The Dark Lord of Crafting

Clutching Noivern’s saddle, I soared above Nargul, the wind howling around my helm. The city spread beneath me, a patchwork of shadowy spires and iron-shod warehouses slick with mildly acidic rain. At my request, Gaap had summoned a storm. Of course, there was already a storm, as Dargoth was perpetually shrouded by brown-black clouds, but he had made it rain.

The droplets didn’t seem to bother Noivern, but they hissed when they came in contact with my armor. They were tainted, as most everything else in this blighted land. I’d neglected to ask Zareth about the water situation for a population like this. It wasn’t important for the assault, but the logistics of keeping people alive in a realm like Dargoth had to be staggering.

Lights burned in the city below, and heavy plumes of smoke rose, further obscuring the sky. Torches in the windows of the towers and along the walls generated small fields of unimpeachable light, unaffected by the rain. Kevin had to have produced thousands of them to illuminate Nargul like this, the presence of their steady glow almost giving the impression of a modern city.

As Noivern and I wove through the smoke and the rain and the lower hanging clouds, I smelled burnt ozone and ash even stronger than the musk of the wyvern. Nargul was oppressive, bleak, dystopian. Kevin had designed this place, he had wanted to give it the aesthetic of a dark city in a darker land, and he had succeeded. Points for artistry.

The lights were mesmerizing, and many of them were moving, especially around the center of the city. Were people marching with torches? Were the soldiers on patrol? The lights seemed too numerous and too steady for that. The closer we flew to the center of the city, the more unease settled into my stomach. I had expected to see Dread Keep, but what was ahead of me wasn’t quite right. The towers weren’t where they were supposed to be, and there were railroad tracks where there should have been streets or open squares; Zareth’s map was outdated.

The inner wall was there, even higher than the curtain of black stone that encircled the rest of Nargul. But behind it was something my brain didn’t want to accept. It was the Dread Keep, but the moving lights weren’t an army marching across its bridges and ramparts. The structure itself was moving. Towers turned, and walls shifted, entire buildings were drifting like the backs of whales on the open sea. I blinked. This wasn’t a trick of the rain or the darkness of night. The Dread Keep was there, but it wasn’t a single solid structure at all, it had been fragmented, and those fragments were in motion.

Noivern tensed beneath me, his broad wings beating to give us altitude. Gaap was drawing the army up to Nargul’s great gate; he had already sent messengers ahead of him announcing his arrival. While the watchers on the outer wall were focused on his approach, I’d assigned myself the task of scouting the city, and I didn’t like what I was seeing.

There was still some distance between us and the keep, but from the heights where Noivern had taken me, I had a panoramic view of Kevin’s creation. Zareth had talked about the Eternal Engine, and I had expected to see it running along a track beside the city's walls; a toy train set writ large, the legacy of a railfan with the powers of a crafter and effectively unlimited time and resources on his hands. I hadn’t been wrong, exactly, but I’d underestimated the level of Kevin’s commitment to this project.

He had transformed an entire castle into a locomotive.

The Dread Keep, the Eternal Engine, was a monstrosity of iron and stone. The cars of the train were the size of buildings, they were buildings, topped with battlements. The rain fell in sheets, here and there striking chimneys hot enough to convert the droplets into steam, further shrouding the air. It was a leviathan, a mythical creature; a single heaving, breathing machine, belching smoke. Heated by fires unseen. The clank and clang of machinery reached me even in the sky. At ground level, it would have to be deafening.

People were moving on top of the cars, soldiers patrolling as if they were atop the walls of a castle, which, I supposed, they were. I was so intent on the sight that I didn’t even notice the other wyvern, but Noivern did. He trilled a warning below me, shifting the angle of our flight so that we were headed directly toward it. I tugged on the reins for him to take us higher, into the denser cover of the clouds, but it was too late.

Had it spawned because of my presence, or did it belong to Agares? Phantoms were hunting the skies, and I’d already had to fend off a few of them, but they weren’t as fast as Noivern, so we’d been able to fly mostly unmolested.

The other wyvern called out a challenge, shrieking like a hawk, and veered toward us. It didn’t have a rider, but as I couldn’t know for sure it was one of my spawns, I had to assume it was under the control of Agares, guided by his will. As far as I knew, the demons weren’t able to use the monsters they controlled as eyes and ears, at least not in the sense of being able to

possess them directly, but they were unquestionably able to communicate. Trolls and shamblers could only grunt and hoot, but I’d seen Bojack ask them questions before, and he’d always seemed to understand their responses. I had every reason to believe this wyvern could report back to Agares that there was a stranger in his airspace.

Noivern met the challenging call with an almost identical shriek. His wings flared, catching the wind, and our approach slowed. The other wyvern was coming towards us. Kevin’s crossbow was at hand, and my own bow was ready to be called from the Storage Ring, but I didn’t want to shoot it down. A few enchanted arrows would certainly do the job of taking it out of the sky, but I didn’t want the thing to hit the ground looking like a pincushion. It would be as good as announcing my presence above the city.

