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Chapter 27: The Blood Moon

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  A Skeleton! Oh God... he... it... Skeleton! I was having a hard time thinking... a hard time breathing even, I was... running? The last clear thought I had was that I had to get away from... It's impossible, I didn't see... there must have been some kind of... Skeleton...

  I was climbing, towards... that pull. I didn't want to go, there was just too much... This was wrong... Skeletons can't talk... No Lungs... Larynx... Lips... They couldn't appear out of thin air either... Why do I feel pulled this way? The sun was most of the way down, where had the time gone? The plateau with the small shack was not too far ahead. It felt right, like I belonged there. My throat was raw... Was I screaming? I could see the light coming out of the small hole in the back of the structure... Why was it so dark? I came around the front of the building and threw myself through the door, collapsing as I passed the entrance, and my last thought before being overcome by blackness was of landing on something soft that spasmed as all my muscles liquefied simultaneously.


  There's no point... he thought over, and over again, None of it matters... the voice from the darkness, Guile's voice, it taunted him... All the threats, the warnings, he was not enough... he didn't understand enough... In the light, in the darkness... there is no escape... he was just going to lie here and...

  The door came crashing open, and something attacked him. Even as far gone as he felt, he couldn't just lie there as he was assailed. Throwing his arms at whatever it was, he pushed it away from him roughly so that he could scramble away, and pulling his sword out he turned to defend himself from his position on the floor from... A woman?

  Crumpled in a heap on the floor where he'd shoved her, near to the workbench, was a young fair skinned woman in a clean white dress, with a white cap emblazoned with a red cross tied into her bright blonde hair. He sat there staring at her for what would have been an embarrassing amount of time had she not been lying there so obviously unconscious.

  Even so, he was uncomfortable sitting near the open door with a sword pointed at the second person that wasn't Guile he'd actually encountered in this place. Kathryn, the Nurse as Guile called her. She's hurt! he thought as he quickly put the sword away and crawled over to check on her. She was breathing, and really... she looked perfectly whole, unlike the gentleman from before. Thinking about that he suddenly realized that it was dark, too dark.

  Scrambling to his feet he slammed the door shut and looked out the opening he'd left beside it. The sun was just passing the horizon and very soon, the restless dead would begin to stir. Suppressing a shudder, he knew the structure was proof against them and in any event, he now had someone else to protect. He could not spare the fear he'd otherwise allow himself... so he suppressed another shudder.

  Looking back at the young woman, he wasn't sure what to do with her. Should he just let her lie there? It's not like any of the rest of the floor was any more comfortable. She was unnaturally splayed however, so he decided to settle her limbs in a more natural resting position. As soon as his hands touched her arms, she kicked out with her legs throwing him away from her and knocking her head against the workbench in the process.
"GooooW!" she scrambled away backwards towards the wall and shouted, "Stay away from me!"


  Somebody was trying to attack me! Even half out of it and exhausted as I was I didn't need time to consider a response, I just kicked out with my legs pushing myself, "GooooW!" my head, the stool! Swinging my arms about to ensure my attacker wasn't already on me, I backed towards what I hoped was the wall.

"Stay away from me!" I shouted, not really expecting the kind of twisted person that would kidnap someone and bring them out to the middle of nowhere to listen, but I was running on adrenaline and instinct against a foe I'd still hadn't gotten a good look at, so it would have to do. I should have grabbed the bench...

"It's okay..."

"HA!" inappropriate a response as it was, I couldn't help it. The idea that anything was okay right now was patently ridiculous. Kidnapped, out in the middle of nowhere, talking Skeletons, and this nutjob was trying to comfort me?! "Ha-ha-ha-ha..." I laughed, more than a touch maniacally.

  Forcing my eyes to focus through the ringing, I got my first look at my kidnapper. He was a mess. Filthy scraggly hair that could have been almost any color through all the dirt and grime, and rags, that may have at one time been clothing of some kind, hardly did anything to keep him decent. He was equally dirty, though otherwise appeared in good health, and the rags, upon minutely closer inspection, seemed to have been torn and ripped intentionally. Did some of that dirt looked suspiciously like dried blood? Adding to his strange attire was a metal shackle, the kind you'd see attached to a ball and chain in a low budget movie, attached to his right wrist, as if someone had attempted to chain this deranged individual, but had unfortunately failed in the effort.

  For a moment, I could see something more, something... but then he took a step towards me and I snapped out of whatever that was, "Don't you dare!" I threatened him, braver than I felt, "I know it was you that brought me here!" I shouted.

