Guardians of Terraria II: The World of Calamity

Episode 23.2 - corrosion!

"Sounds powerful. I'll take that."

Sid spun around just in time to come face-to-face with someone wearing what looked like a purplish-grey spacesuit, orange lights trimmed across the armour and the faceplate being an opaque gradient that ran from oranges to aquas.

Before he could react the suited person had thrown several knives in his chest, sparking with a yellow intensity, causing him to stumble backwards and lose his grip on the Spent Fuel Container.

The rogue!

She scooped up the weapon in her hands and lobbed one at the Pirate.

An irradiated explosion.

The Pirate getting knocked off the bridge.

Sid scrambled to his feet and cast forth some Daedalus Golems to stand in front of him and shoot at the rogue, but she was already disappearing into invisibility.

Sid grit his teeth and leapt into the water.

To his horror he realised the Pirate had been standing directly over the gaping maw of the Abyss. There was no sign of him around the edges, so there was only one place he could have fallen.

He acted quickly, thrusting out his grappling hook down to the ocean floor to pull him straight to the entrance of the Abyss. On reaching it he let go of his hook and dropped into the shaft, but the speed that he was sinking was still too slow. He'd never catch up in time.

I can't let another citizen die out here! he thought to himself. Especially not one he had known for so long.

That was when he remembered the Iron Boots he had found down in the Abyss. On equipping them, he felt himself plunging much faster, his ears beginning to pop from the increasing pressure. He held out a glowstick and tossed it downward.

He caught a flicker of a dark shape directly below him, silhouetted by the glowstick's green light. There he is!

On dropping he saw it wasn't the Pirate. It was a Moray Eel, dark green with a single red fin running across the length of its back. He quickly summoned a Daedalus Golem to knock it away, and threw another glowstick down.

There! This time he was sure that was the Pirate. He sunk down to Red Beard's level, taking off his Iron Boots so he'd stop sinking so fast, and grabbed hold of his arm.

Now there was the problem of how they were going to get out. Recall potions and magic mirrors didn't work for citizens. And already Sid could see the Pirate was struggling to breathe, his health dropping slowly. Thankfully they hadn't sunk deep enough into the Abyss for the water pressure to get too extreme.

But without a way up the Pirate was still doomed.

***

Renee smiled to herself, comfortably hidden by her stealth. She had managed to knock that Pirate into the Abyss, and like a fool who didn't understand the meaning of a lost cause, the summoner had gone straight down after him.

That left just the mage alone, who was deftly pointing around with her icy trident, a brown spell tome with a picture of a slithering eel on its cover in her other hand.

"It's just you and me!" the mage shouted. "Come out of your cowardly stealth like a true warrior and face me!"

That will be your undoing, Renee thought to herself. She held one of her weapons in her hand – razor-sharp spiky-balls named the Nychthemeron. She hurled them, her stealth strike allowing her to throw ten of the projectiles at once.

The mage's reflexes were quick, as was expected, but no matter. Renee hadn't been aiming at the mage. Her Nychthemerons struck into a target dummy she had sneakily placed underwater just beneath the platform she was standing on, and the weapon's special ability caused an entire solar system's worth of black and white orbs to start orbiting her. On recalling the Nychthemerons, every single one of the orbs then shot towards the mage, slamming into her for massive damage.

The mage fell to the bridge on her side, weak from the low health she had been left on.

Renee slipped a Stormfront Razor – an electric knife – into her palm, ready to finish her off.

"The Tyrant has trained you well, clearly," Renee said. "He will pay. For the death of my master." She hefted back a knife, ready to strike. "And for the death of the God of Slimes."

The mage just shot to her feet and cast forth a green-and-purple eel from her spell tome.

Renee's first knife sliced through the eel straight down the middle, but more eels were fired. She took to the skies, demon wings spreading, throwing a Spent Fuel Container down for a radioactive explosion at the mage's feet. But the mage dodged that too, switching to her icy trident and firing waves of icicles at her.

The two of them continued to fly and fight, Renee throwing knives and bombs while the mage fired magic back, but both were moving so fast that neither of their attacks could hit. Renee's strengths lay in her stealth, but she knew the weakness of a mage always came out in a sustained battle. Soon, any mage would run out of mana, and be unable to attack for a short time. Renee would use that opportunity to get in close and finish her.

There was just one problem. This mage was keeping her attacks going for a considerably long time, longer than any other mage Renee had had to fight. Some mages kept their mana up with Mana Potions, but Renee hadn't seen a single sign of this mage drinking one.

How is she still attacking for so long?

She was getting so frustrated she didn't notice the three eels that had been fired away from her were arcing through the sky and coming at her from three different directions. She dodged one but the other two raked across her Titan Heart Armour.

"Aagh!" she cried out, but that was when the mage followed up with an attack of a calibre Renee had not been expecting.

She didn't even see what it was, only feeling the blast as she was launched high into the sky, cleanly away from the Sulphurous Sea and into the adjacent forest. She slammed straight through a tree, snapping its trunk in two, and then crashed against the base of a small rocky hill.

There, she groaned, unable to move, her armour's stealth just coating her in its veil once again.

She had underestimated the power of that mage.

***

Sid surfaced, the Pirate gasping for breath next to him.

"Ahoyyy..." he shouted, albeit weakly. "Ye saved me from Davy Jones' Locker, aye!"

Sid grappled up to the wooden bridge, bringing the Pirate away from the water.

"We were lucky," he said. "My summons killed that Moray Eel, and it dropped a pair of Flippers. Just the item I needed to swim us both out of there. Now, where's Meg..."

He spotted her with her back to him. Her health was a bit low, and she too looked to be breathing hard and on edge. The rogue must've put up quite a fight.

"You okay?" he asked, approaching her.

Meg turned around and slowly nodded. "It was close, but I blasted the rogue away."

Sid nodded. "Sorry I left you alone to fight her... I know you always get mad at me for –"

"It's okay," Meg said, giving him a smile. "I learnt something about her, you know."

"What's that?"

"She thinks we're on Yharim's side."

It took Sid a few moments to process that statement before he laughed.

"Wait, so she thinks Yharim sent us here? Is that why she keeps attacking us?"

"I can't think of any other reason," Meg said.

Sid put an armoured finger to his chin. "You know, there's a saying. The enemy of your enemy is your friend. We shouldn't be fighting her. We should be working together so we can take that cactus Lord down!"

"I don't know if she will see it that way though."

Sid gazed off at the ocean, now once again bright with its turquoise seas now that the acid rain had subsided.

The mystery of the rogue deepens... as does the mystery of the vote button.