The Dark Lord of Crafting

A strange look crossed the face of the former mayor as realization dawned on him. Whether he recognized my voice or my habit of calling the harpies my homies, he knew who I was, and I saw my name being formed on his lips.

“Get the lillits out of here!” I shouted to the flocking birds. They weren’t as big as the eagles in the Lord of the Rings, but they were big enough to snatch up a half-starved lillit.

Berith gave me a quizzical look, his whiskers twitching. “Are you talking to me?”

“The lillits aren’t going anywhere,” Agares said before I could reply. “And neither are you.”

With a casual gesture, he caused the stones under my feet to soften until they had the consistency of mud. It was one of Bojack’s favorite tricks as well, hence the grass mattresses in my inventory. I dropped one directly in front of me and did a Legend of Zelda style roll onto it out of the semi-fluid stones.

The platform sucked at my boots, and I carried a bit of splatter with me, but I was free. As I came up on my knees, I twisted around just enough to give Berith his marching orders.

“You handle Astaroth, I’ve got the rest.”

Agares snorted in derision.

“Surrender,” he said, “or the lillits all die.”

It was at that moment that the first harpy reached the tower. Its arrival was followed by the terrified squeal of a lillit child being snatched from the verge and taken into the sky. Due to the precarious positioning of the other lillits lining the edge of the tower, the sudden kidnapping caused a few to bump into each other and lose their balance. It happened too fast for me to react, and one of them fell backward into open space.

The moment seemed to last forever, but a breath later, the lillit who had fallen rose again, a harpy pulling him up by his shirt.

“Kill them!” Agares bellowed, and the peacock beside him began casting a spell. Like Bael, Astaroth had an affinity for fire. Red gold tendrils burst into life between his hands, which he shaped into a ball. As he drew his hands apart, the ball increased in size, blooming at an alarming rate.

Rather than charging ahead with his ax, Berith tore the cap off of a water gourd at his hip, and a fountain of clear liquid shot across the tower, striking Astaroth on his beak with the force of a punch. His spell was disrupted, and the fireball lost its coherence, exploding in his face. I was aiming the crossbow, highlighting the Shadowbane arrows in my inventory, and ripping back the string.

Agares charged, bowling over the lillits in front of him, hefting his oversized hammer as he came. I only had enough time to shoot once. The enchanted arrow bounced off his stone breastplate, and he was on me. The bull demon swung the hammer up, its head striking my right arm at the elbow, jarring the weapon out of my hands. The armor absorbed most of the damage, but it still hurt, and my arm went numb. As strong as I had become, this demon was stronger.

Still on my knees from the roll, I used my legs to throw myself into him shoulder first, hoping to knock him off balance, but I may as well have been slamming into a mountain. He stepped away to give himself room to swing, and I barely managed to avoid being knocked on my back, ducking under his hammer at the last instant.

The gargoyles sprang forward. Their wings were too stunted to allow them to fly, but the monsters could hop. I rolled away from Agares, dropping another grass mat as I went, trying to get back on my feet, and the first gargoyle grabbed me. Its claws dug into my pauldrons, smart enough to know that the worst it could do to me was hold me in place and allow Agares to crack me open. Rather than resisting, I twitched my spirit finger to spin through my inventory and dropped magic torches.

The gray-skinned mob made a pained noise as Shadowbane took effect, its grip falling away as it shielded its eyes while the other balked at the edge of the illuminated circle. The enchantment was enough to even give Agares pause, affording me the second I needed to rise. The bull demon snarled, mastering the pain of the torch in an instant, and attacked again.

I sidestepped, and the hammer came down on the grass mat, the sound of the stone cracking underneath cutting the air like lightning. The lillits were in chaos. It wouldn’t be obvious to them that the harpies were their salvation, but there was nowhere to run. Most of them pressed in around the pillars, avoiding the very edge of the tower.

Brenys alone remained motionless. She had always looked like an old woman, for all I knew, even older than Boffin, and she had never been the type to take guff from anyone. Even when I had brought the lillits back from the wastes and founded Williamsburg, she had never been subservient or obsequious, treating me like a son-in-law whom she wasn’t quite sure about. Now, caught in a conflict of monsters and demons, her eyes narrowed, and she smiled.

“The Mayor has returned,” she shouted. “The harpies are our friends!”

Then she held out both her arms and very deliberately stepped off the tower.

Astaroth blinked away the aftereffects of his botched spell, pointing at Berith. A line of bright white flame erupted from his outstretched finger, forcing the tiger demon to duck. With most of the lillits out of the way, Berith was free to charge. He roared a challenge and attacked Astaroth with the same fervor he had shown against the troll. The peacock danced away from his ax, summoning more fire, and the two of them went back and forth, evading and striking with neither being able to land a decisive blow.

