The Dark Lord of Crafting

Kevin’s expletive was cut short by a flaming skull the size of a small dog smashing into his chest and knocking him into the pit. He tumbled down with his arms flailing. There was an audible snap as he bounced off a wall before the Elytron kicked in, and he shouted in pain. Gastard called out a challenge, and I threw up my visor to drink a few potions.

Strength, Speed, Leaping. The heady cocktail of magical chemicals mixed unpleasantly in my stomach as the effects surged through my veins. I gritted my teeth against the sensation of nausea and wall-hopped to the top of the pit like a video game character.

The Wither was as big as a bus, a mismatched collection of bones held together by black sludge. Human, animal, alien, there was no order or coherency in its composition. It had been made, or made itself, out of whatever material was available. It had three heads, fleshless and yellowed, and all different. One looked like an ox, complete with a set of broken horns, sitting beside a human skull, though it was three times the size of any human head I’d ever seen. The third head had a long snout lined with fangs. In life, it might have belonged to a crocodile.

It had arms, though they looked to have been assembled from an assortment of femurs, and its hands were rib cages lacking a breastbone, each with dozens of fingers ending in jagged points.

The Wither dragged its broad upper body through the thick undergrowth, its tail, more rib cages, trailing behind.

Gastard was working his way around the mycelium mound, looking for a way to reach the monster that didn’t involve jumping into the stagnant pool that lay between them. He climbed onto a mushroom cap, then hopped to another, which deflated under his weight. As he crouched to maintain his balance, the Wither opened its mouths and spit out a trio of animal skulls.

They launched like cannons, one flying over Gastard, burning with green fire, its jaws chomping spasmodically. I got my shield up to block another, its impact triggering the barrier rune, but the third slipped by and hit my shoulder.

My heart bar flashed, nothing missing yet, but it was a warning that they could hurt me. Worse, the skulls were animated. They bounced away, but made little hops toward me by pumping their jawbones. The Wither was a mob that spawned smaller mobs.

I stomped the one closest to me, and it shattered under my boot. They weren’t dangerous on their own, but the Wither was already firing more. With the shield active, I could prevent any damage, but blocking the volleys and kicking the skulls required so much of my attention that I couldn’t do anything else.

Gastard was doing a little better. Once he saw the way it attacked, he could slice through the skulls that fired at him before they landed, and he was making gradual progress around the water to engage the Wither in melee. Where was Kevin? Still in the hole, and he could stay there. Aside from throwing a healing potion at it, I doubted the weapons he had would be of any use against this thing, and having him die on us would only lead to more complications.

Alpha and Beta were clinging to stalks twenty feet above us, and when they saw me under attack, they launched themselves at the Wither. The wyverns dove at its wide frame, their toothy maws gaping, and it grabbed Beta out of the air, slamming it into the water. Alpha latched onto the Wither’s shoulder and took half the ox head into its mouth, clamping down and attempting to rip it off.

The head stopped firing for a moment, and the Wither jabbed one of its spiky hands into the wyvern's flank, the rib bones sinking deep. Alpha shrieked, flapping its wings to escape, but the monster’s fingers were inside of it, and it couldn’t free itself. The Wither wrenched the wyvern off of its shoulder and stabbed it with its other hand.

Alpha struggled a moment longer, then fell still. Beta crawled out of the water, only to be torn apart. This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to name them.

I crushed another bouncing skull and absorbed impact after impact on my shield. The Wither was firing in quick succession from a seemingly endless supply of osseous ammunition, its eyes alight with the same emerald flames that shrouded the mobs it produced. Some of them splintered on arrival, unable to survive the forces that propelled them, but in less than a minute, the mound on which I stood was overrun with hopping, biting skulls.

Though they weren’t strong enough to bite through orichalcum, one had latched onto my ankle. The flames that animated it burned me through my armor, and I lost my first heart of the battle. Caliburn sliced through its cranium with ease, and it fell apart, reverting to simple bones.

What were those flying skulls in Zelda called? Bubbles. An odd choice by the game developers, and these weren’t them, but it would as a temporary title for these swarming nuisances.

I couldn’t ignore them, couldn’t attack the Wither, and couldn’t let my guard down long enough to clear them out. The boss had been focusing on me, but as Gastard approached, it turned all three of its heads to the templar and redirected its volleys. The onslaught forced him to halt his advance but gave me the seconds of freedom I needed to cut down the skulls intent on harrying me.

With the Wither distracted, I could leap off of the mound into the dubious solidity of the mushroom jungle. It was impossible to run through the irregular masses of fungal growth, but I cut my way through the obtruding stalks to come around the side of the pool opposite Gastard. I sheathed Caliburn, hooked the shield onto my waist, and summoned a bow.

