Lord Yharim sat upon his throne.
He truly deserved finally being back in the Nexus. Once upon a time, he had ruled many worlds. Worlds that had been full of inhabitants who hadn't known better than their own pitiful and meaningless existence.
Every single one of their conflicts, their squabbles, their wars... it was all meaningless. All a distraction from what truly mattered. Something that Yharim alone had realised. No, been enlightened to.
He gazed out at the bones that remained of the Lihzahrd race, still strewn out across the throne room's brick floor. Soldiers were cleaning them up, but they served as a stark reminder to his days as the Jungle Tyrant.
"My lord."
He turned his head to the entrance of the chamber, spotting one of his generals approaching him.
"We have an update on the status of Calamitas."
"Did she fail?" Yharim asked.
The general seemed to stiffen. A common reaction when under the fear of punishment from his hand. "Calamitas was slain."
Yharim made no reaction beyond asking another question. "What of the Guardians?"
"We are uncertain, my lord," the general said.
Yharim rose to his feet. No matter, he thought to himself. In fact, he had been expecting Calamitas to fall. She was only a clone, weaker than her source, and certainly not strong enough against the power and ingenuity of the Guardians.
Yharim beckoned to the pile of scrap metal by the side of his throne. Recovered from the remains of one of the citizens that had fallen during his invasion of their village. "Give this to the head of Project Hodgepodge. See to it that he puts these parts to good use."
"Yes, sir."
***
"As rank progresses, so often does the lethality of equipment. In the hands of competent soldiers, the weapons have the ability to make change. However, competent soldiers take no action but orders from above.
"Addendum: If you read this, you have come far. Do not disappoint. Go now to Hell, for the next component stored in what were once my forges."
William looked up from the Codebreaker as Draedon's voice finished speaking, casting his eye over Sid and Meg.
"That is some whacko stuff there, Will," Sid said.
"So let me get this straight," Meg said, "In the Sunken Sea lab there was a schematic that told you to go find a lab underneath the snow biome? Then you decrypted that schematic and it told you to go to the jungle?"
"And the schematic from that lab is the one we just decrypted," William said. "But we have already have the schematic from the Underworld lab. That was actually the first schematic we found, but we didn't have the means of decrypting it."
"And each of these schematics, aside from having a creepy voice note, have crafting recipes for these special weapons?" Sid asked.
"Correct." William said. "Your new laser-turrets that you like so much were thanks to the ice lab's schematic. Same with Meg's Gauss Pistol and my Hydraulic Volt Crasher." He turned back to the Codebreaker, staring into its computer screen and quickly reading off the crafting recipes for the new items.
"The problem is, we can't yet craft any of the new items here," he said. "The Advanced Display I believe will let us decrypt the Underworld schematic, but it requires something called a Life Alloy. The weapons all need that too along with Infected Armor Plating."
"Well, let's start with the Life Alloy," Sid said. "Do you know how to get those?"
"If it's an alloy, wouldn't that make it a mix of different metals?" Meg asked.
"That is correct, I already looked up its recipe," William said. "It requires Cryonic Bars, which we already have. But the other two bars it needs I've never heard of. Perennial Bars and Scoria Bars."
"We're gonna have to go look for those then," Sid said.
That was when there was a knock at the warehouse door. Meg stepped over to it and let Faye the Princess in.
"I apologise if I am interrupting anything," she said. "But we have arrivals."
"Arrivals?" William asked. "Who?"
***
Congregated in the town square were all of the citizens. William spotted Durim the Demolitionist and Bart the Angler and Archmage Permafrost. Cirrus the Drunk Princess was talking with Red Beard the Pirate, and to William's surprise she didn't have a drink in her hand.
"You know, ever since I moved in with Roxanne, I haven't found myself drinking as much," she said. "It's a strange but not unwelcome feeling."
Okay, maybe she wasn't really the Drunk Princess anymore.
"Arr, matey, health shall always be first before drinkin'!" Red Beard spoke in his usual boisterous voice. "Else, ye may get scurvy or suffer some other malady!"
His eyes swept over the crowd again, noticing how Whitney the Steampunker was talking to Tony the Arms Dealer about high-velocity bullets, and Zop'a the Witch Doctor was –
Wait.
"James!" Robyn cried.
"Robyn!"
His bearded face grinning, his red hat perched happily on his head. "William! Meg! Sid! Helloooo!"
Next to him was Nissa the Dryad. William realised at once what had happened – back in Firstworld, when he and the others were being chased by Calamitas through the jungle, James, Zop'a, Whitney and Nissa had all fallen into a pond filled with piranhas, courtesy of a blast from Calamitas against James's Skeletron skull. Then Nissa had used some sort of spell to whisk them all away to safety.
And somehow, they too had all ended up in Secondworld. And had found their way to Slimetown.
There was one problem. Nissa's skin had turned grey, the vine coverings that wrapped around her skin shrivelling and withering.
