A whole new world

[aestrix]

There is a forest that likes to pretend that it's ordinary. It isn't, it's quite bizarre. Every night, in fact, zombies and other horrible monsters swarm this place, looking for people to kill. Not that they've found anyone, the forest itself is quite empty of residents. But they search anyway, during the night, shambling and groaning and occasionally leaving body parts lying around. Those disappear pretty quickly, but it still happens. Then the day comes, and they depart to who knows where, swearing (if mindless monsters could think, or in fact swear to anything in particular) that they'l be back the next night. Repeat ad nauseum.

It's currently in the day portion of this cycle of directionless attempts at violence. Maybe this day will be different from all of the others.

But then, probably not, it's a very boring island without anyone here.

Comments

[greatestgift]

"...What are all these eyes and brains doing?"

[aestrix]

"If you combine lenses at a demon altar, you might be able to find a way to summon a powerful monster. You will want to wait until night before using it, though." Pause. "Your current equipment simply won't do. You need to make better armor."

[greatestgift]

"Out of what? Platinum?"

[aestrix]

"You should focus on gathering more heart crystals to increase your maximum life."

[greatestgift]

"...What's a heart crystal," she sighs.

[aestrix]

"Underground are crystal hearts that can be used to increase your max life. You can smash them with a pickaxe."

[greatestgift]

"Great. Okay. Fine."

She goes back to her ore hunt. Ore hunt, ore hunt, ore hunt. It's usually pretty difficult to sense things through a thick layer of stone or dirt, but everything here is so regular that the ores shine like beacons.

She neglects to get inside before dark.

[aestrix]

Ore! Wonderful, wonderful ore -

And then there are zombies.

[greatestgift]

Blowing up zombies is painful but, frankly, kind of fun. Sable could use some fun right now. She clears a path back to the surface and heads for her new house, exploding zombies and smacking eyeballs along the way.

[aestrix]

Halfway to her house, something bright and somewhat colorful plummets from the sky, going very fast.

It nails a zombie, right in the head. Appropriately, the zombie explodes.

[greatestgift]

...

The fallen object doesn't feel... monstery. She crouches down and peers at it where it sits in the grass.

[aestrix]

It is a tiny stylized star! It glows brightly, at first seeming white, but the light it gives off shifts colors; pale blue, pink, yellow, some kind of purple, and others. The little star gives off little sparklies that fade away quickly enough. It's kind of cute, actually. Sparkly, sparkly, sparkly.

[greatestgift]

She prods it. It doesn't do her any obvious harm.

She picks it up and sticks it in her pocket and kills all the zombies that have approached while she was screwing around with sparkly things.

[aestrix]

The star-thing fizzles a bit in her hand, and then in her pocket! It sort of tickles, but it doesn't feel like it's harmful. If anything, it feels sort of... magic.

The zombies explode. No more star-things are obviously falling from the sky.

[greatestgift]

Well, maybe she can ask Dylan about it later. For now, she's just going to go home.

[aestrix]

Home is present and accounted for.

Slight problem: Dylan's door is open.

[greatestgift]

...

She investigates.

[aestrix]

Dylan is inside! Along with a dead thing.

The dead thing is currently hitting Dylan. Dylan doesn't seem to notice.

"You should stay indoors at night. It is very dangerous to be wandering around in the dark," he observes, as if there wasn't something trying (and doing pretty well at succeeding) to bash his skull in.

[greatestgift]

Sable ground-rips a chunk out of the walking corpse's spine. It explodes.

"Did you let that thing into your house?" she demands.

[aestrix]

"There is treasure hidden all over the world. Some amazing things can be found deep underground!"

[greatestgift]

"Ugh."

She goes outside, shuts his door, and stacks wood blocks in front of it until it is completely covered. Then she does the same thing to Gus. Then she kills every corpse in sight and stomps back to her own house.

[aestrix]

That is probably best. A slightly overripe fruit would be better at surviving the night, because at least the fruit wouldn't open the door to let the creatures in.

At least her house is free of the door opening menace.

[greatestgift]

So she can curl up and go to sleep in it. Hooray.

[aestrix]

Yep! The horrible monsters outside will sing her a lullaby of their people. It goes sort of like: Bang, bang, scratch, claw groan groan bang, scratch scratch bang. Truly inspired.

Predictably, the cacophony has stopped the next morning. Back to idyllic bliss! And bunnies. Exploding bunnies.

[greatestgift]

Sable gets up, unblocks Dylan's door, stomps in, and wordlessly shows him the sparkly thing that fell from the sky.