When Sid took his first steps back into Firstworld after Robyn, he saw they had emerged onto a flat plain of grass. Groves of trees rose up in the distance, puffy clouds floated through the sky, the sun shining as bright as ever.
It took him a moment to realise that the land was completely flat, and he realised why – this was where he'd fought that army that came from portals in waves and finished up with Betsy the dragon. Even the Eternia Crystal Stand was still there. A relic of Sid's final moments before Yharim had arrived.
Then he looked to the right, and his gaze landed on something that had not been there before.
A massively tall tower, looking like a god had driven a stake into the earth.
Built from dark material, ridged with metal grooves and dotted with glowing jewels of innumerable colours. Situated at the tower's crest was the unmistakable shape of a lab core. Except much bigger, at least a dozen blocks in diameter.
Nissa the Dryad stepped through.
"The coast looks to be clear," Robyn said to her. "Tell the other citizens they can come through."
She nodded and stepped back into the portal.
Sid readied his summons. The Cosmic Energy from his new Cosmic Immaterialiser weapon took up 10 minion slots. He was able to squeeze in one Draconid and then had one slot left over to throw up a radiant aura from his Saros Possession. He also had the Elementals and the Profaned Guardians, which had all still been useful even though it had been some time since he'd crafted both their accessories. He saw Robyn was holding her new Heavenly Gale, as ready for battle as he was.
Their objective? To challenge Yharim.
"Where do you think he'd be?" Robyn asked.
Sid looked up at the tower again. "Yharim must be setting up another set of lab cores. One in that tower, and four more in other places."
"So big..." Robyn muttered, the weight of what they were up against bearing down on her. "Definitely big enough to travel to any Terraria world he wished."
"Or to real life," Sid said.
Robyn shrugged. "Yharim claimed one thing, the Eidolists said another. But either way, he needs to be stopped."
Sid nodded. "What about... William? Or... Meg?"
She looked down at her bow, then at the ground.
"If we encounter them... we'll have to deal with them too." She looked to Sid. "Whatever that may be."
***
"Renee's stealth would really come in handy right about now," Sid murmured.
He, Robyn and the citizens had travelled almost to the centre of the world, now exiting the desert biome. The night's darkness masked their movement while illuminating the numerous patrols of Yharim's troops that had come close to spotting them.
The walls of the Forest Village stood in the distance. The place that had been their home for many months, but which now felt like a memory far in the past, the current state the village was in doing little to rejuvenate those memories.
The elegant stone walls William had built had been replaced by ugly barricades of metal. The presence of several tall buildings rising up from within told Sid that most (if not all) of the houses had probably been torn down and similarly replaced. And of course, another one of the towers was rising up not far behind, its core like the Eye of Sauron keeping a firm gaze overhead.
"We need to rescue the rest of the citizens," James the Clothier said. "Jeff. Mrunok. Hayley..."
"We don't know where they'd be held," Robyn said. "Maybe they are in there, but we just don't know."
"They may not even still be alive!" Princess Faye wailed.
"Hey, it's okay," Cirrus said, wrapping her arms around the younger princess.
"Double hug!" Bart exclaimed, putting his arms around Faye.
"Aww, young love," Cirrus said dreamily.
Sid noticed Robyn sitting down on the ground.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I don't know. It's just... we've been working towards coming back here for ages. At the beginning, we thought if we got back, it would be as simple as defeating Yharim and things would go back to normal as easily as they did after we took down Cthulhu.
"But now... it's not so simple. Meg turned out to be Calamitas and William... you know what he did. And so many citizens have died. Even if we do win, what then? What's even going to be left?"
She looked down at the ground, tears forming in her eyes. "That's what I miss the most, you know? I miss living. I miss... being part of our community. Our... family."
That was when the bright red blast wave hit them.
The ground all around them was suddenly set ablaze.
Scarlet crackling flames.
The citizens all screamed. Bart pulled Faye to her feet, running in the direction that had the least fire. James turned into Skeletron and the Dryad clapped her hands together, extending her aura of blessing, though its usual green colour was bled to a sickly yellow by the scarlet in the air.
Robyn cried out from the brimstone flames afflicting her armour, but scrambled to her feet and snatched up her bow. "Get to cover!" she shouted as she spotted the bright red orb passing over their heads.
She started firing arrows, aiming at the object in the sky. But despite all the effects her shots inflicted, the green flames and tornadoes that blazed across her target, not even her super-powered bow could deal much damage to it.
Not against the one and true Calamitas.
More fireballs were launched from the sky. Robyn jumped to avoid them but the blast wave of one launched her to the side, and she was sent flying into a tree, the trunk snapping in two, before slumping onto the ground heavily.
Sid grit his teeth and took to the skies himself. Instead of directing his summons to attack though, he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"MEG!"
Calamitas stopped.
Inside her magic red orb of calamity, she turned to face him, nothing visible beneath her hooded cloak.
"Summoner," she spoke. "Do you enjoy going through hell?"
"Of course not, but thanks to your lord, it's become a necessity."
A bright red fireball formed in Calamitas's hand.
"You should have just died. Spared yourself the trouble. The pain. The agony. You should have accepted that there is no point. Lord Yharim cannot be stopped."
"We've stopped everything that's come after us so far," Sid said boldly. "Yharim is next. But first... we've got to get through his intern."
"You dare use such callous words?" Calamitas exclaimed. "But I should be expecting that. You are careless, reckless, and so stupid I question how you are still alive."
"And you are too blinded. Too loyal. You can't seem to see that everything Yharim's doing is wrong. Whatever he's planning, he's not going to change who he is. He's not going to stop." Sid pointed one of his summoning staves at Calamitas, but not in a motion that would send his summons forward. "I challenge you, Calamitas, to a duel." He drew his staff up against his body. "No reinforcements. No Yharim. Just you, and me."
Calamitas seemed to ponder this.
"I accept," she finally said, clenching the fireball in her fist so it was snuffed out of existence. "But know that my power unthinkably eclipses yours. It wasn't that long ago that you barely managed to defeat my doppelganger. Quite the failure, wasn't it?"
"You were there," Sid said.
"I wasn't there," Calamitas said. "Meg was. And she chose to die. Now... I am."
She thrust out her hands, and suddenly the green world below them was gone.
Now, they were in a realm of black and red. A constrained space of dimensions.
An arena, for the duel to take place.
Time to cue that epic 13-minute-long boss music! And vote while you're at it.