The Dark Lord of Crafting

The Wastes were a sea of shadows beneath me. The wind rushed by to the beat of Noivern’s powerful wings, carrying me either to the future I hoped for or utter despair. More than a decade had gone by since I’d seen my wife. Even if it hadn’t been that long subjectively for me, there was weight in the knowledge. Seeing Boffin and Brenys again had more than made the point of how much had changed.

Crossing the Wastes on foot took at least three days if you were willing to go with very little rest and a good hiking pace. The waystations had been built about twenty miles apart, so a platoon of soldiers on the march could conceivably make it from one to the next in a single day. It was impossible to be sure exactly how fast my wyvern could fly, probably not as fast as if he hadn’t been burdened by a man in full metal gear on his back, but it got me where I was going.

The warm air from the sand filled his wide, leathery wings and allowed us to soar across the Wastes in a single night. The clouds that rose from Mount Doom didn’t extend past the sands, which meant I’d had to spend several hours waiting for the sun to set before it was safe for Noivern to fly again. It gave him a chance to rest, but I couldn’t, so I’d passed the time pacing and second-guessing myself.

I was a free man, given magic to wield and a kingdom to command, but a part of me felt like I was still in a holding cell. A lot of life in prison is just sitting and waiting, whether for the next meal, the next letter, or the results of a parole hearing.

In my previous life, after I’d gotten out, I’d spent a lot of time pushing the past from my mind. I’d cut off my connections to the friends I’d made behind bars, not because I hadn’t liked them, but because I couldn’t be in contact with them without thinking about everything that had come before. It’s a funny comparison to make, considering I’d now literally been transported to another world, but being locked up is a little bit like being isekaied.

Being in prison severs you from normal life. The rules are not the same. It sounds stupid to say it, but confinement is confining; it limits you in ways that most people in the modern world will never have to think about.

Getting out and being handed a smartphone felt like being given a superpower. I’d done everything I could to put that period of my life behind me, to just not have to think about it; working all the time, drinking myself to sleep. It hadn’t been healthy, but I hadn’t been totally mentally together to start with, and being incarcerated hadn’t helped.

People in jail are always talking about what they did to get in there, but the people who have been down a while rarely do. I had been a bipolar nineteen-year-old who’d had a breakdown, quit his job, run out of money, and gone on a crime spree. I’d driven into a neighboring state and started robbing banks for reasons I could never fully explain. Sure, I could make up reasons, and tell a story about it that would halfway make sense, but it would just be made-up excuses. Sometimes, people do things just to do them, and then they have to live with the consequences. I had been a teenager one day, and a thirty-year-old man the next, released early on what amounted to a stroke of luck, trying to figure out how to start over.

Now I had been reborn, given gifts straight out of a fantasy, but I was still me, still making mistakes, and reckless decisions that risked more than my own life. If I’d been more careful, I never would have had to be separated from my new family. Whatever had happened to Esmelda in the intervening time, whatever had happened to my son, it was my fault. Standing outside of the nest I’d made for Noivern, watching the shadows thicken over the mountain as the sun began to fall behind the dunes of the Wastes, I made a promise to myself. If I got another chance, if Esmelda was safe, things were going to be different. I was going to be different, and I would never leave my family behind again.

As the sands rushed beneath me, I hoped it was a promise I could keep.

A flight of harpies accompanied us on the journey. Celaeno took most of the flock to help with the situation at Mount Doom, but she insisted that I not travel alone. My new homies were young. They had been born in the years of my absence, and they didn’t talk much. Harpies had their own language, and only the oldest and cleverest of them could speak English well enough to hold a conversation.

The birds arrived at the border after us, as they couldn’t match the wyvern’s speed. They were wary of the wyvern but seemed to respect our relationship. These harpies had never fed from my hands, but they still accepted me as their alpha, or whatever the bird equivalent of an alpha was.

The mountains came and went, and the region beyond the mountains was a completely different climate from the Wastes; temperate and green, with wide fields and scattered stands of old-growth trees. As we descended, I directed Noivern to follow a river that flowed down from the icy caps of the taller peaks. While the exact location of my original spawn point had been obscured by countless deaths and rebirths, there were notes in my journal about the area, and being back on this side of the world was already stirring memories in me.

Dargoth’s influence hadn’t completely extended into this land, aside from the single train track, now overgrown, the land was unchanged. A river grew weaker as the miles passed away, becoming no more than a stream, and I knew that I was close.

Then I saw the shelter, or what was left of it. My first few days in this world had been spent entirely alone, surviving for survival’s sake, crafting and harvesting by myself, and figuring out how my System worked. Long abandonment can wreak havoc on any structure, and my original shelter had been crafted primarily out of wooden logs and planks.

Vines covered the exterior, and one of the walls was just gone, rotted away. It had barely been more than a lean-to to begin with, and the fact that it still existed at all was a testament to how the System fortified crafted building materials. Somewhere nearby was my own grave, but nature had taken over, erasing nearly every sign of what had transpired in those early days of survival.

They weren’t here, but the remains of the shelter were as good as an arrow pointing to where I needed to go. I stood by the stream where I had first discovered that I could turn grass into coins, lined myself up according to the placement of the last standing wall and the position of the square, falling moon, and looked toward a line of trees.

It was more trees than I remembered. I’d spawned in an open field, but a patch of forest had sprung up in the middle of the grassland. Putting my feet back in the straps of Noivern’s harness, I spurred the wyvern to take flight once more. We rose over the abandoned shelter, circled it once, and headed for my origin.

It was only a few miles, but covering the distance seemed to take as long as crossing all of the Wastes. A faint glow hid within the cover of the wood, as bright as a beacon to my eyes. Flying overhead, gaps in the canopy revealed the edge of a cottage, a scrap of garden, and two figures. A man and a boy in martial stances, each holding a sword. It looked like a training session.

