Unlike the lush green of the forest, the Desert was a barren wasteland of yellow sand. Cacti dotted the rolling dunes. The only enemies to be seen were some Sand Slimes and Vultures, the latter which would fly up and try to swoop if attacked.

"I don't see any sign of the sinkhole," Sid said as they approached a pond of teal-blue water. "There's this oasis, which is nice I guess."

William tried chopping down the palm trees that surrounded the oasis. "It's a different type of wood," he said.

"Like how the snow biome has boreal wood," Sid said.

Robyn said nothing, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon both for the sinkhole but also any signs of danger. It was then that she spotted something sticking out from the sand, clashing against the smooth dunes.

"There," she said, beginning to run towards it.

Sid sped past her – the Hermes Boots he had recently found in a chest underground allowed him to run much faster than either of them.

"It's not a sinkhole," he said. "But it looks like a tiny pyramid."

When Robyn caught up to him she could see what he meant. It looked to be constructed from some sort of sandstone brick, pointing only about four blocks tall.

William got out his pickaxe and began digging at the sand surrounding the base of the pyramid.

"It goes downwards," he said. "It's not a tiny pyramid – it's just the top of a pyramid that's mostly buried!"

He dug into the sandstone brick. Some time later he broke into a musty staircase that led further downwards. It soon led into a large, ornate room lit with desert torches. It was decorated with yellow banners depicting hieroglyphs. Several pots were scattered across the room along with a golden chest.

Sid smashed the pots to collect the coins and other items within, while William went for the chest.

"There's a Sandstorm in a Bottle," he said. He turned to Robyn and said, "Do you want to have it?"

"No need," she said, then did a double jump using her newly-fished Tsunami in a Bottle, a burst of water spurting from her feet.

"Oh."

"Looks like you can keep it, Will," Sid chuckled.

There was another staircase that led deeper into the pyramid, however it led to a dead end after several flights of steps. So the three of them returned to the surface and kept trekking.

"Looks like we're coming up to the end of the Desert," Sid said after awhile, "There's more forest ahead."

Robyn looked ahead, her eyes blinking in the intense sunlight.

"Hold on," she said. "Why are those trees... red?"

As they approached the strange red forest the sky around them seemed to darken. It was still day, the sun hanging in the sky, but it seemed like some sort of grey shade was high in the sky.

On closer inspection the grass was red too. Some spiny-looking bushes grew in patches alongside the trees, which sported dead-looking grey trunks and ragged red leaves.

"I don't like the look of this place," William said. "It's giving me goosebumps."

I feel the same, Robyn couldn't help thinking. The entire place looked like something had consumed the flesh of an entire forest and regurgitated it inside-out.

"Hey, look! There's eyeballs in that cave!" Sid exclaimed.

"Ew!" Robyn screeched softly.

Sid stepped into the cave, which was more like an overhang than a cave. Inside the eyeballs that he'd pointed out were resting on mounds of some sort of fleshy substance. He snapped his leather whip at one of the mounds and it burst apart in a squelchy noise, dropping some coins.

That was when Robyn heard a loud, guttural roar. The very sound caused her stomach to drop.

"Uh... guys? We should get out of here," she said.

That was when a creature stepped into the daylight.

It looked humanoid, with fleshy, naked skin, its malformed head elongnated, its jaw the size of its torso. It had a single, empty eye, which looked to be the size of Sid's face. Its label read: 'Face Monster: 140/140'.

Eeuuwww!

"Run!" William shouted.

Sid sent his Flinxes after the Face Monster to slow it down while the three of them ran back the way they'd came, towards the Desert.

"Incoming!" Sid cried.

Robyn looked up just in time to see a flying monster overhead. This one was named a Crimera, and it had a teardrop-shaped body with spines all along its side. Its eyes and mouth sat at the base of the teardrop alongside some nasty-looking curved horns.

She aimed her bow upwards and fired, one flaming arrow knocking the Crimera for a spin. Luckily, they didn't face much more resistance before escaping back into the safe dunes of the Desert.

"What the heck is that place?" William groaned.

"I don't know," Sid said. "My best bet is, it might be where the Eye of Ka-choo-choo came from."

William and Sid hadn't been able to agree on how to pronounce 'Cthulhu' after the Eye had invaded, so they'd just invented their own pronunciations.

