“But I’m not interested in you. I mean, you’re just a human now. Name a bigger downgrade, RIGHT?!”




(Its voice was uneven, shifting wildly in pitch and tone. It was hammered.)




Tim turned his finger to point to the Hero. The Guide’s eyes followed, pulse quickening. They had long-since recovered from their fall, now standing at the bottom of the slope, eyes wild as their gaze darted between the Guide, Tim, and the area around them.




The Guide bristled.




“If you…” he began.




But the threat was cut short. If Tim what? What could the Guide even do in this form?




A chill swept over him as he realized that the answer was, at best, fire a volley of arrows at it to buy time for the Hero to run away. If he tried to get into an honest-to-god match with the wizard, he’d probably die.




He re-worded his warning.




“As it stands, the Hero is under my protection. To get to them… You will have to go through me.”




“Ooooh, I’m shaking in my pointy little- HIC- wizard hat.”




Tim conjured another blue blast of magic, aiming it at the Hero.




“HERO! GET OUT OF THE WAY!” The Guide shouted reflexively.




Thankfully, he hadn’t needed to tell them. As soon as Tim pointed at them, they’d scrambled under the nearest mushroom, taking shelter away from its malicious gaze. When the burst of magic hit the ground, it exploded in a phantasmagoria of light and sound, and the entire cavern shook in the earth.




Of course he hadn’t needed to to tell them that, the Guide kicked himself mentally. What kind of idiot wouldn’t move out of the way of danger? If the Hero hadn’t possessed that basic instinct of self-preservation, Terraria really was doomed.




The Guide took a moment to steel himself as the Hero made it to safety. The two of them weren’t dead yet.




And, you son of a :red:, He thought, pulling his bow from where it was around his quiver. Two could play at this game.




He nocked one of his arrows, and drew it back before releasing, watching it take flight.




Something dormant within him itched as he watched it land right in the skeleton’s eye socket. Tim stumbled backwards with the force of the blow, and slipped off of the mushroom cap, taking a long tumble to the floor of the cave.




He knew it would only daze it, but the Guide’s lip curled up in a spiteful smile anyways. His marksmanship was always something he’d taken pride in.




As soon as Tim was knocked into a stupor, the Guide carefully used the last bit of rope he had to create a handrail to make the climb up the slope easier. By the time he had fastened one end of it securely onto the nail, Tim was already getting up, leaning on the trunk of the mushroom it’d just fallen off of for support. It rubbed its bony temples.




“Ooooh, I’m going to have a nasty hangover tomorrow!” it whined.




The Guide’s eyes widened in alarm as Tim raised its drunken first again, charging up a new blast. The light of it was bleeding through its phalanges, casting strange, dark shadows across the cavern. It and the Hero were both standing within the circle of mushrooms now, facing each other from opposite ends of the cave, and the Hero’s face was tightened, waiting for Tim to strike.




Oh, :red:.




The Guide skidded down the slope, blindly running over to the mushroom ring, but it was too late: Tim fired, and the blast of mana traveled to where the Hero was standing in an instant.




“DON’T TELL ME THIS IS THE HERO MEANT TO SAVE TERRARIA!”, it warbled, “YOU RECKON IF I KILL THEM HERE THEY’LL-” It broke into a fit of giggling, “THEY’LL SEND YOU A NEW ONE?!”




The Guide nocked another arrow, drawing it far enough to where he could feel the fletching graze his cheek when he fired. He was aiming for the skeleton’s hand, hoping to cut off the flow of magic from the crystal that was currently serving as its sternum, but it moved at the last minute and the arrow lodged itself into another mushroom halfway across the clearing. The Guide cursed—it had been his second-to-last—before surveying the immediate area for the Hero.




The impact site of Tim’s magical pulse was charred and sizzling. Any organic matter there had been burnt away, leaving a dark mark, bordered by curdled black tendrils of mycelium.




No Hero.




Charred impact site.




No Hero.




The Guide’s heart skipped a beat. Did they die?!





They emerged from behind a mushroom, unharmed. From the Guide’s angle, he could see them clearly, but Tim was still looking around the room for the Hero, unaware of their hiding place.




