The Dark Lord of Crafting

A precipice extended before me, terminating on a sharp point. It was an arrow pointed at infinity, thrusting into the depths of space. Stars twinkled in their multitudes, and a single great galaxy turned with glacial slowness behind a floating gray bar.

Quit Game.

“I don’t recommend it.”

The voice came from behind me, and I turned to face a one-eyed centaur clip-clopping toward me from the opposite center of the platform. We were standing on a gray rhombus drifting in the void. It almost could have been Bedlam, but there were no other islands here, only stars.

“Where am I?” I was naked, regrettably, but this wasn’t my respawn point. My hands looked like my hands again; no claws, no extra hair, but shadows were moving under my skin like fish swimming just below the surface of a pond.

“An interstice,” the centaur said, his voice as deep as the void beyond, “a vestibule. This is the place where you decide whether to go on or turn back and try again.”

“The owl…it killed me?” It had ripped off my helmet, and then what? Gastard had been close to attacking. Esmelda had been firing her bow. “Are my friends okay?”

“Stolas was defeated,” the centaur, I realized his name was Limnus, said. I wasn’t sure why I knew that. This place was familiar. Did I come here every time I died? “Your companions survived.”

Relief flooded me. My family was safe, the mountain was secure, and Kevin was still in his box. “I want to go back,” I said, “but why did you say you didn’t recommend me going the other way?”

Limnus took one of my hands in his, lifting my arm and pointing to a tendril of shade that was slipping across my biceps.

“You are more solid than you have ever been here. In truth, your soul might survive the celestial forge in its current condition, but it is more likely that the hierarchy would find you lacking. Discord has left its mark on you, and until you have purged yourself of its influence, or else accomplished more in the service of Harmony, I expect you would be deemed a failed candidate.”

I pulled my hand away. “The great test. You guys have this big secret game going on, and I’m not allowed to know all the rules. Even if you tell me now, I’ll forget again, right?”

“That is correct,” his face was blank, but his one oversized eye swirled with the forces of the cosmos.

“You’re the one who talked to Gastard, aren’t you?” He’d said that he’d met Gotte, but that the deity was missing an eye.

“I am.”

“So you’re a god to the people in Drom, the one who watches over Plana?”

“I am a sentinel, an administrator, each realm has its own.”

“Then what are you doing about The One Who Knocks? Why don’t you stop the demons from entering this world? Wouldn’t that make more sense than sending a bunch of heroes who tore up the veil just by existing?”

“I am not idle,” Limnus said, a hint of disapproval in his tone, “much of my essence is tied to the continued preservation of Plana. Besides this, the Hierarchy takes a long view. They invest much in the fostering of potential candidates. The plight of this world is not a significant risk to the sector, so it serves as an ideal zone of trial.”

“Even if we fail and you end up losing the world?”

“There are risks,” Limnus turned his face away, his gaze traveling to the stars. “David’s interference was not planned, but it has since been approved. With the loss of your intended mentor, there was room for new candidates.” He paused. “Will any of this affect your decision to return?”

“No way. I have to go back.”

“Then there is no reason to continue this conversation.”

***

I woke up in the safe room beside my Anchor. A violet light flared for a moment in the heart of the obsidian block and then faded. A bed, a table, some chests for storage, this hadn’t been meant for long-term habitation. My equipment was laid out on the floor: armor, the buster sword, and magic thermos, while the Storage Ring had a prominent place on the table.

In the far corner of the room, a body was wrapped in cloth. I assumed it was mine.

It had been a while since I’d died, and I felt the need to take an inventory. Horns, check. Claws on my fingers and toes, more body hair than I’d ever had in my life, though thankfully not to the point of having it qualify as fur. The torchlight bothered my eyes, even if I hadn’t made it myself, I would have known it was enchanted with Shadowbane because of the uncomfortable prickling on my bare skin. Having killed two bird demons, Malphas and whoever the crane had been, I was just glad not to have grown feathers or a beak.

Was it possible that the taint wasn’t making me more like the demons that I killed, but instead turning me into a more generally demonic version of myself? Or maybe it was my insides that were changing now. They’d laid out clothing for me as well, and I’d just slipped a tunic over my shoulders when part of the ceiling slid open.

“You’re alright.” Esmelda’s eyes were red, and her hair unbound. There was a ladder to get down into the shelter, but she eschewed it to hop nimbly down to the floor instead. A moment later, her arms were wrapped around my waist.

“Hey,” I said, placing my hand against her back, “it’s okay. It’s not like I’ve never died before.”

“I know that,” her voice was muffled against my chest, “but I’ve never seen it happen before.”

“That was probably rough,” I don’t know how it would have affected me to see something like that happen to Esmelda, even knowing that she would come back. “What happened? The last thing I remember was losing my helmet.”

“The demon bit your head,” Esmelda’s grip tightened. “Gastard was able to run it through, but he was a moment too late.”

