The Dark Lord of Crafting

The bell began ringing sometimes after midnight. I’d been scratching out runes, perfecting the lines, and hoping for a notification ding. So far, no ding. Drawing was advancing my Artisan skill, albeit slowly, while Inscription was stuck as zero progress toward advancement. There was an element missing. Did I have to carve the symbols into something more solid than paper? Was the process supposed to involve my other tools, or happen on a work table?

There was no medallion for me to merge a block with. Maybe I could have harvested the runes like I harvested ink, but that would have left a gap in Kevin’s barrier, and anyway, I wanted to be able to craft them myself. Reusing what crafters before me had left behind wasn’t enough.

Focused on the task, I didn’t immediately hear the ringing. The bells were spaced along the walls and towers of the fortress, and whenever one sounded, the soldiers on duty would rush to ring the others until the alarm reached all of Mount Doom. There were no windows in the cube or the attached hall and the stones muffled any noise from outside, but it was soon too much for me to ignore.

A glance at Kevin confirmed he was either napping or pretending to, so I jogged down the tunnel to find out what was happening. Not that there were many options. We were under attack. The only question was how bad it was going to be.

Before I reached the end of the hall, a soldier rushed through the door, and we nearly ran into each other. He skidded to a stop and slammed his fist on his breastplate in a salute.

“Enemies on the wall,” he panted, “a demon and his beasts.”

“Let’s go!” I took two steps past the soldier and stopped dead.

“My lord?” He had begun to move at the same time and caught himself when he saw that I wasn’t going further.

“It’s a trap,” I said. Admiral Ackbar’s wisdom would never die. How many books do you have to read, and how many movies do you have to see, before you start anticipating the beats?

“Tell Esmelda that I said she needs to get Leto to the safe room and stay there. If she’s not in our suite, find her, and tell her I said that. Gastard can handle whatever’s going on at the wall.”

“Go!” I shouted when he hesitated, and the man rushed off.

Though the actions of the demons didn’t always make sense, and sometimes they seemed downright juvenile, they weren’t stupid. Not all of them, at least. Maybe this was only a single harbinger taking it on himself to attack Mount Doom, but I doubted it. More than enough time had passed for Valefor to realize that I hadn’t done what he wanted. Berith had told me that they could feel the deaths of other demons when they happened. The rulers of Gundurgon knew that I’d turned. There were eight of them there, and something like thirty more spread around Dargoth. If they were making a move, I had to assume it was a big one. There was too much at stake for me to respond impulsively.

If I was Valefor, what would my goal be? Either free Kevin or kidnap the family of the Survivor who was acting up. Yes, Esmelda could fight now, but Leto couldn’t, and we didn’t know what we were facing here.

As a part of spawn-proofing our bedroom, I’d built a warpstone chamber beneath it. My anchor was there, the one Bojack had bound me to, as well as a host of supplies. In addition to strengthening the veil, Warpstone got in the way of aetheric sensitivity like lead got in the way of X-ray vision. The entrance to the safe room was disguised, and they could hide there even if we lost the mountain. If I died, I’d wake up with her and we could take things from there.

If Gastard died, I had no idea where he’d come back, but we would have to figure that out when we came to it. We had more anchors, but as far as I knew, they only activated when a hero died near them, latching onto their soul to assign a new spawn point, and none of us had been eager to have Esmelda or Gastard kill themselves to test how they worked.

I didn’t bother laying down a bridge to get to Kevin’s cell. Donning an Elytron was faster. The same switch that activated a rocket could cut it off. Precise flight control was still beyond me, so I ended up jetting straight into the ceiling, banging my head, and gliding down to the top of the diamond box.

Kevin got up, holding his hands out to the sides in an obvious question. I ignored him, scanning the walls. Maincraft was more about the journey than the destination. Sure, you fought mobs, and there was a boss monster in the form of the Ender Dragon, but that wasn’t the point of the game.

You mined, you built, you mined some more. You collected resources and crafted them into tools so you could mine rarer resources and use them to make whatever you felt like making. You spent a lot more time planning and preparing than fighting.

The stone steps I’d used to plant the torches were still in place, as well as one other very special kind of block. Square bundles of red cylinders, the walls were dotted with TNT.

Demons had elemental magic. If they knew where Kevin was, there was no reason to fight their way through a fortress to get to him. A demon with earth affinity could just open a hole in the wall. They might not have known Kevin’s location, but it was better to assume they did. My people were loyal, but my one conversation with Valefor had led me to believe he knew a lot more about what went on in Mount Doom than he should have. If nothing else, the demons who got close would be able to sense where he was.

I slotted a flame arrow in my crossbow and waited. The bells continued to ring, and a messenger came running down the hall to give me an update. Gastard was leading the defense against two demons, a group of Voidmen, and a host of flying mobs. He had no idea where Esmelda was, which hopefully meant she had done what I asked.

