A winged shadow fell upon them.
In the sky it was as though a second sun had appeared. Something massive, brown-skinned like the Profaned Guardians, with moth-like wings made of solar flares. Pearl crystals protruding from the shoulders and embedded in the stomach.
At the head, two small but burning eyes. The eyes seeking out those that had slain its guardians.
Providence, the Profaned Goddess, had arrived.
"Holy cactus," Sid said, drawing out every syllable. "That's got to be the biggest boss we've fought since Cthulhu..."
Robyn looked to where she'd seen the Cultist, but the blue-robed figure had vanished.
We've got a much bigger problem to deal with, though, she thought as Providence descended upon them.
The sky seemed to have turned yellow from the very heat of the goddess. The Hallowed grass was desaturated in the heat, and the Kingdom of Fab ruins looked like they might melt if pushed over.
Robyn began firing her Planetary Annihilation, blasting Providence with multicoloured beams. Sid's summons all attacked and lashed while Renee threw her Elemental Disk. The disk splitting caused the damage to stack up quite a lot across Providence's large form, crystalline sounds constantly resounding from Profaned Goddess taking damage, but her 600,000 health meant she wasn't going down anytime soon.
For every new boss they faced, it felt like their health values got higher and higher exponentially. How much more extreme could things get?
Robyn was so caught up that she didn't even notice Providence had started attacking, and it was in a way more subtle than one might expect. Small flames, burning off from Providence's wings, were left in the air, which hung for a few moments before flying downward towards them in a wave of fire. She was hit by one... then two flames, for a bit of damage, but her body was set ablaze by the yellow fire as a result, causing her health to only continue dropping.
Providence flew mostly high in the air, now dropping larger fireballs that exploded into smaller flames upon impacting the ground. She eventually seemed to close herself into a shell, her fiery wings disappearing and crystals becoming buried by rock-hard skin. Then she started firing glowing yellow spears similar to what one of the Profaned Guardians had, except much more dense, with a few being fired in streams directly at Sid and Renee. It also seemed like her shelling up caused her to take much less damage from attacks based on the damage numbers that were popping up.
Robyn remembered the Brimstone Elemental had had an attack pattern like this, but based on the amount of glowing spears that were being launched, she felt like she'd rather face five Brimstone Elementals than this one Profaned Goddess.
Providence soon opened back up again to resume her previous attack patterns, but Robyn found herself accidentally firing into one of the glowing spears that still hung in the air.
She tried landing on the ground, groaning from the very air, which felt like it was burning. She wiped a hand across her sweaty face, then blinked as she realised the Cultist from earlier was standing on the grass about fifty blocks away, its hood turned towards her.
She took a step towards the Cultist, but one exploding fireball landing in front of her later, the Cultist seemed to have disappeared.
She decided to ignore it and took to the air again. Providence was now firing orange-coloured fireballs that exploded into globs of molten substance that scattered across the Hallowed grass and turned it into a fiery hot minefield. She saw Sid accidentally land on one of the globs and get set ablaze.
"Ow! My tootsies!"
"Tootsies? Who in Terraria even says tootsies?" his Brimstone Elemental grumbled.
"I certainly don't, I don't even have them," the Cloud Elemental said.
"That's because you're just a cloud!"
"Cloudy!" the ditsy Sand Elemental giggled.
Providence soon closed herself up again, but this time she used a different attack – one where she fired out spirals and spirals of glowing stars in an almost indiscrete pattern.
It was nearly impossible to dodge every star that she fired out, but Robyn was relieved that they didn't do a massive amount of damage. She found herself flying near Renee.
"I got hit by a green star, but it healed me instead," Renee said.
That's a small mercy, Robyn thought.
Providence opened up again, and seemed to hang in the air for a few moments, not making any attacks, before two searing beams of light were fired out from her crystal.
"Cactuses! She's got a Moon Lord laser!" Sid shouted. "Two of them!"
The two lasers converged inwards, attempting to catch him like picking up a noodle with chopsticks, but he managed to fly up and out of their grasp.
"Oh yeah!" Sid shouted, feeling like a certain orange-suited supervillain from a real-life movie that he found himself vaguely remembering.
The three of them kept on fighting the Profaned Goddess. Her attack patterns were overwhelming, but low damage and Robyn actually found herself gradually acclimating to them, even when the next time Providence fired her dual lasers Robyn had to dodge out from between them.
"Almost down to 200,000 health left!" Sid shouted.
That was when three objects were suddenly thrust out from her fiery wings. Three very familiar objects.
"Cactuses! She's spawned three more Profaned Guardians!"
Providence flew up in the air, dropping more flare bombs, the Profaned Guardians flying with her in erratic orbits around her.
"That crystal one is healing her now!" Renee said.
"Big, spiky cactuses! Take it down!"
Sid pointed his summons towards the crystal guardian while Renee started throwing her Celestial Reaper at it. Robyn, with her Planetary Annihilation, wasn't able to easily directly hit the healer guardian, but she could deal some damage to all three guardians across the board as well as to Providence herself, stopping her health from getting up too high. She was thankful that the guardians themselves didn't seem to be too aggressive now, just sticking by their goddess. She kept dodging the fire in the air and everything else Providence threw at them with relative ease. They could do this.
That was when she saw the Cultist again, once again staring at her. Much closer this time.
And... she swore she could hear... a voice emanating from the Cultist. Dark and ethereal, reminding her grimly of when she'd been cursed.
No... What is going on? I can't be cursed again! I can't!
Her attention was taken so much that she didn't see the massive fireball explode into her, blasting her to the ground.
"Robyn!" Sid shouted.
It looked like she'd been knocked out, but he couldn't spend any time worrying about her. The best he could do was try to lure Providence away from Robyn's unconscious body so she'd be safe. He signalled to Renee to do just that.
The healer guardian was brought down shortly after, and then the two other Profaned Guardians. Providence, seeing her health was getting low, seemed to dial up her attacks faster and faster, but it wasn't enough to stop Sid and Renee.
On reaching 0 health, she froze in mid-air. Her crystal core seemed to shatter, her entire body turning completely white and flaring quite brightly. A few seconds passed before she exploded in a blinding flash of light, a shockwave heard throughout the Hallow, a ring of flames bursting out like a supernova.
Sid heard a voice in his ear. "Fossilised tree bark is bursting through the jungle's mud."
***
"Robyn." It was Sid. "Robyn?"
Her eyes felt like they were burning. Her joints ached.
But somehow, in her mind, she felt a sense of clarity. She felt like she could comprehend what that Cultist had been saying to her, and suddenly, for the first time in what felt like ages, she knew what she had to do.
It might bring her into danger, but so what? She had a powerful set of armour and weapons. She had less than 100 of her health left as well, but that would regenerate. Providence was dead, and the Hallowed plain was calm once again.
She got to her feet and jumped into the air, blue-and-green wings spreading from her Seraph Tracers.
"Where are you going?" Sid asked.
He wasn't sure if Robyn heard him as she soared into the air and took flight in a northerly direction.
He looked to Renee next to him. "Follow her."
Without a word, she cloaked herself in her rogue invisibility. Sid watched as twin particle trails began to lead away, following Robyn.
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