That wasn't supposed to happen

[whatamithinking]

The parameters are recalibrated, the dial is spun, and a new universe is selected.
It won't be home--they haven't collected anywhere near enough coordinate data to think they can find home yet--but it will be another step closer.
And who knows, it might be interesting.
Edie steps through the portal first.

Comments

[not_only]

"I do have some extra granite. It's lovely, isn't it?"

He retrieves a miniature red heart-shaped thing.

"If you eat heart candies, you get healthier and harder to hurt and I think maybe you don't need to eat or sleep as much, but I'm not sure about that part. The most one person can usefully have is fifteen - any more than that doesn't have a permanent effect, it just heals you a little bit if you were injured right then - and I have sixteen of them right now. Do you and your sister want them?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Sure! And I think granite is another of those things like gold or palladium that works differently here than in other worlds, normal granite is nowhere near this pretty."

[not_only]

He hands her the red heart-shaped thing, which proclaims that it is 16 Life Crystals. Then he goes and gets some granite from another storage chest, and opens yet another storage chest to say, "This is where I keep all of my extra metal bars if you want to take some."

There are many many tiny bricks of metal in that chest.

[iamnotpolaris]

"Thanks!"
Emily will take some iron and somewhat lesser amounts of copper and tin and gold and silver and platinum.
"What's that one?"

[not_only]

"It calls itself Tungsten. I hadn't heard of it before I got here."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I've heard of it. You can make good alloys out of it, if it works like tungsten in other universes."

[not_only]

"Terraria doesn't really seem to do alloys."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Terraria also doesn't do lattices like the one I made out of the copper, I'd bet. We should test this, I should see if I can make bronze out of some of the copper and some of the tin."

[not_only]

"Sure."

[iamnotpolaris]

So she takes a bar each of copper and tin out of their stacks and sets them as blocks and melts relevant proportions of each and mixes them.
"...It's bronze. I don't think it could be described as Terrarian bronze, though, if that makes sense."

[not_only]

"Yes, it does make sense. Okay. Time to go back, do you think? Actually, no—" and he starts grabbing more things out of the same storage chest where he got the granite. "Now that I know there's a safer island there, I should bring lots and lots of building materials so I can make good houses with good furniture."

[iamnotpolaris]

"You seem to like architecture a lot."

[not_only]

"Yes."

[iamnotpolaris]

"We should--oh! When we get back, do you want my sister to put our language in your head? It's spoken in a lot of the universes we go through, so it would be pretty convenient."

[not_only]

"Maybe," he says. "I'll think about it."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Right, so what I was going to say is I think you might like learning non-block architecture. It wouldn't be as easy, but there's all kinds of different styles and building materials and I don't know all that much about it but I know there's a lot."

[not_only]

"Well, if it's less easy I might have a harder time practicing."

[iamnotpolaris]

"That is true! But there are books and stuff, which is actually why I thought of the language thing, and it might have principles that could be applied to block architecture."

[not_only]

"Oh. Well, do you have any of those books?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Not with me, no--architecture isn't one of my particular interests, or Edie's. But most universes have them."

[not_only]

"If we found one, I could read it and see if I liked it."

He looks around the room again, closes open storage chests, and nods thoughtfully.

"I think I have everything this time. We could go back to your island."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Great!"
Emily will try out the butterfly wings instead of supporting herself with metals. She has to take off her fabric shirt for this, but her torso is layered with enough titanium and other things for that not to leave her indecent until she puts the armor back on. It's...different. Not as nice as floating on a proper planet's magnetic field, but better what she had been doing in Terraria.
And they look fantastic.

[not_only]

Sivath coincidentally remembers that he wanted to get something else out of a storage chest when Emily starts fussing with putting on the wings. But when she has finished putting on the wings and her armour is back on, he smiles at her. "They suit you."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Thanks!"

[not_only]

"And now we can really go back."