But it had already seen us. Letting it go was not an option. Did the monsters fight amongst themselves? If they were controlled by adversarial demons, they certainly might. The second wyvern rose to match our height, and though I couldn’t make out its eyes, I felt like they were locked onto me. It banked sharply, turning away from us and dropping toward the inner wall of the city.

“Catch it,” I shouted over the wind, squeezing with my knees, and Noivern shifted into high gear. I still wasn’t sure how well my mount could understand me, but it certainly seemed to agree with my intent. With a mighty pump of its wings, we dove after the retreating wyvern, and I called Kevin’s buster sword out of my inventory.

It was an incredibly awkward weapon, though not as heavy as it should have been, and I had witnessed firsthand how ineffective it could be when one was confined to fighting in a hallway. Out here, however, on the back of a flying beast, there was no ceiling to scrape, no wall to stop a swing. It was the perfect environment for an improbably proportioned sword.

The white gold metal of the blade caught the light of a lightning flash behind us, and a heartbeat later, the thunder covered Noivern’s screech as we gave chase. The extra weight of carrying me didn’t appear to be putting Noivern at a disadvantage, and we closed the gap a moment later.

Coming at the second wyvern from above, Noivern chomped down on one of its

wings in an upbeat. The buster sword was as long as a spear, so I didn’t have any trouble jabbing its tip into the beast’s back.

There’s no such thing as a flying grapple. What ensued was a tangle of wings and claws and two gaping, toothy maws as we fell. But the second wyvern didn’t have a rider to defend it, and when I stabbed it again, it let out a final piercing cry and stopped fighting. We were too low, even with the cover of darkness and the rain, I was sure that at least some of the soldiers on the inner wall would see what was happening. But it was over in another second.

Noivern released the wyvern and let it fall while he labored to ascend. I returned the sword to the ring and tried to look to see where the monster had fallen, but it was already lost in the maze of the streets below.

The scene of our struggle, and the deep wound I had given the beast, were hardly less conspicuous than a few arrows would have been. It was probably more conspicuous overall, but I chalked it up to the mistakes of a new dark lord. It was practically my first day.

Agares was sure to soon realize I was here and up to no good either way.

The train whistled, and the sound filled the sky, echoing over the city, loud enough to hurt my eardrums. Noivern screeched in response, sounding more annoyed than pained, and I tugged on the harness to take us over the Dread Keep and to the back side of the city. The whistle didn’t repeat, and I didn’t think it was an alarm. Kevin liked trains, and trains whistled sometimes. There was nothing I could do about it now.

There didn’t appear to be any other sentinels in the air, and I had two demons waiting for me in the quarries behind the city. When we reached them, Noivern’s landing was impressively delicate.

Berith was an easy silhouette to spot, standing tall, with his arms crossed over his chest, ignoring the rain and what it was doing to the ruff of fur around his face. As I dropped to the ground, giving Noivern an appreciative pat for his good work, Asmodeus separated himself from a nearby shadow. He’d blended into his environment perfectly. The snake, at least, knew how to be stealthy.

A pair of varghests were resting near Berith, they’d ridden the creatures hard to come ahead of the army and around the city in time to meet me. The monster's tongues lolled out of their long snouts as they panted, looking for all the world like a couple of lovable canines that just happened to be the size of horses and equipped with teeth that could shear through chainmail like it was chicken skin.

Berith didn’t waste any time on formalities. “What did you see?”

“It’s basically like Zareth said.” I paused to roll my shoulders and stretch my back, riding a wyvern was not a leisure activity, and I was still new at it. “Aside from the fact that the Dread Keep and the Eternal Engine are the same thing. That was a bit of an oversight.”

“What?” Berith scrunched up his face in confusion. It was actually kind of cute, being that he was basically a big cat and all. “What are you saying?”

“Kevin converted the keep into a train. Did you guys not know about this? I get that Orobas was out of the loop for a while, but how did you guys not tell me about it?” It wasn’t exactly a small project, Kevin would have spent months on the build, if not years. Zareth hadn’t done anything so far to make me doubt his worth as a vizier, but this was a pretty big change for him not to have noticed, and I intended to bring it up with him as soon as we got back.

“This isn’t my territory,” Berith growled, “I haven’t been inside Nargul in decades.”

“A mobile fortress,” Asmodeus said in a soft voice, “that complicates things, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Even though it’s moving, the whole thing just looked like it was spinning around the center of the city. It may not make that much of a difference. At least it gives me a good idea of where the lillits are.” Of course, they could be spread around hundreds of cars, and Agares was probably in there with them, but that was just par for the course at this point.

I gave my full attention to Noivern, taking his wide head in both my gauntleted hands. He met my gaze, more intelligent than anything that looked like that had a right to be.

“Go back to the army,” I said, “go to Gaap. I want you to wait for me at the front. And keep yourself safe, okay? There’s plenty of other monsters to do the fighting if there’s fighting to be done.”

He chirped at me in response, and when I let him go, he was back in the air in a few wingbeats. I watched him for a moment, and another lighting flash illuminated the broad span of his wings as he circled back above the city's outer wall, and then I turned back to the demons.