  The look on his face was enough to confirm my words. Surprise, followed by guilt, before he muttered, "I'm sorry. I didn't know... How did you?" he asked, hardly audible.

"The skeleton told me," I answered, gut dropping as I realized how ridiculous that sounded.

"Who?" he asked, completely unfazed by that revelation, "it was probably his fault! A voice told me to break the Heart Crystal, I didn't know that it would bring you here!" he shouted in defense of his actions.

  It was no surprise that this guy was as deranged as the rest of the people I'd met out here, wherever here was. I needed to get out of this building, and... I didn't know what then, but I needed to...

"Kaaaathryyyyyn..." a voice, sounding at the same time familiar and nightmarish, like a cherished memory gone horribly sour came drifting in from outside. At the same time a sword, made entirely out of wood, appeared in my captors hand before he turned towards the small window beside the door, but not before a look that was at least half anger and half terror contorted his face.


  Looking out the window of the structure he'd acquired from the Builder, he could feel the Blood Moon rising, and for the first time in as long as he could remember... the presence left him entirely alone. Falling to the floor weeping, not just for the sudden release he'd never expected to feel, but for the end of his last vestige of hope as the crimson light slowly coated the world. Though he was released temporarily, he knew where the presence was going, and the Builder was not ready.


  He didn't know what he was looking at, or more accurately, he wasn't sure what was going on. Standing at the very edge of the plateau that the structure was now sitting on was the once well-dressed gentleman... or... what was left of him. His hat was in surprisingly good condition... it was just the rest of him that was more than a little worse for the wear.

  His suit no longer qualified for that title, and with his skin missing in large portions on not only his face, but his body seen through the remnants of his clothing, it was clear that he was no longer among the living... though coated in a blood red light that seemed to cover everything in his field of vision he stood there nonetheless with an expression that was probably as close to a smile as the remains of his face could manage.

  Rooted to the spot he wasn't sure how to respond, and the red glow coming... from the moon as the first sliver of it came cresting over the horizon seemed to pull at him in ways he was unprepared to resist. Which left him entirely unprepared when the nurse chose to act.


"Johnathan!" I yelled as I realized why the voice sounded so familiar. There was something... wrong, with his voice, but I recognized him anyway.

  Getting up I took the risk of running past my captor and pushing through the door, I ran out into the strange red hued night as he attempted to grab at me. Pulling away, I stopped myself within arm's reach before running headlong into... Oh no...

"What's the matter Kathy?" he asked using the pet name only he had ever dared use, the voice coming out all wrong because he was... Oh god no...

  He reached out quicker than I could evade him and pulled me against his ruined body. The suit he'd been wearing at our ceremony hung in tatters around him, in worse condition even than the rags my captor had been wearing. The rest of him was in no better condition. It looked as if he had been picked apart by some kind of violent creature and beyond that, there was a... wrongness that was uncomfortably familiar radiating from him. I could almost feel the same... wrongness in the chillingly blood red light of the moon.

  Putting his ruined face beside mine, he whispered directly into my ear, "Don't you still love me?"

  Struggling, I tried desperately to push away from my fiancé... my husband. While I knew there was something wrong with him, if I could just...

"Truly Fleshling?" he spoke in a raised voice over my shoulder, tightening his grip as he did, "Do you truly believe yourself a match for this vessel for my will?"

"I don't know what you're up to," my captor shouted at Johnathan, "But let her go!"

  In a movement that was as terrifying as it was unexpected, Johnathan flipped me over his head, knocking the top hat we'd purchased only the night before the wedding off in the process. Firmly gripping my arms to keep me from falling or breaking loose, he held me upside down over the side of the plateau and the sight below me was enough to fully engage what little terror I still had in reserve.

  Standing in congregation at the bottom of the climb to the little building was a mass of people washed in the bloody light... no that wasn't right, creatures that had maybe once been people, each one more grotesque than the last. Pieces, and sometimes all of, their flesh were missing and just as many had boney appendages where their hands or feet should have been. It took me a moment to realize that the screaming I was hearing was my own, and it was all I could do to keep from succumbing to the terror of it all and allowing darkness to pull me into its final dance.


  He wasn't sure what to do. Guile's voice was coming out of the Well Dressed Gentleman, and he was holding Kathryn over the edge of the plateau. If he lunged at him, he risked her being dropped, but he couldn't just stand there doing nothing while she was screaming upside down in his hands.