The Guide shuddered, resting his hands on his knees for support.




The Hero waved to him covertly, and as Tim recharged its spell, they motioned with their hands: holding their right arm against the trunk of the mushroom, they made an arrow with two of their left fingers, using it to ‘pin’ it to the trunk.




Trust me, they mouthed.




The Guide’s face twisted. Trust was such a monumental thing to ask for.





But he nocked the arrow, taking aim anyways.




The arrow fired, whistling as it sliced through the air. Miraculously, it landed square in the center between Tim’s radius and ulna bone, fletching preventing it from sliding its arm off of the arrow .Tim whipped its head around, seeming to snap out of whatever inebriated haze it had been riding the high of moments before.




The Guide didn’t breathe as they stared each other down. His heart—at least, what he was fairly certain was his heart—was beating so fast. Should it be- that couldn’t be normal, right?





It opened its jaw to speak.




“You’ve become too human, you know. Everyone thinks so. I mean, come on, it hasn’t been that long.” it rasped with sobriety.




The Guide bared his teeth, and somewhere deep in the bowels of hell, the tendrils of something massive stirred in defiance.




Too human. What an insult .




He forced himself to swallow his pride, and replied quietly,




“I don’t care. This is the job I was given. I will keep the Hero alive by any means necessary.”




The Hero chose that moment to bodyslam the trunk of the damaged mushroom. Now that it had a weakness on one side, they were able to tip it over, and with a massive groan it fell onto its neighbor. The Guide turned to stare in amazement: The Hero had begun a chain reaction. One by one, the ring of mushrooms began to topple, falling on top of one another like a line of dominoes.




“HELL! :red: :red:! OH WORM :red:!”




Tim shrieked as the movement got closer and closer to where it was pinned to the trunk. By the time it managed to yank itself away (by the arm socket—its hand, forearm, and upper arm were still dangling from the Guide's arrow) it was too late—it was crushed beneath the falling trunk, too inebriated to dodge the fall. The sound of the crash filled the entire cavern; the collective noise was deafening, and the shower of spores each fallen fungus released from their gills obscured the Guide’s vision in a glowing haze.






The silence as the spore clouds dissipated felt too quiet by comparison. The Guide stared at the direction of the fallen shroom, waiting for… something. For Tim to teleport behind him and shout ‘Huzzah! You thought getting my bones crushed to a fine powder would kill me?!’ before- he didn’t know, before it stabbed him with a knife or something.




How hard he flinched when the Hero’s hand took him by the wrist was unprecedented.




Their face wasn’t completely visible through the spores, but the tip of their straw hat was enough.




“Come on,” they murmured, “let’s go before that skeleton guy wakes up.”




The Guide let himself be pulled, a little dazed, and thoroughly amazed that Tim was really incapacitated. He turned back around. The spore cloud was settling, covering the fallen ring of mushrooms in a fine, luminous dust and there was no sign of movement. His eyes searched the spore settlements for footprints leading away from the ring, but it was undisturbed, like a layer of noxious snow.




The Hero had thought of that. This was the Hero’s plan in action he had no part in this.




The Guide turned to study them from behind as they pulled him along at record speeds, reassessing some things.




The two of them climbed up the slope in nervous silence, and the Guide was too used to Tim’s antics to not keep checking behind him as they went. It seemed as if the skeleton really was too inebriated to pull anything: both the Guide and the Hero left the cavern as quietly as they had come in.




The Guide led them back to the upper levels of the cavern, quietly instructing the Hero to seal off the crack leading to the mushroom fields, but he said nothing else as they made the trek back to the surface. They were both taking pains to extinguish the torches they had left behind, to not tread through gravel, to muffle the sound of their footfall. The promising frontier of darkness that had once been in front of them on their way down took a new shape as they made their way back up again; predatory, stifling, like Tim was waiting to spring out of it the moment they broke the silence.




The Guide’s hands had stopped shaking half an hour ago, and his breath had been coming in and out at a steady pace since. Now that the amazement at the Hero’s brief moment of ingenuity had passed, he found his steps had unconsciously been outpacing the Hero’s.