"What happened?" Sid asked, looking at her up and down.
"She has lost the energy to speak," James said. "Can barely even comprehend anything we say to her, either. Best the Witch Doctor can figure out, she drained herself in using her powers to transport us here. It actually took us a while to realise we even were in a completely different world."
"Same for us," William said, but kept his eyes on her. Nissa knew how to travel between worlds?
Meg began to tell the story of how they had come to Secondworld to James, while William left them to talking and mingled back into the crowd. That was when Zop'a the Witch Doctor grabbed hold of his armoured shoulder.
"The wind blows with the leaves, the leaves blow with the wind," he spoke. "At sundown, find me atop that hill. I have knowledge to share of our foe."
***
"I can't believe you all made it," Robyn said.
"A surprise, yes, but very welcome," James replied. "How are you though? It's terrible, all that's gone down..."
"Yeah," Robyn agreed. "The invasion... and ending up here... that really messed me up."
"Same. I've gotten quite... used to my Skeletron form now. But Yharim's army was the first time I'd truly felt like we were all going to lose. And when we ended up in this world, and Nissa was... grey, all I could think about was that the peaceful, tranquil life we'd all built for ourselves... we may never get to experience it again. Not in that way." He sighed. "We've all had to suffer many hardships through the journey to peace. Some, stronger than others."
"And the hardships aren't over yet..." Robyn murmured. "We're working on a way to build our own portal to get back home, but even then... we'll still have to face Yharim. And even if we do defeat him, will what's left even be recognisable?"
"Change is a hard but necessary part of life," the old Clothier said. "But those that can adapt to change are a force to be reckoned with. I believe in you, in all of the Guardians. You've clearly come far since first finding yourselves here."
Robyn wasn't sure how to reply to his speech, but he was as perceptive as ever. She, William, Meg, Sid and the rest of the citizens had settled peacefully into Slimetown, so much so that it was beginning to feel like home again. Home didn't have to be in the place. It could be in the people. People like Roxanne and Cirrus, whom she'd spent that girl's night with. People like Bart and Faye, with whom she'd taken fishing. People like Tony and Durim, their friendly rivalry making them as strong as ever. And of course, in William, Sid and Meg.
She felt, for perhaps the first time since waking up in this world, confident.
***
The sky was turning a beautiful pink-red when William crested the peak near the village. The Witch Doctor sat with his legs crossed, silhouetted against the sun that was dipping below the horizon. The rags he wore blew in the breeze.
"So what do you have to tell me?" William asked.
The Lihzahrd said nothing at first, the animal skull he wore as a mask just inclining slightly to look at him.
"After we discovered all of my people had been slain," he spoke, "I meditated. For a long time. I desired to know what had massacred my people, what had torn the Golem asunder. But it was only after... he... arrived... that I was able to unlock the truth."
He... "Lord Yharim?"
"Do not speak of that cursed name!" Zop'a shrieked. "The man, no, the monster that bears that name has massacred far more than just my own. In his name, thousands, perhaps millions, have perished. Needlessly."
"We know that," William said. "He killed the populations of many civilisations that used to exist in this world. But... you're saying..."
"Yes, William. Lord Yharim has once been in your world. Firstworld, I believe you have come to calling it. He once ruled all. Until... he couldn't."
"What stopped him?" William asked.
"I do not know for certain," the Witch Doctor said. "But I can tell you this. His servant, the witch Calamitas, may have had a hand in it."
William just stared at him. "How?"
"In my meditation, I learnt of a tribulation." Zop'a put his hands together around his staff. "The witch betrayed the Lord for his doings. She set the Golem loose on Lord Yharim in the temple. An attempt on his life. After which, the witch escaped."
The weight of those words hit William. He remembered when they'd first entered the Lihzahrd Temple back in Firstworld, only to find it empty save for the massacred bones of Lihzahrd and the damaged Golem. The Golem had even mentioned a lord and a witch to them, but in its damaged state it had been unable to string together a complete sentence.
It had told us about Yharim and Calamitas before we even knew they existed!
"What about your people?" William asked.
"Lord Yharim executed everyone shortly after," Zop'a said. "Punishment for their idol turning against him."
"But they had nothing to do with it!"
The Witch Doctor simply shrugged. "The witch betrayed Lord Yharim in the first place because of his murderous rule. Perhaps, her intent was to free my people. But in the Golem's failure to defeat the Lord, he punished her through the execution of my people. In his twisted logic, they died because of her."
William sat back, unsure of what to think. The Calamitas they had met during the invasion of the Forest Village had been relentless, merciless, almost unstoppable.
But she was just a clone all along, he reminded himself. Perhaps, in the absence of his most powerful underling, Yharim had created the clone in order to keep enforcing his harsh rule.
He wondered what had become of the real Calamitas. Could she still be out there? Burning with hatred for Lord Yharim?
We need to find her, William thought to himself.
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