A colossal worm-like being, made from silver steel began rising high into the sky. Its entire length was embedded with glowing red circular pods. Its head looked down, showing its red eye and pincers.

That would have been bad enough, but then William spotted an eye – no, two eyes – peering over the wall. One green, one red, connected by a filament of blood-red tissue, and both as large as the Eye of Cthulhu had been.

"James!" Sid suddenly shouted. "What are you doing here?"

William spun to his direction just in time to see Skeletron bearing down on them. Except this wasn't Skeletron as he knew it.

"Actually, I don't think that's James," Sid said, voicing William's thoughts. "It's made of metal and has four arms... and one has a laser!"

The metal Skeletron roared and began spinning towards them in a manner like the original Skeletron, with the addition of a ring of spikes sprouting out along its circumference.

The twin eyeballs also charged towards them. Pink lasers began firing from the red one, while glowing green fireballs began launching from the other. The metal worm swooped down at them from above, Sid narrowly avoiding it as it burrowed back down into the ground, only to come back up again, this time tearing its way through the house of Theodore the Tax Collector in the process.

"You young whippersnappers keep your toys off my property!" he cried as he began beating his cane against the worm's metal carapace.

William finally snapped out of his shock and went on the attack. Thinking the worm would be the most destructive threat, he went for it first, but the metal Skeletron got in his way, swinging at him with two arms that had a saw-blade and vice respectively attached to their ends, and he was forced to weave around and throw some Shadowflame Daggers at it instead.

Sid didn't seem to be faring too much better. He summoned an entire cauldron of Sanguine Bats and tried to leap to William's defence, but the twin eyeballs similarly got in his way. Meg turned her new weapon – the Sky Fracture – on the worm, shooting volleys of glowing blue energy swords at its body, but that seemed to do little damage. Worse, some of the red pods on its back began opening, revealing small metal probes that flew out and started firing lasers.

With so much going on they were quickly being overwhelmed. William got hit by a green fireball from one of the eyes, a laser from Skeletron, and accidentally flew into the side of the worm in the span of three seconds. This wasn't working.

"We should try to focus one of them down!" Meg shouted.

"I've got a better idea," Sid said. "We try to split them up and fight them one-on-one. There's three of us, and three of them."

"Four of them. There's two eyeballs!" Meg said.

"They're connected. I was counting them as one! I'll deal with them!" He snapped his Cool Whip at both eyeballs, sending forth his bats, and the two eyes began turning their gaze upon him. He expertly managed to lure them away from the village, and soon disappeared into the night. William then saw Meg managing to attract metal Skeletron's attention and similarly lead it away.

That left the worm for William.

Looking at its label for the first time – 'The Destroyer: 108,589/120,000' – he was struck with just how much life it had. Still, it had already lost over 10,000 just in the short time that they'd been fighting it, and he suspected the reason why was because of its massive size, making it easy to hit.

The Destroyer charged straight at him, and he flew up, but was assaulted by a barrage of large red lasers from the worm as well as a flotilla of smaller ones from the probes. Big or small, they hurt, and he knew he wouldn't last long if they kept on whittling him down.

His wings ran out of flight and he was forced to fall and land on one of the houses, which led to the Destroyer burrowing straight into its roof, sending a screaming Emily the Nurse fleeing. William took to the skies again and began pelting the Destroyer with Shadowflame Knives. He'd noticed before they were prone to bouncing between groups of enemies, and realised that now they were bouncing along the segments of the Destroyer for massive damage. Already it had fallen below 95,000 life.

But then he had to land again. On taking off the probes kept pursuing him, so he twirled his Drippler Crippler and flung it through them all, blasting many of them to pieces.

That was when he found himself falling into the Destroyer's segmented body. He cried out on impact and rebounded off of it, falling to the ground.

It was then that he had an idea.

He equipped an item he had barely used up to this point – the Gelatinous Pillion, which he had gotten from the Queen Slime. It summoned a pink slime with wings and a saddle, which similar to Sid's bee mount he could ride on and fly with. But what made it special was that if it landed on top of an enemy it would bounce straight off the top of it without William taking damage.

He planned to use this property to great effect here.

Sitting on the mount, he flew upwards, just over the Destroyer's head as it charged at him. Just as he'd hoped, the slime landed on the Destroyer's body and bounced off the top of it. And again, and again.

He smiled. Now we're getting somewhere!

He kept this up, pelting the Destroyer and its probes with Shadowflame Knives all from the comfort of his winged slime mount. He still had to dodge lasers of numerous colours from the probes and the Destroyer itself, but the fight was now largely in his favour. The damage stacked up, and after some time the Destroyer exploded along its entire length, collapsing into a pile of metal and circuitry.

