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You awaken and slam your fist into the wall, just about shouting in rage. Then, you withdraw your hand, and cradle your nuckles, which you think you might’ve broken, and you grab the backup peg leg from the side of your bed. Another Plantera, another lack of a grenade launcher, which you’ve been told she can drop. Which is getting annoying, with each time you die meaning another attempt at that plant, and another death, which meant another retrieval mission for your leg.
You’re about ready to give up, frustration boiling deep inside of you, when you decide to head for the dungeon. Fine. If she won’t give you the grenade launcher, then you’ll just skip it. Apparently, curse of the dungeon was broken by your slaughter of the giant plant, which you’ll take full advantage of. You have no idea what it means, but the jungle key that rests in your hand feels a lot lighter now.
You obtain your leg, then fly over, feeling a sense of foreboding at the imposing walls of the blue bricked dungeon, before you slip inside, the door long since having broken off of it’s hinges. You did that. You broke the door. Good job.
You stumble your way down the cramped pathways to the depths of the dungeon, passing candles that you remember having blown out previously that were now relit. You pull out your crossbow, narrowly avoiding a dart trap and some crumbling bricks beneath your feet, before you’re struck by a spiked ball.
Fuck. It kills you near instantly, slamming your head into the blue floor and splatting your brains across the tiles. It fucking hurts , but there’s nothing you can do, and you wake up even more frustrated than before.
You make it into the depths where the skeletons start attacking on your next attempt, retrieving your leg once more before descending deeper into the depths of the dungeon. There are flaming skeletons rushing at you, with weapons that burn through your clothes the moment that they make contact with you, which isn’t your favorite, but is manageable.
Much better than the spiked balls, anyways.
There’s a good pile of bones that clutter the ground around you when a new type of skeleton that you’ve never seen before arrives, darting around your peripherals. From what you can see, its got a black belt, and some kind of headband on. Wait, a black belt? Does that mean it knows how to fight?
You shoot at it, crossbow doing a number on its bones, before it darts directly at you. You duck, gasping, and swing the direction it’d flown, watching it slam into the wall before it turns around to stare at you. You cease fire, for just a moment, which turns out to be an egregious error, as it dashes forward once more. You can’t duck this time, and it slams into your ribs at the speed that you’d run at down a minecart track, which you’re pretty sure breaks just about all of your ribs.
You shoot it between the eye sockets as it scrambles over you, and you push yourself up, wheezing for breath as you continue attacking. Finally, on another lunge, it falls to pieces just in front of you, the black belt dropping to the ground. You snatch it, before you chug a health potion and run away from the crowd of flaming skeletons that’s decided to start crowding you.
You’re fine, you think, as you sit next to a campfire in a small box, occasionally shooting the larger skulls that float towards you. You’d rather not lose your leg this deep, not again, but you’re tempted into staying by the key in your pocket and the potential for loot. You’re mostly waiting for the sickness in the back of your throat to leave before you try to ingest another health potion, as your firing hand and, more importantly, your trigger finger, looks like it’s on the verge of falling off.
The pained sensation running through your arm sure makes it feel like it. A greater healing potion will fix it right up, you’re aware, but you’d rather not throw it up before you can get your bearings and properly absorb the healing. So you’re left laying there, fiddling with your belt while waiting for your stomach to stop churning.
You tug your glove off slowly, staring at your hand. You’d been hit by a flaming skeleton that had burned through your glove, but, luckily, it hadn’t melted into you. Blisters run along the backside of your hand and the parts of your palm that suffered the least amount of heat, while the skin looks blackened and singed the closer to the wound you get. Then you reach the main attraction, a gash that runs from between your index finger and your middle finger down to your wrist. You can’t move your thumb at all—it would be very surprising if you could—but you’re left wondering if this will be permanent too, like your leg. You’re not sure what you’ll do if you lose your ability to shoot.
(You do know. You’ll probably change weapons, relearn your skills, get better with swords or magic books rather than bows and guns. You’d have to use your other hand, but you know it’ll work. Eventually. Even if it takes you throwing blue bubblegum onto your front lawn.)
You look up to a skull that has materialized out of the wall, and send a couple of lazy shots at it with your non-dominant hand. It’s far more unsteady than your normal hand, used to being the stabilizer rather than the shot. The jaw clacks to the ground nearby you.
Your ribs are still mending too. That fucking hurt, and it’s still a little hard to breathe. If you survive, Emily’s going to have one hell of a time trying to figure out how to put you back together, but the odds of you surviving are thin. And it doesn’t really matter, outside of annoyances, and your preference to not lose your prosthetic leg this deep in the dungeon.
You drink another potion, then kick out your fire and bust down the wall, staring out into the darkness. Your hand is fixing itself, and you experimentally flex your thumb after it’s mended. Good as new. Alright.