My heart beat faster. I was too high to make them out clearly, but I did not doubt who they were. The way the man stood, his broad shoulders and confident air, was deeply familiar to me.

The boy spotted me first, shouting and pointing, and the pair retreated into the cottage. I guided Noivern away from the trees and landed him just outside of the small wood.

Taking Noivern’s broad, toothy head in both my hands, I gave him a stern warning.

“Don’t attack anyone here. If you feel threatened, fly away. Do you hear me?”

The wyvern trilled in what I took to be assent.

“Stay,” I said and took a few steps. Noivern didn’t move. “Good boy.”

The light was gone, so I dropped torches around me as I entered the trees. A single monster spawning could destroy the peace I hoped to find. The harpies wouldn’t catch up to us for a while yet, and there was already a phantom crying somewhere above, though it had yet to dive. A horse was munching on the grass beside the cottage, utterly unperturbed by the presence of an armored stranger throwing around magic lights.

The door creaked open as I dropped another torch, blanketing the little clearing in enchanted light. A simple building with a thatch roof, it wasn't my work. My shelter here had been underground. The man stepped out, staggeringly handsome, with a chiseled jawline and a mane of blonde hair. Time had weathered him, adding wrinkles around his eyes and creases around his mouth, but I would have recognized that Chad anywhere.

“Who are you?” Gastard demanded, his voice ringing clear and unafraid. He’d thrown on a chain shirt, and he held his sword in a low-guard position, but he was still in trousers.

I removed my helmet, and his eyes widened. The sword wavered and fell.

“William?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling weak. “It’s a long story, but I’m here.”

Gastard sheathed his sword in a practiced motion, and strode forward, throwing his arms around me in a manful embrace.

“By Gotte,” he said, “it is you.”

I patted his shoulder, taken aback by this show of affection. Gastard was not a hugger. My gaze fixed on the doorway behind him and the delicate figure revealed within it. At four and a half feet, Esmelda was actually tall for a lillit woman. Her long chestnut brown hair was loose, and there was a scattering of freckles across her slightly upturned nose and beneath her bright, gray eyes.

“Esmelda,” I breathed, my heart aching at the sight of her. Gastard let me go, allowing me to step forward.

“Hello, Will,” she said, and then I was holding her.

It didn’t feel real, I was floating outside of my body. I needed to get out of my armor. To have a wall of metal separating us now was almost too much. I needed to feel her head resting against my chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice thick, “I’m sorry I didn’t come home.”

“I knew that you would,” she said softly, “eventually.”

There was light in the cottage, an Eternal Torch, illuminating a single-room living space. The boy was there, it could only be Leto, watching us warily. He was taller than his mother, with auburn hair and hazel eyes. His lillit blood was evident in his delicate features, but I saw myself in him as well.

“Leto,” Esmelda said, still holding onto me with one arm. “This is your father.”

My heart swelled, but he didn’t come forward.

“You didn’t tell me he had horns,” my son said, and for a moment, I was baffled. Then I touched my head. There were hard nubs on both of my temples. Killing Beleth had left me with cat-like eyes, and it seemed that killing Agares had made a similar alteration to my appearance. I hadn’t looked in a mirror since leaving Mount Doom, and though my head had been aching over the last few days, the nubs were new.

“You do, don’t you,” Esmelda said. “Well, that’s new.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I told my son. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.”

The boy blinked, then closed the door. My heart ached.

“Give him some time,” Esmelda said, her brows dropping in concern. She looked exactly as I remembered her. Time moved more slowly for the lillits. “It’s been…difficult for him.”

Of course, it had, and I was the one to blame for that.

“Is there anyone else here?” I asked, looking around the clearing, the cottage, the garden, the simple life they had built out in the middle of nowhere.

Esmelda shook her head. “It’s just been the three of us.”

Gastard stepped closer, his square jaw set, his blue eyes serious. “When you didn’t return, we traveled here together. Apart from reconnaissance, and fetching additional supplies, I have not left her side.”

His words were simple, but they spoke of a bond of loyalty and friendship that I did not deserve.

“Thank you,” I said. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

He shook his head. “It was my duty. There was fighting to be done, but I knew there was nothing I could do that was more important than this.”

I was at a loss for words.

“Come inside,” Esmelda said. “I’m sure there’s a lot to tell.”

The interior was plain, little more than a dining room and a hearth. A bearskin rug had been thrown to one side on the floor, revealing a trapdoor, the entrance to the original shelter. Had Gastard killed a bear? I unequipped my armor, and we sat together around a bare oak table.

Once my hand was free of its gauntlet, Esmelda wouldn’t let it go, and I didn’t want her to. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

“What happened to you?”

“A lot.”

She gave a small smile, not trying to force it out of me.

“Have you been all right out here?” I asked. “Did the Dargothians come looking for you?”

“Soldiers did find us, once,” Esmelda said. “They weren’t Dargothians. Godwod’s men were roaming the countryside looking for lillits, and we hid in the cellar while Gastard spoke with them.”

At the mention of Lord Godwod, a hot pit of anger knotted in my belly, but I let it dissolve. There was no need for that here, and I would deal with the margrave when the time came. Everything that mattered was in this place with me.

I told them everything, at least as much as I knew. Waking up in the diamond egg, making a deal with the demon who had held me captive, and all that had come after. They listened without interrupting, though it was obvious that Gastard was upset by the revelation that I was now actively consorting with his sworn enemies. His frown was sharp enough to cut rock. Esmelda took it all in with a clear expression. She had always been strong, and I hadn’t realized exactly how strong until this moment.

“So,” she said, squeezing my hand. “My husband is the Dark Lord. Mizu works in mysterious ways.”