“You should send your mounts back too. They’ll just get in the way in the city.”

Berith muttered a few words in the demonic tongue, and the varghests picked themselves up to trot off into the night.

“Your plan hasn’t changed?” Asmodeus asked, slipping closer to me. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said he was about to assassinate me, but the snake demon always looked like he was about to assassinate someone, so no worries there.

Honestly, calling my plan a plan was too generous, but here we were.

“Berith,” I said, “cue the mist.”

The tiger nodded and uncorked a water jug. His hands cycled through a series of intricate movements while he muttered under his breath. Liquid spurted from the jug at his hip, dispersing into a cloud as more moisture rose from our surroundings. A thick, yellowish mist materialized, and in a few more seconds, we were completely shrouded. I couldn’t see much farther than the stretch of my hands.

“Will that do?” Berith asked.

“It’ll do.”

This quarry wasn’t far from the outer wall, and I set the pace to as fast as I could walk without stomping with metal-shod feet. As we reached the barrier, I summoned my new pick, Durin’s Digger, and drilled through. The stones of the wall vanished under its touch, and the coins they produced were automatically funneled into the last open slot in my inventory hot bar. I'd made some last-minute decisions about what I would need to have instant access to, and I'd settled on the buster, my bow, and stacks of arrows as well as the orb, torches, and my remaining atreanum knives. The knife I’d used to kill Bael had been ruined, shattering into dust when I tried to recover it. Also, I was bringing grass mattresses.

There were basic materials in my pack, but they weren’t essential to our mission.

I dug out just enough space for me to move forward, there was no call for crafting a fancy arch here, though it was tempting to think about, and I’d mined out a tunnel to the other side after only a few minutes of work.

Mining was always a relaxing activity, and for a moment, I could almost pretend I was back home under Williamsburg, collecting material for another build, but it was over quickly.

Emerging on the other side, the haze of Berith’s spell poured through behind us. Amid the tightly packed buildings and the cobblestone streets, a movement caught my eye.

There was a man twenty paces from us, dressed in the clothes of a laborer, holding what appeared to be a flagon in one hand. He’d emerged from an alley and frozen in place as soon as he saw us, his mouth opened, but he didn’t call out an alarm.

Before I could react, a flash of silver streaked through the dim light from the torches on the wall high above. Asmodeus’s knife shot as straight as an arrow, coming to rest in the man’s chest. He crumpled silently, like a doll whose strings had been cut, and then the mist covered everything.

I heard the flagon hit the cobblestones, a little lonely sound.

I rounded on the snake demon, anger building in my chest.

“What are you doing?”

“Killing a witness,” he answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. There was a sucking sound, and then the knife reappeared in his hand.

“He wasn’t a threat,” I said, forcing myself to keep my voice down.

“He saw us. I killed him.” Asmodeus’s head tilted quizzically, his hood flaring out briefly before closing again.

He may have made a prudent choice, but that man obviously hadn’t been on guard duty. He had been a bystander, and he was a citizen of the empire I was nominally in charge of. That made him my citizen, or at least he would be once Agares was deposed. I wanted to prevent unnecessary deaths where I could if I could, and this seemed like an obvious example.

“He was a man of Dargoth,” I said. “Don’t kill anyone who isn’t a threat to us. That’s an order.”

The demon’s tongue flickered out, tasting the air. “Everyone is a threat,” he said.

I punched him in the chest. He staggered back, his hood flaring again, gripping the Kris like he meant to use it.

“Do better,” I said, and after a pause, he nodded in acquiescence. Berith looked like he was enjoying the exchange.

“As you say,” the tiger agreed, “we will act with discretion.”

The mist pulled more tightly around us, and we made our way further into the city. The journey to the inner wall was dreamlike, silent except for the distant chugging of the great machine at Nargul’s heart and the clip of our feet. The noise made it easy to navigate.

Buildings appeared and disappeared in the swirl, visible only in parts and pieces; a hanging sign, a jagged fence, a cornice, a stoop. There were no more people, maybe Nargul had a curfew, or maybe it was just luck. Shamblers groaned in the fog, and I couldn’t be sure if they belonged to the city or if they were coming into being because of me.

No one tried to stop us, and we kept to side streets and alleys. I heard someone laugh, but they were far away, and the sound was disconnected from any possible context, just another figment of the dream. Humans were living ordinary lives in this city. Dark lord or no dark lord, demons or no demons, people just lived. The man Asmodeus had killed had a family somewhere among this maze of streets, and he would not come home to them. Did he have a wife who was waiting for him, a child? It was easy not to think about those things when you were dealing with a platoon of soldiers in matching stormtrooper helmets, but it was different when you killed a guy who could have just been out having a drink.

The wall of the inner city appeared before us, a sheer face of granite that rose higher than I could see in the mist. I pressed my hand against it, and even through my gauntlet, I could feel the thrum of the Eternal Engine on the other side.

The stillness of the moment was interrupted by an eerie, two-toned cough.

An Voidman appeared next to me, its long-fingered hands reaching for my neck.