What the fuck is that?
There’s a hulking figure, possibly double Jamundi’s height, that’s creeping through the halls, footsteps heavy and loud. Its covered in armor, looking almost like hallowed armor, and has a large shield and a hammer in hand, marching forward without any sign of life. A skeleton inhabited a piece of armor and is using it to scare them? Unlikely, but what isn’t unlikely is that it’s a hostile creature, as it seems to spot you as soon as it turns the corner.
Not hard. You’re not exactly a knight in shining armor, like this figure is, but you’re wearing a set of generally darker clothes, with your cloak covering most of the brighter articles of clothing, dark and blending in. Your mask is really the only thing that stands out, aside from maybe your antlers and gloves and boots, so when it raises its hammer it isn’t a surprise.
What is is how it uses it.
You were expecting it to try and hit you up close, guaranteeing the kill instantly. That doesn’t happen. Rather, the knight (paladin?) throws the hammer at you, heavy and bright, and then another materializes in its hand right after.
Oh shit.
You dart down a corner, then another, shooting any stray skeletons that try to get into your way as you run . Why the fuck do you leave your magic mirror and recall potions at fucking home every time you go exploring? Fuck—
A hammer slams into your back, and you’re sent to the ground, spwrawling against the bricks below. It takes you a hazy moment to check where it hit you, and you realize that it’s gone straight through you. Though, not in the same way that the skulls go through the walls—no, no, it’s burned right through your back and now there’s a hole where your stomach should be.
You fumble for a health potion, only to realize that your potions were destroyed as well. Fucking hell.
The armored thing comes towards you, laying on the ground, and you awkwardly turn to face it. There’s a holy symbol on its chest, which you recognize as the sigil of the old gods, long since dead. This is a holy figure, or at least it was, before it was defiled and repurposed for whatever reason, and it wants you dead. Fine.
You shoot yourself in the face with your own crossbow before it gets the satisfaction of killing you. Though you wonder if skeletons can feel satisfaction.
Retrieving your leg is a fucking chore , to say the least. It takes numerous deaths to even find the catacomb that you died in, and when you do you’re always tackled by something that tries to kill you as fast as possible. These skeletons really don’t want you getting your leg back, you think, as you dive back down for the nth time, unknowable because you haven’t been counting.
You make your way through the twisting halls, hand constantly on the recall potions on your belt, shooting whatever you see. You come across a skeleton in some sort of helmet that’s holding a gun, which you shoot until it’s nothing more than splinters of bones, and you steal its gun, which looks an awful lot like a shotgun. You’ll have to see later, once you’ve gotten your leg back and you can play with a training dummy.
You sling it over your shoulder, switching back to your crossbow, and continuing your walk. Eventually, you come across familiar walls, so you get ready to launch an offensive, before you jump in. What meets you is a single ragged caster, who seems almost startled at your presence, before beams of light are being shot at you, curling around the walls to come directly at you.
You launch forward, ducking beneath the beams, and you fire, arrow meeting its mark in the empty socket of the ragged caster, which drops to the ground in a pile of bones. You snatch your leg, stumbling on your peg leg, and quickly down a recall potion just as the paladin passes the corner and readies its hammer. You fall into your bed, taking a moment to breathe, before you slip the wooden prosthetic off and slide the one that you’ve gotten used to back on.
You lay in bed for awhile, just sitting there, staring at the shoddily repaired ceiling. After a while, the feeling of the ridgid edges of the shotgun in your back becomes painful, so you push yourself up and make your way downstairs, then to the backyard. You set up the dummies, before taking a step back and taking a shot with your crossbow. Dead center of the dummy’s head. Nice.
Andre’s quick to do business with you, after you’ve…Disturbed him and Emily in their ah…Activities. He’s dishevelved, and very, very upset when he answers the door, giving you a glare as you pass money to him in return for bullets. Then you’re left dragging a bag full of about nine-thousand bullets to the pylon to return home. You’re not sure, but you know you payed a hefty sum for it, and Emily started getting annoyed at you too, looking even more disheveled. Oh, yeah, you had disturbed something. You don’t really care.
You make some chlorophyte bullets, then march back outside and point the shotgun. It feels comfortable in your hands, and you take a rough aim, staring down the barrel at the dummy. There’s no pump. You wonder why that is? Then you pull the trigger, and forget that guns, generally speaking, have recoil, so you experience what can easily be described as a punch to the jaw.
The bullets punch through the stitched cloth easily, and imbed themselves into the dummy. About six, from what you can see, though you don’t know what the spread looks like. All you know is that you’re nursing a busted lip, grimacing to yourself as you walk back inside.