Some items rushed into William's inventory – Souls of Might, Hallowed Bars, and some gold coins.

He landed on one of the houses and took in the village around him. It had suffered great damage, but villages could be rebuilt. Lives couldn't.

He could only hope Meg and Sid were having as much success with their fights.

***

Sid was not having much success with his fight. He'd hit both of the eyes – Retinazer and Spazmatism – a roughly equal amount of times with his Cool Whip, to ensure the snowflake it summoned kept bouncing between them for even more damage. His Sanguine Bat summons, fast as they were, also kept rapidly flying between them dealing equal damage. Things had been going well, until they'd both reached around half health and started spinning around, shedding their outer eye parts in a similar way that the Eye of Cthulhu had. Spazmatism, the green eye, unveiled an open mouth similar to the Eye of Cthulhu, but which could breathe green fire like a dragon, while Retinazer revealed a protruding laser cannon that started firing red lasers so rapidly Sid found it hard to keep ahead of them.

He should have anticipated this based on how the Eye of Cthulhu had worked – heck, the logic of focussing one down and then dealing with the other was what Meg had initially suggested earlier just before they'd all split up! In this situation, where he was facing off against a unit of two opponents, it certainly would have helped.

He found Spazmatism's fire-breath almost impossible to avoid if it got too close, and whenever he tried to fly away it would just roar and make massive charges towards him. Even when he managed to dodge it, Retinazer's sharpshooting would almost always find him.

He decided to focus down Spazmatism, figuring it was more threatening. Retinazer's straight-line lasers would be easier to dodge if they were the only thing coming after him. It took some mad dodging and a couple of close calls, but eventually his Sanguine Bats managed to dismantle the green eye, leaving just its brother. Or sister. Did these eyes have genders?

Just as he'd hoped, Retinazer was easier to deal with on its own, and his summons wasted no time in taking it down as well. While Spazmatism had dropped nothing upon death, Retinazer dropped some green-coloured Souls of Sight and some Hallowed Bars.

As he touched down on the grassy ground, he began to wonder if he should start listening to Meg more.

***

Meg hadn't been around when William and Sid had fought the original Skeletron, but from what she knew, the metal Skeletron – named Skeletron Prime – was definitely far stronger. It launched quite a barrage of attacks at her, but many of her weapons were well-suited for dealing damage to multiple targets at once – namely, Skeletron Prime and all of his arms. Her Golden Shower especially was often able to do this, lowering the defence on all of them. The laser and cannon arm were the first to be destroyed, leaving just the saw and vice arms, but they were easy to dodge, so she decided to just focus down on the head with the magic swords from her Sky Fracture. It was quickly destroyed.

She collected the orange-coloured Souls of Fright and Hallowed Bars it dropped, then used her Magic Mirror to return to the village.

There she found William, panting heavily and looking around at the destruction that the Destroyer had wrought, but still alive. Sid materialised in a spray of blue particles a moment later.

"What the heck were those things?" he asked.

Meg had one theory on her mind, which was based on something that William and Sid had told her about before. Based on the grim look on William's face, she suspected he was thinking the same.

"The mechanical Cthulhu parts that the Cultists forced the Mechanic into building," William said. "That's what we just fought."

"Hold up," Sid said. "You serious?"

"Remember we fought Cthulhu's eye way back when. Now you just took down two mechanical eyes. The metal Skeletron was probably its skull and arms. And the Destroyer... I guess its spine or ribs or something?"

"How does that even work?" Sid exclaimed. "The eyes were way bigger than Skeletron's head. They wouldn't fit in its sockets!"

William shrugged.

"Well, there's only one person that can confirm or deny what we just fought."

***

"Based on your descriptions," Kayla the Mechanic said, "I'm pretty sure you fought – and defeated – my mechanical body parts."

The bunker, which had been relatively clean and empty when William had left it, was now chock-full of gadgets and devices. Some finished, like some timers with numbers on them, and some unfinished, like a humanoid form lying on a bed that vaguely resembled some sort of robot in development.

"They were planning on using the parts to revive Cthulhu," William muttered. "But now they just sent them all after us, basically on a suicide attack, since we blew them all up and none of them killed us, or even any of the citizens."

"Do you think you know why they were sent after us?" Meg asked.

"I... I'm not sure," she said, then her blue eyes lit up. "Perhaps –"

She was interrupted by the bunker ceiling exploding.

A figure with glowing eyes dropped inside and grabbed the Mechanic around the neck.

Robyn!