How could they be so reckless?




As he retraced the steps they had taken to get here, he felt something heavy and constrictive in his throat, like someone had wrapped a band around it and was pulling it tighter. This ordeal had all started from a simple lesson in daybloom identification, and how the Hero had insisted on going into the caves to check for blinkroots, and how they had kept pushing for them to go deeper, and into darker parts of the cave, how they had pulled his rope down when they were in the pool of water, how they didn’t turn back when he asked them to, how they went ahead with investigating the crack against his wishes…





Why didn’t he just. Why didn’t he just say no?






“You’ve become too human, you know.”






Tim’s words echoed bitterly, long after it’d said them. What the hell was that even supposed to mean?




His nails were digging into the wood of the torch, and he loosened his grip on it, trying to slow his breathing down. He bit his tongue to stop himself from- from doing something.




Maybe it was the exhaustion catching up to him. He felt like collapsing. How was he supposed to keep this idiot alive? Was this part of his job?




The two of them had gotten far above the cavern layer before either felt safe enough to break the silence.




“Who was that?” the Hero asked from a few yards behind, before continuing, “Or, uh, what was that? That was terrifying,” they laughed, “Good thing we got through that, right?”




For some reason, it incensed him. He didn’t respond.




“... Hey, are you mad?” they asked, trotting a little faster.




“No.”




“... Your, uh. Hand is bleeding.”




The Guide stopped momentarily. His free hand had been clenched earlier. When he unfolded it, upon examining his nails, he realized they were caked with blood.




“So it is.” he replied cooly, and continued walking.




A moment of silence passed.




“... It really feels like you’re mad at me. Um, sorry. Sorry for getting us into trouble. Sorry for killing your friend.”




The Guide whipped his head around incredulously.




“Tim?! That cave-dweller isn’t a friend! Stars above, I couldn’t be more delighted that you put it in the ground. It’s where it belongs. Damn overgrown trilobite.”




The Hero snorted.




“Careful, it might hear you.”




The Guide began to walk again.




“Hero. We could have died in a very gruesome way back there, you know that, right?”




“Right. I know.”




The Guide sighed, loudly.




“No, you don’t know! It doesn’t matter how many times I warn you. You just keep jumping into mortal danger like an idiot.”




The Hero winced.




“I’m sorry.”




The Guide realized his voice had gone up a few octaves. He toned it down.




“You’re wasting time like this,” he hissed, “Not just yours, but mine as well. I’m exhausted, and damn it, I’m still soaking wet," the Guide shuddered as he tried to peel his shirt off of his skin, only to find blue spores clinging to him in its wake.





"We should have gone back when we had found the blinkroots.”





“But you came with me…”





The Guide forced himself to breathe through his nose.





“Yes. That was my fault. I’ll leave you to die in the cave next time.”




Was that unnecessarily acerbic? Yes. Did it feel good to say it? Absolutely.




The Hero flailed their arms.




“Well, you were laughing with me. What was I supposed to think? I thought you wanted to come!”




The Guide squeezed the bridge of his nose.




“I didn’t-”




Sign up for this, is what he wanted to say. But he began to realize that he did, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. He signed up for this when he acquiesced to the Hero’s request to search for dayblooms. He signed up for this the moment he began inhabiting this vessel.





“... Just listen to me when I say something’s dangerous in the future. You’re the Hero that is destined to bring balance to Terraria to seal away the Corruption,”




The Hallow, too. But they didn’t need to know that yet.




“This world is rotting, but it’s not dead yet. Your death will only waste time.”




A moment of silence followed.




“Why do you keep calling me that?” they asked.




The Guide turned back to face them.




“What?”




“ ‘The’ Hero. There’s no ‘The’. It’s just my name.”




They peered at him curiously, waiting for an answer.




The Guide’s face heated up.




“I- I- I thought it was a role, like mine.”




The serious atmosphere was broken. The Hero chuckled, covering their mouth with their hand.




“Were you just-” they snorted, “wrong about something?”