There’s a scope that you can attach to your guns, which’ll let you be more accurate, you think, even with chlorophyte. You’re probably going to switch the bullets out for ichor, or high velocity bullets, or something else that does a fair amount of damage, and allow yourself to actually aim at your targets. Though, the shotgun won’t allow that, with its gigantic spread.
So back to the dungeon with you.
There’s a hooded figure standing in the broken doorway when you drop down, wings dissipating into nothing but sparks. You can’t see much of them, but you know that they’ve got a mask similar to yours, so you raise your crossbow and stare down at them.
Surprisingly, they can talk. “Lower that barbaric thing,” They say, quickly, waving a hand. “I don’t intend to hurt you, terrarian. They peer to the side, and you catch a glimpse of their hood, blue with a golden trim. You’ve never seen one of the townsfolk wear something like that. “Someone lifted the curse on this prison and the old man is no longer here. I was simply curious, that is all.”
That was you. You tell them that. You killed Skeletron.
“Oh, was it now? I had wondered why there are so many skeletons laying across the ground in the fields. So you were the one who slayed the guardian.” They fold their arms. “You don’t look like it. That cloak doesn’t hide how scrawny you are, and with your rather short stature I’m surprised that you stood a chance at all.”
You raise the crossbow once more. You will not have your height made fun of. You’re not even that short, in fact you’re tall , so what are they talking about?
They snicker. “Put that down,” They say, again, and you feel almost compelled to do so, before you lower it on your own accord. “I have no intention to hurt you, as I’ve said. You can pass.”
So you slide into the doorway, and they slink back into the dungeon’s upper level. Their face is entirely hidden, a white bird mask dawning their head beneath a silky blue and gold hood, numerous robes stacked on top of each other giving them a regal look. You’re not sure how to feel about them. There’s a sense of unease that follows you as you meet their eyes, or, more accurately, where the slits in their mask are, which are far sharper and more crescent shaped than yours.
You keep your composure as you make your way down the steps, into the depths of the dungeon, before you turn a corner and take a moment to rub your face. You’re sure that they’re going to be a problem, knowing your luck. Whatever. You’ll cope.
Though, you don’t know why that sense of foreboding became so strong when you looked at their face.
You’ve slain about a dozen flaming zombies before something else shows up. Another skeleton in a robe, differently colored than one in the brown cloaks, which shoot homing beams of light at you, or the ones in the blue, which shoot waterbolts that’ll wind you. Its cloak is white, with red trims, and it looks like flames are dancing around its hands. You stare for a moment, before you take aim—
It fires a fast bolt of fire at you. You shriek, watching it hit a wall and explode in lingering fire, before you’re seeing another one coming at you. You jump forward, over the bolt, thousgh you’re sure it’s singed your cloak, and you shoot at the skeleton, heart slamming into your ribs. It drops to the ground quickly, bones crumbling and the robes falling with, and you stomp past as you see more flaming skeletons arrive. You do not want a repeat of the injury you recieved from them last time. That had hurt.
You come across a long hallway lined by bookshelves and tables, slabbed walls surrounding you, with only one other door on the other side of the hall. You frown. Was this some kind of joke by the architects? Did they know that you’d be here, in this dungeon, fighting for your life and taking any kind of cover you could? Did they want to play a sick prank on you in the process of building these catacombs? You continue walking down the hallway, regardless, keeping a hand hovering over your recall potions.
About halfway down, you feel a bullet pierce your side, and you whip around, nearly falling to the ground to spot the source. Ahead of you is a skeleton with a large rifle in hand, peering down a scope directly at you, getting ready to pull trigger. You duck as it takes another shot, aiming your crossbow and striking it in the head once, though it doesn’t go down, so you do it again, and again, and again—
A bullet shoots through your lung. Holy fuck that hurts like a bitch .
You shoot once again, though you miss, barely, before you fall to the ground, narrowly avoiding a shot that would’ve hit your head. You chug a health potion, and, despite the pain, you get up, dashing behind the thin wall of one of the bookshelves. The wood’s nice, you think, though not your favorite color, with it’s misty blue whisps of a pattern. You’re cut off from that train of thought when a bullet strikes the edge of the wood about where you knee is, and the splinters imbed themselves in your clothes.
You really want to curse the person who made this dungeon, but then you’d have to figure out how to curse people, which means that you’d have to learn magic. And magic is, uh, not fun, in your experience, with how volatile it is, or how tired you get after just playing with a couple of spells, or how sick you feel after drinking just one mana potion. Someone would have to teach you magic, and you’re not feeling the clothier, to be honest, since you’re still mad about that.
Your thoughts are interrupted once more by another bullet, this one striking near your face, and you just barely have the foresight to turn the other way before you end up with a mouth full of splinters. Now it’s just a cheek.
You peek around, seeing it taking aim once more. It pulls the trigger, and you roll forward, back into the open of the hallway, and you take the shot.