I drew my sword, and Agares knocked it out of my hand a moment later. He was too strong for me to parry his blows. There was no point in trying to match him in a fair fight, and even orichalcum full plate wasn’t enough to completely protect me from the force of his hammer. But any weapon that size was at a disadvantage if you could get close enough.

I jumped up and hugged him.

My arms wrapped around his shoulders, and I called the atreanum dagger from my inventory. He spun us around. He was so tall that my feet were off the ground, but he was forced to let go of his hammer with one hand to pry me off.

I jabbed the dagger into the back of his neck.

It wasn’t a well-aimed strike, but the blade of black metal slid into his flesh, and the meta-material did its work. Agares bellowed in anguish, thrusting me away, and I landed on my back on the tower stones. He raised his hammer in both hands, and it came down with the force of an avalanche on my chest. The orichalcum breastplate dented but didn’t entirely cave. I felt the impact through my entire body, and he raised the hammer again for a second blow.

I rolled onto my side out of the way, forcing my numb hands to push me up.

Brenys returned into view, held aloft by a harpy, and cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West. The shamblers, pushed to the edge of the tower by the enchanted light, were attacking the lillits. The little people caught between a precipice and certain death at the hands of murderous space zombies, followed her example, throwing themselves from the tower en masse.

Agares paused to pull the dagger from his neck, and Kevin’s sword appeared in my grasp. I swung it with everything I had left, barely aiming, and the tip sliced open his cheek. The bull demon staggered back, ripping the dagger free, but the hammer slipped from his other hand. Black blood was spouting from his neck, pouring down his jaw, and he looked at me with wild, furious eyes.

“You are not the Dark Lord,” he said, his words slurring. “But perhaps we can come to an understanding.”

I brought Kevin’s sword down on top of his head, embedding it in his skull.

“Understanding reached,” I said, and the bull demon fell to his knees. Still alive, he gripped the sword in both his hands, ignoring the bite of the blade, and I jerked it back, pulling him forward. The buster was stuck in his head, so I let it go, but Caliburn’s glimmering edge a pace away caught my eye.

Berith and Astaroth were locked in their dance. He had lost some of his fur, but he refused to allow the peacock demon to cast his most powerful spells. Astaroth threw out his arms, summoning a blazing aura like the one Bael had used to protect himself from Vepar, but Berith tanked it. Ignoring the wave of flame, he buried his ax in the bird demon’s belly, and Astaroth collapsed.

Agares was leaning forward as if supported by the buster lodged in his head. His mouth moved in an incantation, and the stones of the platform rose in his defense, but his control was slacking. A half wall slumped into shape around him, and granite spikes erupted, one of them scraping the plate covering my upper thigh.

I lifted Caliburn in both hands, pointed down, and drove it into the base of the demon’s skull.

“Bael was tougher,” I said and heard a scream.

A gargoyle had a lillit on the ground. The little person nearly disappeared under the monster’s broad frame, but I could hear him. Ripping my sword free, I sprinted over and thrust it into the gargoyle’s back. The monster reared up, forgetting the lillit as it howled. It tried to turn, caught on my blade, and collapsed when I tore Caliburn free.

The lillit wasn’t in great shape, but he was alive.

Another face I didn’t recognize. Esmelda might have known his name. She’d had a knack for remembering seemingly everyone in Williamsburg she had ever interacted with, whereas I had taken our citizens for granted.

With a few brusque commands, Berith was able to stop the remaining gargoyles from assaulting anyone else, and he sent them down the trapdoor into the tower to get them out of the way and block any train guards from coming up. Not all the lillits had jumped, but a lot of them were in the air in the talons of harpies, and most of those were not nearly as pleased about the situation as Brenys seemed to be.

“Homies!” I shouted. “Bring everyone in! It’s over!”

Berith approached Agares body with caution, and with a growl that came from deep in his throat, hacked off the bull demon’s head. He presented it to me like a trophy, holding it by one horn.

“Uh, thanks,” I said, neither wanting to offend Berith nor accept the grisly offering. “You can keep that, though. Consider it a token of my appreciation. The seventh seat is yours, by the way. You did what I asked, and you were here when I needed you.”

Berith raised the face and roared in triumph. In the grand scheme of things, the demons weren’t that hard to please. My eyes roved the platform, the grass mat, the morphed stones, and saw that the knife had fractured into pieces when Agares threw it away. Atreanum was as fragile as advertised. I collected the pieces anyway.

A massive black bird flapped in and landed a pace away from me, almost as big as a wyvern. I recognized her by her eyes, violet orbs eerily similar to the gaze of an Voidman.

“We have long awaited your return,” Celaeno said.

I wanted to shake her hand, but she didn’t have one, so I touched her beak instead, and she warbled her appreciation.

“You came at just the right time. How did you know I would be here?”

“We are connected, blood to blood, flock to flock.” She croaked in agitation. “You were gone for so long, and I could not feel you. Then you returned, and we followed.”