"If you wish," the Gentleman, no Guile speaking through the Gentleman, said in a voice that he could feel resonating in all the feeble parts of his will. He'd seen his Guide's strange presence before, and that same darkness was radiating powerfully from the Gentleman... stronger really than he'd ever experienced, and it took him a moment before he realized why. The moon... it was somehow contributing to the wrongness that the Gentleman radiated. He wasn't entirely sure how he knew that... until Guile's words from earlier came back to him, Tonight my touch upon the world will be felt by all the creatures that walk beyond the reach of the sun, and you... must forge your worth in the light of my moon.

"Wait!" he shouted before the Gentleman threw her over the edge, "What do you want?" It was a stupid question, all Guile had ever shown interest in was toying with him but if he could figure out what the game was, perhaps he'd have a chance to save her from it.

  She was kicking and screaming against his hold, but he showed no sign that he even noticed her efforts as he answered, "Want Fleshing? What I want is release from my imprisonment in this pitiful construct. What I want is absolute dominion over all that is. For now however," he pulled her back over his head, throwing her at him in the same motion, "I'll settle for a more base pleasure," he ended before lunging at the two of them.

  There was no time to recover from having the nurse thrown into him, still kicking and screaming as if nothing would ever calm her again, before the Gentleman was on top of them. The wrongness was overpowering at this distance, and as the Gentleman's clawed grasp dug into the flesh of his arms, pinning the nurse between them, he struggled to move from beneath her so that he could safely use his sword.

"Tell me Fleshling," the Gentleman taunted in an almost conversational way, Guile's voice unaffected as he bit into the Nurses shoulder, increasing the fervor of her thrashing, but having no noticeable effect on their assailant, "are you prepared to return to the darkness of my embrace?"

  He tried to ignore the taunting. Guile wanted to distract him and unless he focused, a task made more difficult by the pain on top of the wrongness radiating from the Gentleman, neither he nor the Nurse were likely to survive the night. They needed to get back into the structure, but he had to dislodge the Gentleman first. The sword was still within his grip, loose as it was, and with no other option but to trust to the weapon he attempted to flip it up towards the Gentleman.

  The weapon responded. Coming up with a force that was far more than he could have possibly provided alone, the sword cut solidly into the Gentleman's shoulder, and as had occurred with the walking dead in the past, caused him to leap back from the blow. There was hardly time to fully appreciate the fact that the Gentleman was no longer on top of them before he was half pushing half dragging the Nurse into the doorway. Turning as she toppled through, he swung the sword once more at what he assumed would be the Gentleman in a continued assault. As the blade cut cleanly through the open air, he could feel his hastily constructed wall of self-control shudder ominously at the sight before him.

  Leaping up over the edge of the Plateau behind the Gentleman in a grotesque acrobatic display were more of the walking dead than he had ever seen... an almost innumerable sum of them. And in the air above them swarmed an equally nightmarish cloud of the flying eyes, their trailing veins lashing about with a violent fervor. He almost lost his grip not only on the sword, but on his feeble self-control. Were it not for the sound of weeping behind him to remind him why he could not simply walk out to greet the mob with open arms, it was unlikely he'd have managed even that.

  Standing before this mass of death was the Gentleman, his face once more twisted into what may have been a smile, his arm raised as if forestalling the massacre that haloed the swarm in a Blood Red Light.

"And now you see Fleshling, that your escape is impossible. I will allow you to come to me of your own volition," Guile's voice spoke from the Gentleman, "Drop that useless stick and enter now into my embrace."

  It was terrible how tempting his offer was at that moment. An end to the constant pain and terror that had defined his life since he'd awoken in this place... but it wasn't just his life that would be affected anymore, and though he'd tensed unconsciously to move forward, he straightened his stance and shook his head as he responded, "Never." with far more conviction in his tone than he would have believed he had remaining.

"Hehehe..." the dark laughter seemed to come from the air between he and the Gentleman, seemed to come at once from every non-existent mouth in the mass of floating eyes, seemed even to pour like a slow wave from the shambling forms now seething behind the Gentleman waiting for some sign to break across the plateau washing even the hope of escape away in the ruby violence of the night.

  The sound of it almost did what the sight did not, and again he felt himself tensed to move towards his inevitable end and the Gentleman's now open embrace. Using the very last of his resolve, he turned from the nightmarish scene before him and stumbling into the structure, threw the door closed behind him before collapsing to the floor inside.