The Wither had no organs to pierce, no blood to bleed, but when the first Shadowbane arrow lodged in its torso, it reacted immediately, swiveling all three of its heads to renew its assault on me. I had time to fire one more shot before a skull slammed into my side and knocked me off of my feet. Spores puffed out of the bed of fungus where I landed, bitter and cloying, and my health bar dropped by another heart. The Bubble broke on impact, but there were two more hopping toward me, and I dismissed the bow.

That was all the opportunity Gastard had required. He rushed across the remaining distance to the Wither and brought his sword, gleaming with white flame, down on one of its arms. The blade severed the corded bones with a resounding crack, and the boss mob emitted a sound like a wailing siren. It reared back on its tail and swiped at Gastard with its other hand like it was swatting an offending gnat.

He ducked under the claw and struck again, though this time his sword only scraped the bones of its wrist. I kicked the nearest Bubble like a soccer ball and launched myself forward, rushing to join Gastard. The Wither moved faster than anything its size had a right to, pulling back from the templar and spitting more Bubbles to slow his advance. One skull struck Gastard’s right leg, sweeping him off of his feet, and leaving him face down amid a fresh cloud of spores.

We were thirty feet apart, and I was seconds away from closing with the monster when it lunged forward, driving its remaining claw into Gastard’s back. It continued to spit flaming skulls, each Bubble smashing into him with enough force to crack the diamond of his chestplate. They didn’t survive the hits, but Gastard couldn’t weather that kind of attack for long, and he couldn’t rise with the full strength of the Wither holding him in place.

My foot sank through a soft patch of mycelium, causing me to stumble almost within reach of the monster as its mouths continued to projectile vomit skulls into Gastard. I ripped my boot free, trailing moss, and leaped across the remaining distance, Caliburn in both hands.

The Wither lifted Gastard like a toy and threw him at me. We met in midair, and fell in a heap. Caliburn was gone, slipped from my hands into the pool, and the Wither was already spitting more skulls. I absorbed a blow to my chest, the Bubble costing me another heart, and fumbled for my shield.

“Are you okay?” I said, the pale blue barrier springing into existence once more as the shield absorbed another hit.

Gastard grunted, his armor run through with a spider web of cracks, the diamond plates barely holding together as he rolled onto his side. Somehow, he had kept hold of his sword.

“How many hearts do you have left?” I asked as another Bubble burst against the barrier.

“Hearts?” Gastard’s voice was rough, almost groggy. “What are you talking about?”

“Wait, am I the only one with hearts?” We’d never discussed health bars, and I’d just assumed that other heroes were working with essentially the same baseline as I was.

“I have heart enough for this,” Gastard said, levering himself up and stepping around my barrier to resume his attack on the Wither. He didn’t know what I was talking about. Why would Survivors be the only class with a heart bar? This wasn’t the place or time to bemoan the caprice of the System, but what the heck?

Gastard dodged a swipe from the Wither’s claw and jammed his sword into its chest. It wailed again, pelting him with skulls, and one of his pauldrons disintegrated. He fell back into a defensive stance, fending off the Bubbles and its remaining claw, and I drew a Splash Healing potion, tossing it to explode against the Wither’s central head.

A chunk of the humanoid skull disappeared, and red mist touched Gastard as well, hopefully compensating for some hits he’d taken. Beside me, a hollow rose out of the otherwise still pool, jabbing a trident into my leg. It scraped along the plating of my armor, and one of its points pressed into the joint at my knee.

Five hearts left.

“Dick!” I grabbed the trident, intending to rip it out of the hollow’s hands, and instead pulled the undead mob onto the soggy shore. It struggled against me, attempting to regain control of its weapon, and I slammed the shield into its desiccated face, destroying its nose. That wasn’t enough to stop it, of course, but Caliburn was gone, and it wasn’t possible for me to wield the buster while I had the shield on my arm.

I twisted the trident out of its hands and drove the points into its chest. The weapon was pitted with rust, lacking enchantment, and in no way suited to killing a hollow. The mob fought on even as I continued to stab, and a strike from a Bubble staggered me. Wrestling the hollow to the ground, I smashed my shield into its face over and over until it was thoroughly crushed. The Bubble was gnawing at my leg, its flames searing my skin, and I crushed it as well.

The runic barrier was still effective, but it had become fainter, and its edges frayed into a gaseous border. The shield itself showed cracks in the wood. While I was with the hollow, Gastard had been engrossed in his duel with the Wither. It had lost one of its heads, and it was now sitting high on its tail, fending him off with its claw while spitting more skulls at the templar.

