Guardians of Terraria II: The World of Calamity

Episode 22.1 - The Step Below Hell

"Here for more of my contraband?" Amber asked.

She stared at her frequent customer as she faded out from invisibility. The rogue was clothed in purple garb over a brown tunic which smelled of sulphur. Her helmet's mask was dotted with four glowing yellow circles.

"I am not pleased that even you could detect my presence, bandit."

Amber just smiled. "You know that it doesn't matter how stealthy you are, you can't fool these ears o' mine."

"Enough with the banter." Her customer stepped forward and thrust out a hand. "What do you have on you? I've got coin."

Amber let her shop interface open, allowing the rogue to inspect it.

"What makes you think I'd need a Slick Cane? Do I look old to you?"

"You know Renee, anything is a weapon if you throw it hard enough," Amber simply replied.

"If a weapon can't defeat your enemies you may as well not have it," the rogue – Renee – retorted. She held what looked like a grey snail's shell covered with shining purple shards and sprialling into a teal 'eye' in the center. "Though I wasn't expecting this mollusk I found in the Astral Infection to be one."

"That's your chucking arm?" Amber exclaimed. "You need to work out more."

"If you're going to keep quipping at me, I'm not going to make you rich," Renee grumbled. She drew back her hand. "Actually, I've made up my mind. I'm not making you rich today. As usual, I've got to do this on my own."

"What are you even trying to do?"

It didn't look like Renee was going to answer as she turned away, her armour beginning to fade into its sheathed stealth. But then she turned her head, half-invisible, and spoke.

"Make the murderers suffer from their own doings."

***

Slinging down the rope, William was quickly greeted with the familiar but unnerving sight of lava, ash and smoke.

In the Underworld of Firstworld, the Guide had died here and brought forth the Wall of Flesh, which had changed the world forever and had also led to Robyn's curse activating, causing her to attack them all.

Now, they had a new goal. Locate the area of the Underworld known as the Brimstone Crags.

Earlier, he had assembled a large meeting with Sid, Meg, Robyn, and all of the citizens, including Permafrost the Archmage. It turned out that the Archmage had quite a lot of deep knowledge about the history of Secondworld before he'd gotten frozen in Cryogen.

"Years ago, Jungle Tyrant Yharim was ruler of this world," the Archmage had said. "He ruled with the harshest of fists. Not an iron one, one made of the densest and hardest of metals.

"Now, all that remains are the disastrous after-effects of his rule and a few ruins. Places like the jungle, and this village. Yharim moved on to other worlds, only continuing to enforce harsh control over whatever he found and massacre any who tried to resist. Before soon arriving at your world."

What Yharim had done when he'd reached Firstworld was history. William had been interested in finding out if Permafrost knew how Yharim could travel between worlds, but that was outside of the Archmage's knowledge.

What he had known, however, was several places they could visit to not only gear up more, but also to directly see what Yharim had done to the world.

The first was the underground snow biome, as after being freed from Cryogen, Permafrost had detected a magical surge of frigid energy expelling deep into the ice caves, which had turned out to take the form of a new ore – Cryonic Ore. William and his friends had crafted new armour and weapons from the material.