“Tell me about the demons!” The entrance to the cube was far enough away from the cell that we had to shout at each other. I probably looked ridiculous, turning in a slow circle as I continued to monitor the walls while he filled me in.

We were being attacked by birds. A stork with air magic and a monstrous owl that had feathers like steel. It was hard to be sure from the description if that was a demon or a new kind of mob. Gastard had his hands full. I almost missed the change in the stone. The top corner facing away from the fortress was melting.

“Run! Get out of here!” I glanced back to make sure the messenger did as he was told, then slammed a potion. Magma Cream was good for Fire Resistance, it would have been a crime not to make a few when I got back.

The corner opened, and I saw a long yellow beak and a white feathered face. Another Stork, or the same one that had been at the wall. It didn’t matter, the demon saw me and lunged through the gap. It dropped down twenty feet, landing lightly on one of the stone steps. A second followed, a Malphas lookalike in orange robes. I guess there were only so many kinds of animal heads to go around.

At the twitch of my finger, the crossbow twanged, and the arrow leaped for its target. The stork was readying a bow of his own, and he ducked as I fired, but the shot hadn’t been meant for him.

Kaboom.

The TNT blocks didn’t all detonate at once, but the chain reaction was quick enough that it felt like one big explosion. I shut my eyes against the sudden bloom of light, buffeted by shockwaves and stone fragments. The cube was large enough that I wasn’t technically within the blast radius, but it didn’t feel like it.

There had been a lot of TNT.

The upper half of the cube was gone, but parts of what had been the ceiling were raining down. A rock almost as big as I was hit the edge of the diamond, bouncing off without even nicking the crystal’s surface, and I had to dodge another chunk that nearly landed on my head. I didn’t see the stork, but I felt its presence evaporating. My elder sign stung as a portion of that lost essence flowed into me. My stomach turned over, with nauseating slowness.

One question was answered. When it came to getting the credit for killing a demon, setting off a trap that did them in counted. Fiddlesticks.

What about the crow? After dodging a few more rocks, I scanned the area. What remained of the walls were jagged teeth, and the only torch left was the one planted beside me atop the cell. No mobs in the sky, or else they had all been blasted away. The main body of the fortress blocked my line of sight to the wall where the fighting was supposed to be happening, but I couldn’t hear the bells. My ears were ringing too badly from the explosion.

A ball of flame arced up from below and burst against my chestplate. My heartbar flashed in response, but I hadn’t lost any. It did, however, set off the explosive strapped to my back, knocking me forward onto my hands and knees. One wing of the Elytron went spinning off and dropped over the edge of the cell. At least I hadn’t been wearing a backpack, the coins would have scattered everywhere.

The crow was below me, hiding amid the rubble. His robes had burned off, and he must have had a concussion, but his elemental affinity had saved him from being incinerated. I stood at the diamond verge and slotted a Shadowbane arrow. He lobbed another fireball while I was aiming, and I stepped out of its path.

It was a homing fireball.

The bright orange sphere zipped by me, stopped abruptly, and snapped back, detonating on my crossbow. Kevin’s weapons were tough, but cracks appeared in the stock, and I lost the arrow. What followed was the most frustrating back-and-forth imaginable. The demon continued to target my weapon, and when I did manage to shoot, he ducked behind cover. After a few minutes of this, Kevin’s crossbow gave out, coming apart in my hands.

Fine, there were other options.

I lobbed a Splash Healing Potion, and the demon took it out of the air like a sharpshoot. A mote of flame no larger than a bullet streaked from his fingertip and popped the potion when it was halfway down. Reddish mist sprayed, but none of it fell on him.

I jumped. The crow scrambled out of the way as I came down, Feather Fall only got me about halfway to the floor, and my Elytron was nonfunctional, so the only thing to catch my fall was a loose pile of stones. My foot twisted on the landing, and I felt something pop.

Flames washed over me, more annoying than painful. A timer was ticking down in the corner of my vision, six minutes remaining on the Fire Resistance potion. I limped after the crow, drawing Caliburn, as he led me around the base of the cube. There was no way out but up, the steps were ruined, and this bird couldn’t fly.

He kept lobbing fireballs, and though most of them didn’t do any damage, they seemed to have a cumulative effect. Every few volleys, I lost a heart. If he didn’t run out of essence, it would eventually wear me down.

We were circling the pillar that upheld Kevin’s cell, and I put it between us to call another potion out of my inventory and slurp it down. A Potion of Speed, sugary and light, the refreshing taste of Sprite. I had never been a fan. Mountain Dew was better.

Slapping down my visor, I resumed the chase, ignoring the twinge in my ankle at every step. Round and round we went, but I was gaining. The crow was quick, but he couldn’t full-out run while casting spells. When I came within a few paces of him, he gave up trying and sprinted away.

It was ridiculous, cartoonish, a man in devilish armor chasing a demon around a pole. Harsh breaths echoed in my helmet, and impending sickness gnawed at my guts. The crow stumbled, and I jabbed Caliburn through his leg.