Creepy, but awesome.

“I am grateful,” I said. “I didn’t know if you would remember me.”

Celaeno cawed in a way that I interpreted as a scoff. “I see far,” she said, “even through the years, and we do not forget. We fed well in the green lands of the man who betrayed you, and the flock has grown.”

The flock certainly had grown, a curtain of wings ringed the air around the tower, and they were dropping off lillits left and right. Brenys landed and came to stand directly in front of me with her hands on her hips.

“Have you gotten taller?” she demanded, looking up at me. “Take that helmet off, I want to see that it’s you.”

Even with Agares dead, we weren’t entirely safe. The mobs would soon be running amok until my demons were able to corral them, and as far as the soldiers of the city were concerned, Nargul was still under attack. Any stray arrow could take me out, but I wanted the lillits to see me, to know that I was who they believed me to be, and that their bondage was really at an end.

I tapped my helm until it vanished.

Berys hugged me. I couldn’t feel her through my plate, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless, only slightly mitigated by the comment that followed.

“You still smell bad, vagabond,” she said, pulling away with a frown on her deeply lined face. “But I suppose it is you.”

“I suppose it is.”

The other lillits crowded around me, giving thanks, touching my armor, many of them in tears. It was an overwhelming feeling, to be needed by these people, respected, even loved. My memories were still fractured, a hundred deaths in Kevin’s diamond egg had taken away a lot of who I was, of who I had been during my first year in this world. But that version of myself must have done something right, to earn the admiration that I felt all around me now. The lillits were giving Berith a wide berth, and otherwise pretending he wasn’t there. He lowered the head of Agares once it was clear that his moment of triumph wasn’t being appreciated by our audience.

“What now?” He asked, the two of us were like giants among the crowd of lillits.

“Hang the head from the tower,” I told him. “We’ll put torches around it. We need the garrison to see what has become of their Duke.” The train would probably keep moving for a while, and everyone on the walls would have an opportunity to bear witness to the demon’s fate. Berith seemed to approve of the idea, and it gave him something to do while I engaged with the lillits.

The crowd gave way as Boffin approached. He had a limp that I didn’t remember, but he stood tall when he faced me, as tall as a lillit could stand.

“I had almost lost hope,” he said, sounding tired. The years had gone by in a blink for me, but he had lived every day.

“It’s been ten years,” I said. “Anyone would have lost hope.”

He shook his head. “The goddess is wise, and our lives are long. We talked about this day…” he lost his voice for a moment, “even if you never returned. I would still be grateful to you. When Dargothians came with Godwod’s men to round us up, my daughter and my grandson were already gone. When we ran, and they hunted us, I trusted they were safe. It kept me going, all this time.”

A lump formed in my throat.

“Do you know where they went?”

His eyes widened. “You don’t know?”

“I think I do,” I said. “But I’m trusting the word of a demon, and if you know, I can be sure.”

Boffin’s face paled at my words, and he shook his head. “I don’t know what choices you made that brought you here, but I see what stands beside you. Esmelda didn’t tell me where she was going. If the Dark Lord thought to torture me, I don’t know that I could have kept the secret.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “Did he?” I said, “Torture you?”

The former mayor looked away, his gaze growing distant. “Not for that. We were never asked about her. If you aren’t sure…” his voice trailed away.

I felt myself grow cold. Kevin deserved more than I could ever do to him. But a full recounting of what had been suffered for his whims could wait.

“She’s okay,” I said, unwilling to believe anything else. “You have a grandson, and I’m going to get them as soon as you’re all off this train.”

“A grandson,” Boffin was barely audible. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes.

“What are you waiting for?” Brenys grabbed my hand. “We won’t all be murdered tonight. You can’t trust a demon’s word, so if you think you know where they are, you have to go to them. I won’t sleep until I know what’s happened to my niece.”

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t leave that instant. The rest of the night was lost to pacifying the city. We marched up and down the train, freeing lillits, cowing soldiers, and claiming monsters. The alarm bells rang for hours, but once the officers started swearing fealty to me, it was just a matter of getting the word out.

The Dark Lord was here, Agares had been a traitor to Dargoth, and a new demon would be taking charge of Nargul. Asmodeus had killed Forneus, but Astaroth was still clinging to life, so I sent them both back to Gaap and the army at the gates with orders to return to Mount Doom and make sure it still belonged to me. Agares could have been bluffing about sending forces to

take it back, but I doubted it. I was putting my faith in Bojack and Zareth to keep the fortress intact and Kevin in his cage until reinforcements arrived.

Berith would be managing Nargul for the time being, but I ordered him to defer to Boffin when it came to the lillits. I wasn’t going back to Mount Doom yet. When the sun rose again, the light of morning sickly and weak as it filtered through the clouds; I found Noivern, and we flew for the Wastes.

I was going home.