“It might have gotten me before that if you hadn’t shot it in the eye. Did you get my message? I thought you were going to stay in here.”

“I heard the explosion,” she said, letting me go to take a step back. “I had to see. We can’t stay here now either, there are too many people who need to know you are alive.”

After the demon was defeated, the mobs fled. That meant there had been another entity controlling them, one we hadn’t spotted, but whoever it was must have chalked up the mission as a loss. People witnessed my death, and it led to a small panic. Esmelda and Gastard had been quick to assure everyone that I would return when the sun rose, but the garrison was understandably anxious.

Kevin was known as immortal, but he’d never had his head bitten off by an owl, and I wasn’t Kevin.

There was a crowd of people waiting in the great hall when I got there, and the moment seemed to call for me to make some kind of statement, so I gave a short, impromptu, address about how I wasn’t going anywhere. Zareth followed it up with a much more dramatic speech including the phrase “Even death cannot vanquish our lord,” and we got the hall cleared out a few minutes later. While being a ruler had its perks, it was stressful to think about how many human beings depended on me to stick around, and I was happy to get everyone back to their daily routines.

Not that things could be completely business as usual.

“We will hold a service for those who lost their lives in the assault,” Zareth said, having given me a rundown of last night’s aftermath. I’d taken my seat on the throne, not a comfortable place to rest my bottom, but I was usually in full armor when I sat there.

“Of course,” Esmelda said, looking particularly small beside the oversized throne. She’d put on one of her fancier “Lady of Dargoth” dresses, a bright yellow, pleated get-up with a lot of embroidery along the sleeves. Her hair was up, and she looked every bit the queen. “I would be happy to speak with the families.”

“Thank you,” I nodded to Zareth. “Let me know if there’s anything you need.” Having Esmelda do the talking would make things a lot easier. I dreaded having to face the people who had lost loved ones defending the fortress. Breaking with the demons would be good for everyone in the long term, but here and now, it meant that people would die or be hurt who otherwise might have gone their whole lives without seeing battle.

“Where’s Gastard? He’s alright, isn’t he?”

“He’s alive,” Esmelda’s face fell. “But you should speak with him.”

***

Leto had been asleep when I came out of the safe room. They hadn’t told him that I’d been killed, only that I’d needed to recover from the battle, and he was more upset about being cooped up during the action than everything that had happened as a consequence of the attack.

When Esmelda and I entered the suite, Leto hopped off of the sofa where he had been lounging and then paused, unsure. He seemed relieved to see me unharmed, but that relief was swiftly overwritten by worry.

“Gastard won’t come out,” he said.

I glanced at Esmelda, whose face mirrored our son’s concern.

“He’ll be fine,” I said. “It was a difficult night, but we’ll all be fine.”

We’d converted a study attached to the main living area into a bedroom for Gastard. Having us all sleep in the same area of the fortress simplified spawn-proofing, and it meant that one of us was always close to Esmelda and Leto if an invader decided to go for our rooms. I knocked on his door and let him know I was there. Silence on the other side, but a moment later, I heard the lock click and I went in.

Gastard was sitting in a deep cushioned chair directly beneath an Everburning Torch. He wasn’t wearing his armor, instead draped in a soldier’s tunic, though the diamond pieces of his gear were laid out on a nearby table. They were cracked from the battle, and I needed to repair them. My suit had Mending enchantments baked in, but I hadn’t had enough of the books available when crafting Gastard’s

But it wasn’t the armor that drew my eye. Gastard had lost an arm in the battle, I remembered it clearly. Now he had two, but one of them was thinner than the other and covered in cloth bandages. His horns had grown a couple of inches, the beginnings of antlers. He would need a new helm, but that was to be expected given that he’d killed a demon, probably two. The change must have been what he was upset about.

“Hey,” I said, pointing to the regrown limb, “what happened there?”

I heard the door shut behind me. Esmelda had not come in.

Gastard had always been serious, and if he ever joked, it was with a straight face. His expression now was more than severe, it was angry. His jaw clenched, and his eyes clouded with something like despair.

“One of your potions. Regeneration. We thought it worth trying.”

“That’s fantastic.” You didn’t lose limbs in Maincraft, and Potions of Regeneration simply healed damage over time instead of instantly like a Potion of Healing. As they required more ingredients to brew, there weren’t many reasons to use them, and I was pleased to discover this added benefit. Otherwise, Gastard would have had to die and reset his level to get his arm back.

So why did he look so upset?

He undid the binding on his hand and slowly removed the binding. The limb wasn’t just leaner than his other arm, it was covered in silver scales. Though he had four fingers and a thumb, his hand looked more like a raptor’s talon than a human appendage.

“I am tainted,” his voice was thick with frustration. As there were no other chairs in the chamber, I took a seat opposite him on the edge of his bed.

“That’s more than I expected,” I said, “but we knew something like this could happen. Have you noticed any other differences, anything…internal?”