"What are you doing!?" the Nurse screamed at him as she dragged the bench towards the door, "We need to barricade them out!" she was yelling, the horror that he felt inside manifest in her expression.

"The door..." he tried to respond as a hungry roar erupted from the mass of dead ready to break against their structure, "It keeps..." the sound of the Eyes pounding at the ceiling and walls provided a backdrop, "them out..." every opening had a grotesque mockery of what may have once been a human face, and brought in their hungry eager sounds...

    *Knock*

  With the first rap, the rest of the sound was quenched as if it had never been, leaving behind a silence that could be felt in the air.

    *Knock*

  The second rap consumed the emptiness, and tore across his already taut nerves as he turned from his place on the floor to face the door.

    *Knock*

  After the third rap the silence once more filled every open space, and was made grotesque in the presence of the once living faces now quietly filling the openings in ceiling and wall. As he watched, no more able to move than he could fly, the handle to the door turned and he watched as the door slowly opened inward, revealing the Gentleman standing just outside the structure. A moment that felt like an eternity passed as he just stared, before the silence was broken by Guile's voice.

  The Groom, as he incoherently made the connection between the rags that had once clothed him and their purpose, now of all times, said to him, "Tonight, there is no safety in your walls," before stepping forward, the seething mass of the dead quivering behind him as if connected on some unseen thread. "Tonight, there is no safety... Anywhere."

  As the last word passed the Groom's lips, the eerie silence broke, and the chaos that followed blurred the lines between what was being seen, what he felt, and what he heard. It was as if the very world around him had been holding its breath, and with those words, it now it exhaled a gust of violence and death that was far too large for the tiny shack he had hoped to hide in.

  He was a fool to have believed that Guile would let him hide behind the door. From the first night he'd stayed within this structure he'd known this would happen. Guile had waited until he had something to lose... and now he struck. It would have been almost comical in a gallows humor kind of way... if he weren't certain that this would be their last night in Terraria.

  The Groom simply stood there in the entrance, his ruined face wearing that mockery of a smile as the walking dead poured in behind him. Grabbing the Nurse, he pulled her behind him as he plunged his sword into Guile's puppet causing him to leap back towards the doorway. From there he tried to stop the dead from going around the oven, as that would put them behind him, but had to end up backing towards the Nurse instead.

  In very short order he was beyond the point where he had any idea what was actually going on. His world had been reduced to a Wooden Sword and an endless stream of the Walking Flying Dead. There were bits of gore, some of which may have even belonged to him... or the Nurse, coating everything. As one once living creature was forcibly removed from him, two more were eagerly taking their place. And though the flying eyes were contentedly smashing whatever they could reach in the cacophony... That was as often the wall of death as it was him and his charge, which may have helped him as much as it hurt. In fact, were it not for the confined space and thankfully the chairs that the Nurse had grabbed making every movement difficult, and not just his own, he was certain this would have already been over...


  My kidnapper pulling me away from facing Johnathan broke me from my paralyzed state, but there was little I could do in the chaos that followed. More creatures that looked to have once been alive began filing in, and coming in above them were giant floating eyes. If I hadn't already moved past my threshold for fear, that would have done it.

  As much as I didn't want to trust this guy, the fact that he was standing between me and a putrid assembly of dangerous creatures was enough for me to do so... at least for the moment. Grabbing the chairs set at the back of the room, I was pressing myself as far into the corner as I could get, keeping the chairs between me and the creatures.. And though this combined with the ragged looking crazy person wielding a sword did manage to keep the bipedal horrors from tearing into me, it did nothing to prevent the eyes from their assault.

  Something as soft as an eye, even an eye that was nearly as large as my head, should not have been able to deliver as much force as these did upon impact. Granted, an eye doesn't tend to fly around in the air trailing little bits of its optic nerve... so my rationalizations were more than just a little out of place in this particular situation. My irrational focus could also have had something to do with the third or fourth blow to my upper body that was delivered with enough concussive force to leave me with what would undoubtedly be heavy contusions when... If... I survived this.

  My kidnapper wasn't fairing as well, having nothing but that wooden sword to stand between him and the creatures... And there was something else. I could see more than just the fact that his body was cut, torn, and bruised... I could see... Something else. Not ignoring the fact that it could simply be an optical illusion from the repeated blows to my head, I saw something like an incredibly soft glow emanating from him that was growing dimmer by the moment.



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