The Guide sputtered, at a loss for words. Him? Wrong? No, that couldn’t be right. He was never wrong. That wasn’t his own arrogance talking- encyclopedic powers came with their perks.




The Hero laughed harder.




“You look like a deer in the crosshairs!”




The Guide huffed, turning away.




“I- Oh, whatever. I was wrong about one thing. So what? I’ve still been right about the other two hundred.”




“I dunno. This might be marking the end for you. Could be a slippery slope from here on out- first it’s my name, then you won’t be able to tell torches from glowsticks…”




“Big words from someone who thought they could eat slime gel.”




“Hey! That was one time!”




The Hero trotted up to fall in step with the Guide, bumping his shoulder playfully.




“So what’s your name, then?” they asked him.




“What?”




“Your name. I can’t just keep calling you ‘Guidey’. It’s been, what, two weeks, and I haven’t learned your name yet- oof!”




The Guide caught them as they tripped over a tiny stalagmite, helping them steady themselves as they continued their ascent.




“Does ‘Guide’ not suffice?” he asked.




“Well, I guess…” the Hero conceded, “but you said that was a title, didn’t you?”




“More of a-”




“More of a role, yeah. Like how my name’s Hero, but my role’s the Hero too. I don’t want to call you by your role… that seems kind of, um, dehumanizing?




That’s the point, the Guide muttered internally.




“I suppose it is. But there’s nothing else I go by.”




Well, nothing else he wanted the Hero to know about.




“You don’t have a name? Seriously? Even I have one, and I was-”




“Born two weeks ago, yes!” the Guide finished, with no small amount of exasperation. “ Lord of the moon, you’ve been saying that since the day you got here.”




If the Hero picked up on his exasperation, they didn’t show it.




“Hmmm..” the Hero hummed. It was a rare sound to hear, considering it meant they were thinking about something.




“Well, what name do you want then?”




The Guide sighed.




“Do I really have to choose one? Is it that important?”




“Uhh, duh. Of course. They’re part of who you are. What about Jake?”




“...No, too simple. That sounds like something you’d name a dog.”




“Bradley?”




“No, that’s not… well, I just don’t like that one.”




“Catherine?”




“Er, wrong gender, Hero.”




“Oh, sorry. Leaf? Blue?”




“Those aren’t even names.”




The Hero beamed. “Anything can be a name if you name something with it!”




“Whatever you say.”




The Guide was not smiling. He wasn’t.




“Andre, then?”




The Guide’s face scrunched up. “Ugh, no. That sounds horrid.”




“Kyle.”




“Absolutely not.”




“Huh… Wyatt?”




“That’s… elegant enough. Wyatt is acceptable.”




“Woohoo!”




The Hero pumped their arms in the air, and the Guide winced, ducking out of their way.




“How are you this energetic? We’ve been in this cave system for a day and a half.”




The Hero’s grin stretched even wider. “Are you kidding? I’m ready to do that all over again!” they said enthusiastically. The grin fell as they saw the dark look the Guide was giving them.




“Er, not that I would. I mean, will.”




They were close to the entrance of the cave now. The sun had risen, and judging by the birdsong echoing down its entrance, it was close to morning.




The Hero was staring straight ahead, face surprisingly sober-looking. As the Guide looked at them hair tangled, lip split, covered in blue spores (oh, hell, were those in his hair too?) he found that, despite the energetic exterior, they looked pitiful. And shaken up.




He decided the appropriate course of action was to apologize.




“I’m sorry. About earlier. I... should have had more patience. You’re new to this world.”





He'd be more clear about when it was time to stop next time.




They gave him a shaky smile.




“Nah. I should be sorry, right? I was the one who got us into this mess.”




The Guide swallowed miserably.




But I’m your guide, he wanted to- he thought. It’s my job to keep you safe.




The Hero bopped him on the shoulder as they passed him up through the cave entrance.




They ran into the daylight with a whooping noise, but the Guide stayed behind, taking a moment to stare down into the darkness of the cave mouth.




No more caves, he thought. Not until the Hero had armor, at least.


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Continued here







 

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