“Such as the hunger for human flesh?” He shook his head. “My heart is still my own, though it seems that my body belongs to Bedlam. I thought I could do so much more before I fell.”

“You can, you’re still you.” I’d killed more demons than he had, but regenerating a limb may have allowed the corruption to grow faster than it would have otherwise. We didn’t really know how all of this worked to begin with.

“You captured one of them,” he’d been glaring at his hand, but now he met my eyes, “did you kill another?”

“In the explosion, yeah.”

“And yet you are unchanged.” It wasn’t a question. He saw me being less affected by demonic essence and interpreted it as a personal failing on his part.

“My body seems the same, but I don’t know how deep my problems are. You shouldn’t beat yourself up about this. You stopped the attack. If that thing had gotten past us, there’s no telling how much damage it could have done. The regular soldiers couldn’t kill it, and it would have had hours to try to break Kevin out.”

Even now, his cell was exposed. I needed to rebuild the cube before nightfall or we were going to have even more issues. Not to mention the extra demon I’d put in a box. What had his name been? Raum. We had to take care of him as well.

“Three killed,” Gastard said bitterly, “and one captured. With all the others defeated before today, how many remain?”

Even Zareth didn’t have an exact count, but I had a pretty good idea. Gremory, the last to arrive, had been the fifty-sixth harbinger to enter Plana. Heroes had been killing demons for long before we got involved, but most of those had been replaced during Kevin’s reign. The roster hadn’t been completely full, but the records we had suggested Dargoth was teeming with them.

“Thirty,” I said, “maybe more.”

“Then we know our doom,” Gastard began rewrapping his hand. “We kill them all, and in the end, become something more terrible still.”

Absorbing that much corrupted essence would break all three of us, I didn’t disagree. There were other options, however.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said. “You said once that I should arm regular people with enchanted weapons and armor. Now that my oath is gone, that’s a possibility. Without Systems, they won’t be as capable as we are, but enough enchanted arrows and swords can take down a demon no matter who’s using them. A new order of templars, with you at the head.”

“I wanted it before,” his expression was pained. “But each man we armed would be risking their soul. Our blessings protect us, if incompletely, a mortal man would be faster to succumb.”

“It’s not an insurmountable problem,” I said, “anyone who kills a demon retires and passes their weapons on. I should have been arming people already, it was a mistake not to. With only three of us, we can’t cover enough ground on our own. With the clouds gone, I underestimated how dangerous just a few demons could be. Nargul would be practically defenseless against an attack like last night.”

Gastard grunted in reluctant agreement. “I see the necessity, but I do not like it.”

“That’s why we need more atreanum.” If we armed soldiers with Shadowbane weapons, we could trust them to defend our strongholds without us and take the offensive.

“Esmelda said you found no maps.”

“We didn’t, but I’m willing to bet Kevin knows his way around the other side.”

Eternal Torches did not flicker, its steady glow cast Gastard’s head in a halo, though when he turned to look at his armor on the table, it cast half his face in shadow.

“Unthinkable. He cannot be allowed in Bedlam. The risk is too great.”

“He isn’t as dangerous without gear. You bind him with oaths, and I take him to the other side. I’ll tell him it’s a test, and that if he behaves himself, he can come out of his cell. We need the atreanum, and I don’t have another way of finding it.”

“Did you not gather it yourself before?”

“I’m not going back to that swamp. I mined everything there was to mine, and got trapped there before I could bring it home.”

“You mean to go alone?” Gastard said, his face creasing in a frown.

“We can’t afford to all go together.” Even if we did arm regular people, there was no telling how long the journey would go on. Any trip to Bedlam carried the risk of running into time dilation, and if all three of us went, it could leave Plana undefended indefinitely. Bringing Kevin with me would at least remove the danger of having him return to power in my absence.

“What if he returns without you?”

“He won’t. I can handle him.” Kevin had met someone on the other side, the entity that had given him his eye. It might have been Walter White himself. If he still had the support of The One Who Knocks, Bedlam was the last place I needed to take him. But I wasn’t as worried about that as I probably should have been.

Gremory had said that their master approved of me. And I couldn’t help but think that even now, the demons weren’t trying as hard as they could have to restore Kevin to the throne. Four or five of them had been involved in the assault. Why not ten? I was more and more convinced that Bojack had let me win.

If that was true, then the true battle wasn’t overcoming the demons. They were immortal, and they could respawn. The One Who Knocks wanted to turn me into his champion, and the way things were going, he would. I wanted to fool myself into believing that I was different, that I wouldn’t become like Fladnag, or Kevin, or the other heroes he had told me about. But I wasn’t that pure, I had never been. Going to Bedlam might be playing right into his hands, but the atreanum was our only hope of putting an end to the invasion once and for all. It wasn’t a good choice, it just felt like the only one I had.

Gastard cleared his throat. I’d fallen into my thoughts, staring at the claws at the ends of my fingertips, and the sound brought me out of it.

“Esmelda,” he said, “will not be pleased.”