He squawked, fell, and tried to cast another spell. My boot came down on one of his hands, crunching bones.

“I am Raum!” He proclaimed, “Fortieth harbinger of—”

“Don’t care,” I kicked him in the head, and as he lay stunned, started dropping diamond blocks. Every time the demon tried to rise, I knocked him back down, and he was soon encased in a translucent coffin with a single opening to allow in air.

“You dare bind me?” He glared daggers through the gap. “You cannot seal your doom!”

“Very dramatic,” I said, shrugging off what was left of the Elytron and pulling out a medallion to replace it. “Super cool.” A moment later, I was rising out of the shattered cube on a rocket. The fighting had moved to the secondary wall. Harpies wheeled in a cloud of phantoms and wyverns, and arrows flew. No trolls or zombies, but the dark forms of Voidmen flickered among the defenders. I didn’t see the other crane, but the owl couldn’t have been more obvious.

It was as big as a grizzly, with a humanoid torso and claws on its wings like a pterodactyl. A body covered in silver feathers, with eyes as large and bright as lamps. It batted aside the ends of pikes and hopped out of the way of Gastard’s shining sword. Dropping my shoulders and kicking back my legs, I adjusted the angle of my flight, and Supermanned down to the wall.

Summoning the buster proved to be a mistake, its weight off balanced me and turned the dive into a wild barrel roll. I slammed into a stray phantom and spun through the air. The next thing I knew, my face got a vigorous high-five from a wall.

The buster went flying, and the Eytron, still blazing, sent me careening into another building. I fumbled at the switch to turn off the rocket and ended up on the ground below the inner wall. Maybe I wasn’t ready for aerial combat.

Soldiers stood frozen around me, and I waved them off.

“I’m fine.” Feeling like I needed to throw up, I ran to the stairs to ascend the wall and switched back to Caliburn. The Voidman were vastly outnumbered, so many soldiers had arrived that they were getting in each other’s way, and mine. I had to push through the crowd to reach where Gastard was dueling the owl.

It was impossibly agile for a creature of that size, hopping from rampart to rampart, twisting out of the way of Gastard’s attacks, all the while battering him with its wings and claws. There were cracks in the diamond surface of his armor, and for all his skill, it appeared he could not do more than shear the feathers from its body. Though it didn’t look like the other demons, it felt like them.

Just as I rushed to join him, the owl pounced, putting Gastard on his back on the stone walkway. Its wicked beak dropped, latching onto his upper arm, and I covered the remaining distance in a blink, thrusting Caliburn into its broad flank. Those silver feathers were as tough as scale mail, but the point of my blade punched through.

The owl jerked its head up, and Gastard screamed in a voice I’d never heard before. His diamond-clad arm was hanging from the demon’s beak. I ripped Caliburn free, intending to stab it again, but the owl leaped up well out of my reach, its great wings blocking the moon.

Blood spurted from Gastard’s shoulder, and he struggled madly as I forced open his visor and shoved a healing potion into his mouth. He swallowed reflexively, and soldiers rushed in to defend us as the owl came down again. The hafts of their polearms snapped against the weight of its descending body, and I turned in time to see the talons of its left foot reaching for me.

I’d had to let go of my sword to help Gastard, and as I grabbed it, the demon’s claw wrapped around my waist and jerked me up. It flung me from the rampart, and the Elytron extended to catch me in a glide. I used the momentum to swoop down and rise again in a U, narrowly avoiding a collision with the wall.

With a sweep of its wings, it scattered the soldiers and bent over to finish Gastard. A Splash potion appeared in my free hand, and I threw it against the back of its feathered head. Red mist sprayed, and the owl screeched, launching itself at me.

I couldn't outmaneuver it in the air, and when I swung, it caught Caliburn in its beak. The xanthium bit into keratin, and it twisted its head in a one-eighty to break my grip, latching on to me with its feet in the same instant to drive me back to the ground.

It had to weigh half a ton, and all of that pressed down on top of me as I was slammed into the cobblestone path.

“So you are the Survivor,” it said, holding me in place, its voice high and silken, “I expected more.”

An arrow cut through the night, piercing one of its huge, lambent eyes. Esmelda had appeared atop the roof of the garrison, and she was already readying her next shot. The owl shrieked, leaping once more, and I held onto its leg with one arm while thrusting Caliburn into its belly with the other.

It didn’t even slow down, and Esmelda jumped to one side to avoid the owl's snapping beak. The demon dragged me along as it followed her, and I twisted the blade still embedded in its flesh. It paused in its advance to clamp its beak over my helmet, the clasps snapping as it tore it off of my head.

An arrow glanced off of the ruff of feathers around its neck, and I saw a flash of white light falling to the roof behind the demon. Gastard was charging the monster’s back with his brilliant sword in his one remaining arm. Blinded on one side, focusing on me, I caught a glimpse of the owl’s pink throat as its beak dropped toward my face.