And the skeleton refuses to fucking die.
Great.
Just great.
Wonderful, even.
For a brief moment, you wonder what Plantera had to do with the dungeon, and why everything became so much more aggressive (and deadly) after she died. Maybe something to do with the screaming you heard, but still.
Then, you’re stopped by another bullet whizzing over your head, and you take cover behind another bookshelf. You shoot one last shot at the skeleton, hoping that maybe this will kill it, but it doesn’t.
You swap for hellfire arrows when another bullet passes, hitting the bookshelf and imbedding splinters into your other cheek. Emily’s going to have a field day fixing yo up.
You roll out once more, shooting the hellfire at the skeleton, and, finally, the bones break apart. Well, no, they don’t. They explode. Now there’s splinters of wood and ribs embedded into your chest, and legs, and face, and pretty much everywhere. You move forward, ignoring the sharp pain that greets you with each movement, and pick up its gun and scope, before you hear heavy footsteps.
You whip around.
Oh yeah, this is a cruel joke. A paladin, a sniper, and a necromancer walk into the same room. They never say anything because they’re too busy beating the shit out of you.
You chug a recall moments before the first hammer can hit you.
As to be expected, Emily is slapping you just as much as she’s stitching you up. She’s plucked out all of the splinters from your face and neck, and is currently working on your legs, seeming almost surprised at your lack of a leg when you stripped down to the bare nesessities. You shrugged and told her the story, and she’s been all high strung ever since.
“I probably could’ve fixed that back on,” She says quickly, being needlessly aggressive with the stitches on your chest that are to fully seal the bullet hole. Since nooo , you’re not supposed to just chug a potion and call it good, because apparently getting the bullet out is super important. Not that you’ve really ever had the chance too, with how you always die before you have to deal with a serious wound. Unless it carries over.
You shrug in return. It’s whatever. You’re lucky it wasn’t your arm, with how many times you’d lost one or the other. A functional prosthetic leg that works just as good, if not better than your normal leg is a pretty killer deal when compared to the idea of losing even just a finger.
“How many times have you avoided coming in here?” Emily asks. You shrug again, before she grabs your sore face and makes you stare her in the eyes. She’d tugged your mask off a while ago, so you were left feeling extremely bare, but if you don’t let the embarrassment of seeing her and, occasionally, Andre, staring at your face which looks about ten years younger than you think you are, then you’ll be fine.
You’re pretty good at being fine, you think. You shrug once more. Not feeling talkative right now, come back later.
She finishes the bullet hole in your lung, which was a bitch to get out, before she moves to stitching your side up. Clearly, Emily and Andre are still upset about you interrupting their healing sessions , as Zelda calls it, though they’re willing to pity you the moment that they both saw how scarred up you are. Which is great, you get pity points, which’ll surely cause them to stop charging so gods damn much.
“Seriously,” She says, and you feel a harsh pinch on your side as she finishes them up. “At this point I can’t tell what’s scar tissue and what isn’t.”
So, to prove how wrong she is, you begin pointing out scars that you remember getting. And then your realize that, yeah, okay, you probably have more puncture wounds and cuts than you do normal skin, because you’re struggling to pinpoint just one. You’ve got some new ones, burns running along the back of your neck, some patches underneath your hair that she points out, and some you can even see that loop around your arms to your elbows. Must’ve been Plantera, since nothing else has burned you longways recently, and these are new.
She also points out your hand, to which you shrug. You’ve been doing a lot of that.
Emily stops trying to talk to you much after that, more just basic things like “Turn around” or “Look that way” while she’s cleaning stuff up. She even shoves a bowl of soup into your hands, with a towel, because she probably didn’t want to treat you for burning your hand on a hot bowl, and then orders you to bed, which you find crazy.
“Five platinum, then,” She says.
You’ll take the bedrest, you think.
Emily lets you out a day later, and Andre seems very relieved (though, you’re not sure why , because it isn’t like they didn’t participate in explicit activities while you were in the room below theirs,) as are you. You stretch your leg, and then your fake leg, which Zelda ended up tinkering on just a little when she came to uncover her inventions which had been covered in tarps, and it works like a charm. So Zelda’s definitely your favorite townsperson, right now.
You get home and familiarize yourself with the new rifle you’ve gotten your hands on. It packs a serious punch, and you’re left wheezing after you slam the butt of the gun into your chest, but it does some serious damage to your target dummy too, sending the head flying off in just one shot. One bullet can break a dummy. Awesome.
You test it on the Eye of Cthulhu, as it’s one of the better testing dummies, and it goes down like a dream. Then you think for a few moments, before your hand finds the truffle worms in your pocket, and you grin.
Maybe killing that
thing
will be a little easier than you thought. At least you’ll get to see whatever it might drop for you.