I summoned the buster from my inventory, tapping my shield to fill the slot left open by the oversized sword. Blocking the Bubbles wasn’t getting me anywhere, and I needed a weapon that could vie with the size of the Wither. In the few seconds it cost me to switch out my equipment, the monster made its move.

Its tail swept in from behind Gastard, taking his legs out from under him, and it thrust its claw into his chestplate. The diamond armor, after sustaining dozens of blows during the battle, gave out, breaking apart like a pane of glass dropped on a stone floor.

The Wither drew back its arm for a finishing blow, and I launched myself forward, swinging the buster with both hands and lodging its edge in the monster’s torso. It backhanded me, knocking me aside as if I was a nipping kitten, while its crocodile head spat another skull at Gastard.

I heard him cry out, his voice breaking as I splashed into the putrid pool. No Aqua Affinity, no floaties, just a hundred pounds of armor and a possible concussion. The water poured into my helm, in through the gaps of my plates, and I tasted the filth of the swamp. Darkvision was no use in the murky water, so I rolled to my side and tried to find something to latch onto as I sank.

Mycelium crumbled under my grasp, and something took hold of my feet. I kicked hard and reached for the surface. It was too far, I couldn’t even see it. After everything that had happened, the demons, the upgrades, I was going to drown in a swamp. Even if Gastard could beat the Wither, he would not fish me out before I took a fatal breath.

The armor. I needed to get out of my armor. It would leave me as vulnerable as a newborn, but with the alternative being what it was, I had to try. Tapping furiously on my chestplate, I felt it vanish, becoming a medallion in my hand. The leggings followed as the pressure on my eardrums increased. I was going down, no telling where the bottom was, or what waited there. Zombies, or something worse, were dragging at my feet.

As I reached up to remove my helm, I felt a bop on my head and grabbed for whatever had done it. A block attached to a cylinder, a solid link to the surface. Hand over hand, careful not to lose the medallions, I pulled myself up along the cylinder. It was a log, smooth and perfectly regular, a crafted pole. As I breached into the open air, I saw Kevin holding the other end of the pole, dragging it back to speed my ascent. His tunic had a large, charred hole in the center where the Bubble had struck him, but the skin beneath was healthy and pink. He must have had another healing potion. When had he come out? It didn’t matter. The former Dark Lord had decided that helping me was the best thing he could do for himself. It was amazing he hadn’t been blasted again while he’d crafted the pole, which I now realized wasn’t wood at all. It was a mushroom stalk.

Heaving myself onto the spongy shore, I glanced over to see the Wither going back and forth with Gastard. Somehow, he had gotten to his feet to rejoin the fight, and taken its other arm for his trouble. It was still launching skulls, and the ground around Gastard was littered with Bubble bone fragments.

“Thanks,” I said to Kevin, slapping my armor back on. Without my gear, one blast from the skeletal behemoth would have finished me. Caliburn was somewhere in the pond, and the buster was still jutting out of the Wither’s torso, so I summoned my shield once more and started forward.

A moment’s difference, another step, and I would have made it in time. Gastard’s cuirass was gone, and the Wither’s long tail had snaked behind him. Its pointed end lifted like the head of a viper, seeming to move in slow motion, wavering for a second that stretched into eternity, and then struck.

Gastard didn’t let go of his sword, his father’s weapon, now imbued with the blessing of his class. Even as the bone spike jutted from his chest, he cut a flaming skull from the air, then glanced down. I reached them in the same instant, batting a Bubble aside with my shield and reaching for the buster.

I wrenched it free with one hand, fury rising in my throat, and spun, severing the bundle of bones that connected to the spike embedded in Gastard. He coughed, blood splattering from his mouth, and dropped to his knees.

The Wither wouldn’t let up, still spitting skulls. One burst against the runic barrier, and another hit my abdomen. Hearts flashed, and I ignored them, the tendons in my arm screaming as I swung the buster wildly, hacking the abomination with everything I had. Shards of bone and clumps of the tar that held it together flew in all directions.

The crocodile head lost its jaw, and the Wither, falling apart, lunged. Its one remaining mouth stretched wide enough to swallow my helm, and I felt something. Not the pain in my arm, or the weight of its body pressing down on me, a Presence buried deep in its chest. Its mouth had covered my head, but I let go of the buster and reached blindly for the thing that I felt. My hand passed through a gap in its ribs and closed around something hard and sharp. I ripped it free.

The Wither shuddered, its bindings disintegrating, and collapsed into a mountain of old bones.

A crystal sat in my hand, a Moravian star with a violet, burning core. In the swamp's silence, there was a ding.