Robyn glanced back at the crimson forest, and her eyes were drawn to a splash of green standing out amongst the red of the forest and the yellow of the sand. It looked to be a slim woman, with long, bushy hair the colour of grass.

"Guys?" Robyn said, glancing at the others. "There's a woman there."

William and Sid spun around and looked where she was pointing.

"I don't see anyone there," Sid said.

Robyn looked back. The woman was gone.

What? I swear, she was right there!

"Whatever," William said. "Remember, we're looking for Hayley's brother. He fell down a sinkhole in the Desert. We should keep looking around."

A sandstorm began whipping up as they continued. The sound of whistling wind ran through Robyn's ears along with particles of sand. She squinted to try to keep it out of her eyes and struggled to keep her footing, the wind itself trying to push her in the other direction. A rolling tumbleweed slammed into her, dealing 55 damage.

"We need to find shelter!" William shouted over the wind.

"You're the builder!" Sid yelled. "We could build our own!"

"Oh! Yeah!"

He quickly erected a wall of wooden planks, which Sid and Robyn crouched behind. Another tumbleweed – apparently enemies named Angry Tumblers – rolled past them, but Sid's Flinxes knocked it to the side.

William soon managed to encase them in the wooden box, now protecting them from the sandstorm.

"Let's wait it out, then keep searching once it's over," he said.

Sid laid down on the rough sand. "I might take a nap until it's over." He pulled his viking helmet down over his eyes and lay still.

Robyn sat against one wall, bringing her knees up to her chin, her eyes on Sid. Days and nights cycled much faster than they did in the real world, meaning there was no real way for them to get any sort of sleeping schedule or even to sleep for long periods of time. So the three of them had begun just trying to get some rest whenever they could. But at that moment she was too tense to rest, her mind still going through the creepy crimson forest they had found.

William sat on the other side of the shelter and faced her. "How are you feeling, Robyn?"

She grumbled. "Fine."

He nodded, taking off his iron helmet.

"I feel like something's been bothering you," he said.

She tensed.

"You don't... really talk much," he went on, "And especially not much since we took down the Eye. At first I thought it was because of how... powerful it was, because of the fact that we all almost died, but... Look, I just want to make sure you're alright. Living in this world is hard when everything's trying to kill us."

Robyn stared at his blue eyes. What he was saying did make sense. But it wasn't the Eye of Cthulhu that scared her. Not completely, anyway.

"Sid almost killed you," she blurted. "And you lied to me."

William stared at her.

"When did I lie to you?"

"I..." she hesitated. "When you said Sid went away... you never told me... you made him go away..."

William sighed. He shuffled in his sitting position over to her right.

"I admit I was a bit of a jerk at first," he said. "But Sid and I... we've agreed on a common goal now. To get stronger so that whatever this world throws at us, we'll be able to take it down."

Robyn sighed.

"Are you worried... about us fighting again?"

"No," she said. "I'm just..."

She wasn't sure what to say. That she didn't trust them? Because of the lie, and the fight?

"Sid thinks this whole world is a videogame," William said.

She had kind of gathered that from when they'd been fighting.

"He told me the reason why he thinks that is because of how the world is set out," William went on. "Like, think of all the treasure chests we've been finding. If we found a treasure chest in real life, someone would have had to put the chest and everything in it there. But in a videogame, he said, the items inside can just be... randomly placed."

"Oh," Robyn said softly.

"He also said he thinks citizens like Andrew the Guide aren't real people. They're just people designed and placed in this videogame. All the slimes and other monsters we're fighting, too. He says they're all like NPCs."

"NPCs?"

"It stands for something... can't remember what he said, though."

"Do you believe him?" Robyn asked.

He threw a glance at Sid.

"Some bits of what he said might be right," he said. "But I think this world is more than a videogame." He looked back to her. "You said it yourself. You can't transport yourself inside one. Not yet anyway, technology in the real world that we know of isn't that advanced."

Robyn looked down at her knees. "Why is it that we can remember certain bits of the real world but can't remember anything about... ourselves?"

William sighed. "I don't know. Not even Sid has an answer to that one. But what I do know is that we're all in this together. That means we have to look out for each other."

Robyn glanced at him. He looked to be a mixture of ease, but also apprehension.

There was a lot in this world that they could come to understand.

But the bigger questions... they were clearly affecting him.